Storytime: In the Dark.

November 11th, 2016

“Father?”
“Yes?”
“I am afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“The dark.”
The father put away his newspaper in halves and quarters and eighths, quickly but kindly. His eyes remained settled on his son, turning him over and over. They were warm. Loving. Endothermic. And they were a smoky grey that looked proper, especially at sunsets.
“Walk with me,” he said to his son.
And his son took the father’s hand, and they did that. They walked out of the warm wood-panelled living room into the smooth-slated floor of the front hall and down the long, long white path that shone so brightly in the fires of the setting sun.

There they turned away from the warm and the bright and the open sky, and they walked in thicket, then brush, and finally in trees, under trees, old trees with neither flowers nor leaves nor colour, a grey and green kingdom under a darkening sky.
“Sit here,” the father told his son. And his son sat, back against the spine of an old, old pine. The father paced away from him by one hundred and eighty degrees, counting them with care, and sat down likewise, rough bark brushing smooth cotton.
There were no words there for some time as the sun faded out and the night clotted up around them, just soft breath. And at last, as the world turned out its last light, the father spoke.
He spoke of the sounds that flittered overhead, surreptitious between the branches. Bats, out hunting for their mosquito meals using squeaks far too precise for anything as clumsy as the human ear.
He spoke of the soft business trundling by their feet at that moment; a porcupine, out roving from tree to tree to search for bark.
He spoke of the long, maniacal laughter that sprang out of the distance, and why coyotes made the sounds they did, and for what they were searching, and why.
And he spoke most carefully, most thoroughly, and most calmly and surely, of the spiderweb that lay behind his son’s eyes, of rods and cones and the lack of a tapetum lucidum, and the manifest difficulties that presented when it came to the need of his son to see in the darkness.
“We are creatures of daylight,” he told his son. “Not of nightfall. Your business is now much more difficult, and just as surely theirs is much more comfortable.”
And his son nodded, and the father took him by the hand and led him away again.

They walked away from the damp and the branches and the needles and through dead leaves and onto old asphalt, bone-dry and thrice as cracked. The father walked with his long, slow paces and his son with his fast skipping ones, one-two-three-andahop to keep pace, to keep up. They walked down old streets, mean streets, empty streets with no lights and no laughter and not even a moan to be heard, and down into an old, old canal that had once been full and now was quiet and empty.
Here there was a rusted door set into the wall, above the waterline. The father opened it and his son entered it and the father closed it and they sat down, back to back against the metal. As his son opened his eyes in absolute black, the father spoke.
He spoke of the abandoned sewer that his son sat within, and of why it had been shut down, and of the growth and shrinkage of a city, and of the historical effects this had upon civil plumbing infrastructure.
He spoke of the type of cleaning that would’ve been done, by hand and by time, and the debris that would be left behind by now.
He spoke of the origins of the rustling sounds that echoed around his son, of mice and rats and the various insects that filled the gaps in any civilization, and of why they would be there, and of their habits in food, in love, in homes.
And he spoke, with gentle softness, of the efforts that went into creating such places, and the thoughts behind every quirk of their architecture.
“This is a place of care,” he told his son. “It is certainly no cave. Every surface surrounding you was put there for a reason, a mechanical, biological, integrated, systemic purpose. Even if it is no longer used. Even if it is no longer remembered. It has been set aside by its makers, and its deterioration, too, follows a plan of sorts.”
And his son nodded, and the father opened the old rusted door and walked beside him once more under the deep sky.

They walked down the streets from silence to murmurs, past buildings that still snored if not rumbled. Down, downhill, always downhill, in slips and slopes, until they smelled salt and came to a little dock among the gigantic, with a little dinghy among the giants.
The father rowed. His son sat at the bow.
It was a good ways to go. A little more than three miles until the curved water swallowed the city shoreline. But the father put away his oars, and he pulled out a rope, and he pulled out a hook and bait, and he pulled out a small camera.
All three went over the side. And the father held up the far end of the camera, the viewing-screen, the transmitted end of the transmitter, and he spoke.
He spoke to his son of the opacity of water, and why this was so, and how many things living in it relied on their ears far more than their eyes.
He spoke to his son of the peculiar properties of movement in water, and why he should be so very clumsy in it when other things should be so very swift.
He spoke to his son of the appearance of a shark, and how this was a result of its biology, which was a result of its ecological niche.
He spoke to his son of the penetration of light into water, and how this resulted in the loss of colour, from red to all.
He spoke to his son of the bottom-dwellers; the earnest, silent crabs; and how they lived in the shower of detritus from the surface, and why.
“These things are old,” he told his son. “But they are not immutable. Others have filled their niches before them. Others will fill them after them. They react and change to the days and events that are placed upon them by time and tide, as anywhere else. They eat to live, and they move to eat, and they do so as diligently and constantly as anything, anywhere.”
His son nodded, and the sun came up.

The city was beginning to hum and wail to itself as they walked back, not yet woken but waking its way. It paid them little mind yet, and put few things in their path, and between that and the light that guided their footsteps home was within their eyes before long.
Here the father stopped one more time, and he turned to his son and this time, the first time, he looked him in the eye as he spoke.
“Remember,” he said, “that all fear is like all love.” And he placed his hand over his son’s heart. “It arises in here.”
“I will.”
The father smiled, small and soft. “Good. Now come along. It has been a long night, and a long lesson, but now there is time for breakfast.”
They set out on that shining white path, the little bones crunching under their sensible shoes. In the door ahead stood the waiting shadow of the mother, half-shrunken at the sight of them; and overhead from the chimney the dry ashes of their red breakfast spiralled upwards to mar the dawning face of the new day.

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Leave a comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.