When I was growing up, there was this house that all the kids liked to sneak off to. You take a right off Main Street, all the way to the edge of town then hook another right onto Francis. It was an old paved road covered in cracks that spread like the limbs of an old oak. Next, you drive a good five miles and then turn onto one of those old county roads covered in loose gravel that no one ever bothered to name. Registered under a number buried so deep in old court records that it would take a full-scale excavation to uncover. Go somewhere around fifteen minutes that way, around some sharp curves and up and down more than a few hills, and when you’re truly lost, you’re almost there. After that its just a few more minutes down an even older, rutted driveway.
As far as anyone in town knew, whoever owned the house last must have died off without a beneficiary because no one claimed it or put any care into its wellbeing for generations. But when you’re a horny kid just lookin for a place to get a little wasted on a Friday night, you don’t really put much thought into the logistics of ownership for the abandoned house you and your older siblings before you and your parents before them are squatting in.
There was just something about that old house, some type of allure to it that brought congregations of the towns youth out there to act a fool for generations. No amount of parental lectures or police raids, by the same hypocrites who did the same damn thing when they were kids, could ever dissuade any of us. We were teenagers damn it, we knew best. And there was just something too irresistible about that old Antebellum, way out there in its own little world.
The house itself stood tall and proud, despite being well over a hundred years old. You can even see some of the paint left, well, the paint that hadn’t quiet peeled off yet. Almost looked royal with those old columns lining the front of the wrap around porch. The house was three stories tall and despite the wear and tear, there was something proud about it. The house was old but it was made from strong bones and seemed to grow out of the soil itself from even stronger roots.
I’m not quite sure what made me think of that house tonight. I hadn’t really put much thought into it in several years. Not since I put that town in my rear view. Moved upstate, then outta state and just kept going til I reached coast. I’ve been too busy to revel in nostalgia. But I just can’t seem to get my mind off it tonight. Not since that kid.
Comin in earlier, I noticed the garden at the base of my apartment complex that always smells of fresh flowers and inexplicably like spring year round, had taken a sour turn. Instead of lilacs, it was like I stepped into that old dilapidated front room, permeating a stench of upturned soil and rotting wood. Oddly relaxing in a, “graveside funeral,” kinda way.
I shower to clear my head and cleanse my sense of smell, to wash away natures decay from my nostrils, but all I feel is a heavy downpour under that old elm out front. The only tree growing in what had to have once been a beautiful yard. I close my eyes and it’s a cold spring night all over again. The white dots when I shut my eyes real tight even look like little stars speckled behind storm clouds, fighting to be seen and losing definitively.
Before I get too lost into some old, nearly forgotten reverie, I shamble my thoughts to that kid at the bodega earlier this afternoon. No taller than five-four, slim as a budding willow, and hair the color of mud under a midnight sky, I swear to God he could have been you. Twenty years ago, that kid would have damn near been your twin. I don’t know. Maybe it was just the baseball cap, the red one. It was a lot like the one you wore that night at the house.
I open my fridge, hoping to find a little relief for my uneasy stomach but all I find is that bottle of Carlsberg beer you stole from your brother’s stash. The twin to the one you drank earlier in the night when we first got to the house and realized it was just going to be us. It was surprisingly bright for midnight, I still remember how clearly I could see you even without a camp fire. I remember that beer too, it wasn’t cold anymore but it wasn’t quite warm yet either, perspiration running down onto my fingers as the contents desperately cling to the last bit of chill, like a dying man to his last breath.
It was absolutely disgusting but you can’t be too picky when you’re sixteen. I take a good, long drag of that bitter honey, that amber poison. I take that drink that I shouldn’t have taken then, all over again. And with it comes the thunder. Faint at first, but steady. Growing stronger and nearer as I close my eyes to the fresh moonlight peaking out from the clouds, from the kitchen light that suddenly turns into a goddamn beacon. I can handle my alcohol better now than I could then. It made me do things, things I didn’t mean. But I’m better now. Damn it, I know I’m better.
The thunder rolls into my head like your closed fist, pounding against my skull. Like the sirens bearing down on me. Thunder so loud that it almost drowns out my own words.
Boom.
“It was an accident!”
Crack.
“I’m sorry!”
I see stars. Bright, beautiful stars over the roof of the old house.
BOOM!
“Please don’t tell!”
BOOM!
“I’m so sorry!”
BOOM!
Then silence. Sweet, comforting, terrifying silence. The antithesis to that bitter, foul, coppery taste in my mouth. I hold my hands up in the moon light, under the kitchen’s florescent beams, and I see the blood. That kid? At the bodega. I could have sworn he was you. I wonder, just for a moment, am I there again, under that old elm outside that old house? Am I with you?
Am I there?
The sirens come to a halt down by the garden.
It wasn’t you after all.
