In the Forest of Light and Dark (13 page)

     My mama, then told me that it was just then that the pharmacist—who she said had seemed, up to that point, rushing to get the man’s prescriptions filled as to get him out the door—thankfully had stepped in saying, “You’re all set Mr. Kolinski.” and then he handed the man a small, white pharmacy bag.
     My mama, then said that the man—Kolinski—had snatched the bag out of the pharmacist hand only to shake it in her face and say, “DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS IS? DO YOU KNOW WHAT’S IN HERE?” to which my mama just shook her head, gasping to say no, her voice having failed her again.
     Kolinski then told her it was Carmustine and Becenum. That it was for his little boy. For his brain tumor that had been successfully removed, but was now growing back with a vengeance. He said that his kid’s cancer had been in remission for four years, ever since my grandmother—and I could tell that my mama didn’t really want to say this next part, but she’d come this far in the story already, and I’m pretty sure she knew I’d never let it go until she told me.—that
witch,
Lyanna Barrett, as he had called her, had
stopped coming around the village and just kept her old ass shut away in her house where she belonged. He then went on blaming my mama for what was now happening to his son saying, “And now! Thanks to you. My kid’s tumor is back just when you and that daughter of yours started showing up around here again.”
     By this point of her story I had felt myself becoming fairly wrought up by what my mama had told me. I could also see the hurt on my mama’s face too. How even the mere retelling of what had happened to her today at the pharmacy had once again shaken her to her core. It was at this point that all I want to do was nail his nuts—Kolinski’s nuts—to a stump and push him over backwards for what he’d said about my mama and grandma. But at that moment, though, all I really wanted to know was what my mama had said to him in response to him blaming her for his son’s cancer.
     My mama had finished her story by telling me she’d been mortified and didn’t know what to do. So, she did what I guess anyone in her situation would have done. She left.
     The funny thing is though. At the time of all this happening. She’d been standing in line behind Kolinski at the checkout holding a package of aspirin and some salve ointments for me that were supposedly good for curing poison ivy. (Which she thought I might have had due to the red patches that I’d developed around the scratches on my legs I had received from my time in the forest.) In her confusion. She had simply forgotten to put the items back or at least leave them down on the nearest counter when she’d scurried out the store to get away from Kolinski. She had said that she’d run out of the pharmacy so fast that she hadn’t even realized that she still held the items in her hands until after she had gotten back to her car.
     So, that makes the second village store in less than a week’s time that we’d gotten a five-finger discount from. I guess you can add thieves to the long list of things that people liked to call us around here.
     “We’re becoming a real family of Bonnie & Clyde’s.” I said teasing her and my mama just cracked a smile and even snickered a little at the thought of us being outlaws. But then we heard a sudden crash that came from somewhere out on the deck. Followed by my Step Daddy Cade yelling, “Goddamn Cats! Get the hell outta here!”

The Weather Girl
 

That night it had stormed something awful, and I had spent the evening in my room splitting time between looking out my balcony while I awaited the approaching storm (I have always been fascinated with storms.) or on my phone talking with Lettie and telling her all about my three new best buds from school.
     It was just after dark when I had eventually given up on my conversation with Lettie after my intermittent phone kept cutting out. (Probably due to the approaching storm and lack of cell towers in the area.) But Lettie had gotten the gist of what I’d been saying and right before we’d hung up, she even teased me for not having kicked the bitches asses. She told me I was losing it, and that I was becoming a real pussy-ass New Yorker already. To which I told her that I could still kick her ass.
     After the call had ended, I put my phone back on its charge, and in doing so received a nasty, little shock of static electricity that made me swear out loud. I then sat on my bed looking out my balcony windows at the storm which had come ever closer, and was just now beginning to let it rip after having crested over the hills and forest atop Mt. Harrison.
     As I watched the show. I could hear my mama and step daddy down the hall in their bedroom discussing something. But I couldn’t make out just what it was though through the walls and distance, and honestly, I really didn’t care.
     Looking out at the mountain the sky above the forest had grown rapidly dark. But I could still see the maelstrom of thunder clouds that were whirling around one another through the last wisps of daylight as if the gods were becoming angry. From my spot on my bed the storm looked like it was building itself up to bring forth a crushing blow that might level all the trees of the forest.
   As I waited in anticipation, I thought of Saraland and of how the storms we’d get sometimes rolling in from over the Gulf would build for what seemed like an eternity before bring forth their wrath. For as long as I could remember. I had always loved watching them with their wicked brilliance as they’d let loose their payload of lightning that would pierce the atmosphere igniting the air on fire. And, at that moment as I looked out over the mountain I found myself feeling that way again. Antsy with delectation and almost giddy enough to start cavorting about my bedroom in heightened anticipation of the performance that was about to unfold.
   I cracked open the French glass doors that led out to my balcony and was immediately hit by a wave of cool air. It’d been saturated with a powerful stench of ozone and pine. I could also hear the sounds of the trees atop Mt. Harrison groaning as they aggressively swayed back-and-forth as wave-after-wave of upcoming gales rushed down the hillsides sweeping their way through them.
     My parents had begun to pick up their voices too, and I could now hear them consistently coming through the walls. But I still wasn’t able to make out just what it was they were talking about. It was like they were drunks and their speech was all slurred.
     I opened my balcony doors up even further so I could feel the mist in the hazy air. It was palpable and felt cool on my face.
    The heavy clouds, then began fulminating in a cacophony of explosions not far in the distance, and the night sky lit up like the fourth of July. As the lightning illuminated the atmosphere in rapid successions. I could literally see the rain through the darkness coming towards me and down the hills of Mount Harrison in sheets as it headed straight for my house.
     At that moment, I wondered where all of Mount Harrison’s strays were taking up residency to keep out of the storm, but I had figured their instincts would’ve led them to someplace warm, dry, and safe.
     Wave-after-wave of downpour began slamming into the roof and back side of our house eventually beginning to flood my balcony as the forceful winds blew my hair back.
     I could hear my parents arguing even louder now as if they were trying to compete with the storm. I had even thought I heard my step daddy shout something like,
“So what do you want me to do, go find this guy and kick his ass?”
Leaving me to believe that they were discussing what had happened earlier today with Mama and that Kolinski jackass down at the pharmacy.
     The winds began picking up even harder as the center of the storm approached overhead. Thunder and lightning continued their banter with one another.
    I looked down at my feet and noticed that there was still about a two foot section of my balcony directly in front of me that’d been sheltered from the rain by the eve of the second floor rooftop. I stepped out onto it, hoping to get as close to the storm as possible without getting drenched.
     The trees of the forest continued to crackle and moan as they swayed back-and-forth like hippies at a Mama’s and the Papa’s concert. I even thought I heard one snap and come crashing to the ground from somewhere out among the infinite scores of them.
     My parents bickering grew as exponentially loud as the storm did and I couldn’t help but think,
Will you shut the fuck up already!
     The storm was building itself up to a crescendo like how a fireworks show would eventually lead to its grand finale.
   I watched as a tree branch that’d been ripped from one of the pines fell from the air and tumbled across the backyard before me. It looked like an umbrella that’d been liberated from somebody’s hand during a hurricane.
     I could feel the static electricity in the air beginning to lift my long, blonde hair up off my shoulders, pinning it to the air as if gravity ceased to exist. The electricity in my eardrums buzzed loudly sounding just like swarming honeybees, which then caused the skin on my arms to turn to goose-flesh.
     Another lightning bolt shot out of the sky and worked its way crookedly down to the earth. After a few seconds its report rang out with a clap that shook the house to its very foundation.
     “WELL, I NEVER WANTED TO COME BACK HERE, BUT WHAT CHOICE DID WE HAVE?” Came from somewhere on the other side of the house breaking my concentration on the storm.
    
Son of a bitch!
I thought, and I began growing steadily angry with my mama.
Would you just grow a pair already? You can’t just run into your hole and hide every time somebody looks at you cockeyed.
     Torrents of water came down from the capacious clouds. Soon, the rain that was hitting my balcony began to splash up off its cement floor only to begin soaking my legs up to my kneecaps. Eventually, even getting the hem of my denim skirt wet.
     Light continued to flicker throughout the billowing clouds. While the occasional white or pink bolt would jump horizontally from cloud-to-cloud as if it were a snake burrowing itself through hills of sand.
     By now I had become rapt in the storm. As if it were a part of me and me some intrinsic part of it. As if I was feeding it somehow. We had merged into one entity.
     Acrid smells were now beginning to waft up from the rotting foliage being turned over from a compost heap near the back-end of the yard.
     Another clap of thunder hit and with it I heard a forlorn and terrified animal shriek out from somewhere in the forest, but the effusive rain quickly silenced its cries.
     Light from deep within the storm clouds began to irradiate parts of the sky’s black canvas, giving it a deep, warm glow. As if the tempest had swallowed lightning bugs causing a dappled condition to appear.
     The indefatigable storm surged forward punishing Mt. Harrison in its intensity as it pervasively made its ways through its hills.
     “WELL WHAT THE HELL DID YOU WANT ME TO SAY? NO, LETS NOT TAKE THE HOUSE AND THE MONEY AND THE CAR BECAUSE YOU DON’T LIKE THE PEOPLE YOU GREW UP WITH!!!” I heard my Step Daddy Cade cogently shout out. His voice now carrying through the walls as if they were paper-thin.
     Perturbed and now seething over my parent’s squabbling. I reached behind me for the balcony’s door handles to close them behind me. When I touched them, I became jolted by another one of those surges of power that arced its way from the brass handles to my finger tips. The electricity was purple and bluish as I saw it from the corner of my eye and I had felt it course through me becoming serpentine around my insides. Like I was now a lightning conduit that the storm was using to enter inside me.
     Truculent thunder clapped from all around as I lifted my arms up to the heavens in pure delight of the storm’s all encompassing cacophony. I supinated my hands, and water began filling my palms instantly. I then stepped out from under the eve further onto the balcony, letting the sheets of rain begin to drench my clothes.
    Power seemed everywhere and all around me even though I could not see it; I could feel it, warm and comforting. I felt like the storm and I had coalesced and I was now in control of it. It was like a giant machine and I was pushing the buttons. Winds whipped around me and howled in my ears as the glass balcony doors behind me shook violently.
     It all felt ethereal, like I wasn’t on my balcony any longer. It was as if I was up in the clouds. In the storm high above the forest. I rained down on the village, cleansing it of all its horrible secrets, and belaboring its abhorrent history from it.
     “THINGS ARE ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE. I KNOW THEY ARE!” I heard my mama cry out. And with that,
I was completely enraged. I felt myself become totally implacable, and I shouted into the sky “SHUT UP!” as the rain poured down on my face.
     Lightning struck down just off to my right, near the Genesee River. That was followed almost immediately by another bolt that came down, burning the sky somewhere to my left. It was close. Possibly even in my side yard, close.
     “THERE’S NO GODDAMN WAY WE’RE GIVING BACK THAT MONEY!”
     “
SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!!!”
I screamed as I slammed both of my hands down upon the balcony’s railings.
     Coinciding with my outburst the sky lit up and a spider web of bolts raced across the clouds culminating back into one enormous thunderbolt that rocketed down before me striking the sodden lawn of my backyard. The black sky momentarily burned red and orange from its heat, and I could feel the warmth of it come off the air. Everything went awash with light around me. And the light, piercing in its brilliance, seemed to penetrate the walls of the house behind me lighting up the entire structure. The earth and the house shook tremulously as the ground absorbed the bolts power. The thunder which then accompanied the bolt simultaneously almost leveled the house when its shock wave had hit. Sending a wall of sound and pressurized air, slamming against the house’s back facade. All the windows on the back-end of our house where I stood instantly shattered, sending their liberated glass crashing to the ground and deck.
     And then, just like that, it was finished. The rain tailed off almost immediately and the thunder and lightning ceased. Forged on the ground was a smoldering, carbon-black circle where the lightning had struck. The clouds dissipated and slipped away back behind the mountain opening up the night’s sky. I soon could see the stars again twinkling with their dazzling radiance up on their black canvas where they belonged.
     My mama and step daddy rushed into my bedroom, turning on the lights. I quickly turned around to see them come in as my hair and clothing all soaked and wet ran off in little rivulets of rain water.
   Before me scattered across the balcony laid shimmering shards of broken glass that stretched out over the balcony’s flooded cement floor. Twinkling pieces of jagged razors reaching as far as my bedroom’s now drenched carpet that lay just beyond the broken doors.
     “Oh my god... Cera. Are you alright?” My mama called out to me before rushing forward, and paying no mind to the broken glass. “What happened? Did you get hit by lightning?” she then asked panic-stricken. My step daddy then quickly grabbed a blanket off of my bed using it to cover me.
     “I’m fine.” I said. “I was just watching the storm and—”
     “But you’re all wet and cold.” She said, cutting me off mid-sentence while also suffocating me in her embrace. “You didn’t get cut from any of this broken glass, did you?” She then asked as she feverishly looked me over from head-to-toe.
     “JEZUS!” Step Daddy Cade exclaimed as he came back in from the balcony. “That damn storm broke every window on this side of the house.”
     “It’s alright. As long as nobody got hurt. That’s all that is important.” My mama told him while still holding me tight to her chest.
     “I’m fine. Really, I am.” I said, trying to reassure her as I broke away from her grip and went over to my closet to grab dry clothes. “I think I’m just goin’ to get somethin’ warm and dry to put on now and go to bed. Got school in the mornin’, you know.”
     “Yeah,
well...
You’re gonna have to sleep downstairs tonight, kiddo.” Step Daddy Cade then said as he closed up the balcony doors, engaging the deadbolt to keep the door’s framework held tight. “I’m gonna have to get a few garbage bags from the kitchen to cover up these windows or ya know what? I think we got some of those big-ass ones used for yard work out in the garage. I can use them to cover up these broken windows for now. If we don’t get’em covered we’ll have water and bugs all through the upstairs by mornin’.”
     “Okay, I’ll head downstairs and start making up the couches because it looks like we’ll all be bunking down there for at least tonight.” My mama then told the two of us before heading off.
     “If you want. I’ll take care of the other rooms first. So, you’ll have time to take a hot shower before I have to come in here and bandage up your room?” Step Daddy Cade then said to me, but then he headed off downstairs himself before I had even given him an answer.