I’m not moving anymore. That’s not good. I went away for a while, and when I came back, I wasn’t moving anymore. It comes to me that Grandpapa would want me to move. He’d want me to keep going.
Getting going hurts. It hurts so much I sail up out of my body again and watch it work from a safe distance. From up here it’s interesting, more than anything else. It’s strange how I move. Like a spider that’s missing some legs. I’ve never liked killing anything, but I’ve put spiders like that out of their misery. A quick stomp and then no more herky-jerky movement, just a smear on the ground.
I don’t want to be put out of my misery, though. I want to live. I want to go back to good things.
The sun is getting too close to the horizon. Once it disappears completely, I’ve got to go in for dinner, which means there’s not enough time to finish our fort today. It’s the best fort Caleb and I have ever made. It goes out into the river, so there’s an on-land section of it and an indoor-pool section of it.
“Hand me that twine,” Caleb says.
I give him the rope while I shovel wet gravel. I’m bolstering the main wall of the indoor swimming pool.
“When we grow up we should make a house for real just like this,” I say. “Have it go out over the river. There’d be glass floors and you could look down and see the water.”
“What if it floods?” Caleb is always practical.
“You’d put it up on stilts like houses at the beach, so if it floods it just hits the stilts.”
“That’d be cool. And it could be really tall, too, up into the branches of the trees, like a tree house.”
I like it when Caleb plays along. “And instead of beds we’d have hammocks,” I say.
“And you could make me dinner every night.”
I laugh long and hard. “In your dreams.” Upon reflection, I add, “I would make breakfast, though, because I like doing it. You can make dinner.”
“Deal.”
A thud wakes me up. Somehow I know the thud was me falling to the ground. Which means I must have been up and walking. There’s no memory of being up and walking, but I’m sure that’s what was going on.
Scattered pine trees surround me. Where did the flat field go? I have no idea. All I know is that I was visiting the memory of a long-gone fort. I’d completely forgotten that ever happened. The next day we discovered the river had washed away all our hard work. Why didn’t we rebuild? Even now, nine years later, I think that fort was pretty amazing.
Wait, no. This isn’t important. I shouldn’t be thinking about a fort. There are pine needles stuck to my face. I’m facedown in a pine forest. I need to be thinking about how to survive.
I was walking and that’s good. I know that’s good. I need to see if I can do it again.
Getting up is an otherworldly torture. Once up I decide to never fall down ever again. Doing that twice would be too much to ask of my body. Moving forward is a lot to ask too. That feeling of leaving myself comes over me again. I don’t think it’s a good thing. Fighting the sensation, I try to stay in the pain, stay with my legs and my arms, my head and my stomach. I try to remember the Wolfman.
Up ahead there’s a patch of forest that seems brighter than the rest. It doesn’t look like the dawn, although the sun can’t be too far off. It doesn’t look like much of anything at all, actually. It might not even really be there. But it gives me something to focus on, something to dull the pain. I wonder if the glow is emanating from the redheaded girls. I don’t see them, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there. They haven’t steered me wrong yet, so I point my feet in their direction.
After a few more yards I decide that the light is real. It’s not the other girls. It’s too big and bright for that. It’s a bluish-white sort of color. There’s something very pure about it. In the mist it dissipates into a broad, soft glow. No sign to be seen of what is behind it. It almost makes me think of heaven. It’s possible I could be walking toward heaven. I have no idea what it’s like. My pastor said that before you went to heaven, you were baptized by a Pentecostal fire. It wasn’t clear what he meant by that, but it stuck with me. Maybe this pain is a Pentecostal fire. Maybe I’m getting ready to go to heaven. Maybe that white light will be the end of all of this. I don’t want it to be the end, but if that’s what God has planned for me, it’ll be okay.
My mom is in the doorway, a cardboard box labeled GOODWILL under one arm and a DVD in her hand. She looks concerned, or maybe just a little sad.
“You’re giving away The Black Stallion?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought maybe it got in here on accident, or something.”
“Nope.”
“I thought it was your favorite movie.”
I shrug.
“Not anymore?”
“I’m never going to watch it again, Mom.” This is a true statement.