Thomas Huston’s feet were blue but they were not black. Sitting as high as he could on the inside of the concrete drain pipe, buttocks four inches above the thin stream of water gurgling through the pipe, a foot braced against the other side, he had removed his soggy shoes and socks and now rubbed one bare foot and then the other until they no longer felt like packages of refrigerated meat in his hands. He rubbed away the agonizing needle prick and then kept massaging until he could flex his toes without fearing they might break off.
He had scuttled into the culvert just minutes earlier, awkwardly straddling the little stream until he was fifteen or so feet inside the pipe at more or less the center of the asphalt road overhead. According to his wristwatch, it was now 11:40 in the morning, though the hour or even the date bore little meaning to him. Something had happened to his concept of time. Time had been shattered and broken, some of the pieces melted together, others wholly lost. Ten minutes might carry the pain of a month, two days nothing more than a sliver of glass in the corner of his eye.
Maybe he had been inside that drainpipe forever. Maybe he was a character in a play by Beckett and what he thought of as his memory was merely seepage from his creator’s brain.
He pulled the collar of the dirty jacket tight around his neck, then tucked both hands into the side pockets. And only then saw that he was wearing a jacket and knew it wasn’t his. He had no idea where it had come from or when he had put it on. It felt too loose across his chest and shoulders, was the jacket of a bigger man. An old, quilted jacket, dark green, stained with dark blotches that smelled of motor oil, with long tears in both sleeves through which the dirty white batting showed. Small patches of dried clay marked the front, the sleeves, every surface he could see. He sniffed a patch of dirt; it reminded him of the cave. But the memory of the cave was itself uncertain, dreamlike, and unreal. When had he been in a cave? And why?
What was not dreamlike was the heavy, deep ache in his chest, the feeling of grief that made his head feel swollen, made every breath feel like a bruise. He wanted desperately to weep, he wanted that comfort. But he was not sure why.
Now and then, a vehicle rumbled down the asphalt road, and when it passed atop him, Huston reflexively hunched his shoulders and lowered his head. Afterward, he smiled to himself because he recognized the uselessness of that posture. Part of him was helpless to resist the urge to take a defensive posture, and part of him could not help being amused by it.
He sat with both legs stretched over the stream now, bare feet braced against the other side, knees bent just enough to keep them from locking up with stiffness. He kept his wet shoes and socks cradled in his lap. The smell of wet leather and sodden, sweaty cotton was somehow comforting—the end of a morning run, just another part of his daily routine. He would rest for a few minutes and then head for the shower, get dressed for his eleven o’clock class. What day is this? he wondered. If it’s Monday, I teach Contemporary Lit. If it’s Tuesday, the Craft of Fiction.
But he could not hold the truth at bay for long. It came back with the speed and suddenness of a bullet, it roared through the pipe and slammed into him, left him sitting there shivering and sobbing, convulsing with grief. “My babies,” he moaned. “My sweet, darling babies…” But the pain was too much and it took him under; it made him sink into sleep, doubled over with his arms hooked around his knees.
After a while, his arms slipped apart and he awoke with a start, gasping for breath. The air was dim now, gray and damp, and the first image to flash through his brain was of the knife going into Davy’s chest. He shrieked with pain then, had no power to contain it. His cry bounced off the concrete, split in half, and shot down both sides of the pipe, echoed and echoed and pounded like a hammer at his brain.