Tara Wilson Redd - Fierce as the Wind

I am racing. The wind sings in my ears and burns my tearstained cheeks as I fly down the hill on my bike. The sky is starless, moonless, empty. My headlight cuts a yellow circle out of the night ahead of me, just enough to find my way.

Theres a part of my brain that talks when I bike this hard, while the rest of my mind is perfectly still. Tonight, it wants me to notice the palm trees and the brush as my headlight passes over them. Even though I am blinded by rage, I see Van Goghs rolling cypress trees in the scraggly branches. The voice remembers how Van Goghs ink sketches of those trees look like towering bonfires. The voice sees so much beauty in the world.

But as I skid to a stop, it goes silent.

Im here.

I steer straight into the bushes, cutting up my legs.

I bunny hop my bike over roots until Im hidden in the trees. The ground gets sandier, less stable, with fallen branches and trash all over. Even though Im fighting as hard as I can, my front wheel finally gets caught in a rut too deep to push through, and the bike starts to fall sideways. I jump off before I go down with it.

I find a sturdy-looking tree trunk and chain up my bike. I take off my helmet, hang it on the handlebars. I unstrap my pillowcase full of heartache from my rack. The bungee cord snaps back into my arm, and I let out a yelp. I sling the pillowcase over my shoulder.

On foot, I break through the trees out onto the beach. My pillowcase is stabbing me in the back as I make my way toward the oil drum down on the sand. I shift my cursed load. My legs are on fire from cranking over here, and I cant catch my breath.

I stop when I get to the oil drum, the only thing on this stretch of beach. I drop my pillowcase in the sand. I wipe the sweat from my eyes and I check my phone. Still no answer. My last seven text messages form a column on my side of the conversation. I clench my teeth and slide my phone away so I can turn the pillowcase upside down into the oil drum.

Most of what he gave me over two years was paper: books, notebooks, an occasional postcard. Everything else was digital. We spent two years together in WhatsApp and Snapchat. We rode wolves across the wild pixelated fields of Eldritch Codex, controllers in hand, me and my partner in crime. We were miles apart but always together. But it was the books I treasured. The books were really him. I dump in his copy of Van Goghs letters, illuminated by his commentary in the margins, his chicken-scratch thoughts in French and English, in Latin and Greek, connections only he could have made. Into the drum go the novels, the sketchbooks and Moleskines he inscribed to me, every bookmark and every poem and every bit of mail from abroad. I dump in every Post-it note I saved because his handwriting was precious to me.

Even paper drenched with tears burns when you squirt a full container of lighter fluid over it. I scream as I shake every drop from the bottle. I reach into my pocket and

And

I dont have a lighter.

Its the middle of the night, but I jump back on my bike and ride the full twenty miles back to the Trailer Park. The wind is against me now and it takes forever.

My house isnt actually a trailer, but it squeaks like one. I try to silently swing open the front screen door. It screams like it always does.

Achilles gallops out from his post in my room, thundering down the hall past my dads bedroom. I raise a finger to my lips, holding my hand out flat and willing the word Stay into his defective Shiba Inu consciousness. Achilles has three-fourths the number of legs of a standard-issue dog, and one-fourth the brain. I pray he is in a listening mood.

He sits, cocks his head at me, and watches as I slide open the kitchen junk drawer so smoothly that nothing inside it moves. I withdraw a book of matches that reads Uncle Tuas Pizzeria without touching anything else in the drawer. I can see the long grill lighter buried in the bottom, but theres no way I can reach it without disturbing approximately a million keys that open nothing. Jeez, Dad, I think. How do old people accumulate so many dead batteries and keys?

Achilles is looking at me like he thinks Ive been hiding his long-lost pink tennis ball in that drawer all along, holding out on him. I keep my hand up, but hes losing patience. He starts to whine, hopping around, bouncing back and forth on his one front leg.

Down, Achilles! I whisper-shout. In reply, he barks louder than you would think possible for such a small dog.

I stand absolutely still, one foot hovering aloft as I wait.

Aki-chan! growls my dad from his room in the back. Achilles goes running off to appease his real master. As Dad is grumbling at the dog, I back my way silently to the door.

And then I am gone, racing away.