Wednesday Write-Up: Dawn (for Mike)

My memory of that day always starts the same way. I usually see it in the bottom of my wine glass, when Luc has left to order more drinks at the bar. In the haze of smoke and the thrum of the music, I go back in time.

 

I watch the light hit the water on the pool and shimmer against the windows of my parents’ house. The dogs sip the water and bite the air around the last of the moths. The earth seems to be holding its breath: it’s the time before the cars start their trek to Town, before people splash themselves awake in the shower or slurp the coffee off their breakfast rusks. I smell a cigarette burning.

            My feet trace the way to the kitchen. I know something is wrong by the way the kitchen door is positioned. The chain is swinging against the wood like a hypnotist’s pendulum. I feel the air and shudder. I want to close the door, when I notice the light in the garage. I jump when the dogs nudge their bowls across the floor at me, waiting for a refill. I swallow a lump of fear and it sticks in my neck before landing in my stomach and upsetting the butterflies. My shorts do little to protect me; I am exposed to the morning, the street lamps and the neighbours, should they care to look.

            The garage door is open. I hear a creak. A shadow lies across the paving. The dogs lick my legs. They must sense my panic. I cannot look. My eyes are on the shadow dancer. The paving has ended and the gape of the garage door threatens to swallow me. I am blinded twice: firstly, by the bulb and secondly, by the horror hanging there. The dogs whine with me. His face is blue and distorted. The slack limbs dangle like a puppet’s and the stench of urine makes me retch.

            Daddy.

           I am floored by my grief and relief. My mother comes outside, asking me what I am doing. Her eyes follow my gaze and she starts to scream. All the sounds that would not come from me escape her mouth. The dogs go berserk in the neighbourhood. Peeping Tom leans over the wall and mutters the rosary. My brother joins us, half asleep, the sinews in his arms ready to fight an intruder.

            I cannot stop looking at his face: a face that is mine as much as it is his. It is no longer animated in a scowl, nor does it have the power to hurl abuse at me or my mother. His hands are lifeless and unable to hit or steal. In a strange way, he seems at peace in the midst of the chaos. My mother is crying. People are standing around in their gowns and slippers, sleep having styled their hair. Blue lights arrive with the police. I have not moved. I cannot feel the cold.

            Luc is back from the bar and asks about the look in my eye. I tell him I am drunk, which he believes.

            I don’t revisit the memory to see experience horror again. I go there because I want to be back in the moment before I saw him. Before I stopped being a boy.