He clutches at his throat, trying to speak.
I don’t tell him why. I wonder if when we die, we can still ponder things. I hope not. I want the things I think about to rest once I’m gone.
I watch him, and make sure he’s gone. It doesn’t take long. It’s so much faster and simpler than I thought it would be.
A breeze goes through the alley and my face is cold. Streaks of what feels like ice make me shiver involuntarily until I brush away the tears. They’re unexpected.
I clean off the knife on his shirt before dropping it down a sewer. The last act that involves Harold has to do with his wallet. I collect the cash and pocket it. Only forty-three dollars. Then I drop the wallet down the grates along the street too.
The white noise fades fast and I can hear the parade again, like nothing happened. Picking up a stick, I trail it along the mortar between the bricks of the building. Because that’s what kids do, they like sticks and rocks and keeping to themselves.
I keep walking and I don’t look back. Instead I think about Cody and how that was the only time we rode down that alley. How when we went down it, I couldn’t wait to try on my own. I was going to have my own bike soon and I was going to do it too.
I don’t hear anyone scream like I thought I would. Watching the parade from the end of the street where it’s taped off I wait, but no one ever screams.
The sirens come and no one wants to part to let them through.
It’s for the better outcome.
It’s for all the pretty little birds.
Delilah
I was never adventurous. I didn’t want to go play outside. My father locked the door once after telling my sister and me to go on the front porch. He yelled through the closed door to go play and turned his back to us.
I suppose telling us we couldn’t stay inside all day during summer got old, so he resorted to kicking us out. When the streetlights came on and dinner was on the table, we were finally allowed back in. But kids were supposed to be outside playing when the sun was out. Luckily, I almost always had a book to keep me occupied.
Inhaling the fresh smell of the forests to the left and the hints of hay from the field to the right, I don’t know why I didn’t play out here more. It’s peaceful.
The field didn’t scare me like it did my sister. She said she could get lost in the long rows of corn and that freaked her out.
She hated it out here. I remember her, so much taller than me, with her arms crossed over her chest in her favorite blue jean jacket. She’d rather lose at hide-and-seek than take one step into that cornfield. I don’t know why it spooked her like it did, but I love it out here.
The red barn always looked beat down to me back then and the years haven’t been kind to it now.
I wonder what Marcus knows. There’s no such thing as coincidence when it comes to him. There’s a reason he brought me back here to the place I know my father used to hide away in.
When my mother and he were fighting, he’d always take off to help Mr. Dave fix up the old machines. There’s more than a time or two I can recall Mom hunched over the sink, gripping the counter and pretending not to cry when I stepped into the kitchen after hearing the argument from upstairs.
She’d wipe away the tears with her back to me, and dry her hands on the flannel towel that hung from the cabinet below.
“Clean yourself up. It’s almost time for breakfast.” It wasn’t always breakfast she’d say; the meals were interchangeable and all corresponded to the time of day.
I can picture it so clearly, the same tearstained cheeks she had only yesterday with her hair up in a silk wrap and not a dress to be seen for days.
When they fought, the kitchen was her safe place. This barn was his.
“What does it mean to you?” Marcus’s voice calls out and it scares me, causing me to stagger a step back. He’s in jeans and a hoodie, maybe ten feet away under the shade of an old pine tree. Leaning against it, with his hands in his pockets, he looks relaxed which is at odds with everything I know about him.
“What does what mean? What does what mean to me?” I have to speak up a little louder than comfortable for him to hear me. The gray clouds part in the muted sky and as Marcus makes his way to me, I see his face easily enough.