[My mother taught me to love the unloved. She was really talking about outcast kids at school. But for complex reasons, I’ve come to cast a broader net: rattlesnakes and rainstorms, salamanders and stinging nettles; all garner at least my respect, if not outright love and admiration. In that contrarian spirit, while most people celebrate the “return of the light,” I’ll be stepping into the shadows to embrace the creative crush of winter darkness. The Light will be sweet when it finally arrives. “Black in Third Person” is excerpted from Palindrome: Grateful Reflections from the Home Ground]
***
He arrived at the cabin in late afternoon in the season when afternoons flicker and die like tiny winter midges. All that remained of that hottest driest summer were blackened tomato plants sagging in their rusty cages and moldering corn stalks twined with brittle bean vines. Dead plants were stacked across the garden beds in a pyre of decomposition that would nurture new life in the spring.
At dusk the storm slouched just off the coast, a beast with humid breath flooding eastward across darkening canyons and ridges. Stalking rain tasted like the acrid seep of a lead fishing weight squeezed between his teeth. Ragged clouds sailed in the dying light, battleship wraiths strewn across the western sky. Why had they come, these vaporous shadows of war? Were they running from a fight lost long ago? Or were they harbingers of a new war, sailing toward the prospect of new blood? He willed them back toward the steel heave of the Pacific. But the storm was strong, indifferent to his existence.
Darkness engulfed the front porch. There were no streetlights houselights headlights holiday lights. Only a trifling bubble of brightness from his headlamp kept him from drowning in astronomical events utterly beyond his control. Raindrops ticked against the pickup. He wrote in black ink in a black journal in black night stirred by a black breeze sighing through ancient trees on the ridge. He wrote hoping this crushing blackness would squeeze some essence from him that had been diluted by an overly busy autumn.
Finally, he flinched. Wind and darkness and solitude quickly overwhelmed the small glow of the headlamp, overwhelmed the small glow of his spirit. He packed his journal and shards of the broken bulb of his soul. Inside the house, he switched off the headlamp, hung it from a nail, fumbled for the house keys, locked the door by Braille.
Fists of rain pummeled the pickup as he drove up the road to Martha and Jerry’s. Their kitchen was happy and warm with dinner. Together they drank wine, listened to the pounding rain. As he left their house, the storm began to gather him in. He looked back. Light from the kitchen window pushed gently against his face. A smile cracked the darkness.
Thanks for sharing this piece, Tom. I love your use of language!