The Radiant City. Lauren B. Davis
THE RADIANT CITY
by Lauren B. Davis
Copyright 2011 Lauren B. Davis,
All rights reserved.
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-0443-1
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
Woe is me, for I sojourn in Meshech,
For I dwell among the tents of Kedar!
Too long has my soul had its dwelling
With those who hate peace.
I am for peace, but when I speak,
They are for war.
-Psalm 120
What we call fundamental truths are
simply the ones we discover after all the others.
-Albert Camus, THE FALL
Cynicism is the last refuge of the broken-hearted.
-The Right Reverend Ernest Hunt, Rector, The American Cathedral of Paris
Chapter One
The night is the wrong colour.
The first sound he heard was the horses. They sounded like eagles torn apart, like metal gears stripping, like speared whales. Matthew ran to the window. The barn was firelit from within, and orange tongues flickered up almost gently from the roof. His parents and his brother were already in the yard. His father strained to keep his mother from running headlong into the inferno. She twisted and turned in her husband’s grip and Matthew knew there would be bruises up and down her arms tomorrow. Her cries mingled with the horses’ shrieks. Ashes rose and swirled in the heated air. Hellish snowflakes. If he had wanted to, Matthew could have caught them on his tongue.
Everything made sense then—the kerosene can, the rags, his father’s flustered irritation, his sharp, “Nothing, you hear! I’m doing nothing!” when Matthew asked him what he was up to yesterday in the tack room.
Matthew ran down the stairs and out the door to his mother’s side and saw what she saw inside that burning barn. The horses’ manes flashed and shrivelled, their teeth bared, their hooves flailed at the flames, the skin crisped, going black along their backs, chained in their stalls while the hay went up all around them, so hot they burned, denied even the cruel blessing of suffocation. Matthew stood his ground, faced his father and pointed his finger. He said what he knew.
Matthew’s mother broke away from her husband and turned to her son. She slapped him in the face, so hard he fell to the ground. She had never hit him before and his shock left him speechless.
“Shut your mouth,” she said. “You’re lying. Don’t ever say that again! You’re lying.”
Matthew looked up from the ground at her tear-streaked face, the skin so bright in the fire spray that she might have been burning. In her scalded eyes he saw she knew the truth, and that it made no difference, and that she would not forgive him for it. She would never forgive his father, either, but she would stay nonetheless, even if it killed her, which it would.
His father stood, fierce in his power, fierce in his victory. He did not smile. There was no need to hide anything behind smiles.
His brother took their mother by the arm and led her into the house. “We’ll call the fire department,” he said.
His father stared into the collapsing barn. “Go telling tales on me, will you, you little shit. All right, then. Let’s see where that gets you.”
Matthew pressed his face into the dust and begged the dust to swallow him, the ash to bury him.
And nothing was the same after that.
Chapter Two
He wakes up in a hospital. There is pain, a lot of it, but it is over there, in the corner somewhere. It crouches and readies itself to spring into his gut. Someone is moaning. Ah, yes. He is moaning. A nurse’s face appears, her skin like dusty paper, and then a warm liquid spreading, full of happy little massaging fingers. Good drugs, he thinks as he slips away from the crouching pain. Missed me, he thinks. But there is something to be remembered. Something worse even than this pain. But he can remember later. There will be all the time in the world for remembering.
Oblivion cannot last. Refuses to last. The doctors insist the morphine be tapered off. Matthew hates these doctors. And it is good to hate them, for it gives him something to hate other than himself.
His spleen is gone, the doctors tell him. He is a lucky man, they tell him. Another inch or so and the spine might have been severed.
Yes. Lucky. Lucky, Matthew.
The man in the square was not lucky. His daughter was not lucky.
Josh was not lucky.
More drugs please. Heads shake. So he begins screaming, and keeps on screaming, until they give him something and the black curtain tumbles over his eyes.
There are some people. Asking questions. Taking notes. There is a camera. A bright light. More questions. Then nurses are shooing people out. Raised voices. He wonders what he said. He screamed Josh’s name. He knows that much.
Kate is here. Kate with her dark hair, and her vanilla and sandalwood scent, her long-fingered hands, her steel-and-sapphire eyes. Kate at the foot of his hospital bed, her white-knuckled fingers clutching the footboard.
“Hello,” he says.
“I thought you were dead,” she says and it is clear she has done much crying.
“I don’t think so. I’m trying . . .”
She moves to the bedside to kiss him. Her lips feel chapped on his. Her hands are cold on his face. How can anyone be cold in this country?
“How long have you been here?” Time is an impenetrable grey cloud.
“Couple of days. It took a day for them to notify me. Planes, travel, you know.”
“Such a long way to come.”
Kate looks puzzled. “What did you expect?”
“I don’t know.” He fumbles with the sheet. Turns it back, pulls at it.
Looking at her is painful. Being seen by her is worse.
“They say you’re going to have to stay in hospital for a few weeks, anyway. Maybe longer. Three bullets, apparently. They did a bit of a dance around inside you.” She wipes something off his face. “It’s all right, baby, it’s all right.”
Oh, God, he thinks. I’m crying.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
He shakes his head. Language is helpless and helplessness destroys. A kid with his foot caught in a railway tie screams. The kid screams and tries to get out and the watcher knows he is not going to get out and the train whistle blows and it doesn’t mean anything because that kid’s as good as dead. The question is, In that equation, which am I? Watcher? The kid caught in the track? “I think I’m the train,” he says.
“We’ll get you back home soon,” Kate murmurs as he cries. “I promise. Into a hospital in the U.S. and then home as soon as possible.”
He cannot smell her scent, only disinfectant, bleach. Her hands feel like silken ice. He shivers. Sleeps. Dreams of Hebron. Bullets. Josh. Father and child. Sand between his teeth, coating his tongue.