Home By the Sun

Taken

He doesn’t remember much before the night he was taken away from his mother. He was so small. He had just turned four. He didn’t understand what was happening but he remembers the smell. The unmistakable smell of wood ash and burning latex paint.

He couldn’t remember what the house looked like, or what color his room had been, but he remembered how it smelled when it nearly burned down. He would carry that smell with him, in the back of his mind, through his entire adult life.

Because he couldn’t remember what the house looked like, but he could remember her face. He could remember the way her features twisted with agony, and how the tears pulled her mascara down her face. He remembered the pitch black night sky behind her and how she was illuminated by the red and blue siren lights, because the moon was hiding, and the dark forest behind her offered nothing but an eerie backdrop for the last words he ever heard from his mother.

On her knees, hands behind her back, between broken sobs in a primal guttural wail she cried, “No… my son… you can’t… please… you can’t take him! He needs me!”

In the memory of a four year old, the cops were nothing more than large boots attached to endless legs. They surrounded his mother who was crying out for him. He wanted to go to her, but there was a man, another cop probably, kneeling next to Archie, trying to urge him to turn away. He was saying something, but Archie didn’t hear him. Seeing his mother cry had made him cry. He wanted his mom. He wanted to go to her. Why didn’t he go to her?

He was picked up by a stranger who began walking him away from the scene.

He heard his mom call his name one more time, then he was placed in a stranger's car.

They drove away, the smell of his burning childhood home imprinted in his mind.