A Light In The Distance

A Light In The Distance

The icy air pricked my skin, frost wrapping around me tightly like a jagged claw.  I stepped briskly away from my seemingly blithe house, from which muffled yells emerged.  Damp branches crushed noisily beneath my drenched sneakers as I stumbled through the dark, shadows and silver shreds guiding my dazed mind.  I grasped the broad oak, which gazed proudly over the sea of rolling fields behind the haggard barn.  I slid slowly down the trunk, wishing that my problems would somehow do the same and melt off me.

The moon shimmered above; a golden orb weaved into the overwhelming shadow that draped the entire land.  It stared down upon me gently, and its mild flicker seemed to damper my chaotic thoughts for a moment.

I risked a glance back at the looming white house in the distance.  It was engulfed in the rising dusk, all windows empty and blank except for the remote glimmer in the kitchen.  I felt a trickle of anger crawl leisurely down my spine, and looked away.

The muggy, comforting nights of summer had faded away to fall, and dead leaves were already sprinkling down from the giant oak.  They peppered the soggy ground, fluttering eerily in the silent breeze.  I grabbed one as it rode through the air, gazed at its rusty red creases. 

It reminded me of Jeffrey, tall with dull blue eyes pricking out from under a matt of brown hair.  The cause of the dispute in the kitchen, again.  Like the leaf, he had dried up and fallen off the tree, absorbed in his self-pity; shriveled and tattered.

I turned, and noticed an abandoned beer bottle embedded in the moss.  It lay there, so smug, mocking me with what it had taken.  It haunted my life, trapped my brother in its hungry clench.  Hate involuntarily flared up in me, and I grabbed the despicable thing, hurled it as far as I could.  I listened as it shattered in empty satisfaction.

I felt anger ensnare my heart again as I clutched the leaf in my hand.  Anger, at Jeffrey for not understanding, at my parents for not understanding, at myself for not understanding.  “Why?” I asked out loud through clenched teeth.

“Why not?” A husky voice suddenly muttered behind me.  I froze, letting the specks of broken leaf slip through my fingers and flow sinuously with the wind.  The figure behind me, a dark silhouette, slowly crouched down by the tree, back pressed against the trunk.  “Why not, Caty?” Asked the voice again.

“Like you would know.” My voice buzzed angrily, and then stung, like a yellow jacket in the weeping shadows of spring.  Seeing the hurt in his dull cerulean eyes, disturbingly reflecting my own features, set me off.  “Don’t look like that,” I snapped at him.  “How can you pull off that face when you’ve caused everyone else so much of it? So much… pain?”

The terse words whipped wildly through the air, seeped quickly into the soil and surrounded us, overbearing.  He opened his mouth, closed it.  The tempestuous silence throbbed.  The solace of the night had shriveled up now, and dark clouds wrapped around the shimmering moon, stars sprinkled over the night sky.  The last of the summer crickets chirped, once, twice, then stopped.  Even the leaves had stopped falling.

“I’m sorry,” Jeffrey whispered.  His voice was laced with sorrow.

I stayed inert, the rough bark digging into my back as I glared at the hidden moon, slivers of light radiating from behind the billows of darkness.  I was tired of apologies, and sympathy, and hate.  The words formed on my tongue before they crossed my muddled mind.

“Why do you drink?”

I knew.  I knew because I saw the reason lingering in his forlorn eyes.  Her blonde hair, waving silently; eyes sparkling with an ardent life.  Her exultant laughter, the sea sighing.  All of that, washed away with the grabbing waves of shadow.  She left her poor Jeffrey in this world all alone.

There was another long silence.  My mind turned to the events that had occurred months after, the beer bottles hidden in the basement, the smell of stale alcohol down the hall near Jeffrey’s room.  My mouth twitched downward, half disgusted, and half sympathetic.

“It makes me forget.” Was his gruff reply, and I heard him shift uncomfortably against the tree.  Forget? I felt the uncontrollable sensation, which had lurked in the back of my head for years, feverishly rise again.  I swamped it out, swallowing.  This is something that you will never understand, I reprimanded myself sternly.  Don’t make it worse by trying to help.  The moon had once again risen out above the clouds, illuminating light onto the monotonous field.

But I couldn’t help myself.  “Tomorrow… will you forget what happened tonight?” I asked, shooting a critical glance at his shadowed figure.

“Maybe.”

But his words were tinged with certainty.  I could feel his desperate confidence vibrating in the air, his pushing desire to lose himself and disregard his own life.  To drown himself in a sea of nothingness… only to wake up the next morning with more worthless time lost.

I chose my words carefully this time, gazing over at the tacit, dark house as I spoke.  “And… about the life you could have?”  There was a pause.  I quivered slightly as I waited for the reply I had quietly wondered for years.

But then- “What life?” He suddenly snapped out from under the tree’s shadow, blue eyes ringing.  The wind seemed to rise and moaned, snapping the tree branches viciously back and forth.  He continued.  “The life that gives me pain? Despair? I’ve had enough of that.  The life I could have had, Caty? That life is long gone. After she-” His voice lowered and the wind jabbing my skin suddenly felt hot, like a wave of fire.  “After Elizabeth died.  Everyday and night, I watch other people, laughing and growing and living, and I drink.  I’ve seen love and hate, happiness and sadness, and I drink.  I’ve seen you, Caty, every year you grow more beautiful and gifted…“ His voice suddenly broke, and he sobbed quietly for a moment.

My comforting hand on his shoulder was a strange burst of cold to him; he flinched.  “Lost love is hard,” I whispered.  Perhaps I understand after all, I realized as the indigo eyes snapped open and stared at me, bewildered. 

“Yes… yes, it is,” was the silent reply.

Suddenly, I did understand- for my own brother had been long gone for a while now.  My brother, flickering with the shadows; his haunted eyes specks of fire, nearly burned out.  There was no more existence in his hopeless form.

I had lost him.

Apprehension slammed against me unmercifully, followed by numb disbelief, and then angry determination.  I tried to whisk the idea away, out of my spinning head.  It stuck, and I was lost in a restless ocean of self-pity and desperation.

The scorching hotness poured slowly through me, daggers blistering my heart and rain blurring my vision.  The tangle of emotion that had lay inside me was suddenly too much.  “Will you… forget… me tomorrow… Jeffrey?” I managed softly.

A cold hand placed gently over my own.  I looked up to see his my older brother staring at me, not a bleak outsider.  Pools of endless grieving and shame seeped out from under the brown overturned hair, but they were also lined with hope… for me.

“No,” he whispered.  “I never forget about you.”

“Then… you shouldn’t forget about your life.” My voice shook with shuddering emotion, and I snatched my hand away from his.  “What you are doing.  What you have been doing.  What you could do.  Your family loves you.  Your friends love you.  I love you.  Do you love?”

“Yes!” His answer echoed over the farm and across the swaying fields, and the moon and stars shone bleakly in agreement.  I looked back at the house.  A light in the kitchen had appeared again-

“Then show it.  Love yourself.”

He looked at me again, his brow furrowing, eyes wishing.  Wishing for hope, and trust, and love.  Then there was pain, and fear, and despair.  “I-“

“Show it,” I repeated fiercely.  “Because you can.”

The trees that had been shedding waving leaves stopped suddenly and watched, and the wind held.  The moon and dark, cool sky loomed over, examining us.  Even the trunk seemed to curl around my shoulder, and the wet grass beneath my feet lay still.

When he looked up, he was smiling.  Not a sad, withering smile, or a smile plastered onto his face like the ones I’d known before.  This one was true, straight from his rekindled heart.

“Thank you,” He muttered.  Then he got to his feet, eyes high and determined, and stared up at the moon, grinning slightly.  He turned and walked back home.

I watched him go, proud.  This was the brother I had known all along.  For days afterwards, I knew we would be meeting here, talking.  Healing deep wounds.  Above me, a small burst of white light darted through the speckled sky.

“You’re welcome… Jeffrey.”


~Chloe