Logan Antill

Excerpt

Excerpt from a work in progress:

They drove on. The rain wet Bob’s wrist where it fell into the car through the open slot of window. Then it stopped. You could see clearly the line where the highway was dry. The green returned to the trees. He thought he recognized this certain mile. Then he saw the sign and he knew where they were going. Al told him to turn off and he did down a ragged jungle path pushing back into the dim lurk until he saw the huts and the chickens loose scrabbling in the mud and the old woman crouched next to a ring of stones stoking a fire that was nothing but smoke.

If she recognized Bob from his last visit she gave no indication nor did she acknowledge their arrival anymore than you would the falling of some leaves. She blew the dust from the embers and shifted the hollow chars of wood by her fingers alone. Her gray hair was spun into a loose bun beneath the blanket that covered her head. Her dress little more than gauze. She clucked her tongue and scattered chips of corn for the chickens. They came and ate the seed. The fire ticked and threw spark and one by one their redness blinked out and the air was as it had been before.

Buenos días, said Al.

The old woman waved a finger. A welcome or a dismissal.

Al looked over the scattered huts. A goat with a brass bell roped to its neck grazing on crabgrass. A few birds bathing in a wooden trough.

Les espero, said the old woman. Has llegado aquí para morir como la última vez. Como siempre. She pressed a hand to the damp earth and got to her feet one leg at a time. Then she turned and passed through the low doorway into the hut.

Al took LaFaye by the arm and the horse led her after the old woman. Bob and Maria fell in after her.

What did she tell him? said Bob.

Maria looked back at him through the smoke. She say you come here to die. Just like the last time. Just like always.

Excerpt

Excerpt from a work in progress:

A hermit crab came out of the tall grass under the fence and stopped in the road. It tested a shaft of light with its claw and stood poised, rocking on its bandy legs. Then the grass bristled and another crab joined, halting at the edge of the moonstrip and bowing in matching dance. The dog pressed in and raised its nose over them. The crabs hovered, picking up their legs and setting them down, claws flowering open slowly and quietly shut again. The dog stepped back. The grass along the road folded and bent and here they came, shoulders and berms of crab, stalking in pairs and then lines and then columns out from under the fence at all points in the road as far as you could see. Bob stood where he stood. They passed inches from his feet, keeping to the border set by the first two, their conch white backs pearling in the light, their motion silent but for their multitude.

The dog whimpered and lay down. The crabs came on and on, the first passing off the road into the jungle bracken and the new filling their place so the road entire was a shifting moat of crab in high tapered step seeking the sea in nocturnal migration. Bob looked behind him for witness but there was none and there would be no one save the dog. Witness to what is put forth daily. Life from the jaws of death. Who can not be a witness to what is always there, to the turning of the world, for the world is full of men who are in turn full of all things and there is nothing a man is not witness to, nothing he can see that happens without him that has not, at some time, also happened within him. So he goes on witnessing the portrait of events time has wrought, the portends in a pool of water, the universe of dreams when he closes his eyes, and there is nothing that does not come from him. God’s chaos and his invisibility, man has fashioned them both. We are born seeking the symbols in the world that we recognize within ourselves, born craving coupling, a dialect of unification you might call love, the fragments of truth we shore to build homestead, that we protect to salvage an amulet of soul.

Bob put a foot forward and stepped into the gaps in the crabs’ lines. He picked his toes up carefully and set them down between the slow moving conveyor. If the crabs cared they didn’t show it and they went on oblivious to this interloper slowly searching westward to the purpose nature had fashioned for them at water’s edge. For the way their shells held and beamed back the light they were beautiful but Bob did not like their ways and he cringed whenever his toes butted up against one and its antennae swung to him. It was slow going. He paused midstream and turned back and the dog was pacing at the border.  It looked at him and lowered its ears and ducked its head and would not step into the living stream. The crabs surged around his ankles. He shook his sandals. Come on dog, he said. Come on. The dog whined and looked at him but would not step. You better come on, said Bob. The only way out is through.

Excerpt

Excerpt from a work in progress:   

One summer before Robby was born, back when things were still good, they flew cross-country together in a Piper Cub. During the day she would pick out towns on the map and at night he would land in those places and they would sleep together in a brass bed inside a lamplit room. In the morning she lay on his chest and looked up at him and they talked about where to go next. What landmarks she wanted to see. What rivers. What forests. When she got up to shower he stayed under the sheets and listened to the water and tried to make himself believe any of this was real, that he was a good man who deserved a woman like that, but he never could. He always knew he would let her down and eventually he did.

Over Wyoming he flew into a thunderstorm he should have flown around. The cockpit got very dark. The rain on the thin metal hull was deafening. Columns of electric air sparked inside the thunderheads. He was worried about the lightning, the sudden updrafts of boiling wind. The plane lurched. She gripped his arm and asked if it was alright. He couldn’t tell her yes. His RPMs kept dropping. They didn’t have the fuel for this kind of fight and he couldn’t tell how deep the storm ran.
   
He decided to put down. He sped up and dropped under the clouds. Scrolling gray fields. Flat enough. He told her to look for fences. The wipers going as fast as they could and still the glass was blurry. He cracked the triangle window and got his face in close to sight straight down. Clear grassland. There looked like a lot of it but you couldn’t tell for sure. One rock, one leftover fencepost was all it took. But without fuel it’s where they’d be anyway. Lightning dropped on the horizon. A lot of storm.

He thought it was one of his best landings. Always seemed to be so considering the conditions. And not just the external. Her eyes shut tight, her fingers white on his leg. He was proud of himself.

He stopped as short as he could and cut the engine and sat back in the raindrum. The whole world gray. He popped the door and jumped out. There was a barbwire fence about twenty yards in front of where he stood. The rest of the land clear and quiet. The rain warm on his shoulders. Most of the time you never know, he thought. Just how close you come. He wondered how many other times. Probably a lot. Probably you don’t want to know. No, he thought. Probably I don’t.
He turned around and laughed.

What? she said. What do you see?

They slept in the plane. In the morning they were surrounded by cows. He had to wait for one to graze on before he could open the door.
 
The rain had quit. He pissed in the field between steaming cow patties. Off on a little rise was a farmhouse with cupolas and a wraparound porch. He hadn’t seen it the day before. He told her he was going to walk over and ask about a ride into town to get some gas. He said she was welcome to walk with him.

It’s ok to leave the plane?

Far as I know a cow hasn’t worked one yet.

She smiled and put on her shoes and together they walked up the hill to the house.