THE SHADOWS, KITH AND KIN

"…and the soul, resenting its lot, flies groaningly to the shades."

The Aeneid, by Virgil

 

There are no leaves left on the trees, and the limbs are weighted with ice and bending low. Many of them have broken and fallen across the drive. Beyond the drive, down where it and the road meet, where the bar ditch is, there is a brown, savage run of water.

It is early afternoon, but already it is growing dark, and the fifth week of the storm raves on. I have never seen such a storm of wind and ice and rain, not here in the South, and only once before have I been in a cold storm bad enough to force me to lock myself tight in my home.

So many things were different then, during that first storm.

No better, but different.

On this day, while I sit by my window looking out at what the great, white, wet storm has done to my world, I feel at first confused, and finally elated.

The storm. The ice. The rain. All of it. It's the sign I was waiting for.

––

I thought for a moment of my wife, her hair so blonde it was almost white as the ice that hung in the trees, and I thought of her parents, white-headed too, but white with age, not dye, and of our little dog Constance, not white at all, but all brown and black with traces of tan; a rat terrier mixed with all other blends of dog you might imagine.

I thought of all of them. I looked at my watch. There wasn't really any reason to. I had no place to go, and no way to go if I did. Besides, the battery in my watch had been dead for almost a month.

––

Once, when I was a boy, just before nightfall, I was out hunting with my father, out where the bayou water gets deep and runs between the twisted trunks and low-hanging limbs of water-loving trees; out there where the frogs bleat and jump and the sun don't hardly shine.

We were hunting for hogs. Then out of the brush came a man, running. He was dressed in striped clothes and he had on very thin shoes. He saw us and the dogs that were gathered about us, blue-ticks, long-eared and dripping spit from their jaws; he turned and broke and ran with a scream.

A few minutes later, the sheriff and three of his deputies came beating their way through the brush, their shirts stained with sweat, their faces red with heat.

My father watched all of this with a kind of hard-edged cool, and the sheriff, a man Dad knew, said, "There's a man escaped off the chain gang, Hirem. He run through here. Did you see him?"

My father said that we had, and the sheriff said, "Will those dogs track him?"

"I want them to they will," my father said, and he called the dogs over to where the convict had been, where his footprints in the mud were filling slowly with water, and he pushed the dog's heads down toward these shoe prints one at a time, and said, "Sic him," and away the hounds went.

We ran after them then, me and my dad and all these fat cops who huffed and puffed out long before we did, and finally we came upon the man, tired, leaning against a tree with one hand, his other holding his business while he urinated on the bark. He had been defeated some time back, and now he was waiting for rescue, probably thinking it would have been best to have not run at all.

But the dogs, they had decided by private conference that this man was as good as any hog, and they came down on him like heat-seeking missiles. Hit him hard, knocked him down. I turned to my father, who could call them up and make them stop, no matter what the situation, but he did not call.

The dogs tore at the man, and I wanted to turn away, but did not. I looked at my father and his eyes were alight and his lips dripped spit; he reminded me of the hounds.

The dogs ripped and growled and savaged, and then the fat sheriff and his fat deputies stumbled into view, and when one of the deputies saw what had been done to the man, he doubled over and let go of whatever grease-fried goodness he had poked into his mouth earlier that day.

The sheriff and the other deputy stopped and stared, and the sheriff said, "My God," and turned away, and the deputy said, "Stop them, Hirem. Stop them. They done done it to him. Stop them."

My father called the dogs back, their muzzles dark and dripping. They sat in a row behind him, like sentries. The man, or what had been a man, the convict, lay all about the base of the tree, as did the rags that had once been his clothes.

Later, we learned the convict had been on the chain gang for cashing hot checks.

––

Time keeps on slipping, slipping. . . Wasn't that a song?

––

As day comes I sleep, then awake when night arrives. The sky has cleared and the moon has come out, and it is merely cold now. Pulling on my coat, I go out on the porch and sniff the air, and the air is like a meat slicer to the brain, so sharp it gives me a headache. I have never known cold like that.

I can see the yard close up. Ice has sheened all over my world, all across the ground, up in the trees. The sky is like a black-velvet backdrop, the stars like sharp shards of blue ice clinging to it.

I leave the porch light on, go inside, return to my chair by the window, burp. The air is filled with the aroma of my last meal: canned Ravioli, eaten cold.

I take off my coat and hang it on the back of the chair.

––

Has it happened yet, or is it yet to happen?

Time, it just keep on slippin', slippin', yeah it do.

––

I nod in the chair, and when I snap awake from a deep nod, there is snow blowing across the yard and the moon is gone and there is only the porch light to brighten it up.

But, in spite of the cold, I know they are out there.

The cold, the heat, nothing bothers them.

They are out there.

––

They came to me first on a dark night several months back, with no snow and no rain and no cold, but a dark night without clouds and plenty of heat in the air, a real humid night, sticky like dirty undershorts. I awoke and sat up in bed and the yard light was shining thinly through our window. I turned to look at my wife lying there beside me, her very blonde hair silver in that light. I looked at her for a long time, then got up and went into the living room. Our little dog, who made his bed by the front door, came over and sniffed me, and I bent to pet him. He took to this for a minute, then found his spot by the door again, laid down.

Finally I turned out the yard light and went out on the porch. In my underwear. No one could see me, not with all our trees, and if they could see me, I didn't care.

I sat in a deck chair and looked at the night, and thought about the job I didn't have and how my wife had been talking of divorce, and how my in-laws resented our living with them, and I thought too of how every time I did a thing I failed, and dramatically at that. I felt strange and empty and lost.

While I watched the night, the darkness split apart and some of it came up on the porch, walking. Heavy steps full of all the world's shadow.

I was frightened, but I didn't move. Couldn't move. The shadow, which looked like a tar-covered human-shape, trudged heavily across the porch until it stood over me, looking down. When I looked up, trembling, I saw there was no face, just darkness, thick as chocolate custard. It bent low and placed hand shapes on the sides of my chair and brought its faceless face close to mine, breathed on me—a hot languid breath that made me ill.

"You are almost one of us," it said, then turned and slowly moved along the porch and down the steps and right back into the shadows. The darkness, thick as a wall, thinned and split, and absorbed my visitor; then the shadows rustled away in all directions like startled bats. I heard a dry, crackling leaf sound amongst the trees.

My God, I thought. There had been a crowd of them.

Out there.

Waiting.

Watching.

Shadows.

And one of them had spoken to me.

––

Lying in bed later that night I held up my hand and found that what intrigued me most were not the fingers, but the darkness between them. It was a thin darkness, made weak by light, but it was darkness and it seemed more a part of me than the flesh.

I turned and looked at my sleeping wife.

I said, "I am one of them. Almost."

––

I remember all this as I sit in my chair and the storm rages outside, blowing snow and swirling little twirls of water that in turn become ice. I remember all this, holding up my hand again to look.

The shadows between my fingers are no longer thin.

They are dark.

They have connection to flesh.

They are me.

––

Four flashes. Four snaps.

The deed is done.

I wait in the chair by the window.

No one comes.

As I suspected.

The shadows were right.

You see, they come to me nightly now. They never enter the house. Perhaps they cannot.

But out on the porch, there they gather. More than one, now. And they flutter tight around me and I can smell them, and it is a smell like nothing I have smelled before. It is dark and empty and mildewed and old and dead and dry.

It smells like home.

––

Who are the shadows?

They are all of those who are like me.

They are the empty congregation. The faceless ones. The failures.

The sad empty folk who wander through life and walk beside you and never get so much as a glance; nerds like me who live inside their heads and imagine winning the lottery and scoring the girls and walking tall. But instead, we stand short and bald and angry, our hands in our pockets, holding not money, but our limp balls.

Real life is a drudge.

No one but another loser like myself can understand that.

Except for the shadows, for they are the ones like me. They are the losers and the lost, and they understand and they never do judge.

They are of my flesh, or, to be more precise, I am of their shadow.

They accept me for who I am.

They know what must be done, and gradually they reveal it to me.

The shadows.

I am one of them.

Well, almost.

––

My wife, my in-laws, every human being who walks this earth, underrates me.

There are things I can do.

I can play computer games, and I can win them. I have created my own characters. They are unlike humans. They are better than humans. They are the potential that is inside me and will never be.

Oh, and I can do some other things as well. I didn't mention all the things I can do well. In spite of what my family thinks of me. I can do a number of things that they don't appreciate, but should.

I can make a very good chocolate milkshake.

My wife knows this, and if she would, she would admit that I do. She used to say so. Now she does not. She has closed up to me. Internally. Externally.

Battened down hatches, inwardly and outwardly.

Below. In her fine little galley, that hatch is tightly sealed.

But there is another thing I do well.

I can really shoot a gun.

My father, between beatings, he taught me that. It was the only time we were happy together. When we held the guns.

––

Down in the basement I have a trunk.

Inside the trunk are guns.

Lots of them.

Rifles and shotguns and revolvers and automatics.

I have collected them over the years.

One of the rifles belongs to my father-in-law.

There is lots of ammunition.

Sometimes, during the day, if I can't sleep, while my wife is at work and my in-laws are about their retirement—golf—I sit down there and clean the guns and load them and repack them in the crate. I do it carefully, slowly, like foreplay. And when I finish my hands smell like gun oil. I rub my hands against my face and under my nose, the odor of the oil like some kind of musk.

But now, with the ice and the cold and the dark, with us frozen in and with no place to go, I clean them at night. Not during the day while they are gone.

I clean them at night.

In the dark.

After I visit with the shadows.

My friends.

All the dark ones, gathered from all over the world, past and present. Gathered out there in my yard—my wife's parent's yard—waiting on me. Waiting for me to be one with them, waiting on me to join them.

The only club that has ever wanted me.

––

They are many of those shadows, and I know who they are now. I know it on the day I take the duct tape and use it to seal the doors to my wife's bedroom, to my parents-in-law's bedroom.

The dog is with my wife.

I can no longer sleep in our bed.

My wife, like the others, has begun to smell.

The tape keeps some of the stench out.

I pour cologne all over the carpet.

It helps.

Some.

––

How it happened. I'll line it out:

One night I went out and sat and the shadows came up on the porch in such numbers there was only darkness around me and in me, and I was like something scared, but somehow happy, down deep in a big black sack held by hands that love me.

Yet, simultaneously, I was free.

I could feel them touching me, breathing on me. And I knew, then, it was time.

––

Down in the basement, I opened the trunk, took out a well-oiled weapon: a hunting rifle. I went upstairs and did it quick. My wife first. She never awoke. Beneath her head, on the pillow, in the moonlight, there was a spreading blossom the color of gun oil.

My father-in-law heard the shot, met me at their bedroom door, pulling on his robe. One shot. Then another for my mother-in-law who sat up in bed, her face hidden in shadow—but a different shadow. Not one of my shadow friends, but one made purely by an absence of light, and not an absence of being.

The dog bit me.

I guess it was the noise.

I shot the dog too.

I didn't want him to be lonely.

Who would care for him?

––

I pulled my father-in-law into his bed with his wife and pulled the covers to their chins. My wife is tucked in too, the covers over her head. I put our little dog, Constance, beside her.

How long ago was the good deed done?

I can't tell.

I think, strangely, of my father-in-law. He always wore a hat. He thought it strange that men no longer wore hats. When he was growing up in the Forties and Fifties, men wore hats.

He told me that many times.

He wore hats. Men wore hats, and it was odd to him that they no longer did, and to him the men without hats were manless.

He looked at me then. Hatless. Looked me up and down. Not only was I hatless in his eyes, I was manless.

Manless? Is that a word?

The wind howls and the night is bright and the shadows twist and the moon gives them light to dance by.

They are many and they are one, and I am almost one of them.

––

One day I could not sleep and sat up all day. I had taken to the couch at first, in the living room, but in time the stench from behind the taped doors seeped out and it was strong. I made a pallet in the kitchen and pulled all the curtains tight and slept the day away, rose at night and roamed and watched the shadows from the windows or out on the porch. The stench was less then, at night, and out on the porch I couldn't smell it at all.

––

The phone has rang many times and there are messages from relatives. Asking about the storm. If we are okay.

I consider calling to tell them we are.

But I have no voice for anyone anymore. My vocal cords are hollow and my body is full of dark.

––

The storm has blown away and in a small matter of time people will come to find out how we are doing. It is daybreak and no car could possibly get up our long drive, not way out here in the country like we are. But the ice is starting to melt.

Can't sleep.

Can't eat.

Thirsty all the time.

Have masturbated till I hurt.

––

Strange, but by nightfall the ice started to slip away and all the whiteness was gone and the air, though chill, was not as cold, and the shadows gathered on the welcome mat, and now they have slipped inside, like envelopes pushed beneath the bottom of the door.

They join me.

They comfort me.

I oil my guns.

––

Late night, early morning, depends on how you look at it. But the guns are well-oiled and there is no ice anywhere. The night is as clear as my mind is now.

I pull the trunk upstairs and drag it out on the porch toward the truck. It's heavy, but I manage it into the back of the pickup. Then I remember there's a dolly in the garage.

My father-in-law's dolly.

"This damn dolly will move anything," he used to say. "Anything."

I get the dolly, load it up, stick in a few tools from the garage, start the truck and roll on out.

––

I flunked out of college.

Couldn't pass the test.

I'm supposed to be smart.

My mother told me when I was young that I was a genius.

There had been tests.

But I couldn't seem to finish anything.

Dropped out of high school. Took the G.E.D. eventually. Didn't score high there either, but did pass. Barely.

What kind of genius is that?

Finally got into college, four years later than everyone else.

Couldn't cut it. Just couldn't hold anything in my head. Too stuffed up there, as if Kleenex had been packed inside.

My history teacher, he told me: "Son, perhaps you should consider a trade."

––

I drive along campus. My mind is clear, like the night. The campus clock tower is very sharp against the darkness, lit up at the top and all around. A giant phallus punching up at the moon.

––

It is easy to drive right up to the tower and unload the gun trunk onto the dolly.

My father-in-law was right.

This dolly is amazing.

And my head, so clear. No Kleenex.

And the shadows, thick and plenty, are with me.

––

Rolling the dolly, a crowbar from the collection of tools stuffed in my belt, I proceed to the front of the tower. I'm wearing a jumpsuit. Gray. Workman's uniform. For a while I worked for the janitorial department on campus. My attempt at a trade.

They fired me for reading in the janitor's closet.

But I still have the jumpsuit.

––

The foyer is open, but the elevators are locked.

I pull the dolly upstairs.

It is a chore, a bump at a time, but the dolly straps hold the trunk and I can hear the guns rattling inside, like they want to get out.

––

By the time I reach the top I'm sweating, feeling weak. I have no idea how long it has taken, but some time I'm sure. The shadows have been with me, encouraging me.

Thank you, I tell them.

––

The door at the top of the clock tower is locked.

I take out my burglar's key. The crowbar. Go to work.

It's easy.

On the other side of the door I use the dolly itself to push up under the door handle, and it freezes the door. It'll take some work to shake that loose.

––

There's one more flight inside the tower.

I have to drag the trunk of guns.

Hard work. The rope handle on the crate snaps and the guns slide all the way back down.

I push them up.

I almost think I can't make it. The trunk is so heavy. So many guns. And all that sweet ammunition.

––

Finally, to the top, shoving with my shoulder, bending my legs all the way.

The door up there is not locked, the one that leads outside to the runway around the clock tower.

I walk out, leaving the trunk. I walk all around the tower and look down at all the small things there.

Soon the light will come, and so will the people.

Turning, I look up at the huge clock hands. Four o'clock.

I hope time does not slip. I do not want to find myself at home by the window, looking out.

The shadows.

They flutter.

They twist.

The runway is full of them, thick as all the world's lost ones. Thick as all the world's hopeless. Thick, thick, thick, and thicker yet to be. When I join them.

––

There is one fine spot at the corner of the tower runway. That is where I should begin.

I place a rifle there, the one I used to put my family and dog asleep.

I place rifles all around the tower.

I will probably run from one station to the other.

The shadows make suggestions.

All good, of course.

I put a revolver in my belt.

I put a shotgun near the entrance to the runway, hidden behind the edge of the tower, in a little outcrop of artful bricks. It tucks in there nicely.

There are huge flowerpots stuffed with ferns all about the runway. I stick pistols in the pots.

When I finish, I look at the clock again.

An hour has passed.

––

Back home in my chair, looking out the window at the dying night. Back home in my chair, the smell of my family growing familiar, like a shirt worn too many days in a row.

Like the one I have on. Like the thick coat I wear.

I look out the window and it is not the window, but the little split in the runway barrier. There are splits all around the runway wall.

I turn to study the place I have chosen and find myself looking out my window at home, and as I stare, the window melts and so does the house.

The smell.

That does not go with the window and the house.

The smell stays with me.

The shadows are way too close. I am nearly smothered. I can hardly breathe.

––

Light cracks along the top of the tower and falls through the campus trees and runs along the ground like spilt warm honey.

I clutch my coat together, pull it tight. It is very cold. I can hardly feel my legs.

––

I get up and walk about the runway twice, checking on all my guns.

Well-oiled. Fully loaded.

Full of hot-lead announcements.

Telegram: You're dead.

––

Back at my spot, the one from which I will begin, I can see movement. The day has started. I poke the rifle through the break in the barrier and bead down on a tall man walking across campus.

I could take him easy.

But I do not.

Wait, say the shadows. Wait until the little world below is full.

––

The hands on the clock are loud when they move, they sound like the machinery I can hear in my head. Creaking and clanking and moving along.

The air had turned surprisingly warm.

I feel so hot in my jacket.

I take it off.

I am sweating.

The day has come but the shadows stay with me.

True friends are like that. They don't desert you.

It's nice to have true friends.

It's nice to have with me the ones who love me.

It's nice to not be judged.

It's nice to know I know what to do and the shadows know too, and we are all the better for it.

––

The campus is alive.

People swim across the concrete walks like minnows in the narrows.

Minnows everywhere in their new sharp clothes, ready to take their tests and do their papers and meet each other so they might screw. All of them, with futures.

But I am the future-stealing machine.

––

I remember once, when I was a child, I went fishing with minnows. Stuck them on the hooks and dropped them in the wet. When the day was done, I had caught nothing. I violated the fisherman's code. I did not pour the remaining minnows into the water to give them their freedom. I poured them on the ground.

And stomped them.

I was in control.

––

A young, beautiful girl, probably eighteen, tall like a model, walking like a dream, is moving across the campus. The light is on her hair and it looks very blonde, like my wife's.

I draw a bead.

The shadows gather. They whisper. They touch. They show me their faces.

They have faces now.

Simple faces.

Like mine.

I trace my eye down the length of the barrel.

Without me really knowing it, the gun snaps sharp in the morning light.

The young woman falls amidst a burst of what looks like plum jelly.

The minnows flutter. The minnows flee.

But there are so many, and they are panicked. Like they have been poured on the ground to squirm and gasp in the dry.

I begin to fire. Shot after shot after shot.

Each snap of the rifle a stomp of my foot.

Down they go.

Squashed.

I have no hat, father-in-law, and I am full of manliness.

––

The day goes up hot.

Who would have thunk?

I have moved from one end of the tower to the other.

I have dropped many of them.

The cops have come.

I have dropped many of them.

I hear noise in the tower.

I think they have shook the dolly loose.

The door to the runway bursts open.

A lady cop steps through. My first shot takes her in the throat. But she snaps one off at about the same time. A revolver shot. It hits next to me where I crouch low against the runway wall.

Another cop comes through the door. I fire and miss.

My first miss.

He fires. I feel something hot inside my shoulder.

I find that I am slipping down, my back against the runway wall. I can't hold the rifle. I try to drag the pistol from my belt, but can't. My arm is dead. The other one, well, it's no good either. The shot has cut something apart inside of me. The strings to my limbs. My puppet won't work.

Another cop has appeared. He has a shotgun. He leans over me. His teeth are gritted and his eyes are wet.

And just as he fires, the shadows say:

Now, you are one of us.

 "The Shadows, Kith and Kin" originally appeared in Outsiders: 22 All-New Stories from the Edge (Roc, 2005). It was later collected in The Shadows, Kith and Kin (Subterranean Press, 2007).