“So that’s how we found Hurley’s Flex.”
Finish with preformed foam sealer strips that fit between the roofing and joist.
“That is an Atlanta-ass story,” Jayceon said, hands on his hips while all of them—Bishop, Rodney, Mercedes, Timeica, Sydney, Bugs, Kendrick, Linc, and the reporter—looked up at the horse barn they’d built. “You a Atlanta-ass nigga.”
“Thank you, kind sir,” Kendrick replied, eyebrow arched, shoulders aching, smirking at their barn.
Bishop made the rounds, picking everybody up from where they lived downtown. It was almost like he was getting them ready for work. But none of them had their hammers with them, just themselves and a sparkling sense of mission. It was early in the day, the blue-dawn hour, dew-fresh and cool. There was no plan, no time set to go pick up the horses from Fairfield and bring them to their new home in West Rock.
There’d been some residual touches put on the stables, the clearing away of brush and the installation of a bootleg filtration machine for Lake Wintergreen, just east of the mountain ridge. Linc and a few of the others had gone back to add extensions to the barn, and they’d worked in relative silence. No storytelling, no real out-loud joking. All conversation happened in their bodies, put this here and slide that over there, fasten it here, lift, hold, nail. And like that, more stables had been built. It looked like the populating of a small town on that field in the shadow of the south prominence of West Rock. By now, some of the housing development residents had come down, either to gawk or complain or help or marvel or joke. And every time one of the children asked what was going on and Linc said, “Horses,” the kid’s eyes would light up like they were made of diamonds. Stoic and near soundless, the men even let the kids sometimes play with the old power washer they’d borrowed from Bishop, feigning injury and death when the little warrior turned it on them.
One morning, a few of the young men had come back to see saddles hung on nails in the tack room. No note left behind, no evidence of past ownership. No idea where they’d come from, but the boys looked at them and knew what they said. They said, “This place is ours.” So they silently thanked the residents and took the saddles with them, and now the saddles sat on their laps as they rode in the back of Bishop’s truck to that small clearing in Fairfield where the miracle horses lounged, munching on the grass.
None of them said a word as Bishop pulled over on the side of the broken road and the crew piled out and moved in hushed, whispered steps down the path through the forest. Even the stackers who were making this trip for the first time stepped with sureness.
Sydney and Timeica led the way, followed by Bugs. Then came Kendrick and Jayceon and finally Linc. Rodney, citing his leg, begged off.
When they finally came to the clearing, they stood for several minutes in awe, watching the horses be. Bugs had his jaw open the whole time, the rest of the world gone to him. Jayceon drew a sharp breath, brought up short. Kendrick crouched on his haunches and smiled. Linc began to tremble.
Sydney and Timeica grinned at the group, satisfied with their work. Then, one by one, the boys passed their saddles to Timeica and Sydney, who saddled the horses and tugged and made sure everything fit like it was supposed to.
Jayceon was the first on his horse. There was a moment after Timeica helped him up where he looked unstable, like he was ready to fight the thing underneath him. And the clearing held its breath, and Sydney shot him a warning, as though to say, “Don’t you dare hurt this horse,” but a relaxing flooded through the space, and Jayceon grew taller and gentler at the same time.
Kendrick was up next, looking as though he’d been born on a horse. Linc let Sydney help him up, but before she boosted him into his saddle, they looked at each other and put their foreheads close and seemed to kiss. Then he was up on his horse. Bugs rushed to his own horse, electric with energy, and the horse, not knowing him yet, reared and skipped backward. Timeica got the horse by the reins and called Bugs out in the softest voice possible, then led the horse back and let the two of them speak silently before it seemed Bugs and the horse had come to an agreement and Timeica boosted him up.
Sydney and Timeica were the last up on their horse, Timeica with her arms wrapped around Sydney’s waist.
Sydney said, “Like this,” and led them in a slow circle around the clearing. They formed a line and followed her, squinting at how she moved her legs, squeezed her thighs against the horse’s flanks and loosened, how she held the reins, and each boy became an item of homage to her. They made circuit after circuit after circuit until she could tell that their bodies had learned it all, that they didn’t need to think about it anymore, and just like that she led them up out of the clearing, sticking to flat ground and winding around the base of the cliff to another, smoother incline. The forest chirped and sang around them. Then they emerged onto the street, closer to the QZ and farther from Bishop’s truck than when they’d first entered the green.
It was Rodney who first saw the group coming from behind him and Bishop.
Bishop was working his chewing stick and had his elbow hanging outside his window. His gaze lost itself somewhere in the middle distance, and it was Rodney who brought him back.
“Look at ’em,” Rodney said, and it was the awe in his voice that got Bishop out of his truck and into the middle of the road to watch them coming. Five of them in two rows with Sydney and Timeica up front. Clopping regularly and deliberately, not like an army, but like the people who command one.
Rodney clambered out after Bishop, and they both had their hands on their hips while the royal family drew near.
Bishop looked up at Sydney and Timeica, who sat imperially on their horses, the sun silhouetting them from behind.
“Y’all need an escort?”
Sydney looked to Timeica, who smirked and nodded, then she turned back to Bishop. “I reckon we’ll take one,” she said in a Kentucky accent.
Bishop snorted. “Will it scare the horses if I honk the horn a few times? Announce our arrival into town?”
“We got it, Bishop,” Timeica replied with a wink.
“All right, then. Let’s get a move on, then. Mercedes been at the farm all day.” He shook his head on the way back to his car. “Can you believe that, Rodney?” he said once they were both in.
Rodney adjusted in his seat and chuckled. “Changes a person. Bein’ on a horse.” His accent had changed.
“Not you too,” Bishop said, starting the car, smiling.
Others had helped Jonathan load the furniture, some of it wooden, some of it metal and misshapen, into the husk of a living room, but when Jonathan, soaked through his layers, turned to thank them, they were gone. The Black neighbors and other nearby residents who saw this lost, misbegotten white boy trying to do an impossible thing with almost no help. Maybe they were laughing at him. Maybe they were too occupied with the business of their own lives to laugh at him. Sometimes, though, he would hear laughter.
Like now.
Around him, wet paint in open buckets; over his mouth, his filtration mask, waging war on two fronts, against both residual radiation and paint fumes. In one hand, a thick paintbrush, and in the other, his Flex.
There was still no blue dome on his street yet, nor could he afford a single-dwelling shield. Perhaps it was the David in him that was secretly content not to have one, not to have those helping him find in his home the safety of fully breathable air only to return to their irradiated reality when he’s gotten what he needed from them.
Impatient, he scrolled through the instructions on his Flex: How to Properly Paint Your Furniture in 5 Steps.
Step 1: Sand it. A paragraph followed, first telling of all those erroneous tutorials that dispense with sanding. Then, after that disclaimer came instructions to use 150-grit sandpaper. A link brought him to a separate page about orbital sanders and where to buy them from. Jonathan recognized none of the store names, had seen nothing he recognized in all his time in New Haven and its environs. Getting ahold of a car or truck to go searching would take too much time and money he didn’t have, and he couldn’t bear begging the neighbors for any more than they’d already given him. Be careful not to gouge the surface, you just want to give the primer something to adhere to and—
He had no primer. He couldn’t get past Step 1 because he had no primer. And what the fuck even was primer?
The paintbrush trembled in his grip. He saw in his mind’s eye the aftermath of the tantrum: the paint cans kicked over, the walls gouged out even further by some hammer that must have been lying around, the metal table with the bent legs bent even further, the window glass shattered from whatever broken piece of wood he’d thrown through it. And he had risen to bring about the vision when the laughter arrived.
He realized only now that he’d been standing. He dropped the paintbrush onto the floor he knew he would have to tear up again at some point in the disordered list of tasks he’d put together over the past several months.
Then he was on the ground, staring at the ceiling.
The windows. He forgot to open the windows. Why didn’t he open the windows?
The ceiling melted toward him in the shape of Eamonn, and it was like wood and plaster dripping from the ceiling where it melted and landing on his cheeks and sliding into his ears and landing on every other part of his body but with the force of a stone thrown so that every joint ached, every piston rusted and every gear made the sound of bone against bone, the sound of protest. Plaster dripped onto the rest of the apartment’s upturned interior: it rained holes in the cushion of his futon, it splintered the wood of his desks.
Then, the ceiling throbbed with the shape of David. Jonathan willed his eyes to remain open, fearing that if he should close them, if he should blink, the vision would change back, and David would leave him, and Eamonn would be what was left. Eamonn and the black closing in on him from the edges of his vision, swallowing the world around him without chewing until—
