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The pain is muted and dull, distant but overpowering in its opacity.
It is cold, but he is burning.
He feels himself slipping out through the cracks she broke open with the club, bleeding his soul into the air.
He doesn’t know who she is.
He doesn’t care.
She wants him to care.
He could see it in her angry eyes, feel it in the shake of her hands when she buried the club in his body. This mattered to her and she wanted it to matter to him.
It did not matter.
The angry woman dragging him towards the gates of hell does not matter.
The slow seeping of himself into the floor, into the air, every heartbeat pushing him closer to death — all of this is just and right, and he does not begrudge the painful death.
He knew what the end was for men like him, and even with his body a bloody mess there is nothing he would change.
He has earned this.
He is dying as he lived, and he has lived what feels like three lifetimes.
He is tired.
He feels himself slipping away, out of the cold of his body, into warmth like a womb, then hotter, wet, blood or sweat in the air, as he sees his body on the ground.
He has no real regret.
But then her, his girl, breaking in, an avenging angel hellbent on changing the ending —
He’s slipped through a gate, though he doesn’t remember it opening or closing, and is pushing at it as though it will open again at his command.
She’s calling his name, sobbing his name, begging, demanding, commanding —
Get up. Joel — get up.
He beats on the closed gates, screaming himself hoarse, calling her name, begging god and the devil both —
They’ll kill her. It wasn’t her fault, whatever I did, it wasn’t her fault, leave my girl out of this.
He throws himself against the gate, his whole body thudding, splintering against it.
NO.
It doesn’t even shudder beneath his weight.
JOEL. GET UP.
his hands are bloody, tearing at the seam where he slipped through so easily on his way in.
Let me back Let me out Let me go
He releases the seam and steps back, looking for hinges. The gates are so wide he can see neither end, so he runs to the right, lurching in the heat.
He runs slowly, as fast as he can, for a long time, but when he staggers to a stop, the hot air swallowing him whole, the seam of the gate is only an arms length behind him.
He begins swearing, screaming, but no sound comes out.
He claws at the flat surface, beats with his palms, his fists, throws himself against it with his shoulder, wedges his fingers into the seam —
he begs, he threatens, he demands.
joel
The gates stay closed.
What do you want? he asks the gate, bloody hands on his knees.
In an instant so fast his breath catches in his throat he sees himself on his porch, his girl beside him. The air is cold.
He hears himself swear I would do it all over again.
He sees the blonde woman with the braid, club in her hands.
All over again he screams, and the heat engulfs him, hot and sticky, sweat standing on his skin, soaking through his shirt, on his arms. All over again you goddamn sons of bitches, I’m not sorry. All over again so send me back.
It is so hot he can’t breathe, it is stifling, smothering, heavy and slick and
It is a dark Texas hillside, hot and muggy, the sounds of cicadas and gunfire in the distance, his little girl in his arms. He is slick with her blood. The heat is stifling. She is crying, choking, whimpering, and he is begging her to stay.
Get up.
He roars, beats the gate with his fists, kicks at the base with his boots, clawing at the crack, jumping and scrabbling for purchase on the smooth solid face and sliding back down.
NO.
The heat is radiating from the surface of the gate; it is now too hot to touch. He feels his skin singe even after backing away.
get up
Every last drop of life he has he gathers up, settles in his hands, holds it out to the gate and pleads
I’m not ready yet. I don’t belong here yet. She still needs me. Let me the fuck out, I don’t belong here yet. I’ll come back.
The gate seems to consider this, and he feels a crawling, examined sensation before it gaps, just a breath. He throws himself at the gash as one side opens out and one opens in, trying to wrench the one further open and push the other with a wordless roar erupting out of his mouth as he puts all the strength he’s ever had into the assault on the gate.
It cracks.
For a thudding moment he is back in the bleeding mess of his body, still raging, still screaming inside, and he wills his broken body to move, to go to her.
Each muscle screams in pain, burning; it is like dragging his body through hardening concrete, but his girl is staring at him from across the room, held down by people who hate him and she’s begging him to live.
He reaches for her.
The blonde woman cracks his skull open and the gate slams closed on his fingers.
He falls to his knees and weeps.
Choking, angry, desperate sobs catch in his throat, suffocating, opaque, and overwhelming.
Get up.
When he stands and turns, wiping snot and sweat, tears and blood on his sleeve, it is still hot. Stifling, unbearable, humid and heavy.
He hears cicadas.
It is a dark Texas hillside, hot and muggy, his little girl in his arms.
All over again.
Don’t do this to me baby.
He sits on the ground with her cradled against his body.
All over again.
Get up.
He stands, the little girl in his arms.
The heat is oppressive, heavy, overwhelming.
He knows this heat.
It is a humid Texas hillside, and from here he can walk home.
get up
It is a humid Texas morning, and it is his birthday.
All over again? The voice is not his own this time. Not an echo of a memory. It is a challenge, a promise, a hope.
He is on his front porch, chill biting into his bare hands, his girl beside him, and he is swearing the only oath that matters.
All over again.
I swear.
He feels it fade, seep out of him like blood, as he cracks his eyes.
The last splinter of memory claws at his consciousness, an avenging angel desperate to change the ending,
Get up.
His curtain flutters in front of his window and he struggles to remember the straining notes of a song from his dream, but there is nothing but a nagging heaviness.
He blames the heat.
He feels older than the length of his years, as though they have been overstuffed.
He blames his birthday.
He is tired and faded, a tape rewound and replayed until falling apart.
But it is morning, it is beginning, and it is his birthday.
Get up.
It is hot.
He is home.
Don’t do this to me.
That afternoon, still carrying the heaviness from a dream he can’t remember, he is wiping sweat from his eyes with the shoulder of his shirt, hands above his head holding a beam in place, when his foreman walks by, claps him on the back, and says
“Happy birthday old man. How many this make? A hundred?”
It sparks something, some splinter in his abdomen, an ache in his side, like soreness from an old injury he never had.
Bile churns in his stomach and he wants to run.
All over again?
The heat beats down on his exposed head, burning through his hair, sweat rolling down his face like blood, as though his skull has cracked in the sun.
It is a humid afternoon in Texas, and it is his birthday.
Tonight, he will carry his little girl to bed for the last time.
In a month he will put a gun to his head and try to claw the gates open from the other side.
He will beg to be let in as desperately as he begged to be let out, as he lies on the ground bleeding.
There will be a voice –
GET UP.
He will mistake it for his brother’s.
He will obey it anyway.
In twenty years he will pile bodies outside the gate and offer them all in exchange for the small one in his arms, begging
Not again.
He will stand on a warm hillside in Wyoming and swear a lie.
He will stand on a cold porch with bare hands and swear a truth.
He will bleed out on the floor and reach for her.
The gates will slam shut.
He will force them open with bloody hands.
The heat will be oppressive, weighty, unbearable.
He will fall to his knees and she will cry get up
So
he will go home
and try
all over again.
That which has been is what will be
That which is done is what will be done
And there is nothing new under the sun.
~ Ecclesiastes 1:9 NKJV