V. H. King's Ink

Full dark doesn’t come around these parts.  When I cut the headlights, ground fog shimmers pink.  The trees are outlined in that white-green glow, and orange light hugs the tree tops.  I kill the engine and hop out. 

Kite doesn’t turn to me when I open the passenger door.  His fingers struggle against seatbelt until it finally clicks and releases.  His arm drops to the side and he gulps air, exhausted by the effort of what should have been a small task. 

The safety-green of his hoodie is nearly blinding.  I tug on his sleeve, take his arm, and help him out of the truck.  He’s steady enough on his feet, if stiff.  I shut the door behind us and walk into low branches and a damp breeze.

The river is easy for me to find.  Follow the bluebells.  The wet ground turns rocky, and then our boots puddle through the stream’s edge.  Kite sinks onto a boulder without me having to tell him to sit.  I stay on my feet, eyes scanning for patches of sky.

“Yeah, uh—“ Kite coughs, presses a hand to his chest.  “Nothing could have prepared me for that.”

He tests his lungs with a tentative inhale, a shallow exhale.  Slowly drawing deeper breaths until he feels he can mostly breathe again.  Swirls in the water as he shifts his feet, testing the aches in his body. 

I didn’t have to tell Boss what could happen to Kite out here.   The other jacks, they couldn’t have warned him if they wanted to.  The stream slithers around our ankles, small fish reflecting the orange haze overhead.  The breeze rises and falls, about ninety-seconds between its gasps. 

Good, for now. 

“Let me guess—don’t drink the water?” Kite asks. 

“Can, if you want.”  I take a risk and sit on the boulder beside him.  “Might not hurt.”

“Have you ever–?”  Kite stops himself and just looks at me a long minute.  “Thanks.”

I lean down, scooping my hand through the swirl.  Were we here in full daylight, the water wouldn’t be blue.  Or clear. Maybe not anything you could call a color, either.  A fish the size of a Twinkie curls into my cupped palm.  I let my thumb rest just behind its gills.  The suckers on its belly kiss the lines on my skin, scenting for danger. 

The prickle starts at my elbow and creeps up to my shoulder.  I wait for a ringing in my ears.  It doesn’t come. 

The fish squishes its way through my fingers, stealing away. 

“I want to ask you what you know.” 

Kite’s voice is quiet, matter of fact.  He’s been looking at me this whole time, I realize.  Instead of drying my hand on my jeans, I rub both it against the other as if I were putting on lotion.  The smell of this place is dead leaves in winter; a brittle breath against the weight of the woods. 

The wind rises.  Ten seconds sooner than the last sigh through the branches. 

“We don’t have long.”

Kite doesn’t say anything right away.  His eyes are still on me, as if he’s waiting for me to answer a question he won’t ask.  Not many people expect me to answer them at all, so I’m surprised.  Maybe he thinks I’ll tell him what I’ll tell him, and nothing he says will change how much I say.  He might be right—but…

“My dad would have said that none of us do.  But from the looks of things—“

“That’s what you’re going by?”  The side of my mouth nudges upward.  “After the jolt you just got?”

“I was starting to get sleepy, anyway.”

Kite’s half-smile is somehow serious—and in its seriousness, it feels more disarming than full-bodies laughter.  My eyes skate over his face and then back up to the sky. 

“Sure.”

If I’d thought Kite was relaxed in the truck, I was wrong.  I didn’t want to judge right off, thinking he was too nonchalant about the drive.  Maybe it was hard to have your guard up, when everyone stayed mum about what you may or may not be getting into.  His curiosity was genuine—and it was also projected. 

I’d never thought about being personable as a defense mechanism.  For someone who assumed I couldn’t change someone’s mind when it came to how they saw me or my place in the world, I didn’t bother much with making friends.  This route was about the best way to keep to myself that there was.  That, and hoping to do some good along the way. 

This stretch in the woods, though—

“I asked Boss to put me on this route,” Kite says.  “Practically had to beg him, really—and more than once.”

I feel like I should say something about it being a good thing, he didn’t give up easy.  At least, I want to.  The problem is that sometimes you have to give up, because it’s the only way to go on. 

The branches shiver in the wind.  Their white-green glow reminds me of a meteor shower as it’s reflected in the stream below. 

I get to my feet.

“Time to go.”

Kite is looking at me again—has looked at me more than any of the weird scenery I dragged him into.  But then again, he did say he chose to be put on this route.  If he thinks I’m the weirdest thing out here…well, he might not be wrong.  Jacks see all sorts of things on the road, and I know they still count me as one of the stranger oddities in the business. 

I almost expect Kite to grab me by the arm, drag me down to the water.  Instead he pushes himself to his feet, looking ten years older than he had when I met him that morning. It occurs to me, from his comment about nagging Boss to put him on this route, he’s not a novice jack like I’d thought. 

I wonder what all he’s seen. 

Image Description: A forest in late-summer light, with pink and purple fog on the ground. Black, green, and white fog lingers along the tree tops.