The Lookouters
A medium read
Martha sat on the faded dry porch. Chair legs like an old woman. She suckled the lamb. The ewe had gone not a day past birthing but did not survive. Sheep were valuable. So also, milk.
One
Out in the trees, a guitar strummed, and a voice chorded angelic. It was there every night even if you could not hear it over the silence of your thoughts and the noise of nothing. And although the runt’s ears raised, it didn’t stop pulling milk from Martha’s teat. Martha, oblivious to the music, the moon, the salmon flesh western edge, the snout and lamb.
The moment was not lost on Emmett, who walked up the bowed steps of the porch between two half barrels sunk some into the ground by the weight of soil, wild fallen flowers and destitution. To the unfamiliar, the virgins, the aching harmonies and straining ears would sound the same each moon rise, but to him, like the wind, after centuries you get used to the feel of the nuances of sound and vibration, the angle of pine needle, and the fullness of a hollow tree.
In the kitchen, he poured himself a cup of wild camomile tea, a dampness at the base of the glass leaving a mark on the oak grains as he lifted it from the table. He had built the piece himself in the weeks following the storm of ’27. The grandfather had come down the other side of the field, centred in a stretch of hedge left abandoned by the loss of crops, though the damage had already been done over the years of farming. Grandfather’s crown becoming bald like a man’s, wisdom escaping through bare exposure to insensitivity and distrust of Mother. His roots unhinged, unfed, unsupported, unloved, untreated, uncovered. The debris smashed wide with a snap and tossed arms. A huge round gnarled trunk butchered by Emmett to get beyond the carcass and the flesh inside. There was no fuel for the chainsaw, so cutting the circumference had been a slow, colossal and body-breaking task. There weren’t many bow saws around anymore, but he had one. At the end of cutting, he drunk his only glass of bourbon that year in homage to his own great grandfather, who, himself a carpenter and logs man, had tendered his tools with care. When he lifted the saw from its brackets high on the wall it sung with reflected light and tone. The woods heard too and replied.
Under the aged pattern of the oak played little ‘Lyne. She sat crossed legged and whispered to the shadows. Dust floating on the delicate air currents around her young bones, catching light almost lost inside the deepening darkness of the house. In her head the words of a song skipping through from she knew not where. A lullaby, a memory, a folk song she had heard from someplace? Her lips silent, eyes soft, imagination verdant, and unshackled.
Above the table a small, a fawn hued moth circled upward, caught in a vortex of muscle memory. The dipping sun a rectangle of amber on the inside wall, seemingly scorching the wood in a defiant display of hope.
Emmett pulled a stool from under the grandfather’s solid back and leant his own against the wall below tomorrow’s light. Through the open-door late spring heat tempered the air. It promised already to be another hot summer, though hopefully this time absent of fire fear. Not seven months previous, at the end of the season, most of the land around them had been blown thin by raging flames. The surrounding ground a firebreak now between them and the forests to the north still to be touched. The acrid smell, smoke fog and locusts swarm of ash could trouble them still, but their home would be safe. Another year, like the recent, merging with the mountains, alone.
As the light lowered and flittered between the branches, Emmett crouched blowing into the oscillating embers of the softy crackling burner. After a short pause, the flames lifted to caress the newly placed log, catching the tips of the splintered strands with bursts of orange. Even though he was now starting to feel the chill of night and morning, more in age than location, he respected not to take more wood than was needed. Learning to feel some inner cold was extra insulation in the winter and would be welcome in a few months time again. It was also a lesson which needed to be practised, much like a craft is, to remain astute in acts of creation.
As with fires you are not compelled to flee, a self-made burn can initiate a dream state - one of memories already lived, and memories to be lived in the future.
A flickering screen when there are no more screens, a moving image of warmth despite the cold feelings of recollection. Simple thoughts illuminated in the orange, such as going to the store for a handful of groceries, filling the car up with gas, playing ball in the yard, watching election night on tv. The thoughts split like the logs, turning black and charred, knowing they were, and could be no more. It felt like an age ago, though there were enough strands to grasp hold of at each fireside sit. Memories, Martha and ‘Lyne, and the need to get on and live the hand they had been dealt. The last set of cards of any people. Everything comes to an end. Chapters change. Books finish, even the good books.
Emmett had been raised believing in the next life. But here, now, understanding, as far as he was aware, that there is no next human life. Other than ‘Lyne, and if he and Martha fell pregnant once more with a son - the complications, the mis-evolution of human life, the weight. We all want to survive. Survive and be happy. That’s the function, the emotional output of all life - to ensure that we will be here tomorrow. His thoughts wandered in worry up with the smoke before being broken gratefully by the dusk call of an owl - sharp, loud, and near - just beyond the clearing into the pines and song that played the needle notes each evening regardless of weather or season.
The credits etc.
A post-dystopian novel. Copyright of the author.