Vermilion

Author's Note.
I saw the recent 'Quotation Inspiration' quote and did not want to write a poem. The prompt did spark my imagination, though, so I thought I'd follow my muse and see where it led.

Snow provokes responses that reach right back to childhood.
~Andy Goldsworthy

Snow fell outside the kitchen window. It added feathery layers to the white blanket that covered the yard outside. It was so quiet about it. I disregarded my coffee cup and finished cleaning my shotgun. I watched Paul, my youngest son, rock back and forth from his stool while he hunched his tiny frame over the kitchen counter-top. He stuck his tongue out in determined artistry. Crayons and sheets of paper peppered the surface. He was having trouble recreating the sun. I sympathized. Yellow crayons were the worst. They never showed up on white paper very well. When I was a kid, I used to do an outline with a thin-tipped black sharpie to make the color stand out. Color doesn't need an outline in snow. Snow is a different kind of white. I loved to pee on it. The yellow was brilliant. There were other special effects, too; the faint hiss of snow-melt, acrid tendrils of steam rising alongside the expected zingy aroma, and the yellowed area sinking like a perverse footprint. Flick liked making snow angels. I liked pissing in the snow. We often argued the relative merits of our personal tastes. It takes all sorts to make a world, I guess.

The color red is a whole different ball game. Red crayons explode onto paper as waxy lumps of intensity to assault the eyeballs. If yellow is vibrant, red is something else, altogether. It's a color I can hardly express. Red on snow is as bright and dark as space and as terrifying and thrilling as getting caught kissing; it's often too much to see to recall accurately. I remember Flick, though. The first time she saw red snow she puked. It hissed and steamed like piss, but it sure wasn't yellow. The hot lumps in it sunk deeper in the snow than the wet bits did. In my memory I hear her crying. I don't think a person ever forgets the first time they made their wife cry. Of course, we were only ten at the time. Larry was there. He laughed at her. I promised myself, there and then, I would look after her for the rest of my life, and I would not make her cry again.

"You need a sharpie to make the rays pop out," I advised Paul.

He looked up from the paper, as if he only just realized I was in the room. "Am I big enough yet?"

"For hunting?" I shook my head. "When your mother says it's okay, then it's okay."

"She says to quit asking."

"Then leave it a while."

"How long?"

"Ooh, I'd say until you're at least in double figures."

Paul's legs stopped swinging, the drawing instantly forgotten. The fire in his eyes mimicked the flare of his nostrils in outrage. "Ten?"

I swallowed a chortle, put the shotgun in its case and went over to look at his drawings. He let me ruffle his mop of unruly hair. "Hey, these are good! I like the one with the horse best."

"It's a cat."

"Of course it is. I still like it the best."

Chimes from the front porch bell announced Larry's arrival. I heard Flick's quick footsteps answer it with an urgency neither I nor the postman could usually illicit. I listened to the pair's muffled conversation. It dragged them along the hall at a funeral pace. I left the artist to his misery, grabbed my gun, hunting jacket and backpack and met them in the hall. Guilty eyes scrambled over me for a moment before they found their footing.

"Hope you've got your thermals on." Larry grinned. He'd brought in a dose of cotton-fresh air that hit my nostrils like a slab of ice.

"Just be careful out there," Flick addressed us both. "I think you guys are crazy going out when the weather man says more snow's coming."

I put my arm around her waist and gave it a squeeze. "We won't take risks. I promise." She stiffened in my arms. It must have been uncomfortable for her to act dutifully in front of Larry. Another slice of pain assaulted my heart. I didn't know it had so much hurt left in it.

I felt her sad, desperate eyes bore into my back all the way down the driveway. I didn't look back. Larry fixed down a fluttering end of tarpaulin on the truck bed without sneaking a peek at my wife. I wondered if she felt ignored. I slipped on a disregarded fast-food container as I swung into the passenger seat. Larry was meticulous in his wardrobe, housekeeping and working life, but a real slob when it came to his cars. He climbed in, ignored the chiming reminder to buckle-up and hit the ignition and radio at the same time. We left in a whirlwind of snow and rock. I looked back, but the snow was already erasing my life. Somewhere in the seamless join along the blank horizon our little house was swallowed up. I wondered how Flick would fill her time today.

The land around us was anonymous and repetitive. Songs devoured minutes and miles. Larry was concentrating on finding the road. There were no fresh tire tracks to follow.

"Do you remember the first time we went hunting, Larry?"

My voice startled him, as if he'd forgotten I was there. He smiled. "The first time? Jeeze, we've been hunting since we could walk. How the hell should I remember that?"

"I remember. The snow was just like this. Flick, you and me went out with an air-gun, hunting crows."

"Yeah? Did we get any?"

I didn't answer. Larry swung the hood of the pick-up onto Glendale Road. The snow hadn't quite won the right to fill it. The higher banks of land, either side, formed a protective barrier against snowdrifts. The pick-up bowed and nodded to each potholes full of black, muddied water as we drove along. We came to the clearing where the old Sykes place used to be. It was just a shell. The roof had long gone, and the windows were naked of glazing. It was like this thirty years ago when the three of us hunted crows here. The only noticeable change over the decades was that the entire back wall had collapsed, leaving it looking like a theater set instead of a house.

Larry turned off the engine, got out and opened the tarp. I got my kit together, too, and we strode through the ankle deep snow toward a wooded copse of trees where the hunting was good.

As was our practice, we took out our guns once we'd crossed a small stream. I loaded two shots and left the barrel broken to avoid accidents. Larry led the way, his gun ready, with only the safety to take off. We hunkered down and waited for what we hoped would not be long; there were fresh deer tracks.

I watched a bullish stream of breath puff out of Larry's nose in a steady rhythm. I wanted to punch him on it until the whirling clouds belched like a derailed steam-train. I wanted to split his skin with my bare knuckles, and watch his blood spatter the snow. I thought back to Paul's crayoning. He'd find it hard to see his mother cry. And she would cry if I hurt Larry. He was all she wanted now. It enraged me to think about how Larry had laughed at her squeamish reaction to the dead crow, all those years ago. How could she forget that, and how could she fall in love with someone who couldn't even remember her distress? Her horrified tears had changed me, made me see nothing but her, made me want nothing but to keep her safe, keep her smiling, hold her forever. Ever since the day I saw the two lovers together I wondered why she could smile into his eyes so trustingly. Had she considered his past record with women, or thought about the kind of life they would lead together? He would hurt her. He would shred her heart. She would be left as torn as I was now. A thousand little incisions would overwhelm her every time he dropped a careless word, cast a careless glance, or ignored a little plea from her soul. He'd kill her, crush her spirit, make her cry.

Larry's breathing became faster. He nudged me. Up ahead a stag wove his way through the thicket on the other side of the clearing. He was majestic, in his prime. Larry stayed low and moved forward. He took the safety off his gun and waited for the stag's path to present the best shot. The stag was blind to us. As far as he was concerned all was well in his kingdom. He did not expect any threat. I closed the barrel on my own gun. For the briefest of moments Larry moved in front of my sights. I thought about pulling the trigger. I didn't. I felt sick. It was a fleeting thought, but it had existed. It shocked me. I think I gasped. I must have gasped. The stag bolted. Larry loosed a shot, and the sharp crack disturbed a murder of crows in the tree line. They rose with caws of protest that aped the expletives punctuating the air around Larry until the retort from the gun receded.

Larry looked at me. He didn't look angry, just resigned in his frustration. I couldn't help but think his expression showed more than he meant it to. Every muscle in his face echoed his steady impatience. My presence was an immovable obstacle thwarting his every desire.

I couldn't stand the fact Flick cried when we were ten. I was not going to make her cry now. I would leave. Larry would not. They might be happy. I would tell her that night. I took the lead for the return to the pick-up. Larry followed in silence.

The stream was in sight. I broke the barrel and stowed my gun. I hear Larry load two shots in the barrel of his gun and started to turn toward him.

"Please, don't turn around."

"You're going to shoot me, Larry?"

"Yes, and I am sorry about it, really I am, but I'm going to do it anyway."

I didn't have time to respond, or to fully turn my body toward him. He took the shot. He made it count, too. Bizarre, but it felt liked getting kicked by an iron-shod mule. I felt winded. I was rolling in the snow before the pain hit. Little balls of lead shot peppered my side and shredded me with a thousand icy shards of pain. I couldn't get my breath to cry out. I kept on thinking about the time I broke a tooth on one. It was as I ate a deer's liver. It struck me how persistent those shot guns were--the way they buried themselves everywhere. I thought of my liver, my heart, my lungs, and all other the living gloop that the good Lord shoved inside me. Would I die from blood loss or organ failure.

The sun was eclipsed by Larry's silhouette. I couldn't see his expression. I was glad of it. I hoped he was sorry. I hoped he was scared. I hoped he would fix this, fix me.

Larry left.

I heard the unmistakable belch of the pick-up's engine compete with the radio station's latest rock classic, until both faded into the distance.

I hoped I'd died with my eyes shut. The crows had come back. They may want to dine on my gleaming, glassy delicacies. I seasoned them with some salty tears. It was not the only liquid leaking from me.

The air around me was leaden. I bench-pressed against it by managing to turn on my side. The snow was corrupted and soiled. The filth of the wet woodland floor beneath it grubbied its way through Larry's retreating footprints. Tendrils of steam wafted like fairy-made vapor trails from the spreading port-stained puddle that emanated from my middle. The thickness of my blood fascinated me, as did its changing color. It was deep crimson as it sat slightly proud of the snow's surface for a moment, before the melting snow diluted it to Slush-Puppie status. The ice changed the crimson to something akin to a pillar-box shade: vermilion, I think it's called. But, even then, it refused to give up the intensity. In fact, the more it melted the brighter the shade of red dazzled from nature's canvass.

Paul's crayons could never do it justice.

I wanted to pee. Not because I felt the urge to pee, but because I reckoned that the yellow would be crazy intense against the red hue. When people eventually discovered my body, they'd be a little bit awestruck by the artistry, and not simply distressed by the horrifying spectacle. I didn't pee. I couldn't pee. A slow, creeping, numbness invaded my spine. I couldn't move anything, except the corners of my mouth, which turned up into a grin. Flick would not cry at my death, not even if she saw it up close in a police report or mirrored in the haunted musings of her lover's murderous gaze. No, she would not cry, because it was beautiful to behold: I was the ultimate snow angel. My life spilled out into fiery wings beside me. My pale skin aped a Renaissance painter's rendering of Gabriel in all heavenly glory. I would see heaven. I had suffered my hell on earth. I had been a killer in my mind, but I had exercised my volition well. I sought redemption. I had forgiven the trespasses of others.

I wondered what the colors would look like.