Faultline
If it is a wintry Thursday night. If there is a football field and players and a wilting ball. If the same old boys are smoking out on the field’s edge. If there is a black dry forest, and out of the forest’s dark mouth winds a dirt path, and the dirt path passes the field. If Avery, on the way home from her job at the pub, emerges from the forest and follows the path. If a fizzling streetlamp struggles to light the path. If in the lamp’s sorry light Avery glimpses a figure among the boys at the edge of the football field. If it is Sam. If Sam has always seemed lost to her. If the years have slipped by since she last saw Sam. If she’s spent years circling a question she can’t voice. If she feels like she’s seeing Sam for the first time: soft and strong, brilliant and gold. If she has heard rumors about Sam, how they keep company with the football boys. If she remembers Sam’s high school boyfriend. If she remembers blowing Sam’s high school boyfriend in the locker room and thinking of Sam the whole time. If the lamp’s light is sorry, but Sam is smiling at her. If she could have been a painter, a botanist, somehow alluring. If she feels like she never had a choice. If the players out on the field follow a plan, a plan she has never been able to understand or access. If Sam’s smile lifts her. If Sam asks, “Do you want a smoke?” and Avery says, “Hell yes.” If there is a hunger in the cold air between them. If the boys kick the dirt, caught in the failing lamplight with Sam and Avery, made small by the enormity of the field and its rules. If the boys, watching from the sidelines, eagerly track the ball, the players, the state of the field. If the boys believe they have made a choice to live by the field’s rules. If there is comfort and stability in living that way. If there is pain in it too. If the boys yearn for victory but fear they are in the midst of a lie. If Avery asks what Sam does for work and they say, “I’m a carpenter—I made these,” and they flick the gauges in their ears. If harsh smoke fills Avery’s chest. If she coughs and hacks. If they gravely say, “Smoking’s bad for you,” and lead her toward their car, away from the boys. If Avery says, “Sorry,” and she’s talking about the locker room blow job. If their hand on her shoulder, firm and calloused, is intoxicating. If they sit in the driver’s seat and she sits on the passenger side. If Sam mumbles sorry about the boys. If Sam says, “I feel like I pass when I’m with them.” If Avery wishes she could soak up the shame. If the winter has been long and strange. If they kiss. If she invites Sam to the backseat of the car, and they squeeze through the thin slot between the seats, the oily light warping the shadows, the ratty backseat sinking beneath their dirty sneakers and cold asses. If Sam was her friend once. If they reach for her cheek and trace her neck, and their fingers slide across her collarbone. If her breath catches. If she has dreamed of this. If she has kept a ledger. If the ledger counts all the ways Sam might have touched her and never did. If she kisses Sam again. If it is hard and pleasant and eerie. If she wishes she might change—might erode, might bloom—the way Sam has. If she guides Sam’s hand to her spine. If she presses their finger against a groove in her skin. If she says, “Here.” If they do. If they rub a finger along the groove, sink their nail into the skin, and finally begin to peel her. If Avery has always wanted to ask what else can she be. If she makes a wish. If she is a rippling curtain. If she is a golem. If she is a cloud. If she is the soil clinging to their sneakers. If she is stark, breathless entropy. If Avery unfurls, and if the groove is a knot in who Avery is, may be, can never be again, and her skin sloughs off, laying on the backseat like folded linens. If this is a faultline, an opportunity—if Sam plunges their freckled face into Avery’s neck and sucks in air, and they breathe of a meadow teeming with skin and hair and ferns, of the forest, if, after all this, Sam exhales winter: the football game is lost. Sorrow grips the boys. They howl out on the field’s edge. They rap their knuckles on the car’s rear bumper, oblivious to what has happened inside. They brawl and hug, bruised, defeated, fumbling their way on the dirt path and into the dark mouth of the forest. In the car, Avery is in Sam’s arms, cracked open against the leather seat, a human figure, a rift of possibility. She’s the car’s yellow overhead light. She is the forest. The football flying. The cigarette smoke in her lungs, too, or the lungs’ agitated tissue. The world’s hers. She wraps her arms around Sam. Her hot breath mingles with theirs in the quiet. Now, what else can she be?
brandon brown (@cedarchromatic) holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts—what they call their “MFA in strange stories.” Right now, they are working on a short story cycle about a small town in the grip of climate change and eroded reality. They grew up in upstate South Carolina and now live in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with Felix, their loudmouth cat.