First

Yellow lightning tore the clouds apart on the night I was born. It was a queer yellow, that’s how they tell it, ma said it turned the sky the color of an overripe mango’s insides. Everybody else I’ve asked tell it as a great jaundiced eye bloodshot and bulging, a cloud iris mean with intent.

When she left there wasn’t much reason, it just was and then that what was wasn’t. We went at each other some sure but it wasn’t no malice in it. It was like a testing. I failed it seems, yep, I’ve failed in quite the fashion.

I asked that shadow thing that lurks and slobbers in the middle of the gyrating abyss why. It never answered back. I left a message that was mostly rambling. Was embarrassed immediately after.

Father Max said it wasn’t nothing that the Lord can’t bear. I suppose that’s so, though I don’t know what good that does for me, I wondered at him, who aint the Lord and so far aint bearing very good at all. Through Him it’s bore for you as well, he said. What about the eye? I asked him. The curse. Son, he told me, you aren’t any more cursed than anybody else. Let me tell you. Mr. Jensen lost his wife just last week, an accident on vacation in Florida involving six or seven folks, a pile up. She was the only one died, he told me. If there’s any eye, he said to me, his breath hot in his chest some and raising his chin, it was His and it looks on all us alike, equal in its blessings and its curses. I been trying hard to force myself to believe it.

Up upon the edge of twin paleface moons twirled together like dancers locked in fast footwork and swaying hips, I saw her for the last time:

“Hey cutie,” she said.

“Hey Bama,” I said.

“What you lookin all sad for? You know what you gotta do.”

“I know it, yep. Hey, let’s take off and hook up at the pier or something tonight. I aint gotta do it right this second.”

“You’d put off the apocalypse. The pier? It smells like fish, and don’t you dare make that joke.”

We laughed. Hard, genuine. A sound cut out of air and given weight. It felt like the laughing was a sort of weld making us into one thing through a long series of melting and recombining. It wasn’t nothing like that but it felt so.

“Your momma still got that mango tree growing? How is it?”

“It’s growing good. Come by. We can sit there like we—”

“Babe. You’re just too cute. I’ll see ya.”

I’ll see ya, knowing full well she wouldn’t. I didn’t say nothing back. Couldn’t bear to. All that bearing, why’s it that a person’s made to bear and be bearing forever yet can’t fully grasp at what was to be bore. That was the last time I saw her, six weeks after her disintegration in an industrial vat of acids. Up there on the edge of one of those moons like a final silver breath in dusky mist.

Sometimes I might hear her once every while if I’m lucky.

“You love her still?” he says.

“I ain’t sure. Probably,” I say.

“An you not gone on after her?”

“Nah, no point in it. She moved.”

“You not even gonna call?” he says.

“Aint any point, really. Didn’t go well last time I tried it.”

“But you still got her number, huh?”

“Nah. Maybe, whatever.”

“Ha. You a bitch!”

“It’s a curse on me.”

“You a damn lie. You the curse, an a bitch.”

“Bite it and let me alone.”

“Ha. You the curse alright. Plain spooky.”

“Let me the hell alone.”

Sulphureous lightning split clouds into explosions, yep, that’s how they tell it, gray wind erupting into a violence copper-hued and in the sprawl of sundered sky a wide-open giant’s eye, pupil dilated and whites sickly yellowed, marking me for turmoil.

 

Second

The rings are like hammer blows. It goes on for five minutes or so. After each one I tell myself to hang up. A storm chill rests on the air. When she answers her voice sounds like a slow whistle glacier like sliding slowly into my ear, beautiful and threatening an all-encompassing oblivion.

“I’ll be damned. No, really, I must be. Benny?”

“Hey Alabama. How you been?”

“What the hell you want?”

“Nothing really. Just to say hi.”

“What makes you think I wanna say hi to you after the shit you pulled?”

“I’m— It’s the eye makes me act like that, I can’t help it any. It aint how I really am.”

“The eye. You and the damn eye. You ever gonna get over that silly shit?”

“How many times have I said sorry?”

“How many times you acted unsorry?”

“I can’t escape my fate.”

“Guess it’s lucky for all us then that we can escape you.”

“I love you still.”

“If so then please, don’t call me no more, not ever again.”

“I didn’t—”

Click. Silence, silence, silence. Then I can hear the far-off laughing thunder and can see the eye creased at the corners with mirth. Deep breathing helps, ma told me. I try but it catches right at the middle of my chest like it had talons latched on my insides. I aint any good at bearing and that’s that. I grab my pistol from the dresser.

Outside, as rain drops soak into my skin like a trillion lonely ghosts, I fire the entire magazine straight up above me and pray that I hit it somewhere where it hurts.