Serum
That evening, they sealed her in the bedroom. The boy called it the Dead Room. Then, he followed his grandfather to the lab room, not wanting to be alone. His grandfather spoke to him as they worked, his voice reassuring and warm.
Late that night, Grandfather finished the serum. He injected it into his own arm as the boy watched.
Grandfather explained how he made the serum. The boy did not understand everything he said, but he did understand that now his blood was mingled with his grandfather's. The old man looked at the boy, with an ever-so-slight upturn at the corner of his mouth.
"Our blood now is joined, Grandson. Mine's in you by way of your mother. Yours in me by way of this needle." He held the needle for a moment, then cleaned it and put it in a plastic baggie. "We'll always be together."
The old man looked at the boy, much the way he had looked at the boy's mother before she passed away. Then he put the baggie with the needle in a small case, snapped it shut and put it in an inner pocket of his canvas backpack. On the table, beakers and small bottles of tinctures and dry leaves of some plant crushed in a pestle were scattered across its top.
"Grandson, I'm not sure how my body will react to this serum," he said. "If I get sick, stay with me and use towels soaked in cold water. Like you did with your mother." He put a hand on the boy's shoulder. "Will you do that?"
"I will," answered the boy, scared for his grandfather and for himself. "What if you die?"
"If you stay by me and watch over me tonight, I'll be okay. Can I use your bed to lie down?"
"Yes."
An hour later, the old man got terribly sick. His body was on fire and the boy followed the old man's directions, bathing the face and chest with cold tap water from the bathroom. Then the shaking began - his whole body, for hours.
In the long hours of the night, the boy was sure the old man was dying. His fear, always there beside him, told him so. The boy felt the same helplessness he felt with his mother, before Grandfather appeared.
Sitting at the end of his own bed, in his own room, the boy could do nothing but stare at the now-motionless body of this man.
The long hours wore on. The boy knew stars moved across the night sky outside his window. When his fear grew quiet, he almost felt their movement, though he could not see them. He had watched them so often with his mother. She would point out some of the more obvious constellations that were bright enough to burn through the glow of the big city. The Big Dipper. Lining up the two stars at the far end of the bucket pointed to the North Star. And Cassiopeia. Its middle star, like an arrow, also pointed to the North Star. The North Star, his mother always said, was the way home.
Weird to know her body was sealed in the Death Room down the hall. Grandfather, while they were closing her room, had reassured the boy she would be taken care of. When the boy pressed for more explanation, the old man only answered with silence.
Sitting with this sick man, his mother gone, and thinking about the vastness of the night sky overhead was overwhelming. Lonely. Down deep inside. Yet, there was nothing to do except watch and wait.
In the early hours before dawn, the boy fell into an exhausted sleep. His head angled awkwardly onto the chair back. A wet towel dangled off his right knee. A bucket of water nearby. A small lamp burned next to the bed where the old man struggled with the serum surging through his veins.
Ledge
New Orleans. His mother. A grandfather that appeared like a ghost from the past, a gift. His mother's death, a curse.
His world was thrown into chaos that day. And now even that is in the past.
This ledge. The darkness. The loneliness. This is the boy's life now.
What about his dreams? His memories? Do they matter?
Why is he alive? Why did Grandfather die to keep him alive? Take him from the house in New Orleans and bring him out here? Teach him how to live in the desert? To be on the landscape?
So many questions.
His head heavy with fatigue. Is it fatigue from waking so many times or from the strain of fleeing?
Questions again. Goddamn questions.
His head drops to his pillow, the pack. His eyes close as he tries to forget.
The moon is now low on the western horizon. A thin red sickle in the dark night. The stars stretch across the skyscape, tilting with the setting moon. Red.
Why?
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