The distance between things has increased. The night sky hangs lonely and still over a traffic jam on a freeway. There are a few stars. There is a plane. There is a city with all its lights on, and next to the city, there is a huge forest. The forest is burning. A satellite blinks once, then blinks again as the night sky turns a shade of yellow. The parade of license plates on the freeway blurs as my head slips from my arm to the surface of my desk.
I open my eyes standing on the shoulder of a satellite that hovers above the world. I am wearing my pajamas. I am in space wearing my pajamas. My pajamas have sailboats on them. The sailboats hover above the world; the satellite and I sweep across the upper atmosphere. I forget the horizontal and vertical, the up and down, the side to side. I simply exist above, weightless.
Together the satellite and I gather images of landscapes and continents and storm clouds from a point high above any of the fears of the world. At first we see the world like everyone else sees it on TV, a deep voice saying: This is planet EARTH-our one and only home. A massive globe slowly spinning. Blue, green and white shapes appearing to barely move.
I try to look for my house but I can’t find it. I try and locate all the lines that define the states and keep taxes out of New Hampshire but I don’t see any. All I see is a shape that resembles North America and another that looks like Greenland. I can’t be too sure because I’ve never been too good at geography and nothing has a name in bold face written across it like it does in class. Even if it did, I still couldn’t see it from here. From here the entire Earth seems untouched and unchanged. Space is colder than I thought. The sails of the boats along my thighs don’t move as I shiver.
I tell the satellite that we should get closer. The satellite blinks and drifts to the left; it drifts more to the left and then blinks again. Suddenly the state of the world shifts and places I have never seen before are revealed. The satellite zooms in and I see what it sees: oceans begin to move and twitch and ripple slowly. I see the Rocky Mountains and they look like a backbone to me. There is a deep cut tearing into the earth near the bottom left of the country. I see swamps and the grids of cities. We are close enough now to feel the pull of the continent. We are close enough to see the landscapes of the nation defined in silent beauty. I look for my house again. I still can’t see any lines. And then, without notice, the satellite disappears and I fall from space with nothing to hold onto.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
The Sky
As I fall through the atmosphere I begin to see the structure of neighborhoods and traffic patterns going up and down the shoreline of a Great Lake. I see a Ford Ranger. I see a fire turning a forest on a hillside into ash. I see the ash swept up in a gust of wind. I see a large ball of dust drift across the country and turn into a tornado and I watch as a tornado tears the roof off a barn. I am falling over the middle of the country, over a tornado and I can’t stop myself. My face is getting closer and closer to the ground. My impact will destroy a landscape, a city, a supermarket and leave a huge crater in the earth. People will wonder if I was a U.F.O.
The city I am over looks so recognizable but still unlike anything I have ever seen before. I feel like I can remember something about the way its streets appear to curl around their corners. There is something about the buildings and the houses behind the buildings and the mountains beyond the houses. Something real. Something I can touch.
I am really close to hitting the ground and I can see inside the windows now and in one I see a man holding a Coke can and scratching his beard, in another I see a woman passed out on a couch. I fall between the buildings. Some of the windows are dark and empty, places unvisited. Others fill with bright fluorescent glow. I fall between the buildings and grab onto the edge of a window. I climb inside a room and in the room I am finally on solid ground. My heart is beating out of my chest. I feel the floor with my hands just to feel something solid underneath me. It is just a wooden floor but it feels so comforting. I take a deep breath. I pause. I take another breath and press my hands tightly to the floor. Holy shit.
The city I am over looks so recognizable but still unlike anything I have ever seen before. I feel like I can remember something about the way its streets appear to curl around their corners. There is something about the buildings and the houses behind the buildings and the mountains beyond the houses. Something real. Something I can touch.
I am really close to hitting the ground and I can see inside the windows now and in one I see a man holding a Coke can and scratching his beard, in another I see a woman passed out on a couch. I fall between the buildings. Some of the windows are dark and empty, places unvisited. Others fill with bright fluorescent glow. I fall between the buildings and grab onto the edge of a window. I climb inside a room and in the room I am finally on solid ground. My heart is beating out of my chest. I feel the floor with my hands just to feel something solid underneath me. It is just a wooden floor but it feels so comforting. I take a deep breath. I pause. I take another breath and press my hands tightly to the floor. Holy shit.
The Window and The Wall
I look up and out the window and all I see is another window straight across from mine. There are two women in track suits doing aerobics in front of a television. The prettier of the two looks out of her window and just stares into mine, a blank expression on her face, sweat pouring off her forehead. I have become just another image inside a building within the depths of a city.
I turn the light on in the room. There is no furniture, no television blaring, no refrigerator humming alone in the corner. There is only the perfect silence of nothingness. The room has been forgotten. It looks like it hasn’t been visited in ages. The light on the ceiling flickers on and off, off and on, on and off, off and on. In the moments of light I notice some photographs on the walls. I stand in the center and turn slowly around in a circle. My heart is still pounding. My feet are shaking. It is hard to swallow. My head hurts. I wish I had some water. All along the walls the photographs leave no space for paint or wall paper. I am in the middle of a room made out of pictures. I take a step forward towards one of the walls.
I wipe some sweat from my forehead and extend my hand, running my fingertips along the photographs. At first from the middle of the room they appeared as only blurs of color and I could barely make out any of the images. Now that I am closer to the wall I begin to focus on each individual photo. In one frame I see my house. I take a step back and stop for a second. I tap my finger against my front door. In another I see my lawn. The grass was long then. A few photographs over I see the rest stop where we were one summer when I played tag with my dad and he tripped and broke his arm. I see the town we went to, two states over, to buy our dog. There is a picture on the wall for every place I have ever been to. All the photos are lined up side by side and allow me to feel like I am conquering the great distances between them by just moving one step down. I see my best friend Joey’s house and his big swimming pool with the biggest slide in the world. The further I go down the wall the deeper into my past the pictures seem to go. I pass some photographs that are yellowing and broken around their edges. I touch them gently with my palm, my thumb up against them and I stop for a second.
Suddenly the walls of the room start to disintegrate and the pictures turn to dust on the floor and the walls turn to more dust on top of the dust already on the floor. I look out to where the window in the room used to be, where I saw the ladies in the track suits but the wall of the room and its window are now just one large open space. The breeze from the city touches my face. I take a few steps forward and I move my feet to the edge. I stand at the edge of where the floor of the room ends and the air of the city takes over. I take a deep breath and I blink.
I turn the light on in the room. There is no furniture, no television blaring, no refrigerator humming alone in the corner. There is only the perfect silence of nothingness. The room has been forgotten. It looks like it hasn’t been visited in ages. The light on the ceiling flickers on and off, off and on, on and off, off and on. In the moments of light I notice some photographs on the walls. I stand in the center and turn slowly around in a circle. My heart is still pounding. My feet are shaking. It is hard to swallow. My head hurts. I wish I had some water. All along the walls the photographs leave no space for paint or wall paper. I am in the middle of a room made out of pictures. I take a step forward towards one of the walls.
I wipe some sweat from my forehead and extend my hand, running my fingertips along the photographs. At first from the middle of the room they appeared as only blurs of color and I could barely make out any of the images. Now that I am closer to the wall I begin to focus on each individual photo. In one frame I see my house. I take a step back and stop for a second. I tap my finger against my front door. In another I see my lawn. The grass was long then. A few photographs over I see the rest stop where we were one summer when I played tag with my dad and he tripped and broke his arm. I see the town we went to, two states over, to buy our dog. There is a picture on the wall for every place I have ever been to. All the photos are lined up side by side and allow me to feel like I am conquering the great distances between them by just moving one step down. I see my best friend Joey’s house and his big swimming pool with the biggest slide in the world. The further I go down the wall the deeper into my past the pictures seem to go. I pass some photographs that are yellowing and broken around their edges. I touch them gently with my palm, my thumb up against them and I stop for a second.
Suddenly the walls of the room start to disintegrate and the pictures turn to dust on the floor and the walls turn to more dust on top of the dust already on the floor. I look out to where the window in the room used to be, where I saw the ladies in the track suits but the wall of the room and its window are now just one large open space. The breeze from the city touches my face. I take a few steps forward and I move my feet to the edge. I stand at the edge of where the floor of the room ends and the air of the city takes over. I take a deep breath and I blink.
The Computer Screen
A noise wakes Fortune up. He opens his eyes and for a second he is convinced that his life is full of only movement in shadows. He yawns and brings his fists to his eyes. The image clears and some of the shadows vanish but everything is still smudged a little around the edges. When Fortune yawns his eyes water and people think he’s crying.
The computer screen brightens and lights up the room and he is joined by his 456 friends on myspace.com on the page in front of him. He must have fallen asleep while typing on his blog. A billion little z’s, x’s and f’s are in the middle of the screen like he had fallen asleep with his forehead on the keyboard. He brushes his hair away from his eyes and runs his fingertips along his skin. His forehead feels sore. The cursor is blinking next to Hannah Leigh’s face on her profile picture. She is staring right at him from the screen. She is looking as cute as always. You’re cute, he tells her profile picture because he is too nervous to tell her himself. He presses his pointer finger on the backspace button and watches the random letters from his sleep be replaced by white space.
Friday, May 25th, 2007
This Summer!
Category: friends
School is out and it is officially summertime and you all know what that means. My family and I are leaving for our annual summer vacation tomorrow morning. I haven’t even begun to pack yet. What am I supposed to bring? My game boy broke a few weeks ago. I guess I will just listen to a lot of music or something.
It sucks that I’m not going to be around to go swimming and just hang out but my parents get their summers off because they teach. Every summer they always want to be going somewhere, seeing some place. So, I guess I am used to not being home for the summer but that doesn’t mean I don’t miss it. Later on tonight I go to my 3rd grade graduation and then we leave in the morning.
This summer we are driving west across the U.S. There are a few big stops that we have planned. My mom really wants to go to some huge mall in the middle of the country because she says it’s where the best shopping is and the lowest prices. My mom loves to shop and buy new things.
My dad told me we are driving near where they found that REALLY big dinosaur skeleton a few years ago. He told me to keep my eye out for Round Island. I told him I always do.
Who knows, I might find another skeleton and it might be even bigger…or better yet, what if I find one that hasn’t even been discovered yet?
I could find a skeleton of a new species of dinosaur that no scientist had even knew existed so the entire science community would let me name it. I’m thinking I’d call it the…Fortunesaurus or something like that. Let me know what you guys think.
And then my skeleton could stand, reconstructed in the entry of some famous history museum in some place like New York or Chicago. And people would come from all over the country with their families on their summer vacations and walk into the museum and see the Fortunesaurus
hulking over them with its huge teeth so big that everyone who sees it feels like the Fortunesaurus is going to eat their head off in one bite.
And people will want to take pictures in front of the Fortunesaurus with their families or their girlfriends. Everyone will have their arms around each other with crazy, frightened, Jurassic Park looks on their faces like they truly believe that the Fortunesaurus could come alive any moment and bite every single person’s head right off.
And then they will all go home and put all the pictures up on all of their refrigerators. And when their friends come over they will walk into the kitchen and see the picture and know that they were there, that they saw the Fortunesaurus with their very own eyes.
Anyways I got to get going. Everyone I don’t see tonight, enjoy your summer! I’ll try and give a few updates from the road and let you know if I find anything.
Your friend, Fortune Alabama
7:45 AM – 0 Comments – 0 Kudos – Add Comment
The computer screen brightens and lights up the room and he is joined by his 456 friends on myspace.com on the page in front of him. He must have fallen asleep while typing on his blog. A billion little z’s, x’s and f’s are in the middle of the screen like he had fallen asleep with his forehead on the keyboard. He brushes his hair away from his eyes and runs his fingertips along his skin. His forehead feels sore. The cursor is blinking next to Hannah Leigh’s face on her profile picture. She is staring right at him from the screen. She is looking as cute as always. You’re cute, he tells her profile picture because he is too nervous to tell her himself. He presses his pointer finger on the backspace button and watches the random letters from his sleep be replaced by white space.
Friday, May 25th, 2007
This Summer!
Category: friends
School is out and it is officially summertime and you all know what that means. My family and I are leaving for our annual summer vacation tomorrow morning. I haven’t even begun to pack yet. What am I supposed to bring? My game boy broke a few weeks ago. I guess I will just listen to a lot of music or something.
It sucks that I’m not going to be around to go swimming and just hang out but my parents get their summers off because they teach. Every summer they always want to be going somewhere, seeing some place. So, I guess I am used to not being home for the summer but that doesn’t mean I don’t miss it. Later on tonight I go to my 3rd grade graduation and then we leave in the morning.
This summer we are driving west across the U.S. There are a few big stops that we have planned. My mom really wants to go to some huge mall in the middle of the country because she says it’s where the best shopping is and the lowest prices. My mom loves to shop and buy new things.
My dad told me we are driving near where they found that REALLY big dinosaur skeleton a few years ago. He told me to keep my eye out for Round Island. I told him I always do.
Who knows, I might find another skeleton and it might be even bigger…or better yet, what if I find one that hasn’t even been discovered yet?
I could find a skeleton of a new species of dinosaur that no scientist had even knew existed so the entire science community would let me name it. I’m thinking I’d call it the…Fortunesaurus or something like that. Let me know what you guys think.
And then my skeleton could stand, reconstructed in the entry of some famous history museum in some place like New York or Chicago. And people would come from all over the country with their families on their summer vacations and walk into the museum and see the Fortunesaurus
hulking over them with its huge teeth so big that everyone who sees it feels like the Fortunesaurus is going to eat their head off in one bite.
And people will want to take pictures in front of the Fortunesaurus with their families or their girlfriends. Everyone will have their arms around each other with crazy, frightened, Jurassic Park looks on their faces like they truly believe that the Fortunesaurus could come alive any moment and bite every single person’s head right off.
And then they will all go home and put all the pictures up on all of their refrigerators. And when their friends come over they will walk into the kitchen and see the picture and know that they were there, that they saw the Fortunesaurus with their very own eyes.
Anyways I got to get going. Everyone I don’t see tonight, enjoy your summer! I’ll try and give a few updates from the road and let you know if I find anything.
Your friend, Fortune Alabama
7:45 AM – 0 Comments – 0 Kudos – Add Comment
The Stop Sign
The telephone rings early in the morning but Joanne Alabama doesn’t pick it up. Jeff is in the backyard smoking a cigarette near the fence. He hasn’t said a word to her in over an hour. He just finished packing the van and there is a small ring of sweat darkening the neckline of his t-shirt. He had promised to mow the lawn before they left but the grass is reaching up towards his ankles and he doesn’t seem to notice. Fortune is upstairs in his bedroom. The phone rings again. Joanne looks at herself in the mirror; her thin blonde hair falls to one side of her face. She brushes it away. Her cheeks are covered in small wrinkles. She smiles. The phone rings. The wrinkles on her face seem to multiply four times whenever she smiles. On the last day of classes at the high school she smiled when she told her students she thought Annie Dillard was overrated. They just sat there. Some of them passed notes in the back. She stops smiling and pulls her bangs back down over her face. The van needs gas and maybe even a good wash before they leave for their trip. Joanne takes the keys from the counter and walks out the front door. The neighborhood sits silent except for the sound of the phone which is leaking into the driveway through the windows of her house.
Joanne gets into the van, shuts the door and turns the keys.
The engine drowns out the phone.
Joanne turns on the radio.
Billy Joel drowns out the engine.
Joanne sings, it’s been always burning since the world was turning and drowns out Billy Joel.
She pulls out into the street and drives through the neighborhood. She drives past the stop sign Fortune ran towards the night when he first heard Jeff yell at her. That night, she chased after him in her high heels. Her heart nearly fell apart inside her chest when he ran across the street without looking. Fortune was yelling over his shoulder that he was running away forever, that he wasn’t coming back. The houses of the neighborhood were pulling around him like the walls of a cave. She pleaded with him to stop. She said that she was sorry. She offered cookies but he kept running. Her legs got tired and she stopped and waved. She yelled and told him to make sure that he wrote home every now and again and then she watched. At the sign he finally stopped. Fortune stood alone in the middle of the road in the darkness, leaning a little to the left. He turned around slowly and appeared smaller as he entered under the glow of the street light.
He spoke just over a whisper and even then she could hear his small voice cracking. He looked up and said that he didn’t know how to write and started to cry. Joanne smiled and felt happy and warm and scared all at once. When she reached him she knelt down onto the pavement and held him tightly in her arms. She wanted to tell him that it would never happen again. She wanted to tell him that he didn’t have a reason to run away but she couldn’t. She just held him there in the street with the lamp shinning above them.
The street light is broken now and the stop sign is covered in graffiti.
Joanne gets into the van, shuts the door and turns the keys.
The engine drowns out the phone.
Joanne turns on the radio.
Billy Joel drowns out the engine.
Joanne sings, it’s been always burning since the world was turning and drowns out Billy Joel.
She pulls out into the street and drives through the neighborhood. She drives past the stop sign Fortune ran towards the night when he first heard Jeff yell at her. That night, she chased after him in her high heels. Her heart nearly fell apart inside her chest when he ran across the street without looking. Fortune was yelling over his shoulder that he was running away forever, that he wasn’t coming back. The houses of the neighborhood were pulling around him like the walls of a cave. She pleaded with him to stop. She said that she was sorry. She offered cookies but he kept running. Her legs got tired and she stopped and waved. She yelled and told him to make sure that he wrote home every now and again and then she watched. At the sign he finally stopped. Fortune stood alone in the middle of the road in the darkness, leaning a little to the left. He turned around slowly and appeared smaller as he entered under the glow of the street light.
He spoke just over a whisper and even then she could hear his small voice cracking. He looked up and said that he didn’t know how to write and started to cry. Joanne smiled and felt happy and warm and scared all at once. When she reached him she knelt down onto the pavement and held him tightly in her arms. She wanted to tell him that it would never happen again. She wanted to tell him that he didn’t have a reason to run away but she couldn’t. She just held him there in the street with the lamp shinning above them.
The street light is broken now and the stop sign is covered in graffiti.
The Map
Joanne Alabama walks into the house and immediately takes off her shoes. The van is clean now and full of gas. She examines her nails under the lights of the mudroom. She rubs her feet, curls her toes and lets out a sigh. Jeff is standing in the kitchen furiously flipping through maps on the table. He looks tired. She feels tired. She runs her hands down the legs of her pants like she is trying to get the creases out of a really nice dress. She moves slowly into kitchen. He looks up at her and smiles faintly.
Jeff stops paying attention to his wife and stares blankly at the big star next to Washington D.C. Joanne walks over to her husband and puts her arm around his neck and kisses him softly. She stops talking and her head stops hurting and for a brief second their arms wrap around each other and she can feel them breathe in and out in unison.
Jeff Alabama feels the soft lips of his wife touch gently against his neck. He drags his pointer finger along a red curvy line that goes from New York into Pennsylvania, the feeling of her nose on his skin.
The map out on the table is full of colorful lines of all types of roads from all over the country. Jeff searches for Route 5, I-80, any road or name he can think of. He just stares at the map for anything at all.
Lately, he has been trying to think about the most boring objects around him at any given moment. He then focuses entirely on those objects whenever Joanne is around him. Jeff sees it as his way of protecting himself from the pain of living in the same house, sleeping in the same bed with someone who he no longer knew how to touch.
He looks at the map. He thinks about nothing. He thinks about nothing as hard as he has ever thought about anything in his entire life. He thinks of anything that might help stop him from thinking about how her arms used to feel around his neck. Anything that doesn’t remind him of the times they had when they were younger. When they felt because they were together their world was indestructible. Anything to keep from having to turn around and stare into the eyes of his wife.
A few seconds pass. Joanne says nothing. He doesn’t know what else there is for him to say to her. In the silence he feels her arms let go of his waist. She backs away from the table and moves into the living room. The TV turns on and the sound of a commercial jingle about bathroom cleaner fills the house. The side of his body where her body just covered feels cold against the air in the dining room. He stares at the white walls of the living room. They stare back.
What he planned to do right then was go up to her and grab her and kiss her and say: “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I love you. I’m sorry.”
Instead Jeff folds up the entire nation off the table and stuffs it into the back pocket of his jeans. He turns and kisses his wife softly on the forehead and walks up the stairs unable to say anything at all.
Jeff stops paying attention to his wife and stares blankly at the big star next to Washington D.C. Joanne walks over to her husband and puts her arm around his neck and kisses him softly. She stops talking and her head stops hurting and for a brief second their arms wrap around each other and she can feel them breathe in and out in unison.
Jeff Alabama feels the soft lips of his wife touch gently against his neck. He drags his pointer finger along a red curvy line that goes from New York into Pennsylvania, the feeling of her nose on his skin.
The map out on the table is full of colorful lines of all types of roads from all over the country. Jeff searches for Route 5, I-80, any road or name he can think of. He just stares at the map for anything at all.
Lately, he has been trying to think about the most boring objects around him at any given moment. He then focuses entirely on those objects whenever Joanne is around him. Jeff sees it as his way of protecting himself from the pain of living in the same house, sleeping in the same bed with someone who he no longer knew how to touch.
He looks at the map. He thinks about nothing. He thinks about nothing as hard as he has ever thought about anything in his entire life. He thinks of anything that might help stop him from thinking about how her arms used to feel around his neck. Anything that doesn’t remind him of the times they had when they were younger. When they felt because they were together their world was indestructible. Anything to keep from having to turn around and stare into the eyes of his wife.
A few seconds pass. Joanne says nothing. He doesn’t know what else there is for him to say to her. In the silence he feels her arms let go of his waist. She backs away from the table and moves into the living room. The TV turns on and the sound of a commercial jingle about bathroom cleaner fills the house. The side of his body where her body just covered feels cold against the air in the dining room. He stares at the white walls of the living room. They stare back.
What he planned to do right then was go up to her and grab her and kiss her and say: “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I love you. I’m sorry.”
Instead Jeff folds up the entire nation off the table and stuffs it into the back pocket of his jeans. He turns and kisses his wife softly on the forehead and walks up the stairs unable to say anything at all.
The Lava Field
The floorboard creaks as Fortune makes his way downstairs. There are two small steps followed by one bigger one followed by ten more small ones until you get to the first floor of the house. When Fortune takes showers sometimes the shampoo gets in his eyes and it starts to burn. He uses a towel and washes his eyes out as best he can but sometimes the burning seems to stay forever. Whenever this happens Fortune thinks that he might not be able to open his eyes again and he will be blind.
Fortune is afraid that he will end up walking around for the rest of his life squinting and smelling like Pert Plus. Surrounded only by darkness and various shapes made out of that same darkness. Fortune practices walking down the stairs of his house with his eyes closed. He walks through the entire house and learns how many steps it takes to get from places like the TV to the phone: four straight, eleven left, two straight. Just in case one day he can’t open his eyes ever again.
Or something even worse. Like if the house caught on fire and he couldn’t see anything but smoke and flame. Or if a bunch of robbers broke in and blindfolded him and he needed to escape to help save his family.
Fortune reads the headlines of the papers. The articles always say something like, “no one ever thought something like this could happen here,” or, “she was just a kid and didn’t really know what to do in that situation.” Fortune doesn’t want to become that type of story. Fortune wants to be ready for anything. Anything ever.
Downstairs in the living room Fortune’s mother is standing on the brown carpet in bare feet watching digital clouds drift across the nation. The clouds swirl across the Pacific ocean. They cross the state of Ohio and over the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. A man in a grey suit looks like he is pulling the storm front along the shores of the Great Lakes with his bare hands. Fortune’s mother curls her fingers around a glass of milk.
“What are you doing Fortune?” She asks and takes a sip of her milk.
“Mom, I have to be prepared for anything,” He says opening his eyes in front of her.
“You have to be prepared for anything huh? What’s going to happen? Do you know something I don’t Fortune Alabama?” She asks.
“Maybe. I’ve counted how many steps that it takes to get from everywhere in the house to anywhere else in the house. I was just checking to make sure it hadn’t changed.”
“Well has it?” she says.
Fortune twists his big toe into the sole of the slipper. “No. It still takes me five steps to get from the bottom of the stairs to the couch. I guess the house hasn’t grown.” He sits down on the couch and watches satellite images of the eastern seaboard appear on the TV. It’s boring. He takes one of the pillows into his arms and tosses it to the floor, then another, then two more, then another.
“Fortune...now why are you throwing my pillows on the floor? What are pillows on the floor going to prepare you for other than learning how to pick them back up?”
He stands up on the couch and looks at his mother, turns his head and jumps off the couch landing on one of the pillows on the floor. He stands on the pillow for a brief second, scanning the floor for his next jump. A few seconds pass and he spots it. He takes the jump and moves from one pillow to another without ever touching the brown of the carpet.
“What if the whole carpet just suddenly turned into lava and the pillows were the rocks sticking out. I need to be ready just in case I am ever caught in a lava field or a flood and I don’t get burned alive or sucked under water. See,” Fortune points to the brown carpet underneath his mothers slippers, “you would already be burnt.”
Fortune is afraid that he will end up walking around for the rest of his life squinting and smelling like Pert Plus. Surrounded only by darkness and various shapes made out of that same darkness. Fortune practices walking down the stairs of his house with his eyes closed. He walks through the entire house and learns how many steps it takes to get from places like the TV to the phone: four straight, eleven left, two straight. Just in case one day he can’t open his eyes ever again.
Or something even worse. Like if the house caught on fire and he couldn’t see anything but smoke and flame. Or if a bunch of robbers broke in and blindfolded him and he needed to escape to help save his family.
Fortune reads the headlines of the papers. The articles always say something like, “no one ever thought something like this could happen here,” or, “she was just a kid and didn’t really know what to do in that situation.” Fortune doesn’t want to become that type of story. Fortune wants to be ready for anything. Anything ever.
Downstairs in the living room Fortune’s mother is standing on the brown carpet in bare feet watching digital clouds drift across the nation. The clouds swirl across the Pacific ocean. They cross the state of Ohio and over the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. A man in a grey suit looks like he is pulling the storm front along the shores of the Great Lakes with his bare hands. Fortune’s mother curls her fingers around a glass of milk.
“What are you doing Fortune?” She asks and takes a sip of her milk.
“Mom, I have to be prepared for anything,” He says opening his eyes in front of her.
“You have to be prepared for anything huh? What’s going to happen? Do you know something I don’t Fortune Alabama?” She asks.
“Maybe. I’ve counted how many steps that it takes to get from everywhere in the house to anywhere else in the house. I was just checking to make sure it hadn’t changed.”
“Well has it?” she says.
Fortune twists his big toe into the sole of the slipper. “No. It still takes me five steps to get from the bottom of the stairs to the couch. I guess the house hasn’t grown.” He sits down on the couch and watches satellite images of the eastern seaboard appear on the TV. It’s boring. He takes one of the pillows into his arms and tosses it to the floor, then another, then two more, then another.
“Fortune...now why are you throwing my pillows on the floor? What are pillows on the floor going to prepare you for other than learning how to pick them back up?”
He stands up on the couch and looks at his mother, turns his head and jumps off the couch landing on one of the pillows on the floor. He stands on the pillow for a brief second, scanning the floor for his next jump. A few seconds pass and he spots it. He takes the jump and moves from one pillow to another without ever touching the brown of the carpet.
“What if the whole carpet just suddenly turned into lava and the pillows were the rocks sticking out. I need to be ready just in case I am ever caught in a lava field or a flood and I don’t get burned alive or sucked under water. See,” Fortune points to the brown carpet underneath his mothers slippers, “you would already be burnt.”
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