Page 40 - WTP VOl. XII #1

The Longest Day (continued from preceding page)
of the mine itself as it tries to adjust to its new shape, its lost pieces. Its sadness drips from the rocks and forms puddles on the ground, the mine too full to reabsorb its grief. In the beginning, she talked to the mine, asked it questions, howled her anguish and rage into the rock, pounded it in with her fists. It’d said nothing in return, only rumbled and quaked, shifted and ground itself together, swaddling her tighter in its darkness. A puddle formed where it had happened, so deep it filled up the shaft. The water had filled up faster than their pumps could work, so the men had to close it even though they’d seen the veins of gold spiderwebbing the walls.
Then she feels it. The tremor. It soaks up into her right foot and then her left, little quivers that delight her, and she leans as near to the light as she dares then freezes. There is something different. Another tremor, so light it barely registers, more a whisper than a breeze. Then she hears the voices, the laugh- ter. A flash of robin’s-egg blue startles away the chickadee and a girl’s figure, slim and wreathed about with long, dark, loose-hanging hair, glides into view. The girl holds her arms outstretched and she
is laughing, leaning back. Her throat is white and curves like a graceful swan into the milkiness of her chest above the blue of her dress, the curve of breasts beneath the fabric. Her hands hold a man’s hands, playfully pulling him into view. Michael. He is smiling, his brown hair falling over his forehead and curling at the nape of his neck. He pulls the girl to him. She tilts her face up. They kiss, their faces shining in
the sunlight. They separate and smile at each other before passing out of her view.
She closes her eyes, but the blue of the dress has been seared into them, the curve of his forearm around that slender waist, the delicate fingers curling into his hair. The mine shakes. She looks down at her own shaking hands and presses one against her chest. The pain there is serrated and excruciating, penetrating her more deeply than even the knife had. She half expects to see blood spill out around her fingers, spreading its crimson flow onto the rocks once more. But she has no more blood. She curls her hands into fists, digging the nails into her palms. The dirt-scuffed stones under her feet murmur, the vibration intensifying like tracks foretelling the coming of a train. Dirt sifts down from around the timbers as they strain against the shift- ing rocks that grind against each other in time with the opening and closing of her fists, buckling with
the bunching of her knuckles. The mine pulses in
time with the throbbing that was once a heartbeat. She presses her hand to stone, and she stares at the sunlight until it gnaws at the back of her eyes, until she can’t feel their footsteps anymore. The light is brilliant, white-gold that seems to fizz where it meets the dark in which she stands. She reaches out her hand, finger- tips lingering at the edge of the effervescence, and all around her stills. Birds and breeze, dust and rock. And then she clenches her hand and pounds it against the gray immovable rock. Turning, she disappears into
the dark. Deep in the heart of the mountain, there is
a cracking, like the snapping in two of a grandfather tree by a bolt of lightning. It reverberates through tunnels and shafts, sending ripples through the stand- ing water. There, in the impenetrable blackness, Nellie Greene waits for the longest day of the year to end.
Sheerer is an emerging writer whose work has been published in in DASH Literary Journal, 34th Parallel, and Adanna Literary Journal.
She watches a fat chickadee as it hops along the path, cheeping and tipping its head side to side. Michael
is late this morning, and her longing for him rolls
“She closes her eyes, but the
blue of the dress has been seared into them, the curve of his forearm around that slender waist, the delicate fingers curling into his hair.”
through her like the wind gusting down the moun- tain. Today of all days, she needs to feel him near even for the briefest moment, to calm the anguish that bends her mind and twists her heart like a gale through pine trees. Even on Sundays, he walks the steep path from his house past the mine, ascending the mountain to the rocky outcropping that over- looked the craggy peaks of the mountains, the bowls between them where carpets of purple, white, blue, yellow and maroon flowers replaced deep snow for a little while each summer. He would sit up there and read or stare, getting as far away from the innards
of the earth as he could. She’d heard him tell her brother this once, who’d scoffed and said that he counted not having to walk up the mountain as a blessing. Always he passes by shortly after the light sneaks insidiously across the rock threshold. She wonders at his lateness and the fear pricks at her that he is sick. The timbers in the shaft behind her creak as she shifts from one foot to the other.