At night, from afar, in the cold and pale evening where the stars were keenly sharp and the air was crisp as if a single sheet of ice you could see the flames of the refinery from miles away. He often found himself parked as the afternoon slowly slid its curtain aside into the evening, waiting for the flames to be lit and signal the official start to the nighttime.
The car was slightly tilted on the edge of the dirt road, surrounded by the scrub brush that was golden in the afternoon but became clumps of gray and then black as the sun compressed against the horizon. The bottle of bourbon was half full, the front seat still covered with remnants of packaging that were slowly littered when he opened it a few hours ago.
He was in a very remote place, the only radio station that worked was AM and he had found a country station out of Waco that barely muddled through the speakers...his iPhone had no reception from where he sat. So he took another sip.
There had been other birthdays in the past...once he had brought her a store-bought cake with one of her favorite Disney characters...it was a child's cake, pretty and small and they had laughed as they tried to fit her age number of candles on it...the next year, same cake but he got the larger single number candles and it was a sweet moment, the kiss after the cake, the scent of frosting, the sugar, the sweet breath of her.
Buying gifts for her were always interesting...she gravitated towards certain colors and then rarely deviated...she didn't wear a lot of jewelry...she liked his scribbled notes in his poor handwriting and of course any bourbon that they could share.
The hardest part were the wishes...she never shared what she wanted or asked for when she blew out the candles, the flames going sideways and then disappearing in their peculiar gray smoke. He had asked once, and she had merely shaken her head. He never asked again.
And as the years piled on the sun kept its similar arc across the skies and for the most part the stars remained the same...a few falling now and then...to be wished upon...but that wish never shared but kept secret by her. And they didn't get a chance to spend those days together as much...no more cakes or Disney or lit candles. And their communications became almost-birthday like...occurring once a year...at least that's what it felt like. Certainly random...but the gaps became gaps and just lengthened the way an afternoon in summer gets longer than one in winter. Only just as cold as a winter one.
In the cool evening a refinery plume exulted, leaping up in the sky, orange and yellow against the pitch black, dancing and flaring and drawing one's eye from across the entire horizon in a way eerily similar to the way she caught his in any situation where they shared proximity. She burned white hot if she was in the same room, a can't-miss sight that even if he wasn't looking directly at her he would still feel her upon him.
Tonight she wasn't even in the same geography as him.
But as he watched the fire dancing he recalled the same exact wish that he had wished every time she had blown out the candles...the exact same sentiment that he murmured as she leaned in to extinguish the flames.
It went along the lines of every time that she saw something remarkable, saw something pretty, felt something comforting, luxuriated in a certain hidden way, relaxed in a seemingly unimaginable fashion and let her eyes be pleased as they gazed upon something...he wished that she could feel that every day. It was merely just asking or hoping that she experienced everything he went through as she crossed his peripherals and let her come into focus. He raised the bottle and wished it to her again.
No comments:
Post a Comment