We were quiet, each lost in our own thoughts. It got like that every now and then, when no words were necessary, more a hindrance than a help. Mom said she’d never known any other people who could just be content to sit next to each other and not say a word. It would drive her nuts, she said, all that quiet.
But there were times when important questions needed to be asked. And when they needed to be asked, we asked them.
He asked, “Benji? Do you believe in the impossible?”
I thought for a moment. “I believe impossible things can happen, though we may not always get to see them.”
He turned my words over in his mind. Then my father said, “I thought this house would be impossible to finish. On the day we started, I thought it would never get done.” He paused. “I thought the life I have now would not have been possible. Your mom. You. None of this seemed like it could be real. Like it could be mine. It seemed impossible.”
I looked at him funny. “But we’re real,” I told him. “We’re yours. Right? Me and Mom?”
He looked out across the yard, up toward Big House, a king surveying his domain. He must have liked what he saw, because the sigh he gave sounded of peace. “Yes,” he said quietly. “You are. Impossibly. Improbably. You are.”
Do youbelieve in the impossible? my father’s voice whispers in my head.
I do. I do believe in the impossible.
I believe because high above the treetops, high above the mountains, the clouds have parted and a brilliant blue light is falling toward the earth. The sounds of the world around me are gone. I cannot hear the wind blowing through the trees, causing them to creak as they bend and sway. I cannot hear the sound of the river flowing in front of me, even though I’m only feet away. I cannot even hear my strangled breath, though my chest surely heaves. The world has gone mute, bowing to the blue fire in the sky.
The light moves like a comet, and the trail it leaves behind is almost as bright as the light itself, leaving an incandescent streak that seems to divide the clouds and the stars left above. There is a low hmmmmmmm that floats through the air, as if it’s vibrating as it falls. The light begins to reflect off the river as it gets closer, the waves throw off flashes of blue and white.
Oh sweet God, I think wildly. What… what?
Impossible. Improbable.
As the falling light gets closer to the earth, the hmmmmmm gets louder and the ground beneath my feet begins to vibrate, the river rocks near the edge clacking together, bouncing off of one another. The vibration worsens and my teeth start to chatter together. The light becomes too bright to look at, and I lower my gaze in fear that I will be blinded. The river rocks rattle violently before they rise into the air, floating four feet above the ground. Thousands of them, as far up and down the river as I can see. There’s a crack across the river as massive pine and maple trees groan against the earth, pulled up, their roots snapping underground.
Coming from the previous silence, this destruction is ear-shattering, massive. The world begins to roar around me and I can do nothing but watch. The boulder that my father’s truck had struck, causing him to flip, begins to split, the divide running down the side like a fault line. It breaks in half and both sides rise into the air.
The light is brighter now, and I hazard a glance, terrified, but unable to look away. For the split second I allow myself to look at it again, my mind registers the light for what it is—fire. Blue fire tinged with arcing lightning, snapping and sizzling. The hmmmmmmmmm has become HMMMMMMMM. My teeth vibrate in their sockets, my bones quake in muscle. The noise crawls along my skin, hairs stand on end, my spine straightening as if electrified. I cry out as I squeeze my eyes shut. I don’t know how much more I can take, I don’t know how much more I can stand, because I’m about to be blown apart and I’m sure all that’ll remain of me, my only mark on this earth, will be a fine red mist that falls into the river.
It gets worse before it gets better, a cacophony where all my cells and