Looking Back Through Ash - Wade Ebeling Page 0,100

but he was doing so now. If Daniel’s body could have mustered any moisture at all, he would have been crying.

It was mid-day and dark as the middle of the night. The ash outside pelted the windows with a sound reminiscent of sleeting rain. Daniel lay in the middle of the bare living room on a stained mattress, which sat right in front of the fireplace. A small stack of firewood was off to the side, his puke pot and the crap bucket, with baby wipes, were close at hand.

When his father brought him back to the house that he grew up in, it was as empty as Daniel felt that day. The first few months, his father made regular visits; to the house more than to Daniel. Allen was much more interested in stashing whatever goods he had with him than he was to see his son. As far as Daniel was concerned, his father was only mildly happy to see him because he was expected to unload the truck.

On any given day, all manner of boxes, bins, and cans could be found awaiting him in the truck’s bed. The most painful deliveries were the mounds of split firewood. Daniel’s forearms had scabs and resurfacing splinters weeks later after carrying and stacking the three heaped firewood piles in the fall. It seemed an endless cycle to Daniel: Work, recuperate alone, work some more.

Some days were easy, maybe just some light boxes of water filters, or like the afternoon that Allen showed up with fifty boxes of “rags-in-a-box”. However, on most of the days when Allen chose to appear, it meant an excruciatingly long day of work for Daniel. A lot of what Allen brought home for him to unload was both heavy and awkward for a scrawny fourteen year-old to try lugging around. Everything from cases of bottled water and cans of food, to beds and storage shelves got transferred from the truck down into the basement. The large pieces of furniture were a new occurrence. Daniel had grown stronger and much taller over the past year, despite his poor diet, and Allen was using his son’s increased abilities very efficiently.

Daniel, now suffering from another bout of nausea, knew that assistance from his father would not come in time to save him. He would die, covered in his own filth and misery, if he did not act soon. His body seemed to react to this new found fortitude. It seemed to tell him that it was ready to move, to live. He no longer hoped for his father’s prompt return. In fact, he started to hope that Allen would never show up again.

A weird sense of nervous immediacy bubbled in his stomach now. Daniel would show his father exactly how unneeded he really was. He truly wanted to save himself, and get everything in the house cleaned up, before Allen had a chance to come home and find him like this. Daniel’s new mission was to never let his father know that he had gotten sick. More particularly, to never let him know how he had gotten sick.

Daniel could almost hear his father’s gruff voice admonishing him. Although he had never been sick from any of the animals that he had snared before, his father would make it out to sound like it was his fault. “Why did I even put that giant jug of hand-sanitizer there? I told you to wash your hands after handling meat. It’s not my fault…It’s yours!” was sure to be what Allen would say, if he did happen to show up right now.

Over the past few months, Daniel had caught dozens of squirrels, rats, opossums, cats, and raccoons in the two snares set up in the backyard. Two opposing slats on the privacy fence had a short length snapped off from the bottom. This is where wire snares had their free-end nailed to the fence and the noose end positioned in front of the narrow holes. Any creatures scampering along the fence-line would duck through the hole, catching themselves in the traps.

‘He will never see me crying again,’ Daniel thought hazily. ‘Screw him! I don’t need him. I don’t need this house, or his crap. He won’t even let me touch the damn stuff anyways!’

“C’mon!” Daniel’s parched throat and cracked mouth managed to say strongly.

With that, his eyes opened and fought to focus. His mind, despite feeling swelled, focused with anger and demanded movement. Daniel rolled off of the mattress and onto all