In the New Fell Light, Basking

A pastor’s son is walking. He’s not walking toward anything in particular, just away. It’s hot out: he feels sweat drip down his calves from the pockets of his knees. He kicks rocks. He steps on empty cans. Even in his anger he won’t step on any cracks. His mother hasn’t done anything—no need to cause her harm. He doesn’t really believe that superstition, but he knows the world is a wild place, veils are thin, meaning abounds. Plus, he knows God is always watching, that anger is too close to sin. So he skips around the busted sidewalk, looking down because it’s important where he steps, not where his eyes are situated. 

The town is dying, or that’s what the older folks at church say, that this place is a shallow creek and there are no clouds in the sky. He wanders by closed stores, boarded and graffitied entranceways. He pauses to trace the symbols spray-painted on particleboard that used to be windows. The paint has run, long drips hardened into crusted nodules. He picks at them until he gets a splinter under his fingernail and bleeds the same color as the paint. After a while, he finds the marquee. His father says they used to show movies here, sinful things, with violence and fornication and swearing. His father says he must guard his heart against such things. His father says the devil would trick him, mislead him, beguile him into enjoying things of the flesh. 

The pastor’s son often worries about things of the flesh. Recently he has found himself drawn to physicality. Bones, sinew, skin, lips. A couple of weeks ago, he went swimming with the Mullin brothers in the lake out past their father’s fields. They all stripped down and swam and wrestled and fought. And the Mullin brothers wanted to pretend to be army rangers or cowboys or cops and robbers. The pastor’s son was content to follow along, to take on the different roles they wanted him to play. 

That evening, they sat on hay bales and ate bacon and mayo sandwiches Mrs. Mullin prepared. They teased one another, told secrets, and Larry Mullin produced a cigarette. They couldn’t find a lighter, so they passed it back and forth and sucked on it, feigning adult sophistication, until the filter became soggy and the cigarette fell apart. The pastor’s son laughed then, saying, Look at all this slobber. It’s like we kissed. The Mullin brothers didn’t laugh. The next day at school, when they stood and put their hands over their hearts to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, instead of mouthing silly things to each other like normal, the Mullin brothers looked straight at the flag and sang out every word strong. 

And now he stands before the empty marquee, not quite sure what he wants, knowing only that whatever that might be, he doesn’t have it. He walks around back, finds some half-smoked cigarette butts, but leaves them where they lie. Certain actions only hold meaning when done together, he thinks. But that makes him feel an ache just above his stomach, so he picks up a few of the butts and stuffs them into his pocket. He sniffs his fingertips. 

He tries the back door. To his surprise, it opens. It’s dark inside, with a thick smell, like a cracked-open, rotting log. But a small hole in the roof, maybe the size of a half-dollar, lets in a stream of light and illuminates several chairs near the wall in the front rows. 

At first, he sits in the back, the highest up, and tries to imagine giant figures populating the screen, involved in adventures like the ones he and the Mullin brothers pretended to have. But he can’t get there in his mind. So he moves closer to the blank screen, then closer still, until he sits right in the epicenter of the circle of light. Now that he’s closer and the screen takes up the whole of his vision, he finds he doesn’t need to imagine. The screen, like a canvas in its emptiness, holds infinite possibility. 

He pulls out the cigarette butts, puts one in his mouth, flips the others over his shoulder, like a bit of spilled salt. And the pastor’s son stares up into halo of light until it is all he can see. 

EVAN JAMES SHELDON

Evan James Sheldon is the author of Children & Their Cages (Twelve House Books, 2022). He is the Features Editor for F(r)iction and the Editorial Director for the Brink Literacy Project. He lives with his family in Colorado. You can find him online at www.evanjamessheldon.com.