Moths of the Mountain by Richard Childers

Juvenile Lifer by Joseph Frye

Lucy’s father sits out on the porch way up into the night when he gets high. She likes all the different kinds of moths that fly down from the top of the mountain to sit with him. They twirl around the porch light while her father sits with his head hanging between his knees and drool running down his chin. In the morning there’ll be a flock of them clinging to the side of their house. As the sun cuts through the fog they’ll start fluttering. Some big as birds, their wings as wide as her daddy’s calloused hands. Splotches of lime green painted on their backs, others like pink lemonade, some are dark brown streaked with red up their sides.

…

Lucy is in her bedroom, but she ain’t sleeping just yet. She’s waiting for a moth to come down off the mountain. Lucy takes her father’s flashlight and shines it through her window into the backyard. She flips it on and off until one just can’t resist. They don’t always come, but sometimes she gets one to land right on the window. Lucy looks at their underbellies. She wonders what they feel in their guts when they see the light glowing, what makes them float down from the poplars to look closer.

The moon is enormous above; it lights up smoky clouds that sidestep across the sky. The only moth Lucy has seen tonight is small and dusty. It’s one her dopey-eyed hound would have lapped up without a thought. She didn’t notice her father at first, but now the tip of his cigarette catches Lucy’s eye. She cuts the flashlight off and holds her breath.

He sits at the edge of the back porch. Her father used to have great broad shoulders, but now he’s become a wiry man. Lucy can tell he’s got his medicine on his mind because he won’t stop shaking his knee. Up and down he bounces his heel. He finishes his cigarette and grounds it into the porch railing. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a wad of keys. The shed sits across the backyard from Lucy’s bedroom window. The man crosses the grass, opens the door, and steps in. The shadows consume his figure, Lucy’s eyes dart back and forth searching for an outline of the man. A light comes on. Lucy still can’t see him. A lonesome light bulb swings above old boxes and scattered tools. She hears metal and wood scrape across the concrete floor. The night falls silent. The clouds have slipped off somewhere behind the mountains now. One of her father’s electric saws whines to life inside the shed. The sound of the blade rips through Lucy’s eardrums.

…

Lucy’s room is gray and her eyes suddenly heavy. She doesn’t dare move from underneath her blanket. She breathes slowly. She listens to the clock on the wall and the blood pulsing through her ears. After some time, Lucy’s bedroom door creaks open and she hears her granny’s voice.

“Lucy, honey. Granny’s here. I need you to get some shoes on. Come on now, honey.

Wake up.”

Lucy flinches at the smoothness of her grandmother’s voice, like cream pouring into the

Room.

“Your daddy had an accident, baby. Come on now, get ready,” she says.

Granny is a short plump woman. Her grandmother’s cheeks droop over the corners of her mouth, just like her father’s, and Lucy figures that one day hers will do the same. Lucy climbs out of bed and slides into a pair of shoes without putting socks on. She can feel her feet getting clammy and cold before she’s even down the hallway.

When Lucy comes around the corner she is confused to see her father sitting upright and awake. He sits at the end of their musty, worn out couch with a bloody rag wrapped around his left hand. A trail of blood runs from where he sits, across the carpet, and up to the brass doorknob. On the coffee table, resting on a fresh dishrag plain as day, is her father’s pinky.

He doesn’t look at his daughter. His hand is bloody, but his face doesn’t show any real pain. He’s staring at the TV but there’s nothing on it. Just a black screen and his reflection. He’s bouncing his leg and smoking another cigarette. His face is boney, and his eyes are dark.

Outside, in the dark of night, the hills are sleepy. The air is still warm from the daytime sun. Lucy’s father slides into the passenger seat of granny’s car and Lucy buckles herself in the back. The seats feel slick and smell fruity. Her granny climbs in and the vehicle hums smoothly beneath the three of them. Lucy watches the street lamps flicker by once they’re in town. Cracks in the pavement thump beneath the car’s wheels and red lights throw a glow in their faces each time the old woman stops. Lucy’s father props his hand on the middle console and stares down the hood of the car at the road. Lucy thinks about the moths up high on the mountain, in the tops of the poplar trees.

They pull into the hospital lot, but her granny doesn’t drive them straight up to the emergency room door. She parks with other cars instead. 

“You still have both your feet. You can walk,” the old woman spits out at her son.

Lucy’s father doesn’t say a word.

Lucy steps into the stale white light of the hospital. A doctor eyes her father up and down before paying any attention to his bloody hand. Granny starts filling out paperwork and they take her father to the back. Granny’s face looks like she wants to cry and curse and then pray.

The bright lights in the emergency room give Lucy a headache. The room buzzes, and she twists around in her seat. She thinks that a moth might like a place like a hospital, lit up and bright all over. Lucy rests her head in granny’s lap, her face turned away from the rest of the waiting room.

…

“You want a snack from the vending machine, honey?” Lucy’s granny nudges her awake and begins digging through her purse.

Lucy stares at the big leather purse with its brass zippers. The girl’s eyes follow the floral patterns. Before she can answer her grandmother is walking to the hallway where the vending machine sits. The old woman scans row after row of junk food with pursed lips. A wrinkled dollar bill slips from her billfold and she holds it to the machine’s mouth. The bill is spit back at granny a time or two. Her cheeks are red and her mouth doesn’t close all the way. She takes her heavy purse and slings it hard against the glass pane of the vending machine. Honey buns and sticks of gum rattle inside, but none fall.

…

When Lucy wakes up in her bed the next day, the room is bright. Sunshine rests silently on the toys that litter her floor. She climbs out of bed and looks out the window into the yard. The door to the shed swings freely on its hinges. There’s a dark smear across the siding of the shed that Lucy had never seen before. She thinks about her father’s pinky on the coffee table. Lucy walks quietly down the hall and peeks into the living room. Her father is stretched out on the couch, but Marlboro Red smoke still hangs in the air. The living room is clean and sunlight pours in from the windows.

The girl walks into the kitchen and pulls open the fridge. Inside there’s a half-eaten jar of pickled bologna, a carton of eggs, a jug of orange juice. She grabs the orange juice and drags a dining chair over to reach a cup. She takes her drink to the living room and watches her father sleep, the man who used to twist his hips and sing one for the money, two for the show in the mornings.

His black hoodie is pulled down over his face. His left hand is wrapped tightly in fresh white bandages and his right hand clutches a bottle of pills. Her father must have been awake early this morning. Even before any pharmacies had opened, on the phone nagging at her granny to take him to town fill the slip from the doctor. Lucy watches for her father’s breathing. She stands so still it feels like the world is running off without her. She closes her mouth tight and stares hard at his chest as it swells and falls.

Granny opens the front door. The stocky woman huffs and puffs as she piles bags of groceries onto the kitchen table then turns to switch on the coffeemaker. Dark amber liquid begins bubbling into the pot on the kitchen counter. She peers at her only son passed out on the couch. She shakes her head and begins filling the fridge with food. 

“Put you on some clothes and get ready for church. Don’t pay any mind to him, Lucy.”

…

Lucy and her grandmother walk across the parking lot. The off-white steeple is short and disappointing against the smothering gray sky above. Soggy hay bales line a farmer’s fence across from the church parking lot. Lucy wonders where the farmer’s cows are, but her granny pushes her along. There are cracks in the church house steps up to the wooden double doors, Lucy thinks about tripping and falling into one of them.

Inside, the people at granny’s church look glossy with sweat. Old men’s guts stretch the seams of their stuffy collared shirts. The women have great big teeth and the stench of their hairspray makes Lucy gag softly. Granny and her friends sit near the back.

Granny’s tears start on the drive home from church.

“Lucy.”

She speaks her granddaughter’s name and then her thin lips clap tight. Lucy can tell she’s holding back a whole wash of sobs. “It wasn’t always like this, honey. Do you remember that? You know you can come stay with granny whenever you want.” The words drag Lucy’s heart down into her stomach like a lead sinker. Tears boil over granny’s hot face and down her droopy cheeks.

“I like it at home.” Lucy answers. The girl is glad when her grandmother doesn’t speak the rest of the way home.

…

Lucy’s house stays dark most days. Even during the summer with the sun high in the sky, her father has the shades pulled tight and all the lights out. He’s been shaking his knee and staring at the blank TV all morning. He gags and honks his nose as he snorts the last of his pills from the hospital trip. He pulls on his hoodie and cinches it so tight it swallows his entire face. Lucy sits on the floor with her orange juice and plays with her toys while her father keels over and begins snoring on the couch.

A few moments pass, Lucy stands to take her father’s hand into her own. She eyeballs the stub where his pinky used to be. The scab is rough and brown, but almost healed now.  It runs up the side of his hand like the saw didn’t cut clean. She stares at her father’s hand and wonders how many fingers it would take to make him feel normal again. Not a word comes from the pinched-up hoodie and his hand feels cool. The house is silent like in the winter when their kerosene heater pops and kicks off. She can feel the house settling into the ground beneath them. Lucy’s chest burns, tears block out her eyes. She takes her cup of orange juice and throws it into her father’s lap. The man’s jeans soak up the sticky drink and Lucy’s plastic cup rests in the nook of his crotch. Her father doesn’t move, he slouches further over onto his side. Lucy thinks about his bright blue eyes on the mornings he’d sing and dance from one side of the living room to the other. The hands that once stretched down to scoop her up, now mangled.

Richard Childers is from Estill County, Kentucky and received his BA in English from Berea College. His short fiction has appeared in Limestone Journal, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Still: The Journal, as well as Heartwood Literary Magazine.