Page 31 of Light in the Dark
There's an indignant huff and a slammed door.
I catch glimpses of grass, blue shutters against white vertical board-and-batten. A storm door creaks open—I hold it with my elbow while he wrenches at the door.
"Locked," he snarls. "Goddammit."
He rears back and plants a boot into the door beside the knob—there's a sickening crack of wood and the door shudders open.
"Y-you c-could have…uh-uh-unl-l-locked it," I stammer.
"Keys are in the truck. I can fix it. Don't fuckin' care."
White walls. Black and white photographs—beaches, dunes, trees, snowy fields, a horned owl staring down the camera lens. Dark wood floors. A door toed open. Bright sunlight bathing a bedroom—sheer curtains billow in the gentle breeze. A king-sized bed, white duvet, and a colorful handmade quilt folded across the lower third.
Felix kicks the door shut, shoves the duvet aside. Lowers himself to the bed with me in his arms, on his lap. "Tell me what you need, Ember. You want to be alone? A cup of tea? Shot of whiskey?"
"J-just h-hold m-me."
“Okay. I got you."
His hard, mammoth arms wrap around me, tightening, and his chest is a cliff-face against my cheek, and he's a cocoon surrounding me with safety.
The stinging blur of tears wells, surges, and then a tear trickles down my cheek. Another.
A sob wrenches through me, a keening cough of agony.
I turn my face into the soft cotton of his shirt, which absorbs my tears. They're flowing now, and I'm shaking, my shoulders heaving as sobs so violent they're soundless wrack me as if I'm being shaken by giant hands.
There are no thoughts, no emotions, just the savage catharsis of weeping. Felix doesn't shush me, doesn't tell me it's gonna be okay, doesn't ask questions. He just holds me silently, tightly, his lips against the crown of my head, breath hot on my scalp.
It's a brutal breakdown. Ugly crying isn't anywhere close to accurate. My lungs ache and scream as sobs clutch my chest and prevent breathing—and then I manage to suck in a wailing, shuddering breath, and now I'm screaming, screaming.
"Let it out," he whispers. "Gimme all you got, Ember. Hit me. Scream. Kick. Whatever you got, I can take it."
I can't help but take him at his word. A wave of fury at the unfairness of life overwhelms me and my scream becomes one of rage, and I let it rip out of me and my hands curl into fists and I bash at his chest with all my might, and yet all he does is smooth back my hair and rub soft slow circles on my back.
Rage becomes sorrow so profound it cuts through my soul like a razor blade, and I see my precious Dutchie across the years I was privileged to spend with him.
Surfing in San Diego. Disneyland with ice cream cones. Smoking pot in Portland with the whacko kind of people my mother would have loved. Over-roasted coffee from the original Starbucks in Seattle. Hiking the mountains in Idaho. Trail rides on a thousand-acre ranch in Montana. Yelling incoherently at the Grand Canyon and laughing about the wonder of a good barbaric yawp. Making love in the bus with the sliding door open, the breathtaking wonder of the Rockies spread out before us.
The camera—always the camera going, recording everything. Dutchie driving. Me sleeping. Gas stations on Route 66. Ruler-straight highways across the Nevada desert. The iconic red rock plateaus and the sweeping vistas of New Mexico through my passenger window. Dutchie laughing, drunk, as he dances around the campfire. A riverboat paddling down the mighty Mississippi past Mark Twain’s hometown.
Reading comments together. Laughing at the haters. Arguments at highway junctions about which way to go, and miles of angry silence that slowly fade as we forget what we were even fighting about, and then pulling over to have quick but passionate makeup sex. The excitement of our first sponsor. Disbelief as our audience passes a hundred thousand, and then half a million. Our first million-like vlog post. Our first five-figure sponsorship.
Dutchie waking up in the middle of the night, coughing blood so dark it's nearly black. The fear in his eyes. A cold, sterile hospital room in Lima, Ohio. X-rays on a light board. A nameless doctor giving the worst possible news: weeks to live at most.
Dutchie, thin and frail, eyes sunken, cheeks hollow, in the back of the bus as I drive us north, passing through Kalamazoo, Pentwater, Ludington, Manistee, Frankfort, Glen Arbor, Traverse City…
Dutchie asking me to help him to the overlook so he can see the Sleeping Bear Dunes.
His last breath at sunrise, sitting with me on a bench, his head on my shoulder, the Mackinac Bridge soaring over our heads—the bridge we'll never cross together.
He was so emaciated at the end that I could easily carry him back to the bus. Surrendering him to a hospital. Receiving a jar of his ashes a few days later.
Scattering them on a long, dry wind across Lake Michigan as the sun rises—Dutchie loved sunrises best of all.
All of this ravages me, a flash flood of memories that gut me, savage me, shred me.
Felix just holds me through it.
