Other Voices Magazine

The Monthlies

Winner June 2010

“Surely all art is the result of one’s having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, where no one can go any further. The further one goes, the more private, the more personal, the more singular an experience becomes.”—Rainer Maria Rilke

Fly, Fly Away
Bobbi Beatty

Flickering pinpricks in a sea of endless ink, as distant spotlights in a darkened theatre. Chirping crickets, near-naked fir trees bowing and sighing in the midnight wind. They sing the music of despondency, of desperation, of loss and endless longing for me, I think. I stoop and let my fingers float over the lush grass, colourless in the darkness, as devoid of colour as my thoughts. The soft, prickly grass becomes cold and harsh as my fingers, of their own accord, reach the etched bronze plaque. I can see the images and the inscription beneath my closed lids. A teddy bear on one side, an infant angel on the other. The words, “Here lies our littlest angel,” nestled in between. Just as she lays here, nestled amongst a sea of uncounted lost souls. Souls that didn’t even get the chance to draw a single breath.

A hawk screeches above, wings spread to the utmost, circling on the current. It’s the same sound that’s lodged deep in my chest, begging for release. Hovering over her grave on bended knees, I grasp handfuls of grass and squeeze until the pain of my fingernails digging into my palms eases some of the ache inside. It eases only for a moment and then comes back in a wave so fierce it forces me flat on the ground. I lift my head and claw at the dirt, both hands in harmony, slowly at first, then alternating faster, faster, dirt lodging under my nails, eventually breaking pieces of the nail off. The scream-sob-accusation—at whom I don’t know—that’s been kept prisoner inside makes its way out as the tears fall again. I wouldn’t have thought there’d be any left after almost hourly deluges in the two weeks since her birth and death. But they fall and fall until I can’t breathe anymore, and don’t want to.

I freeze. What am I thinking? I may not be able to dig my way down to her with my bare hands, but there is another way. I shove myself up off the cold ground and run back to my car—my car that’s as black as the night itself. It’s nothing more than another shadowy outline, just like everything else in the moonless sky. Throwing the car into drive, I slam the accelerator down and bolt out of the cemetery. I screech around ess-curves leading out onto the country road, fly up the hills, and soar down the other side of them. My car is old, so the lights don’t turn on automatically, and the painted lines are invisible in the gloom.

Faster, faster, faster. The speed feels good—I’m getting closer to her now, I can feel it. The car shudders as I push the accelerator down harder and try to make the next turn. Two headlights shoot out of the darkness over the top of the next hill and I feel the adrenaline burst through my veins. I laugh hysterically, the first laughter since she left me. The lights draw increasingly closer and I feel happy finally, thankful to finally have found the way. I let go of the wheel. I stop breathing. I smile. “Another few seconds and we’ll be together again,” I think. A horn blares as the two lights blend into one, like the entrance to the other side.

Then her face flashes in front of me and my hands are on the wheel again. They jerk the steering wheel to the right of their own volition and I feel the rumble of the Texas Gate under my tires, then the car bumps and thumps over the uneven ground of the wild field beside the road. Scrub brush and branches scratch the underside of the car as it barrels out of control. Lucidity slowly sets in and wends its way to my limbs. They shake wildly as I remember to brake.

Why? Head bowed on forearms resting on the steering wheel, I ask myself, “Why, why, why?” It would have been so easy, over so fast.

As I sit in the dark listening to the sound of my heart still beating, a voice in the wind whispers, “Because that was the easy way, not the right way.”

And I sit alone, but not alone, and cry.

Bobbi Beatty has a diploma in Professional Writing from Grant MacEwan University, and is working towards a degree in Applied Communications. This is her first published piece, unless you count the story Bobbi wrote when she was nine, a story that won a contest and was subsequently published. It was that story, written at nine, which started her on the writing path, to which she returned after a long delay to raise her kids.

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