a story from the revolution

The first thing my father feels that morning is the heat of sunlight against a bare shoulder. His eyes snap open, his arms already swinging him off the wooden bench. A sudden, searing pain jolts from his heels up his legs, collapsing him back into his seat. He inhales sharply, suppresses the sound out of instinct. His feet are wrapped in bloodied bandages.

A tanned man in a straw hat enters the room, smiling widely. "Looks like you came around," he says to my father. "You didn't look too good this morning."

My father gapes at the man. He presses a hand to his eyes, tries to gather his thoughts. Vague impressions seem to flee from his grasp. He remembers a guard in the tower, the numbness creeping up his arms and legs. Ice-cold waves, salt in his mouth and nostrils.

"I found you in my oyster fields this morning," says the stranger. "You're lucky I got out there before the low tide. Their shells are too sharp to walk on, if you don't know where the paths are. You should know better, what were you doing out there?"

Hollowness is spreading through my father's chest, robbing him of breath. Through the uneven joins in the roof, he can feel the sun already high overhead, the tide has gone out.

"We came from the mainland," my father says slowly, truthfully. He has never been a good liar, and he is beyond caring now, beyond thinking. "My friend... he was trying to help me get here. Do you know where he is?"

He already knows the answer, even before he sees the man in the straw hat begin to frown. What is beautiful is seized. He has read this in a book somewhere, some time before the revolution. It means: everything that is good is passing. He watches the man's lips move, but the sound seems to take forever to travel across the room. This is how things feel in dreams, he thinks. A stray gust of wind outside sends a few leaves scattering across the doorway, dancing their shadows across the floor, and then they are gone.