Zack Strait

He snapped his lighter shut, placed it beside the metronome on his nightstand. We’d just made love and I was sitting naked on the edge of his bed, watching the stars appear. He told me my skin was chatoyant in the window light, like wet fiddleback maple. I asked him what chatoyant meant. He grinned and explained growth distortion, how it could pattern the wood fibers into flames of alternating tones. I told him that was nice and he said he could take me to the workshop for a look around. Show me what he was talking about. I rolled my eyes. It sounded so boring. But then he bit into my thigh and said he wanted to fashion me into a beautiful cello. He drove with both hands on the wheel and told me he thought of everyone as instruments. He said his father was filled with knots like a burl and only good for music boxes but his mother was quilted beneath her surface, like rippled river water. Then he just stared ahead at the road and kept quiet the rest of the way. When we got inside he felt along the wall and flipped a switch so I could see the three white torsos, each with a headstock and fretboard attached to the sternum. They were displayed on hangers like guitars. I covered my mouth with a shaking hand, backed away and ran out to the parking lot. He stood at the door and watched me squeal away in his pickup. The sky clouded over as I drove to the police station, all the millions of stars like birds’ eyes. Like the darkness was sawn off the trunk of a black walnut tree, then sliced into a veneer.

we were riding out to an abandoned farmhouse on his pearl black Triumph deaf to the sound of bleating sheep that was when he told me it was the same model James Dean had swapped for three days after they’d finished filming East of Eden I tried to tell him that was cool but he didn’t act like he’d heard me so I hugged him tight and set my head on his shoulder and watched how the yellow moon was shifting behind the pines like the face of a jailbird he’d told me before that his wife knew he didn’t swing her way but she was keeping quiet about it for their kid’s sake we rumbled into the dry grass and started cutting through the cornstalks into a big clearing where he kicked the bike stand and told me to get off he tossed his chrome aviators and then we started our hike to the farmhouse which was sagging in the field opposite of us we were quiet on the way like a couple of thieves about to rob someone blind I stood back as he tore a warped door off the barn and flung it into the gravel inside the air was dusty and thick and the moon was still with us cocked behind a streaked window like we’d traded places and now we were the jailbirds serving a lifetime sentence without parole John pulled off his steel-toe boots and told me to wait for him up in the hayloft I left my loafers there and climbed a wood ladder until I was looking into the eyes of a great horned owl he kept shaking his head like he couldn’t believe what was about to happen I was going to be John’s first but while I was gathering the wet straw I smelled smoke and slid back down the ladder that was when I saw the fire licking the crossbeams and ran outside John was passing through the wheat like a final judgment his figure was muscled with flame and I kept silent as he reached for a head of grain and burned it to the ground

Mama said it only existed in storybooks with its soft surface of  bluebells but there it was spinning so close to the earth that it bent every weather vane in Omaha it was prom night and I thought I’d pluck a few trumpets to bring your Grandma so I pulled our red ladder out of  the garage and climbed to the roof I stood up and imagined I was balancing the moon on my head the narrow windows of  Union Station gleamed like ice chips and the thin faces of the clock tower told me it was almost eight I was going to be late picking Nancy up if  I didn’t get a move on so I snipped off the best stems and hurried back down to my Ford I sped through every stop sign on my way to her parents’ house she was waiting with her arms crossed trying not to look upset I think she thought she was going to get stood up so when I popped open the door and told her to get in she couldn’t help smiling a bit she asked what’d taken me so long and I figured I should go ahead and give her the flowers I’d brought her I’d set them back behind the steering wheel to not ruin the surprise I told her she was the princess and I was the knight who rode into the stars so he could flare their notes to her on a blue horn