Amid this late exodus, Ben’s glasses are flung from His face. The overtimes reinforced strap that grannied them held snaps in the jostle, the specs go flying out into the departing crowd, are lost amid the flux of beads, bandanas, suedefringing strangle…Him falling hands and knees to find them, how He can’t by touch alone, more attempt less determination what with this gush of hair, heat, the blur of His disbelief ’s blinking, is trodden on and then, if not a grace granted, then don’t ask how: He manages to find of them a single lens, one round lens from His righteye, His left. He rises shocked, lost in His find to hold it aloft to the sun, the glass — is then as a concave wave pulled back into the momentum of escape, is pushed into pushing, again into a spectacular pulling, His effort at keepingup spurting sparks from His thighs one’s chapped the other’s chaffing to immolate what obstacles ahead, the people, the shrubs and trees that smoke and will, just as well, be consumed. The gauntletrun, deathmarched weak left for dead, how they manage even in their last breaths to laugh at Him now, on the ground, doubledover fetally in their last fleeing life, holding the ache of their sides, which have been split then the blood binding spilled. What’s so funny, doesn’t know, maybe it’s a fat mensch in a rush, like the majority (leaders, followers, stragglers and taggersalong) heading east, if vaguely…about to lunge up and over the far hill, the modest mountain of the latter Law, and there to its summit, murdering underfoot — and maybe only in order to latterly deserve His dwell amid the Refuge He’s just exploded. Ben crests the hill, and beholds in the valley below a drastic emptiness, the hollow given hole between the fallings, constant, as if the earth’s gone agape to swallow them down — these refugees He’s stepping down on from the summit as lightly as possible, which isn’t very, though as if apologetic, nimblynamby leaving in their faces a slippery wisp, heeled dimples, a shoeprint’s dolloped swirl. Him to avert the earth’s gorge and its endless depth only by making His way over the bodies of those crashing down, shrieking, then unheard, unseen, His weight to crack their bones that skein the surface as if winding trails of limb, the chattering teeth of boulders, and a glimpse of rivered tongue, lain flat below and cold; using such casualties as human bridges, collapsing them on His way to mount the summit next, the cliffward hill distant, that mounding one over larger and greater, a mountain even, then beyond the rage of its peak — the westernmost rise of the Rockies. With one lens held to one eye, the other arm thrust out for upright, to fumblingly use dumb heads downed as steppingstones, paths of skull across air to spring from as the bodies under His stride — open mouths that snag, silence — slip their deep and slow sink through the sky, deathrolls entwined, goners givingout their last scattered breaths that storm through the night into clouds.
As it is written, at least here: He knows but does not really know, hears but does not listen, He sees but does not really see…His eyes are open but to them, the world has been shut.
Moon gives way to sun through the window, its sill stooped from having to shoulder the feedbag heft of the light: illumination scattering across the planks of the floor then the filthy wallow of throwrug and then His form, His face; withdrawing from sleep, there’s a waft, the slight smell of brunch cooking, then burning, and then the sensation, it’s pain, a sizzling sprung from His forehead, fire focused through the lens left atop His sleep, beaming to concentrate morn upon a worrisome furrow — Ben beats His head out of wrinkles, snuffs His hair, then fingers the smoldering mark.
Goddamnit, to be awake to such hurt!
Ben holds the lens up to whichever eye’s imperfections it wasn’t made to perfect — blindly guess which He holds it up in the air to His eyes, which squint to see through it…emptiness. A wall, a loin of log. He groans, takes the glass off and away. Without it, there’s the hock of a chimney and furnace, coldbellied, gray. An eye as if rendered to lard. And then, the blur of its veins, which are cracks; the roof ’s leaking, too, that’s the wet on His head. There’s a scar in the pitch, plipdrip the sound. A balm, so cooling.
He forages for the glass again, rinds it into His lids. Through the scratches and dirt, the snoutings of knuckles and thumbprints gathered throughout the untold glut of His sleep…a foursquare logcabin, His shadow like blood clot along its slats barked toward the ceiling. Furniture and fence hacked into kindling, piled in stacks in the corner against the foot of the bed where He lies.
