The Fiction of Owen Thomas

Next (“The Cages”)

A Novella

Excerpt D

He knew he would probably never see her again. And yet he could not help but anticipate her.  He made trips to their various favorite places throughout the town, expecting in a quiet, forbidden part of his heart that someday, when he was sitting very still, sketching something that she might have sketched, he will sense her arrival, like a flutter of wings just outside some corner of his vision.  Nothing will come of such a sighting, of course.  She will never know he is there, watching.  Sketching. It will be enough for him, Maribel imagined, just to see her. 

Mr. Bird sat watching cars and trucks and busses pass between the Burger Barn and The Dunkin Chicken for a long time after Maribel had finished eating.  She opened her window to let the heat out.  The sun was rolling freely now in a sky that had cleared and hardened into a glossy dome of beryl shot with veins of melancholic granite that were like great gray rivers retreating into space.  She melted cubes of ice on her tongue, waiting.

When he finally started his car and exited the parking lot, Mr. Bird pointed himself East.  They left the business of Summerfield quickly, tracing Bright Leaf Road, passing over corridors of greening cropland and into the heart of a loose network of subdivisions which, from the air, looked like the petals of a strange flower carved into the alfalfa and the nascent corn. Every mile, side roads veered to the right and to the left, each an entrance to a different plume of habitat.  None of the roads had gates. None of the subdivisions came with signs declaring a name.  Eventually, Mr. Bird left Bright Leaf Road through an arc of filtered light from a stand of old Maple that was like a natural gateway all its own. 

Within another ten minutes, Maribel could see homes rising up on the near horizon.  They were modest and mostly white, arranged in a circular array of interconnected cul-de-sacs, as though she and Mr. Bird were a couple of ants climbing the stem of a giant daisy.  She slowed as he slowed, trying to maintain her distance. The road bent and they began to trace the inner circle, passing on the right a new cul-de-sac petal every thousand yards.  Mr. Bird turned into the fifth cul-de-sac.  Maribel slowed and waited at the corner.  Like all of the others she had passed, the cul-de-sac was rimmed with nine homes. 

Mr. Bird pulled into the driveway of the fifth house, a simple, two-story, white-clapboard cliché at the very tip of the petal. The driver’s door opened and he stepped out, turned and bent back into the car to retrieve his sketchpad and whatever might have been left of his Burger Barn lunch.  He closed the car door and arched his back, stretching up into the sunlight.  He stood in his driveway looking out towards the entrance of the cul-de-sac, from where Maribel was looking back, idling.  She knew he did not see her. Just as at the zoo, she was in his field of vision, but was not his focus. One last time, before enclosing himself for the remainder of the day, he was scanning the horizon for any sign of happiness.

Mr. Bird turned and proceeded up a short walk to the front door, and disappeared inside.

Maribel waited a minute or two longer before rolling slowly into the cul-de-sac.