The 14th Day by K.C. Frederick Page B

homeland? Though they would no longer be the same kind of questions since the people with the greatest interest in the answers are dead now. Once again these thoughts have brought him to a feeling of emptiness. The family’s story—the brothers’ rivalry, their parents’ sudden death, countless things that came before—it could all end with him, here in this alien place. Kneeling before the mound of earth, he pats it with his hands gently, like a man searching for something he’s lost.
    â€œJory,” Carl yells. “We need that wheelbarrow over here.”
    He rises and starts toward the wheelbarrow but stops in mid-stride, thinking I will not come instantly when you call . He stands beside the wheelbarrow, his hands hanging free, and the bright warm day swims around him. So different from that other, colder place, and still he remembers a similar moment, his breath frosting, his hand bleeding, a man lying in the snow beneath him. Time stopped for an instant then and Jory accepted everything that might happen to him, prepared for whatever followed. Even though that moment passed after a few beats of his heart and the world began to totter and sway once more, Jory remembers the tranquility of that gap in time. Now, as the memory fades, he takes a deliberate step toward the wheelbarrow. When I’m ready .
    When the workday is over, Jory’s back and shoulders ache but thinking about Fotor, about his uncle, has brought its own heaviness. He feels older than his years: one more day has been added to his count. It’s like the stories the nuns used to tell about eternity, the bird flying out of a flat land across spaces so vast that it took a century to reach a gigantic mountain, from which the bird would take one speck of dirt and fly back with it for another century, depositing that tiny crumb of earth on the plain it had set out from. After waiting for a full hundred years it would then take flight once more toward that distant mountain, repeating the actions of the previous trip. “And when that bird had finally transported that entire huge mountain and recreated it on the plain—think, children, how immensely long that must be …” Sister Gendura’s eyes would have grown so large, many in the class could believe she was actually witnessing what she was describing. “And when the whole mountain was leveled and set upon the plain, even then, eternity would not have started to begin.” Yes, he thinks, another day, another speck of dirt from the mountain.
    At last he’s made his way to the neighborhood where he lives. The simple frame houses, built in the previous century for workers of a mill long since closed, are occupied mostly by students and other transients now. Set among thick, old trees and a motley abundance of untended vegetation, the buildings with their sagging porches and fallen shutters have a temporary air. In a few places the front yards are worn to dirt where the students play their games. A battered sofa is sprawled on one of the skimpy lawns, as if the inhabitants of the house had to flee in a hurry and hadn’t had the time to take everything. The evening air is mild and a soft yellow light infuses the dense greenness of the street, the lazy light at the end of a workday. On a shaded porch nearby, a couple of young men in baseball caps sit drinking beer while one of them hesitantly plucks the strings of a guitar. All at once the easy laughter of a young woman floats over the bushes, sounding surprisingly close, and Jory turns to listen. A rich, leafy smell engulfs him, stirring his memory, and for the moment all the weight of his past slides off of him. He’s sure he’s about to make some kind of connection; but after the laughter there’s only silence, the smell drifts away.
    Who am I thinking about? His heart beats faster.
    Inside the green and gray house where he lives, the warm, enclosed air is stifling, carrying the