King of Ashes

by S.A. Cosby

Her dark skin was smooth as a night gone black.

“I used to be afraid the universe was evil. Now I almost wish it was. Because evil can be bargained with, evil has a purpose, no matter how horrible it may be. But what I’ve come to realize is the universe is indifferent, and that is so much more terrifying,” she had said.

The universe was both evil and indifferent. It was both horrific and idiotically apathetic. It was like a god that strode through time and space full of anger and bereft of concern.

But he had no desire to be the King of Ashes. That title belonged to his father, and Roman was content to let it live on through him or burn with him.

According to the police, June 6th, 2003, Bonita Carruthers walked out of Jefferson Run Memorial and vanished like a cloud of dust caught in the summer breeze.

In the backyard, past the bricked-in barbecue grill his daddy and his uncle Harold had built, the woods waited, ever encroaching, waiting, perhaps, for the day men flipped a switch or dropped a beaker and snuffed out the light of human existence like a child blowing out a candle. Waited to reclaim the land, the sky, and the night.

In the five years since Roman’s last visit Dante had grown a wispy goatee. Roman thought it was more like the suggestion of a goatee, so thin it looked like he could wipe it off with his thumb and a few drops of spit.

Kudzu and honeysuckle had embraced the laundromat like long-lost lovers, the kind of lovers you feared would find you after you moved halfway across the country.

Money is like acid. It burns through everything. Friendships, family, lovers, husbands and wives. Whatever bond you think you have, money will make that shit dissolve. It’s acid. Don’t ever lie to yourself and think it ain’t,”

Their faces had the same permanent scowl. It was like the metal handles of a cauldron that had slowly but surely melted infinitesimally over the years, only to become rigid again as it cooled. But Roman didn’t think these men ever cooled. Their wrath was an eternal flame. He could feel it coming off them like heat from a woodstove.

For a moment the pain was so intense that it seemed not to exist. In its place for the briefest of moments was a sense of coldness like he’d bitten into an ice cube. But that only lasted for a millisecond. And when the pain came, it was like slamming face-first into a fence post. It was sticking his finger in a light socket. It was taking a punch to the mouth with a handful of quarters. It was all these things all at once.

Memory is a powerful thing. It’s a spirit we willingly call upon to whisper lies or help us punish ourselves. For the people of Jefferson Run, remembering Bonita Carruthers was their hobby. For him it was his penance.

Ancestry stretched marionette strings down through a generation of couplings, of sighs, of long winter days and champagne Saturday nights, to make them move with unpracticed synchronicity.

The velvet was moth-eaten, and he could see the real Chauncey through the holes.

You know Jefferson Run used to be the number one producer of Mason jars? Was the number one producer of Mason jars from 1901 to 1987. Now all we make is orphans and widows,”

“That boy so tightly wound, if he fart too hard his eyeballs gonna pop out.

The dress clung to her like an insecure lover.

“The service and loyalty I owe, in doing it, pays itself,” Khalil said. “Macbeth.”

A few white ladies trying to escape their poor choice to get married because their husband could play Savage Garden on the guitar.

There’s a thousand ways to die, he thought, but sometimes all it takes is one thing to make you want to live. Like your brother remembering what you like on your pizza.

Roman watched Torrent with Zulu like he was observing a wolf who had taken up crochet.

Roman made his way down the stairs with a mouthful of cotton and a head full of ghosts.

Fate is like a train roaring down the track. There are times you can beat that train and there are times that train plows right through you.

“Sometimes the man wearing the crown ain’t the man that’s supposed to be the king.”

It’s never too late to change things unless you’re in the dirt. But time is a wicked river. It will take you down the line before you know it.

His eyes had a faraway dreamy quality that mostly was from the liquor, but Roman thought it was also partly from long hours of staring into the abyss. Violence exacts a heavy toll on every man who spills blood. If one is judged by his eyes alone, Torrent’s bill was coming due.

Tawny brown skin as supple and soft as the petals of a magnolia flower. Her eyes are so light they appear gold. The way the setting sun shines through the skylight makes them glow just a bit.

Her face is beautiful. The smile is like sunrise, like Christmas morning, like every good thing he’s ever known all at once.

We love our parents not because they are perfect but because they persevere despite their imperfections. We all fall short of grace, but the beauty lives in the attempt.