By Jacob Dayton
I drive stiff-armed, knuckles fluorescent white in the dark car, eyes darting at any movement in the blue-dark fringes, flinching at headlights, far from that house, that still-cornered feeling, still feeling caught in a net, caught on a line. I pull off the shoulder to a wreck where barbed wire scratches yellow wounds into a broken post, holding it bent in prayer.
Between rasping breaths, something like vomit and something like tears works its way out. But my heart stops my throat like a cork, stopped with anger, regret, this damn dust, anguish, Dad’s self-righteous bullshit, grief, shame, and Mom’s fridge magnet from DC digging into my thigh.
Staring into the red eyes of the Washington Monument, I circle questions I’ll never have the stomach to answer. She’s gone. I’m not going to see her again, not going to look into her dark eyes that always catch the light, eyes I see in every damn mirror. I wipe the back of my dirty hand across my face until the words and the tears and the vise in my throat stop.
I trace the tire tracks in the dirt. The car that hit this fence drove away. You idiot, this is someone else’s wreck. But my heart doesn’t know, thumping on the bars of my ribcage with fleet-footed kicks. I hear her screeching tires, cracking wood, shattering glass. And a rustle ahead.
A husk of hares, red eyes in the night, prodigal as the stars overhead, has come out to witness my roadside mourning. The vise releases me and I huck the stupid magnet. It sails through the night and sagebrush, skittering as the red stars blink out.
A line chatters. A hare struggles in the barbed wire. When I move closer, he turns his yellow eyes my way. The pupils are a well of concentrated black, haloed in amber as his terror and pain are directed at me. Mumbling in a sedated voice as I touch his hindquarters, I hope something in my tone will trigger calm, remind him of the cooperation that sometimes happens between mammals at watering holes and burrows.
You’re never prepared to reckon with how big hares are. They’re always a surprise. This one’s no exception. A battle flashes in his eyes as I grab the wire. Tense muscles twitch and the buck kicks at the dirt, my hands, the night, and the headlights.
“Gotta trust me, okay? Can you do that?”
I don’t know if it’s my tone or his exhaustion setting in, but the buck doesn’t thrash. I work the wire over his head, one haloed eye trained on me when I let go of his collar. He stands, shoulders square and ears pulled back, ready for a fight. Then jumps clean through the wire into the sage and shadows. When I can’t see him anymore, I pull straight the wires best I can and return the post to where it was torn.
Jake Dayton is a writer based in San Francisco. His works explore queer life after Mormonism, community’s ability to foster connection or heighten isolation, and the weight of a life worth living. A Utah native, the natural beauty of the state worms its way into everything he writes.
