Thursday Flash!

Things Behind the Sun

Maipel Page shouldered the petrol barrel until it fell, and stood listening to the fluid kalug into her yard. She watched it spill across the long grass, down the slope to the gravel driveway, heard the mourning birds weep in the early sun, already bright and burning. She sang In the Sweet By and By and her voice—a bullet in a tin can—rattled its way through the trees and it didn’t rattle back. She tiptoed over the puddle to the last barrel and pulled a folded sheet of paper and a pen from the small pocket in her flowered dress. She unfolded the paper and crossed “barrels” from her list—the last item—then tipped the barrel over and watched the gasoline flood the yard. Little rivulets like the short curls of her father's hair snaked between the wooden legs of the coffee table and finally pooled against the armoire. When the warped liquid touched the fabric of his armchair it seeped upwards and spread in one dark ring like a bullet wound. She turned a sulphur head between her fingertips. She struck it and heard it hiss. The sun, finally slinking free from the tree-line, drowned the clearing in white hot light, which, glowing off the streams of gasoline, filled the sad caves of Maipel’s eyes with a fury that had never been there before. A fire caught, grew brighter and lit her father’s things with a light like the sun’s and the flames grew bigger until everything was behind the fire and they all looked like things behind the sun, just the frames of things, the edges in the light, the skeletons. She let the light burn awhile against her eyelids, rejoiced in it before turning away from the house and walking back up to the service.