Lark and Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips

though equally important and alive. Nothing is peripheral; it’s sensual, simultaneous. His chest floods with warmth and he sees his mother on the floor of the grocery in Philly her eyes blank and still before he shut them. He’s touching his mother’s face but he sees the Korean girl looking at him, waiting for him in the crowd on the tracks. The sightless boy on her back tilts his head, listening to the sky. Mother may I, mother me. Words he said to Lola when she tried to pull rank, be the older woman who advised and directed, who liked him to ask how to touch her. He already knew and was touching her. Her eyes as she watched him, blue, bright with tears. The dark, nearly black eyes of the Korean girl, drawing him into the crowd to give him the boy. The images distort, detach from meaning like puzzle pieces with heightened colors. The colors loosen, coalesce into glowing brilliance, pull him into shards of light that are fine as rain. He’s flying in bright silence. The light grows whiter and hotter, unbearably hot.
    Then, like a parcel dumped off a truck, he’s in the tunnel, cold and sweating. The heat and light are in his head and the pain shifts, yawns, opens wide and tugs at him like a mouth. There are scattered bursts of fire. American forces are shooting sporadically to keep everyone inside, keep them from fleeing or retrieving the injured, as though the refugees are an enemy force trying to regroup. The troops are panicked or confused and there’s no command. Leavitt holds still; the pain is a firewall threatening to break. He must be spine shot; that’s why he’s torn up but can’t feel the depth of the pain unless he tries to move. He reaches down, relieved he has sensation in his hands, feels the drenched, slippery fabric of his trousers. It’s as though he’s touching wet sandbags. He feels for his service revolver and touches his empty holster. Frantically, he feels for the hard snub nose of the gun and finds it under his dead thigh; he has it in his fingers when the pain breaks through.
    He thinks he screams, but it’s the women screaming, and the children. He’s back outside with the boy and the sky is full of noise, throttling up, homing in on them. There are four planes, he’s certain now, he sees them clearly. Red tracers of fire shoot down in arcs, crackling electrically like comic-book images as he strides powerfully into the tunnel with the Korean girl and her brother in his arms. He knows this isn’t happening; he’s only enduring it to revise it; he’s inside an altered version of what happened, inside his own wavering memory. You’ll be safe here, stay low, move in deeper. The words echo back to him as he receives the girl’s searing gaze. He gives her the boy and urges them forward, deeper in. The arched stone mouth of the railway tunnel seems to open endlessly beyond them and he gestures again to the girl, the sister, his arm opening out: Go in here, stay low, near the tunnel walls. Had he said that? It was true. Safer near the walls if there was errant fire. The scene repeats in his head: he gives her the boy, pushes them in after the old woman. He can’t get past the final image, when he urges them inside. He brought them here to leave them; he was wrong. He has to get out now and take them with him. He’d fallen forward; someone has moved him. He’s on his back, like an insect too awkward to move. He hears the girl speaking, whispering in a rush. She’s near him, telling him to be still, to wait, but she’s wrong. They have to get out now. The pain throbs. Out: the word beats in his pulse. He’s got to convince the girl to help him. He needs to think, but he can’t hold on or hold still. He feels himself sliding, falling.
    Lola’s embrace receives him. The feel of her rises around him, dark and wide like a river they’re moving in. It’s a familiar fantasy, especially at night: he pretends he’s with her. He doesn’t have to pretend now. The tunnel disappears and he