|
Ariel remembered his own toys, the small plastic army figures he grew up with and had once manipulated so fondly. He thought back on his life the way it had been before the bomb went off, he remembered his sisters and teachers, saw his mother hanging white sheets in the alleyway, smelled the machine oil on the black barrel of his father’s rifle, gripped again the rocks he threw down from the hill at savage boys he never got to know and opened one last time the gate in the compound wall at his grandfather’s farm, the one at the end of the orchards that led out into the fields where the jackals prowled at night. Ariel must have been about ten years old the evening he and some other boys ventured into those wild desert fields. It was a warm spring twilight, a light breeze blew, and they’d wandered farther than they had ever before dared. At the foot of a steep hill they found a shallow stream and lingered there listening to the sweet sound of the water running across the stones. But there were other sounds, more sinister. Out on the fringes of vision there were movements and noises in the dirt, and it had grown unaccountably dark. The boys had heard stories of jackals that prowled the countryside, of swarthy armed men who lurked in the shadows of outcrops. Frightened, they began making their way back to the farm, moving quickly in a tight group, hurrying over the stones. Then running.
Ariel was the slowest. It was a long run and his friends reached the farm gate well ahead of him. In some intimate corner of his brain he could hear them yelling at him now, Go, Ariel, come on, don’t look back. Ariel ran until the earth seemed to gyrate beneath him, he heard paws clicking on the hard dirt behind him, growing closer. He could see the gate now with his friends crowded at the swinging doors awaiting him and urging him on but the land was suddenly too big, the incline too steep and heavy, and Ariel slowed.
Something tugged hard at his leg and he tripped. A wild form growled at him. He hit and kicked out blindly. Teeth drew blood from his calf and pain shot up his leg but his fist hit something and the animal backed off for an instant. Ariel scampered up and fled again, ignoring the pain, lifted by a wave of hope that he would make it to the gate after all. He was so close he could see the pupils in his friends’ eyes, smell the sourness of their gaping mouths, feel their burning cheeks. But that’s what undid him, understanding the expressions on their faces. Etched there he saw the horror and the hatred on his own face, the fierce determination to have what wasn’t his, to keep more than what had been given to him. It was as though he were being pulled underwater and his vision failed. There was only a terrific rank odor, the hideous smell of rotting meat on the animal’s breath, he smelled that awful smell.
|