Written by Dave Kunz
The day had died by the time Joseph awoke. His hand
moved in a slow arc beneath the blankets, wishing he
might find warmth and familiarity lying next to him. But
hope faded along with the dream that ended his rest. He
felt the chill of the empty room and wondered if this day
would be grayer than the last.
At the window, the one place where light might be found,
he saw none. His shoulders lifted then settled, lungs
clicking in a worn struggle, like bellows beside a hearth
containing a final ember.
In his dream he’d had a family again, a sense of place
and belonging, an embrace of unseen arms, shadows
with the grace of an easy presence. A parade of friends,
free of sadness, trooped along in that very same vision,
all of them from a time long buried.
In the hall near the front door he took down his canvas
coat, threaded arms through sleeves and stepped into
the silence and the darkness beyond the edge of the
house. A cold wind accompanied him to the doors of the
shed. A hinge creaked while a blue light waited inside.
Decades of all things discarded were piled in ragged
columns intertwined with the warrens of small animals.
One corner of the shed had been cleared and swept. In
the process Joseph found a plastic tub the size of a
cattle trough filled with photos. Laura toiling in her
garden. Children playing. Summer lakes and winter
sleds. In one of the photographs, his son and daughter,
Edward and Louisa, shaded their eyes against the sun,
their backs to the ocean, their smiles as carefree and
infinite as the waves that stretched to the horizon.
He sat on milk crates and sorted through more of the
photos, the images quickly becoming a deep well of
memories and emotions. And with every layer sifted—
the images of family and friends frozen in time—he
realized that while the memories had faded, the emotions
had become sharper and more focused in their ability to
leave behind echoes of mistakes made, of things left unsaid.
In a separate corner, a tangle of Christmas lights rested
amid a confusion of abandoned ornaments. He picked up
the lights. They came away in a knotted mass, the
greenness of their cords reminding him of the boughs of
the trees in the living room at Christmas time, and how
Laura always insisted the lights had to be there. Had to
be right. She was always the one to put them up. And he
was always the one to take them down. Always in a hurry
to be done with the season, not bothering to make sure if
things had been properly put away—as Laura wished—
because, in his mind, there was always one more year.
Joseph worked on the lights, becoming anxious and
unsettled as he labored to untangle the loops and
crossing points. But in the confined space under the pale
blue light, for every knot untied the strands re-tangled as
they curled their way to the floor in darkened clumps.
He went outside to the backyard carrying the lights along
with him, the breath from his lungs freezing in the air. He
freed the two ends of the string and separated them,
discovering the marriage of a male and a female socket
at the center. With room to work the untangling became
easier and the gnarled block began to resemble a single
thread.
He fell into a trance of focused effort until the distant
howling of a dog broke the spell. He had to stop and
shake himself before he remembered the last of his own
dogs, Franklin, was not trapped inside the house asking
to come out for a bit of play, but, instead, had long ago
gone to his final rest.
He collected an extension cord from the garage, plugged
it in and ran it out to the lights in the yard. Reds and
blues and greens and yellows lit up the frozen lawn
choppy with snow.
Joseph, cheered by the lights, sat on the ground. A
stubble of grass stabbed at the back of his legs as he
placed the tangled strands in his lap, the cold of the
snow digging deep roots into his bones. As he untied the
final knot, the lights blinked off. Then turned on again.
Then… Nothing. Dead. A short in the circuitry. He began
to panic, for more than anything—even more than the
untangling—he wanted the lights to remain on, for the
illumination to stay with him. For Laura. Her memory. Her
presence.
A minute passed before he realized that as long as he
sat quiet on the frozen ground, with the lights piercing the
darkness on either side of him, the radiance remained.
He settled in, the many-colored lights incandescent
against the blue of his jeans and the white of the snow.
The cold faded.
He felt finally at peace.
Maybe, he thought, maybe this is good, that at the end of
life’s winter, he be left to tend the light and wait for
warmth.
.
Dave Kunz is a writer of short fiction and novels. His flash fiction has appeared in Mystery Tribune, Yellow Mama, and Close To The Bone. He also has been produced as a playwright and a screenwriter. Dave lives in Minnesota with his wife, dog, and two cats; he is currently working on his fourth novel.