Evan Morgan Williams
Samuel and Aviela
T
heir uncles had warned them: people in town slept lightly, twitching like dogs, naming every creak and rattle their houses made, and damning the noises that were new and strange. Older folk kept bayonets under their mattresses, rusting from pee, and they diced stray children and stirred them into their stew. Samuel stuck close to Aviela as she scurried from shadow to shadow. They left footprints on the cobblestones—country mud and horse shit—and their footprints were close together because Samuel had wriggled under Aviela’s shawl. When they came to tidy rowhouses, amicably nudging, grateful for each other’s warmth, Aviela stopped, and Samuel bumped into her. Samuel guessed she was sizing up the rowhouses to find the richest prize. Gazing at the houses, Samuel could only believe that his uncles had been wrong. Decent people dwelled within, people who drank tea with cream poured from silver pitchers, people who told happy stories ending only in accord, people who could not imagine a morning they would find their silver pitchers gone. Samuel wondered how long until the rain rinsed their footprints away, not to cover their tracks, but to restore the ordered cobblestones to clean. Aviela would know. So why was she so afraid? A coal truck rumbled past, and Aviela yanked Samuel against a wet stone wall. Her fingers dug into his arm. Their cheeks touched. Samuel listened to Aviela’s panting. Samuel wondered whether she resented having to bring him along. Aviela picked a house with light flickering from the second-floor window. As Aviela kept watch, Samuel scampered up the downspout, nimble as a cat, and peeked inside. The window was streaked with rain, but Samuel could tell from the crowd gathered around the pump organ, from the candles on the blood-red tablecloths, from the singing, that it must have been a party, or a rite, and that the rest of the house was likely deserted. Samuel let himself drop the full length to the ground, rolling into the fall, the way his uncles had taught him. Easy. He came up. Aviela found a darkened window and began working the latch with a flatware knife. Her breathing was slow and steady. Samuel made his breath slow and steady too. Their breath fogged the glass. Light from the upstairs window shone on their work. Aviela had not tied back her hair, and it slid glossy and black from under the hood of her cape and got in the way of her hands. “Fuck!” she whispered. Samuel had never heard her say that before. He was eleven, she was fifteen: what else did he not know? Aviela shoved her hair under her hood and went back to working the latch. She had been ignoring Samuel all day. Last night, after the tightrope, Samuel had found her and Peter, a horse handler, in the caravan. Peter was fastening his pants. Aviela’s silk skirt was pulled around her waist, and she was daubing at her crotch with a bloody rag. Her eyes looked terrified. Samuel tried to climb into the caravan, and he did
24
45th Parallel