He found himself behind the house, smoking in the dark,
waiting for the possums. They came about this time every night, around
9:00, to feast on table scraps and garbage he put out to draw them close.
They relied on him for food, as he relied on them for company. He shared
with the possums a special, secret intimacy that his neighbors would not
have appreciated, had they been aware. Giant rats, the old man next door
called them. He mixed poison nightly into his spiteful trash, and had managed
to take out a few real rats that way, as well as many innocent birds and
the occasional alley cat. But never a possum. They were wise, discerning
creatures, rulers of night's hidden landscape, slow to human contact, and
faithful to their few well-chosen friends.
So it was not strange that he was here this night, out
on the plastic lawn chair, hearing the nocturnal shuffle begin in the trees
as possums, one by one, stretched awake, uncurled ropey tails, and dropped
gracelessly into the underbrush behind the garage. What was unusual was finding
himself there, opening his eyes on this scene, when what seemed only a
moment before, he remem-bered them closing around the bright rush hour
highway, heading west, heading home, the glare on the windshield burning
his eyes toward sleep, and he remembered think-ing, Just a nap...
And now he was here, in the yard, nearly four hours later,
with no memory to explain his presence, no story as to how he'd gotten
from there to here. He supposed he should count himself lucky to have made
it home at all.
The possums were coming. City possums, fat and pampered.
He could hear them marching fearlessly through the scrub; they knew he
was there, had smelled him from the trees. Any moment, a spearpoint nose
would test the air between the brick corner of the garage and the giant
plastic pot his wife had left on the driveway in her rush to get away.
She was moving to an apartment, wouldn't have room, could he...? He'd killed
the plant with inattention and let its corpse stand as a monument. The
possums liked the pot, hid behind it when the neighbor's dog came yapping
on the other side of the high fence, calmly chewing biscuits or tuna casserole
in the darkness until the old man came yelling, cursing the beast for remembering
its dogness, for taking an interest in life beyond his cloistered compound.
And the moment the door snapped shut on that tucked, neutered tail, they
were back for more, diving ravenously into the lighted circle where he'd
placed his nightly offering, into bananas and cornbread, garlic pasta and
fried chicken. They were cautious creatures, but never picky.
He was expecting a march, a real possum parade. First
around the corner would be Roswell, then her many early babies. He was
proud that she'd felt safe having a litter in late February. The unseasonable
warmth would not have been enough. She was counting on him, on his unflagging
generosity, to sustain them. When the brood scampered into view behind
her, he would smile. He was their godfather, their true father; it was
a happy secret they all shared.
He'd named her Roswell because of her uncanny, gray resemblance
to the aliens supposedly captured when their spaceship crashed in New Mexico
in 1947. He'd seen artist's renderings on TV, a botched, faked autopsy
film that made headlines, but no real sense. He knew aliens, and that bleeding
thing on the table simply wasn't one. As a kid, he used to pray to the
aliens - the ethereal, kindly Close Encounters of the Third Kind aliens
- to come and take him away from his inescapable family, his psychotic
older brother, all booze and fists and terror, his beloved, fragile sister
he was too young to protect, whose cries in the night he could only block
out with covers pulled over his head, his self-blinded mother, eyes fixed
on denial, her back forever turned to the atrocities going on in her own
home. Aliens were angels, beings of light, and no bureau-cracy would ever
touch one, let alone dissect it like some bug. Besides, one didn't need
those huge, wrap around eyes to see in the dark of space; that was pure
Hollywood. He knew the night even better than he knew aliens, or even possums,
and what one needs in the dark is a keen sense of smell. The TV aliens
didn't even have noses, just holes in their faces. Roswell's beady, pinpoint
eyes were sufficient; she saw with smell, could tell a friend from a predator
a city block from the spot where a sight- dependent creature, like Man,
would be dinner.
For years, he'd watched his wife with his eyes. Watched
her leave for work, leave to visit friends, leave to volunteer at the City
Botanical Garden, so close to the apartment of her newfound male just friend
coworker. He should have smelled her for sex, for the dirty fetor of men,
for the sweaty aura of lies and betrayal that would have triggered Roswell's
radar a mile away, alerted her, wisely, to dodge the attack, to immediately
sprint to a safe, dark place. He'd stood that final evening in the dangerous
sunlight, watching her back down the driveway, her car loaded to bursting
with things no longer his. As the sun set and darkness fell, he was still
standing there, afraid of the empty house, relieved to surrender vision
as the night embraced him in its black, enveloping wings.
And suddenly, beyond reason, he could smell her. All
the way across town. He could smell her laughter, her exhilarating freedom,
her relief to have so easily escaped witnessing the devastation she'd left
in her wake. For an instant, he thought he smelled uncertainty, regret,
but it vanished when her scent spiraled off on a breeze, then came back
vibrant again, mixed now with something heavy, strangely familiar... the
just friend. She would not be back. He could smell it.
That was the night he'd met Roswell.
She appeared around the corner right on schedule and
paused, her nose twitching in the air, carefully locating him in the darkness,
the food laid out on the blacktop. He could hear the babies closing in
behind her, navigating the autumn leaves he'd never bothered to rake, the
piled twigs and branches what winter ice there'd been had brought down
from the trees. Apparently satisfied that all was right, she took a fix
on the night's libation and waddled out into the light.
She was so beautiful. He never tired of the feral caution
in her gradual approach, the transfiguration of her camouflage gray into
radiant silver under the halogen spotlight, her efficient razor teeth rendering
soft fruits and tough meats with equal, hungry fervor. His heart joined
her scraping rhythm as she worked to strip a hambone of its last pink vestige.
He held his breath as she raised her maternal head when the babies filed
out, climbing playfully over one anther's backs, already fat and spoiled,
tumbling to be first in line at the trough when their mother gave the command.
Then all at once he smelled it - something heavenly,
something so out of place among the earthy mix of mud and possum and aging
food that his whole body spasmed against it; his sudden movement froze
the possums in their places. They rose as one on their round haunches,
noses to the breeze. They smelled it, too: Cookies. Cinnamon. The air turned
suddenly warm around him, and he, too, rose, allowing the sweet and somehow
dangerous scent to turn him slowly around until he faced the house, the
dark, back window, the black, lifeless kitchen that had once been her domain,
his wife's joyful sanctum, the room from which she had spun enchant-ments
in exotic soups and breads, in stews and roasts that spoke a secret, sacred
language he had suffered long to unlearn, a sanctuary he had long ago defiled
with his own angry grime, with piled, unclean offerings to strange gods
of hate and filth.
She was there. He could smell her, like some vague vanilla
shadow floating impossibly in the darkness bey-ond the dirty glass of the
window. Hovering by the stove. Singing happily to herself; he could hear
he now.
He closed his eyes against the vision, against this too-present
ghost, this unbeckoned resurgence of sweetness long ago traded for the
gall of disappointment and despair. He didn't want to remember these feelings,
hated himself for coming so suddenly alive, cursed the long-untended ember
of joy being fanned to painful brilliance within him with each fragrant
breath.
He was glowing now, erupting pale fire, slicing the shadows
around him with spinning blades of radiant silver light. As the night released
him, the light lifted him up, out of the yard, over the house, then east
toward the dawn and a vision of his missing four hours: He saw the crash,
heard a sound like thunder that startled him awake on the highway, a distant
crackle as the steering wheel entered his chest, then flashing lights from
above: blue, then red, then blue again, strobing, a frantic, whispered
child's prayer - followed by black, enveloping wings and, finally, inexplicably,
the musky, familial smell of possums.