Talk Vomit

By Vera Podell

“The wrath of God lies sleeping.”

Cormac McCarthy ‘Blood Meridian;
or, The Evening Redness in the West’

‘I don’t think it can be fixed now,’ the man sighed. 

The kid looked at him, perplexed. But of course, it can be fixed, of course, it can, the child thought. Blowing wind was rustling the trees around and endless black skies were swallowing them both. The man looked a little down at the kid with those disgustingly pitiful eyes, the way a young butcher might look at their first victim, as if there’s a choice, as if he was about to say ‘I’m sorry’ – but there is no use of that – and as the sun was gone completely, the kid’s hands felt wet. The bird in his hands lied still. The man sighed again. 

Something invisible, something deep and harrowing was creaking inside of the kid at that moment, it ached, that invisible thing, it tasted like bile in his throat, it wasn’t fear but something even more poignant and visceral – and as the man was looking at him, the child still believed, no, no, he knew that there was no such thing that breaks forever – the simple thing that ends. 

And yet. 

Here they both were, standing in the woods in the all-encompassing darkness, so far from the highway that the kid would hardly find his way back by himself, so there was really no other choice for him but to rely on the man. 

‘I’m sorry,’ the kid mumbled. ‘I didn’t want to.’ He so desired to hear the man say that it was all okay, but he didn’t – and it wasn’t. ‘I want to go home.’ 

‘We will,’ the man said. ‘But I need you to go with me first.’ 

‘I think my mother is in the car,’ the child answered, on the verge of tears. 

‘She’ll wait. She knows you’re with me. But you should come with me now,’ and he marched into the darkness. 

So, they started walking again. And the further they went into the cage of a forest, the more fright arose in the kid. His mouth got dry and his limbs felt heavy. He put the bird’s carcass to his chest, cuddling it, making every attempt he could manage to fix what had been done as the bird’s snapped neck was hanging down. The carcass was almost weightless while the child’s body got hard to bear — such a heavy, eternally heavy body. He didn’t know when or, at that point, whether they would go back. He thought of his mother. She missed him, probably. The child remembered the look she gave him as he was walking out of the car, the look full of remorse, something he couldn’t understand. Her eyes were a little wet. She looked at him just for a moment, and then averted her gaze. The kid didn’t pay much attention to it at the time, but now, as he could hardly even remember her features, some other feeling, some kind of hopeless sorrow appeared in him. He put the bird even tighter to his chest and its bones creaked a little. Fright and sorrow, exhaustion and fright. 

It was too dark for the kid to recognize any of the surroundings but the man seemed to manage finding the route just fine. The child was looking at the man from just a little bit below him. The figure was strained and tense. At some point, a few minutes or a few hours later, the kid started stumbling. 

‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled and then another. ‘I’m sorry, with the bird.’ 

‘Yeah, right,’ he heard the man’s low voice. ‘It’s what you do,’ and after a pause. ‘Or so I’ve been told. So, do not bother.’ 

The kid swallowed but his mouth ran out of saliva a while ago and his throat hurt. 

‘I didn’t want to hurt the bird.’ 

‘I know. But you still did.’ 

‘I didn’t want to hurt anyone.’ 

‘Okay.’ 

The forest stood silent. 

Suddenly they were on a small clearing. There was a hole that had been dug in the ground in the center of it. A pile of earth was lying nearby. The man came closer to the edge of the hole. For some reason the man appeared older now, with pale moonlight on his wrinkled face. 

‘I need you to dig a little more,’ he said, stuttering a little. But the kid was too young, weak and small, and there was no way he could do that. 

‘I can’t,’ the child was stunned.  

‘You can. You are old enough, remember now? You can. Don’t make yourself small. It doesn’t suit you, kid.’ 

The child, looking into the man’s eyes, gently laid the bird’s carcass on the ground, then took a shovel. As he did so, the man looked at him almost regretfully and the kid didn’t really grasp why that was. His only feelings were of heaviness and exhaustion. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault that the mangled thing was lying in front of them. The kid could hardly see anything in the darkness, but as he jumped into the hole, he saw something lighting up in the dirty moonlight, something in the man’s hands. 

‘It won’t happen again,’ the kid swore as he was digging down. He threw the earth up, and it rained on the ground in a muddy squall. His clothes were almost black with dirt; he would not have been able to recognize himself in the mirror. His whole body was sore. 

‘I know.’

‘I promise.’ 

‘You said it already, remember? Frankly, you said that a lot.’ 

The kid didn’t remember but something was starting to emerge in his consciousness bit by bit. Some pictures, mere sensations. Long words that he didn’t understand. He worked now with his body as if his life depended on it, with all his might, which wasn’t a lot anymore. Life was being drained out of him drop by drop and if only he had some more time to think about it, he would have wished for it to end like it did with a bird or those creatures in those faraway recollections of the past – fast and, arguably, painless. 

‘It’s fine,’ the man finally said. ‘You can lay down now. It will be easier this way, actually.’ The kid could hardly hold himself up so he was only grateful to finally lay down, even though the ground was cold and disgustingly wet, with some tree roots sticking out here and there, and felt his limbs rest a little, while the ache in his chest was still present. He still couldn’t really remember what had happened, other than some vague shapes, something on his hands, the images that had no words now, no sound at all. 

‘Dad, I’m tired,’ the kid said as he was lying in the ground. The man, that crooked dark figure staying on the edge of the pit, looked down at him, with his hand behind his back, and smiled for the first time that night. His smile could barely be seen in the dark.  

‘You called me dad,’ he said. Something glistened in his eyes. Something sparkled, lit by the moonlight, in his right hand that he got from behind his back. ‘Now, this will make it difficult.’