There is a moment, a second or two before he comes to, when his mind begins to wander. After the fender and the blacktop and the embankment, the moonlight or the light beam hitting his face.

When he considers first the feeling. The nerve stripped from the tendon, the silver sliver of glass digging into the thin part of his skull and below that the wetness on his neck.

When he wonders whether it’s been raining. And doesn’t know, never knows, that it’s the blood from his eye that’s leaking into the sticky caramel of the skin just below. The brilliant green she first fell in love with already disfigured and maybe past saving.

When he feels for a split-second the agony of his body framed this way. The shape of it. His arms and legs and head bent, his back arched in a ragged wave of brown and red across the rock there.

When he notices first the itch and then the pain behind it. The blistering of nerve against muscle against bone. His nervous system shifting, his mind jerking forward toward some future he imagines only in self-preservation.

When he thinks of his birthday later that fall. The rafters in The Rim decked out in the garish colors Cate has picked out in celebration, the hand-painted sign above the revelers and all those voices singing. Or maybe out on the lake come summertime. Drifting along the water’s edge. His feet tethered to the little cooler he has stashed beneath his legs, the wide arc of the late afternoon sun warming his neck as he paddles slowly towards its center. Or maybe not even that. Maybe just the kids running through the house, his body aching from the long week of work and losing his temper.

When he sees already some indeterminate future. His wife in the chemically scrubbed air-conditioned room beside him, the pocked limbs of their children tucked into armpits, pillows, their tiny bodies splayed across the ill-patterned sofa, beneath blankets the nurses must have dragged in from somewhere.

When he can hear the sound of distant waves for some reason. The sea butting the sand. And thinks of whales stranded. How they move sometimes inland, through the canals and rivers. Beaching themselves en masse on some shallow stretch of land. Huddled and hulking, dying, just because.

When he thinks then of his kid sister. Left to fend away by herself whatever pale miseries their parents had in mind for them both. And of Cate at home waiting. The Christmas tree lights blinking red and green and red again around the television set. The look on her face as she studies the clock, or nothing at all.

When he thinks of himself in the summertime. His arms thick and his gut rescinding. Out in the woods or down by the river. Casting his line towards the tiny shimmers of green and brown and silver just beneath the surface. The same eddies he’s been hitting since he was a kid, and Cyrus first took him down there.

When he thinks of Cate cooking dinner at home later, grilling the one fish he has caught. Calling out to ask if he can do anything. His feet up on the table in the den among her polishes and ties and the bindings of their life.

When he watches her in the doorway. Digging her back into the jamb. Her neck cocked in a vain attempt at releasing whatever nerve she has pinched carrying the kids inside, their whole lives on her back.

When he pictures that life together. The endless stream of hours running into days. All the years of working, talking. Her belly swollen and taut and her temper. Driving out to the house by the beach in Bolinas, the same one Cyrus used to disappear to each year. The small wooden shack tucked away in the hillside among the millionaires. And none of them sure how Cyrus came to own it, or if he owned it. The kid in the backseat pointing out the red cars as they pass them. Another. And another.

When he thinks of Cate beside him. Her legs tight and tan in her shorts. The thin flicker of smoke snaking through the cracked car window, as she shifts her ringed fingers through the debris in the console. Asking him to pull over to the shoulder, so they can get a better view of the water as it appears like a punchline on the horizon. Holding the kid above his head while the white line of surf crashes against the rocks far below them.

When, later that night, in the sour smelling bed, there is something he likes playing on the radio. And he asks Cate if she knows it. Which of course she does. Stay, she says. Keeping him. Her foot snaking his, digging in. The same way it digs beneath the table at breakfast the next morning, when he tells her he thinks a little girl might be nice. A girl for Cate to have as her own. That he worries sometimes about her loneliness. How this might be good for them both.

When he thinks it will be this way with his sons: the three of them outside in the field, the white comet of a pitched ball arching towards him. Or heading to The Rim after dinner when they’re grown. Cate at home with the girl, the two of them shrouded in the mysteries of their private conversations. The boys on his side, offering their advice.

When he watches his wife as she rises from the table. A smile forming on her lips already because she already knows the truth. Can see their daughter in her mind already. Already knows that the child will be a dervish of abandon. Her crooked lower teeth, the freckle of black in the blue of her iris. That she will leave them all one day for a life of her own. Somewhere the streets are crowded, and her rent is more than their mortgage ever was. That she will be close to her mother always, but always, always, her father’s daughter. Will go looking for him in every man that she meets.

When he can see this, too. His daughter. The little girl grown and the caravan of men trailing behind her. Trying to make sense of her future while Cate rattles things back and forth in the kitchen. Washing mugs and bowls and spoons. Her body veiled in the thin grubby light of the early morning. The fog settling around the house like the scent of shampoo on her hair, the coffee and Kools on her breath.

When he hears the slick swish of a tap going on, then off, then on again. And above it the sound of Cate laughing. Returning to the doorway to tell him that the kids will all worship him regardless. That no matter what he does or doesn’t do, no matter how little he is there—all the long shifts and the late nights, all the work and the hardship—it will be the camping trips and the dusk in the yard they’ll remember their whole lives. That she will simply be their mother, his wife, that woman in the kitchen making breakfast, packing lunches. In the evening, brushing snares of tangled hair in front of the television, her bare feet curled beneath her on the sofa.

When he can see this, too. The little girl froglegged on the floor in front of his wife, his son in the armchair beside them, waiting. The scattered gasps and yelps, as he rattles off his day, the shot, the score, the mole he has caught in the woods and placed in a paper sack in the garage. The other boy upstairs in his room. The door closed. The computer open. All that color and light ablaze all around him.

When he, too, smiles at this. This idea of his family. Watching Cate as she moves from the sink to the dust-caught light by the screen door. Something in the grass out there catching her eye. A toy. A beer can he has left there. The split innards of some animal the gulls are now picking over. Feeling the damp on his back. His skin still sticky from the night before and his too-heavy T-shirt. Noticing for the first time the stain there. That part of him that is not already the child they are now discussing. His young family more clear in his mind now than ever.

When Cate says, “But I wouldn’t mind it.” And looks back at him from the edge of the stairs as she goes to wake the children. A gleaming in her eye he has known their whole lives.

When he can see her later that day. Outside the little shack on the beach. The wind-torn picnic tables scattered with cups and plates and grease, the mug of black coffee a spoon or three of sugar too sweet. That look on her face. Her loosening shoulders. The calmness in her body because she knows there is nothing to do now, nothing for any of them to need except sleep.

When he can see them together all that long afternoon. The sun moving the way that it does, his family moving in circles between their towels and the water and back again. Thinking back to the night before. Cate in the mirror squeezing the muscle on her thigh, digging her thumb into her belly. Imagining the weight she might gain. Holding, pinching, hoping—really, she hopes, he knows this—that she’ll look back on this moment in years to come and know it was here that their daughter appeared in their lives for the first time.

When he stares from his towel to the ocean, watching as she walks with the baby and the boy to the water. Seeing her this way without seeing her. Knowing exactly what she is doing and thinking because he knows her better than anybody. Although really, he knows, he knows nothing of her at all. That she is and will always be hidden from him in some way. That this distance between them is the space where their love lives.

When even with her back to him he can see her at the water’s edge, the look on her face as she places the flat of her hand against her belly. Her fingers releasing the boy’s as he runs into the white wave breaking beyond them.

When he feels his body in the heat of that summer afternoon. Young, still, considering, and strong from all the years spent at the mill, the general fact of his growing up here. On the mountain, in these woods. The same valley his family has always lived in, where he has been his whole life. Five, ten, different generations. All growing up the same way. The same way he hoped his kids would. Listening to the sound of the song all around them. The way you’re supposed to.

When he can see all of this before them. A whole life. Cate and his sons and his daughter. His sister coming over for dinner and the peace they have made with their families. Taking the girl to his parents’, the newborn in his mother’s arms, her giggles and gurgles tumbling around that tattered, ancient house.

When he can see his friends getting older. Guys from school or from work he will know his whole life. Out on the lake escaping their families, or in The Rim, after work. Drunk and hobbled, inching their way along the edge of the world towards home.

When suddenly he knows he must fight this. The heavy lids and the void that is growing where the pain used to be. That this is all a part of his living. A condition of his continuing to live.

When he starts to worry that his body is slipping into a darkness descending faster than even the machine had hurtled towards him. Laid out beneath the moon in his quiet corner. Out by the railing on the side of the rim. The thin hook of silver slipping between the shadow of the trees. His belongings propped against the same rock where whatever is left of his body now lies. The same body he huddled each night beneath the salted tarp, squeezing himself between his carts filled with bags of empty cans and wires, the broken shards of a world left behind. Totems to some other life. Some other version of himself that did not end up here, cold and alone on the side of the road. The car turning, spinning. The sound of metal. The taste in his mouth.

When he understands that all of this is somehow much larger than he is capable even of grasping. That if he can only slow his mind, his breath, his body, focus only on his recovery and not on his agony—which is astonishing—he can find the strength he needs to get through this. And for a while he does.

When he can see months from now his old self returning.

When he feels this idea forming, his will to live becoming reality.

When he understands that all of this will pass. Is as sure of it as he is that he is dying.

When he knows, suddenly knows, that the flicker of light at the edge of his vison—the pink and blue turning bright, brilliant white—is not the life he has lived but the one he once wanted. The spark of a life long ago abandoned, igniting for just a moment the dark and dying night.


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Philip M. Watts lives in Los Angeles, CA.