I was standing on the front porch of our farmhouse, picking at its flakey, once white paint. It fell in curls from weathered grey boards. Even the boards of the porch were warping…some up and some down.
A fox had made a den under that porch. Then he went and grabbed a chicken from our yard instead of down the road…no more fox. With the fox gone, raccoons moved in and made themselves right at home. There was a whole family under my feet. Momma made purring sounds to her babies. Poppa hissed and snarled. They could feel it coming too.
The first thing to change was the color of the air. The sky changes color, but air doesn’t have color. At least not until it does. Not until the sky gets cut and bleeds color into it. Air and sky slowly grew the same green as the husks of the black walnuts on the trees in the side yard.
Before she appeared, she sang a deep, ratcheting song of iron wheels on rails, hammering over the hill, getting closer. I was watching, waiting…then the star, a grey ballerina, appeared on her husk-green stage. Once she got the spotlight, I couldn’t hardly breathe. She twirled and roared, spun and hissed, jumped and began collecting things from buildings and trees. I knew deep, deep down that she was dancing just for me, and my eyes never left her.
I could smell her. She was earth and lightning.
She was teasing my hair.
I got jerked by the collar of my coveralls, and dragged around to the cellar on the side of the house. Mom was yelling at me, but it was too loud to hear her. She set the boards to keep the doors closed, and dragged me down the steps to the always damp and moldy cellar. She wasn’t yelling anymore, just hugging me around my waist and crying. That was worse.
When we came out of our burrow, we saw that my ballerina had eaten the barn and our car, but she left us, the raccoons and our house alone…except for a few souvenir shingles.
No matter what words I used, or how I used them, I never got anyone to understand why I just stood there. Eventually, I gave up talking about standing over a family of raccoons and watching the sky turn green.
BanWynn Oakshadow remembers the short story he wrote when he was twelve. He began writing poetry in high school, and was a published finalist at both state and national levels. For two years he was part of the editorial staff of “A Paper Garden”, a small poetry press. Military service and health issues kept him out of the game for several years, but he came back and started writing fiction in 2004 and one of his stories was nominated for a Nebula Award. He published many pieces in 2005-2007. Now, after a couple strokes in the language are of his brain, and relearning to read and write, he is back and having a blast.
BanWynn is a disabled American veteran living in a little cottage built in 1754 in the middle of a forest in southern Sweden with his demented husband, Henrik and their dog “Biscuit”…also demented.
–Art by Ashley Holloway
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