Brief Candles by Karen Shepherd

“…Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow…”
-William Shakespeare, Macbeth

Malcolm didn’t think about her in October when they came to the pumpkin patch. He thought of the sear of yellow leaves, the bold sky still open but weakening to the crisp currents of autumn syphoning through. Of roasted corn with butter dripping like a sunset as they sat outside the farm shop, wiping their hands on their blue jeans.

Cell phone pings and golden hair: that’s what he thinks about in June when they visit the island. June is the month that she went missing five years ago.

Celia wakes the boys up this morning, reminds them it will be many hours until their picnic lunch so they need to eat up their cereal and fruit. She hums while she fills the cooler with bread, cheese, sliced cucumbers and hummus.

When Malcolm first met Celia, she was humming. Sitting across the library table from him while reading Shakespeare, she wrapped her index finger in her long auburn hair, like a wire in a fire. He asked her what the tune was and she said it was R.E.M.’s “It’s the end of the world as we know it.” He told her she was fatalistic. He drew her pictures of birds, which she taped to the back of her dorm room door until there was no space left for more. She said he was prolific. Prolific, like words and rain. Or hunger.

“Should we bring the kites?” Duncan is eight years old, named after his grandfather. Malcolm won’t call his father today to wish him a happy Father’s Day. Chemo, radiation and boredom from staring at shelves of books he was too tired to read took him on a spring morning when the humming birds found the orange honeysuckle flowers at the back of his garden.

“No kites today.” Malcolm rinses his bowl, puts it in the dishwasher and heads to the garage. “The canoe still needs to be loaded, tied down.” The boys still need to brush their teeth, the car still needs to be packed. The morning is in a hurry, in a churning, stealing time needed to search for kites.

“I’ll help.” Corin runs to the garage, his six-year-old enthusiasm more show than practical, and pushes the button on the automatic door. Sunlight pours in from bottom-to-top. “Whoa,” Corin walks to the blooming yellow roses next to the drive way. Hypnotized, he leans in, inhales. “You should pick one for Mom.”

“Not right now. I’m loading the boat.”

Celia places the cooler next to the car. “Be sure to keep the emergency kit in the trunk.” Malcolm nods. She is not referring to the box of Band-Aids and first aid supplies, but the fifty-pound duffle bag with food, water pouches, flashlights, blankets and everything else needed to survive her apocalypses. The slipping of the Cascadia plate, swarms of starlings, spasms from snake bites or desolation from downed planes: Celia would’ve made a better boy scout than Malcolm ever was.

Malcolm runs his hands through his hair, stands by the car waiting as the boys look for an IPod. They insist it will just be a moment. Moments are both long and fleeting.

Watching the hair-like cirrus clouds in their silky swirls, Malcolm reverses out of the driveway once they are all fastened in.

“Oh, hang on. Sorry.” Celia touches his arm. “Sunscreen.” He puts the car in park and rubs his temples, waits for her to return.

Emilia was seven years old when she went missing. Her step-father took her to school early that day for the end of year talent show rehearsal. She was going to sing with two of her friends. Her teacher reported that Emilia’s step-father stayed through the rehearsal and said he was taking her to a dentist appointment. She was supposed to be back in class within the hour. Her step-father said he brought her back to school as planned, kissed her forehead and watched her walk down the hallway. But nobody saw him kiss her. Nobody else saw her walk down the hallway. She never made it to her classroom.

The drive to the bridge is winding, passes over the west hills. The trees soften the shine and create mottled patterns on the pavement. The boys can’t connect to a Wi-Fi signal or the scenery and start arguing about legs and feet that cross over the backseat cushion lines that define their personal boundaries.

“Let’s listen to music.” Celia uses that tone that indicates she is trying to keep everyone happy. The boys know where this voice will go next, so they quiet down. She connects her phone to the car audio system and “Landslide” by The Smashing Pumpkins starts playing. She sings along in a volume just above lullaby, smiles at Malcolm.

Malcolm drives over the bridge and the boys start looking for the “lollipops” that they first noticed last fall. The power line poles in the river are dotted with osprey nests. The large rounded stick and soil roosts house the birds whose main threat, Celia reminds them, is electrocution. Malcolm tells them to look for the white underpart and the black eye stripes that distinguish them from the eagles.

The teacher didn’t report the absence to the main office that morning because she thought Emilia would just be coming in a little late.

Malcolm drives past the dock of house boats, beyond the u-pick berry farms and pastures of wheat, away from the clothing optional beaches. The cottonwoods release their seeds in clouds, ghosts floating across the orchards and corn fields.

The step-father and her mother went to meet Emilia at the school bus stop that afternoon. When she didn’t get off the bus, her mother called the school. She never returned after her dentist appointment, Emilia’s teacher said.

Malcolm drives to a boat ramp on the channel on the west side of the island. The nature reserve is quieter, tucked away from the sound of the two-lane road and with less fury from motor boats.

The canoe is unloaded off the car and rests against the dock as the boys climb in. The smell of the water is earthy, like dirt that is soaked in preparation for new plants to be nestled into. Through his binoculars, Malcolm watches an eagle perched in an oak tree at the edge of the shore. The warbler’s melody lingers like lily pads on the water’s surface.

Cell phone pings placed the step-father on the island. To buy seeds from the farm store, he said, was why he came here after he dropped Emilia off at school, after he gave her that final kiss and after he watched her walk away. Her step-father failed a polygraph, and then he failed it two more times. He stopped talking to the police, to reporters, to his wife, cropping all the tethers. County officers, volunteer groups and locals organized searches. Nothing was found.

“Boys, let me make sure those life jackets are buckled tight.” Celia leans over to them, the canoe wobbles.

“You’re so fatalistic,” Malcolm laughs, letting the words land in that soft center they once had more time for.

“And your prolific.” Her eyebrows raise just above the top of her sunglasses, a seduction dusty from the day to day small frets.

He leans in, lingers, and tastes a saltiness on her lips. “Or I’m just hungry,” he whispers.

Corin giggles and looks at the twig Duncan threw in the water, watching it float to the east.

“If we start paddling that way,” Duncan points to their left, “then we won’t be paddling against the current when we come back and are tired.”

“Okay, that way it is.” Malcolm rows them out. The green surface of the water reflects the sky, the oaks, the black walnuts, their shadows. The oars dipping and fanning out bends, but does not break, the guise.

A few months into the investigation, the newspapers reported that a neighbor had called child protective services three times, but the nature of the concerns remained undisclosed and didn’t warrant further follow up. The step-father was fired from his job, but remained in his home living off some type of inheritance.

Emilia’s mother was hospitalized. Her attorney told a journalist that her mental capabilities had further declined after her daughter went missing and she was not fit to be interviewed by the press or detectives.

“What’s under the boat, in the water?” Duncan asks.

“Fish and plants, probably people’s garbage that they chucked off their boats.” Celia says. Malcolm and his father used to catch perch and catfish from the island lakes, steelhead from its rivers. A faint call from a Sandhill crane drifts through the air, an almost mourning trumpet. Malcolm waits for its mate to reply.

“Listen,” Corin says, bouncing on the canoe bench.

“Motor boat,” Duncan laughs.

Malcolm sighs and Celia reminds the boys not to lean out of the boat. The noise gathers, grows, growls and swallows the bird song. A family of ducks wade in a protected cove on the shoreline. The boys watch for the swells making their way across the channel in an arching pattern.

Fits of giggles break out as they bounce on the rougher ripples that bump the boat. Malcolm waits it out, steadies his binoculars and watches the sky.

Nothing was ever found. Not a scrap of her clothing, not a shoe or a hair ribbon. Search teams scoured the island for over a year, combed the shores, the grasses, the shadowy places under the trees. Rescue boats trudged through the rivers, channels and island lakes. Emilia became faded golden hair in the picture on the missing posters, a cell phone ping, a brief light scattered in the banks along the river’s shoreline.

The disturbed water calms, a languid quiet settles in as they paddle on and back with the current. Silence then permeates as the eagle sails over them, a dappled shadow on the green mirror. It glides to the surface, takes something unseen from the water and flies beyond the tree line.

After the canoe is loaded and strapped again, they unpack the cooler. The dock rocks gently where Malcolm and his father once casted their lines. Celia stops passing out plates and touches his arm. “How are you feeling?”

“Motor boat.” Duncan interrupts. He pulls Corin up by the arm. “Come on, stand up.”

Corin and Duncan take wide stances, grin as they watch the waves approaching. The boys look taller today, their legs look stronger.

“I feel fine,” he says to Celia.

“Come on, Dad.” Duncan’s outstretched hand is smooth, his arm darkening in the afternoon sun. Malcolm rises, but extends his other hand to Celia. Four warriors, standing, waiting for the swells to reach them.

The dock rises and falls, bumpy and yet steady. The water slaps, splashes, sprays their feet. Wind tangles Celia’s hair, lifts the boys’ laughter into the oaks. He squeezes her hand tightly, feels her return it as they shift their balance, match the movement beneath them.

The waves peter out, fade to a rocking. The surface resettles, reflects the sky. Sitting with their feet over the dock’s edge, they break bread.

The cottonwood seeds float like angels in the breeze, white and translucent against the blue.

###

Karen Shepherd is a public school special education administrator who enjoys reading, writing and reflecting on the small moments in daily life. She lives with my husband and two teenagers in the Pacific Northwest, where she enjoys kayaking, walking in forests and listening to the rain. Her poems and fiction have been published in riverbabble, Literally Stories, CircleShow and Sediments Literary Art Journal.

Photo: Frank Winkler

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