ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

 
BIRTHDAY
by Brandon Shimoda

All of the children hide behind the fence in the woods. Through the slender lengths between slats of fence, they watch the house, risen high at the top of the yard, beveled roof against the late afternoon sky. Balloons, all colors, are tied to the railings of the porch, languid bobs against clapboard siding. The birthday boy stands among them, his back to the woods and to the children hiding behind the fence.

He stands on the porch, covering his eyes with his hands. A birthday hat dunce-awkward atop his short, brown hair. When he drops his hands and turns around, the yard is empty. Only the yard and the trees around: grass buffed up by the soft scars of mole tunnels, holes filled with weeds, humus. A few streaks of white across the sky. The yard tilts down toward the woods, leveling off at a fence separating property lines.

He steps off the porch and into the yard. He looks first in all of the obvious places: under the steps, under the picnic table, in the treehouse, behind the woodpile. He finds some loose feathers, deer sign. Twigs, thistle, spent. He has cake in his stomach, turning slowly to acid and bone. The light of the sun is beginning to fail; a dull hoof across the sky.

Inside the house, the children's parents sit around, smoking, their jackets piled up on the stairs. The birthday boy's mother shrugs out a joke about youth, then laughs. They all laugh.

He picks up a stick and begins running around the edge of the yard, tapping on all of the trees. His birthday hat falls off, half covering a mole hole. He sees the trees, dogwoods humbled at the knees of oaks, its bark close-grained to the oaks' elder divides. Tulip poplars stand tall and erect, striped against grey birch trees, clustered. Thick and thin enough around to hide his friends. He taps on an oak tree with his stick. The bark of the stick slides loose and falls to the ground.

All of the children hide behind the fence in the woods. They crouch in the leaves, watching the birthday boy through the fence. Some of the children have slunked themselves into the leaves with their backs against the fence. The children that peer through the fence watch as the birthday boy weaves himself into the trees, still a ways from their place of hiding.

Inside the house, drinks are poured. The birthday boy's father teeters through a joke about a turtle. Everybody laughs even before the punch line.

The neighbors porch light glimmers on through the trees. He stands still now, poking at the ground with his stick, poking his stick into the mole tunnels, poking the soft ground full of holes. He watches as the stick sinks into the earth, leaving divots, bent weeds. He pokes the ground and then throws the stick down into the grass. There is a fence there in the woods, browning, irregular, above which is the tangle of trees, slanted, necking.

The children sit behind the fence, staring up into the trees. Two of them, a boy and a girl, have fallen into owl sleep. The others watch as the birthday boy walks back up to the house, which is aglow with light from the kitchen, a single lamp from a corner room, laughter.

A deer wanders past a snag and stops, raises its ears, curls its front bone-leg. Its eyes are slate grey.