The Bright Part of the Sky
Chapter #1 // Circular Logic
Chapter #2 // Savannah Was Here
Ray is furious as he stares at John in disbelief. He can’t believe what is coming out of John’s mouth. His hands have curled tightly in fists. How dare he insinuate—
“You can’t think I had anything to do with this!”
“Look, Ray, I know Savannah, she was a wild girl.”
Ray whips his head around to face John, whose face in grim and suit is wrinkled. Something about the way his friend is slumped makes him pause, or perhaps it is the understanding on John’s face.
“Hell, John, what if it was my fault?”
When John does not reply, there is nothing else to say and he sends Ray home to sleep though they both know that is not on the horizon for either of them in the near future. Savannah’s dead face too fresh in both their minds.
*
Sitting home, alone, all the curtains in the house drawn, and all the lights out, Ray sits on his daughter’s twin sized bed and stares into the darkness trying to figure out why the abyss in front of him is not as dark as the one inside.
And, he wonders if it was his fault all along. If he really is the reason his daughter is dead. The abyss inside him is widening, and Raymond Kyte is breaking further.
It is my fault.
In the darkness, a lone voice finds him, bittersweet. “Daddy, it was never your fault.”
Ray gasps, and feels the world rush around him like being in the middle of a spin cycle on the washing machine.
The mud and hay of the Old Fairgrounds is under his feet, and it smells of livestock and day old cotton candy. There is nothing there but him and the old, rusted Ferris Wheel. Ray takes a deep breath. He is alone. The dark grey sky rumbling above with the promise of rain and the wide open fields, burnt and brown, in every direction as far as the crow can fly.
Then, suddenly, she is there, hand outstretched towards him, nails painted magenta pink. He grabs her hand, as if some kind of life vest and it is warm and real. He turns it over within his own, fascinated by its existence.
“Daddy?”
Her voice startles him, he has expected her to be a life-size doll, something that on the outside looks and smells and feels the same way as his daughter, but doesn’t speak. Her lips are not sewn shut, and he stares at her watching her lips move. All the while, his brain is stuck on repeat, the mantra: She is not dead, Savannah is not dead.
“Daddy, you have to help me.”
He takes her in his arms, then, and pats her head; the hand not on her head tangled in her unruly brunette curls. “Anything.”
He has his daughter back in his arms and the world is right again.
She pulls away, just slightly and he looks down to see what is wrong, her green eyes are dark, and he can see she has been crying.
“You have to help me.”
He is so joyous that Savannah is her and with him, that he determinedly pushes everything other though out of his mind.
“From what, sweatheart?”
“The man who killed me.”
Suddenly the wind kicks up, and Savannah is gone from his arms. The world whooshes by him, and desperate for his daughter, Ray reaches out into the cyclone that surrounds him, only to bring back empty hands.
He is screaming “Savannah!” but there is no reply.
When the wind settles down, the Old Fairgrounds are gone, and he is standing outside some third-rate motel room. The white paint on the building is peeling in places to reveal this horrible puke green, and the blue door has cracks in it. The plaque in the center reads Room No. 203.
He feels a weight slip into his left hand and he looks down. There is a hand; when he looks up, there is Savannah, but it is as if she is so kind of translucent shade, he can see right through her. Silently she moves towards the door, first letting go of Ray’s hand. Ray watches as she walks right through the door, and feels compelled to follow.
He reaches for the door knob; it is frigid under his palm and fingers. He twists the metal under his hand, and the door clicks, and opens.
*
There is a bathroom full of flies and lipstick marks and nail gouges and Raymond feels the bile rise in his throat and somehow, something in him keeps him from losing it right there and then.
And, there is a voice asking why, why, why are you showing me this? But, he knows in his heart that she has a reason. She always has a reason.
He tries to memorize each and every detail from the dark green floor tile which is has veins like crow’s feet, and the climbing vines of rust on the lamp shade, that rests over the bathroom’s only light.
There is a brochure that says Ramada Inn, Virginia City, Nevada; it too has marks, as if it has spent the last hundred miles in the back of someone’s jean’s pocket.
He shies away from the rancid bathroom. The queen sized bed is unmade, the sheets and comforter twisted this way and that. As he walks towards it, he is assaulted by the smell of bleach. There is a young girl, Savannah’s age, sitting with her back to him in a lumpy recliner chair; the weather channel on the TV is on mute. The girl’s hair is brown and for a second he thinks it is Savannah, but as he gets closer he realizes it is straight and much shorter than his daughter’s.
“Hello,” he says, but there is no reply.
He finally gets to where he can see the girl’s face. Only then does he realize, the girl is dead.
