Part 1, Chapter 5

5


The sun rises and sets and rises and sets and on the third night we hear fireworks again. The three of us assemble on the front porch to watch the yellows, oranges, reds, purples, and blues billow across the sky in ever more elaborate patterns, mixing, popping, crackling, burning out, and being renewed. The whole vision diffused through the light spatter of snowflake and clouds of gunpowder smoke. There are hundreds of fireworks, probably brought from Ohio or stolen from the sport stadiums.

“Somebody trying to get our attention,” I announce.

“That seems the obvious explanation,” Hank concurs.

Over the past two days, James has become increasingly insular. There are plenty of obvious reasons why this has happened. The past few days of scarce activity has left too much time to muse upon our dire situation. Arriving at the understanding that everyone you have ever known may well be dead is enough to fuck anybody up. Furthermore, Hank’s theory of the plague’s misogynistic quality hasn’t helped anybody’s emotional state. But I don’t know why this would have affected James more visibly than Hank and I. When I ask James how he’s feeling, I am as likely to get an unconcerned response as I am to get a cheerful or even angry one.

So James remains quiet, staring at the explosions in the sky.

I break the long silence. “Well it’s on the Southside” — a shopping and cultural district stretching a few miles along the Monongahela River — “how about we head down there tomorrow?”

“We’ve got nothing to lose,” Hank replies.

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Chapter 6, here.