A Gust of Wind

by Dominique Rocheford

A Gust of Wind

Dominique Rocheford

A young man wakes up early in the morning, determined to hold on to his New Year’s resolution longer than anyone else has. He gets out of bed slowly, so he doesn’t disturb his snoring wife, and pulls on his workout clothes. His sneakers are new, with crisp white details on the all black sneaker that his wife gave to him for Christmas. It was her way of motivating him.

Once he brushes his teeth and washes his face to clear the sleep from the corners of his eyes, he goes downstairs and starts to make a protein shake. He learned the recipe from an online cookbook he had found while researching healthy, fast meal options. His wife was excited because she wanted to try and cook some of the others for him.

He throws a scoop of protein powder, four cubes of ice, and a cup of water into the blender and runs it on low so it doesn’t wake up his wife. It takes a little longer to blend, but when it’s finished, he pours it into a shaker bottle and chugs it down. It tastes gross, like watered down vanilla powder, but he knows that it’ll help him build more muscle. Its thickness coats his mouth, and it leaves a bad aftertaste. He tries to wash it away with some water, but he’s convinced the vanilla stained his tongue and he’d taste the chalkiness forever.

“It’s worth it,” he mutters to himself as he takes one more sip of water before heading to the front door. He pulls on a light exercise sweatshirt and then steps out, the early morning chill nipping at his cheeks and his bare hands. The newly dropped bedding of snow is twinkling on the ground and looks pure enough to lick. He likes being out before the sun rises; that way, he’ll be able to watch it come up over the horizon as he reaches the edge of town.

He takes a big breath of air before he starts to jog. His new sneakers smack against the unplowed cement and the impact shoots its way up his legs, through his knees, and ends at his thighs. He’s careful where he puts his feet because he’s worried that he’ll hit a patch of ice and slip. He’s done that a couple times so far, but he doesn’t have a treadmill and he can’t stop exercising because there’s snow on the ground.

The man keeps his breathing steady as he jogs, the cold air turning into a solace as his heartrate starts to pick up. He can see his breath in front of him, coming out in small puffs of smoke. He blows out through his nose and watches the breath come out like a dragon breathing fire. His nephew always liked when he would do that.

As the man continues down the road, he passes a group of kids lining up at the bus stop by the church for another day of school. As he passes the kids, he sees a group of boys around a girl, all bundled up in their heavy jackets and baggy pants that don’t quite fit their little legs yet. There’s one small girl huddled underneath a willow tree by herself.

Once he passes the children, he focuses back ahead of him. He counts his breaths, knowing that he’s getting close to the edge of town where he will watch the sunrise. He’s starting to feel tired, and cold sweat starts to bead against his body and stick to his clothing. The new sneakers are biting at the backs of his heels—he could feel the blisters forming and peeling as they jostle with every step he takes. He would have to put band aids on them once he got home.

When he eventually reaches the edge, he stops and breathes deeply. He is bending over and puts his hands on his knees, then remembers that that won’t help his breathing, and stands straight and puts his hands up to allow his lungs to expand properly. As he does this, the sun is just starting to peak out. There are dark clouds starting to float in, but the sun attempts to stay out for as long as possible. The light starts to reflect off the house-made horizon and the windows bounce the light around until it hits him. He watches as the sun rises, and right then he puts his arms back down. He has caught his breath and shakes out his legs. Snow is starting to fall again, glistening in the waking sunlight as it falls from the clouds above. When the sun is fully visible, he turns around to head back home.

~

A young girl is standing at the bus stop in a church parking lot, underneath a willow tree, waiting to be picked up by the school bus. It’s snowing, and she hugs herself to try and keep her body heat close. Little speckles of snow fall onto her eyelids, and she blinks to try and clear them.

When the young girl looks over at her friend, talking and laughing with a circle of boys, tears start to sprout into beads that coagulate at the corners of her eyes, ready to roll down her frost-bitten cheeks. She starts picking at her thumb, her black finger nails grabbing at her cuticle and pulling. The satisfaction of having the skin come off rather easily and exposing the rawness makes her shiver. She feels the familiar sting when she brushes her fingertip over the wound.

When she looks back up, the other kids are starting to move towards where the bus just arrived. She heads down, waiting in line until she goes up the steep stairs, watching her footing to make sure she doesn’t trip, and goes to the very back. She sits down and wraps her arms tight around her—it’s the coldest back there.

She plugs in her ear buds when the bus starts to move. Much to her relief, no one sits next to her. She clicks a random song and lies her head back against the solid, cold seat. A slow violin plays in her ears, and the beads in her eyes form again as a response. She starts to pick at her finger again, moving underneath her nail. She pulls skin from her finger relentlessly, little pieces of skin falling to the floor like snow. She digs so far under her nail that it starts to bleed, and soon the entire underneath of the nail is smudged with blood. She doesn’t mind it, though. Instead, she continues, her picking fingers getting bloody too.

When she looks up, all the kids seem to be quiet, though she can’t quite tell with the loud music in her ears. They bounce with the rhythm of the bus as it hits potholes and cracks in the pavement from years of snow and salt and more salt. Her friend is sitting with two boys, unaware of the girl in the back. She turns away and looks out the window to watch as bare trees fly by, blanketed with snow. Outside is grey and dead; the sun isn’t out anymore. Rather, plump snow clouds have rolled in to consume the day in dreary wet flakes that stuck to clothes and made them damp. The already white blanket across the houses and cars continue to grow as the flakes stick and stay. This isn’t the fluffy snow, it’s the thick, hard-to-shovel kind.

The girl shivers again, this time from the prickling cold seeping in from the poorly made windows that didn’t close all the way. The heat on the bus didn’t reach this far back, and for a moment, the girl wishes she sat a little further up.

As the bus nears the school, she stares at the back of the seat. The holes in the material are starting to puke out its insides—gross, discolored yellow stuffing is peeking out. She grabs a side of the hole and peels it open a little to reveal more of the stuffing. She does this with every hole in the back of the seat, peeling and peeling until they are just a little bit larger. She knows that every time a kid sits in these seats, they do the same thing. The holes are always just slightly bigger; there’s always one extra doodled penis, or a heart with initials inside of it; there’s always a smiley face or a “Chad is cute, pass it on” written in messy handwriting because it’s too difficult to write while the bus is in motion. Everyone contributes to the vandalism of the bus, even the girl.

When the bus pulls up to the school, the girl takes out her ear buds and tucks them into her backpack before standing up from the rusty grey benches. Her legs are asleep, so she tries to move and shake them out as she waits for her turn to exit the bus.

Once she’s off and the snow is falling onto her again, she moves quickly so that she doesn’t have damp clothes for the rest of the day. The light coming from the building is inviting and promises warmth, so she pulls the door open and rushes in.

~

A young boy is home from school today, since he has caught a cold from his sister. While she has gone to school, he goes into her room to see her birds. He sniffles and rubs the back of his hand across his nose, wiping the snot left behind on his Spiderman pajama pant leg. Then he bends down until his eyes are level with the birds in the cage and peers in. There’s one blue one, Sylvester, and a green one, Lucky.

“Hi Sylvester and Lucky,” the boy says to the birds. They are both huddled against each other, their puffy bellies protruding over their claws that held on to a makeshift branch.

The boy opens the front of the cage and sticks his hand in. Immediately, the birds stand alert and start tweeting. Then they rustle and start to fly around, crashing into the cage’s bars. The boy pulls his hand back at the sudden panic. When it’s out of the cage, the birds relax and perch on their branch again. They didn’t like it when their home was invaded.

“C’mon, don’t you want fresh air?” he whines. He looks at them and then at the window they are sitting in front of and decides to open it. “See?”

The cold breeze sweeps into the bedroom, pushing stray feathers and bird food all over the ground. He ignores it and tries to put his hand in again. This time, Lucky panics, but Sylvester stays where he is and allows the boy to stroke his belly. As his knuckle rubs against the feathers, the boy looks at the window again and takes his hand out to pull up the screen. He sticks his hand out the window to feel the air on his fingers and catches a couple snowflakes. It’s snowing and the sunlight is gone, shielded by dark clouds full to the brim with rain that would turn to flakes the minute it came into contact with the below-freezing atmosphere.

“Do you guys want to fly outside for a second?” he asks them. When they don’t respond, he smiles. Then, he turns the cage around and opens its door wide so the birds can fly out into the sky. “Go, guys. But go quickly, because mom and dad won’t like that I’m doing this.”

The birds don’t move. They rustle their feathers with their beaks and make small noises, but they don’t fly out of the cage. The feathers peel off their bodies as they pick at them, fluttering to the bottom of the cage. The boy watches in anticipation, hoping that he doesn’t get caught by his parents. He wants them to experience the outside; after all, they were always cooped up in his sister’s room, who didn’t even really like them anyway. He wanted to make sure they were happy.

“If I were a bird, I’d want to fly in the sky,” he whispers to them. “You don’t have to go for long. Just for a second.”

The birds continue to stay in the cage. They don’t understand what’s happening, so they stay perched on their fake branch that they don’t realize is fake. It’s all the same to the birds.

Eventually, Lucky leaps down and grabs hold of the opening of the door, peering outside into the cold morning. There are flurries starting to fall, but Lucky leaps out into the fresh air anyway.

The boy squeals happily. “Be careful, Lucky, and be back in a couple minutes.”

Sylvester doesn’t go. Instead, it stays perched, picking and peeling off the feathers that itch its body. The blue feathers with white streaks start to pool on the floor of the cage, along with leftover treat pellets and bird poop. It piles up like the snow outside, piling and piling until there’s nothing left of the original floor to see except feathers and poop and pellets.

A couple minutes go by and Sylvester hasn’t moved. Lucky hasn’t come back, either, and the boy is starting to worry. He wants to call out Lucky’s name, but he is worried that if he talks too loudly, his parents will hear.

“Lucky,” he whispers. “Lucky, come back.”

The boy looks out at the snow, coming down in fat flakes now. Sticky, heavy snow builds on the ground below. He shivers from the cold air and looks at the sky to try and spot a green bird. He doesn’t see it. He sneezes loudly, and it blows some of the feathers Sylvester has been picking out of the cage and through the window. He watches as they glide back and forth down to the snow.

“Lucky,” he says louder. “Lucky, come back.”

He hears his parent’s footsteps. His heart starts to race as he realizes that Lucky isn’t coming back. He closes the cage door and pulls the screen and window down before his parents open the door to his sister’s room.

“What’re you doing in here?”

“The birds wanted some company,” he responds. He tries to shield Sylvester and the non-Lucky with his tiny body. He sneezes again and wipes his snot with the back of his hand. His Spiderman pajamas are becoming crusty from his wiping.

“You need to go back to bed.”

The boy nods and walks towards his parents, hoping that they don’t look and see that there’s no Lucky in the cage. Luckily for him, they don’t. They walk out of the room together and close the door shut, leaving Sylvester alone to pick and peel his blue feathers that fall to the floor of the cage, covering the green ones that were left before Lucky flew away.