Beneath a Smiling Sun

Beneath a Smiling Sun

  by Shannon Lee Martin

  Copyright 2012 Shannon Lee Martin

  Any similarities between persons, places or things, living, dead, or otherwise, is what it is.

  * * *

  My thoughts kept returning to those three resin gnomes I'd bought my mother one eldritch Mothers' Day a couple of years back, with their red hats and boots and their flowing white beards, curly pipes, twinkling eyes and secret smiles. I could almost see thick tendrils of blue-grey smoke wafting from those ornately molded things as I drove home from the nursery I worked at, the rain unable to make up its mind whether or not it wanted to pour down heaven's wrath or just drizzle. It reminded me of one of the many days the threshold was thin, when I might go completely insane.

  My wife Loretta and I had been driving home from the Wal-Mart in Searcy on one of those rare, clear sunny days squeezed between a few dreary, cloudy ones in early March. She was doing the driving, and I was looking at the folks we passed as I sometimes did, talking about something or other as I watched the myriad faces roll past us. That's when I saw the thing that made me scream, a short, high-pitched yelping scream, almost causing Loretta to swerve into the ditch.

  "What the hell, Daron, you tryin' to give me a god-damned heart attack?" she asked in her sweet, red-neck voice. She was a lovely, wonderful woman, my Loretta was. Damn it all to hell, I'm crying again. Reminds me of the rain. Always reminds me of the goddamned rain. . .I sat there in the passenger seat and said nothing, my eyes wide with dull thudding shock, my heart racing along like somebody being chased by ole Granny with a shotgun..

  "Feel here, honey," she said, taking my hand and putting it on her belly. "You've even got Annabelle riled up again. Good lord honey, you feel that?" Her smile was heartfelt, and full of love supreme. My unborn daughter was thumping out a good steady rhythm, but I could only pay meager attention to what would normally make my heart swell to bursting, with almost rapturous joy. I almost couldn't believe what I'd seen, though the cold creepy claw that clutched my insides wouldn't let me do anything but.

  "Eerie. Downright fuckin' eerie!" I snapped. The image was burned into my brain.

  "What, the baby? You've felt her kick before, honey. What in the hell's wrong with you Leroy?" She often called me by my middle name whenever she was upset or frustrated. I still didn't say anything. The butterflies in my innards had grown horns and teeth, my hackles standing at attention like their drill sergeant had just threatened to beat 'em with a shovel if they so much as flinched. Every nerve in my body burned with a feeling akin to fear.

  Calmly, with gentle concern, my wife attempted to engage my attention again.

  "Damn, honey, is something wrong?" She tenderly laid a soft swollen hand on mine that rested on her now-calm roundness, and looked over at me with those heart-melting hazel eyes of hers.

  "Nothing...nothin's wrong love. I just. . .I. . ."

  "What?" She had to remove her hand from mine to make a turn.

  "Nothin'."

  "You don't yell out like that and almost cause us to wreck in the ditch for nothin' Daron. What is it?"

  "Well. . .I think. . .no god-dammit I know god-damned well we just, we just--" I let out a tittering little edge-of-psychopathic laugh, and took a long, deep breath, releasing it with a short “ha”.

  "What?" she asked with a laughing smile when we stopped at the first of two stop-signs on the way home.

  "Loretta, I swear to you on my mother's eyes and her seven fuckin' Chihuahua's that I just saw us pass ourselves on the road back there."

  "You what?" she splurted with her what-the-hell is this bullshit tone of voice.

  "Well, when you were talkin' to me back there, I was watchin' the people we passed go by us and, and. . .I must be out of my god-forsaken mind, but we just passed ourselves back there, and we were drivin' in this very same car. You had your hair down, though. Loretta--" he paused, and took a deep breath before continuing. "Loretta, I looked myself in my own son-of-a-bitchin' eyes, and my other self smiled and flipped me off."

  "Ok honey. Whatever you say." I wasn't looking at her, but I could almost feel her rolling her eyes at me. I didn't have to look to know she was smiling, either.

  "I'm serious god dammit!" I said, barely avoiding that hurt whiny tinge a person's voice can get when they're trying to get someone to believe something as outlandish as that.

  "O-----kay," she said, the humor in her tone slowly fading.

  "Battleaxe." My smile was a truly sincere one. Well, it kinda faded from a sneer to mirthful, but hell, I wouldn't 'ave believed me either. She turned to me with a sweet smile of her own.

  "I love you, ya damned nut."

  "I love you too, butterbug," I said with a shit-eating, love-gorging grin, as I scooted over in the seat to kiss her on the neck, on that spot right under the ear. I rested my head on her shoulder right about the time the paved road ended and the gravel road began, as we drove the rest of the way home.

  Later that evening, I remembered the time that same damned thing had happened once before, long ago when me and my friend Lars were driving up from Fabre, when we were still south of Little Rock. It was back when I still lived down in that decaying old scrap town, when we went to college together there. Lars had lived up near Searcy on top of Joy Mountain, and here I was in Higginson, years later, near Searcy, and him and his wife -- and we thought we'd never be married, and happily! Hell -- lived down in Fabre while he finished getting his A&P certificate. Life sure is a strange harsh mistress, isn't she?

  God, I miss my wife. I miss Annabelle too, even though we never got to meet. I still love her though. Love the both of 'em. Always will. Did I ever tell you how they died?

  "No, you haven't been able to," answered the Dryad Princess.

  Well, it was only about a week after that day I was driving home and thinking about the gnomes, and I was driving my wife to the hospital. Her contractions had gotten to be about three minutes apart and I was driving like a goddamned maniac and. . .

  Did I ever tell you about, no, I didn't. . .

  The day I bought my mother the three gnomes was, well, I really can't remember what put me in such an oddball mood that day, but I remember I had a lot of money in my pocket, and it was Mothers Day. I was thinking about how I'd really never gotten my mother anything nice my whole twenty-three years of life, so I drove out to the Wal-Mart there in Fabre. I had no idea at all what I was gonna get her, but I had that longing, dreamy kind of feeling that evening, mixed with a little deep-welling almost-sadness, and I knew I just had to get her something good.

  I think it'd been raining earlier that day too. Hmn. Hell, it seems like its always raining in Arkansas sometimes, but anyway, I got there, and I was looking and wandering and whipping my buggy around -- speaking of buggies, that reminds me of the go-cart like thing I used to drive at that nursery. Some of the greenhouses were a quarter-mile long, and you could run the electric boogie-buggy right down the middle of it.

  The greenhouse felt so warm that day, the same day it rained and I thought about the gnomes. I rode on the back facing the rear, and the guy driving was haulin' ass through it. I'd squint my eyes, so that everything looked fuzzy, and it smelled so sweet and good and pure that I felt like I was drifting off into a completely different and wonderful reality, like I was entering into --

  "What you've done is drift off the part about the gnomes and your mother and all that. Go back to that."

  . . . Alright then. Shit. Shit still gives me chill bumps.

  Anyway, I wandered and wondered and pondered and such, and then I came to the gardening section of the store, of all places. That's when I met -- I mean, that was when I discovered the gnomes. There were a hell of a lot mor
e of 'em than three at the time, and at first I was only gonna buy one of the little suckers, but there were three different kinds, and I swear it took me about an hour or more to pick out the best ones. They had to be perfect, you know.

  They seemed so lifelike, from the moment I first laid eyes on 'em. So real. So living. So goddamned alive. My mother loved 'em. In my mind I could easily picture those three little guys getting up off their dinky little butts and wandering around the house, terrorizing the Chihuahuas that looked like Great Danes next to those little guys.

  After I lost my family, I. . .

  It was raining that night, too. The sky was a grey smoky curtain that blocked out all light except my headlights. I don't remember now how long it was after my family died, but the agony was still so unbearable that I still to this day don't know what kept me from slamming into a tree or a car or a train or. . .

  I'd been driving for. . . I can't remember whose car I'd borrowed for the trip down to Fabre, don't really remember borrowing one. I was in a rage that late afternoon, and the thumping squeal of the windshield wipers certainly didn't help me get out of it. I'd been driving for about an hour, and my eyes began to grow heavy. They'd blink, and stay shut for longer and longer intervals every time, it seemed.

  I swear my eyes were closed when I heard a deafening sound that jolted my eyes wide open, and saw a bright blinding