John Brantingham
The Orange of Water
Larry’s out behind his mother’s place waiting for her to die, and he strolls down to the stream that springs out of the hill. The water there runs orange. All his life, he’s had the urge to taste it despite his mother’s warnings, or maybe even because of them. The water springs out from under the rocks that pile and once formed a chimney. There must be iron down under the ground from the people who lived there all those years ago. The spring must have formed after they built the house because who’d build directly on a spring?
Larry has always thought maybe the mouth of the spring moved. Maybe one day they had a convenient spring right next to the house and something happened, and they woke to find their dream home flooded and the water washing through was orange, and they didn’t know what was going on. He likes to think maybe they saw the water and thought the devil had cursed them with his orange spring, the house lost and their source of water tainted all at once.
They were what? Trappers? Farmers? Something certainly that was so close in that struggle between life and death that they had to up and leave and never return, and maybe they moved to a better place.
Larry’s out behind his mother’s place right now, waiting for her to die as she will and must. His sisters are in there speaking low and morbid, and his daughter and wife are there too. They’re all speaking of death, and he’s out here wondering about the orange stream. He dips his hand in it. He never did that when he was a kid, never let it touch his skin. Back then he thought maybe that whatever poison was in that devil water would work its way through his hand. Maybe his mother told him that. Now, he brings the water to his lips. He smells it. He tastes it just a little. It’s acrid, spoiled. It tastes the way his mother said it would when he was a kid, and she was infinite with wisdom. That was back when she was omniscient and omnipotent. Back then she was eternal.
He prays to her now, as though she is eternal, as though she is omniscient. He asks her to forgive him for all he has done. He knows that if she hears him she will. She has always been benevolent. He thinks his wife and daughter and sisters will go to church for the rest of their lives, but he will not. He will pray to his mother. Perhaps, he will do it here where the water runs orange.
John Brantingham is the recipient of a New York State Arts Council grant and was Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks’ first poet laureate. His work has been in hundreds of magazines and The Best Small Fictions 2016 and 2022. He has twenty-two books of poetry, nonfiction, and fiction. Check out his work at johnbrantingham.com
Banner Art:
John Henry Twachtman, My Summer Studio, c.1900, WikiArt
Author Photo Credit:
Alexis Rhone Fancher
