Stefen Holtrey -- We Have Always Bathed in the Scalding Spring

When Daniel was young, his father would wash him in the scalding spring that flowed beneath their apartment. Each night, he was led down the hidden steps to the room vaulted in stone. At the rocky bank of the coursing spring there was a squat wooden table, and upon the table were the tools: the wire brush, the bar of soap, the towel. At the table’s feet was the threadbare blanket where his father knelt to do his duty. The sweltering room was lit by a hanging bulb whose wire ascended into the dark heights. Its light flashed across slabs of wet, black rock, transforming their descent down the stairs, and their ablutions in the scalding spring, into a shadow theater that played across the walls.

"In you go," his father would say, with a slow, tired smile.

In Daniel’s memory, the waters of the swift and scalding spring were dark and viscous, like the back of a seething serpent, vast enough to span each night to the next. The water tasted like a bloody lip. He would always recall how it seeped into his mouth though he pressed his lips so tight, and he would never forget how the taste of iron settled under his teeth. In these memories of the scalding spring, there is no pain.

But with so many nights spent bathed in the scalding water, he disliked the feel of dirt, of all things rough and natural: stone, tree, concrete, his own fingernails which he chewed. He wore no socks with his shoes, and as he grew older, he preferred the cold. The best time was before the morning, before his father awoke, when he could escape their apartment on the cul-de-sac and savor the air the moon had made.

There was an abandoned lot a few houses down, filled with an overgrowth of the tallest grass, which he would pretend to swim through until the sun came up. He would be a fish in a cool, silent pond, or he would swim and then sink to the bottom, an ageless turtle with no memory of being a boy. Hunkering down amidst the empty bottles and wet leaves and the shadows of the tall grass, he would think nothing of the coming night, but instead try to catch a glimpse of the morning folk as they formed atop the street.

Daniel loved to watch them as they rushed into the day, barely there at first, like steam, but then more substantial as they warmed in the sun. Once, hoping to distract his father from the washing, he had asked him, “where do the morning folk live, when they’re not walking among us on the streets?”

“Nowhere. They live nowhere, and they come from nothing. They have no cleansing spring, with no fathers to wash them. See, there, how lucky you are? Now, in you go.”

Daniel never knew how every night, after the washing, his father tried to form their family in his mind. In his cold bed, he poured over every detail of how things used to be, as if by will alone he might cement their figures into the inner plates of his skull. But he failed, and saw himself fail, over and over. Failure became a kind of light that he chased, a heat that sustained him. Daniel was too young when the scalding spring took his sisters; how they were born anew as pale reddened angels. They smiled from the roots of their teeth upwards, encouraging the father to continue his work, to keep the family going. More than anything, his father wished to ask him, “Do you ever hear them, Daniel, down under the water?”

But the father had grown old and weary. Forgetful. Sometimes he scrubbed too softly, or faltered, catching his breath, and would touch his chest as if checking for something misplaced.

“In you go,” he’d say, and he’d bring the wire brush to Daniel’s skin. The work consoled him. It was everything. Nothing more needed to be said between them.

But one night, before he could be lowered into the water, Daniel asked:

“Please.

 Why am I washed in the scalding spring?”

And the father blinked. The question confused him. Look, he wished to say, love is something you do, but Daniel couldn’t hear, he was past attention, he was being lowered into the scalding water and soon he was swimming through the dark courses, a black serpent at his heel, and as the father pressed the wire brush across his raw skin, all the words were the same: there is no pain, there is no pain. 

"We have always washed in the scalding spring. I love you and give this to you because I love you.” 

It was an early morning in Autumn when Daniel went missing.

The leaves fell. They dripped from the trees, freed of all necessity, heavy with color. The sidewalks were empty. Even the morning folk were not up this early.

His father called for him in the street, and to the empty street, the father made promises:

“Please, my only boy, return to me, and I will never falter. I’m sorry, I will wash you until my hands shake and my nails slip off. I will wash you with the very heart torn from my chest.”

But no answer came, and so now he made threats to the empty street:

“You’ll join your sisters! They wait for you, Daniel!”

But in the end, the leaves knotted in the air until he became chilled and disoriented. He turned to go inside, to make his way down the hidden steps to the room vaulted in stone.

Surely, he thought, Daniel will know to meet me at the scalding spring, when he returns.

Daniel was silent in the tall grass, watching his father search, watching him go back inside. He waited.

All at once, the leaves settled in their place. The wind died in its tracks.

The morning folk came forth as they always did, from the deep cracks in the earth, little more than ghosts atop the tide of the sun. Daniel watched from the tall grass as they folded up from the street. He watched the wrinkles on their faces swallow up the shadows on their skin as they kept their hands at their sides. He saw their eyes open wider as if peeled back from fresh dough, and heard a breath roll among them, swelling like a wave. These people then, having awoken and filled out in the clear air, suddenly went here and there in the dawn light, shredding the sun between their passing ankles. Daniel emerged from his hiding and followed one at random.

He felt vacant, fretless, and vast. The cold of the morning blew through him so completely, he wasn’t sure if he was moving of his own accord, or if some other current had caught him. The morning folk moved without seeming to understand the necessities of motion.

He wanted to ask if they too had fathers who washed them; was love something you did with your hands? Was it a hidden thing you felt only in the mornings? And if he walked among them, every morning, would he too learn to move like they did, full of warrantless grace, forgetting both the tall grass and how used to swim through the shade?