“Mama,” cried the youngest boy, barely tall enough to see across the king-sized bed.

“What?” Mama replied, indignantly, sitting idly on the edge of the bed, wearing nothing but a long blue t-shirt and cotton underpants. “Go eat your food, don’t be rambling on tonight, John. I’m not up for it.”

The boy’s face, which naturally obtained a light angelic tone, drew a sudden disappointed blankness, as though all of the goodness he was made up of was sucked right out of him, quickly and roughly, leaving him hollow, dry and lost as a Northwest Valley. But he did as he was told; he returned to the perfectly square oak table that stood in the smack center of the cheap hotel room, where his older brother remained eating a cheeseburger no bigger than his own callow hand.

The hotel room, which was just one of twelve other identical lodgings, was rather dark, and it had a rancid smell of rotten food, and dingy sweaty bodies, with a poor and hopeless nature. Mama had pulled the curtains together, leaving only the obnoxious glare of the television, with its muted personality, to allow them the vague evening glow, which would soon dissolve into a shivering blackness called night.

While Tom, the older of the two brothers, appeared content just smacking away on his finger food, John had become quite sassy because he was told to watch his cartoons without sound. This was at least the third time Mama had told him to do so, but ceased to explain why, for she never really explained any of the things she did. With a small frown painted to his pale face, he annoyingly watched his mother rummage through the room for her riding clothes; she would be leaving soon to go on her nightly bicycle expedition, as she did every night when the moon masked the sunlight, and darkness reigned upon all life. She dressed tonight in a different manner, as though she was made purely of the substance she had used to defeat her son’s momentary happiness for no reason at all. Perhaps it was being alone and poor her whole life that had made her bitter and ugly and old in her ways.

When the boys were done eating their food, which had been barely enough to fill them, their fingers licked dry of any remaining ketchup or pickle juice, they found some comfort laying side by side, covered with the green and yellow-tiled comforter, which not so long ago seemed only strange and insipid just because so many people had breathed under the very same blanket. But now it felt delightfully personable as it commingled with each of their scents and intimate belongings.

Tom and John snuggled lovingly against the spread, both encased with the same weight of exhaustion. They waited for Mama to tell them goodbye, to kiss them on the cheek, although tonight her lips gave off a rather cold touch, as though she was this great big winter tornado, and they were only brittle shacks built unfortunately in her path. Tom concluded he would feel all right if she refrained from kissing him, but not John. John would not be able to sleep if Mama did not kiss him.

Soon enough, the moon had taken full ownership of the black sky, out to placate the evil of the world, and Mama was finally dressed in her bicycling attire, a winter hat, gloves, coat, and wool socks. Then she did something she had never done before at the same kind of hour; she examined herself in the mirror, rather as though she expected to see someone else looking back at her. She was feeling very different tonight. Maybe it was the way the fall air flowed in and out of the trees; maybe it was thicker, harder, more violent. There was something inside of her that made her especially cruel and hating toward her progeny. John in particular, for he was the sensitive boy who needed her the most.

A tired woman she saw looking back at her, with a heavy drinker’s complexion, and sunken shady eyes. Her thin hair, which bore an old lady’s grey mixed with a few strands of vibrant brunette, was tied back into a loose knot, careless fizzy strands popping out all around her dusky forehead. She could not stand to look at that woman for long. She turned off the light, and headed for her bicycle, which was leaning against the wall in the dark corner of the room by the door.

Countless times had she taken the same exact step, her face portraying the same exact look of cumbrous confusion and frustration. Countless times had she thought about riding down the moonlit highway with different intentions than the night before. Tonight her intentions were of utmost ridicule and purposeful neglect; this time her intentions were very clear: she would not return to the hotel, she would not return to tend to her young boys who were very far from being able to care for themselves. She would ride on, be merely another weed along a barricade, another wild animal track in the snow, another dry hole from a vain ray of sunshine. They would never see her again, not in the form of which they knew her. She would ride on tonight, alone, free of ardent and pestilent thoughts. She would ride unless forcefully stopped.

Grace looked wearily at her quiet, unsleeping children, who lay together very closely as though they might wake in the morning desolate and cold.

“What did you want to ask me, John?” asked Mama. John gazed innocuously at his mother from the bed, trying to remember, but he could not remember, so he made something up.

“What’s for breakfast?” he asked. “Can we get waffles and chocolate muffins and cocoa?”

“Why would you want chocolate muffins, and cocoa?” asked Mama.

“Why not, Mama?” replied the young boy. “When will you be back, Mama?”

“I don’t know, John,” said Mama, her voice so frustrated, even he, just a young boy, could sense it. “I’ll be home around midnight, like I usually am.” But Grace did not know if that was a true statement, and neither did the boy. He kept his eyes, which were like turquoise crystals being held up high into the sunlight with an innocent hand, steady upon Mama. He did not like the rhythm of her voice. It seemed unusual and untrusting.

“Mama, will you be home before breakfast?” asked John.

“Aren’t I always?” replied Mama, tiredly.

“Yes,” said John, but there was a restlessness in the last word he spoke, as if his planned sentence had suddenly faded from his mind for no reason, only to scare him. He looked at his older brother, who remained on the bed quietly, at definite ease, watching the muted cartoons.

“Come on, boy,” he gasped at his brother, “if Mama doesn’t make it back in time, I’ll get you a chocolate muffin-.”

“-And cocoa,” John put in. Tom nodded his head.

“Cocoa, too,” said Tom. “Why are you so agitated tonight anyway?” John looked back at his mother, who now had the front door open, half of her body lingering in the desolate hallway.

“Bye, Mama,” said John, who was now standing up next to the bed, his body aching with anxiousness and urgency. He waited for Mama to kiss him goodbye.

“Lay down, son,” said Mama. “Don’t talk no more, all right? You boys behave while I’m gone, and don’t be falling asleep with no candy in your mouth, you hear?”

“Okay, Mama,” said Tom. “I’m in charge now, don’t get your nose hairs into a tangle. I can take care of the boy.” John crossed his arms about his puffy chest, grinning at his brother, and at his mother too.

“I know you will, Tom,” said Mama, her voice darkened and low, like that of an older man. “I have to go now. I’m going now. Go on, John, do what Mama tells you, crawl into bed next to your brother and behave, you hear?”

John stuck out his nose like a little bunny rabbit ravaging for food in a vegetable garden. He squinted his eyes tightly, and frowned. His mother stared strictly at him, holding out a finger. “John, I’m not feeling light about this tonight, all right? Now, crawl into bed!”

She was downright angry now, and little John knew so. He dropped his hunched shoulders, and his meanly sewn face, and he dragged himself somberly to bed. In spite of her, John turned his body fully toward his brother until he heard the door shut. Soon after, he turned back to the door in hope that his mother had not left after all, but all he saw was a corner of empty darkness, her face floating in the air against the nothingness. Despite being a very young boy, he thought for some reason he would never see his mother again.

Grace unhurriedly wheeled her bicycle down the hallway toward the stairway, and she did so without ignominious posture, for it seemed her recent thought of remaining on the road for as long as she could possibly keep up had not forced a sad, rusty cloud to come about her face, or to form along her insides.

The stabbing darkness of the night bit at her instantly, even with her polyester hat and gloves, a goose-down coat zipped up nearly to her nipping nose. Every inch of her felt frustrated and icy in this raw Oregon weather, but she knew the pain would pass and the numbness would settle. Before taking off in the late fall night of mundane streetlights and yellow markers, she looked to the proper window of the hotel, where her sons were. She wondered if they were goofing around, if they were getting tired and falling asleep, if they were just watching television quietly and softly, their minds lined with only tender colors of content, Tom’s most likely. No matter what John was up to, she knew he was probably up to it with concern and fear. But then it didn’t really matter what he was up to, because she did not plan on ever returning to dignify her thoughts.

She got on her bicycle and pedaled slowly and unsurely out of the parking lot, soon to be going down a mellow side street and then onto the main highway, where she would merge onto the parkway and ride on; ride on to a place she did not quite know yet.

 

“What are you doing, boy?” asked Tom, as he watched his younger brother staring strangely at the darkness around the doorway. “Why don’t you just lay down and hush up?”

“I’m not talking any,” whined John. “And you can’t tell me to hush up, you’re not Mama. You can’t tell me anything.”

“Oh, yes I can, and I will,” said Tom. “I’m older than you, and when Mama’s not around, I’m the boss. She even said so.” Tom placed a Tootsie Roll candy into his mouth, and then looked down at his brother, shaking his head. “Besides,” he went on, “it’s been this way ever since, why are you so agitated about it tonight?”

“I don’t know,” said John, weakly, covering his eyes with his hand. “I don’t feel right in my stomach.  Make me feel better, Tom. Make me feel happy, can you do that?” Tom rummaged through a pile of candy on the bedside table, and pulled out a stick of gum.

“Chew on this,” he said, throwing the gum onto the boy’s chest. “Just don’t fall asleep with it.”

“Tom,” John moaned, “what is this going to do? I don’t even like cherry, you stupid ape!” John threw the gum at the television and then covered his eyes with his hand again. He began to weep faintly, holding his eyes with his fingers as though he thought they might fall out.

“What has crawled inside of you and died, boy?” asked Tom. “What are you crying for? Nothing bad has happened to you, and nothing bad has happened to me.” John rolled over onto his stomach, weeping into a pillow.

“It stinks in here, Tom,” he said. “Why does it stink in here?”

“You’re most likely smelling yourself,” said Tom. “How long has it been since you bathed?” But he got no answer in words; all he could hear was his little brother’s intricate weeping, and he actually felt a vague whoosh of guilt hover over him like a blanket. “Boy,” he paused, “you want me to give you a bath? I won’t say anymore ugly things to you, if you would just stop your crying already.”

John revealed his sulking face from the pillow. He sat up, wiped the tears from his eyes, which were now more like pulsing red dots than turquoise diamonds, and he puckered up his cheeks with his palms. Tom placed his hand on his brother’s head, and rubbed his scalp like one would do to a puppy.

“I feel a demon in my stomach, Tom,” said John.  “You think it will go away with a bath?”

“Maybe,” said Tom, “why don’t we find out.”

John flipped his legs over the side of the bed, dangling them loosely, slowly, freely, all the while his face portraying disgust and agony, instead of the carelessness his legs swayed with. He sponged some left over tears from his puffy cheeks with a tissue and then gripped his stomach firmly with both hands. He groaned softly, helplessly, and then stood on his feet and went to the bathroom, looking behind him to see of his older brother was about to stand by his word.

“Tom?” he said again. And then Tom looked at his younger brother, feeling again a unique and uncomfortable hovering of guilt, for John looked so very feeble and needing; his face was almost as white as a clear day’s hammock of clouds.

“Okay, John,” said Tom, not in mockery. “You just get undressed, get the water running, and I’ll be in there soon.” John nodded his head, shutting the bathroom door.

Tom went to the window and looked out past the hotel lights and the streetlights, past the sidewalks and road signs, at all of the unknown, uninviting darkness that slept past the entire town, and he too began to feel something vile crossing his stomach. He saw Mama’s face in the moon’s milky path, but he could not make her out distinctly. It was as though she was already fading from his memory.

“Tom!” he heard from the bathroom.

“I’m coming,” he said, watching a young lady haul luggage from her car. He did not know quite what to think at the moment- good or bad thoughts, or simply nothing at all.

John was already in the bath when Tom came in. His head was drooping so low, the tip of his chin touched his bare white chest. Tom thought he looked even more fragile than he had on the bed; he looked as though he had been deeply punished for bad behavior, or a very bad doing of which he also felt had been wrong. But he did nothing wrong, had never really done anything wrong.

Tom took a seat on the toilet lid. He grabbed a French vanilla-colored washcloth from the counter adjacent to him and soaked it in the warm bubbly water for a moment, and then he washed his little brother’s back. John was faintly crying now; it was all he could hear. It was as though the world outside had its voice blatantly and abruptly taken away, and all of the young and lonely night critters were left without mothers to protect them.

“Come on, boy,” said Tom, gently, “tell your brother why you are crying.”

“No,” said John, his voice raspy and pitiful.

“Why not?”

“You don’t want to know, Tom. You don’t care nothing about what makes me cry. I know you don’t.”

“Why would I ask you, then? Close your eyes,” said Tom, squeezing a helping of water over the boy’s head.

“I don’t know,” said John. “You never cared about asking me before.”
“Well, I’ve never seen you so upset before, boy. Does your stomach feel better now?” John shook his head.

“It feels like there’s an awful demon in there, Tom. I don’t know why it got in there, I don’t know how, but its clawing and biting and it hurts.”

“Do you want some hot cocoa? I’ll go down and get some, you can stay right here.”

“No, don’t,” said John, grabbing his brother’s arm. “Don’t leave me here alone!”

“Why not? I’ll only be gone for a minute, John.”

“I don’t want you to go!” John screamed, staring into Tom’s eyes fiercely, for Tom had never seen such a look strike his brother before, never such a passionate, demanding vain look of terror. He could even feel his hand shaking as he held his arm in the air.

“Okay,” assured Tom, taking his seat on the toilet lid, moving with slow caution. He grabbed the washcloth and proceeded to wash his little brother, moving with the same easy care.

John remained as quiet and coy as an elderly man’s solitude. It had become so quiet in the hotel room, Tom thought he could hear what the muted cartoons were saying, and this he did not take a fondness to. Normally, John was very talkative and sweet, baring his soft white cheeks, his dimples and crooked front teeth, but now as he sat in the bathtub, quiet and deplorable, he acted as though something had crawled inside of him, strapped all of his happiness to its back, and then crawled out with it, far away, clearly without intention to return the boy’s bliss.

By midnight John had on his red flannel pajamas, and he was crawling into bed. Still his face held blankness and utter melancholy. Tom pulled the yellow and green comforter up over his little brother.

“Okay, boy,” he said. “Are you tired?”

“Yes,” replied John, his voice carrying a tone like a dead man brought back to life only to relive his death.

“Close your eyes, then. Before morning, Mama will be right beside you, sleeping.”

“I want her to be here, now, Tom. Why don’t we go look for her?”

“Come now, boy, you’re getting your little nose hairs in a tangle for no reason. Mama is all right. She’s been night riding since forever. She’ll be home before morning, and I’ll get you some breakfast so she can sleep.”

“You mean that, Tom?” asked John.

“Of course I mean it. What do you mean by that?” John pulled himself up to hug his big brother; his little body shook in Tom’s arms.

“Go to sleep now, John,” said Tom. So John lay back down, and closed his eyes. Tom ate another piece of candy and then crawled in beside his brother. He turned the television on low until he fell asleep, calm, unworried. He fell asleep quickly, and he slept heavily.

 

A half hour past midnight, the moon was shining brightly on Mama as she stood on the side of the road, leaning against her bicycle. The air was biting, uncaring. She took a sip of water, and looked around. It was eerily quiet for such a busy highway; but then again, it was very late. Her face drenched in sadness, grooves deep and long and sour; the troubles of raising two young boys by herself. Her melancholy could have been felt by any creature a thousand miles away, seen by even the most oblivious set of eyes, and the pounding of her heart, rickety, broken, could have been heard by the fish swimming below the surface. She just stood there on the side of the road, and stared into the blackness, her mind drawing blank and empty. Emotionless to ease the sharp edges.

She looked up and saw the moon; a comforting bulb, something that forever watched after her children while she was away. Even something that watched after her, alone on the side of the road.  Out of all the things uncertain and hazy, sickening and painful, there was always the moon that shined upon her as she rode. No matter where she went, no matter how dark the thoughts living inside her, there was that sure thing, that luminescent beauty watching over her.

And then all of that which seemed blurry suddenly became a little clearer, and her rickety heartbeat thickened up, and grew muscle and depth. The blackness started to back down, and warm pictures began to surface; old memories of happy times she once had. And there were lots of them.

Cars began to whizz by speedily, their bright lights slashing across her face.  One could even see a faint smile upon the lips of Grace. Grace Wall, who had been a poor sad woman, working at a Wal-Mart. Lonely, angry, selfish, and foolish. But then here she was now, with the moon, an old friend from way back, and for the first time she could hear the laughter of her boys as she began to slowly pedal in the opposite direction. Something she had not planned when she had set out hours earlier. She rode fast as cars suddenly started to shoot past, like sharp shards of lightning.

A cruel, bashing sunrise woke Tom and John, and they woke without Mama at their side. They woke hungry and cold and desolate, just as John thought they might. But Tom, being the older brother, took John by the hand, and walked him down to the lobby, and they got waffles and hot cocoa and chocolate muffins. They returned to their room and sat on the bed with their food, which Mama would have not allowed, and they continued to eat without savory emotion or felicity. When they were done, John ran to the window and consumed the parking lot, and as far as his eyes could reach.

“I don’t see her, Tom,” he said.

Having eventually grown exhausted from the anxiety of waiting for Mama to return home, the boys decided to wait in the parking lot, so when she came riding up they could run to her quickly, embracing her. Tom dressed John first, and then himself, and then they stood all alone in the great wide lot of emptiness. They watched as people came and went, families who came and went, happy most of them, as the biting wind came and went. They stood closely, John holding his brother’s hand tightly; his eyes were full of hope and wonderment and excitement to see Mama, who was mostly cruel to him anyway. And it was mostly because she did not know how else to be. Despite John’s young age and naïve mind, he knew so.

“Any minute now,” said Tom. “She’ll be riding up any minute now, and then we can all be together again.” But John did not believe it, and he smiled at Tom anyway.

“My stomach still aches, Tom,” John said. “The demon has not gone away, but I think maybe it will some time a long ways from now.”

“Good.”

The air felt like tiny beetles with thick prickly feet prancing along their young faces and up inside of their clothing. Their cheeks grew red with coldness, their eyes droopy with anguished, ravaged color, their fingers and toes numb, and their heads tired from expecting.