He came out of the cave, blinked at the light. It was the sun. He had been warned. “What’ll get you first, well, it’ll be the sun,” said his wife. She wasn’t coming out of the cave just yet. She had plenty to do in there. She was cooking more than ever, had learned to paint, was midway through The Collected Works of Billy The Kid. People came to see her from time to time, stood at the mouth of the cave, announced their names, waited until they heard the tinkling of the bell from within that instructed them to enter. He had been isolated nearly the whole year, with only his wife and her occasional guests as company. He had started projects but had not, to date, finished any of them. As it became clear that he’d be able to venture out, he started to retrain himself: how he would greet people, what his first words to them would be, the importance of keeping conversations economical if for no reason other than communicating a command of himself and his actions, a command that he knew was entirely mythical and that he knew they would know was mythical as well. Without the preparation he would have flung up a hand wildly and yelped his hellos like a dog. He knew he might still. The sun was in his eyes and for a brief moment he loved the feeling before the anxiety closed over him like the sea unparting and he began to gasp for breath. He considered going back into the cave, admiring his wife’s paintings or maybe even sitting for one, but he knew he couldn’t. He had been warned. “What you’ll be thinking is about turning around,” she said. “But you’ll just have to soldier on.” He holstered his fear and took his first fateful step forward. Was this what it meant to make yourself a hero?
©2021 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
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