Mr. Silas Mcgruffin's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Silas McGruffin pressed his palm to the window and could not see his own porch. The nightbloom fog had come again, thick as wet wool, and it had sealed his door shut by dawn. He was old enough to remember when this fog first crawled out of the western marshes, and he did not have many clear days left to waste behind glass. He counted six good mornings this month. Six mornings when his name still came to him before his coffee did. On the bad mornings, the stories slipped. He would reach for the tale of the marsh fox and find only the shape of it, like a coat on a hook with no one inside. He had lived since the first telling of every legend he knew. If he died with them still in his mouth, they died too. He needed an heir. A child, a stranger, anyone who would sit still and listen. But no one climbed his hill in fog like this. He tried the front door. The swollen wood held. He tried the back. The fog pressed against it like a hand. He struck a match at the hearth, hoping smoke and heat would thin the air near the sill. The match guttered. The scar over his left eye ached the way it always did before weather turned worse. He went down to the cellar. He kept seeds there, in tins his wife had labeled sixty years ago. Among them sat one packet he had not opened since the last long fog. The rose. The old growers said its bloom drank nightbloom air and gave back clean breath. He had never needed to test it. He brought the packet up and planted the single seed in the cracked pot by the door. He watered it from the kettle. Then he sat and waited, because waiting was one thing he still did well. The stem rose in an hour. The bud opened by noon. The flower was black, heavy, and its petals moved as if breathing. The fog at the window began to thin in a slow circle around the pot. By late afternoon, he could see the porch rail. By dusk, he could see the road. He pulled the door open. Cold clean air struck his face. He stepped onto the porch with the pot in both hands and set it on the top step, where the wind could carry its work down the hill. Then he saw the footprints. Small ones. Fresh in the wet grass at the bottom of his stairs, stopped halfway up, then turned back toward the trees. Someone had tried to reach his door while the fog held. Someone had given up minutes ago. Silas gripped the rail. His clear day was burning down fast, and whoever had come was already walking away.