The
pyre was fading into evening; the smoke now rose in waves from the blackened
detritus of wood and flesh where small flames leapt infrequently and
disappeared, forever.
Skunk
lay still, unattended, his bare back flushed from prolonged exposure to the intense
heat with every breath pulled from him before he could fully replenish his
lungs of that previous. He shut his swollen streaming eyes against the rising
white mansion, still suppressing the perpetual impulse to roll and stare at
what remained, what flesh and bone had not collapsed in flame, and lying thus
he saw himself pitch round and push his face into the smouldering bed of ash,
his skin dissolved and stuck with wrinkled twigs and loose and chalky fragments
of her bones, the suttee consummated as his body boiled and bubbled with the
remnant of her own.
He
began to place his words inside each rasped depleted breath.
Skunk
(moaning): I want her back. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus I want her back. I want her
back. Bring her back to me Jesus, bring her back
quietly
on and on, the words as regular, as compulsory as each exhalation that
contained them, but as he spoke, Jesus, standing sorrowful and impotent,
twisted his face away to whisper
Jesus:
I can’t.
