Don’t ever say that again! You’re lying.” She had never hit him before and his shock left him speechless. She slapped him in the face, so hard he fell to the ground. Matthew’s mother broke away from her husband and turned to her son. Matthew stood his ground, faced his father and pointed his finger. The horses’ manes flashed and shrivelled, their teeth bared, their hooves flailed at the flames, the skin crisped, going black along their backs, chained in their stalls while the hay went up all around them, so hot they burned, denied even the cruel blessing of suffocation. Matthew ran down the stairs and out the door to his mother’s side and saw what she saw inside that burning barn. If he had wanted to, Matthew could have caught them on his tongue.Įverything made sense then-the kerosene can, the rags, his father’s flustered irritation, his sharp, “Nothing, you hear! I’m doing nothing!” when Matthew asked him what he was up to yesterday in the tack room. Ashes rose and swirled in the heated air. Her cries mingled with the horses’ shrieks. She twisted and turned in her husband’s grip and Matthew knew there would be bruises up and down her arms tomorrow.

His father strained to keep his mother from running headlong into the inferno. His parents and his brother were already in the yard. The barn was firelit from within, and orange tongues flickered up almost gently from the roof. They sounded like eagles torn apart, like metal gears stripping, like speared whales.

What we call fundamental truths are simply the ones we discover after all the others.Ĭynicism is the last refuge of the broken-hearted.

Our daily bread lauren b davis