Believing Cedric by Mark Lavorato Page B

behind him, then at one of the horses he’d put out to pasture for his father. It was strange how calm the horses appeared, standing placid and regal.
    Cedric cleared his throat.
    Peter shook his head. “Anyweh, like isaid, these’r complucated . . . gron-up things, kid. Ya wuldn’t unerstan.”
    â€œOh believe me,” Cedric said, smiling, “I know all about those adult things.” He straightened up. “Just like I know this crisis’ll blow over. Like I know that, after it does, the Cold War will just build and build, long past Kennedy’s assassination, and will only dwindle away just before the Soviet Union collapses.” The boy, looking quite happy with himself, gave Peter an exaggerated wink. “That’s what I know.”
    â€œWha’ju . . . ? Whah? ” Peter squinted.
    Cedric removed his foot from the raised deck. He placed his hands in his pockets. “And I know much more than that,” he said, looking for a moment into the dry grass at his feet. “Much more. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it isn’t roses for everybody. Bad things happen. To the world. To me.” He swallowed. Then, shifting his weight, Cedric pulled a sudden finger from his pocket and pointed into Peter’s face. “But it doesn’t play out the way you think. So keep the doomsday trumpeting to yourself. You hear?”
    Cedric turned and started down the hill. He dipped into the draw and climbed up the other side, stepping out of the coulee and onto the road. He was still looking around at the houses and yards as if he’d never seen them before. Then, abruptly, he lost this acute focus and was looking just in front of his feet again, walking like he had been earlier, less self-assured, smaller, limping to join his friends.
    Peter found himself staring down into his glass, hazily contemplating what had just happened. But, as it was, he was having a hard enough time focusing on the glass itself, the colour of the whisky blurring into a shapeless froth in his lap, let alone digesting word for word something that hadn’t made any sense at all. There was, however, a single allusion that the boy had made that kept rising in his mind; something about J.F.K. getting—stabbed, did he say, shot? Either way, Peter thought, it was laughable. Imagine, someone killing Kennedy. He was sniggering now. “Crizzy kid.”
    There was, however, something troubling about the incident, something he felt quite compelled to push away. Resting his head against the back of his chair, he resumed the woozy task of watching the sky, waiting. In the pasture in front of him, one of the horses lifted its head and turned toward the clouds that hovered over the mountains, as if watching too. Its tail swished, an ear cupping to the side. Tuning into something unseen, unknown. Or tuning out.
    Peter admired how the clouds above the mountains had fixed themselves onto the glass sky with such serene stillness. A stillness, in fact, thought Peter, sinking farther into his chair, that was perfect. Perfect.

( iii )
    When the first of us got his licence
    we stood on the driveway
    passing it around like a chalice
    our voices still crackling with pubescence
    That night we drove beyond the city limits
    into the dark where moths struck the windshield
    and flashes of green eyes stopped frozen
    in the ditch to watch us pass
    Inside the dashboard glow pressed at the glass
    with the images of our faces sated with freedom
    and distorted only as much as the radio swells were
    electrified with our wildness and youth and abandon
    Outside the fields were strewn with hay bales
    like course-haired creatures hunched over
    and sleeping, oblivious to the wide-open night
    and the infinite promise it held
    Somewhere above the car I imagined
    a meteorite slicing open a slash of sky
    and sealing it up instantly
    with the dwindling haze of its tail
    All while we raced along at a floating