Light Boxes by Shane Jones Page A

nice clothes that fit him. (4) Acts like a man. (5) Looks healthy. When she looked at February sitting on the floor, occasionally writing something, she saw none of this. His hair hadn’t been cut in over six months. It was a mess of brown waves and curls, a dingy mat growing down the back of his neck that embarrassed her when she brought him around her friends. His job at a local store, where he had been working for over two years without a decent raise, was going nowhere. He didn’t own a vehicle like other men, because he couldn’t afford one. Instead he rode his bike to work each day and didn’t object when the girl who smelled of honey and smoke’s parents offered to buy them a vehicle. He couldn’t afford an apartment, so he lived in his parents’ basement, where the girl who smelled of honey and smoke lived also and was now planning an escape each day she woke to the sound of someone’s piss spraying the toilet water above her head. His wardrobe consisted of underwear his mother had bought him over six years ago when he first went away to college, a half dozen faded T-shirts and three pairs of jeans that were Christmas gifts from the past three years. When February would spend hours writing a story he wouldn’t discuss because it had gotten away from him months before, the girl who smelled of honey and smoke told him that other men do things like take their girlfriends out, buy them flowers and candy, surprise them with picnics. A man, she said, doesn’t hide some make-believe story that he can’t even finish. And lastly, when she looked at February in the shower, or when he was dressing, she wondered if he was dying. His skin was pale, his arms and leg bones lacked the muscular frame that she believed was sexy. He was six foot two and weighed 155 pounds. Except for the two-mile bike ride to work, he decided against an exercise routine. Occasionally she’d see him in the bedroom, struggling on a third push-up, and she’d notice the uncombed block of hair, the tubelike body trembling, the dirty clothes piled up, the bicycle leaning against the drywall, and it reminded her of what she didn’t have, the possibilities waiting outside those dark walls.
    Â 
    FEBRUARY HELD A BEARD TRIMMER. He reread the list of characteristics the girl who smelled of honey and smoke sought in a man until the anger turned to sadness. He stretched his arms out in front of him. He inspected their thinness. He ran his hands through his hair, the thickest part at the back near his neck, a puffy mess that now embarrassed even himself. Then, flipping the plastic switch, that row of rusty little teeth sawing back and forth, February raised it to the front of his head and in one long stroke began shaving off his hair.
    When the townsfolk looked up, they believed that it was snowing but as the locks of hair fell down upon their shoulders, lashing them across their cheeks, curling around their ankles and holding them to the streets, sticking to their lips and suffocating their breath, they realized that it was another attack by February.
    Look, said Thaddeus to himself. Some summer vines are falling from the clouds. How unusual.
    It’s February, said a war member.
    Thaddeus, please, it’s February from above causing this. Can’t you see that.
    I’m going off to see February at the edge of town again, said Thaddeus.
    Thaddeus, it’s a trick. February doesn’t live at the edge of town. Look up!
    Thaddeus was off.
    Â 
    Thaddeus walked back through the
    Â 
    woods and to the home of February and the girl who smelled of honey and smoke. When he opened the door, he saw a man in a rocking chair cutting his hair with a pair of large sewing shears. The girl who smelled of honey and smoke was sitting on the floor writing on parchment paper, which she folded into tiny squares and bound with blue ribbon.
    The man, thought Thaddeus, was February. He wore faded brown pants and a dark