Below it is red-hot, criss-crossed flame, where his belt whistled in to cut my behind, the backs of my legs. It has eased  enough for me to pull out my lower lip from between my teeth, and pant. My eyes burn.

If I hiccup again Chris will throw his long leg down and kick me hard, so I swallow each sound. The jump in my jaw begins to slow.

I lie pinned under the tight red blanket, waiting for my older brother to fall asleep so I can climb out and roll to my belly. If I move quickly I rock the upper bunk, and then hell to pay. I can't move without a plan.

My hands want to move from under to over the blanket edge. No matter how slowly I turn my toes toward the other ankle, or crawl my fingers up over the satiny, torn edge, he will hear and hiss. Lean over the top bunk, make the evil scrunched up troll face. I don't want to be hit, but I don't want to see this face either, just before sleep, in the moony dark of our bedroom.

I move slowly. Is he listening? Still awake? I dont know. I think so.

My little brother sleeps two feet to my right, but invisible behind the dented metal headboard of his trundler. I squeeze my teeth together so I can turn my head without shaking. My eyes follow again the same dark blue shadows of the bent frame, the banged-up flat panel. Every pushed-in crater, each L-shaped impression, is the result of tumult and fights since Chris and I were very little. The familiar scenery on my right side, at night, since I gained memory. Since forever.

There is pale light from the window at the foot of the bed, enough to see, but not enough: the surface of this head board jitters between what my blurring eyes can really see and what is memorized, what I know is there already. I look for, try to see, the red-brown spidery rust, in a scratch that lies in the deepest indent; I widen my eyes and it pulls my mouth into a frown. I do this again and again but just when I think I see it wiggles away like an electric caterpillar and disappears, and all I see is black again, and the faint cobalt edge where it should be, almost.

I cannot keep my head so far to the right, lying flat like this. But even so I turn my head further, to where it pulls the cords in my neck too much, and tightens all over, to drown out that hot pain below, before I slowly, so slowly -- I think he is asleep up there, but I am not sure -- turn it all the way to the left, evenly, slowly, my shoulders very still. I squeeze my eyes shut, tight, to push out the bits of water and to see the change, again, from pinwheeling black can't-see-it to black-orange reverse colors to dark flowered wallpaper. It is a little brighter on this side. Just a little.

The yellow and blue flowers repeat. Each green tendril is exactly the same but there are six different  combinations of flowers, little ones, that make the pattern.

In the years I have lived in this room I have never stopped looking for the 7th flower, the one that is different, that disturbs the dead repeat of it all. I don't count misprints or smudges or where the wallpaper is cut to meet a corner or floorboard. I know it is somewhere, probably up high, where I can't see clearly. Every day I look here beside me, under the dark slats, and along the far wall where we play Parchesi and Operation, and near the door, by the switch: my eyes climb, every day, over each little set.

But it is always the same: the same printed paper flowers: this one is two blue and one yellow; so is this one but they face down, sad; above them the double-yellow; on this side just one yellow, but with two blue dots, like buds, or mistakes; on the other side a complicated swirl of blue and yellow that touch and make a cuticle of green between them; and down below: the smallest, the little blue one. Then repeat, repeat, all over the wall.

I slowly pull my hands out -- stop, sliiide, clear the elbow, wait: is he breathing steady now? -- and move my left hand up, fingers spread like a starfish, slooow -- how far is it to the wall? then my damp palm touches the talcum cool of the paper, and I flatten against it, like I do every long, black night, and shift until I cover all six, my small fingers at rest against the deep grey of the wall, the leftmost flower under my pinky, the rightmost under my thumb, the whole field gone, and as always I pretend I can feel them, that this pretty little family of blooms is alive.

As always my eyes search out, again, sweeping around as far as I can see, looking for the 7th bloom. Habit.

He is asleep, I think. I take both hands and carefully -- wait: he turns! now I must grip the frayed edge, wait before I pull it free from the tight edge tucked along the wall; I breathe; I count to one hundred in ones, with mississippis and o-hi-os alternating between each number. I move my lips. It is sing-song before I reach 10, I yawn at 30, start counting through tight teeth at 50. He hasn't moved. I creep my hands along the blanket and under the thin mattress and pulll-l-l, grip again, pull-l-l;  quietly, in tens now: 10 mississippi, 20 o-hi-o, 30 mississippi -- the blanket pulls free -- and I repeat 30 mississippi two more times, like it's lucky. Room to pull more, and sit up, now, slow, slow, slow, then I turn, more pull, then one monkey leg up and out.

It hurts so bad. My pajamas stick and pull where the blood was, in spider lines, back there. I turn: hurts again, but I can't stop now, I tell myself if I go all the way, quickly, he will not hear and I suddenly believe this: going slow is somehow louder, more suspicious, louder than Hurry and Be Done. The cool air makes me want to glide. My other leg is now free and I roll over, the bad pressure is off at last, back there, I breathe deep, the hot red heat of my punishment lifts away, and I use my elbows to crawl to the end of the bed. I rest my chin on my fist for a moment -- he moves! stop! -- but then he settles: 50 misssissippi 60 o-hi-o 70...and I inch to the very end.

The moonlight makes a pool on the floor, off the foot of the bed, and I unclench. A small breeze, smaller than me, shuffles the thin curtain. The box window, old wood, is open a foot or so, and the sounds of crickets and frogs chazzle beyond the screen. It is a sound I love, a sound that settles in behind my ears, a sound that changes the subject.

Almost. It is not enough. My bottom aches, but it is better. I no longer sizzle down there. I think: I am up-ended, and I make one small smile.

If I move my eyes back and forth a little I lose the pattern of the screen and see the sycamores sway. The wash of leaves dip and jostle in the better wind, the wind that forever tends the plains, higher up. I close my eyes and still see those moving trees.

A train throms, way out there, half-way to Olathe; I feel the distant clack before I hear it, then the first long note, as if from under a sea of tall grass. I open my eyes but everything is still the same. I see them: the merry passengers, the conductor, old-timey, in black and white. Asleep in each curtained perch, or sipping from cups, playing checkers in the caboose. The train sounds again, comes over the corn and up the shallow draws full of scrub cottonwood, a note blown through a mile-long horn of iron. Then clack joins rumble, the end of it, the go-away sound that lasts and lasts. My legs shift, toes turn in again, and I am asleep.

**
I dream I am walking down our hallway -- the same pale light, the same blue-black, and my bedroom flowered paper is everywhere -- but the wind is bigger, a Voice, a thrushing noise above the roof.

I come into the living room. The keyhole clock ticks above me on my left, the front door clicking open, almost closed each time, then opens more; the wind urges it open, wider, wider still.

I look behind me and the hall is a perfect black. I am afraid to return. Someone is outside. I can hear the wind. I want to see the trees.

I walk across the oval rug and open the painted door. The storm door is missing and I am suddenly all the way outside, toes along the edge of the small front stoop, the concrete cool under my soles. This is so real it thrills me. I am able to see the entire yard. The evergreens blow back on either side, showing me everything.

There is no one. The dark green maple in the center before me thrashes violently, but I feel no wind. I feel the first spiked wave of fear fold and turn along my spine, up my neck, bristling my scalp into a tight ball -- but I am on a track, I must do every next thing.

I don't want to look. I don't want to see.

My eyes move there anyway, over the lawn and up the straight thick trunk, past the low, nodding leaves to the heart of it, deep inside, where the branches part like a curtain and now I see: he sits, smiling at me, a fool's grin.

His skin is sick yellow, and scales away: little bone-pale bits of him on the branches and leaves, picked up and scattered by the swirl that surrounds him. His bird feet grip his branch, his torso covered in swollen bulges;  he sits like rank buboes'd royalty, his sallow arms wrap the thin brown wood on each side.

He has a ball of crushed petals in one ancient hand. His ears change, become pointed, as my eyes move up. His scalp is dotted with blue and yellow, and a drift of long black hair? no, it isn't hair now but just ratcheting, bending twigs and leaves, a dark frenzied halo behind his unmoving head.

This is too real. I want this to stop.

I can see every split nail, every iguana fold of him, the sag of his belly, the cords in his wiry arms. His knees are broken and bleed a thick yellow-gray stuffing. I look at his eyes, at last, and his grin breaks wide, his lips crack. He is all yellow except for the sagging red rims -- wet, dripping -- around small, pale blue eyes, and he is so pleased to see me. To know I see him.

He has waited for me, up there in that tree. He plucks out one of his eyes and gestures at me with it, then puts it in his mouth, chews it up, for me. Just for me.

**
I wake up, moving, a brilliant scream for each chopped breath; I stand up in the low bunk, folded over, my back bent against the papered wall, my neck twisted, my head pressed hard against the bed above, my hands gripping the slats overhead -- and nothing, not my baby brother's frightened crying, not my older brother's kicks and insults, not my sister's panic'd pacing,  not even my father's bellowing rage from behind the walls and the sounds of him fumbling with his brace and cane, can make me stop, nothing, not even when my mother tries to pry my fingers loose -- "for Pete's sake, stop!" and "what in the world?" and "why is he out of his blanket?" and "stop, NOW!" -- until at last she climbs in with me and wraps her arms around my waist and rocks me; then I stop, I stop screaming and let go. I stop shaking the bed.

But my eyes are wide, wide open, and my hands are tight, broken baskets, palms up, against the waffled curlers in her lacquered hair, and my jaw clicks, up, down, again and again and again.