The Summer That Melted Everything (11 page)

The light was letting go, and it was violence's chance. The closeness of that very violence surged through me like an overwhelming disturbance that chilled my blood, a seemingly impossible feat in that heat, but that's how scared shitless I was.

I tore open the bag of lentils and poured them into my hand. I threw hard, and while the lentils fell, I grabbed Sal's hand—so sweaty I had to grip twice. Our hands eventually slipped from each other's as we ran as fast as we could from the open, hungry mouth that had taken chase.

The young girls were the first to fall away, followed by the women whose heels wouldn't let them go any farther. They threw these heels at us like loose, sharp teeth as they hollered for the men to keep on, keep on and tear us to pieces.

“Make us proud,” they insisted, some still in aprons smelling of home.

Me and Sal dodged the honking cars on the lanes before sticking to the yards, running in between houses and through the spray of a water hose and a man watering his oleander. My legs ached. A cramp was coming on in the right hamstring. I looked back. The crowd had gotten smaller. The older of the men had stopped, clutching their chests in a line like a heart attack parade. My own heart was thumping so badly, I looked down and thought at first I was bleeding from the chest, soon realizing it was just sweat and water from the hose soaking through my red T-shirt.

Our pursuers dwindled until all who remained was an eighteen-year-old from Breathed High who was OSU bound on a track scholarship. Dressed for Breathed track, in the school's dark purple and lavender tank and shorts, he jumped over fallen logs and fences like hurdles, took turns with the ease of straight tracks and was sprinting to the finish line of our heels. I wanted to keep looking back, stare the cheetah of the Midwest in the eyes, but Sal kept screaming to just keep running.

I could feel the boy's breath on the backs of my calves, and just when I thought he was going to reach out and grab us, I heard a scream and the squealing of tires. I turned and saw the track star bounce off the hood of a DeLorean, his sweat flinging from his forehead as he flew up into the air, seemingly touching the sun.

The driver was out of the car quick. I could hear him asking the boy to wiggle his toes as Sal pulled me away. I could hear the boy saying he couldn't,
oh God,
he couldn't wiggle his toes.

Just before we crossed into the woods, I saw the red lights of the sheriff's car.

“That boy.” I bent over and grabbed my knees, feeling I might get sick. “You know he has a track scholarship. To OSU. I wonder … I wonder if … Oh, God.”

“C'mon,” Sal tugged my arm. “We best get lost for a while.”

We climbed up the nearby hill, running until we were deep in its cover of woods and could no longer hear the siren.

Sal caught his breath against a tree. “Where should we go?”

“I know a place. Follow me.”

We jumped every time a twig snapped, every time a wild turkey gobbled, every time a hawk squawked like a scream, fearing they had found us out. He chewed his lip until I thought he would chew it down to his chin.

I was so out of my head, I got lost. I couldn't stop thinking about that boy enough to remember direction. We must have passed the same deer drinking hole three different times. Eventually I sobered from worry enough to find the overgrown pasture up on the side of the hill. Past it was a pine grove that led by an old abandoned schoolhouse and from there to the tree me and Grand had built a house in.

“This is mine and Grand's secret place.” I climbed up the slats hammered into the wide trunk. “I've never brought anyone here before.”

I paused on the slats, glancing down at Sal climbing up behind me. “I hope her baby's gonna be all right. Did you see all that blood? Sal? I saw her belly. I saw it push in when she hit. I've never seen anything like it. Have you?”

He nodded he had. I turned back to the slats and climbed the rest of the way.

“And that runner.” I paced the spacey boards that made up the floor while Sal leaned back against the tree trunk continuing its growth up through the middle of the house. “I can't get the sound of the tires squealin' outta my head.”

He stared at the two red handprints on the wall. “If this is yours and your brother's place, why'd you bring me here, Fielding?”

“Ain'tcha like me and Grand? I mean maybe you and me ain't brothers, but I mean we ain't just friends. We're in this together now. They weren't just chasin' you, Sal. They were chasin' me too.”

On the floor was a wooden crate with one of Mom's afghans draped over it. I threw the afghan off as I said, “There's too many people confused 'bout what they think happened back there. They got it in their damn heads that you pushed her. Hell, they think I pushed her too. We've got a right to protect ourselves against that confusion, don't we?”

He came and nudged the crate with his toe as I sat down, happy to be closer to the floor I thought I was going to collapse down to at any moment. My hands were still shaking, little vibrations as if they were being chewed on by gnats.

When I pulled the revolver out of the crate, Sal took it from me by its ivory handle.

“Cool, huh? Me and Grand found it in the attic a few years ago. We never did tell Mom and Dad 'bout it. Parents get … worried 'bout guns.” I opened the chamber to show him the bullets inside. “It's only missin' one.”

He closed one eye and peered down the barrel of the gun.

“Sal? Was that true back there, 'bout the staircase 'n' all?”

He looked deeper into the barrel and then held the gun up, aiming it at the wall behind me. “It's true.”

“What'd you mean when ya said you were discontented with the one suit of your life?”

I thought for a moment he was actually going to fire the gun, but he slowly lowered it to his lap as he asked, “Have you ever tried on one of your father's suits?”

I shook my head.

“You will one day.”

“Are you sayin' that's all ya did? Was try on one of God's suits?”

“I just wanted to try it on. See if it fit me or one day might.” For the first time, he seemed more sweat than skin. “The thing about trying on your father's suit is that if you wear it outside the closet, you are no longer merely trying it on. You are wearing it. Some may think this is you trying to replace your father.”

“Did ya step outside the closet, Sal?”

He nodded. “But only because there were no mirrors in the closet and I just wanted to see how I looked. That was all. I just wanted to see how I looked in my father's suit.” He lowered his eyes to the gun. “It didn't fit.”

 

8

Melt, as I do,

.   .   .   .   .

 … bliss on bliss

—
MILTON,
PARADISE LOST
4:389, 508

I
N LIEU OF
family and friends at the dinner table, I've piled laundry in the chairs to avoid the emptiness. Still it's not easy to dine with dirty jeans and stained shirts. Yesterday I tried something new. I had dinner at the VFW. It was my first time there with them veterans of foreign wars.

When I walked in, they leaned back in their chairs and nodded sympathetically, like I was one of them. Maybe that was because of the service uniform I was wearing and had bought at the thrift store down the road.

As soon as I sat down at the bar, a guy attached to my side, asking what war.

I pretended not to hear him. He smelled like a dog fight. Sweaty. Bloody. A little scared.

When the bartender came, I placed my order for a beer and the BBQ ribs meal.

“I asked ya what war were ya in?” The drunk beside me took a swallow or two of his beer.

“The
big
one.” I sipped my own beer the bartender had just served.

“Yeah, the
big
one.” The drunk's eyes got even glassier. He knew exactly what war I was talking about, even if he didn't.

“Hey, I forgot to ask for your card.” The bartender had returned. “Your membership card.”

“This is my membership card.” I tapped the uniform.

“Amen.” The drunk threw back his beer and asked for another.

“You're over your limit, Gus. Look”—he turned back to me—“I gotta have the card.”

“Leave 'im alone.” Gus slapped my back, a little too hard. “He was in the
big
one.”

The bartender looked from Gus to me and waited. I picked up my glass of beer in case he was going to try to take it away from me.

“I don't have a card.”

“You're not a veteran?” The bartender slung his towel over his shoulder and leaned onto the counter. “We only serve veterans.”

“I'm a veteran. Just not of the United States Army or Navy or whatever the hell this is.” I pinched the uniform.

“You said…” Gus slurred. “You said you were in the
big
war.”

I finished the last of my beer in a great gulp. “I was.”

“He's my guest.” Gus kept turning his glass up to his lips even though it was empty. “He don't need no card if he's a guest of someone with a card. And ain't ol' Gus here got a card?” He flipped his card out from his pocket. It was creased until his name had faded.

The bartender shrugged and returned to wiping the counter.

“You ever kill anybody?” Gus perched his chin on my shoulder and wobbled on his stool. A few more, and I'd be wobbling with him. Two old birds singing on the same old wire.

“Yeah.” I wiped my mouth on my sleeve. “Yeah, I killed someone once. Hey, can I get another?”

The meal was shit. Made me miss my frozen dinners. Damn Gus, who ended up passing out when I was midsentence and before he saw me, beers later, coming to blows with three silver-haired Iraq War veterans, one in a wheelchair. I can't make my fists like I used to, but I still got the punch. Bartender and a couple of the other young ones had to break us up. Not sure what started it all, but I never am.

As I stumbled from the VFW, bloody and bruised, I thought of Dovey. Her care went beyond the resources of Breathed's doctor, so they sent her up to the hospital in Columbus to monitor the baby. That's where they took the track star too. He finally made it to OSU, though it was the hospital instead of the track. He would be there for months but not as long as he was in the rehabilitation center. He'd never walk again.

Later I'd hear he rolled his wheelchair off a train platform while wearing his old lavender and dark purple track uniform from Breathed High. Sometimes the only thing left to do is to flee the life and hope that after we've fled we're spared the judgment of dying wrong.

He must have been something like thirty-six by then. I sent his mother lilies for the funeral, unsigned. Would have sent them to his widow, but he never married.

An apology to him was on my lips as I sat down on the sidewalk, not even half a block away from the VFW.

“Hey, buddy, you okay?”

A passerby. I flipped him and his nosey dog the bird.

“Fuck you too, buddy.”

Finally left in peace, I tried to lie down. Couldn't, though—on account of the heartburn brought on by the barbecue sauce in that shit meal. As I sat up, a sheriff car went driving by. Partly the night, partly my drunkenness, but I saw Sal looking out the window at me just as he'd looked that June morning when Sheriff Sands drove him away.

Sitting there on the sidewalk, feeling as certain as any drunk man can feel, I reached for Sal, screaming his name. I was convinced I was seeing him with his face pressed against the glass. I somehow stood up and stumbled out into the road. The sheriff was nearing the turn and by it would turn out of my life.

I picked up a handful of small gravels from off the pavement. Winding up like I was on the mound, I pitched them, just as Grand had taught me. They pinged and bounced off the car's trunk, causing the brake lights to flash red and the tires to squeal to a stop. When the sheriff got out, he did so cussing and with his hand on his holster.

“Now, you just take a step back onto that sidewalk there. You hear me? Goddamn it. I said take a step back. That's good. Now, why you throwin' rocks at my fuckin' car like that?” He used his flashlight to shine on the trunk. “Could've broken my damn winda out, you old fool.”

I stammered as he shined the light into my eyes.

“Been drinkin' tonight, have we?”

“Just a little, sir.”

“You know you've pissed yourself?” He shined the light down.

“Couldn't find the bathroom, sir.”

“Says the man who's just had a little. You look like a caveman, all that hair, all that beard. You used to be in one of them rock bands or somethin'? Can't let it go now? You still have to look the part, don'tcha? If I was you, I'd get myself to the barber and only drink coffee from now on, you understand?”

He was so close, I could smell coffee on his breath. I knew he could smell the beer on mine. I closed my mouth and didn't breathe. I got light-headed as he asked if I was driving home.

I shook my head. My lungs tightening, about to burst.

“How you plan on gettin' home?”

My answer was a sharp intake of breath.

“You drivin'?”

“No, sir.”

“Ain't you too old for this shit?” His hand dropped from his holster. “What's that you got all over your beard? That red stuff?”

“Barbecue sauce.”

He shined the flashlight down over the rest of me and my thrift store uniform. “You were in the armed forces?”

“I was in a war, yes. It was me.” I stabbed my finger into my chest. “It was me who stopped the war.” I made my hand into a gun and whispered a bang. “That was me with the gun.”

He lowered the light down to my tennis shoes. “Your shoelaces are untied.”