The Summer That Melted Everything (31 page)

I did as I told Sal I would. I told the sheriff and Dad and anyone else who asked that I alone walked Dresden home. That on the way, a branch fell. Sal wasn't there, I swore. He was already far from there. Of course, there were those who didn't believe me. It didn't help that Alvernine was telling her side of the story.

When asked about the various bruises on Dresden's body, Alvernine said it must've been the branch. The coroner determined the bruises were received prior to the branch and not a direct result of it. Alvernine was charged. She pleaded guilty and received three to five years.

On the wall of her cell, she taped photos of Dresden. She called that wall her rose garden. Within the first year of her sentence, they would find her hanging in front of that garden, slowly asphyxiated by a noose of sheets.

In the days following Dresden's death, Sal had yet to speak. It was as if he had to pull the strength together. He became the boy with the pain in the chest. I wonder what he did that night I told him to leave the woods. Did he go straight home and hide away under the pillows and cushions of the window bed? That was how I found him. Trying to become just another pillow, another cushion, another thing of stuffing that didn't have to feel a broken heart.

I pulled the cushions and pillows off him one at a time. Found him flat, pressed down from fingertips to heart. Looking at me with his eyes that said,
Cover me back. Please, just cover me back up.

Pillow by pillow, I did.

Dad tried. He went to the window but didn't touch the pillows or cushions. He reached over them and touched the glass instead.

“Things will be all right.” He didn't sound so sure as his sweaty fingers smudged the glass. He began to rattle on about his court cases because that's all he had. I shut my eyes. I was sitting on the floor, leaning back against the wall.

The cases sounded like walking through a cornfield. I'm sure they did to Sal too. Walking the tight rows, the tall stalks. So tall, they're mountains in fields and you're climbing through.
Swish, swish.
The sound of trying to make it through so many things in your way.
Swish, swish.
Unable to touch and unable not to be touched. Each corn leaf sharp at the edge. Slapping your arms. Your legs. Hitting your face.

Just when you get away from one, you've got another leaf already there. Another one after that. Everywhere you look, more of the same, all around you. The leaves cut little nicks, carving you one slice at a time. The jungle of the Midwest.
Swish, swish.
You shut your eyes to protect them from all the sharp and all the slicing. You have to walk blind. Listening to only the sound.
Swish, swish.
Feeling the pollen from the tassels falling down. Light particles but heavy enough to start to bury you.
Swish, swish.
That's what Dad and his cases sounded like.
Swish, swish.

He left the room. Maybe he didn't even see me sitting over there. He didn't look. He just left, a case still falling from his lips.

Later, Mom came in with her spray bottle of vinegar and a rag. She found a cushion Sal wasn't under and leaned down into it with her knee as she reached over and began to spray the glass.

“You know, they call these picture windas.”
Wipe, wipe, wipe. Squeak, squeak.
“I call it my
on the way
winda. I always look out it, every mornin' on my way downstairs. I just stand there in the hall and peek in over your sleepin' heads and look out. And then I move on.

“I hope this is just on your way too, Sal. We've got to keep movin', don't we? Sometimes things happen, bad things,
on the way
, but we've got to keep movin'. If we don't, we won't get to the next thing, and it could really be somethin'. It could be the best something of our lives.”

The room smelled like vinegar long after she left. When Grand came in, he remarked about the smell.

He stood at the edge of the pillows and cushions.

“I bet Dad was ramblin' off about cases.” He glanced down at the cushions, at the slight movement under them. “He used to do that to me when I was in Little League and lost a game. Here he'd come and start talkin' about
So-and-So v. So-and-So.
I guess he don't know what else to do for loss. Whether it's a ball game or a girl. A girl.”

He laid his sweating hands on the pane. “Sometimes I wanna break this winda out, don't you? Just break it out. It's the only winda in the whole house that don't open. Just a big square of glass. Out. Out.” He pressed on the glass. The cushions moved again and Grand dropped his hands. “Get better, Sal. You can help me break it out one day.”

He patted the pillows. They didn't move again. On his way out, he looked down, his blue eyes seeming to be the only color for miles around that dark room. He'd been the only one to notice me. He kneeled and squeezed my shoulder. I wanted desperately to wrap my arms around him, but he stood before I got the nerve.

After he left, I went to the window bed. I reached in under the pillows and cushions until I found Sal's arm, which wasn't as thin as when he'd first arrived. The same could be said for the rest of him. Mom's meals had done him good, though he never seemed to eat the meat. I think maybe he was the only true vegetarian.

“Stop, Fielding.” He pulled back, but I didn't let go.

“C'mon, Sal. Come out now.”

“I said stop it.”

I pulled harder. His face was out of the cushions and pillows now—so close to mine, I could feel his hot breath. “Fielding, let go or I'll burn the house down while you're all sleeping.”

I let go. He slowly lay back down as he gathered the pillows and cushions in a great heap, burying himself once more.

That night I lay in bed and watched the pillows and cushions heave up and down with his breathing. I thought of fire and the house burning. I fell asleep into a nightmare of this. At the part in the nightmare when everyone was burning, their skin oozing off like some sort of goop, I woke out of breath and into the middle of the night.

I used a T-shirt to wipe the sweat off my face as I stared at the pillows and cushions scattered on the floor and leading from the window like a trail. Big cushions, little cushions, big pillows, the little fringed ones, all leading me downstairs. I heard a faint sound, one I thought splattered quite a bit.

I went toward the sound and the dark kitchen, where I found Sal crawling on his hands and knees across the linoleum. All around him were circles of yellow. I saw the emptied mustard bottles piled on top of the table.

As he crawled, he slammed his hand down onto each circle he came upon, causing the mustard to pop and splatter.

“Whatcha doin', Sal?” I quietly asked.

“Popping all the yellow balloons,” he answered without stopping. “All the yellow balloons in the world so no more will get caught in trees. And no more girls will die because of it.”

“You know it wasn't your fault, Sal.”

“Wasn't it?”
Pop
and
splatter
. “I stepped on the branch.”

“No, you didn't.”

What more could I do but lie. What more could I give him but the shortest way to the light.

“I was watchin' you, and you didn't even touch that branch. It fell on its own, Sal. Sometimes branches just do that.”

He slapped his hand down on the circle before him, the mustard splashing onto his face. He turned to me with yellow freckles.

“Go to bed, Fielding. You've got the funeral in the morning.”

*   *   *

By morning, the only thing remaining of the mustard balloons were the empty bottles in the trash can. The linoleum smelled of Pine-Sol. The mop still wet in the bucket. Sal didn't leave the kitchen all night.

I was already in my black suit when Dad walked into my room, saying it was time to get up and go.

“How's it fit?” he asked of the suit. He'd been the one to buy it for the occasion.

“Fine.” My feet shifted under the weight of it.

“You look … grown.” He felt his tucked tie. “Where's yours?”

I pointed to the black tie draped over the back of my desk chair. “I didn't know how to put it on.”

He went over and picked it up.

“Dad?” Grand was in the doorway. “The sheriff's downstairs. He wants you.”

“Here.” Dad handed Grand the tie. “Help your brother with this.”

Long after he heard Dad go down the steps, Grand stayed leaned into the doorframe, the tie loose in his hand.

“You don't know how to put it on?”

I shook my lowered head.

The floor creaked under his steps, and I closed my eyes in broken joy as I felt his fingers come gently under my collar. They lightly brushed my neck, and though his skin was hot, I felt the cold disaster of the wound we called being brothers.

“Inside out. Cross. Over and under.” His hands followed his instructions. “Are you listenin', little man?”

I nodded.

“Pull. Tighten. Take this end here and another pull. Behind this loop. Bring it through the knot. Like this. Then just tighten. Gentle, though. There you have it.”

His hands stayed on the knot before following the tie down to straighten it.

“Fielding, look at me.”

I slowly raised my eyes, but could get no further than his chin.

“What?” Was that my voice that had come out so thin, so vanished in its presence?

He sighed and tilted his chin up, leaving me his neck, glistening with small drops of sweat. “Nothin'.”

The room echoed of this as he left. I could hear him softly close his door. He wouldn't be going to the funeral. Neither would Mom, for the obvious reason.

I looked down at my tie and picked up its end, smelling my brother. I laid my lips against the silk and said what I couldn't say to him.
I love you.

I straightened it back and went downstairs. The sheriff was gone, and Dad was asking if I was ready. I nodded before following him out to the freshly washed Lincoln.

“What'd the sheriff want, Dad?”

“To make sure we wouldn't be taking Sal along with us to the funeral. I told him we already sat him down and explained to him why it wouldn't be wise for him to go.”

“Dad? I don't know if I wanna go.”

“She was your friend, wasn't she?”

“She was Sal's. I was just … someone she knew.”

“Look, son, I wish he could go as much as you. As much as him. But emotions are very high at the moment. No one wants a scene at a funeral. Do we?”

Mom watched us from the window as we drove away. The handkerchief she gave me, folded in my pocket.

“By the way, do you know who used all the mustard?” Dad turned the car's air conditioner on high. “Your mother was upset. Someone's used it all. She puts it on her burns.”

“What burns?”

“Burns she hasn't gotten yet. If she touches a hot pan handle or something like that. Just kitchen burns. Yellow mustard takes the sting out.”

“Dad, look.” I pointed to the field, where Sal was running toward the woods. “Stop the car.”

“The funeral, Fielding.” His hands were sweating on the steering wheel.

“Please, Dad, stop. I wanna see where he's goin'. I'll meet ya at the cemetery.”

“Fielding—”

“Dad … I just want to see for myself.”

He understood those words and stopped the car, looking straight ahead as I jumped out, slamming the door maybe too hard.

As I followed Sal, I could've been as loud as I wanted. I could've screamed his name and threw sticks at his back. He wouldn't have noticed. He was the boy running toward the something he had to do, and everything else was lost to that cause.

When we got to the pasture, the horses seemed to be in the same spot they were in that night we first saw them. They looked at Sal and remembered him. They even seemed to ask where the girl was.

Did they see me?

One did. The black one with the white on its forehead. It kept eyes on me as I fell back behind a tree at the edge of the pasture and watched Sal walk out to the fence. He gathered the candles still on the posts and with them fell down onto the ground, where he held all thirteen candles close to his chest.

I couldn't hear him from where I was and yet didn't I know what he was saying? Something like: You were my favorite thing, and in imagination your death will not exist. It's all
as if
from now on.
As if
you are not gone. You will be the girl beside me. Never more than a heartbeat length away. The woman who will be the hill of my bed. A climb to the top and such views to make little things of. Little us that will be part you and part me and whole in those two things.
As if
you are not gone and will be with me to get the wrinkles, the white hair, the spine shaped like a rocking chair.
As if
you are not gone and so will have the love of going in my arms, warm and with me. Yes, you are my favorite thing. You always will be.

He slowly laid the candles down while he dug a hole with his hands. It was a frantic tearing of the ground. Sometimes I close my eyes and see his body rocking toward that hole, scooping dirt, shoving it up underneath his fingernails. Over and over again, that grave digging has never passed for me.

In this hole, he placed the candles. The burying of them was a shove away, a short task for a life cut short. As he sat there, patting the dirt, I reached into my suit jacket and took the handkerchief out of the pocket. I rolled it like a long white snake I pulled through my fingers as I sat there, staring out at the grave between him and me.

I was the first to leave. I knew he wouldn't for longer still. I left the handkerchief rolled on the ground. I thought maybe it might slither its way out to him.

Hours passed by the time I got home. Dad was already returned from the funeral. He was still in his suit, the jacket pinned back by his hands on his hips.