The Summer That Melted Everything(100)

“What these poor souls were desperate for was a light. But the thing about light is it all looks the same when you’re in the dark, so you can’t tell if what powers that light is good or if it is bad, because the light blinds you to the source of its power. All you know is that it saves you from the darkness. That’s all his followers knew. They were in the dark of their own private pain, and then this Elohim comes along and he’s shining so bright.

“They reached for that brightness, and while the light distracted them, while it comforted them in its false rescue, the dark power behind it did its work, and before any of them knew it, they were not being saved by the light, they were being changed by it. They were being controlled by it. By this Grayson Elohim.”

In the gesture of spitting on Elohim’s grave, Dad dramatically spit on the floor before throwing his arms up as he boomed, “How can you call them guilty? When they were away from themselves. Temporarily gone. These people, your family, your friends, your neighbors, possibly you under the right circumstances. Away from themselves.

“Haven’t you ever been away from yourself? Only to come home and find a mess has been made in your absence? A mess you need help to clean up. Not to be punished for but to be helped with. Won’t you help your family now? Your friends? Your neighbors? Yourself?

“Grayson Elohim is the murderer, the real murderer, and he is already gone and buried. Isn’t it time we put the shovels down instead of digging more holes? The more holes we dig, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the less solid ground any of us will have to stand on.”

Later that night, Dad came home victorious from the courthouse. You would never have known it. The way his head hung, the way his feet dragged, the way his eyes hardly knew who he was. He went into his study and took down the plain wooden cross from off the wall. With it, he went to the back porch, where he sat down on the steps.

I watched him turn the cross over in his hands. His hair had become more gray than brown, like tree branches covered in ash. His tie was out of his vest, as if he no longer cared if it played noose.

When I sat beside him, he didn’t notice. That was Dad from then on out. The man who was sat beside, but was always alone.

It was late spring by then, though it felt wintry. The grass was holding back its green. Flowers didn’t know what blooming meant. The trees’ bare branches scratched the sky that always seemed to be bright and white, like snow about to come. There was a quiet stillness, even in the moving breeze you wanted to grab a sweater for.

“Dad?”

He didn’t answer, so I said his name over and over, putting the hooks in and trying to pull him out.

He let go of a long-held breath. “Yes, Fielding?”

“Why’d you do it, Dad? Why’d you invite the devil?”

He looked at me as if he forgot who I was. And through that, I didn’t know if it was me either. I didn’t know if I was enough left to be a son. If he was enough left to be a father. Or if we were just two flames, with not enough love to be anything more than reminders of the burn.

Finally, he turned his eyes back out onto the world. “You remember when I told you and Sal about the case I prosecuted? Of the girl accusing her father of rape? I killed that father, Fielding. All because I’d been wrong. I killed him. It wasn’t the girl. It wasn’t the jury. It wasn’t the misunderstanding. But me. I alone killed him because I was the one who was supposed to be certain. I was the one entrusted with the filter. The one who was supposed to do everything right with it. I failed.”

He was quiet, as if to allow me the chance to say something or, at the very least, pat him on the back. I did nothing. I sat there and felt the unrelenting crush of that very choice.

“We live each day with thoughts we think are certain to the core, Fielding. But what if we are sincerely wrong? Take a look at this cross. We are told it’s a cross, so surely it must be a cross. But what if it isn’t? What if we’re wrong? What if this whole time we’ve just been hanging a lowercased t on our walls?”

With one swift pitch, he flung the cross. We watched it hit the ground and felt nothing.

He didn’t speak for some minutes later.

“I once overheard Elohim ask, ‘Would a panther eat us before we could call it black? Or would it not eat us at all?’ I thought, of course a panther would eat us. Of course. I was certain of it, and yet what if I was wrong?

“That is what I wanted to do. I wanted to test the validity of the claims. I wanted to meet the devil, and through that meeting I would know for certain if I’d ever met him before in the courtroom, in those men and women I sent away. And if I had, then I would’ve done some good after all. I would’ve been right and maybe in all those rights, I would be able to make up for that one wrong when I sent an innocent man to prison and in that sent him to his death.

“I had all my faith in. I was so sure of what was evil, of what was good. But then Sal came, and the panther ate salad, and the devil—well, he turned out to be the only angel among us. And I’m lost. I’m lost now, Fielding. What is good and what is bad?” He tossed his arms weakly in the air. “I don’t know. I just don’t know anymore. My faith is gone. How can it not be? After all, who was burned at the end of this story?”

The quiet filled in all the spaces between us as we sat there, unsure of not just ourselves, but also each other.