The Summer That Melted Everything(26)

Friends, neighbors, my fellow Breathanians were advancing on us. The only time I’d ever been truly scared in my thirteen years was when a five-foot black racer chased me out of a field after I got too close to its eggs. The crowd was like that racer, rising up on its tail and hissing at me and Sal.

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.