The Summer That Melted Everything(28)

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 f*ckin’ 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.”

“I know.”

“Weird-lookin’ color for shoelaces.”

“They’re my brother’s, sir. They’re my brother’s shoelaces.”

“What’s that brownish color on ’em?”

“Dried blood.”

He sighed as he clicked off the flashlight. “I should take you in.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Public intoxication. Public stupidity. Public stink.”

“Wouldn’t be my first, sir.” I held out my wrists, ready to be cuffed.

“I’m on my way home myself.” He turned to leave. “Ain’t got no desire to take you in and do more paperwork tonight. You get home, old timer. I don’t wanna hear you killed no one. I said get home. What are you doin’?” He stepped back around his car to see me lowering myself to the ground.

I burped and he threw his hands up at me. Mumbled something like jackass before he got into his car and drove away while I sat there and closed my eyes, remembering Sheriff Sands and how he said Breathed wasn’t safe for Sal anymore.

Dovey’s fall and the track star’s accident were a few days gone when the sheriff came to our house, telling Dad it was being said Sal had a hand in those tragic accidents.

“I like to think we take care of and solve our own problems,” the sheriff said, “but I don’t want that boy in danger. I think you agree.”

When Sal was told he would be leaving, he put on the overalls he had arrived in. Dad said he didn’t have to do that. Said he wouldn’t even be leaving until the next morning, but Sal wouldn’t take them off.

When I woke in the middle of the night, I found him downstairs, scribbling a small tangle of ink in the corner of the reproduction painting of The Great Wave in the room we knew as Japan.