The Summer That Melted Everything(6)

“I mean, the name of the town. How do you say it?”

“Oh, well, most folks think it’s pronounced like the past tense of breathin’. You know, like you just breathed somethin’ in. But it’s not like that at all. Say breath. And then ed. Breathed. Say it so the tongue don’t recognize such a large break between Breath and ed. Breathed.”

He repeated after me.

“Yeah, just like that.”

I knew by looking at him, he was the type of boy who got up with the sunrise, already tired, and worked until the sunset, shrunk to the bone. He knew the resilience of a seed, and the vulnerabilities of it also. The blessing of a full field and the destroyed hope of a barren one.

I wondered how many times those dirt-crusted fingernails had tried to pry growth from a drought. How many times those small hands had thrown buckets of water from flooded plains. He knew how to jar and can vegetables the way I knew how to play Mario Bros. We were in the same world, yet to me he smelled of rocket fuel.

“Your eyes…” I stared at his irises, never having seen such a dark yet sparkling shade. They were like July foliage in the sun. “They’re so green.”

“They’re leaves I took as souvenirs from the Garden of Eden.” He said it so certain, I couldn’t doubt its truth.

A truck backfired. Or maybe that was just what that group of kids sounded like as they came bursting from around the corner, nearly knocking the boy over. At first I thought his hands were up in order to catch his balance. Then I realized he was reaching out to the kids. Each sleeve or arm that came close enough he tried to grab hold of but couldn’t. They were passing him by as if he should know better. As if he should know he could never be them. Joyous and free and in pure bliss.

There was someone in the group falling back, calling my name.

It was Flint, always Flint. The boy with Coke-bottle glasses and one eye lazier than the other.

“Hey, Fieldin’.” He ran in place as the others kept forward. “We’re goin’ out to the river for a swim. You comin’? Mason swears he seen an alligator in there.”

“Ain’t nothin’ but a longnose gar.” I shook my head, unimpressed.

“I told ’im.” He wearily shrugged his shoulders while his bare, dirty feet continued to pound the ground as he looked from me to the boy. “Who’s the cricket you got with ya, Fieldin’?”

The boy was looking up, his wide eyes as seemingly edgeless as the sky he tilted to. His mouth slightly opened in dazzled wonder. What drew those wide eyes? That dazzled wonder? Why, nothing more than a hawk. Just something to glance at for most, but to him it was something more. The way he looked at it made it almost holy, a sort of flying cross. The moment spiritual. He could have sat down on a lawn chair and turned it into a pew.

“This is, um, well”—I grabbed the back of my hot neck—“it’s the devil.”

Flint stopped running in place, though his arms took longer to slow down to his sides. “What’s that you say?”

“He’s the devil.”

Flint scratched his temple like his own dad was prone to do in situations of deep figuring. “Let me get this straight, Fieldin.’ You mean to tell me that this here little tick is the devil? The one come to answer your pa’s invitation?”

“That’s right.” I pulled my words close. They seemed less silly like that.

Still his laugh came. Hard and bumpy like the gravelly path that led to his trailer park. He took a step closer to the boy, clicking his tongue the way one would approach a potentially skittish pony. The boy lowered his eyes from the hawk.

Flint smiled small, like a tapping at a door. “Hey.”

The boy stared back, no tell on his face. Flint didn’t need more than that.

“Wait’ll I tell the fellas.” He pushed his thick glasses up on his nose and took off, his bare feet kicking and lifting the road dust into little clouds that hung long after he’d gone, like swarms of gnats.

“Ain’t no goin’ back now. Flint will make sure the whole town knows who you say you are, so you better be prepared to be just that.”

The boy nodded.

“C’mon then. We’re almost there.” I pointed to the KETTLE LANE sign before us. “My house is at the end of here. There’s an actual kettle buried somewhere on this lane. They say if you find the kettle, you can drink your way to immortality. If I find it, I’ll let you have a sip.”

“No, thank you.”

“Don’tcha wanna live forever?”

“I’m the devil. I am already forever.”

Any further conversation was doubted by the start of a John Deere in the nearby yard. Instead of trying to compete with its blaring rumble, we continued down the lane in silence.

The lane was drenched in sunlight. The trees put their shade down in the large lawns of the large houses that made up Kettle Lane.

The first house on the lane belonged to our neighbor, Grayson Elohim, and was part of an inheritance from Elohim’s banker father.

As we came upon the orange-red brick, we saw Elohim eating on the porch. His feet, too short to reach the floor, hung barefoot. His lunch consisted of macaroni salad and a raw onion sandwich. No meat would be found on his table. At that time, he was the town’s only vegetarian. I used to think this put his sharp teeth to waste.