The Summer That Melted Everything(65)

“As if hearing you run away, a man appears and says he has some ice cream you could run away to. You say you don’t know. He says he can tell you are the type of boy who needs something to hold onto, so he gives you a bowl and spoon.”

Sal shoved the bowl and spoon into my stomach, forcing me to take them just to get them out of my ribs.

“The man says you can go for a drive in his sparkling convertible. How can a convertible be bad, you think. They only ever drive them in advertisements when they’re selling happiness, when they’re selling a shot at a good life. You still want that shot desperately, so you take the bowl and spoon and ride in his convertible, which reminds you of the 1950s, with its polished chrome and high tailfins. You think this is what you’re supposed to do. Ride in a white convertible and drop the shadows of the farm.

“As you get closer to his house, he tells you to bend down and touch the car’s floor and count to twenty. He’s short enough to see over, so you’re not afraid, and by the time you’ve counted to twenty, you’re in his garage and from there, in his house where you see pictures of a tall woman. You ask if it’s his wife. Yes, he answers. She’s smiling in the pictures, so you think he can’t be so bad. You forget it is the camera we smile at, not the life behind.”

“I don’t like this story.” I set the bowl and spoon down on the tracks.

I thought Sal was going to slap me again. Instead he continued the story as if there could never be anything to stop it.

“The man goes into the kitchen, to get the ice cream, he says. While you wait for him, you read old newspaper clippings in the red leather scrapbook open on the table. See a woman’s face in one of the clippings, same face as in the photographs around you. You get a sinking feeling, you feel you might sink.

“When the man returns, he doesn’t have any ice cream. He has a white handkerchief. And suddenly, you can’t breathe at all.”

Sal came up behind me and held his hand over my mouth so forcibly, I thought my teeth would break.

“Just go to sleep now, boy,” Sal repeated over and over again as I struggled. His strength surprised me, and only when I elbowed him as hard as I could did he let go.

“What’s the matter with you, Sal?”

“It’s just a story, Fielding.”

A horn blared from the train approaching in the distance.

“That was a pretty messed-up story.”

“Hell’s full of all kinds of stories like that.”

He looked back at the blaring train, its smoke churning up like a way to follow. Maybe in his mind he was following that smoke up to the clouds and to the God too gold to be of any earthly help.

I went to get the bowl and spoon off the tracks, but Sal told me to leave them.

“That’s the ending of the story,” he said. “Something broken.”

Together we watched as the train roared over first the spoon and then the bowl, its broken pieces scattered to the ground.

“You know, Fielding, the thing about breaking something that no one much thinks about is that more shadows are created. The bowl when intact was one shadow. One single shadow. Now each piece will have a shadow of its own. My God, so many shadows have been made. Small little slivers of darkness that seem at once to be larger than the bowl ever was. That’s the problem of broken things. The light dies in small ways, and the shadows—well, they always win big in the end.”





18

Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;

And in the lowest deep, a lower deep

Still threatening to devour me opens wide

—MILTON, PARADISE LOST 4:75–77

THIS IS ME. Teeth marks here. Teeth marks there. Being eaten one bite at a time. I smell myself on my breath. Feel myself swallowed and plopped to my stomach. Clean myself out from my own teeth with a toothpick.

It was Carl Jung who said shame is a soul-eating emotion. It doesn’t eat you in one big gulp. It takes its time. Seventy-one years, it is still taking its time.

I am for my own teeth. I am for my own stomach. I alone eat myself to the dark.

It was the end of August, and me and Sal were in the woods by the tree house. There I saw a metal bucket of stones. I thought maybe Sal was building onto Granny’s grave. Then I saw the paint on the stones. I picked a few up. They all had the same image of a boat. More than that. It was a ship given the details of something grand like an ocean liner. Then the name written on the sides. SS Andrea Doria.

“What do you think?” Sal came up behind me.

I was stunned at the details of the ships and how the same image could be done over and over again without miss.

“I painted them at night, while you were sleeping.”

I dropped the stones back into the bucket. “Listen, Sal, if these are for Mr. Elohim—”

“Shouldn’t they be? All his pamphlets and meetings. He has no right to keep on me. I’ve been good. I mean, I could be bad, Fielding. I could be really bad for him, I could be the worst thing ever. But they always take away the trouble, and I want to stay.

“If only he would just be good. Then we wouldn’t have to worry about any bad he’s done or could do. You don’t have to worry about the teeth if they get filed down. And that’s all I want to do. Just file his teeth down a bit, so we can all live together.”

“You can’t throw stones at ’im, Sal.”