The Summer That Melted Everything(68)

Was it God, Devil, or wind that blew it upon release? Was it God, Devil, or tree that decided it should motor between branches, waiting for us in its harmless ruse?

I must first tell of the day that sparked the possibility of Sal and Dresden ending up together, for always and ever.

That day started by me and Sal throwing water balloons. It’d been my idea, but I had to stop. It reminded me too much of that day at the river. It would be throwing the stone’s spirit from then on out.

“We shouldn’t have filled ’em anyways.” I stepped on the remaining balloons until they burst. “Dad would be angry if he knew. We’re supposed to be conservin’ water.”

By the end of August, the heat had made more of a mess. The farmers lost their cash crops due to the drought, and the number of livestock continued to dwindle. Thankfully, the flies had been controlled by a recent spraying of pesticide. While at first the flies were blamed on Sal, they were actually traced to an infestation at an egg farm in the next town.

The rest of the country seemed to have forgotten about Sal and our heat wave, which was a fine relief to us, though Dad and the sheriff were still conducting their own investigation with more theories, more guesses, more places for pushpins to go and lines to be drawn.

I suppose I hoped they wouldn’t find out where he came from. He had become my best friend. What boy is ever ready to lose that? It’s not like Sal wanted to go back to wherever it was he came from. No boy who wants to go back calls another woman Mom or another man Dad. He doesn’t call the place he’s come from hell and the place he’s at heaven.

His stories, his language, his way of manner said a child is not here, and yet there the child would poke its head. When he ran giddy to the tree house. When he sat up all night, telling me ghost stories in the dark, trying to deepen his voice to mystery over the light of the flashlight under his chin. When he wanted to learn how to play the piano in the living room. Or baseball or Mario Bros. Mom taught him the piano. Me and Grand taught him the rest.

There was a boy at home. He just wasn’t ready to say it yet. And maybe he was afraid. I mean, it was the devil who’d been invited in the first place. Maybe he was afraid that being the devil was the only way he could stay.

Being the devil made him a target, but it also meant he had a power he didn’t have when he was just a boy. People looked at him, listened to what he said. Being the devil made him important. Made him visible. And isn’t that the biggest tragedy of all? When a boy has to be the devil in order to be significant?

It’s not like anyone was coming looking for him. No mother showed up on our doorstep. No father either. Major newspapers from all over the country wrote at least once about him and various media outlets from TV reported on him in their local broadcasts, yet no one came saying they’d been looking for him and that he was theirs. No one came saying they wanted him back. Maybe if they had come and said that, he would’ve went with them. It was their not coming that kept his staying.

After bursting the balloons, we walked down the lane. When we came upon the Delmar house, Dresden stood up against the oak. I noticed her face right off.

She watched us approach over her book, Lord of the Flies. When I asked what was on her face, she answered it was makeup. In truth, it was construction paper, cut, trimmed, and taped into blush, lipstick, and purple eye shadow with long black lashes. The most unflattering was the pair of arching black lines placed over her own faint brows, giving her a sort of exaggerated madness.

She sighed like we were bothering her as she returned to her book and began to circle words.

“Why do you do that every day?” Sal asked.

“One should write in their diary every day.” She flipped through the pages, showing how circling a word here and there made sentences like, Today was not so bad, and I hate my leg.

“I’m no writer, but still I want to record my days. And books have given me all the words I need. I just go through and take the ones that belong to me for the day. I like having my life entwined with literature’s great tales. It makes me more—” She closed her eyes and found the word. “—significant.”

I tried not to stare at that leg. I couldn’t see much of it. She wore a long, flowing dress, one of her many muted floral ones that went below her ankles, but the leg’s silhouette was still there. Its unbending form and black flat, which went against the bareness of her other foot.

“There’s a pool in the backyard.” Her frizzy hair stuck out as if it too had its own life to seize. “You guys could go for a swim.”

We walked around the house, which was a large whitewashed brick, the white fading in places to the rusty tinge beneath. It had green shutters and green trim that matched the green bushes of the rose garden.

The heat would not prevent Alvernine’s roses from blooming. When the sun’s rays were too much, she would shade the roses by setting up tents, the kind used for parties and events. She would drape the bushes with dampened blankets to regulate their temperature, and she used fans, reaching from the house by extension cord, to keep them cool.

Each rose was so perfect and just like the next, they were almost unreal. Like they were machine printed. A garden of wallpapered walls. Later, we would come to learn Alvernine had been siphoning water from the forgotten artesian well at the top of the hill to keep her roses hydrated.

If found out, the well would’ve been seized by the town, and Alvernine would’ve paid a fine for breaking regulation. Worst to her, the town would’ve stopped her use of the well, and her roses would’ve died like most of the gardens in Breathed.