The Summer That Melted Everything(75)

“Oh.” She gasped. “Where’d he get that fire from? Fielding?”

“I don’t know.” I moved closer to her and felt the ground until I found her hand.

“Fielding, don’t.” She quickly pulled her hand away.

I didn’t look at her, nor she at me. Our eyes merely followed his figure moving down along the fence, his back to us as he counted off thirteen consecutive posts that lit in tiny flickering flames.

As he walked back toward us, I helped Dresden stand, her grip tight on my arm as she put her weight on her good leg. She was the first to let go. I only did when I heard Sal stepping closer.

“You like your candles?” He wrapped his arms around her.

“How’d you do it?” I looked at his hands for a lighter or some matches.

“Fire comes easy to me.” He winked before kissing her cheek and asking her if she was ready to blow out her candles and make a wish.

She closed her eyes and made her wish, but on exhale the lights still flickered in the distance.

“Deeper breath,” Sal whispered in her ear, his lips brushing her cheek. “When I say.”

She waited and when he squeezed her arm, her exhale carried across the pasture to the fence, where the flames lay down into the night.

There would be no answer then as to how he’d done it. At that moment, he was the one hugging the birthday girl while I stared off into the dark night.

“This will be a happy diary day.” She nuzzled into his neck. “I think The Little Prince will be my book of choice. Yes, the Little Prince who came from the sky.”

“I’ve read that. Doesn’t the prince leave a rose behind?” He held her tighter.

“I’ll only circle the words that say he takes her with him.”

*

By the time we left the pasture, the horses were lying down. The moon, still full in the sky, provided light for our walk back through the wooded hills, which sounded like crickets and looked like fireflies.

I again thought of Elohim, as I meandered around the trees, cupping my hands up around one of the fireflies and holding it in my palms like a jar. I could feel its tiny legs crawling on the underside of my fingers as my hands closed in around it. Feeling its space getting smaller and smaller, the firefly took to flight, softly tapping against my skin but not finding the exit.

Its flying got more and more frantic the smaller I made its space. I wondered what it was thinking as its body flattened between the contact of my palms. Did it plead for its life in its own bug-speak?

Please don’t kill me, there’s still summer left. There was a tree, that one over there, that I have yet to fly to the top of. I really wanted to see what the leaves are like up there. Please don’t kill me. There’s a star, way up there, I wanted to see if I could reach. I probably can’t reach it, but still I want to try. Please don’t kill me. I’m not finished yet.

When I opened my hands, the bug’s squished abdomen was bleeding what was left of its luciferase enzymes, which had been smeared onto my palms. Yellow like the blood of the chimney swift eggs. But not yellow for long, as it was slowly losing its illumination until all I had in my hand was something I could not take back.

“Hey, what’s that?”

Dresden was standing under one of the trees, pointing to the yellow orb up in its branches. By that time, we were in the hills closer to town.

“I can’t believe it. A balloon for my birthday. Isn’t that something?”

“I’ll get it for you.” Sal was already halfway up the trunk.

I brushed the firefly’s death from my hand and wiped that once-illuminated glow onto my jeans shorts as I stepped through the trees closer to Dresden and the tree Sal was climbing.

“I climb too,” I whispered to her over the hoot of an owl.

She sighed, almost irritated. “You’re not the one climbing now.”

I stepped farther away from her and watched Sal. He was an all right climber, though he had difficulty with a few of the limbs. Nearer to the balloon, he reached out toward its string but was still too far away. A step here and a stretch there brought him closer until he had the string in his hand.

The thing about branches is there isn’t much warning when one is about to break. It doesn’t groan, it doesn’t say, Look out below. It simply breaks, and sometimes you don’t have time to get out of its way. Sometimes it falls right on your head.

It was an everything bad sound. Think of all the bad sounds. A dropped glass. A 3 A.M. phone call. Hands slipping off the edge of a cliff. That branch and Dresden’s head made all those sounds and more.

I didn’t see the blood at first, not until I fell down by her side. I asked her if she was okay, but she said nothing. I said, “Move, Dresden. Goddamn you, please move.”

I could hear Sal grunting down through the limbs, landing on the ground behind me with a thud. He still held the balloon, so tightly, his nails were digging around the string into the other side of his palm.

I stood and wiped my eyes on my arm. “I’m gonna get help. Are you listenin’? Sal?” I shook his shoulders because all he saw was her. “Don’t be here when I get back.”

He finally brought his eyes up to mine. I couldn’t see his irises or pupils. The water was too deep.

“Go home, Sal. Pretend you were there all along. If they know you were here, climbin’ that tree, they won’t believe it was an accident. Not with what happened earlier with Alvernine. No matter what I say as a witness, they’ll say you hurt Dresden on purpose. So go. I’ll say it was just me walkin’ her home. We were under the tree. A branch fell. Simple as that. Okay?”