The Summer That Melted Everything(77)

“What are you doing?” She asked me so quietly, the question almost didn’t exist.

“Giving you some wind. Seeing if I can’t blow you away.”

“Do you want to blow me away?” I liked the way she whispered things.

“No.”

She turned her head away, but I saw her smile before she did.

“You look like a garden.” I reached out to the roses on her sweater. “Who found me?”

“The neighbor heard the shot.”

“I’ve always hated my neighbors.”

“So close to your heart.” She felt the bandage again. “Doctor said just a little more to the left, and you’d not be here. People who choose suicide usually choose their wrists or pills or rope. A gun is so violent, isn’t it?”

“I knew someone who was shot once.”

“In the chest?”

I nodded. She nodded with me.

“And that is why you shot yourself, Mr. Bliss?”

“I suppose I just wanted to see for myself … what it felt like.”

“And now that you know, you won’t be trying it again, I hope?”

I laid my hand on hers. It was warm and nice. I’d go to bed with her for a whole year, but never love her and she’d cry because of it.

I’d never love any of those women, really. Never like Sal loved Dresden.

Dresden. I thought maybe a really bad concussion. I thought all she would have to do was to stay in bed for a few days. Of all falling things, who knew a tree branch could take so much?

I did as I told Sal I would. I told the sheriff and Dad and anyone else who asked that I alone walked Dresden home. That on the way, a branch fell. Sal wasn’t there, I swore. He was already far from there. Of course, there were those who didn’t believe me. It didn’t help that Alvernine was telling her side of the story.

When asked about the various bruises on Dresden’s body, Alvernine said it must’ve been the branch. The coroner determined the bruises were received prior to the branch and not a direct result of it. Alvernine was charged. She pleaded guilty and received three to five years.

On the wall of her cell, she taped photos of Dresden. She called that wall her rose garden. Within the first year of her sentence, they would find her hanging in front of that garden, slowly asphyxiated by a noose of sheets.

In the days following Dresden’s death, Sal had yet to speak. It was as if he had to pull the strength together. He became the boy with the pain in the chest. I wonder what he did that night I told him to leave the woods. Did he go straight home and hide away under the pillows and cushions of the window bed? That was how I found him. Trying to become just another pillow, another cushion, another thing of stuffing that didn’t have to feel a broken heart.

I pulled the cushions and pillows off him one at a time. Found him flat, pressed down from fingertips to heart. Looking at me with his eyes that said, Cover me back. Please, just cover me back up.

Pillow by pillow, I did.

Dad tried. He went to the window but didn’t touch the pillows or cushions. He reached over them and touched the glass instead.

“Things will be all right.” He didn’t sound so sure as his sweaty fingers smudged the glass. He began to rattle on about his court cases because that’s all he had. I shut my eyes. I was sitting on the floor, leaning back against the wall.

The cases sounded like walking through a cornfield. I’m sure they did to Sal too. Walking the tight rows, the tall stalks. So tall, they’re mountains in fields and you’re climbing through. Swish, swish. The sound of trying to make it through so many things in your way. Swish, swish. Unable to touch and unable not to be touched. Each corn leaf sharp at the edge. Slapping your arms. Your legs. Hitting your face.

Just when you get away from one, you’ve got another leaf already there. Another one after that. Everywhere you look, more of the same, all around you. The leaves cut little nicks, carving you one slice at a time. The jungle of the Midwest. Swish, swish. You shut your eyes to protect them from all the sharp and all the slicing. You have to walk blind. Listening to only the sound. Swish, swish. Feeling the pollen from the tassels falling down. Light particles but heavy enough to start to bury you. Swish, swish. That’s what Dad and his cases sounded like. Swish, swish.

He left the room. Maybe he didn’t even see me sitting over there. He didn’t look. He just left, a case still falling from his lips.

Later, Mom came in with her spray bottle of vinegar and a rag. She found a cushion Sal wasn’t under and leaned down into it with her knee as she reached over and began to spray the glass.

“You know, they call these picture windas.” Wipe, wipe, wipe. Squeak, squeak. “I call it my on the way winda. I always look out it, every mornin’ on my way downstairs. I just stand there in the hall and peek in over your sleepin’ heads and look out. And then I move on.

“I hope this is just on your way too, Sal. We’ve got to keep movin’, don’t we? Sometimes things happen, bad things, on the way, but we’ve got to keep movin’. If we don’t, we won’t get to the next thing, and it could really be somethin’. It could be the best something of our lives.”

The room smelled like vinegar long after she left. When Grand came in, he remarked about the smell.

He stood at the edge of the pillows and cushions.