The Summer That Melted Everything(88)

“Dad, please stop now.”

A bawling howl set me back on my heels. Dad’s agony was so severe, it was frightening. I didn’t have the courage to hold him through it, so I stayed back, letting my father be devoured before me.

Somewhere I heard a crying that compared to Dad’s was so small, it almost didn’t exist. I shined the flashlight, and there was Sal, coiled up on the ground, face tucked toward his knees. He didn’t rise to look at me or the light. The ache had curled him into a circle, rounding him out, like a porthole into a darkness that was taking his place.

I needed the devil more at that moment than the weeping Sal. I needed that comfort of authority. I needed the experienced angel to stand solid and strong, not collapsed on the ground as just another crying boy who could offer me no wisdom nor understanding.

I grabbed the pocketknife and climbed up the tree house. I looked at mine and Grand’s handprints on the wall. There was a new third handprint, smaller than either mine or Grand’s. I didn’t worry about it then. It was Grand’s handprint I wanted. It was his that I stabbed.

“I hate you. I hate you.”

I spit my powerful fire. I raged against his ghost, so my living hurt could haunt him, the way he was already haunting me. I stabbed until the wood splintered and broke away, revealing the outside and what I had tried to escape. My father crying. My brother dead in his arms. The darkness eating from edge in.





24

Farewell, happy fields

—MILTON, PARADISE LOST 1:249

THE YELL IS permanent, the wrong is lasting, the damage is complete, and the goddamn is eternal when a young man goes into the woods and in his fray turns the sword inward.

I waited for Dad to ask me why Grand would do it, but he never did. Not even when the morning light began to reveal more of the scene before us. He just stood and said he was going into town to do the things that needed doing. Me and Sal were to wait with Grand’s body, he said. And then he left. Me and Sal listened for as long as we could hear him. He was rambling off case after case. Some real. Some not. Like Man v. God. Boy v. Knife. Bliss v. Misery.

Me and Sal didn’t sit close to Grand nor close to each other. Spaces had already started to form.

When Dad returned with the sheriff, he said he had called Mom and told her the news so we wouldn’t have to. Then he told us to go home.

“Dad?”

“I said go home, Fielding.”

Then he turned from me. The start of the rest of our lives.

Me and Sal walked home slowly to give Mom enough time to scream the loudest, enough time to cry the worst. I thought we’d find her somewhere inside the house, collapsed under a pile of tissues. I was surprised to see her standing on the front porch, her hands full of our refrigerator magnets.

As soon as I stepped up onto the porch, she fit the magnets into my hands. The magnets were wet. Her eyes made everything wet.

“You’ve got to go to him, Fielding. Your Father won’t do it. He says it’s being silly.” Her voiced cracked, and I can’t be certain she even said the word silly.

“I don’t understand, Mom. What do you want me to do with the magnets?”

“Rub ’em all over him.”

“Who?”

“Grand.”

“But why, Mom?”

“To get the metal out of him.” She wrung her hands until I thought she’d twist her fingers off.

“What metal, Mom?”

“His arm got cut, didn’t it? That’s what your father said on the phone.”

“He cut himself.”

“He did not cut himself, Fielding.” She refused to say the word suicide. “He was simply cut. And when he was cut, some of the metal got inside ’im. It always comes off the blade, a little bit. And that extra metal will weigh him down.

“All souls are weighed come death, and the souls deemed fit to enter heaven are light as lettuce. No sins to heavy ’em. We’ve got to make sure Grand’s soul weighs as little as it can. I won’t have my baby in hell.”

“All right, Mom. I’ll do it.”

“But you can’t.” Sal stopped me from leaving with the magnets. “Only the mother can get the metal out of a son.”

“But…” Mom looked past us, at the world outside the porch. “I know, you can bring the body here, to me. That’s how it’ll be done. Then I can do the magnets and make sure all the metal is lifted right outta him.”

“They’re not gonna bring his body here, Mom.”

“That’s right,” Sal added. “You’ve got to go down there yourself.”

“Leave the house? I can’t.”

“For Grand.” Sal moved the magnets from my hands back to hers. “If it makes you feel any better, there isn’t a cloud in the sky. There’ll be no rain. Even if there is, you know how to swim now. Remember?”

She held the magnets to her chest as she closed her eyes. She counted to ten before sliding her feet in toothpick strides across the porch. She would on occasion whimper and look around as if terror were going to come in on her from all sides. Finally across the porch, she slowly lowered herself down the steps. She seemed afraid of the way they creaked under her.

Sunlight cast on her red painted toes through her hosiery as she stood on the bottom step. The ground below something she looked at as if it held the greatest fault she’d ever seen. She lifted her foot, as though she would take the step, but instead she lowered her foot back down and cried, “I can’t. Oh, Lord, help me. I can’t.”