Hummingbird Salamander(63)

Except, later, I understood Ned better—after he was gone. It wasn’t just escape, all those mysterious details, that amazing mythical salamander. By telling me the giant salamander could be near where we lived, he was changing the landscape around me. He was changing what we dreaded, and what stifled him, into something exciting and positive and new. Getting rid of the residue of Shot that contaminated everything.

It took me a long time to see it that way. But when I did, years later, I remember I sat down on a bench in a park and wept. From the weight of it and the goodness. The sweetness of it. The pureness.

But I was younger, and Ned must have felt that responsibility. So as Shot got worse and Dad even less present, the fantasy of the salamander that overtook Ned meant leaving me behind for some of it. Daytime expeditions to the usual places were fine. But suddenly one summer, when I’d been looking forward, without school, to more escapes, not fewer … a wall came up.

“There are places in the wilderness too dangerous for you,” he’d say.

“There are places only someone stronger can get to,” he’d say.

I was big for my age but not strong yet. Perhaps that stung. Or I thought he was saying I was clumsy. Perhaps that stung. But not for long. That was the thing about Ned, if he’d ever become evil. He could say just about anything and you’d forgive him.

“There are places.” Places I couldn’t go without him. It wasn’t like the law didn’t exist where we lived, but there were gaps.

So we’d have our time, two or three times a week. The well-worn grooves of familiar bogs and ponds and creeks. But then he’d bring me back to the farm and go out again. I re member the narrow space around the side of the barn very well, covered over by trees, intruded on by bushes. Because that’s how we’d sneak back onto the property if we thought Shit was around.

“He’s going to do what he’s going to do,” Ned said. “You have to live your life, when he’s not, like you mean to.”

Even in punishment, caught, I saw a kind of light in Ned’s eyes, some lightness to his features that felt like a secret smile. No slumped shoulders. He would look Shot straight in the eye, and, at first, that made Shot worse, but eventually Shot began to look away. As if Ned was showing him something about Shot’s future he didn’t like much.

Except there was cause and effect. I didn’t want to “get shit from Shot” because the more Ned’s stare got to Shot, the more he took it out on me. And I had no way to tell Ned that. Not in a way that didn’t feel selfish or wrong.

The times Shot would smack me when I was doing chores in the barn. The time he finally figured out my “secret” route and popped out of the bushes in that narrow space coming back from a salamander search and crushed me against the barn wall and punched me in the kidneys and then was off again, manic this time, thankfully. If he’d been morose, he would’ve spent more time on me. Me, on the ground, staring up at the tree branches, thinking how beautiful it all looked. It was spring. Everything was green. My belly hurt so much I thought something had ripped open inside.

A lot of people have it worse, I always told myself, even when I couldn’t stop crying.



* * *



Ned’s most secret expeditions took place when Shot was in town, and Ned used to nudge our father to suggest getting drunk in town to Shot. It didn’t take much.

Sometimes, as Ned’s adventures seemed to get more frequent and organized, I wondered if he had actually found a giant salamander. Maybe that’s why he took the risk. Maybe that’s why he seemed not to mind Shot so much. Even if I wasn’t sure that made any sense.

I remember that night, too, because I’ll never be able to forget it. Not a day of my life. It’s there, peering over my shoulder, and I can’t push it away. The only difference is, over time, so many other things peer in at you. The weight shifts. The weight leans on you a little less.



* * *



Shot had gone off in spectacular fashion, like a hundred bottle rockets exploding too close, and we were both in our separate rooms vibrating from the aftermath. The way your bones feel the abuse even if your bones aren’t broken. So you’re both numb and humming, both angry and cold.

I don’t remember particulars; they were always so banal. They say a trigger can be anything. Shot’s randomness gave me so many triggers, they began to cancel one another out. He had been out of sorts over something about the crops, or some arrangement Father had made with a neighbor, and it just escalated until things were thrown at walls—and then I was.

The usual. But this time I’d seen Ned’s lip tremble, and it was getting to him more than normal. Like maybe having been stoic all those other times had used up too much of himself. Why that day, I couldn’t ever figure out, though. What else had gone wrong? That he couldn’t share.

We’d been punished, as if we’d started it, and sent to our rooms, while Mom and Dad sat at the kitchen table, among the dirty dishes, arguing—but softly, so Shot wouldn’t hear. Shot was out on the porch demolishing a rocking chair and randomly taking potshots with his hunting rifle at things in the backyard. The chickens had scattered.

I would’ve gone in to talk to Ned anyway, but I heard him moving around with purpose, which alarmed me. So I snuck over and saw he was packing a knapsack.