The Summer That Melted Everything

by Tiffany McDaniel

  Dad struggled through the water to get to her, his grief leaning back behind a smile to say,

  “You know, my love, the funniest thing happened on the way to the cemetery…”

  26

  Must I thus leave you Paradise? thus leave

  Thee, native soil, these happy walks and shades?

  —MILTON, PARADISE LOST 11:269–270

  IT WAS THE last day of summer and only nineteen days since we’d buried Grand. Nineteen days of Dad in T-shirts and pajama pants, of him growing the most beard of his life and of him sitting there in coffined silence. Nineteen days of Mom in a robotic restlessness that saw our house the cleanest it ever was. Nineteen days of Fedelia asking what we wanted to eat, and nineteen days of our not caring and of her making meals of her own decision. Above all else, it was nineteen days of pure, corroding pain.

  The florist was always at our door, delivering the latest batch of sympathy and house plant. Even Elohim sent a lily condolence. I don’t think it was coincidence it arrived that very morning as I was sitting on the sofa with Sal by the open windows.

  Dad was resting in his chair, the strands of his hair like a pile of broken branches. In his mess, in his ruin, in his unkempt chaos, he was more wilderness than the one outside. The groomed father I once had was now like a stain in his almost savage neglect of hygiene. For all the showers and baths he did not take, it was confusing why he wore his bathrobe, slung open though adding bulk to his going frame.

  Mom was up and straightening an already straight lampshade. Her apron was like Dad’s bathrobe, something worn but not with purpose. Mom hadn’t cooked since Grand. Cleaning, sorting, emptying—those were the things she did. It was Fedelia who was in the kitchen cooking meals we wouldn’t have the appetite to eat.

  As for me and Sal, we were in and out of grief, in and out of quiet talk that made short stretches of the impossible possible. As a whole, we were just a family, just the Blisses trying to get back to it, knowing we never would.

  With it soon to be October, the heat had still to break. Some wondered if winter would be skipped altogether. We feared a one-season life, where the fan is always on and the heat boils us in our beds. There are winter dreams to be had when summer makes too good of its time.

  “The ice cream will be delivered today,” Sal spoke just above a whisper. “Juniper’s called here. Said the truck is on its way. They thought I’d like to know because of how I used to call and ask.”

  He stared out the open window before him. His frown like a red land. A place you can imagine screams echo so well in.

  “Funny it took a whole summer to get ice cream to a town in a heat wave.” He turned from the window to me and we looked at each other.

  Mom on her hands and knees, dusting the already dusted bottom shelves. Dad sitting so still, staring up at the ceiling as if he’d heard someone walking just overhead in Grand’s room. Fedelia clanking a pot against another in the kitchen. Amidst all of this and more, me and Sal looked at each other and knew we’d never eat ice cream again.

  “Do you hear that?” Dad slightly raised in his chair but did not get up. “I think I hear someone, up there walking.” He pointed toward the ceiling and Grand’s room above. “I should check, don’t you think?”

  He asked no one in particular, still Mom was the one to answer as she stood up from her hands and knees, the duster something she used to tap the top of Dad’s head with as she passed and said, “It’s no one, dear. Just relax back now.”

  And so he did as she said later she would polish the silver, but first there were the curtains to wash, never mind she washed them just the day before. She climbed the ladder and took them back down, piling them in the middle of the room while she diverted to some other cleaning task. Meanwhile, I reached over to the coffee table and picked up my chemistry book, trying to finish my homework.

  School had begun a few weeks back. I was starting the eighth grade. My old friends, who weren’t my friends anymore. Flint and the whole gang, who still had their happiness like the whole world laughing. I found myself reaching toward them the way Sal had when they ran past him that first day. They ran by me too, as if I should know better than to think I could ever have youth that way again.

  I did have my old locker. Same combination. Who would’ve thought a combination could make me so happy? But I liked having the same. It was from that old life, and sometimes I thought I could just spin the lock back to it. I could open the locker and find the old Fielding, a summer younger. I could open it to Grand. There he’d be, squeezed inside, and I could just pull him out. Dresden too. Just keep pulling out all the things lost.

  Sal took a test to determine what grade level he would function at. According to his score, he’d be in high school already. Apparently, he was some sort of genius. Mom said it wasn’t a good idea for him to go to school yet with others. I guess she thought it would be a mad, glistening violence. Bullies and beasts lining up and all that. So a tutor came in and taught him in one of the spare rooms, which Mom eagerly cleaned out for a desk.

  When I look back, I now know Grand’s death was the final vibration for Elohim and his group. The final fusing of them into a single sword pointed at Sal.

  I can imagine Elohim at his meeting, saying Grand’s name.

  Just a boy, a young god of Breathed who would’ve made us all proud. But he’s dead now. And all because of that devil. How many more gods will we allow the devil to kill?

  We Blisses were too busy grieving to see the sword on its way to Sal. We couldn’t see beyond the dirt we felt buried under. I hadn’t even seen Elohim since passing him on the way to Grand’s funeral. I walked by him, sure. I passed his house when he was out on the porch eating his vegetables, but I didn’t see him. I had too many ghosts in my eyes. We all did.

  I laid down the chemistry book and my homework.

  “I wish it would snow.” I reached behind the sofa and laid my arm across the hot windowsill, my fingers dangling to the brick outside. Mom had taken the screens down to clean and the windows were left open to air out the house.

  I looked up at the sky. It was like the fur of a coyote, tan in all the places it wasn’t gray. A bolt of lightning came in a slender flash. The thunder slipped in a low grumbling hello. In its wild self, it was finally going to rain.

  “There’s something—” Sal cleared his throat “—there’s something I have to tell you all. About me.”

  I brought my eyes down from the sky and saw Elohim’s face staring back at me. How canine his features looked. How his mouth seemed to foam. Just another rabid dog at the window.

  “I’m sorry, Fielding.”

  Elohim looked as though he might have meant it as he reached through the window and grabbed Sal. Dad quite possibly made a leap from the chair to the sofa. Mom quite possibly flew from the lampshade. I know Fedelia ran in from the kitchen, joining Mom and Dad, who each had a foot of Sal’s.

  Elohim would not let go. For all his life, he would not let go of Sal, of Helen, of her lover. He held tight to all these things and that’s when the others appeared. They’d been so quiet, not your usual loud mob. Their silence was worst, stealing away our right to shut the windows and bolt the door. We didn’t even have time to scream. It was a silent struggle on both ends. Joining the battle, I wrapped my arms around Sal’s legs, pulling back with Mom, Dad, and Fedelia.

  “Don’t let me go.”

  Sal was looking at me. If only I were Grand. If only I had his strength. No one ever said it, but I know it was my fault they pulled Sal away from us. I wasn’t strong enough, and it was me who let him go.

  That was when the screaming started. They were screaming cheers, we were screaming tears, and Sal was screaming fear. A rhyme of the ages.

  Dad lost his slippers and Mom lost her heels as they climbed out the window, his bathrobe and her apron flapping as they gave chase. Me and Fedelia were behind them, but she broke off before we got into the woods. She said she was going to get the sheriff. No one had time
to tell her the sheriff was in the mob. I suppose he always had been.

  Fedelia’s parting words were for me to save the day.

  I will, Auntie. I tried to believe I could.

  Even before we got there, I knew it was to the schoolhouse they were going. The place in which their insanity had ripened and been brought to fruit. There in the middle of the schoolhouse was a wooden post they had newly erected. To this post they tied Sal as quickly as anybody has ever been tied.

  Dad grabbed at the rope and punched a guy. Kicked another in the groin, but someone grabbed onto the back of his robe and yanked him to the ground by it. It took three guys to hold him down.

  Mom was screaming somewhere on the other side of me. I know I looked at her face, but all I remember is seeing the edges of her dress. Edges turning and flailing under those who held her down.

  I myself was scratching, biting, and kicking the shins of a guy holding me against him. It was then I saw Dovey with the gas can. Beside her was the woman in the rhinestone belt who had asked Sal if God was a nigger too. Together Dovey and this woman poured gas on the ground around Sal. They did it so steady, as if they were pouring milk in glasses for their very own dinner table.

  I bit down on the man’s hand holding me until I drew blood and he let go. I ran to Sal. I almost made it too. I felt the rough of the rope at the tips of my fingers. I saw him smile with the hope I would be enough to save him.

  It was Elohim who grabbed me back by my hair and slapped me down. By his orders, two followers came to get me. I hit one in the stomach. He hit me in the face. I bit one on the arm. He bit me on the hand. I wiggled and squirmed, but it only seemed to tighten their grip.

  All I could do was watch Elohim light the match like it was the only right choice. I would like to say he was not smiling. I would like to say he was not happy as the match tossed through the air in slow motion like a thing that held all of time. Tumbling and flipping its flame down to the gasoline, where it lit in a bright, painfully beautiful burst.

  I was still looking at that burst when I heard Sal scream to me to remember Granny. Granny? The flames were all I saw. But then I did remember. Granny. The suffering. The gun. Yes, I remembered what I couldn’t do the first time. Would I stay the child? Or become the man Sal was asking me to become?

  The flames burned through the gas trail around him, building higher and higher as they headed for him. He didn’t scream, but he did cry. I didn’t understand how a boy could have so many tears, yet not have enough to put anything out.

  In love with the flames, the two men who held me loosened their grip as they watched the fire they couldn’t stop being in awe of. It was enough of a loosened grip for me to break away, to run past them, past Dad, watching me, his teeth gritting under the elbow plastered to his cheek.

  I ran past the edge of Mom’s dress, to the tree house not far there in the woods. From the crate I grabbed the gun because it was the only water I had to put the fire out.

  By the time I returned, the flames had made their way in the circle of gas around the tree, and were now at Sal’s feet, burning up his calves. The smell of his melting flesh was so thick, it packed into the nose as something solid. I thought my nostrils were going to split under the strain.

  No one saw me with the gun. They were busy cheering the flames.

  “Just look at him.” They laughed as he struggled to get free of the rope. “Just look at the devil wiggle.”

  Sal never once screamed. I know he did it for Mom and Dad’s sake. It’s a hard thing for a parent to hear, that of their child burning alive. Sal loved them enough not to let them hear a thing like that.

  “I’m sorry. Oh, God, I’m so sorry, son.” Dad’s crying left little room for his words. He was still being held down. Still fighting to not be.

  Mom had a whole different fight. Each of her limbs were held by a person a piece, but her whole middle bounced up and down like she was on a trampoline as she screamed and called them bastards and bitches and fucking devils.

  Truth be told, I thought a miracle would come, yellow and soft like a peach. If ever there was a moment for God to appear, it was right then and there. I waited for Him. For Him to save me from the choice of the trigger, because to squeeze it was to risk the wrong decision. A decision I could never come back from. It would tangle me. Follow me, choke me, scatter me, seize me for all sorrows. And yet, if I did nothing, I risked being Him. Just another God. A spectator of war.

  The sound was like that of a heavy book falling from the top shelf, just magnified. How could two things so different share the same sound?

  It was a sound that stopped all the others. All that remained was the crackling of the fire, which no longer burned a life, just a body, and there ain’t suffering in that except for the coffin’s loss.

  The bullet was as successful as a bullet can be.

  People let go of the things they’d been holding tight to. Things like Mom and Dad. Dad just stood there, his fingers like claws digging into his head as he stared at Sal’s body. Mom walked slowly, holding her arms out. She got so close to Sal, the fire caught on the edge of her dress.

  In her unbelieving daze, she didn’t realize the flames at first, not until she felt their heat on her legs. She screamed she didn’t want to burn. Dad threw her down onto the ground, told her to roll while me and him threw the dry dirt, trying to suffocate the flames. But the flames continued on. They were eating her dress, they were eating her apron, until the rain fell sudden and strong.

  Call it a miracle, or just call it weather. Either way, Mom was put out and Dad fell down beside her.

  “Yes,” she whispered as he held her in a rocking way.

  “Yes, what, love?”

  “The rain is just the gift I need.” She tilted her face to the drops, thinking of the small jar of water sitting in the study.

  The rain carried Elohim’s blood from the gunshot wound. It was him, after all, who I shot in the chest.

  My plan for the gun was to shoot Sal, to stop his suffering of the flames. But his eyes told me to aim away from him. To aim at the reason for the suffering. And so I did, and Sal heard the bang before he died. He heard the bang and he lowered his head and went knowing what I’d done for him.

  As Elohim lay dying, no one cared. No one held his head in their hands and told him to breathe, breathe, help is on the way. No one said, You’re a good, good man, and you matter.

  No one cried for him or shouted at me, What have you done?

  And what had I done?

  I had shot a man. A man I once called a neighbor, a teacher, a friend. The best steeplejack in all the world. That’s what I told him once, and he’d smiled.

  I shot all those things. The man who was the saving hand when I nearly slipped off the roof. The man I caught fireflies with one summer night. The man I’d known all my life. All shot to pieces by me. I shot all the bad, but damn it all, I shot all the good as well. That’s something you never quite come back from. That’s something that’s a fresh pain every day.

  Out of all the things to last see, Elohim saw me with the gun as he lay there. Even in the rain, I saw the difference of the tear slipping down his face. His eyes said to me, I hope one day you know what it feels like. The pain, the hurt, the slow dying.

  Yes, Elohim, I know what it feels like. I have seen for myself.

  When he did finally die, he did so to the sounds of the women weeping and the men howling, not for him but for the boy they had burned to death.

  They stared at his small, charred figure in the smoldering ash and knew he was no devil. They knew they had melted the skin off a thirteen-year-old boy. The pain of that was etched into his face, the way his mouth gaped open, the way his teeth protruded from the lips no longer there.

  The sheriff, careful not to burn his fingers, began to gently untie the remaining rope as me, Mom, and Dad left.

  Along the way, we passed Juniper’s and the truck delivering the ice cream. Mom couldn’t help herself. Her mad laughter c
aused the man unloading the ice cream to drop a carton. It rolled into our path. It seemed to stop everything, including us. Would we ever be able to move past? That is what I wondered as we stood there frozen before the frozen.

  Mom was the first to move. She lifted her foot as if to take a step over it, but she felt the weight of that great task and instead walked around the carton, her head hung in the disappointing realization. Dad followed her around the carton. He didn’t even put on the show of any other choice. Their steps said there would be no getting over it, there would only be the living around it. That it would always be there. It had become the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and our end. I knew this, and yet I wanted to try.

  I took a step, but my toe caught on the carton and I fell as if the fall had always been in my nature. Waiting for the right moment of my life. When all my soul, in its smallness and its vastness, would fall face down against the earth from the bliss of my name to the hard crosses I would be handed to bear.

  Mom and Dad silently waited for me to stand up on my own. Somehow we knew we could no longer help one another. It was up to ourselves to learn how to survive, and it was because of this, Dad let me carry the gun home. I was no longer the child. I was the man who had yet to have height on his side.

  27

  They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,

  Through Eden took their solitary way.

  —MILTON, PARADISE LOST 12:648–649

  COOLER TEMPERATURES AND regret ultimately equaled the recovery of the town. Yes, the murderers of Sal really did regret. Some even regretted it enough to hurry to the grave. Brains on the wall. Gun in the hand. That was how they found one of them. Another rolled a cigarette with some cyanide. His whole room smelled like almonds because of it.

  Otis hadn’t been part of the mob. He found out Dovey had only after the fact. He didn’t know what to say to her nor she to him. Those moments after the death of their child, Dovey and Otis were husband and wife unable to come together and heal. That distance between them led her to Elohim. It led to the night she said she was going to take a bath and asked Otis if he could hand her a bar of her homemade soap out of the closet.