In the Wild Light

by Jeff Zentner

“It was a busy night and I’m training a new girl, and she messed up the order for Ruthie Cloud’s grandson. I don’t recall his name right off. Has the gold teeth and braided hair and tattoos.”

  “Jason?” My heart drums on the wall of my chest like an animal dashing itself against the bars of its cage. Whatever she’s about to tell me, it’s my fault. He promised me he would make me sorry if I came between him and Delaney. My knees tremble. A sourness rises in the back of my throat.

  “Jason. So she gets the order wrong. Gives him sausage instead of bacon. Well, Jason starts fussing at her, hollering. Being as ugly as can be. I go to see what’s the matter. He tells me. I says, ‘Sir, you are our customer. Your satisfaction is our first priority. We’ll make you a fresh pie.’ But that’s not good enough. So I says, ‘We’ll refund your money too. Keep the pie.’ Course that’s not good enough either. Says he wants a fresh pie, his money back, and twenty dollars for his trouble.”

  “For his trouble? Hell.” Papaw shakes his head in disgust. “For his trouble.”

  Mamaw continues. “I tell him, ‘Sir, I have offered you what I can. I’ve tried to do right by you. I cannot just give you money from the till. I will lose my job.’ Then he opens up his pizza box, and—” Her face crumples. She pulls off her glasses and presses a hand over her eyes. She begins weeping. “He slaps me with a slice, right over the eye. Fresh out of the oven. Pushes it hard in my face.” She breaks down sobbing.

  Papaw and I cry out simultaneously in wordless outrage. We both stand over her, hands on her back like we’re faith healers. Papaw wheezes. He coughs until he’s red-faced.

  Papaw and I hug her tight from each side for several moments while she cradles her burned face in both hands, one arm of her bifocals clenched precariously between two fingers. I gently take her glasses, go inside, and wash them clean. My belly is an incandescent crucible of molten iron. Papaw is still embracing her to his chest when I come back out.

  I give her back her glasses.

  “Thank you,” she says, voice still quaking. She shakes her head. “This world’s come to be so ugly. People didn’t always act this way.”

  “How dare he. He deserves to be shot.” Papaw is hoarse. “We ought to call the sheriff on him.” He hacks furiously and fights for breath.

  Mamaw shakes her head firmly. “I don’t believe in calling the law on every little thing.” She stands and takes a deep breath, composing herself. “I’ll be all right. I just need to take my mind off it. When it happened, I left one of the gals in charge and took off. And truth is, I didn’t forget the pizza. I didn’t want my boys eating something I’d been slapped across the face with. I’m gonna go inside and cook some real dinner. I’m tired of y’all eating this stuff from a cardboard box.”

  “You should take a hot bath, rest. You work too hard,” I say. “Let us sort dinner.”

  She summons a wan smile. “I need to do this. There’s dignity in serving the people I love, and I could use a dose of dignity.”

  “I love you.” I give her a long hug.

  Papaw pecks her on the cheek and embraces her. “Love you, Donna Bird.”

  She doesn’t say anything, but rests her hand on his cheek for a second. Then she goes inside.

  Papaw and I retake our seats. He’s shaking his head. His face is red and there’s a glowering set to his jaw.

  Something begins happening to me. My concern for Mamaw of a few moments ago is swept into the rush of a crescendoing inside my chest. Something animal and ferocious, bleak and savage. It’s growing too big for my body, ready to rip through my skin. A roiling tumult of hatred and fury overcomes me, and a fog of black-and-gray static envelops my brain. I see Jason Cloud’s glittering, leering grin mocking me. My head throbs at the base of my skull.

  Some beastly voice from the gloom calls me and says, Stand, and I do.

  It tells me, Leave the porch, and I do.

  It tells me, Go to the shed, and pull the axe off the wall—the one you use on October mornings to chop wood for winter. And I do.

  I run my hand down its work-worn smoothness. I weigh the heft of its gleaming, shattered-glass-sharp head. I take good care of it like Papaw taught me.

  And the serpentine voice tells me, Bury it in Jason Cloud’s face.

  The voice bids me, Do this.

  And I will.

  I toss the axe with a clatter into the bed of my pickup and jerk the door open.

  I’m half inside when Papaw breaks through the malignant buzz in my brain. “Where you going with that?”

  I look at him. “To kill Jason Cloud.”

  “No you will not either,” Papaw roars. His voice booms with its old authority.

  But whatever has me in its grip is too strong. I hesitate for only a moment before I sit behind the wheel.

  “You get up here right now if you love me,” Papaw shouts, with what must be the last of his strength. In the dim of the porch light, I see his eyes, ardent with furious love. It burns through the darkness in me. It pulls me from the maelstrom and drops me, dripping and shivering on the shore. I trudge back up to the porch, my head bowed. I sit. Every cell in my body pulsates with hatred.

  Mamaw opens the front door. “I heard hollering.”

  Papaw wheezes. “We thought we saw a coyote on up the road and Cash went to go see. I called him back because I didn’t know if it had rabies.”

  I meet Mamaw’s eyes for a second, but I quickly avert my gaze.

  “Okay,” she says uncertainly, and goes back inside. She knows Papaw is lying. But I appreciate his doing it.

  Papaw sits beside me and coughs and coughs, as though paying a debt for a moment of his old strength. While he does, I listen to the rain fall and feel the red tide of adrenaline recede from my chest, leaving me queasy and spent. It’s a long time before Papaw can summon back his breath. And when he does, he lets the silence grow thin enough to burst.

  My voice trembles when I speak, and a searing rage floods back into me. It feels like running hot water over frost-numbed fingers. “I’d kill that son of a bitch for what he did.” I’m ashamed of how I sound. I never curse in front of Papaw and Mamaw.

  Papaw just listens.

  “He humiliated her,” I say.

  “I know it,” Papaw says quietly.

  “Someone like him killed my mama. Drug-dealing piece of shit.”

  Papaw shakes his head and exhales heavily out his nose.

  “You said Cloud deserved to be shot,” I say.

  Papaw looks down, then at me. “That was talk. You think visiting you in jail is how I want to spend the time I got left?”

  From nowhere, some new and unfamiliar emotion levels me. I put my face in my hands and begin sobbing. I’m so ashamed.

  Papaw rubs my back, his rough hand scratching on my T-shirt. He pulls me gently by the shoulder over to him and hugs me while I cry. “C’mon, now. Hey. Hey, now.”

  After several minutes I compose myself and sit back in my rocker, my eyes puffy.

  “You know one reason I think you ought to go to that school?”

  I shake my head.

  “This here’s a good place to live. Beautiful country. Decent folks. But it’s real easy to come up here learning there’s only one way to be a man. Live hard. Take blood for blood. You think maybe that’s what’s going on here?”

  I look at the ground and nod.

  “I want you to get out in the world and see there’s more than one way to be a man. We’re having Betsy and Mitzi over for supper in a few days.”

  “I remember.”

  “We said it was to celebrate two years sober for Mitzi—” Papaw pauses to cough. “But really it was to get you and Bets in the same room so’s she could talk about this school opportunity. You’ve always listened to her.”

  “I listen to you and Mamaw.”

  �
�The hell you do. In one ear, out the other. We’re bringing in reinforcements.”

  I smile a little with the corner of my mouth.

  Papaw reaches over, pinches the top of my ear, and tugs my head down to him, mussing my hair. “I believe I saw a bird nest in your hair. Lemme get it out.”

  We sit and rock, listening to the rain dwindle to a patter, the sky slowly bleeding.

  The buttery aroma of hot homemade biscuits wafts out to us from the cracks around the front door. We’re about to get up when Mamaw opens the door and calls us inside to eat. She has a look of contentment underneath her fresh burn, like she’s channeled all her indignity into creating something to nourish and comfort herself and the people she loves.

  My stomach is still knotted and queasy from earlier, and my mind is protesting that I’m not hungry, but my heart is telling me something else entirely.

  “See you don’t leave the axe in the pickup,” Papaw says as we go in. “Someone’ll steal it and swap it for a pill.”

  “There were many times, during the toughest days, that I imagined us sitting together at a table, celebrating your sobriety, your coming through the storm into sunshine—” Aunt Betsy looks away, blinking fast, the back of her quaking hand pressed over her lips while she collects herself, her other hand on her daughter’s hand. “I thought the day I heard your voice on the phone to try to tell you about Blake would be the last time I ever heard it. God has moved in our lives, and I praise him for it. I thank you for the gift you are, Mitzi.”

  Tears stream down Mitzi’s cheeks, and her eyes are red and puffy, but she looks radiant compared to pictures I’d seen of her from when she was using: pockmarked; scabby, sallow skin; patches of missing hair; scarecrow-thin; a feral, hunted look in her eyes.

  Papaw raises his glass of Dr. Enuf. “To two years clean and sober. And many more.”

  We raise our glasses. To two years clean and sober. And many more. We say grace and dig into the spread before us. Aunt Betsy’s chicken and dumplings and sweet potato casserole, Mamaw’s white beans, skillet cornbread, and greens. Papaw and I teamed up on some mac and cheese. Just keep adding butter and cheese; won’t get no complaints, Papaw said.

  Our old air conditioner can’t keep up with the heat we generated with all of the cooking and conversation, so we sit, sweating, around our scarred oak table, which Papaw built. I look around at us.

  Here we are, survivors of quiet wars. Like trees that have weathered a brutal storm, but with broken branches and fallen blossoms littering the ground around us.

  We finish and lean back in our chairs, bursting.

  “Y’all wanna set for a while and digest. We got banana pudding,” Aunt Betsy says. “Don’t worry about the mess. Cash and I’ll get it.”

  Papaw, Mamaw, and Mitzi get up slowly and retire to the porch. My chest tightens like I’m in trouble, even though I know I’m not.

  Aunt Betsy runs hot, sudsy water in the sink. I join her with a handful of greasy dishes.

  She takes them from me one by one and lays them to soak. “You get enough to eat?”

  I smile. “Could say that.”

  “I thought about Cassie a lot tonight,” she says softly.

  “Me too.”

  “I miss her.”

  “So do I.”

  Aunt Betsy scrubs at a spot on a plate. “On a happier note, Pep tells me an amazing opportunity has arisen for you.”

  I set a half-full casserole dish on the counter and hunt through the cupboards for one of the plastic Country Crock butter containers Mamaw uses to store leftovers. “Yeah.”

  “He said you’re hesitant and not sure whether you should go.”

  “Also true.”

  Aunt Betsy shakes soapy water off her hands, rests them on the edge of the sink, and looks at me. “Cash, you are a brilliant, hardworking young man. You can’t convince me you shouldn’t jump at this chance just because you weren’t born with a silver spoon in your mouth.”

  I swallow hard and turn away, sweeping some crumbs from the counter into my hand. “That’s not even the main issue,” I say quietly.

  “What is?”

  I lower my voice and glance at the front door. “Him. If I leave I won’t be here for him. He’s the only dad I’ve ever had.”

  “You’re right. I know it. He knows it. And you also might be right about not being around here when he goes if you leave for school. And still I think you ought to go.”

  “Nobody thinks my being here for him is as important as I do.”

  “Of course we think it’s important.” Aunt Betsy motions to the table. She pulls out a chair and sits. I join her. “Death is frightening and I know how tempting it is to let fear guide our steps.”

  “That’s not what I’m—”

  “Hold on.” Aunt Betsy raises her hand. “I took Blake and left my lifelong home to move to Nashville so’s he could attend art school there. You know how that turned out.”

  “I do.”

  “Would he have gotten into that car accident if we hadn’t moved there? No. Would he have had the amazing opportunities he had, the friends he made, if we hadn’t moved there? Also no. You knew Blake.”

  “Yes.”

  “He and I talked about almost everything. So I know this with great assurance: Blake wouldn’t have let death make that decision for him. He wouldn’t have traded the wonderful friends he made there, and the life we built, just to put off the inevitable. How concerned is Pep about dying while you’re gone?”

  “Obviously not much,” I say.

  Aunt Betsy gets up, goes to the fridge, and retrieves her glass mixing bowl of banana pudding. She gets out five small bowls and spoons. She returns to the table and serves me a generous helping. “I think the real problem is you feel so lucky to have survived what you did, you think you bagged your limit of luck by finishing out your childhood in a safe and loving home.”

  I stare at the table and toy with my spoon. “I’m serious about worrying over Papaw dying.”

  Aunt Betsy takes a bite and catches a piece of Nilla Wafer before it can fall. “Losing your mama was a big deal. I know you’re afraid to lose what you have left. If you go, you can always come back later. That’s what I did.”

  My throat narrows. “I’m scared.”

  “I’d be too. I don’t guess this is a decision you ever thought you’d have to make.”

  “Nope.”

  “You trust me if I make you a promise?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’ll never regret a decision more than the one you make out of fear. Fear tells you to make your life small. Fear tells you to think small. Fear tells you to be small-hearted. Fear seeks to preserve itself, and the bigger you let your life and perspective and heart get, the less air you give fear to survive.”

  Aunt Betsy and I hold each other’s gaze for a long while. She and Papaw have the same eyes. Gentle, but piercing when they need to be. Sometimes both at once, like now.

  “You had to use an example about not being able to breathe?” I let a little smile tug at the corner of my mouth.

  Aunt Betsy snorts through the bite of banana pudding she just took. She covers her mouth, and shakes and chokes with laughter.

  I laugh with her. “I’m going to hell for that joke.”

  “You kidding me? I know my brother. Pep would be so proud.”

  Our laughter subsides. “I don’t want to live a fearful life,” I say soberly.

  “So don’t. The opportunity is there. Take it. You are a courageous young man.”

  Aunt Betsy has this way—she reaches you somehow. Papaw was right. I do listen to her. Everyone I most love and respect is telling me the same thing.

  I guess maybe it’s like this: Sometimes you agonize over something. You war inside yourself trying to defeat uncertainty. Then you look around, and the
field of battle is deserted and you’ve been striking vainly at the air. And there’s nothing before you but a path marked Uncertainty. I guess uncertainty isn’t always something you can conquer. Sometimes it’s a path you have to take.

  And I realize something else: Betsy is wrong. I don’t have a choice to do this.

  I have to do it.

  “Guess we should take some of this out to the others before we eat it all,” I murmur.

  “I guess we ought,” Betsy says, looking me square in the eye.

  I rise and pick up the bowl of banana pudding, and I can tell she sees me trying to stand a bit taller.

  There’s a secret place we go that overlooks the town, its hazy lights unfurling under us in the muggy night. Above us, mirroring them, the summer stars float bright and creamy in a sea of indigo.

  We sit on the tailgate of my pickup, our legs gently swinging. I grin at Delaney as she licks banana pudding from the front of her plastic spoon, then the back, then the front again.

  “What?” she asks.

  “I say something?”

  “I feel your judging stare.”

  “I think you might’ve missed a molecule there.”

  “See?”

  “I had three massive bowls of Betsy’s pudding myself. It just cracks me up how much you love sugar. You work with it all day long; I can still bring you more and know you’ll appreciate it.”

  Delaney shrugs. “Nothing wrong with sugar, other than many scientists think it’s literally low-grade poison.” She raises the clear plastic container so it’s backlit from below, scanning it for lingering traces of banana pudding.

  “Don’t get your head stuck in it trying to lick it out.”

  “Stop pudding-shaming me.”

  “So.” I fidget and toy with a twig next to me. “I actually had something I needed to talk to you about.”

  “So talk.”

  My heart patters in my ears. “I’m gonna do it.”

  “What are you talking about?” Delaney sets her container and spoon to the side and eyes me warily.

  I let a few seconds pass with my eyebrows raised. Let her guess.