Blaze

by Coop Kirby

  “Let’s get you dressed,” Poet says quietly, firmly. But, there is no running interference between me and my father this time though he turns away to give me privacy. What I need is emotional space to figure all this out. Instead I get another lecture I literally cannot stand for.

  "You sustained a nearly fatal injury, after barely surviving a massively crappy series of decisions. I'm not sure where you think you're headed from here, Blaze. If that kid isn't destroyed by your reckless behavior now, he will be later."

  "Like Gigi destroyed you?" The derision dripping from every syllable shuts Cannon down. He turns on his heel and leaves without another word. Maybe's he out of energy, too. Can we be giving up on each other? In all the times I walked away from my father, I never considered he might walk away from me.

  Poet lowers a Paisley nightgown over my head, the cool layer of cotton drapes on my crispy skin with only the slightest cringe from me. The effects of the painkillers dull almost everything but the gnawing necessity for me to find #22, to explain - or at least apologize, since there’s no explaining what I don’t yet understand myself.

  "I need to make sure Ford's okay." I say this out of respect for her role as healer, though her permission will not halt my mission.

  “You love him?"

  "I do." The affirmation requires zero consideration. While so many of my thoughts and feelings swirl beyond my grasp, this I understand to be true without a single doubt.

  Poet nods. “Try not to test him. Most men fail to be perfect all the time, but Ford at least tries to be the guy you need. For the record, he's not the only one." She slips on my shoes and ties them. Before I leave, she grabs me for a long squeeze and I yelp. “Sweet girl, promise me one thing, okay?"

  “Of course.”

  "Remember that none of this — and I mean none of this — is your fault."

  I love Poet to the moon and back, but she's wrong.

  All of this is my fault, and I intend to fix it.

  The 16 wagon is obviously occupied, The Smiths blaring through the walls, and I can smell Cannon’s smudging sage from twenty yards away. My father might look like a Hemingway prize fighter on the outside, scratch down a few layers and he's pure emo goo. I don't knock more than once before I barge in.

  Cannon’s on a Gigi-a-thon, full stop, squatting in a puddle of memorabilia that's new to me. Posters of my mother's fire act, and photographs of Gigi on the road in the early days - before the Wild Big Top became the last American circus. Before the blaze that took her life and gave me my name. It’s not something we discuss, the gruesome details only revealed to me by a Google search at a public library when I was old enough to venture on walkabout without Cannon as chaperone.

  Apparently Cannon's decided today of all days is a good time to rip open his psychic wounds, adding plenty of salt. I gently remove the photo clutched in his calloused fingers. It's a yellowed K-Mart portrait of Gigi and an infant I’ve never seen before. Right. The baby is me. "Wow, I was scrawny."

  My father turns his face to mine, an earnest expression catching me off-guard. “Bullshit, Blaze. You were born a force of nature.”

  Tempted to probe further, instead I sit with his cryptic message - intent on not wasting the rare opportunity to dig deeply into a past I know next to nothing about. Only the grim forensics: a spark jumped from Gigi’s finger rig, catching straw from the bales beneath the high wire and traveling like lightening up the tent scaffolding. The circus performers and crew, as well as the crowd of spectators were spared, she was not.

  From inside a box, he pulls a faded Wild Big Top bill advertising a tiny dancer twirling twin torches: Gigi The Great. The font garish, the illustration almost cartoonish. "I tried to tell her, it’s The Great Gigi not the other way around, but she insisted."

  I get it. “Like Alexander."

  "Your mother's act built the Wild Big Top. After a spate of fires ended every other traveling circus in this country, I begged Gigi to stop performing. She could control the flame, she said. It was in her blood. Why put us out of business by cancelling the main attraction? It was a daily argument each of us refused to lose until we both did.”

  Reports vary as to whether my mother died from her burns, or from being trampled. In my darkest moments, I dwell on debating the two possibilities, as I suspect Cannon does.

  I peer into the eyes on the poster. "Could she control the flame?" We both know I’m asking, Can I?

  "What happened tonight should scare the hell out of you, Blaze. It doesn't though, does it?" The tips of his mustache are wiry, and wild. My father’s coming undone.

  "No." Not sass, just fact. I am not scared. No point lying.

  "Maybe this will. Picture your daughter having this same conversation with Ford."

  I appreciate Cannon, I do. But, like Poet, he's wrong about what happens next in my story. I'm the one writing it now, not him and not Gigi, and I’ve never been a big believer in happy endings.

  This Will Hurt, A Lot

  FORD

  How long it takes me to stumble back to our farm is unclear, could be anywhere between an hour and an eternity. The ache radiating from my crispy skin into the marrow of my bones wouldn’t know the difference any more than the pain receptors in my brain, lighting up like a pinball machine at the abandoned arcade down on Main Street.

  I crawl up our front steps on my elbows and knees, focused on the sanctuary offered by our front porch. Just one more yard, just one more foot, just one more inch. Collapsing on the porch, I roll over and lay prone on the welcome mat woven from random short ends of rope. It’s night I realize, like this is news, as I gape at the creamy moon waxing in the sky.

  The creak of our screen door induces an involuntary shriek from a place inside me that’s deep and raw and bursting with overdue omissions. Franny stares down at me, her face twisted into a worried question mark, demanding answers I can’t give, so I simply mutter “You're out of bed,” like there’s a way to keep this all casual.

  "What the hell, kiddo?" Mom's justifiably pissed. Not only is her son visibly charred on the outside, it’s clear that inside I’ve locked away something too big to manage on my own - and I’m screwing-up big time. Even if I knew the right words, smoke inhalation has shut my voice box down.

  With a shrug of resignation, Franny flips the edges of the mat around me like I’m a burrito, and drags me over the threshold of our home, and across the knotted pine beams to our kitchen. I lay prone, feeling beyond foolish, while she pulls her hair into a knot and takes a hard look at me. Covered in ash and burns, I'm incapable of much but I manage to stop her when she picks up her phone.

  "Don't." Talking hurts like hell. If Franny calls the sheriff, cops will be all over the Wild Big Top in a hot minute.

  She sets the phone on our butcher block, grabbing a dish towel to fold under my head. Cool fingers brush away the soot from my eyes, her tears wet my skin. “So you are under there."

  "Water, water." My mind's still back at the Wild Big Top, racing through the events like a super cut of crazy that makes less and less sense the more I play it back. Had me and Blaze just caught on fire? One minute, I’m dodging her dad like your average teenage guy and the next, I’m burnt to a damn crisp. How is that a thing that even happened? Definitely nothing about the Wild Big Top is near normal.

  Franny props me up against the sink, dangling the faucet hose so water streams over my head and down my face and back, creating a puddle around me. I gulp the fresh jug of water she hands me, too quickly, coughing most of it up.

  Sinking down next to me against a chicken-wire cabinet, she gives me another moment to catch my breath and find my voice. Then repeats, “What the hell?”

  I owe her a decent answer. Actually, I owe my mom way more than that. So I tell Franny everything, from the beginning. About my dream of Rollercoaster Road, about my final buzzer epiphany at the championship game, about waking up in Blaze's lap and asking her to meet Franny. I tell her about Brick and the poker shack, and the cemetery. F
inally, I tell her about the fire.

  "Blaze was unconscious when her dad tossed me out of the camp." I clutch my chest, swallowing a sob that threatens to unravel me. "I belong back there, with her.”

  Franny listens without interruption, or judgement. When she’s sure I’m finished, she nods in curt punctuation to my rambling. "I got you, kiddo. Let's get cleaned-up."

  Mom hasn't regained the thirty or so pounds shed in sickness she couldn't afford to lose in the first place. Still Franny's freakishly strong, all instinct and adrenaline like an internal switch flipped inside her to mama bear mode and stayed like that, stuck on purpose.

  I lean on her carefully, angling up our off-kilter stairs to the second floor, where we make a hairpin turn and lurch together through the bathroom doorway.

  "Daaaaaaaaaamn," I exhale in part-moan and part-scream, settling into our deep claw foot bathtub. Mom sourced it from a condemned brothel, pouring a new coat of porcelain herself before bartering with Brick’s pop to hoist it through the second floor window with his picking jib.

  Franny opens the antique bathroom vanity and tosses me a metal flask which she keeps for strictly medicinal application, the only occasions I’ve ever taken a legit drink.

  I throw back a belt, like Brick does on the daily. My lip curls at the taste I’ll never acquire. From under the hammered brass basin, Franny grabs a manicure kit I don’t remember her using once in my lifetime. Unwrapping the cloth, she selects tweezers, changes her mind, and picks tiny scissors with blades curved in a crescent point.

  "This will hurt, a lot,” she warns.

  I shudder, knowing when Mom say this she means it. The polyester of my letterman's jacket is fused to my shoulder, starting at my right mid-bicep and spreading up my neck. She begins peeling and picking away fabric from skin with quick pricks, shooting flares of agony.

  "So this girl. The girl."

  "Blaze." I see what she's doing, classic misdirection, and I am here for it.

  "Her father must love you." Franny knows her eye roll kills me, and sure enough I chuckle in spite of the shards of pain cutting through the layer of love she’s wrapped me in.

  "Wow, that hurts!" Braced against the walls of the tub, I vow this is the last time I get wedged in an excruciating position. “Yeah, Cannon basically wants me dead. What's so funny?"

  Franny's not even trying to keep a straight face. "I'm sorry, her father’s the ringmaster of a damn circus and his name is actually Cannon?”

  Giggles tear into us both. It feels so freaking good to laugh, like it's been forever - which it has. We stop only when Brick's 4x4 roars up our drive, blasting his Dixie horn - because of course my best friend has a Dixie horn, which until now, I never realized is the short answer to what the hell is wrong with him.

  Franny leaves me stretched out on our sagging couch in the living room, where Brick is pacing in front of our window bench seat - losing what’s left of his mind. The set of his jaw betrays the grinding of his teeth, an involuntary habit already drilling holes the size of cavities in his molars. I’m shocked the pressure of his pacing doesn’t leave a trail of burned rubber in his footsteps.

  “Dude. You need a doctor.” Brick’s rant escalates from reckless to unhinged before I can respond. “What is it about this slut, Ford? I just don’t get it.”

  I bristle, restraining myself. I promised Franny I wouldn’t move a muscle no matter what short pier Brick marched off, no matter how deep a dive he takes into the pit of toxic masculinity. "Do not go there."

  "I think I will. This circus chick has you so twisted - and it’s obvious why.” He leers, then licks his lips before revealing a disgusting sneer. “Can't wait to see for myself, actually."

  I catapult off the couch, landing on Brick with the sum total of a lifetime of aggression I’ve kept in check for ludicrous reasons. No longer am I afraid of his recriminations at school, on the court, around town. His BS is irrelevant. Brick doesn’t matter. He doesn't fight my half-hearted attempts to pummel him. Truth? Even if I wasn’t way below his fighting weight, I don't want to give Brick the same beating he keeps getting and giving like a virus.

  This is what makes me come clean with the only person in this whole world I’ve loved besides Mom, until Blaze. Pinning him with my knees under his chin, I deliver all the honesty I can muster. “I want her to be my first. And my last. I'm in love with her, you jackass. Okay?"

  Releasing him before Brick retaliates, I jab my elbow into his ribs and drive home my point. Brick cinches his hoodie, covering his eyes with his arms. "All these years you never said a word about getting any, and I figured you were you know, a late bloomer, like Franny said."

  “Hold up. You discussed my love life with my mom?” This news is disturbing on so many levels, it sends a shiver straight up my spine.

  "Hell yes, I thought you were gay." Far from defensive, Brick offers this explanation like it makes perfect sense, folding his arms across his chest.

  “Seriously, though. You asked my mom if I’m into guys?" Favoring my right shoulder burns, I wiggle back into the makeshift sling Franny fashioned for me, and resume my position on the sofa. My head throbs, envisioning how this convo went down.

  "What was I supposed to do? Take a team poll? Most of the guys already assumed you were. I figured Franny knew what’s up." Brick expands the distance between us, finding a perch on the bench below the expansive windows that frame our family’s orchard. He won’t look at me.

  "What is up is you are under no circumstances allowed to speak with my mom about sex again, ever. Also, so what if I was gay?” Brick kind of grunts in acknowledgement that I’m speaking, but no trace of agreement is evident. The piece of me that is pure Franny rises, powerful as the sun. “Bro, I have no idea how we got here but the hate you carry around like it’s your mission in life is gonna get somebody hurt. Let it go.”

  Releasing the strings of his hoodie, Brick stands - eyes the same frigid blue as the night I brought Blaze to the poker shack. “Your virgin ass riding off into the sunset with some chick you haven't even banged is not something I will allow.”

  "I'm not riding off into the sunset with Blaze. I want her to stay right here, in Louisiana, with me. You can blink now, Brick.”

  His voice severs the last shreds of our brotherhood swiftly, with zero remorse. "Well that's absolutely not going to happen.” I see the right-cross coming before it connects with my cheek, before the blow knocks me out cold. But, I don’t side-step or avoid the inevitable consequence.

  Ashamed I never took his threats seriously, never took the opportunity to warn Blaze, I simply accept the punishment meted out for all of the above.

  Way Too Much Information

  BLAZE

  The apricot glow from Franny’s studio is a beacon, calling me from the violet layers of night. I trudged here with a purpose, wound up getting pretty lost along the way. A million convincing arguments fill my mind — for and against me and Ford as a couple, pro and anti my flow art - though none give me a clue how to make any of this right, for anyone. To Cannon’s point, I’m unafraid to play with fire and that risk isn’t mine alone to take.

  Was it really just a few days ago that I first came to the blacksmith lodge? When a little thing like #22 wanting me to meet his mom seemed like a biggie? Not that I'm itching for an introduction, or anything. I feel like she might have questions. I am fresh out of answers. Sure enough, I stop short when I round the back of the stone building, where Franny waits with an expectant grin and a steaming mug.

  This whole time I had Franny figured exactly wrong. I pictured her angry, with an actual chip on her shoulder. Instead, she's stretched out along a bench, illuminated under the halo of a porch light, rocking cowgirl chic in all shades of ombre.

  "Would you like some tea, Blaze?" She nods toward the seat of a painter’s stool perched on the slate next to her and I sit, grateful for her chill.

  “I would absolutely love some. Thanks.” Tea and a bottle of whatever maternal musk Franny exudes
like an aura of comfort. "Your teapot is amazing." Do homes like this even exist, like with heirlooms and traditions and parents who don’t start conversations at an eleven?

  "Thanks. It's the last of my mother’s china. I smashed the rest of the set to bits and made that." Franny points to a ceramic mosaic in the shape of a yin/yang.

  I’m impressed, honestly. “Damn. Was your mom pissed?”

  Franny doesn’t blink at my language, which isn’t exactly PG. “She'd already passed on, so I didn't hear a lot about it. I probably will later.”

  “My mom’s dead, too.” I dive deep into the abyss of way too much information, head first. The shock of how easily I show myself to Franny is swiftly followed by an urgent need to convey why I have the nerve to show my face after what I put her kid through. “Your son saved my life.”

  Franny sits up, reaching out to lift a limp curl away from a particularly nasty burn on my face. "Yeah, he does that every now and again. Nice to know a guy will walk through fire for you, am I right?” Her grin holds every Ford origin story I desperately want to binge on, she is the sunshine that fills her son. I lean in with my whole heart — listening to Franny not like a parent, but a person.

  "Ford was a breech baby, delivered feet first. For hours the midwife tried turning him by kneading my body from the outside. I could feel him, resisting. Wanting to stay snug inside me. I whispered to him, promising I'd keep him warm and safe but to hurry it up. By the time he arrived with a barbaric yawp, I’d lost too much blood. No heart beat.” Franny taps my nose in reassurance. "Spoiler, I survived. Four minutes and thirty-seven seconds is how long it takes to see a white light, get pulled kicking and screaming toward it, look into the face of the divine, and cuss him out."

  "Stop." I double-over with giggles and awe. "What? You cursed out God?"