Burning Bright

by Ron Rash

  Dr. Timrod looks up from the book.

  “‘The affection of the survivors seemed rather to increase,’” he says softly. “That’s a pretty heartbreaking passage.”

  “Yes,” Ruth says. “It is.”

  Dr. Timrod lays the book on the desk. He looks at his watch.

  “I’ve got a meeting,” he says, standing up. He comes around the desk and offers his hand. “Congratulations. You may be on the cutting edge of South Carolina jaguar studies.”

  Ruth takes his hand, a stronger, more calloused hand than she’d have expected. Dr. Timrod opens the door.

  “After you,” he says.

  Ruth stands up slowly, both hands gripping the chair’s arms. She walks out into the bright May morning.

  “Thank you,” she says. “Thank you for your help.”

  “Good luck with your search,” Dr. Timrod says.

  He turns from her and walks down the pathway. Ruth watches him until he rounds a curve and disappears. She walks the other way. When she comes to where the river is closest to the walkway, Ruth stops and sits on the bench. She looks out at the river, the far bank where the Columbia skyline rises over the trees.

  The buildings crumble like sand and blow away. Green-and-yellow birds spangle the sky. Below them wolves and buffalo lean their heads into the river’s flow. From the far shore a tree limb rises toward her like an outstretched hand. On it rests a jaguar, blending so well with its habitat that Ruth cannot blink without the jaguar vanishing. Each time it is harder to bring it back, and the moment comes when Ruth knows if she closes her eyes again the jaguar will disappear forever. Her eyes blur but still she holds her gaze. Something comes unanchored inside her. She lies down on the bench, settles her head on her forearm. She closes her eyes and she sleeps.

  BURNING BRIGHT

  After the third fire in two weeks, the talk on TV and radio was no longer about careless campers. Not three fires. Nothing short of a miracle that only a few acres had been burned, the park superintendent said, a miracle less likely to occur again with each additional rainless day.

  Marcie listened to the noon weather forecast, then turned off the TV and went out on the porch. She looked at the sky and nothing belied the prediction of more hot dry weather. The worst drought in a decade, the weatherman had said, showing a ten-year chart of August rainfalls. As if Marcie needed a chart when all she had to do was look at her tomatoes shriveled on the vines, the corn shucks gray and papery as a hornet’s nest. She stepped off the porch and dragged a length of hose into the garden, its rubber the sole bright green among the rows. Marcie turned on the water and watched it splatter against the dust. Hopeless, but she slowly walked the rows, grasping the hose just below the metal mouth, as if it were a snake that could bite her. When she finished she looked at the sky a last time and went inside. She thought of Carl, wondering if he’d be late again. She thought about the cigarette lighter he carried in his front pocket, a wedding gift she’d bought him in Gatlinburg.

  When her first husband, Arthur, had died two falls earlier of a heart attack, the men in the church had come the following week and felled a white oak on the ridge. They’d cut it into firewood and stacked it on her porch. Their doing so had been more an act of homage to Arthur than of concern for her, or so Marcie realized the following September when the men did not come, making it clear that the church and the community it represented believed others needed their help more than a woman whose husband had left behind fifty acres of land, a paid-off house, and money in the bank.

  Carl showed up instead. Heard you might need some firewood cut, he told her, but she did not unlatch the screen door when he stepped onto the porch, even after he explained that Preacher Carter had suggested he come. He stepped back to the porch edge, his deep-blue eyes lowered so as not to meet hers. Trying to set her at ease, she was sure, appear less threatening to a woman living alone. It was something a lot of other men wouldn’t have done, wouldn’t even have thought to do. Marcie asked for a phone number and Carl gave her one. I’ll call you tomorrow if I need you, she said, and watched him drive off in his battered black pickup, a chain saw and red five-gallon gas can rattling in the truck bed. She phoned Preacher Carter after Carl left.

  “He’s new in the area, from down near the coast,” the minister told Marcie. “He came by the church one afternoon, claimed he’d do good work for fair wages.”

  “So you sent him up here not knowing hardly anything about him?” Marcie asked. “With me living alone.”

  “Ozell Harper wanted some trees cut and I sent him out there,” Preacher Carter replied. “He also cut some trees for Andy West. They both said he did a crackerjack job.” The minister paused. “I think the fact he came by the church to ask about work speaks in his favor. He’s got a good demeanor about him too. Serious and soft-spoken, lets his work do his talking for him.”

  She called Carl that night and told him he was hired.

  Marcie cut off the spigot and looked at the sky one last time. She went inside and made her shopping list. As she drove down the half-mile dirt road, red dust rose in the car’s wake. She passed the two other houses on the road, both owned by Floridians who came every year in June and left in September. When they’d moved in, she’d walked down the road with a homemade pie. The newcomers had stood in their doorways. They accepted the welcoming gift with a seeming reluctance, and did not invite her in.

  Marcie turned left onto the blacktop, the radio on the local station. She went by several fields of corn and tobacco every bit as singed as her own garden. Before long she passed Johnny Ramsey’s farm and saw several of the cows that had been in her pasture until Arthur died. The road forked and as Marcie passed Holcombe Pruitt’s place she saw a black snake draped over a barbed-wire fence, put there because the older farmers believed it would bring rain. Her father had called it a silly superstition when she was a child, but during a drought nearly as bad as this one, her father had killed a black snake himself and placed it on a fence, then fallen to his knees in his scorched cornfield, imploring whatever entity would listen to bring rain.

  Marcie hadn’t been listening to the radio, but now a psychology teacher from the community college was being interviewed on a call-in show. The man said the person setting the fires was, according to the statistics, a male and a loner. Sometimes there’s a sexual gratification in the act, he explained, or an inability to communicate with others except in actions, in this case destructive actions, or just a love of watching fire itself, an almost aesthetic response. But arsonists are always obsessive, the teacher concluded, so he won’t stop until he’s caught or the rain comes.

  The thought came to her then, like something held underwater that had finally slipped free and surfaced. The only reason you’re thinking it could be him, Marcie told herself, is because people have made you believe you don’t deserve him, don’t deserve a little happiness. There’s no reason to think such a thing. But just as quickly her mind grasped for one.

  Marcie thought of the one-night honeymoon in Gatlinburg back in April. She and Carl had stayed in a hotel room so close to a stream that they could hear the water rushing past. The next morning they’d eaten at a pancake house and then walked around the town, looking in the shops, Marcie holding Carl’s hand. Foolish, maybe, for a woman of almost sixty, but Carl hadn’t seemed to mind. Marcie told him she wanted to buy him something, and when they came to a shop called Country Gents, she led him into its log-cabin interior. You pick, she told Carl, and he gazed into glass cases holding all manner of belt buckles and pocketknives and cuff links, but it was a tray of cigarette lighters where he lingered. He asked the clerk to see several, opening and closing their hinged lids, flicking the thumbwheel to summon the flame, finally settling on one whose metal bore the image of a cloisonné tiger.

  At the grocery store, Marcie took out her list and an ink pen, moving down the rows. Monday afternoon was a good time to shop, most of the women she knew coming later in the week. Her shopping cart filled, Marcie came
to the front. Only one line was open and it was Barbara Hardison’s, a woman Marcie’s age and the biggest gossip in Sylva.

  “How are your girls?” Barbara asked as she scanned a can of beans and placed it on the conveyor belt. Done slowly, Marcie knew, giving Barbara more time.

  “Fine,” Marcie said, though she’d spoken to neither in over a month.

  “Must be hard to have them living so far away, not hardly see them or your grandkids. I’d not know what to do if I didn’t see mine at least once a week.”

  “We talk every Saturday, so I keep up with them,” Marcie lied.

  Barbara scanned more cans and bottles, all the while talking about how she believed the person responsible for the fires was one of the Mexicans working at the poultry plant.

  “No one who grew up around here would do such a thing,” Barbara said.

  Marcie nodded, barely listening as Barbara prattled on. Instead, her mind replayed what the psychology teacher had said. She thought about how there were days when Carl spoke no more than a handful of words to her, to anyone, as far as she knew, and how he’d sit alone on the porch until bedtime while she watched TV, and how, though he’d smoked his after-supper cigarette, she’d look out the front window and sometimes see a flicker of light rise out of his cupped hand, held before his face like a guiding candle.

  The cart was almost empty when Barbara pressed a bottle of hair dye against the scanner.

  “Must be worrisome sometimes to have a husband strong and strapping as Carl,” Barbara said, loud enough so the bag boy heard. “My boy Ethan sees him over at Burrell’s after work sometimes. Ethan says that girl who works the bar tries to flirt with Carl something awful. Of course Ethan says Carl never flirts back, just sits there by himself and drinks his one beer and leaves soon as his bottle’s empty.” Barbara finally set the hair dye on the conveyor. “Never pays that girl the least bit of mind,” she added, and paused. “At least when Ethan’s been in there.”

  Barbara rang up the total and placed Marcie’s check in the register.

  “You have a good afternoon,” Barbara said.

  On the way back home, Marcie remembered how after the wood had been cut and stacked she’d hired Carl to do other jobs—repairing the sagging porch, then building a small garage—things Arthur would have done if still alive. She’d peek out the window and watch him, admiring the way he worked with such a fixed attentiveness. Carl never seemed bored or distracted. He didn’t bring a radio to help pass the time and he smoked only after a meal, hand-rolling his cigarette with the same meticulous patience as when he measured a cut or stacked a cord of firewood. She’d envied how comfortable he was in his solitude.

  Their courtship had begun with cups of coffee, then offers and acceptances of home-cooked meals. Carl didn’t reveal much about himself, but as the days and then weeks passed Marcie learned he’d grown up in Whiteville, in the far east of the state. A carpenter who’d gotten laid off when the housing market went bad, he’d heard there was more work in the mountains so had come west, all he cared to bring with him in the back of his pickup. When Marcie asked if he had children, Carl told her he’d never been married.

  “Never found a woman who would have me,” he said. “Too quiet, I reckon.”

  “Not for me,” she told him, and smiled. “Too bad I’m nearly old enough to be your mother.”

  “You’re not too old,” he replied, in a matter-of-fact way, his blue eyes looking at her as he spoke, not smiling.

  She expected him to be a shy awkward lover, but he wasn’t. The same attentiveness he showed in his work was in his kisses and touches, in the way he matched the rhythms of his movements to hers. It was as though his long silences made him better able to communicate in other ways. Nothing like Arthur, who’d been brief and concerned mainly with satisfying himself. Carl had lived in a run-down motel outside Sylva that rented by the hour or the week, but they never went there. They always made love in Marcie’s bed. Sometimes he’d stay the whole night. At the grocery store and church there were asides and stares. Preacher Carter, who’d sent Carl to her in the first place, spoke to Marcie of “proper appearances.” By then her daughters had found out as well. From three states away they spoke to Marcie of being humiliated, insisting they’d be too embarrassed to visit, as if their coming home was a common occurrence. Marcie quit going to church and went into town as little as possible. Carl finished his work on the garage but his reputation as a handyman was such that he had all the work he wanted, including an offer to join a construction crew working out of Sylva. Carl told the crew boss he preferred to work alone.

  What people said to Carl about his and Marcie’s relationship, she didn’t know, but the night she brought it up he told her they should get married. No formal proposal or candlelight dinner at a restaurant, just a flat statement. But good enough for her. When Marcie told her daughters, they were, predictably, outraged. The younger one cried. Why couldn’t she act her age, her older daughter asked, her voice scalding as a hot iron.

  A justice of the peace married them and then they drove over the mountains to Gatlinburg for the weekend. Carl moved in what little he had and they began a life together. She thought that the more comfortable they became around each other the more they would talk, but that didn’t happen. Evenings Carl sat by himself on the porch or found some small chore to do, something best done alone. He didn’t like to watch TV or rent movies. At supper he’d always say it was a good meal, and thank her for making it. She might tell him something about her day, and he’d listen politely, make a brief remark to show that though he said little at least he was listening. But at night as she readied herself for bed, he’d always come in. They’d lie down together and he’d turn to kiss her good night, always on the mouth. Three, four nights a week that kiss would linger and then quilts and sheets would be pulled back. Afterward, Marcie would not put her nightgown back on. Instead, she’d press her back into his chest and stomach, bend her knees, and fold herself inside him, his arms holding her close, his body’s heat enclosing her.

  Once back home, Marcie put up the groceries and placed a chuck roast on the stove to simmer. She did a load of laundry and swept off the front porch, her eyes glancing down the road for Carl’s pickup. At six o’clock she turned on the news. Another fire had been set, no more than thirty minutes earlier. Fortunately, a hiker was close by and saw the smoke, even glimpsed a pickup through the trees. No tag number or make. All the hiker knew for sure was that the pickup was black.

  Carl did not get home until almost seven. Marcie heard the truck coming up the road and began setting the table. Carl took off his boots on the porch and came inside, his face grimy with sweat, bits of sawdust in his hair and on his clothes. He nodded at her and went into the bathroom. As he showered, Marcie went out to the pickup. In the truck bed was the chain saw, beside it plastic bottles of twenty-weight engine oil and the red five-gallon gasoline can. When she lifted the can, it was empty.

  They ate in silence except for Carl’s usual compliment on the meal. Marcie watched him, waiting for a sign of something different in his demeanor, some glimpse of anxiety or satisfaction.

  “There was another fire today,” she finally said.

  “I know,” Carl answered, not looking up from his plate.

  She didn’t ask how he knew, when the radio in his truck didn’t work. But he could have heard it at Burrell’s as well.

  “They say whoever set it drove a black pickup.”

  Carl looked at her then, his blue eyes clear and depthless.

  “I know that too,” he said.

  After supper Carl sat on the porch while Marcie switched on the TV. She kept turning away from the movie she watched to look through the window. Carl sat in the wooden deck chair, only the back of his head and shoulders visible, less so as the minutes passed and his body merged with the gathering dusk. He stared toward the high mountains of the Smokies, and Marcie had no idea what, if anything, he was thinking about. He’d already smoked his cigarette,
but she waited to see if he would take the lighter from his pocket, flick it, and stare at the flame a few moments. But he didn’t. Not this night. When she cut off the TV and went to the back room, the deck chair scraped as Carl pushed himself out of it. Then the click of metal as he locked the door.

  When he settled into bed beside her, Marcie continued to lie with her back to him. He moved closer, placed his hand between her head and pillow, and slowly, gently, turned her head so he could kiss her. As soon as his lips brushed hers, she turned away, moved so his body didn’t touch hers. She fell asleep but woke a few hours later. Sometime in the night she had resettled in the bed’s center, and Carl’s arm now lay around her, his knees tucked behind her knees, his chest pressed against her back.

  As she lay awake, Marcie remembered the day her younger daughter left for Cincinnati, joining her sister there. I guess it’s just us now, Arthur had said glumly. She’d resented those words, as if Marcie were some grudgingly accepted consolation prize. She’d also resented how the words acknowledged that their daughters had always been closer to Arthur, even as children. In their teens, the girls had unleashed their rancor, the shouting and tears and grievances, on Marcie. The inevitable conflicts between mothers and daughters and Arthur’s being the only male in the house—that was surely part of it, but Marcie also believed there’d been some difference in temperament as innate as different blood types.

  Arthur had hoped that one day the novelty of city life would pale and the girls would come back to North Carolina. But the girls stayed up north and married and began their own families. Their visits and phone calls became less and less frequent. Arthur was hurt by that, hurt deep, though never saying so. It seemed he aged more quickly, especially after he’d had a stent placed in an artery. After that Arthur did less around the farm, until finally he no longer grew tobacco or cabbage, just raised a few cattle. Then one day he didn’t come back for lunch. She found him in the barn, slumped beside a stall, a hay hook in his hand.