The sight of this vehement rage of nature mesmerized me into a trance, a wonderment of the spectacle and of the power of one sulfur match. As I reflect now, I regard that conflagration as an expression of my own rage. The incendiary explosiveness that had lain latent within the dry wood and contents of the cabinets of that shed paralleled my own veiled, verdant volatility. There were things inside of me—destructive and constructive—that only needed a catalyst, a simple spark.
THIRTEEN
THE DESCENT
“Awright, I did it,” I finally confessed, yielding to Anthony’s swift witness: “Silas did it! Silas burned the shed! We saw ’im do it! Peter and me saw ’im!”
Though Anthony tried to disown any part in the fire, Peter’s tremulous pity for me owned up: “Anthony told him to! Anthony told Silas to light the barbecue! He told ’im to do it cause he was cold. He didn’t wanna get in trouble. He wanted Silas to do it! That’s why he—”
“Yeah, but Peter gave him the matches! Peter got the matches in the cabinet and gave ’em to Silas! If Peter didn’t give ’im the matches he couldn’t start the fire even! And Silas is the one who did it!” Anthony, in fear, began to cry out loud, boisterously. “I was just kiddin’! I didn’t think he’d really do it! I was just kiddin’ around! I didn’t want him to burn down the shed!” Anthony was loud, spraying saliva, pointing at Peter who also started to cry.
There were Mr. and Mrs. Peter Rocco, Mama, and Papa standing elbow to elbow in the kitchen like an impervious wall. Erin stood behind them, curious, arms folded, leaning against the entrance way trim. Little Joey stood behind her, leaning in fear so he could see us during our trial. The firemen had finished and left, and the three of us were seated at the kitchen nook, breaking. Only Peter cried. I felt some grave hatred for Anthony, the big stool pigeon, and I wanted to bash him. The feeling was so strong that it deadened any feeling of remorse for lighting the coals. I still wonder what Anthony felt then, besides fear. I didn’t cry. I just sat there, mad. I really looked like the culprit.
Once the grilling indoors seemed to settle, the wind outdoors stilled as dusk closed the daylight. I stood at that sliding glass door, taking another look. What had been a fine shed was now a crumbled structure, a charred skeleton, blackened cinders, a scorched riding lawnmower, wheelbarrow, metal tool box, and grill. Like a grave after a funeral when the mourners first drift away, that area which had been a focus of human commotion an hour ago was now dead emptiness. The hardy cedars were burned black on one side. That corner of the pretty, curved yard looked like a messy wound. The clouds were gone and the peach-colored glow of the set sun released its grip, giving way to Venus, blue darkness, and stars.
Peter was taken home next door, and Anthony and I were sent to bed early without supper. It took a long time for me to descend into sleep. I kept turning on my light and picking up the framed photo of me, Molly, and Bob at their wedding. Finally falling to sleep, I woke up once, early on, dreaming of surrealistic images from that whole afternoon in the yard, having mixed visions and distorted drifting thoughts. I dreamed I saw the ocean’s horizon with its unencumbered blue, the silvery city skyline in a kaleidoscopic distance, magnified ships in New York Bay with the exaggerated sounds of their electric horns on the wind. I saw manifold clusters—colossal in this fuzzy obscurity of my mind—of red-winged blackbirds and starlings with their ever-changing shapes transforming into dead leaves in the wind, then into the changing shapes of the shed’s blazing fire and billows of smoke in the broken blue sky. I saw in my dreaming all the twisted images of that windy day, twice dreaming of falling and reaching for a football. These blended, blurry mental forms in my slumbering mind awakened me, only to recall what was real, and then to fall asleep again, soundly, somehow peacefully.
In the morning, Papa woke me up. “Get in-a the shower and get dressed!” he said with that Italian trace in his English, with hardness.
“Okay, Papa.”
I was having a hard time breathing this morning. The sound of my high-pitched wheezing moved me to taking deep breaths, listening, fascinated with the echo-like delay of sound. I took my inhaler, shook it, inserted it into my mouth, pressing, inhaling, waiting. This had become perfunctory, like tying my laces. I was itching as well, and could see the flaring red of eczema on my skin. It disgusted me.
When I came out of the bathroom I saw Papa carrying my packed trunk down the stairs. It took me about two minutes to figure out, with all the cold silence, that I was being removed from this home. My clothes were on the now bare mattress of my bed. I peeked out the window and saw him placing my trunk in the trunk of his car, slamming it shut. I hoped, wondering if my bike, scooter, and skateboard they’d bought me were coming too. I was a little scared, sensing their revulsion of me that gray Saturday morning. That thick rejection felt the way silence sounded, like the cold hush following the slammed door of Papa’s luxury car’s trunk. There was this sudden vacancy, a feeling of nakedness. I didn’t want to go. I felt so dead inside. I watched as Papa trudged like a beast from the car to the front door, hearing his entrance. He went into the kitchen, and I could hear him and Mama talking in Italian. I could sense his hugeness even from upstairs. It made me feel puny.
“Silas!” he shouted up the stairs.
“Yeah.”
“Down-a the stairs.”
I descended, pulling my Yankee hat low over my eyes, hearing another slamming door as Mama entered the cellar with my sheets, descending into the laundry room. She didn’t want to look at me. I walked into the kitchen.
“Sit. Eat.” Papa said, pouring milk onto cornflakes.
I obeyed, hungry. Not having supper, I could have eaten more, but was afraid to ask. This was so strange. I was so used to eating a lot here—even too much. I knew I’d gained weight at the Roccos’. Papa left the kitchen. When I finished, I put my spoon and bowl into the sink and sat back down.
Papa reentered. “Into the car,” he said.
I went to the front door, took my coat from the closet, zipped, opened the door, stepped out, descended the imposing stoop and entered the car, buckling. I looked at the house, its gray, its white trim, its red shutters, its palatial facade. Anthony stared out his window at me. He remained there, looking. I don’t know if he could see me looking at him. There probably was some bleary glare on the car window. Neither of us waved. I remained enraged at him.
Papa came out the door, walking, balancing that enormous torso on those awkwardly thin legs, jingling keys and patting his long tuft of hair which fastened across his scalp, showing its snowy streaks of baldness, hiding the rest. He entered, inserted the key, ignited the engine, made a brusque three-point turn, then descended swiftly down the long S-shaped driveway.
“Where am I going?” I said carefully.
Papa hesitated. “Far from here,” he said, burping.
I made sure I sat still, looking out my window—not a word. Papa was hard, like a stone. The big fancy car made the long gradual descent until the vista dissolved. I took one look back. The black asphalt in the November gray seemed so impeccably straight, dividing the rear window.
We passed my school, the mall, the graffiti-ridden embankments and factory walls, the gas stations, convenience stores, all the businesses, the railroad. We descended, rolling silently and comfortably under the traffic lights, finally making a turn, and then another, and then another, into the lot of the agency’s orphanage where Papa drove audaciously right up to the front door. “Get out,” he said.
I obeyed, shut the door, waited. He removed my trunk from his and carried it up the steps, expecting me to follow, saying nothing. Inside he dropped the trunk before the receptionist’s desk.
“I called a Mrs. McNeil about bringing back-a Silas. Tell her I need-a to go now.” Papa turned, bobbing his heaviness away, stepping past me in my puniness, descending, entering his car, not looking back. I stood beside my trunk, wondering about my bike, my scooter, my skateboard; wondering about Molly, who was now married and probably a
iming to begin her own family; barely wondering about Mommy Maureen, who had her rights to me terminated, severed completely; wondering about Papa’s ferocious anger about his shed and everything in it; wondering what was to be coming in my direction now.
FOURTEEN
TIDINGS
This orphanage was the same place where I’d stayed for a while back when I was two, that time after Mommy Maureen got caught leaving me alone on Bay Street. Only now it was winter, and there were no flies. While I stayed here everyone was careful to keep matches away from me since I’d burned down Papa’s shed. I guess they all thought I might be a pyromaniac or something. I could hear them talking, saying things like, “Don’t let the Dillon boy in the kitchen,” or “make sure the matches are in the security cabinet.”
About a week after I’d been brought here, a letter from Mommy Sparks was handed to me. This had been sent to the Roccos where they thought I still lived. I opened the letter eagerly and read:
Dear Silas,
We hope you are doing well. We have some news we’ve been meaning to tell you. Justin is very sick. He has been diagnosed with leukemia. It’s a terrible disease in his blood, a cancer. We are spending much time at the hospital here with him. We wanted you to know about this because we know you will pray very hard for him. He sends his love to you and wants you to know that he misses you very much. We will write to you again soon to let you know how things are going.
We all love you very much.
Love, Mommy Sparks
After reading this I strangely felt very far removed from them all. My life in their house suddenly seemed like such a long time in my past. Blemished retrospections, fleeting glimpses, sounds, even smells flashed back in my skull. I smelled their home, my room, Mommy Lucinda’s paints and cooking; I saw Justin at the docks fishing, on the street playing; I heard glitters of his laughter, resonances of Daddy’s exhortations in church, all in a transient few seconds. These came back to me like a splash. I promised myself I’d pray. For some reason I didn’t cry, but I felt an ache in my chest. I did consciously know that whatever they might have been doing to fight for me, to try to get custody of me from all the way out there in Ohio, had now ended. It didn’t take a lot for me to understand, even at ten, that their energies would not be expended in the courts as much as they would be at that hospital where Justin was being treated.
I placed this letter securely in my old trunk.
Since things were going well at the school I’d attended while living at the Roccos’, Molly thought it was best for me to remain there. So that’s why I had to stay here at the orphanage for three months, waiting while Molly worked very hard at finding me an appropriately suited home within the margins of that school district.
Every weekday morning Molly arrived and drove me to school. I was the only child of the thirty at the orphanage who wasn’t tutored in the orphanage. I guess I was privileged. After school either Molly or some other worker picked me up to take me back. Bus service was not for students outside the district. That was policy.
The drive between school and the orphanage took about fifteen minutes, and the numerous and notable laughs and conversations Molly and I had together each trip made that part of each day the most meaningful for me. Two of those trips are ones I remember especially. One was on a cold January morning, a Monday. I’d eaten my cereal and was seated in the lobby—the one where Papa had dumped me—waiting for Molly. When she entered, I could immediately tell that her mind was preoccupied with something.
“Ready for school, kiddo?”
“Ready.” I stood with my backpack of books already strapped to my shoulders over my coat, and I fixed my woolen cap on my head.
The biting cold of that morning briskly touched my face like a cold hand. I jumped into Molly’s car which was warmer than the lobby. Once Molly was buckled in I said, “What’s the matter Molly?”
She took a deep breath.
I waited.
“How can you tell something’s the matter, kiddo?”
I shrugged my shoulders, hearing the sound of all my winter fabrics rubbing together, watching her. I was getting used to bracing myself for all the varied tidings that can come in the direction of a kid like me.
“I have some news to tell you Silas. I’m not sure how to tell you, but I know I have to, and I think I’m the best person to do it.” She looked at me. I trusted her. My head tilted back. I still loved wearing my hats down far over my eyebrows.
“What?”
“I don’t know how you’re going to take this, but here it goes: Honey, Mommy Maureen died on Friday.”
“She did?” was all I could initially, instinctually say.
“Yes she did Silas.”
I could comprehend immediately. I looked frontward over the dashboard as Molly glanced at me. The news was not something that I could not accept. I accepted it immediately after I comprehended, and there was no feeling, no emotion, none.
“I’ve been praying for you this weekend about this, kiddo, about how to tell you and everything.”
“How?” I said, returning my vision toward her as she drove. My question was impulse, a reflex. I felt I had to further understand. “How did she die? Drugs? Too much drugs again?”
“She died of AIDS, honey, that sickness in her blood she had for a long time, that I told you about… remember?”
I looked away again. “Where?”
“County Hospital.”
“Where I was born?”
She nodded.
Silence.
“She wasn’t taking very good care of herself… for a long time now. You know that, right Silas.”
“Yeah.”
The car’s engine ran quietly as the heat blew delicately from the floor. There was a self pitying temptation to challenge about why I wasn’t told that she had lately been very sick, but the honesty in my awareness that I would prefer to have not known prevailed, and I kept my tongue, withholding my anger. Molly may not have known that Mommy was that sick anyway.
“There’s going to be a small funeral Silas.”
“There is?”
“Yes honey, and others at the agency thought it be best to leave it up to you.”
“What?”
“Whether you want to go or not.”
I shrugged.
“You don’t have to answer now, kiddo.” She touched my shoulder, then my head.
“When is it?”
“Tomorrow.”
I shook my head.
Molly watched me. “No, you don’t want to go?”
I kept shaking my head. “No, I don’t want to go.”
“Sure?”
“I don’t want to go.” I felt certain of this.
“That’s fine, honey. That’s okay. I think that’s fine, and I think if you feel that way that it’s probablåy better, honey.”
Silence and the sound of warm heat emitting kept breaking our words. I leaned back against my books, again hearing the sound of my fabrics.
“Are you going?”
She nodded. “Yes. Okay with you?”
“Yes.” Okay with me.”
“You don’t have to go to school today Silas, if you feel you can’t, you know.”
“No I want to go. I want to go to school.”
“That’s okay. Then you can go. I think it’s good. I think it’s better you go too.”
When we arrived at school, Molly got out with me. She wanted to explain to elderly Mrs. James, my teacher, about Mommy and all. Molly figured this might be a difficult day for me. It really wasn’t, as far as I remember. I didn’t cry. In fact, the activity of the day had me so absorbed that I didn’t even think of it, except maybe once after I was finished doing some seat work, looking out the window. It was two weeks before my tenth birthday, and the weather outside was the same bitter cold as the day I was born. “Ten years is long,” I said to myself. Then it was time to go to gym, which I loved, and I forgot about Mommy dying until the end of the school day when Molly cam
e for me. I knew Molly would come for me that afternoon. She cared about my feelings.
I never cried, as a child, for missing Mommy Maureen. The big problem was the aversion I had for her. I was so disappointed in her. It was a paradox. My disappointment in my mother was, in a way, like a parent’s disappointment might be with a child. I was actually strangely angry at her, rather than grieved for her. I was angry she’d never pulled herself together, and even more angry now that she was dead, since nothing could ever been done about it. It’s inexplicable.
I also felt relieved that I’d never again be coerced into being one of the system’s guinea pigs, an experiment, by being the big part of their allowing her another try at raising me. If a Sparks’ family came along again, I’d be free for adoption, unchained to a pacifistic, detached system that bent too far to a vagrant mother’s sin and selfishness. The only problem now was that I was older, and the older one of us orphans grew, the more baggage we accumulated, and the less people were willing to come forth to adopt. One thing that I’m sure about anyhow is that Mommy’s death meant emancipation, moving me one step deeper into freedom, yet at the same time one step deeper into the slavery of anger. There was a fury swelling in my interior.
Our conversation that afternoon on the way back to the orphanage concentrated on my day at school. I guess Molly, avoiding discussion of Mommy Maureen, just wanted to see if I was doing okay.
That night I couldn’t sleep, feeling guilty as I thought about my decision to not go to Mommy Maureen’s paltry funeral the next day. So first thing in the morning I got one of the orderlies to call Molly for me. “Hello, Molly? I want to go. Can I still go?”
Silas Dillon of Cary County Page 15
