“Stop it, stop it, stop it!” Mena screams, covering her ears with her hands.
“See?” Dale says, pointing toward the car. Alice has slowly slid out of the backseat and is standing at the rear of the car. The taillights make an aura of red and gold around her. Her hair is loose around her shoulders, like a blond angel. If you didn’t know better, you might think she was Franny.
“See?” Dale says again, accusing, crying and pointing wildly. She goes to Alice and yanks her arm, pulling her forward. She points the knife at Alice’s chest, sobbing and shaking. “There’s nothing wrong with her heart. Nothing.”
Sam raises the gun, peers down the sight.
He has one chance. One shot.
Finn is running down the rickety porch steps to the driveway before he has time to think. It feels as though he is watching this from above, with a whirling helicopter view of himself as he runs toward the girl, the one who has Alice.
“Go,” he says to Alice as he knocks the girl to the ground. “Go!” and Alice slips away.
And then his knees are grinding into the gravel driveway as he wrestles with the girl, grabbing her fleshy wrist, twisting it until she is crying. Her skin smells like rotten strawberries. Her hair is plastered to the sides of her face, and her glasses are cracked. Her eyes dart back and forth behind the muddy lenses, and she’s bitten her lip. Blood trickles down her chin.
“Don’t hurt me,” she says. “Please.”
And suddenly, he is ten years old, on the asphalt playground pinning Joey Mendez to the pavement, bending his fingers back, prying the dollar he just stole from Franny out of his dirty hand. He can feel the tendons resisting, hear the joints cracking, and the high-pitched squeal of panic and pain coming out of that little shit Mendez’s mouth. It makes him hate him even more; his weakness makes him nauseous. Palm trees swaying above him and salt in his eyes.
The rain makes the girl’s skin slippery as he pries the knife out of her hand. She is sitting up now, scooching backward on her ass away from him. She holds her hands in front of her face, as if to protect herself from him. As if he’s the crazy one. When he steps back, she smiles at him.
And then Joey Mendez stands up, shaking the pain free from his hand, flipping Finn off with his perfectly undamaged middle finger. Pussy, he says as he starts to walk away, and then Finn is on him again, knocking him to the ground and raising his fist, ready to hit the smile right off his face.
He feels the knife’s weight and heft in his fist, and he imagines plunging it right into her heaving chest. He could kill her. He raises the knife now, ready to strike.
But now Franny is saying, Stop, Finny. That’s enough.
And Alice is saying, “Stop, Finn. Please.”
And then there is a sound louder than thunder, so loud and close, it startles the knife right out of his hand. Gravel and dust fly up into the air, and then the girl is running.
She runs. She hasn’t run this hard or fast since she was a little girl. She thinks she could run all the way back home. Her legs are moving so fast. Her heart is pumping blood furiously through her body. She could be an animal out here, she is suddenly so quick and sure-footed. Fast. She feels graceful and light.
The rain has soaked through her dress, and her hair is plastered to her face. Rain runs into her eyes, pools in her open mouth.
None of this is what she expected, what she wanted.
She can hear Sam coming behind her, and part of her hopes he’ll just shoot again. The first shot hit the ground next to her. But now, she hopes that he’ll aim that awful gun at her heart or head and end this. She thinks of deer, of rabbits. She imagines herself being hunted. And she runs.
It doesn’t take long before she loses feeling in her legs, and fears that the earth has fallen out from underneath her. It doesn’t take long before Sam catches up to her. She glances over her shoulder at him. He doesn’t have the gun anymore. He is alone. And he is calling her name. “Dale?” he says.
Her eyes sting with tears.
“Please stop.”
Her legs and feet are completely numb. But when her ankle twists, and the crack rings out like a gunshot, all sensation returns. She screams out, collapses onto the wet ground, and clutches her ankle, which feels like it has gotten caught in a steel trap.
“It’s okay,” Sam says. “It’s okay.” He is kneeling down next to her on the ground now. “It’s okay. No one is going to hurt you.”
And then he is offering her his hand, helping her up. Tears burn in her eyes, and when her wounded foot makes contact with the ground, pain sears through her entire body. She cries out again.
“Here,” he says, offering her his shoulder. “Let’s get you to the hospital.”
His arms are strong, and he smells like pine trees. Like wood smoke and cinnamon. She breathes him in as they hobble back the way they came.
“I only wanted to talk to you,” she says, tears streaming down her face. “I just wanted to meet you in person.You have no idea what your work means to me. What your words mean to me.”
She leans into him, and he holds her up. Steadies and supports her.
She knows that the police will be waiting there for her. She knows they’ll take her away. She knows that there will be doctors again, pills. She knows that soon she’ll be back inside that house in Phoenix with her mother, stuck again, working at the Blockbuster and trying to finish the stupid paper on Shelley. But none of it matters now, as Sam holds her up and they walk through the rain toward the warm light of his home. What do you do with what’s left when a life is gone? Nothing matters but his arm across her shoulder. She in her yellow summer dress. She looks up at him, smiling as he helps her. Cradles her, carries her home.
“Thank you,” she says. And when he looks down at her, she can see something close to love in his eyes.
Mena is worried about Sam, but she needs to keep it together for the kids. She sends Finn inside to call the police, and Alice stays outside with her on the porch. She is shivering.
“Hold on, sweetie,” Mena says to Alice, and goes into the cabin to find a sweater. She grabs a soft gray cardigan from the chair in the kitchen and goes outside again, wrapping the sweater around Alice’s shoulders.
“Thank you,” Alice says, pulling the long sleeves around her. Mena touches her soft blond hair, brushing it out of her eyes. And that single gesture brings to the surface all of the grief, all of that aching awful loneliness she’s been carrying in her bones for the past nine months. She needs to sit down; she worries if she doesn’t her spine might simply crumble, one vertebra after another, like dominoes.
They sit together on the steps, knees touching. Mena puts her arm across Alice’s shoulder and pulls her in tight. “You okay?” Mena asks.
“You guys saved my life,” Alice says. “That was crazy.”
Mena looks at Alice’s eyes, wide and young and hopeful, and thinks about Franny.
That’s what it is. It isn’t her face, or her mane of blond hair. It isn’t her smile, her nose, her hands. It’s not even her eyes, but rather something inside them. Hope. That’s why Alice reminds Mena of Franny. It’s the light. The light that was there in Franny’s eyes even when she was so sick. If there had been darkness, maybe if that light had gone out, she would have known something was terribly wrong and she could have helped her. But Franny was always so hopeful. Always so brilliant.
“The police are on their way,” Finn says as he comes out of the house.
Mena looks out at the gravel driveway, at the car with its doors still wide open, the headlights still on. The girl, Dale, dropped the manuscript during the scuffle with Finn. Mena leaves Alice on the steps and goes to pick it up. It is wet, the pages bloated and soaked. Mena thumbs through the pages. The ink runs together rendering everything, The Life and Work of Samuel Mason, a shivery blur.
“What is that?” Finn asks.
“It’s trash,” she says.
She knows there are some trash barrels in the barn. She saw Sam filling
them with grass clippings earlier. She leaves Finn and Alice and walks to the barn. It is dark in here. Quiet. She looks up at the basketball hoop, down at the dusty floor. She takes the manuscript and tosses it into one of the barrels, which she drags outside. She reaches into the pocket of her sweater and finds the book of matches she remembers putting there. Jake’s book of matches. God, what the hell was she thinking?
The rain has stopped. She soaks the clippings with some lighter fluid she found in the barn and strikes a match. There is a whoosh and then hot flames. The manuscript turns black within moments, and then the grass begins to burn.
She can see the lights of the police car twirling in the driveway, illuminating the trees, the cabin, and the sky in flashes of red and blue. The cop from down the road is talking to Sam, jotting something down on a clipboard. And the girl is sitting in the backseat of the cruiser, staring straight ahead. Smiling.
“What’s that smoke?” the cop asks Mena. “Something on fire?”
“Just some clippings,” she says. “Some trash.”
“You know you gotta have a permit to burn,” he says, scowling. “From the fire warden.You got a permit?”
“I’ll put it out. I didn’t know I needed a permit,” Sam says. He looks nervous. He’s running his hands through his hair over and over again.
“Maybe I better help you. That looks like it’s burning real good.”
“Don’t you think you should get her to the hospital?” Sam says. “I’m pretty sure she’s got a broken ankle.”
“It can wait. You don’t want that barn to go up with it.” The cop shuts the door to the cruiser, locks the girl inside.
Suddenly a scratchy voice booms from the radio on the cop’s belt. “Eddie? We got a break-in up at Gormlaith.You up there? Got a unit on it already, but they could use some help. Some guy just out of the joint looking for his ex. He tore the place up, tore himself up too.”
Alice lets out a small cry. “My dad.”
The cop speaks into the receiver on his shoulder. “What’s the location?”
And then he’s jumping into the car. He rolls down the window, and says to Sam, “I’ll need you to come down to the station later and give a statement.”
Mena goes to Alice, who is still sitting on the steps, her head in her hands. Mena sits down next to her and puts her arm around her shoulder again. And this time, the grief and aching are gone. Now, all that’s left is that old familiar tenderness. “It’s okay, sweetie. Everything’s going to be okay.”
“I hope so. I really can’t take much more tonight,” Alice says, shaking her head and smiling weakly. “I mean, seriously.”
Finn sits on the other side of Alice, and they watch as Sam walks to the barn. The air is thick and sweet with smoke. And soon, more smoke billows out from behind the barn.The smell is rich. Earthy and familiar. The smoke curls up into the sky, and only then does Mena recognize the smell of marijuana.
The day that Franny died, wildfires were raging through Southern California. In San Diego, the fires had leapt across the freeways. Runaway flames, blazing and destroying everything in their path, eluded helicopters and firefighters, raged across the mountains in the east and through developments in the west. Million-dollar homes and double-wide trailers were going up in smoke. Indiscriminate destruction. Horses and cattle and lost dogs were dying. Everyone was fleeing.
When Sam woke up that morning, it looked like twilight. The entire sky was filled with an orange haze. Like sunset at 6:00 A.M. When he walked out onto their back deck, and into what looked like snow, it was as though he’d stepped through a looking glass into an upside-down world.Where day was night and sand was snow. He’d never seen anything like it before. It was as though he were dreaming. It was like an apocalypse. Like the end of the world.
He remembers the silence. Outside, the thick marine layer hung suspended in limbo between sand and sky.The ash-covered beach was deserted. Finn was the only one out on the water, a black speck in a sea of white. Living directly under the flight path for almost twenty years, the sounds of the planes had become a part of the orchestra of their lives. But it was early, and the sky was empty save for the helicopters with their whispery hum. He should have known then that it wasn’t just their world that was collapsing. It’s the quiet he remembers.
It was so early. Even Mena, who usually woke up before dawn, was still asleep. In the kitchen, the old percolator Mena loved wasn’t bubbling, and the radio they kept on the counter was silent. Sam was about to start the coffee himself, turn on the radio and find out exactly what was going on, when he saw her.
She was lying on the floor between the kitchen and the living room, curled up in her pajamas as though she were just taking a nap. And everything went numb. Cold.
Shit, shit, shit.
Sam ran to her and picked her up. As he lifted her, he recollected the way she used to feel in his arms when she was a little girl. Light. Small. She felt like a tiny little bundle of bones as he carried her to the living room and gently laid her on the couch. He watched his hands grab her sharp shoulders, shaking her. Felt his mouth moving, even heard the words coming out. And then he was pressing his ear against her chest, the way he had a hundred times, to listen for her heart. God, her heart. It’s the quiet he remembers.
Sam pulled Franny’s body close to him, clutching her in an unanswered embrace. Mena stood in the doorway, bleary eyed and confused.
“Mena, stay with her. I’ll call 9-1-1,” Sam said.
Finn came into the room then, a wet black seal, dripping salt water onto the floor. “Jesus, goddamn Christ,” Finn said. “What’s going on?”
And then soundlessly, Mena dropped to her knees, her whole body trembling. She crawled across the floor, like an animal, and climbed onto the couch, curling around Franny’s body, making a cocoon of arms and legs and falling hair. Sam opened his mouth to say something, to cry out, but the words, the sounds, would not come.
He went to the kitchen and called 9-1-1, but because of the fires, the woman misunderstood. She kept asking him if Franny was suffering from smoke inhalation. She kept telling him how important it was that they evacuate. Finally, he made her understand that there was no fire. That his daughter, his child’s heart had just stopped beating.
When he returned to the living room, Mena was still curled around Franny. Finn sat on the floor next to the couch, holding the unyielding bones of her hand. Afterward, Finn stood up and sat down in the chair facing them. His whole body shuddered, and he put his head in his hands. Sam wanted to go to him, to hold him, but he couldn’t move.
It wasn’t until later, after the ambulance came, after they went to the hospital, after they left Franny there and returned to the house without her (as if they had simply dropped her off at a friend’s, at the mall, or at ballet practice), after somebody finally turned on the radio, that they heard the news that the county was on fire.
There was so much confusion. On TV, it seemed that the entire world was grieving. It was maddening. All of a sudden their devastation was made small, not even a fragment of this much larger catastrophe. But what did those people, covered in ash and embers, have to do with Franny? What did any of this have to do with the infant Sam once carried on his back all the way down into the Grand Canyon, the little girl he taught how to play Chinese checkers and how to swim? What did this have to do with the milky smell of her skin, the small constellation of freckles across her nose, the baby teeth Mena still kept in a jar? These televised images of anguish, this pixilated misery, had nothing to do with their dead child.
Finally, Finn yanked the cord out of the wall and picked up the TV, struggling as he made his way out the French doors to the patio. Mena and Sam stood together, not touching, but both watching as he trudged through the smoky haze and ashy sand down the wooden stairs to the water’s edge. Mena leaned into Sam, still trembling, and they watched together as Finn hurled the TV into the waves.
Sam knows it’s just a terrible coincidence. But still, Franny wa
s always like that. Modest. Unassuming. She’d be happy to think that their sadness might be obliterated by this history. That they might one day confuse their sorrow with the sorrow of that day. And in a way, she would be right. In the immediate aftermath, Sam started to think that if he could figure out that tragedy he might be able to solve the mystery of their own. If he could figure out how the fire started, how it spread, like an illness, like a virus, then maybe he could understand what had happened to Franny.
It is almost dawn, and the lingering smell of burnt weed hovers in the air like a dream. His mom and dad have gone into town to the police station to give their statements. His mother is pissed about the weed, but she’s got bigger shit to deal with. For now anyway.
Alice’s mom is on her way to come get her. Her dad is back in jail, and she and her mom suddenly don’t have to go anywhere anymore. He and Alice sit on the grassy lawn by the cabin, facing the lake.
“You okay?” Finn asks.
Alice is pale; her eyes look tired. She nods. She turns to him. “You?”
Finn nods and smiles. “That was fucking crazy,” he says. And then the absurdity of it strikes him, the insanity of all of this. He laughs. It’s one of those laughs you can’t control. A laugh so deep inside your gut, it’s like it’s a living, breathing thing.
Alice snorts, and this makes Finn laugh louder.
Soon, they are both laughing and the loons on the lake are cackling back. Finn’s side hurts from the effort, and he grabs at it. She snorts again.
“Stop,” he says. “God, you gotta stop.”
When they catch their breath, Alice leans into Finn, burying her head in his chest. It makes his knees go soft. His head swimmy. He looks down at her, and she looks up at him. He kisses her, softly on the forehead, on the nose, and on each eyelid. Then he kisses her mouth. Presses his whole body into hers. He kisses her and kisses her and kisses her. He kisses her until the mist over the water has lifted, until the sun is hot and warm on their tangled legs. He kisses her until her mother pulls into the driveway, and then they both scramble up the grassy slope, breathless and holding hands and happy.
The Hungry Season Page 28
