(2007) Chasing Fireflies - A Novel of Discovery

by Charles Martin

  On the single greatest night of my shared history with the Atlanta Braves, Tommye didn't voluntarily utter a single number. She wasn't spiteful or angry, and she'd answer if I asked her, but most of the time I didn't know how to ask the question to get the information. When it came time for the seventh-inning stretch, Tommye didn't sing along.

  The Pirates carried a 2-0 lead into the bottom of the ninth inning under ace pitcher Doug Drabek. I looked at the scoreboard and shook my head. The Pirates were three outs away from going to the Series, and we were the same from going home. But the Braves' leadoff batter, Terry Pendleton, hit a double. David justice-the tying run-reached base on an infield error, and then Drabek walked the bases loaded. Looking at a problem, Pirates manager Jim Leyland pulled Drabek and replaced him with reliever Stan Belinda. Belinda gave up a run on a sacrifice fly by Ron Gant but rallied the Pirates and managed to get two outs.

  In the previous inning, I had bought and finished my second ice cream bar. By the time third-string catcher Francisco Cabrera walked up to the plate, I had chewed the stick into a matted web of splinters. I was not hopeful, for which I have since confessed and sought forgiveness a hundred times, because Cabrera lined a 2-1 pitch from Stan Belinda to left field and scored David Justice.

  The game was tied and Sid Bream was advancing to third, and we were going into extra innings. But then an extraordinary thing happened. Sid Bream was tall, bumbly in a loosely athletic sort of way, and as Unc liked to say, could run all day in the shade of a tree.

  That was, until he rounded third base.

  Pirates left fielder and eventual National League MVP Barry Bonds fielded the ball as Bream put his head down and began throwing his arms, legs, and body toward home plate. The entire stadium sucked in an enormous breath of air, willing Sid homeward. Bonds's throw, unlike Sid, was a rocket. Sid and the ball arrived home-simultaneously. Catcher Mike LaValliere caught the ball, extended his arm, and Sid threw himself at the plate in a gesture that even now is known around the baseball world as "The Slide."

  Braves announcer Skip Caray stood in the press box and called the play: "Swung, line drive left field! One run is in! Here comes Bream! Here's the throw to the plate! He is . . . safe! Braves win! Braves win! Braves win! Braves win!"

  The place erupted. People were hugging total strangers, the players emptied the dugout, mobbed Sid at home plate, and then got tangled in a huge pile on the field. It was five minutes before either Unc or I quit screaming. Crazed fans were running across the outfield, and fireworks were exploding overhead. I had never seen more people more happy at one time in my entire life.

  Except Tommye.

  She was gone. Twenty minutes later she reappeared, unaffected, saying there'd been a line at the bathroom.

  On the drive home I started listening to that part of me that asks questions. I had two: who in their right mind went to the bathroom at that moment in the game and, given the fact that Tommye hadn't eaten or drunk a thing since we'd picked her up that morning, what need did she have of a bathroom? I looked through the darkness of the backseat and studied her. As we passed by the streetlights, or into the light of oncoming cars, the shadows betrayed her. Between the flashes, I saw the face of the little girl who ran through the Zuta that night in her flannel gown.

  Chapter 26

  ommye and I drove north up the island, through the security gate at Sea Island, and past the country club. When we got to Uncle Jack's house, she said, "I'll be right out."

  I leaned against the hood while she unlocked the door, ran upstairs past the rather loud objections of a cleaning lady I didn't know, and then ran back out three minutes later. She had a duffel bag under her arm and a giddy smile on her face. She waved over her shoulder at the still-screaming cleaning lady, jumped into Vicky, and said, "Let's go."

  I was sure they'd stop us at the security gate, and I was right. The guard walked out of the house, held out a huge hand, and said, "Excuse me, sir, you want to step out of the car?"

  When I did, he walked around to Tommye's side and said, "You too, ma'am."

  Tommye said, "Honey, you're gonna have to do better than that."

  He opened the door and reached to put his hand on her. "The owners will be here shortly, as will the police, and I'm told they want to charge you with breaking and entering and grand theft."

  "Oh?" Tommye smiled and shook her head. She dangled her keys and driver's license in front of him. "How can I be accused of breaking into my own house? And if I own it, then how's it stealing?"

  "Ma'am?"

  She handed him her license. He read the name and the address that matched her dad's. "Oh, well ..."

  She turned to me. "Chase, get in the car."

  The guard stepped back, and I did as she said. He handed her back her keys and license, and she said, "Tell my dad I left a few other things. I'll be back in a few days."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "You can raise the gate now."

  He raised the gate, and we drove through. I said, "You want to tell me what's going on?"

  She laughed and said, "Not yet. But that's coming. Let's drive to the old house."

  "What, you mean ... ?"

  "Yeah, the Zuta house."

  "You got a key to it too?"

  She grinned. "Or something."

  Uncle Jack had moved out of the Zuta not long after Tommye left. He'd built on Sea Island, and his Zuta mansion has been vacant ever since. The only things he kept there were his horses, and by now he was down to just one, an old quarter horse named Lil' Bubba. Son of Big Bubba, Lil' Bubba must be twenty years old now, and nothing about him is little. He stands nearly eighteen hands and some twelve hundred pounds on the hoof. He stays in the pasture, watches the cars drive to and from Jesup, and probably dreams about the days that Tommye and I rode him bareback across the Zuta. I don't know why Uncle Jack has kept him all this time, but I think it has something to do with Unc.

  Tommye and I pulled up to the wrought-iron gate, and I touched it with the bumper. It creaked, and rust busted off the hinges as it swung open. The grass was waist-high along the driveway, mostly weeds, and the house was in desperate need of paint. Flakes were chipping off around the windows and soffits, and the front door was swollen at the bottom where it had taken on water.

  "You got a flashlight?" she asked me.

  I pulled one out of the center console and handed it to her.

  Tommye slid it in her back pocket and stood staring at the house a long time. Without looking at me, she said, "You remember my brother?"

  Peter was one more unanswered question. I had never met him, because he had shot himself in the head not long after I moved in. I used to ask questions, but nobody had any answers, only shrugged shoulders.

  She pointed toward a basement window. "He died in that room right there."

  Tommye wasn't talking with me as much as she was talking at me. The questions were piling up, but this was no time to be a journalist.

  She walked to the side of the house and picked up an old brick buried in the dirt beneath a cracked clay pot. Then she went up the front steps, peered through the glass of the front door, and without a word, threw the brick through the glass. She reached in, unlocked the door, and walked in.

  She crossed her arms and looked around. The house smelled of mildew, and there was black mold growing on the walls. The bad kind, the kind you don't want to breathe. Tommye pulled her sweatshirt up over her mouth and circled behind the steps. She opened a big heavy door, clicked on the light, and walked down.

  It smelled musty, and the sump pump had apparently quit working years ago; stagnant water puddled on the concrete floor. She stood at the base of the steps and leaned against the wall. She shined the light around the room, and I heard something scurrying off into the recesses of the basement.

  The racks of wine were mostly full. There must have been two hundred bottles stored in bins that tilted forward, keeping the corks wet from the inside out. She sat on the bottom step, leaned her head against
the wall, and I sat down behind her. Waiting. She shined her light across the room to an old leather chair that had split. Most of the padding had either been eaten out or rotted away.

  "Jack used to come down here and taste his wines. Peter was older than me by about four years. Quiet and not very healthy. Bad asthma. Jack brought him down here and made him rub his feet while he sipped some ancient cabernet or pinot noir. At least that's how it started. About three glasses in, he'd climb back up the stairs and shut the door, keeping Peter down there for quite a while. I didn't know what was going on until I was eight, and Jack brought us both down here. I hadn't even reached puberty yet."

  She shook her head and gritted her teeth, shaking loose the tears. "When he tired of Peter, he turned to me.... That went on for about a year-him bringing us both down here together. We never talked about it. Not ever. One night, Jack brought us down here, and while he was ... with me, Peter got Jack's pistol and shot himself." She shook her head. "The police called it an accident. The local community, church, business, everybody else, felt sorry for Jack. The headline read ONE MORE TRAGEDY IN LIFE OF HARDSHIP. Said he'd suffered so much loss in his life." She sighed. "Some lies run deep."

  She turned and put her hand on my knee. "That was the night I ran across the Zuta ..."

  We climbed out of the basement and walked out through the kitchen to the back porch. The pool was green and covered in scum. Grass grew up through the cracks of the deck, and tiles had fallen off the side above the water level. Tommye looked at the barn where Lil' Bubba stood hanging his head out over the stall door, looking at us. She put her hand on my shoulder. "Hey, why don't you check on Bubba? I'll be along in a minute."

  "You sure?"

  She nodded.

  I walked across the pasture to the barn where Lil' Bubba greeted me with slobbery kisses. "Hey, big guy. How you been?" He was groomed, brushed, and his feet were freshly shod. Unc had been taking good care of him.

  I hopped into his stall, grabbed the rake, and started mucking out the manure while he nudged me around with his head. I spread some fresh mulch, poured some oats in his bucket along the wall, and cleaned out his self-filling water bowl.

  Minutes later, I heard Vicky's muffler outside the barn. Tommye stepped out of the driver's seat and leaned against the hood, staring at the house. That's when the trail of black smoke caught my eye. It climbed out of the kitchen window. It climbed higher, and seconds later it billowed out of the soffits.

  Tommye folded her arms, leaned back, and her shoulders arched downward.

  "Did you do that?"

  She nodded.

  "I don't think your dad's gonna be too happy about this."

  She laughed. "You haven't seen anything yet."

  Just then, an explosion rocked the house and blew off the back sliding doors and windows. Glass splintered across the pool deck and shingles were slung through the air like boomerangs. A second explosion occurred somewhere deep within the house and blew out one entire side. Flames appeared, engulfing the back half of the building. Within seconds, the formerly grand South Georgia mansion was one huge fireball.

  Tommye stood expressionless, unaffected by the sight or the consequences.

  I'd had about enough surprises for one day. I looked up and down the highway. "Don't you think we ought to get out of here?"

  "Why?

  "Well, your dad might-"

  She stepped into Vicky, leaned back, and closed her eyes. "It's not his house."

  Hearing sirens, I cranked the engine, pulled behind the barn, and slipped down an old logging road into the cover of the Zuta. We watched through the trees as the flames climbed higher. The wind carried pieces of ash, which flittered down on us like black pixie dust. A piece landed on Tommye's thigh. She flicked it off and stared through the trees as the second story collapsed onto the first.

  "I've been wanting to do that for a long time."

  With the sirens growing closer, I dropped Vicky into 4-wheel drive and we slipped off through the trees. We paralleled the main road, crossed the Buffalo, and drove aimlessly around the Zuta until night fell across South Georgia. By the time I pulled out onto the main dirt road, Tommye was asleep.

  I parked beneath the barn, carried her upstairs, and tucked her into bed. As I pulled the covers up around her shoulders, her skin hot to the touch, she placed a palm behind my head, pulled me toward her, and kissed me gently on the forehead.

  "I love you, Chase Walker."

  I had not heard that tone before, but my heart told me what it meant. I turned down the AC, closed the door, and walked down the steps outside her room. I walked out of the barn, away from the house, and toward the pasture. Stars lit the night sky, sparkling down. Darkness had fallen, outside and in. I could hold it back no longer. I reached the fence and buried my face in my hands, and somewhere in there I hit my knees.

  Minutes later, I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  I wiped my eyes. Flies circled a dried cow patty a foot or so away. "Why? Why didn't you tell me?"

  Unc looked up at Tommye's window. "She wanted to be the one. She knew it'd hit you hard."

  "Well . . . what about doctors? All these new medicines I hear about. Can't we do something?"

  He shook his head. "When I flew out to get her, the doctors said she should have died already. Clinically, they don't know how she's still alive. Her body's immune system can't fight a sniffle."

  `We can't just sit here ... I mean, Unc, think about it. We're sitting here right now waiting on her to die."

  "Chase, she's a grown woman. Made her own decisions." He turned away, wiped his face with his sleeve, and turned his hat around in his hand. "And we got to live with those. The question is not when, but what do we do with what we've got left."

  `Well ... that just sucks."

  "Hey ... " Unc's tone caught me. "That's a scared girl up there. She needs us. Needs us real bad."

  The Saturday morning sun broke through the window and landed on Tommye's face, but I was already awake. I don't think I'd ever gone to sleep. An hour passed, then two. Finally, she blinked and opened her eyes. Neither of us said anything for a while. She reached out from under the covers for my hand. "I should've told you."

  I had to look further to find her eyes. "We should've done a lot of things."

  She sat up, steadied herself, and said, "You help me to the bathroom?"

  I helped her to the sink and squeezed the toothpaste while she held the brush. I put the lid down on the toilet, and she sat down to brush her teeth. When she spit, the primary color was red.

  "If my life were still a movie, this is the part that would end up on the cutting room floor." She looked in the mirror. "We were all just fill-ins for a long-running soap opera. The actors changed, but the story seldom did. Certainly not the action."

  She stood up and hung her arms around my neck, gathering both her breath and her emotions. She hung there, and for the first time in our complicated life, she said the one thing I, in my selfishness and own blinded pity, had never considered. "You know, you're not the only one with a hole in your chest. Girls get them too. We just fill them differently."

  She wiped her eyes, held my face in her hands, and tried to smile. "Seeing as how I can't gain weight no matter how hard I try, I can pretty much eat whatever I want. And right now, I want some chocolate."

  SOrrietiMeS I dream that I'm stuck down there under that stump, that black water covering up my head and all the air sucked out of my lungs-my chest about to explode. Minutes pass, but Unc never shows and no headlights turn down the drive. Just before the black hole pulls me down, I wake up, gasping, sweating, pulling at the headboard, having tied a knot in my sheets. And while I'm draped in a blanket of sweat and fear, I notice that it's there-my head coming out of the water-that the air tastes sweet. Filling. I lie there, sometimes 'til morning, sucking it in. Gorging. But it's never as sweet as that first breath out of the water.

  I pressed my forehead to Tommye's, and I could see the water starting to
pour in over her head. She was losing her hold.

  We walked slowly, arm in arm, across the yard. She stepped lightly, almost hobbling. "Sometimes my feet feel like they're walking on broken glass."

  Unc, Aunt Lorna, and Sketch sat at the kitchen table. The kid was eating a bowl of cereal and beating Unc in a game of chess. Aunt Lorna stood over the stove, hot pads in her hands. We sat down, and Aunt Lorna pulled a pound cake from the oven.

  Unc caught my attention. "Mandy called. Said she's got to come by this morning." He glanced at Sketch. "State business."

  I nodded. Behind me, Aunt Lorna stuck ten candles into the top of the pound cake and began carrying it to the table. Unc cleared away the chessboard, and she set the cake in front of Sketch. He looked up at her. She pulled matches from her apron and spoke as she lit each one.

  "Since we don't really know your exact birthday, Unc and I have decided that it's today, August 1." She kissed him on the forehead. "Happy Birthday, Buddy."

  He perked up, and his eyes darted from us to the candles.

  Unc started, "Happy Birthday to you . . ." and we joined in. "Happy birthday to you ..."

  The candles lit Sketch's face, and the uncertainty grew. We finished singing and waited for him to blow them out.

  I leaned forward and whispered, "You can blow them out now."

  "Make a wish," Tommye added.

  Sketch closed his eyes, inhaled-which spread his chest and shoulders-and then slowly blew across the top of the candles. Smoke rose from each one as he spent his lungs.

  Aunt Lorna slipped the knife through the cake, slid out a piece, and placed it on a plate in front of him. The amazing thing wasn't that he had blown out all the candles with one breath, or the fact that he held Unc's hand with his; it was the smile that had pasted itself on his face. Every few seconds he would grow conscious of it, force it down, then forget about it-letting it climb back up his cheeks.