Fire Is Your Water

by Minick, Jim;

  “Look at you,” Woody said. The other men watched.

  Will had an audience now. A family in a nearby car watched, including the teenage girl. He popped the squeegee into the air and caught it on the tip of his index finger. The tool wobbled, so Will steadied it with his other hand. He kept at it. Soon, he had the tip of the handle moving from one finger to the next. He shuffled to keep the top balanced.

  “I think she likes it,” one of the men said. Will glanced at the car. Sure enough, the whole family watched, and this made him drop the squeegee. Dino clapped too loudly.

  “You might get some tips if you balance it on your nose like they do in the circus,” Woody said.

  Will shrugged and put the squeegee up in the air again. The car had pulled out, and the men had moved to the other island to fill two cars. He was not needed, so he kept messing with the stick. It was as if he defied gravity for this one concentrated moment. High above, one of the ravens soared, and not for the first time, Will wondered what it would be like to fly.

  “What other tricks you got?” Dino asked when they all gathered back around a pump, four men trying to huddle in the shade of the tiny roof.

  Will heard the raven. He leaned back, cupped his hands to his mouth, and let out a loud, guttural cronk, cronk.

  “What the hell is that?” Woody asked.

  “He’s talking to the raven.” Scoop smiled. “They ever talk back?”

  Will cawed again, and this time the raven answered.

  “The man is just full of wonders,” Dino said.

  Will saw Aunt Amanda watching him from the bathroom window. He waved and did his raven call again, but the raven had flown away.

  Will looked back and saw someone else with his aunt. He waved again, halfheartedly. The other woman he recognized as the ice cream scooper. Will wondered what kind of a fool he’d just made of himself with his too-short pants and his crazy calling into the sky.

  “They’re watching you,” one of the men said, and then three cars pulled in.

  Will glanced back, but the woman and his aunt were gone.

  ON the drive home that evening, Aunt Amanda asked about his pants, and Will told her about the steep climb, the ravens chasing off the owl, and at last finding the nest.

  “And your pants, Mr. William?”

  “Well, I kind of ripped them sliding down the mountain.” Will paused, admiring the huge cumulus clouds before them. “Think you could mend them, Aunt Amanda?”

  “Leave them at the house and I’ll see what I can do.”

  Will steered the Plymouth westward toward the huge buildup of thunderheads. “Looks like that storm’s coming tonight, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe sooner.”

  They fell quiet as they approached the double tunnels. To Will, the mountain looked like a massive wall, the pike hitting a giant gate. And in the bottom, a little mouse hole swallowed all the traffic.

  For forty miles, the turnpike cut a long, straight ribbon across Cumberland Valley. Then here just west of Hopewell, four lanes narrowed to two, and the traffic slowed to scurry through the end-to-end tunnels.

  First was Blue Mountain. Will sucked in air, and the thunderheads disappeared in the artificial lights of the tunnel. Tractor-trailer headlights flashed by and blinded him for a moment.

  Aunt Amanda shook her head. “You don’t have to do that, you know.”

  Will just grinned and didn’t breathe. Ever since he could remember, he had held his breath through these tunnels, seeing if he could outlast the mountain. He counted off seconds in his head and imagined he was an osprey diving for fish.

  “Twenty-nine, thirty.” Will exhaled with a gush when they entered Gunter Valley. But this was only a narrow gorge between the two mountains, so Will sucked in another huge breath, as they entered Kittatinny Tunnel.

  “You’re going to pass out someday if you keep doing that.”

  Will just counted. He could see the far end, the light curved by tunnel walls. So much weight rested above them, so much time—billions of years of fossilized wildness. He felt his heart thumping harder. Kittatinny lasted a good ten beats longer than Blue. “Thirty-eight, thirty-nine, forty.” Daylight hit the hood, and Will breathed in great gasps.

  “I really wish you wouldn’t do that.”

  “You should try it sometime, Aunt Amanda. It clears your head, helps you breathe better.” Will was all grins.

  They entered Amberson Valley, a small offshoot of Path Valley. Thick clouds rose above Knob and Tuscarora Mountains. Will wanted to try his new key on the employee gate, but it was on the other side of the highway, and he knew Aunt Amanda preferred the longer, safer route to the exit. He would use that gate tomorrow when she wasn’t along.

  Aunt Amanda unlaced her shoes and stretched her legs. “My, I get tired of standing on that concrete.” She looked at him. “You sure got quiet.”

  Will shrugged, watched the road. Finally, he decided why not. “So, who was that looking out the window with you this afternoon?”

  “I wondered if you were going to ask.” Aunt Amanda turned to the window to hide her smile.

  “Well, who is she?”

  “Her name is Ada Franklin, and she’s a real sweet girl from Hopewell. Her family just had that barn fire you heard about.”

  She waited, but Will said nothing. She added, “You might ask her out sometime.”

  “I don’t need your meddling, Aunt Amanda.”

  “Oh, but you asked. She’s mighty pretty. And tall. You’d make a cute couple, both of you so tall.”

  “Enough.”

  “Just a thought.”

  They were silent as they approached the tollbooth. Will signed the form for Audrey Swartz, and Aunt Amanda shouted across to ask how her son was doing.

  “We just got a letter yesterday.” Audrey leaned down to look in. “They moved Jacob to a different hospital somewhere in South Korea. He said his leg’s tore up bad, but he still has it. That’s something.”

  Aunt Amanda agreed.

  “He thinks he’ll be coming home in a few weeks. I just hope they don’t send him back over there.”

  “We’re all praying for him and for you,” Aunt Amanda said.

  Audrey thanked her and took the clipboard.

  “I hope he’s OK,” Aunt Amanda said to herself.

  Will was silent as they passed Fannett-Metal High School. Will had graduated just a month ago, and Jacob was a year ahead of him.

  “Have you thought any more about college?”

  “Not really.” Will was tired of this conversation, tired of not knowing what he wanted. His dad wanted him to farm, and Aunt Amanda wanted him in college so he wouldn’t be drafted. Both seemed wrong. Will liked music, but he couldn’t imagine ever being good enough. And maybe even more than his guitar and sax, he loved engines—tinkering with them, figuring them out.

  When he was a kid, he would spend hours fiddling with Aunt Amanda’s lawnmower, getting it to run. Before he could drive, Will would ride his bike the two miles to Ernie’s Garage to help out.

  Ernie’s place felt somehow like a church—dark and mysterious, light coming from those high, dusty windows. Ernie always on his knees, as if in prayer to the gods of gasoline, or on his back, as if asking the gods on high for help. Ernie, though, always prayed with goddamn at the start—“Goddamn Buick’s a piece of shit.” “Goddamn Mary Rich needs to buy a different car.” “Goddamn that wrench if it didn’t walk off.” Ernie still went to the Brethren church every Sunday. He still believed.

  But what did Will want? To work at Esso all of his life? Or work for Ernie? Or maybe have his own garage, like Ernie’s? He’d heard about being an airplane mechanic—that sounded good too. Better money and the chance to learn how to fly. That sounded even better. The air force seemed like a good place to learn. But there was a big difference between a gun and a wrench.

  They drove up the valley, through Spring Run, Doylesburg, Dry Run, the little pebbles of villages strung along the Conococheague and
Burns Valley Creeks. Will had lived his whole life in this long, narrow fold, on his father’s farm, in his aunt’s house, and now in his own small apartment above Ernie’s Garage. He couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

  Cicero

  I loved looking out from that nest. When the gutbags still weren’t hatched, I’d sit on those eggs and just have a gander. (Yeah, I know, gander—a bird or a look—sometimes the same thing—big and fat.) Leaves covered most of the view but for a gap you could see through, and it was like the whole world lay before you. Way out stood another mountain. Closer in, farms and fields and strings of trees along streams. Even closer, that long strip of concrete covered with trucks and cars and all the glorious roadkill they could offer.

  The day before the storm, a barred owl got me and Loot riled. We were out foraging, as usual, and I saw that silent bastard first. From high above, I gave the warning call. The gutbags hunkered down as low as they could. They probably even fell asleep. That owl tried to sneak closer, flying from one tree to the next. By the time I came diving down at the big-eyed rat, Loot was right on him, too. By god of all runts and riffraff if that owl didn’t lose a feather before he got away.

  One of the gutbags—Cleo, probably—stood higher in the nest to watch, just wanting to have a look, but I gave the warning call again. That owl was not our only problem. This man in a red hat stood right below the nest. Where the hell did he come from? He kept searching the cliff, and I could tell he wanted to have a look. Loot and I both stayed close. Neither of us had ever attacked a human, but I thought about it right then.

  That man spoke to us. He said something in an easy voice, something I didn’t understand but for the tone—calm and excited at the same time. And all of a sudden, I understood words—not the specifics, but the idea of them. How they’re magical little vessels, letters strung together like rafts on the river of a sentence, the ocean of a story. The view from that nest suddenly seemed smaller, the world at once larger. All I wanted to do was listen.

  Of course, it was Will. That flat-faced owl had led him right to our nest. Lucky for me, I guess.

  9

  Ada wanted to take her time with breakfast. Her mother sat at the table, her hands still in bandages, but her face wearing a smile. And her father was in better spirits, too. Nathan had called last night at nearly midnight, startling everyone awake. He’d arrived safely in Germany, he said, the call staticky and short. Ada went back to bed holding onto her father’s last words: “Well, you take care, son, and know we all love you.”

  “At least he’s in Germany and not Korea,” her mother repeated. As on all mornings, they read the paper. And every evening after supper, they listened to the radio. They knew the intense battles, the mass of Chinamen coming down from the north. Or at least they knew as much as the reporters told them. Their imaginations did the rest.

  Ada lifted the bacon and flinched as grease sizzled and spatters burned her arm. She checked the biscuits and started cracking eggs. At the table, her mother pretended to read the morning paper. Ada knew she watched, but Ada held her tongue. Her mother would just say, “But I like watching you work, Ada.” Besides, this was her first breakfast at the table since the fire. Her father had helped her with the chair, her mother complaining, “It’s just my hands, Peter, not my feet.” It was good to see her at her seat.

  They talked about the storm that swept through in the night. Her father rubbed his mustache and said he saw a hickory blown down in the meadow. “And another tree, an oak, I think, back of the orchard, looks like it got struck.” Ada didn’t say how little she’d slept because of the lightning.

  She set the platters on the table, and her father said grace.

  “Not too much now,” her mother said as Ada served her plate. “And don’t watch me make a mess.”

  Both Peter and Ada glanced at her just to check. She pinched her fork at an awkward angle, and some of the eggs fell off.

  “I said don’t watch.”

  The room was quiet as they stared at their plates and ate.

  “I’m getting the building crew lined up,” her father said. “And the materials should get shipped in two days.” He talked with his mouth full, a piece of biscuit stuck to his moustache. “Just wish Nathan could be here.” Then, under his breath, “Just wish I hadn’t put up that wet alfalfa.”

  “You just leave it there,” her mother said. “No need to feel guilty for things done and out of your control.”

  Her father didn’t look up from his plate.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Ada watched him. He ate slowly, moving his jaw sideways like a cow. On his forehead, the thin line of scar reminded her of when she was eight. They’d been skipping stones at the pond. Somehow her father had stepped in front of her just as she slung a rock, and that shale hit him right on the forehead, slashing a bloody gash three inches long. She wished she had known how to heal then, to stop the blood. She wished she knew how to now.

  Ellie’s car horn sounded as Ada put her dishes in the sink. Lucky barked his greeting. “Don’t you touch these,” she warned her mother. “Daddy can do them, or I’ll do them tonight.”

  “Yes, dear.” Her mother closed her eyes when Ada kissed her on the forehead. She kissed her father and hurried out the door.

  Ellie and Ada said hello and fell into a comfortable quiet. Ada liked this early hour, the half-light of dawn, the receding darkness shrouding the land. It reminded her of all those years of morning treks to tend the cows. In a barn that no longer stood.

  Ada focused on the road and her day ahead. She liked her job—the time with Ellie and Aunt Amanda, the bustle of people. She’d started two years ago, during her last year of high school, with the goal of saving up money for college. Her parents had offered to help, but she’d wanted to do this on her own, that sense of pride. By her figuring, she would have enough to cover tuition by the end of this summer. Just last week, she had mailed her application to the nursing school in Harrisburg.

  Now, there was the fire. Could she go on with these plans? Her parents rarely talked about money, yet Ada knew they’d struggle to repay the bank loan. She wanted to offer her paycheck, but they’d simply refuse. “That’s yours to get your nursing certificate,” she could hear her mother say.

  And did she still want to nurse? Before the fire, she had worried about what the other nurses would think if they found out about her gift. Would they shun her, treat her like a freak? Now, she didn’t even know what to think herself.

  She wanted the bustle of HoJo’s. She needed that. Something to help her forget.

  But the calls to powwow kept coming.

  Before the barn burned, Ada’s job hadn’t slowed her practice, just condensed it. Folks called to learn what days she had off, and that next Monday or Wednesday, they showed up at the door. Louise Mohn brought her baby with colic, and Ada used an egg to take away the illness. Denton Atwood hobbled in on arthritic knees, and Ada whispered the chant to ease pain. Always, she had felt a certain recklessness when she healed, a letting go, like swimming in the ocean. Always she had been tied to God, to His power that flared through her body and out her hands.

  But now, she no longer felt that tether, no longer felt anything. Like the ocean just dried up. The flame nothing but ashes and memory.

  Since the fire, now anytime the phone rang, her hands turned cold. Sometimes it was someone asking about her mother, and sometimes it was a stranger who hadn’t heard. “No, I can’t help you,” Ada would say. “I can’t powwow anymore.” That usually quieted them before they said they were sorry to hear that, or that they’d pray for her. Sometimes they just hung up.

  Ellie drove through the tollbooth, and they waved to the attendant. “Aunt Amanda told me about her nephew just getting hired at the gas station.” Ellie glanced across the seat. “I stole a peek yesterday. He’s a real cutie.”

  Ada hated how she couldn’t control her reaction, the crimson blush that splotched her neck and cheeks. “You promised.”

  �
�Oh, I’m not playing matchmaker. I’m just trying to open a door. But no, I’m not going to do more than that.” Both of them stewed on the last blind date Ellie’d set up, a Hubert Stowe; Ada’d had to kick him in the groin on their first and only date.

  The lights of the plaza burned away the lingering night as Ellie parked the car. Even after working here for so long, this place still felt strange—the high, bright lights, the trucks and their idling engines, and the diesel exhaust that hung like fog. Ada and Ellie walked across the lot, the remnants of last night’s rain making the blacktop shiny like ice.

  Cicero

  By god of all things broken, I wish I didn’t remember that storm. Goddamn all memory, I wish it.

  Those clouds built up all afternoon, and right after sunset, the wind began to blow hard against the cliff, rain pelting our nest. Loot settled over the gutbags curled up tight underneath. I perched nearby in a scraggly maple. Nothing any of us could do but hunker and wait and try to sleep.

  A thunderclap woke me, a close one. Too close. The night sky suddenly bright and furious, the wind blasting hard enough to make the earth wobble. The first boom hadn’t stopped when the next strike hit the cherry tree. It must’ve killed Loot and our three babies. That’s all I can hope.

  For a moment, the lightning made me blind and deaf, the world all white and soundless. Then I was thrown into that boiling sky, my body flung into a cage of writhing branches. I tried to spread my wings to fly, but my perch fell before I could get away, so I flailed downward. When the falling stopped, I was hanging upside down, my right foot pinched between two big limbs, and the pain—good god, did it hurt. When another blast lit the night, I saw the cherry tree had fallen on top of my maple, and both trees had slid down the twenty feet of cliff. I swung like an apple not even four feet from the ground.

  I didn’t think anything else was broken, so I flapped, hard as I could. That’s when I realized my left wing was wrecked—about made me pass out, the pain so great. After a little, I pushed with my free claw—still nothing. I curled my body to hack at the branch, but it was too big. So I swung there a moment thinking—foot or life, foot or life? I curled my body and began to peck at my leg.