Fire Is Your Water

by Minick, Jim;

  Aunt Amanda trilled, “Dr. Roberts has finally allowed one of us to stay with you all the time, so I’ll be here during the day and Ada will come in after supper and stay all night.”

  Will’s eyes flickered at the sound of Ada’s name.

  “Look at all of these flowers.” She read the cards, some from neighbors or classmates, a big bouquet from the Esso gang. Will fell asleep to the sound of her murmuring.

  NIGHTS were the worst—never enough sedatives, never enough painkillers, and never enough quiet with the constant click and hiss of machines. He had to sleep on his back. Couldn’t move without tangling the IV. The exit sign glowed behind his eyelids. Every breath hurt.

  Then there was the squeak. When he shifted, some part of the bed frame sounded like the swivel chair, and he was back in the garage, the chair going back and forth, back and forth.

  What did I do wrong? He played through the moments—Cicero’s attack, the whir of the pump, the trigger clicking in his sweaty hand, the spark.

  Will stared at the white blob. Would he use his hand again? And what would it look like? Then he wondered what he would look like.

  Sometime in the night, he woke to find Ada’s hand in his. She stared down, her long neck bent, her slender body breathing easily. She seemed unaware of his coming awake, as her eyes remained focused, her lips moving quietly, her thumbs stroking his palm. How he had missed her smooth cheek and phoebe hellos, that brown hair framing her face. Those hazel eyes that pierced even the odd glow of this darkened room.

  He startled her with a squeeze.

  She smiled and squeezed back. “Hello, Will Burk,” she whispered.

  “Hello, Ada Franklin.” He grimaced at the movement of cheeks and lips.

  “I’m Ada Burk, now. Your sister. Otherwise, they’d kick me out. Got it?”

  Will gave a slight nod. “Ada Burk.” He liked the sweetness of it on his tongue. He wanted to talk, apologize, ask questions, but the medicines drifted him back to sleep.

  Ada settled in her chair. She didn’t let go.

  ADA never had been able to sleep sitting up. She woke to the night shift checking in. They moved quietly, but still, they had to slide between her and Will to give more shots. They smiled but seldom spoke.

  No one wanted her to take on this night watch, not her mother or Aunt Amanda, and particularly not her father. When she told her parents, he paced the kitchen. He liked Will well enough, he said, especially since he’d helped with the milking and the barn. “But it ain’t right for a young, unmarried woman to be alone with a young, unmarried man for long hours of whole nights. Especially my daughter.”

  “But he’s so badly burned, Daddy. And Aunt Amanda needs help. My help.”

  “Those nurses there are good. That’s their job, to look after him.”

  “But they’re looking after a whole floor. What if something happens to Will, and they’re at the other end of the hall?”

  Her mother stared at Ada as they argued. Finally she spoke. “She’s an adult now, Peter. She can handle herself. And Amanda needs her. Will needs her.”

  Peter looked at Kate for a long time before he climbed the stairs to watch TV the rest of the evening.

  The next day, as Ada headed out, she hugged her father.

  He held her tight and then let her go.

  46

  “Good morning, Will.”

  Aunt Amanda’s voice. Did he remember right—had Ada been here the night before?

  “Ada had to go to work,” Aunt Amanda said. “She said to tell you she’ll see you again tonight.”

  Will recalled the brief moment—her hand, her new name. He forgot he couldn’t smile; the pain reminded him.

  The daily routine resumed: shots and debridement, his arm glowing red before new layers of gauze. Then a different nurse arrived with the silver nitrate.

  “They say this stuff is used to tan hides,” the new nurse said, a redhead, younger even than Nurse Young. “Say it’ll turn your skin black. Fingernails, too.” She ladled another spoonful over his bicep, spilling some onto the floor. She stood as far away as her arm could reach. “The doctor swears by it, says it’ll heal the worst burns.” Another ladle-full over his shoulder. “And yours are the worst I’ve ever seen.” Will closed his eyes and shivered as the coldness seeped around his cheeks and forehead.

  “How long does the black stain last?” Will asked, his voice squeaky and high pitched.

  “Oh, just a few months, maybe a year.” She wiped the excess. “I’m really not sure.” Then she wheeled the cart out the door.

  Black fingernails and scarred forever, Will thought. What else?

  Aunt Amanda bustled back in. “How are you doing today?”

  Will shrugged his left shoulder.

  “Dr. Roberts told me that you need to talk. Maybe even sing. He said we need to stretch your lungs or they’ll lose their capacity. You won’t be able to breathe well and your voice will sound funny.”

  “It already does,” Will said. “Sounds like I’ve sucked helium from a balloon.”

  “Indeed. Does it hurt to talk?”

  “Some.”

  “So, how was your night?” She picked dead flowers out of the bouquets.

  Will fiddled with the blanket. “OK.”

  “How are the nurses treating you?”

  “Fine.” He watched her settle into the chair and pull out her knitting.

  She looked up from her work. “You’re supposed to talk, William. Not just shrug your shoulder. What do you want to talk about?”

  “Have you seen Cicero?”

  “No, no I haven’t, and I don’t know if anyone else has either. He was there right before the fire, wasn’t he?”

  “He was, and he acted funny that whole morning. Wouldn’t shut up, and he even tried to land on my head, and you know he hates that. Later, when I walked out, that bird came swooping in right at me. Knocked off my hat before I could wave him away. He flew to that old pine and cawed and cawed. It was like he knew. That sounds crazy, but I think he did.”

  “He is a remarkable bird,” Aunt Amanda said. “Ada and I saw most of that from the bathroom window.”

  “You saw the explosion?”

  She stopped knitting. “We did, and I’m just glad you survived. One moment you were working on that truck and the next you were rolling on the ground.” Her needles resumed a steady rhythm. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  They sat in silence.

  “Have you checked my mail?”

  “Just a bill or two, I think.”

  Will looked out the window. “There’s a letter on the kitchen table I need some help with.”

  “Go on.”

  “It’s my draft letter. They want me to report for basic training in Carlisle in a few weeks.”

  “William Brice Burk! Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Will shook his head and grimaced.

  “Well, we need to take care of this. You obviously are in no shape to report for duty, and you might never be.” Aunt Amanda stopped short.

  Will looked at her hard, made her look away first. “What has the doctor told you?”

  “Nothing that he hasn’t already told you.”

  “What, Aunt Amanda?”

  “Like I said before, he’s worried about your lungs and voice. And that hand of yours. He doesn’t know how much movement you’ve lost. He told me this morning that the burns have to heal and then they’ll start the skin grafting, and that’ll be just as painful as the burn itself.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Just that we’re all in for a long haul.”

  Will closed his eyes.

  “I’ll pick up that letter this evening. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. Does Ada know?”

  Will said no.

  “Maybe I can call whoever’s in charge and get you discharged.”

  Will drifted to sleep.

  That afternoon, two guests arrived—Ada’s mother, Kate, and her aunt Rebecca. “Dr. Roberts sa
id to get you singing, Will.” Aunt Amanda spoke loudly. “And Lord knows I can’t carry a tune, so I asked these kind ladies to help. You know Kate Franklin, Ada’s mother, but I’m not sure you’ve met her sister-in-law, Rebecca, Ada’s aunt.”

  Will said hello. “I think we met at the barn dance.”

  Aunt Rebecca nodded.

  Will didn’t want to sing or to see anyone or for anyone to see him. But he liked Mrs. Franklin. “Any chance you brought some of your shoofly pie?”

  “Not this time, but I’ll see what I can do. We did bring hymnals. Rebecca and I like to sing together, sometimes just starting at the front and seeing how far we can go. Do you have any favorite hymns, Will?”

  Will fumbled for any hymn he might know. He hadn’t been to church for six or seven years.

  “How about ‘What a Friend We Have in Jesus’?” Aunt Amanda offered.

  “Yes, that sounds good.” They found the page and placed an open book in Will’s good hand. Rebecca tapped the rhythm on her thigh and started the melody. Kate sang alto, and Aunt Amanda droned her own tune that wavered between the two. Will had always hated this song, the tune too whiny and too slow, but he sang the melody with Rebecca.

  Between verses, Aunt Amanda blurted, “Sing louder, Will. This is for your lungs, so we need to hear you.”

  Will complied. His ribs ached, and his throat grew raw. His lips seemed to crack open with each long note, but he didn’t stop until the end of the song.

  “Will, what would you like to sing?” Ada’s mother asked before he caught his breath.

  He said the first song he could think of. “‘Amazing Grace’?”

  All three women nodded in approval, and Aunt Amanda turned his hymnal to the right page. As they sang, none of the women looked at the words. Will did, though, singing a little louder after Aunt Amanda gave him a sharp look. The trio moved through the verses, but Will lagged. He kept going back to that word wretch. That’s what I am, a damn wretch. And I haven’t felt a bit of this fucking amazing grace.

  The women repeated the first verse. Will’s voice grew softer until he no longer sang. He wanted to cry, to shout at his aunt for bringing Ada’s mother, for forcing him to sing these songs. Instead, when they finished, he closed the book and settled his head on the pillow. “Thank you,” he said, his voice still high pitched and unchanged. “But I think I need to rest now.”

  Aunt Amanda walked the women out the door, thanking them. “I’m sorry he tuckered out so quickly,” she said. “Let’s do this again next week, shall we?”

  Will closed his eyes and didn’t hear their response.

  AT work, Ada spilled coffee, dropped a lunch plate, and made a mistake at the cash register, all in the span of an hour. The last customer, a gray-bearded man, handed back the extra dollar, saying he didn’t want her to get in trouble with Mr. Johnson. Ada thanked him and asked Mabel if she could take a break.

  “Why don’t you just take a week off, Ada?” Mabel replied. “Everyone can see your head and heart are elsewhere . . . as they should be.”

  “What about . . .”

  Mabel cut her off. “It won’t be the first time we’re short shifted. We’ll make do. Now, go home and get some sleep, and call me when you’re ready to come back.”

  Ada thanked her, squeezed Ellie’s shoulder, and caught a ride with James. At home, she didn’t undress. She just collapsed on her bed.

  Her sleep was anything but restful, the window fan blowing only hot air. After a few hours, she changed and ate a late lunch in the empty house, where the clock echoed in the kitchen. She snacked from a bucket of fresh-picked blueberries. Two more full buckets sat by the window. Poor mama, she thought. The bushes are ready and no one’s here to help her. She grabbed empty buckets and headed out the door.

  In the field, she called for her mother but found no one. Then she remembered that Aunt Amanda had asked her mother to sing with Will. She wondered how that was going.

  Ada settled to pick. The roar of the turnpike hovered over her, but she focused on the slow rolling patter of berries falling into the bucket. She remembered the last time she’d been in the orchard, the morning before the explosion, the fog thick. Cicero had come to her from the east, from the station. And he had come directly toward her with those long agitated caws. I thought he was attacking me. But he came to warn me.

  “Cicero,” she surprised herself, saying his name. She yelled it over and over: “Cicero. Cicero.” She never thought she’d want to see him again as she touched the small scar on her earlobe. But she cupped her mouth and yelled his name. She wanted to apologize for sending him away, to let him know Will was OK.

  But the raven never came.

  “Will’s OK,” she called. “He’s in the hospital.” A tractor-trailer rumbling down the mountain drowned her words.

  THAT night, Will tucked his left hand under his leg. Ada searched for his palm but found only his forearm. She touched his wrist long enough for him to feel the heat of her fingers.

  For a while, she sat in silence. Finally, she asked, “How was your day?”

  Will shrugged and muttered, “OK.”

  “How was the singing with Mama and Aunt Rebecca?”

  Again, a shrug and OK. It was as if he had disappeared.

  “You’re supposed to talk, Will. How long did they stay? What did you sing?”

  Will looked out the window, past her face. The sky glowed with city lights. When he glanced at her again, he had to look away, her stare was so intense.

  “We sang ‘What a Friend We Have in Jesus’ for Aunt Amanda, and ‘Amazing Grace.’” He scratched the bandages on his chin and tucked his hand back under his leg. “I’m not really much of a hymn singer.”

  “Did it hurt, to sing, I mean?”

  “Some.”

  Ada searched for something to say. “Why don’t you like hymns?”

  “Oh, they’re all right. I just am not much of a churchgoer.”

  Ada waited. Come on, Will, talk to me.

  Will relented. “You really want to know, don’t you?”

  She nodded.

  “When my mother died, Dad stopped going to church. So it fell to Aunt Amanda to take me. She’d come over early on Sunday morning and make sure I was clean, and if I hadn’t had a bath, she’d heat the water and get me cleaned up. Then off to church we’d go.

  “Sunday school was OK because I was with the other boys, but the church services with those benches and sermons. And everyone else sitting with a mother and a father.

  “I kept hearing ‘God is Love,’ and all of that crap, and I kept asking myself, if ‘God is Love,’ why did he take my mother? I asked Aunt Amanda once on the drive home, and she just said God works in mysterious ways. That made me feel worse.

  “Finally, when I was twelve, I asked Aunt Amanda why I had to go if Dad didn’t. She said that was my father’s business, but as long as she could, she intended to see me raised right.

  “That night, I told Dad I didn’t want to go anymore, and for once, he stood up to her. Told her he didn’t see any need for it. Except for his funeral, I haven’t been in a church since. Or sung any hymns either.”

  They both were silent for a long while.

  “Why won’t you let me hold your hand?” Again, she waited him out.

  “After that first song, they asked me for one, and I said the only hymn I could remember, ‘Amazing Grace.’ Then, when we got to that word wretch, something just clicked.” He held her gaze. “That’s exactly what I am, Ada, a damn wretch.” He looked away. “You don’t want to hold my hand.”

  “You’re wrong, Will. I do. I want to hold your hand.” She reached again, but he slid his fingers back under his leg, so she held his wrist. “And we’re all wretches. You and me and even Aunt Amanda.”

  Will kept his eyes closed until he felt her hand move away. He heard the chair scrape and her footsteps, and then, the door closing.

  LATER that night, Ada watched his chest rise and fall, his breaths long and slow
. He had draped his left arm across his body, so she settled it beside him. She held his good hand, and as had happened every time since the fire, that tingling started in her forearms and moved through her palms. By the time it reached her fingertips, each hand vibrated with heat. She no longer had to say her prayer. She didn’t even have to recite the chant. Her powwowing just started. Ada touched Will, and God worked through her.

  But she was still unsure. The one time she’d chanted over a burn on her brother’s arm, the healing was quick, and the pain went away within an hour. Now, with so much hurt so deep, she didn’t know if or how much her powwowing helped.

  She stroked Will’s palm, trying to stave off the other questions, but they came anyway—What will Will be like when the doctors release him? What will he be able to do with that hand and those lungs? What will he want to do?

  Ada rested her head on the bed. She was thankful for these two things: Will’s steady breath and this tingling in her hands.

  Somehow, her powwowing had returned. But at what cost?

  Before she drifted off, she whispered, “A sign, God. Give some kind of sign. Show that it’s worth all of this.”

  Cicero

  All of these little signs we call words—they put a spell on me. The dictionary became a museum I lived in, each word full of so many stories. Soon I became a black drifter on the current of letters. I was like a nestling, so ravenous for words, because, as your good book taught me, you can crow all you want, but to raven is to hunger, and I was always hungry.

  So I read your books and found I’d been there all along—in Beowulf and Chaucer, in Shakespeare, Keats, and Shelley, who wrote of “feeding the ravening fire.” I discovered Latin with Corvus corax, your fancy name for me, and I found a constellation in the southern hemisphere named Corvus. Some stars, by god of all ravaging nights.

  But then I got to wondering about all this love I’d been giving to words—something didn’t feel right. What about a newborn kid? How does he experience the world if he can’t speak for, what, a year or more? Or hell, what about all the other ravens? Are they simpletons simply because they can’t say OK? The hell.

  It’s like each word is a bantam-sized flag. “There’s a robin. There’s a tree.” You plant that flying word on whatever you claim just like Columbus planted his flag the first time he stepped on New World sand. Claim you know it, own it, then use it up and forget about it. The whole world covered in flags. All of it fucked.