Chasing Fireflies

by Charles Martin

  The group, all twenty of them, walked quietly across the grass. Some of the girls took their heels off and walked barefoot. If this was the partying crowd Tommye had talked about, they didn’t look it.

  At 1:05 Unc checked his watch. He looked at me and nodded to the back row. I knew what he meant, so I walked down the center aisle and spoke to the group as a whole.

  “Hi . . . I’m Chase. Tommye’s cousin.” I paused, looking at each one. “I don’t know if she’d be mad at you or want you to sit up front where she could be near you . . . so because I can’t figure it out, and because she’s not here to straighten me out, why don’t you all come sit up front with us.”

  They nodded and followed me single file up to the front. Once they were situated, Unc stood up next to Tommye’s coffin. He had some note cards in his hands, which he kept shuffling like a card dealer. He tried to start, shook it off, then stood studying his cards and chewing on his lip for a minute. Finally, he dropped the cards on the grass, took off his hat, walked in front of the coffin, and began to speak.

  “I’m William McFarland, Tommye’s uncle. She come to live with us . . . back some time ago.”

  Three peacocks flew up into the branches of a pecan tree behind the house and began squawking.

  “At one time I was mad at God ’cause my son got took, and I had a hard time forgiving him. Then Tommye come to live with us, and I seen it as God’s way of easing my pain. ’Cause she did that.” He held his hand out to the side, level with his waist. “When she was just a kid, I used to call her my Band-Aid—’cause she stuck to me and healed all my hurts.”

  The crowd on the front row seemed to take a collective deep breath, and a few smiled or laughed.

  “And I’ve told God that on more than one occasion. Told him I was grateful and that I was sorry for being mad. ’Cause if any man has ever known anger . . . known pain . . . I reckon it’s me.” He looked off across the pasture, sniffled, and then set his hat on top of Tommye’s coffin while he blew his nose into a white handkerchief.

  “Tommye left us . . . went out west . . . when she was twenty. Trying to outrun her demons. I tried . . .” He looked at Lorna and me. “I guess we all tried to help her battle them, but . . .” He faded off, then looked at his hands. “I’m a farrier by occupation. Us farriers, we read horses by looking at their shoes. How they wear tells us a lot about how they walk. You can read people the same way. Their shoes don’t lie. The other night my wife and I were packing up a few of Tommye’s things, and I started looking at her shoes. They were running shoes. The heels were worn at an angle . . . far too worn for someone as light as Tommye. It looked like she’d been carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders.”

  He turned and faced the coffin, tried to speak to her, but couldn’t. He turned back around and looked out across the pasture. “I can’t quite figure this life out. Mine’s had its ups and its downs. Some would say more downs than ups, but . . .” He shook his head. “I quit screaming at God a long time ago, ’cause I reckon he knows a thing or two about hurt. When things get bad . . . when I think I’ve hit bottom . . . that’s where I go.” He nodded toward the Sanctuary. “And he knows—I’ve been there many a time. That’s what gets me from there to here . . . and to there.”

  While he spoke, I heard myself humming So leave me if you need to, I will still remember. . . . Tears trickled off my face. Willie Nelson had it right. I wiped them away, but it didn’t do any good. Mandy put her arm around me and leaned in closer, pushing more of the hurt out of the corners of my eyes.

  Unc talked with each of us. Not at us, and certainly not to us, but with us. The California crowd felt the difference. If I’d have been in their shoes, I’d have been tempted not to come—too much condemnation—but they had shown up, and that said a lot. They seemed to feel at ease with him. Some leaned forward, others half-smiled, but all were listening, and nobody’s leg was bouncing around. Not even Sketch’s.

  Unc continued, “When I was in prison, I had this dream that my life was a rolling canvas. Every day it rolled off the sheet, bleached white, onto the beach of my life. Come sunup, I’d begin to paint it with my thoughts and actions. My breathing, my living, and my dying. Some days the pictures pleased me, maybe even pleased others, pleased God himself, but some days, some months, even some years, they didn’t, and I didn’t ever want to look at them again. But the thing is this . . . every day, no matter what I’d painted the day before, I got a new canvas, washed white. ’Cause each night the tide rolled in, scrubbed it clean, and receded, taking the stains with it. And in my dreams . . . I just stood on the beach and watched all that stuff wash out to sea.”

  Several of the girls were dabbing their eyes, and one of the guys put his sunglasses back on.

  “Nothing more than ripples on the water.” He waved his hand out across the pasture. “No canvas is ever stained clean through.” He looked at Tommye. “Not one.”

  One of the black-haired girls in the second row let out an audible whimper, which embarrassed her so she tried to cover. Unc stopped, uncertain what to do. He handed her his handkerchief, which she took, but that only forced more tears out. Sketch stood up, walked down the second row, and handed the woman his tabby cat. She laid it in her lap and tried to smile. The blonde-haired lady next to her scooted over, making room for Sketch, so he sat on the edge of her folding chair in between the two. A few seconds later, she picked him up and just sat him on her lap.

  Unc continued, “One of my favorite musicals is The Man of La Mancha. It’s based on a story written a long time ago, somewhere in the 1600s.” He looked at me. “For those of you who just chewed on the covers while you fished your way through school, that’d be the story of Don Quixote.”

  A few of the jet set looked at me and laughed.

  “Old Don, he saw things a bit different than most. Lot of folks thought he was just flat crazy. Maybe he was. He saw windmills as evil giants. He once turned a barber’s basin upside down, pulled it down like a baseball cap, and called it a golden helmet. Saw his old horse as a trusty stallion. Thought the old inn was a castle and its innkeeper a lord. Lastly, he saw Aldonza, the inn’s prostitute, as a virtuous lady. Pure. Unblemished. Radiant. She protests, tells him that she was born on a pile of crap, what she calls a dung heap, and she’ll die on one too.” He hung his thumbs in his jeans. “Old Don doesn’t hear a word she’s saying. He just shakes his head and calls her Dulcinea. Her real name. The name he gives her.

  “Don Quixote saw things as God intended them, not as what they’d become. He said, ‘I come in a world of iron, to make a world of gold.’” Unc shook his head and spoke, almost to himself. “I like that.”

  He looked out across us. “’Cause he never gave up, Aldonza began to see not only herself differently, but the whole world too. Aldonza, like a caterpillar, became something new and different. Something clean. A butterfly . . . Dulcinea. All because some crazy windmill fighter convinced her that the mirror don’t always tell the truth.”

  Unc wiped his eyes, chewed on his lip, and kicked at the grass. He reached behind him and pulled the tarp off the granite tombstone that stood next to her coffin. It read:

  TOMMYE LYNN MCFARLAND

  1976–2006

  MY DULCINEA

  Unc looked down the drive, beneath the canopy of pecan trees. “’Tween now and whenever I get home, I’m gonna paint my canvas, and come sundown, I’ll lie down in the water, let the waves wash me clean, and leave the rest to God. . . .” His voice cracked, and he shook his head and wiped his nose on his shirtsleeve.

  Most everybody was crying—their eyes draining out the inside pain. The woman holding Bones was using the cat’s back to dab her face. Finally, Unc sat down. We all just sat looking at the coffin, wondering what to do. Somewhere near the foot of that simple wooden box it hit me—her wing had healed, she’d flown away.

  Aunt Lorna looked at me, so I stood up and took Unc’s place. The grass beneath me was green, but crushed down from his boots. “We c
losed the coffin ’cause . . . well, we just closed it. But, if you want to say good-bye, you can open it. She’d probably like that. Sometimes it helps.

  “Unc and I won’t take her to the cemetery ’til after lunch.” I pointed to the porch. “Tommye liked chili, so Aunt Lorna made that. We got some crackers, iced tea, Tabasco sauce, and . . . you all can stay as long as you like.”

  We sat there a long time. One by one they stood, walked to the coffin, and paid their respects. Some touched the top, a few opened it, and some even kissed her on the forehead. Finally, Lorna started serving plates, and pretty soon the porch was filled with people. Unc walked off toward the greenhouse and closed the door. I sat on the front row trying to make sense of the box in front of me.

  While I sat there, one of the girls walked over and sat down. She carried a folder, thick with clippings and other papers. She handed it to me and whispered, like she didn’t want to wake Tommye, “She’d want you to have this. I lived with her for a time. She talked about you often.”

  I opened it up and found most every article I’d ever written. She’d scribbled on many of them, underlined sentences, and written things like, “Sounds just like you.” “How’d you know that?” Or “Come on, tell the truth.”

  Sketch appeared at my side. His glasses had slipped down onto the end of his nose and chili stained his shirt. He was carrying his chess set. He walked over to the coffin and looked like he wanted something.

  “You want me to open it?”

  He blinked, then nodded. I lifted the lid and watched him slowly look over the edge. He sucked in a short breath, then forced himself to exhale. He opened his chess set, pulled out a single piece, polished it on his pants leg, and then laid it gently on her chest. He touched his finger to his lips, pressed it to hers, then slowly stepped back and walked to the porch. I closed the coffin, but not before eyeing the chess piece.

  It was his queen.

  Chapter 40

  By midafternoon, Tommye’s friends thanked us and then disappeared as quietly as they’d arrived. I don’t know if she would have liked knowing they were here or not, but something inside me tells me she would have. Around five o’clock Unc appeared carrying two shovels. Lorna and Mandy kept Sketch at the house while we slipped Tommye into the back of Sally and pointed her bumper toward the Buffalo. We drove slowly to the edge of the water, slid her coffin into Unc’s canoe, and waded into the water. We pushed her across and because she was light, she floated easily. We floated her around the northern end of the island and beached the canoe not far from the gravesite. Two hours later, as darkness fell around us, Unc lit a lantern and we finished up the digging by its light. We worked slowly, neither of us needing to speak. Sweat trickled off our faces and dripped onto the black soil below. A few feet to our left lay the graves of Unc’s first wife, Suzanne, and his young son.

  Around nine o’clock we lowered her body into the hole. Unc held one side of the rope and I the other. I thought it fitting—Unc was holding Tommye’s rope one final time.

  Leaning on our shovels, we stared down. The lantern flickered low, several bugs circled in characteristic frenzy, and in the darkness, the tree frogs and crickets sang a final lullaby. Unc looked like he wanted to say something, but every time he opened his mouth, no words came. Finally he looked at me. “I’ll be ’long directly.”

  I nodded, slid my shovel over my shoulder, and walked out through the Sanctuary. I slipped down into the water, waded through, and passed Vicky sitting waterlogged and at an angle. Water was flowing across her seats and bubbling up under the hood and out the grill.

  I left Sally for Unc and walked home. A high moon lit the road and cast shadows across my feet. I thought of Tommye, eight years old, running through the Zuta, bloodstained and scared, her innocence stolen. Then I thought of Uncle Jack, and my anger swelled.

  I got to the house, climbed up on the porch, and slipped down into the swing. Mandy’s car was gone and Sketch’s light was off. Across the pasture, fireflies lit the air. I looked for comfort, but found none. Instead, the emptiness blanketed me.

  At three in the morning, Lorna shook my shoulder to wake me. “He’s not back.”

  “Unc?”

  She nodded. “I think you’d better go get him.”

  I jumped off the porch and ran barefoot down the dirt roads and back into the Zuta. The moon was still high, and my shadow stretched out before me. I reached the headwaters, and Sally was right where I’d left her. I slipped in, chest-deep, where the warmth of the water surrounded me, patted Vicky as I waded by, and climbed up the bank on the other side. That’s when I heard the screaming.

  I stopped and tried to listen above the sound of my own breathing. I could make out no words, but what I heard scared me. It was the sound of pain. I ran through the ferns, the dirt soft beneath my feet and the branches tearing at my chest like the arms of a jealous lover. The further in I ran, the darker it became. Dark rain clouds had moved in fast, covered up the moon, and the temperature had dropped maybe ten degrees. I shivered as the breeze wrapped around me. I got my bearings, turned right, and headed back toward the grave site and the sound. I cleared the magnolias and palm trees, ran through the heart of Ellsworth’s creation, around our fire pit, and out the other side. In the darkness, a man stood over the grave, arms raised high, fists clenched, and head angled up. I crept forward just as the rain came down. Big drops that soon drenched me in a torrent. The sheet of rain drowned out the screams, but I could see his body shaking in the dim light of the flickering lantern. I slipped around the other side and hid myself in the bushes.

  Unc stood over the three graves, screaming at the top of his lungs. His face was contorted, painted in pain. He paced back and forth, first to his wife’s grave, then his son’s, then Tommye’s—now mounded with dirt. Every few steps he’d stop, lift his hands high, clench his fists, and shake his head. He’d torn off his shirt, and his jeans were soaked clean through. Noise, unintelligible words, poured out. The indecipherable tone of a broken man. Lightning crashed above us, thunder spread across the sky, and the rain puddled at my feet. Soon it ran in trickles across the roots and drained off into the Altamaha—carrying our sweat and Unc’s tears.

  As quickly as it had come, the rain stopped. Huge drops cascaded off the trees above and landed on my shoulders, chilling me from the outside in. Fog rose off the water and swirled into the trees above.

  The lantern burned low, casting an eerie light on Unc, who seemed to grow up and out of a black hole in the earth. Having either exhausted himself or reached his limit, he crumbled and hit his knees, then began falling backward. I cleared a few tree limbs and reached him just as his head and shoulders swayed backward toward the graves. I caught him in my arms and laid him in my lap. His eyes looked at me, but they were focused somewhere out beyond the Milky Way. His body was rigid, every muscle a bowstring. Vesuvius was erupting, and a lifetime of pain was exiting Unc’s body. For minutes, I just held him. His body was quivering, and every few seconds he’d let loose a gutteral moan that echoed off the trees above and then spread out over the water that surrounded us.

  Unc was breaking.

  I wrapped my arms around him, cradling his head in my hands. Everything in me hurt, but every time his teeth ground together, I knew that my pain didn’t compare with his.

  After the lantern had burned itself out, we sat beneath the canopy of the Sanctuary, wrapped in the ripe smell of freshly turned earth and angry sweat. Somewhere in there, he drifted off, and I laid his head down on Tommye’s mound. I watched his body slowly relax. The only sound was the grinding of his teeth. An hour later his fist opened, and his big hand lay limp on the ground beside me. The moon had reappeared and shone down, bringing out the blue in his veins and the white of his palms.

  I studied his hand. So many times he’d placed that same hand on my neck and chased away my demons. Now I sat helpless, unable to stem the tide of the demons that tried to kill him. I wanted badly to swing back, to return to the battlefield a
nd rescue the wounded—but comfort was not to be found or offered.

  Sometime later, he stirred and opened his eyes. He stared at the underside of the trees, studying the leaves and the sky that shone between. Finally he spoke. “We were just kids. Jack was a senior, and I was a year behind him. We were driving back at night, don’t remember where we’d been, but we were in Daddy’s Cadillac, and Jack was driving. Going too fast. Somewhere ’round a hundred. This mangy old dog, a long-eared beagle, got caught in the headlights and decided to cross the road. I remember it was limping, nose gray, hobbling across. Jack floored it, swerved out of his way to hit it. The bumper caught it square. It spun sideways through the air, landed in the ditch, and lay there wailing.

  “I got to it first. Remarkably, only its leg was broken. I picked it up and carried it to the car, but Jack appeared from behind the trunk with a pistol. He never even asked. He just walked up, stuck the barrel to the dog’s head, and pulled the trigger. He’d been waiting for me to pick it up so the target would be still. The dog went limp, a huge hole in its head. I looked at Jack, and he was smiling. Enjoying it. Evil down to his core.” Unc paused.

  “I don’t know how he got that way. Same dad, same mom, same town, same life. I used to think I had something to do with it, that maybe I could bring him back, but then . . . well, I couldn’t. The next day I buried that dog and promised myself that I’d never forget that night. Never forget that old beagle.” He looked at me. “And every time I bury somebody I love, I remember.”

  An hour later we walked up the porch steps, where Lorna met us with a tearstained smile and a cup of cold coffee. He wrapped his arms around her, kissed her, and said, “Honey, I’ve got to do something. Something that’s been a long time in coming. I’ve got to bury one more person.” He pressed his forehead to Lorna’s. “You wait on me ’til I get out?”