Mark Spragg - Bone Fire

“We have to go,” he said.

“Now?”

“Right away.”

Someone threw the ball again and they heard the dog hit the water.

McEban stood up, stomping his feet harder into the boots. “You think this is something you’ll remember?”

“Sure,” Kenneth said. Then, “What?”

“Today.” McEban swept a hand toward the abutments. “All the times we’ve come down here. When you’re older you think this is something you’ll remember?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” the boy asked, but he felt scared. Like he hadn’t jumped. Like he’d chickened out and they both had agreed it was a feat he would never accomplish.

They’d been mostly quiet on the drive home. McEban said something about the weather, how he preferred the longer days of summer in spite of the heat, and he’d nodded in numbed agreement. His face felt heated, and something seemed to be fluttering behind his breastbone. The only thing that felt fine was his new haircut, beaded with creekwater, the breeze providing a welcome coolness. That was the best part of the trip.

But here they were home and he’d changed out of his wet swimming trunks, standing on the porch with his backpack leaned against his leg, waiting for McEban to be done talking with Rodney. He shifted his stance, adjusting the basketball against his hip. He’d thought about packing his baseball and glove, but didn’t know how a game of catch would go over in Laramie. He knew he could shoot baskets by himself. He watched the men at the pickup, thinking he might be getting sick, and then he was sure of it.

“I need to see you for a minute,” he called. His voice sounded frail and he cleared his throat.

They turned, staring at him, and he knew for a fact he was the last person he could think of to figure out that this friend of his mother’s was his real dad, and that McEban had always known it.

“I’m sorry,” he said when McEban stepped up beside him.

“For what? Did you set fire to something?” He was trying to make a joke, but it didn’t come out funny.

“I’m getting sick,” the boy told him.

“You were fine a while ago.”

“Now I feel like puking.”

They heard the pickup door open and watched Rodney pull the keys out of the ignition to make the dinging sound stop, then lean back into the shade of the cab.

“I don’t like it either, Kenneth, but this isn’t something we can get away from. He showed me the papers. He showed me where your mother signed.”

The boy looked at where she parked her trailer beside the house, the spot rutted from the tires, the bunchgrass broken and discolored. “You would’ve told me if you knew this was going to happen, right?”

McEban knelt down on a knee in front of him. “I guess maybe not,” he said. “I guess I always thought it might, I just didn’t know when. But I’ll bet this turns out to be fine.”

“Is that what you really think?”

“It’s only for three weeks. I think you can have a good time if you’ll let yourself.”

Kenneth bounced the ball once, then settled it on a porch chair. “I need you to look at something.”

“All right.”

“Inside, I mean.”

McEban followed him into the kitchen and he bent over at the counter, wedging his hands up against the edge like some rough cop had just ordered him to. When they heard the truckdoor slam, Kenneth laid his face against his arm and looked out the screen door. “I hurt my back.”

McEban stared down at his thin back, the T-shirt stained off-center on the right side near his waist. The blood was bright and fresh, dried only at the edges. “Well, Jesus Christ,” he said, carefully pinching the shirt up.

“Is it bad?” the boy asked.

“You sound like you wouldn’t mind if we had to go in to the doctor’s.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“It’s not that bad.”

Kenneth nodded, his cheek still pressed against his arm. “I didn’t think it was. I could sort of see it with the hand mirror in the bathroom.”

The skin was scraped away behind his right kidney, but it didn’t appear to go deeper. “I’ll bet this hurt like a son of a bitch when you did it.”

“I didn’t feel anything till I got out of the water. That’s two quarters you owe me.”

“I’m going to have to put something on it.”

“You sure?”

“I’ll find something that won’t sting too much.”

McEban went into the bathroom and came back with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, a bag of cotton balls, a tube of antibiotic salve, a package of square gauze bandages and tape, all of it cradled up against his chest. When he dabbed at the wound with a peroxide-soaked cotton ball, the boy widened his stance and hung his head between his shoulders. McEban could hear him breathing through his mouth.

“That’s not too bad, is it?”

“It’s okay.”

“When did this happen?”

“Last time I jumped, I came down too close to the concrete. I was showing off.”

“How come you didn’t say anything?” He was peeling the packaging away from the gauze.

“I didn’t think it was a good time to say something.”

“And when did you think a good time would be?” McEban smoothed the tape around the edges of the bandage and pulled the T-shirt down. “Did you think it’d heal up on the drive home?”

They heard footfalls on the porch, the scrape of a chair being moved.

“I didn’t want you saying anything to my mom when you were on the phone. I didn’t want her to know.” He pointed his chin toward the porch, looking like he might finally cry. “Or him.”

“How’d you figure out who I was talking to?”

“It wasn’t that hard.”

McEban got a brown paper lunch sack from under the sink and put the gauze and antibiotic and tape in and folded the top back, and when Kenneth turned around he handed it to him. “I want you to put some salve on every day. And wash your hands first.”

“Okay.”

“If you don’t it’ll get worse.”

“I’ll do it.”

“I know you will.”

They were stalling, like nothing had changed and they were just standing around throwing out possibilities about what they might fix for dinner. They heard Rodney get up out of the chair. He passed in front of the screen door and they watched him walk back to the truck.

“My library books will be overdue before I come home.”

“I’ll take them back for you. If you want, you can check out the same books at the library in Laramie.”

“I don’t have a card for the Laramie library.”

“They’ll give you one.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’ll say something to him.”

The boy nodded. “What if I can’t think of anything to talk about? On the drive. What if he doesn’t say anything either?”

“Well, I bet his radio works.”

Kenneth was looking down at his feet. They both watched the tears fall at the toes of his boots. There weren’t many.

“You know why Chuck Norris doesn’t read books?” McEban asked.

The boy shook his head, still looking down.

“I can’t believe you don’t know this one.”

He pulled the bottom of his T-shirt up and wiped his eyes. “How come you do?”

“I looked it up on the computer the other day. When you were over at Bobby Martens’.”

McEban waited until he was done wiping his face, shaking his head like there was water in his ears. He waited for him to stand up straight and take a deep breath. “He doesn’t read them because he doesn’t have to. He just stares them down until he gets the information he wants.”

The boy’s eyes were still full but he smiled, like he was giving a gift, and they both knew that’s what it was.

CRANE KNOCKED on the door again and waited. To the east a weedy lot, the sage grubbed out around a swing set, the pipe-metal uprights peeling and rusted, a plastic seat hanging by a single chain, paddling in the wind, the slide broken loose from its base and twisted Möbius-wise, and beyond a sagging barbed wire fence and an overgrazed stretch of prairie. He wondered briefly if he would have been any good at a trade that didn’t require a uniform and confrontation. To the west, three other weathered duplexes described the arc of the cul-de-sac.