Erika Swyler - The Book of Speculation

“Worse how?” I stack the pictures on top of each other, bearded face upon bearded face, stern-looking people, vaguely Slavic.

“You saw,” he says. “She doesn’t do that, not to kids. She sometimes messes around with people who are assholes, but she never does a reading like that to kids. I’ve never heard her talk like that before.”

I tell him not to worry, because it’s all I can do. I’m not sure if I can explain how burning a few things will make everything better, or how much of this is hinged on hope. “Let’s get this stuff to the beach. She may not remember it, but she loves bonfires. They’re good for the soul.”

Doyle carries the bulk of things down to the beach, where we heap it all on a flat stretch of bulkhead to keep it from being swarmed by horseshoe crabs. We stare down at the scrabbling throng.

“No worries,” he says. “I’ll find some wood and kindling and see what I can set up. You get Enola, I’ll get this.”

“Thanks.”

“Hurry up. Smells like lightning.” He bends over the bulkhead and pulls from it a piece of driftwood that was sandwiched in the space between the posts and the boards. The Electric Boy not only juggles lightbulbs, but he can pick locks and smell lightning. A bubble of laughter rises.

Enola is more than happy to be rescued. Frank told his wife everything, from the story about his palm being read, to how my mother brought him coffee each morning, and about the house. When Leah opened the door her face grayed at the sight of me and for a brief second I thought she’d be sick. I thought I might be sick as well.

“I’m sorry,” I told her.

“For what?” Leah said. “It’s not as though you did it.”

“Are you okay?” I asked, because it’s what you’re supposed to ask, and following the prescribed motions is all we can do.

She laughed, loud and fierce. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “It’s not like I didn’t have other options. It’s not like I don’t have choices.” She leaned against the door. “I could take him for everything, you know. I could kick him out. But right now, right now, I’d like to see what his back looks like after a week of sleeping in his workshop. Then, we’ll see. Nobody loves you quite like someone who’s sorry.” She smiled and her eyes took on a hard edge. “We’ll see.”

For a moment I pictured Alice’s straight back, grinding coffee, and Frank, curled inside the skeleton of the dory in the barn, sinking into the frame.

Then my sister appeared behind her and we left Leah alone.

“She spent last night and this morning finishing the wine,” Enola says as we walk down the drive. “I don’t mean a bottle either. She finished all their wine. I’m surprised she isn’t dead.”

“It looks like Frank did some of that too. The barn was filled with bottles. Was Alice in there?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“This sucks,” she says softly. “I loved them. I mean, didn’t you want to be their kid even just a little bit, even just once?”

“Sure,” I say. “Once in a while. Couldn’t help it.” But then, maybe being us wouldn’t have been quite so terrible were it not for Frank. “Leah will be fine,” I say.

“She’s tough,” Enola answers. Then after a while: “Did you get what you came for?”

I nod. “Doyle picked the lock on Frank’s barn. Did you know your boyfriend is a thief?”

“We’ve all got to be something,” she says.

Dusk has fallen and Doyle appears to have been right — thunderheads are pushing in from the west. We’d best get moving. I tell Enola that I’ll meet her down on the beach; I need to swing back to the house to get something.

Climbing down the ladder rungs to the beach is difficult with the book and a bottle of lighter fluid under my arm. It would be easier to drop everything down, but the book would be mobbed by crabs, and the last thing I need is to have the thing get so damp it won’t burn.

And maybe I want to hang on to it a little longer, this last piece of us.

Once you’ve held a book and really loved it, you forever remember the feel of it, its specific weight, the way it sits in your hand. My thumb knows the grain of this book’s leather, the dry dust of red rot that’s crept up its spine, each waving leaf of every page that holds a little secret or one of Peabody’s flourishes. A librarian remembers the particular scent of glue and dust, and if we’re so lucky — and I was — the smell of parchment, a quiet tanginess, softer than wood pulp or cotton rag. We would bury ourselves in books until flesh and paper became one and ink and blood at last ran together. So maybe my hand does clench too tightly to the spine. I may never again hold another book this old, or one with such a whisper of me in it.

But on the beach stands my sister. She is not in my books, and what kind of man would choose words that are already written over what might still be? When I carried her, her legs torn open, part of her flowed into me, and who would I be if I could not part with this beautiful thing for the person to whom I promised, “I will take care of you.” I said always. Even if it meant hurting me.

I dig my good foot into the sand for balance.

Doyle has made a driftwood tepee, under which the curtains and paintings are stashed in a pile. Enola stuffs dry grass in the folds, sticking pieces anywhere they will stay.

I thank him and he shrugs. “Don’t know if it’ll light. I put the parts with the chains on the bottom. Figure that’ll keep any of the damp in the sand from creeping up too high.”

I shake the bottle of lighter fluid. “Hopefully it won’t be a problem.” His eyes gleam.

Crabs scuttle around us. Enola kicks at them, swearing. Yes, I remember walking into the water, how they crawled up me and it felt like an itch being scratched. And I remember her sitting back on the shore, knees pulled into her chin, petrified.

I will make things better.

I douse the wood and the curtains, squeezing until the bottle splutters out its last drop. The fumes are strong enough that even the crabs move back, forming a circle around us. I tear a page out, then tuck the book into the very top of the pile, nestling it between a curtain and a log. The page is ruined, an illegible muddle of brown and blue ink, unable to speak the names that were written on it. I roll it tightly and set Enola’s lighter to it.

I only need to touch the burning paper to the curtains. A wall of heat pushes back as the pile becomes a Technicolor bright chemical blossom. Eyebrows and eyelashes singe and I fall. Enola and Doyle pull my shoulders, dragging me from the inferno. There is a putrid stink — smoke and rot together. The hair burned off my forearm and foul-smelling soot dusts my skin.

“Holy shit,” Enola shouts. She repeats it like a mantra, holyshitholyshitholyshit. Soon it falls apart into laughter. The chemicals burn off and the fire settles to a slow roar as tinder smolders and logs catch fire. I watch a curse’s touch turn to ash.

The crabs back away from the fire, retreating toward the water, and Enola and Doyle sit in the sand beside me. It looks like one of the fires Frank and my father built. If I leaned just to the other side I might see Alice, light hopping across her freckles. If I looked out to the water, I might see Mom swimming or hear her calling me. Simon.

“You burned the book,” Enola says. She briefly touches her forehead to my shoulder. The gentle press is her thanks. Words she’s always had trouble with.

“I burned everything. I got caught up in it because I lost my job.”

“Good. Feel better?”

“Yes.” My ankle hurts and my head still aches from where I hit it, my eyes are bloodshot, I’m gutted from destroying a priceless book, and I nearly incinerated myself. I feel remarkably good.