Melanie Thon - Meteors in August

Freda Graves was not afraid. “For behold,” she said, “the Lord will come in fire, to render His anger in fury, and His rebuke with flames of fire.”

Shouts answered her, and then a single cry, shrill and unforgiving. The pack surged forward, a huge animal with many feet and one small mind.

Caleb Wolfe and Red Elk leaped to the front of the mob and jumped the railing of the steps to shield Mrs. Graves. But they were only two men and the crowd was at least a hundred strong. Blinded by the veil of righteousness, Freda Graves shook her mane of gray curls, raised her broad knotted hands toward Heaven and said, “For by fire will the Lord execute judgment.” The clot of people pressed closer, and Freda Graves remembered her mortality just in time to slip inside the white arched door of the Lutheran church.

Caleb Wolfe drew his gun and fired a round into the air. Red Elk spread himself across the door. Legs braced, arms outstretched, he seemed to hang in the arch. The sheriff fired another round, and the crowd drew back, almost tamed.

Then I saw my father, slamming his way to the church steps. His hair was singed and his face was covered with soot. He still had that blind glaze, a man with two glass eyes, but he knew where he wanted to go. Soon he stood on the third step of the Lutheran church, and there was no one between him and the two Indians.

He clutched a rock in each hand. “We’re not gonna let a couple of Indians keep us from getting what we want, are we?” he yelled. That was all he had to say. The crowd swayed and sang, a chorus of no ’s. A mob does not demand eloquence of its leader, only that he take the first step. How could these people guess that my father didn’t give a damn about their precious bar or the preacher woman? He would have stood by and watched the whole block burn to the ground. It was the big Indian spread across the door that drove him wild. It was Red Elk’s hairless face and skinny black braid that turned my father into the leader of a gang of idiots.

Spurred on by his own words, Father flung himself toward Red Elk. He fell against the Indian’s massive chest; his knee rammed into the big man’s groin. His rage was old. He stood before the man he’d always hated. He saw Nina. He knew what she’d done. He blamed Red Elk for this too, blamed him for having a son.

He tried to pummel the Indian with his stones. But fury clouded his eyes. The rocks rained down on Red Elk’s shoulders and arms, a long way from the forehead my father wanted to crush.

Sheriff Wolfe brought a polished stick down hard on the back of Father’s knees, then again sharp and swift across each kidney. His aim was perfect and precise; it took only three blows. Daddy crumpled to his knees, then fell in a heap at Red Elk’s feet.

The sheriff cuffed my father’s hands behind his back. The crowd hummed. Wolfe fired a third round into the dark and waved his nightstick as if to ask if anyone else wanted to take him on. No one moved.

Vern Foot yelled, “You’re not on the reservation, Wolfe. You can’t run us by tribal law. You’ll answer for this!” But it was an idle threat. Even Ralph Foot didn’t back his toothless brother. Sheriff Wolfe was not a man to cross on this night of the hot wind.

The big Indian leaned against the white door; the arch came to a point above his head. He rubbed his left shoulder and looked somewhere far beyond us, to the black outline of the hills, to the peaks of the Rockies where the snow never melts.

Together, Red Elk and Caleb Wolfe lifted my father to his feet. He was too weak to walk. They pulled him down the steps, his feet dragging. A path opened as they passed through the crowd. Daddy’s fickle followers shrank back. I lost myself among them, listening to the buzz of his name on the lips of the people around me, hoping no one recognized his daughter.

Reverend Timothy Piggott climbed the stairs of his church with a shotgun in his hands. He looked gaunt and ridiculous packing that big rifle, but when he spoke, people had to listen. His was the only voice of reason on a night of impulse. “What evil has possessed you?” he said. “Would you chase a woman into the Lord’s house? Would you stone her there while the eyes of Jesus stared down at you from the Cross?”

Maybe he was just protecting his church, saving his carpet from a hundred pairs of sooty soles, saving his pulpit from the scars of bricks and rocks. But I heard something more in his voice, something human and compassionate. He spoke as a man, not a minister, when he said, “Go home. There’s been enough trouble for one night.”

The fire dwindled to smoke and embers. The show was over. People gave up and started home. As the crowd thinned, I saw that Caleb Wolfe hadn’t taken my father to jail. His green Plymouth was still there, parked beneath the stoplight where Main Street crossed Center Street.

My father, his hands locked behind him, sat in the backseat. Wild children cavorted around the car. One tow-headed boy had a pair of shoes dangling from his belt loops, the trophy of a bully. He was the loudest, proud as a cavalryman who’d taken an Indian scalp. He pounded the hood of the car. A dirty-faced girl knocked on the windows, and two small boys flattened their faces to the glass. I saw them from the other side, saw their smashed noses, their cheeks pushed up so high they seemed to have nothing more than slits for eyes.

Father stared at his lap. His chin was cut, and I wondered if he’d fallen or if Caleb Wolfe had punched him in the face. He didn’t see the children. He didn’t see me. I looked for my mother, the only one who might be brave enough to shoo these little monsters away. I ran in circles, from one end of the street to the other. I sprinted to the place where we’d parked the truck. It was gone. I thought she must not know about any of this.

I raced down the streets. I ran so hard my heels kicked my butt with every step. I wanted to go someplace where nobody knew me. But I couldn’t get far enough from home. My father’s humiliation was inside me. His anger was mine. I might be a stranger to everyone I met, but I would always know my own name.

Weary drivers leaned on their horns when I darted into the yellow glaze of their headlights. I never stopped.

Gasping for breath, I leaped up the steps of our porch. I heard the whine of the swing, Mother creaking back and forth in the dark. “Daddy,” I whispered.

And she answered, “I know.”

IT WAS already midnight, and Mother had no intention of going to rescue Daddy. “Stew in his own juice,” she said.

I told her about the cut on his chin. “He might be hurt,” I said.

“He’ll live till morning.”

I knew she was probably right, but I still thought it was wrong to let him sit in jail. Arlen agreed. She came charging up the steps half an hour after I got home.

“Those heathens are probably beating Dean bloody right this minute,” Arlen said. “And here you are sitting on the porch doing nothing to stop them.”

“I’m sure the sheriff is too tired to beat on anyone,” Mom said.

But Arlen wouldn’t let up, so we headed downtown to pay Daddy’s bail and haul him home. The streets were already deserted, and the air was thick with smoke.

Sheriff Wolfe said my father was asleep, and that he’d be better off staying right where he was for the night. “Let sleeping dogs lie,” he muttered, which got Arlen on her high horse.

“You listen here, mister,” she said, “we’ve got a right. You tell us the bail. We pay it. We take him home. Right, Wolfe?” He didn’t budge even when the spit started flying with the words.

“No bail till we see a judge.” He said it slow; he had all night.

“Well, that’s that,” Mom said.