Eric Puchner - Model Home

He left Raoul on Lyle’s pillow. Training his eyes on the floor in front of him, he managed to shuffle down the hall and back to the empty living room, finding the door to the house. Hector closed it carefully behind him. For a second the twittering of birds made his head swim. Then he hunched down the Zillers’ driveway to his truck, thinking vaguely — and just for a second — that there was something he’d forgotten.

Warren pulled on his clothes, breath clouding in the brittle air, and hiked up the boulder to where the sun shone. The light warmed him immediately. It was like entering a different room. Below him, cocooned in sleeping bags, his family slept peacefully around the fire pit, a ring of question marks, their legs tucked up from the cold. There was something remarkable about seeing them in a circle. The shade in which they lay moved imperceptibly as Warren watched, shrinking like a tide and illuminating their faces one at a time, as if they were emerging from the deep.

He felt sluggish and happy. Last night, he and Camille had made love after the kids were asleep, slow as insects, their long johns shackling their ankles. He’d woken this morning with an afterglow of well-being. His family would be all right, so long as they stuck together and confided their failures. He felt this wholeheartedly but was afraid to move in case the feeling dissolved.

Later that afternoon, driving home, Warren gripped the wheel with two hands to keep the wind from yanking it sideways. Tumbleweeds bounced in front of the car. Jonas insisted on listening to a radio show called “The UFO Connection,” which featured an interview with a “spirit photographer.” I asked the blue orbs for a little show, the photographer said, and they really hammed it up.

“They should show a little dignity,” Lyle said.

“What’s a ‘blue orb’?” Jonas asked.

“An orb that’s having a bad day,” Warren said, trying a joke.

No one laughed. Warren glanced in the rearview mirror at Dustin, who hadn’t said a word since they’d stopped for lunch. The McDonald’s straw he’d been chewing on was flat and man gled, sticking out of his teeth. If not an actual smile, Warren hoped to elicit an acknowledgment of some kind — a nod or a glance, something reminiscent of the camaraderie they’d had drinking beer together. Warren stared back at the highway. Ahead of them a gray cloud towered ominously, flickering with brilliant wishbones of lightning.

“How long have you known we were broke?” Dustin said from the backseat. His voice was slow and deliberate, as though he’d been preparing the question in his mind.

“Since January, probably. I don’t know.”

“What about UCLA?”

Warren avoided looking at him. “These tumbleweeds are out of hand. It’s like an asteroid belt.”

“Jesus, Dad. You haven’t even talked to them, have you?”

“Let’s talk about it later.”

“We could have been applying for financial aid! Something! School starts in September.”

Warren looked at Dustin: he was bolted to his seat, tense as a jack-in-the-box. The car thickened with the smell of rain, sweet and manurey and oddly singed. “I thought college was for ‘capitalist sellouts.’ You want to be a rock star.”

Dustin’s face clenched with rage. Warren shouldn’t have said it. It was a stupid thing, a way of turning the tables. Rain began to hit the roof, a few lone smacks building into a torrential roar. He flipped on the wipers and then looked back at his son, hoping to apologize, but he’d strapped his headphones on and was glaring out the window, lost again to his music.

At home, Warren pulled into the driveway and waited for the stillness to catch up with his thoughts. The kids — Dustin included — were slumped sideways in the backseat, leaning together as if they were taking a hairpin turn. Even Camille had fallen asleep, her face mashed into the headrest. Warren sat there for a minute, not wanting to disturb his feeling that the world had stopped. Mr. Leonard snored geriatrically from the far back. Except for Mr. Leonard, for the ticking of the engine, there was no sound at all. A swallowtail landed on the hood for a moment and then flapped away. Dustin opened his eyes, yawning. The left side of his headphones had slid off and were wedged behind his ear like a hearing aid.

“We’ll find a way to get you through school,” Warren said. “I promise.” He glanced away from the mirror. “I did call them once, the aid office, but they never called back.”

“Maybe you can steal enough wine to cover tuition.”

Dustin got out of the car and walked toward the house, pausing for a moment to fish cigarettes from his pocket. The sun glinted off his hair. He was such a relentless boy, so unforgiving; why did Warren insist on trying to befriend him? It was like a sickness or a curse. He wondered what it would be like to stop trying. To give up completely and let Dustin set the rules, let his son’s contempt seep into the ground between them.

It might be a relief, a great one, like sinking into bed after a long day of travel.

Camille was awake now, blinking at the windshield. Warren wanted to tell her that he’d mistaken fatherhood for true love, how sorry he was that he’d been fooled, but even as he thought this he knew it was a lie. He would seek Dustin’s love at all costs, a hopeless search.

Warren watched his son walk toward the house, a cigarette dangling from his lips. Dustin stopped in the middle of the lawn and pulled out a lighter. For a moment, he seemed invincible. The birds seemed to stop chirping, as though in a trance, the air still as a question.

Then something strange: a whoosh, a gasp from the trees. It happened in an instant, but Warren saw the explosion unfold in a tranquil sequence of disasters. First the sound, this earth-sized whoosh. Then the house itself, a crumpling of wood and glass, like someone sucking the air out of a bag. The sky volcanic with fire. A hooflike clatter above him, the world outside the car swirling with debris.

His first thought was: I’m free.

Then he saw Dustin. He was writhing in the grass, trying to flap the fire from his arms. Warren grabbed a blanket from the backseat and bolted across the lawn and jumped on top of Dustin, hugging him with the blanket, his eyes shut to the smoke — to the sweet, bacony, gut-wrenching smell filling his nostrils — rolling through the grass with his burning son, clutching him with both arms, heaving him around and around until the blanket stopped feeling like a wild creature, aware of the awful smothered screaming only when it ended, his son alive and panting in his arms, quiet as a fish, and still Warren didn’t move or speak or let go, ignoring the shouts of his family, the stink of burned wool and flesh, until finally he opened his eyes and saw the trail of scorched lawn and the black angel in the grass where his son had lain flapping, so small compared to the gorgeous disaster of his house, the kitchen and bedrooms and entryway transformed into a pyramid of fire, a tremendous rustling of heat, shirts rising from the popping windows like ghosts.

Lyle rolled down the window of the Renault, the desert air scorching her face. Her T-shirt stuck to her chest. Why the fuck hadn’t she gotten the air-conditioning fixed? She’d replaced the muffler with her own money but had decided to skimp on the extras, forgetting that they lived in the Mojave desert. With coyotes and jackrabbits. Animals that dashed into the highway, hoping to be put out of their misery. Feeling faint, Lyle glanced in the rearview mirror and saw a hungry-looking vulture seesawing behind her, its red head hanging down like a trigger.