Smith Henderson - Fourth of July Creek

He retrieved the feather and showed it to Pete, running it the length of his arm like a jeweler presenting a necklace. Pete whistled.

“It’s nice. Where did you get it?”

Ben watched his father now. Pearl had shielded his eyes and was gazing skyward.

“What in the hell is that?” he asked Pete, pointing up.

Pete stepped out from under the alder boughs and saw the contrail of a jet directly overhead, the white line bisecting the emerging stars.

“A plane?” Pete said.

“Put out the fire,” Pearl said to the boy. “Pack everything up.”

The boy hesitated, and Pearl cuffed him upside the head. Ben scampered to, kicking hunks of dirt and moss onto the fire.

“Whoa!” Pete hollered. “It’s just a plane.”

“Directly overhead. I’m not stupid. How do you think we’re still alive?” Pearl said, ripping up carpets of moss and covering the fire himself.

“I’d love to know what the hell happened to you, why you are like this.”

Pearl stopped stomping out the fire. He looked hard at Pete.

“What are you looking at?” Pete asked.

Pearl went to him and took his backpack right off his back. He dumped the contents onto the ground. He furiously pawed through everything.

“What the hell are you looking for?”

Pearl mumbled to himself, tore into the plastic bags of beans, the boxes of rice. He picked up the puzzle and cut it open with a knife and fingered through the pieces. He shook out the bags of raisins and cinnamon candies and weighed the cans with his hands. Shook them next to his ear.

“It’s just food,” Pete said. “A few things for the kids.”

Pearl squatted regarding the mess he’d made. Poked it with his finger. The boy was standing nearby, watching, slowly putting his sleeping bag back into its sack.

“What things?” Ben asked.

Pearl threw a handful of small rocks at his son, and the child cried out, and immediately covered his mouth. Pete stepped between Pearl and the boy.

“Jeremiah! Don’t do that—”

Pearl swept up his rifle and leveled it at Pete’s face.

“Don’t tell me what to do. I will bury you.”

“Jeremiah.”

“I’m all right,” Benjamin stammered. “I’m all right, Pete. It’s all right, Papa.”

“Benjamin,” Pearl said, and it was all he needed to say. The boy furiously packed their things, shoving his bag into the sack and pulling the drawstring closed.

Pearl kept the rifle trained on Pete.

“I don’t like guns pointed at me,” Pete said, level. Flat.

“I don’t like jets flying directly over my position.”

“I’m not… I’m just a social worker. That is just a plane.”

“You disappeared on us.”

“I told you the truth. I was in Texas looking for my daughter.”

Pearl stepped forward, the barrel inches from Pete’s face.

“Why aren’t you still looking for her?” He poked Pete in the ribs with the rifle, hard. “Don’t you care where she is?”

When he poked him again, Pete grabbed the rifle barrel and pressed the muzzle into his chest.

“You think I’d be out here if there was one thing I could do to get her?”

Pearl pulled on the gun, and Pete stepped forward, still gripping it, still touching it to his heart.

“You think I don’t spend every second wondering what’s happened to her? Do you have any idea what that’s like? Go ahead, put me out of my misery.”

Pearl yanked the rifle out of Pete’s hands, and backed away. He and Pete regarded one another, something wordless and true shaping up out of the moment. Empathy even.

“Put these things back in Pete’s bag,” Pearl said to this son. “We’re moving out in five.”

The boy released his head, his handfuls of hair, and Pete told him it was okay, and they put the cans and puzzle pieces in Pete’s backpack together. Pete said to leave the spilled things. He’d bring more. Then they followed Pearl into the wilderness.

They stepped cautiously in the moonless dark and finally set down for what was left of the night at some arbitrary hillside location that had no discernible advantage. It grew very cold in the depths of night, and Pearl allowed his son to fetch out their sleeping bags. They sat in them under the stars, watchful as stooped cats. Soft nutritious duff under them like a mattress. Just before dawn the boy was asleep.

“President Reagan was shot,” Pete said.

“Is that the truth?”

“He survived, though.”

Pearl nodded.

“I always thought it would be a European. Someone from Hollywood.”

“Thought who would be European?”

“The Antichrist will survive an attempt on his life.”

“Reagan’s the Antichrist?”

“He’s from Hollywood.”

“Well, there you go,” Pete said.

“Don’t patronize me,” Pearl said. “I know you don’t believe any of this.”

The boy stirred where he lay between them, and Pearl leaned over and petted his head.

“I see a lot of different people with a lot of different beliefs. Native Americans and Mormons—”

“ Mormons ,” Pearl said, shaking his head. “That’s not a faith. That’s a company.”

“Best neighbors I ever had were Mormons.”

“Gnaw Bone was lousy with Jehovah’s Witnesses coming by every week, selling a map to hell. A man comes to your house to give you something — a service, a good, a belief — you best set him back on his way.”

“Gnaw Bone?”

Pearl frowned, as though he’d given something unintended away.

“Indiana.”

“Your people from there?”

Pearl volunteered no more.

The birds began to trill at a dawn that couldn’t yet be seen. Pete asked was it all right if he smoked and Pearl nodded. He rolled and lit a cigarette. When he was finished there was enough light to see how thick and close the trees were. Snags and huge sheets of moss.

“How long you gonna stay out here?”

Pearl spat.

“Till we die.”

“Until you’re killed, you mean.”

“My soul will live forever.”

“What about him?” Pete nodded toward Benjamin.

“He’s fine.”

“What about your wife and other children?”

Pearl spat.

“Look, I’m just trying to do my job.”

“You’re not here because of your job.”

“You’re right,” Pete said. “I’m sitting up here in the sticks with you two for the sheer pleasure of it.”

Jeremiah Pearl smiled and leaned back against the hillside with his hands laced, cradling his head, and closed his eyes. As if in the coming light of day he could now rest. “We all have a part to play. We’re all instruments of His will.”

“You’re a lunatic,” Pete said.

Pearl grunted. In moments, he snored.

The boy ran ahead and told Pete to hurry and they emerged from the brush and arrived at a thin and shallow creek that ran through a narrowing canyon. Boulders strewn like the toppled bulwarks of an old castle. The banks soon gave way to sheer rock and the child clambered up the ledges of the canyon on small footholds and disappeared around a jutting face about thirty feet high. The water was only ankle deep. Shot-through tin cans lay among the pebbles in the bed. Dried bits of paper and what looked like runny scat stained the walls. They arrived under a waney set of planks. The boy called down to him from somewhere in the dark ahead. Pete ventured forward and could just make out the green streak of the creek’s origin somewhere above. He walked between timbers supporting the queer structure, a kind of fort straddling the creek at the top of the rock walls. Pearl pointed to a crude wooden ladder wedged underneath, and Pete climbed up.

The floor creaked beneath him and there was no room to stand. He touched the canvas roof. It was ably waxed to wick away water. When Pearl came up, it was evident that the whole space was barely big enough to seat them all. Even though it had been empty for many days, the air was heavy with the smell of the Pearls, of smoke and grease and pine sap.