Rebecca Coleman - Heaven Should Fall

“Is that better?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. Damn, that’s way better.”

He sat upright again and sighed. Softly I rubbed his temples, the sides of his jaw, his scalp. I scratched his forehead along his hairline, and stroked my fingers back through his buzz-cut hair. He tipped his head upward, eyes closed, smiling.

“Fudgies are probably ready,” I told him. “You want some?”

Without opening his eyes, he asked, “What the hell’s a Fudgie?”

“Chocolate and peanut butter comfort food.”

“Fuck, yeah.”

I laughed and patted him on the shoulders. “I hope you like them. I’m not the most awesome in the kitchen.”

“I have faith,” he said.

The next morning I awoke, groggy and exhausted from interrupted sleep, to the sound of bacon sizzling in the skillet downstairs. The smell of it wafted into the room, and I was out of bed and dressed in no time. Pregnancy had made me a serious carnivore. In my ordinary life my staples were bread and fruit, but lately I found myself snacking on strips of leftover flank steak, cold from the fridge. I hoped it was helping build the baby’s brain.

Scooter was already in the kitchen, dressed in a white crew-neck undershirt, a Patriots ball cap and a pair of Levi’s thirty-inch-waist extra-longs. He was chugging chocolate milk from a Coca-Cola glass. The beagles licked bacon grease from the floor around Candy’s feet. I could hear Cade washing up in the bathroom, and Dodge sat at the table with his arms folded in front of him, looking more alert than anyone ought to be at 6:00 a.m. He met my eye but offered no greeting. I wondered if Scooter could sense the tension.

“Mornin’, Jill,” said Scooter. He had a milk mustache.

“You guys doing a clean-out today?”

“Nope. The AC’s not cooling the place down like it ought to. Got to try to fix it.”

“It’s at eighty-five in there right now,” said Dodge.

Candy raised the skillet high and carried it to the kitchen island, sending the beagles scrambling. Dodge asked, “You think Elias knows anything about HVAC work?”

Cade walked in from the hallway. “He doesn’t.”

“That sucks. Would make the sumbitch good for something this morning.”

“Easy,” said Cade.

“I am being easy.” Dodge moved his hands to the sides to make room for the plate Candy was setting in front of him, casting a meaningful glance at me before finishing his thoughts. “Boy needs a drill sergeant. Get him to come out and work. Or one of those trainers like on TV, make him run on the treadmill till his ass falls off.”

“He could have run circles around you a year ago,” Cade told him.

“A year ago. Now all he runs circles around is that island right there. Relay races with a box of Ho-Hos.” He dug into his eggs, and I glanced at Scooter, who looked away. “We’re gonna get him straight .”

Cade kissed me goodbye at the door, but I followed him out to the car anyway. The Saturn wasn’t looking its best these days. The white paint above its wheel wells showed splatters of mud, and the backseat was a mess of crumpled sandwich wrappers and soda cups, unwashed laundry and boxes from the copy center filled with résumés. As Cade climbed in I said, “You’ve got to get Dodge to stop saying that crap about Elias. He’s a bully, your brother-in-law.”

“Don’t make a melodrama out of it. It’s just Dodge being Dodge. He’s trying to get Elias working to keep his mind busy, so he means well. I’ll give him that much credit.”

I scowled. Glancing quickly at the house, I said in a low voice, “I think you ought to talk Elias into going back in to get his meds adjusted and to get some counseling. I can’t believe they’d just hand him a prescription and let him go home without any other treatment. He’s twenty-four years old and all he does is sit there all day. I don’t like Dodge trash-talking him, but he needs to get up, at least.”

Cade’s expression had grown peevish. He was in a hurry to leave, and I knew it. “Give the guy a break. He spent three years fighting the Taliban. It’s okay for him to sit down and watch TV for a while. You and Dodge both need to realize that.”

“If you think he’s acting like that because he just wants to relax, you’re off in la-la land.”

He cocked an eyebrow at me. “What I think,” he began, and his voice was cold, “is that people ought to back off and let the guy be. Elias has always been a couch potato. Just give him some space, and stop playing into it by lavishing attention all over him for being lazy. Don’t think he doesn’t love that shit. He knows how to play it. Girls love it when he whips out his Eeyore impression.” He turned the key in the ignition and slammed the door. The window scrolled down, and he added, “I’ll try to talk him into coming with us when we do the gun-club thing with Dodge, okay? Get him to come out and socialize a little. Even with those idiots, it would be an improvement.”

“Sure, you can try, but he won’t go.”

“You forget where my skill set lies. If I can get college students out to the polls, you’d better be damn sure I can get my brother to walk into the backyard.”

“If you say so.”

“I say so.” He leaned a little out the window, and I kissed him on the mouth. Then he reversed out of the driveway and spun out onto the road, disappearing past the trees in a blue-gray haze of burning oil.

Another week passed before the gun club met again, and Dodge managed to hassle Cade into coming along. Cade was already in a bad mood. The ten résumés he had sent to various offices in D.C. two weeks before had resulted in no phone calls at all, and what was worse, the news had gotten back to him that Drew Fielder had taken a permanent position on Mark Bylina’s staff. The previous night Cade had been downright morose. He had drunk an entire six-pack of beer in front of the TV, slept for two hours and then was up half the night cursing at the clothes dryer he had suddenly decided to repair. He had looked like death when he woke up at four-thirty in the morning, but that afternoon he returned from work in the chipper mood I recognized from his days of campaign volunteering. It was one-dimensional and deceptively shallow, but he could muscle through a bad day with a smile on his face as long as he kept moving.

As Dodge packed his cooler and ammo into the truck, Cade approached Elias and nudged his shoulder. “Hey,” he said good-naturedly. “C’mon. Don’t make me do this on my own.”

Elias looked at his brother over his shoulder, barely raising an eyebrow. “I don’t think so.”

“Just this once. I don’t want it to just be me and those dipshits.”

“Jill’s going.”

“Yeah, but they’ll leave her alone. I’m the one they’ll be giving all the shit to.” He barraged the back of Elias’s shoulder with pokes of his index fingers. “ C’mon. Back me up.”

Elias sighed heavily and stood up, and Cade clapped him on the back. As he headed out the door behind Cade, I felt impressed with Cade’s work. Maybe he was right about his brother after all; maybe Elias just needed more encouragement.

Dodge drove his truck up the slim dirt road that snaked into the woods, but the rest of us walked. As I followed Cade and Elias up the trail I saw the trees clear into an opening that revealed the closest thing to a party I had seen since my arrival. An ancient boom box blasted an ’80s heavy-metal sound track; the fresh piney air carried the smoke from the grill, filling the clearing with the scent of hamburgers. On a series of tree stumps surrounding an ashy fire pit, the men of the club sat drinking beer from bottles shiny with condensation. As they drank they chatted and cleaned their guns with loving care.