Tiffany McDaniel - The Summer That Melted Everything

There was a man who when he bent low to look at Sal, showed the part in his hair and the dandruff there, like shavings of pearl. He was pushed to the side by a woman in a rhinestone belt. She wanted a good look at Sal, and she didn’t want anyone in her way. The man in the cowboy hat took her picture, maybe only to remember the woman who chewed her gum as if her jaw was about to be undone from creation.

There was just something about that woman. The ponytail rising out of the very top of her head like a mushroom cloud. The awful stare of her eyes. A shiny viciousness as if when the wolves saw her, they turned and ran the other way, fear putting their tails between their legs.

I felt like telling the sheriff he should go through her house. I was certain he’d find bottles of tampered Tylenol, potassium cyanide, and a scrapbook of newspaper articles from 1982.

As she looked down on Sal before her, she suddenly stopped chewing the gum. Her thin lips settled like a single bleed across her face. The old acne scars like embedded wreckage.

She cleared her throat, and in one easy go of it, she asked, “Is God a nigger too?”

The gasps of the women were like bright cries. Things that knocked their shoulder pads out of balance and put runs in their hosiery right then and there. My mother included. Some of the men shoved their hands into their pockets and looked down at the toes of their shoes. It was their best natural stance. The braver ones looked directly at Sal. Stepped closer to him even. Waiting as one ear for his response.

He hadn’t so much as flinched.

If the woman had expected to sword him, she was mistaken. His elegance so apparent, even in the filthy overalls. Maybe in his own wounded thoughts he could not give such chance to dignity, but before us he stood as tall as he could. His chin raised. His eyes upon hers not in anger but almost in pity, as if he already knew her eternity was to writhe in flames over and over again.

It was at this time Dad finally made his way from the back of the room. Pushing through the crowd to stand between the woman and Sal.

My father’s fists were clenched so tight it was almost as if his fingers had melted and all that remained were his palms. A layer of sweat seemed to cover him completely. His face so red, it looked like candy. Like one of those fireballs you get out of the machine with a quarter.

He was yelling at the woman, asking her how dare she use such language in his house. She started chewing her gum again. Unchanged by his voice shaking, by the near-to-something mist in his eyes. In fact, she smiled. A smile that had eaten things before.

Angered even more, he lowered his head and shook it, trying very carefully not to lose himself. “You listen to me, you ignorant hill rat, you take yourself and your hateful mouth and get out of here.”

The flames in my father’s eyes burned toward the crowd. They had been getting on his nerves ever since their arrival. The way their shoes dirtied the rugs. The way their smoke grayed the rooms. The way they came to look at Sal like a thing on exhibit.

Dad was telling every one of them to get out of our house. I’d never seen my father so angry. Years later, I would find myself dog-earing a page in a book about the ocean. On the page a painting of gray, wild waves. I have since torn that page out of the book and set the painting to frame by the side of my bed. I suppose it is a painting of my father from that night he raged like waves in a storm.

After herding the last of the crowd out the door, Dad slammed it, and sighed into himself, “We haven’t even had our dinner yet.”

Not used to shouting, he sounded hoarse as he asked what was for dinner. He dropped down in his chair at the table, tired and looking like he’d just come in from a two-day shift in the mines.

“Those people, my God,” he muttered as Mom brought in the meat loaf.

“Well, we can’t have a man on fire at the dinner table. You’ll scorch my tablecloth. We must extinguish the flames.” She told him to close his eyes. Then she used his glass of water and her finger to lightly drop the water on his eyelids.

As tiny streams of water slipped down his cheeks, he opened his eyes and she looked deep into them as she smiled and said, “Not a fire for miles.”

She kissed him on the forehead before returning to the kitchen to bring out the mashed potatoes, green beans, and rolls, while the rounded skirt of her dress reached and whispered to the tablecloth as she passed. She had changed from the afternoon into a bright yellow dress, and Sal couldn’t help but stare at her as she floated about the table like a motored cloud.

“What is it, Sal?” She tightened under his watchful gaze, holding her hand to her flat stomach as if the problem were there. As if it could be anywhere in her tall, narrow frame, wide only in the pads at her shoulders.

“Your dress.” He raised his hand as if he was going to reach out and touch it. “It is just so yellow.”

She apologized, looking as though she really meant it. “I can go up and change.” She held her arm toward the stairs, her bracelet all dangle below her thin wrist.

Sal looked almost worried. “Please leave it on. It’s such a pretty yellow. There’s no yellow where I come from. There is a lot of black. A lot of brown. But none of those colors like yellow. I mean truly yellow. There are yellow things, of course, blue things, purple things. But they are always black first and therefore never anything more.”

“I’m home.” Grand came in, dropping his ball bag down to the floor. His hair was wet. I inhaled its peppermint smell as he passed.

“What’s the deal with this heat? We could barely practice. Had to take a cold shower at the school. We all did. You should’ve seen the sweat goin’ down the drain.” He pulled his chair out, opposite me and Sal at the table, and sat down. “Ah, Mom, why’d ya make meat loaf and potatoes? It’s a million degrees outside.”

Mom made sure to give him an extra-large pile of potatoes that steamed even more.

“Tell us about where you come from, Sal.” Dad grabbed a roll. “You sound like you might be from up north. Cleveland? Close to there, are you?”

“He’s from the south, Dad. You know. Hell.” I opened my can of Pepsi. “What’s hell like, Sal?”

He pulled at his bottom lip. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything. Like, who’s there?”

“Cousin Lloyd is definitely there.” He reached for a roll. “What he did to those little boys was horrible.”

Mom was standing at Sal’s side by then, about to serve him a slice of meat loaf, but upon hearing about Lloyd, she gasped, causing the fork in her hand to turn downward and drop the slice onto Sal’s leg.

“How’d you know about what Lloyd did?” She pointed the fork at him.

He was silent for a long time, staring down at the meat loaf on his leg, its hot juices oozing into the thin denim of his overalls.

“I asked you a question, young man.” She continued to point the fork at him. “How do you know about Lloyd?”

He looked up at her. “I know the sins of everyone who comes to hell. That’s part of my misery. To know and feel theirs.”

“Autopsy?” Mom turned helplessly to Dad. “How does he know about Cousin Lloyd?”

Dad squinted his eyes. “I suppose he could have looked it up in a newspaper. When Lloyd was charged with the pornography, it was in the paper.”

“Oh, yes.” Mom sighed as she stabbed the meatloaf on Sal’s leg with the fork. “That must be it. You silly boy. You had me scared there for a minute.”

“But I didn’t look in any newspaper,” Sal tried to tell her, but she was already convinced as she plopped the meat down on his plate. He stared at it like it was his cross to bear.