Tiffany McDaniel - The Summer That Melted Everything

He stared at the two red handprints on the wall. “If this is yours and your brother’s place, why’d you bring me here, Fielding?”

“Ain’tcha like me and Grand? I mean maybe you and me ain’t brothers, but I mean we ain’t just friends. We’re in this together now. They weren’t just chasin’ you, Sal. They were chasin’ me too.”

On the floor was a wooden crate with one of Mom’s afghans draped over it. I threw the afghan off as I said, “There’s too many people confused ’bout what they think happened back there. They got it in their damn heads that you pushed her. Hell, they think I pushed her too. We’ve got a right to protect ourselves against that confusion, don’t we?”

He came and nudged the crate with his toe as I sat down, happy to be closer to the floor I thought I was going to collapse down to at any moment. My hands were still shaking, little vibrations as if they were being chewed on by gnats.

When I pulled the revolver out of the crate, Sal took it from me by its ivory handle.

“Cool, huh? Me and Grand found it in the attic a few years ago. We never did tell Mom and Dad ’bout it. Parents get … worried ’bout guns.” I opened the chamber to show him the bullets inside. “It’s only missin’ one.”

He closed one eye and peered down the barrel of the gun.

“Sal? Was that true back there, ’bout the staircase ’n’ all?”

He looked deeper into the barrel and then held the gun up, aiming it at the wall behind me. “It’s true.”

“What’d you mean when ya said you were discontented with the one suit of your life?”

I thought for a moment he was actually going to fire the gun, but he slowly lowered it to his lap as he asked, “Have you ever tried on one of your father’s suits?”

I shook my head.

“You will one day.”

“Are you sayin’ that’s all ya did? Was try on one of God’s suits?”

“I just wanted to try it on. See if it fit me or one day might.” For the first time, he seemed more sweat than skin. “The thing about trying on your father’s suit is that if you wear it outside the closet, you are no longer merely trying it on. You are wearing it. Some may think this is you trying to replace your father.”

“Did ya step outside the closet, Sal?”

He nodded. “But only because there were no mirrors in the closet and I just wanted to see how I looked. That was all. I just wanted to see how I looked in my father’s suit.” He lowered his eyes to the gun. “It didn’t fit.”

IN LIEU OF family and friends at the dinner table, I’ve piled laundry in the chairs to avoid the emptiness. Still it’s not easy to dine with dirty jeans and stained shirts. Yesterday I tried something new. I had dinner at the VFW. It was my first time there with them veterans of foreign wars.

When I walked in, they leaned back in their chairs and nodded sympathetically, like I was one of them. Maybe that was because of the service uniform I was wearing and had bought at the thrift store down the road.

As soon as I sat down at the bar, a guy attached to my side, asking what war.

I pretended not to hear him. He smelled like a dog fight. Sweaty. Bloody. A little scared.

When the bartender came, I placed my order for a beer and the BBQ ribs meal.

“I asked ya what war were ya in?” The drunk beside me took a swallow or two of his beer.

“The big one.” I sipped my own beer the bartender had just served.

“Yeah, the big one.” The drunk’s eyes got even glassier. He knew exactly what war I was talking about, even if he didn’t.

“Hey, I forgot to ask for your card.” The bartender had returned. “Your membership card.”

“This is my membership card.” I tapped the uniform.

“Amen.” The drunk threw back his beer and asked for another.

“You’re over your limit, Gus. Look”—he turned back to me—“I gotta have the card.”

“Leave ’im alone.” Gus slapped my back, a little too hard. “He was in the big one.”

The bartender looked from Gus to me and waited. I picked up my glass of beer in case he was going to try to take it away from me.

“I don’t have a card.”

“You’re not a veteran?” The bartender slung his towel over his shoulder and leaned onto the counter. “We only serve veterans.”

“I’m a veteran. Just not of the United States Army or Navy or whatever the hell this is.” I pinched the uniform.

“You said…” Gus slurred. “You said you were in the big war.”

I finished the last of my beer in a great gulp. “I was.”

“He’s my guest.” Gus kept turning his glass up to his lips even though it was empty. “He don’t need no card if he’s a guest of someone with a card. And ain’t ol’ Gus here got a card?” He flipped his card out from his pocket. It was creased until his name had faded.

The bartender shrugged and returned to wiping the counter.

“You ever kill anybody?” Gus perched his chin on my shoulder and wobbled on his stool. A few more, and I’d be wobbling with him. Two old birds singing on the same old wire.

“Yeah.” I wiped my mouth on my sleeve. “Yeah, I killed someone once. Hey, can I get another?”

The meal was shit. Made me miss my frozen dinners. Damn Gus, who ended up passing out when I was midsentence and before he saw me, beers later, coming to blows with three silver-haired Iraq War veterans, one in a wheelchair. I can’t make my fists like I used to, but I still got the punch. Bartender and a couple of the other young ones had to break us up. Not sure what started it all, but I never am.

As I stumbled from the VFW, bloody and bruised, I thought of Dovey. Her care went beyond the resources of Breathed’s doctor, so they sent her up to the hospital in Columbus to monitor the baby. That’s where they took the track star too. He finally made it to OSU, though it was the hospital instead of the track. He would be there for months but not as long as he was in the rehabilitation center. He’d never walk again.

Later I’d hear he rolled his wheelchair off a train platform while wearing his old lavender and dark purple track uniform from Breathed High. Sometimes the only thing left to do is to flee the life and hope that after we’ve fled we’re spared the judgment of dying wrong.

He must have been something like thirty-six by then. I sent his mother lilies for the funeral, unsigned. Would have sent them to his widow, but he never married.

An apology to him was on my lips as I sat down on the sidewalk, not even half a block away from the VFW.

“Hey, buddy, you okay?”

A passerby. I flipped him and his nosey dog the bird.

“Fuck you too, buddy.”

Finally left in peace, I tried to lie down. Couldn’t, though — on account of the heartburn brought on by the barbecue sauce in that shit meal. As I sat up, a sheriff car went driving by. Partly the night, partly my drunkenness, but I saw Sal looking out the window at me just as he’d looked that June morning when Sheriff Sands drove him away.

Sitting there on the sidewalk, feeling as certain as any drunk man can feel, I reached for Sal, screaming his name. I was convinced I was seeing him with his face pressed against the glass. I somehow stood up and stumbled out into the road. The sheriff was nearing the turn and by it would turn out of my life.

I picked up a handful of small gravels from off the pavement. Winding up like I was on the mound, I pitched them, just as Grand had taught me. They pinged and bounced off the car’s trunk, causing the brake lights to flash red and the tires to squeal to a stop. When the sheriff got out, he did so cussing and with his hand on his holster.