Tiffany McDaniel - The Summer That Melted Everything

“C’mon, kid.” The man grabbed Grand’s arm and led him away. Led him away from me as I reached and cried for Grand to come back.

“I was comin’ up from the basement when I heard the most terrible racket.” Mom stood in the doorway. “What was goin’ on?”

Once she saw my nose, she went for a wet rag and a bag of ice. Too sore to move myself, I watched the man and Grand get farther and farther away. All the while, my voice echoed for miles. I was calling for my brother. Please, just come back to me. He didn’t so much as turn his head. He just kept walking until I could no longer see his bare back, nor the yellow shirt of the man beside him.

“What on earth were the two of ya fightin’ about?” Mom bent down to wipe the blood from my nose. “Good Lord, I hope it’s not broken. Noses never look quite right after they’re broken.”

“It isn’t broken.”

When Mom asked Sal how he knew, he shrugged and said, “I guess I’ve been hit a lot myself. I know when it’s broken and when it’s just hurt. And that is just hurt.”

“It’s no good havin’ sons fightin’.” Mom sat down beside me, leaving me to hold the bag of ice. “Just look at what happened to Cain and Abel.”

“My nose is broken.” I threw the ice down. “And none of you even care. Let alone that Grand is gone … with that man.”

“What man?” Mom looked out across the yard like they were still there. “You mean that New Yorker? He was all right. Said he’d give us a free subscription to The New York Times. I’m gonna hold ’im to that.”

“Your nose isn’t broken.” Sal picked up the bag of ice and handed it to me. “It isn’t even bleeding anymore.”

“It still hurts.”

“My poor baby.” Mom pulled me into her side and sang,

Down in the hills of Ohio,

there’s a babe at sleep tonight.

He’ll wake in the morn of Ohio,

in the peaceful, golden light.

“Come on, you too.” She waited for Sal to sit at her other side. And there the three of us swayed with her soft voice,

The Father will smile in Ohio,

and the Mother will hold you tight.

You will be my love in Ohio,

and fooorrrr allllll time.

My mother always smelled like Breathed River, of wet rocks and gritty sand. Or maybe she didn’t. Maybe I just gave that smell to her because her flowing fluid form should’ve smelled more like a river than a house.

“I remember when we first moved into this house,” she sighed. “Me and your dad. I was pregnant with Grand. He wasn’t due for another week or so. Your father was off at the courthouse while I stayed home here, takin’ wallpaper swatches ’round to the different rooms. As I was considerin’ makin’ the entry hall blue, my water broke.

“I couldn’t call your father, ’cause we had yet to hook up the phone. I tried to make it to the neighbors, but the pain became everything. I delivered right there beside the grandfather clock.

“I thought the worst part was over, but as I held Grand in my arms, I heard growlin’. We had yet to put the screens up, and a dog was comin’ through the livin’ room winda. A big beast of a mutt. I knew at once it was First, Mr. Elohim’s dog. Then I saw the white foam at First’s mouth. Bein’ a country girl, I knew he was rabid.

“I was far too weak to fight off a rabid dog, so I opened the door of the grandfather clock and placed Grand down inside, just below the pendulum. I thought the dog may get me, but at least my baby will be safe. Before I closed the clock’s door, I saw it. A revolver with an ivory handle. I checked to see if it was loaded. Then I took aim and fired. One bullet, that’s all it took to take down an entire system of muscles and vessels and organs and bones.”

I was quiet for a few moments, and then I asked as if I didn’t already know, “What’d ya do with the gun, Mom?”

“Don’t you get any ideas, Fielding. I put it someplace safe. I do not want you fishin’ for it. Mark my words, Fielding, if I find that gun missin’, I’ll shoot you with it.” She took her arm out from around Sal so she could playfully poke me in the stomach. “Bang, bang,” but I couldn’t laugh, because my stomach was in the low from Grand’s punches.

“Oh, poor Mr. Elohim.” She coiled the beads at her neck. “He loved that dog so much. It’s why he puts the poison out. It was a coon gave First rabies.”

* * *

After Mom went inside to start dinner, me and Sal stayed on the porch. We were there when Dad got home. He asked about my bruises.

“Me and Grand just played too rough.” I shrugged it off.

Grand didn’t come home for dinner. He did call. Told Mom when she picked up the phone that he’d eat with the journalist at Dandelion Dimes and wouldn’t be home for a while.

I thought about Grand and this man in the yellow booth with the dandelion wallpaper around them, the little yellow vase of plastic dandelions between them. The waitress who would come in her yellow uniform to take their order on a yellow pad, before walking past the yellow curtains to the yellow kitchen to serve their food on yellow dishes. Everything so yellow. Grand, I’m sure, remembered back to how Sal said there was no yellow in hell. With so much around him, Grand must’ve thought he was with that man in heaven, forgetting they were merely in Dandelion Dimes.

I stayed up long after Mom and Dad went to bed, pacing the porch while Sal sat patiently on the swing. My nose was still sore and the vision in my right eye was obstructed from my hanging lid. It hurt to stand up tall. It stretched the bruises out on my ribs. I was the beaten boy and feeling it all over. I feel it now. Especially the bruise in my chest, the length of a heart, the width of one too. The pain making me wince.

“You should go up and take a hot bath, Fielding. Help with the soreness.”

I shook my head at Sal. “I’m waitin’ for Grand.”

“What if he doesn’t come back?”

This thought frightened me. Maybe he wouldn’t come back. Maybe I had to go to him.

I ran down the porch steps and was nearly out of the yard when Sal grabbed my arm.

“Let him come home on his own, Fielding.”

“What’s it to you? Huh? He’s not your brother. This is not your family. Stop actin’ like it is.” I pushed him back and ran. I could hear his feet pounding behind me. He hollered that I didn’t even know where Grand was.

But of course I did. He was with our secrets. Where else would he be?

It had been a few years back when I snuck into Grand’s room and took his Eddie Plank card. I only took it to show off to a couple of friends, but I ended up losing it. I turned the world upside down looking for it, but it’d already been given to that place out of reach, so I went to Grand and said I had something to confess.

“What is it, Fielding?” He closed the chemistry book he’d been reading and sat up on the edge of his bed.

“I don’t wanna say, Grand. You’ll hate me.”

“Well, I guess you’re a little man now, huh? Kids are never afraid of bein’ hated for somethin’, ’cause they’re still kids and easily forgiven. But men, they’re not so easily forgiven and live in fear of bein’ hated. I say you’re a little man ’cause you’re still more kid than man, but you got the fear now, so you’re on your way. So what should we do, little man? Should ya tell me and risk bein’ hated by me? Or, should ya keep it a secret?”

“Don’t I have to tell ya, Grand?”

“I have secrets I haven’t told you.”

“What haven’t you told me?”

“The make of a secret is silence, little man. There is a way we could tell our secrets to one another without really tellin’ ’em.”