Tiffany McDaniel - The Summer That Melted Everything

I pulled the small piece of pottery out of my pocket as I knelt down and patted the deer.

“I wish I had the gun,” I told it, as if it would understand that.

I dragged the pottery’s sharp point across its throat, expecting flesh to open and blood to pour. When that did not happen, I tried again, but the deer would not be cut.

“Mr. Bliss, please stop.”

“I can’t. Don’t you understand? It’s suffering.”

I began to go after the deer’s death rather than help it to it. Over and over, I cut the pottery across its throat. The deer started to resist, or at least I was holding its body down as if it were.

“Mr. Bliss, stop.”

I felt the boy’s arms come gently though determined around my neck, pulling me back.

“It’s not a deer, Mr. Bliss, it’s not a deer. It’s just a cardboard box. Must’ve fallen off a truck.”

“No, you’re wrong. It’s…”

I looked down at what I thought had been a struck deer but was in reality a banged-up cardboard box. The pair of sticks that could be antlers if you needed them to. Then there was the strawberry jam I’d believed was blood. It seeped from the broken jars, oozing wide and then tapering as if the way to eternal glory is one long, narrow passage. Maybe that’s why it’s so hard to get there. Our sins widen us until the narrow way is something we can never go through. We have no choice but to languish in the boiling of what’s left, as I have been languishing.

Oh, God, just burn me away until I’m all gone.

“Mr. Bliss, look here. One of the jars didn’t break.” The boy held the miracle up in the sun, the light shining through the jam and blessing each seed.

I took the jar from him and tried to twist its lid off, but these damn hands, shortened by the swelling and the knots. I stared at his long, tall fingers as they opened the jar with ease. A boy opened what I could not. I was suddenly the midget and he the tallest man in the world. For that moment, I hated him.

He tasted the jam, it squeezing out to the corners of his mouth.

“Did I ever tell you I had a brother? His name was Grand.”

“Oh, here, Mr. Bliss.” He picked up the pottery piece dropped to the ground. “Best put it in your pocket before you forget.”

“I won’t forget.”

I remember too well the day. Me and Sal were in the kitchen, helping Mom clean the glass in the cabinets with vinegar. I could hear the music blaring from Grand’s room overhead. Ever since that night, it seemed to be the only thing he did. Stay in his room. Blare music. Tell Mom he wasn’t hungry and no he wouldn’t be down for dinner. And no, Dad, he doesn’t feel like going outside at the moment and would you just leave him alone? Those were the things he shouted through his closed door.

He hated me. It was why he couldn’t look at me. Why he skipped meals. Why he shut his door and only came out when I wasn’t around.

Then one day, there he was, like a spirit, standing in my room. By that time, my eyelid had lifted and my nose no longer hurt when I sneezed. The pain of the fight lay in the reason for it. Grand was the type of brother to regret such brotherly brawls. I saw this very regret, as if in his mind he would never stop seeing the bruises, even after they’d faded from me.

“Have ya seen the Bible, Fielding?”

He could not hide the crushing he was still feeling from the night I opened the Bible to him. That was what he was asking me, after all. How I could do such a thing.

What would he have said if instead of shaking my head, I told him, yes I have seen the Bible and I have seen you.

Cowardice is always too late for the fact that bravery has the better chance. Our better chance could’ve been understanding. It could’ve been soaring from that which has too long been believed to be a sin. And yet it’s far too easy to be the coward when it requires nothing more than a lie.

“I never touch the Bible, Grand, you know that.”

He left without another word. Later that night, I would find the Bible open on top of my pillow. A line highlighted there. Hebrews 13.

Let brotherly love continue.

The sun had broke and I blinked in its light. That was Grand. The first to forgive when he had the right to be the last. I tore out the page and held it to my chest as I left my room. His door was open. It was the first time in days no music was blaring. He was laying across his bed, reading. I think it might’ve been Langston Hughes. I quietly passed his room and went down to the kitchen, where I placed the page in the back of the freezer.

I wonder about that page. Is it still in the freezer behind the box of frozen broccoli? Or has someone cleaned? Removed the ice and tossed the broccoli and by that found the page only to wonder why Hebrews 13 was in a freezer in the first place. I would say because I wanted to save it from that summer, from melting away. Our love forever frozen and safe in that freezing.

Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night, clutching for the freezer that has been dismantled. The broccoli thawed. The ice melted. The page flying away into the flames. I reach for it but am always, always, too late for the save.

“Fielding?”

Mom was calling my name and saying I was leaving too much lint on the glass. The whole kitchen smelled like vinegar as the three of us wiped the cabinets.

I laid down my rag and picked up the bowl sitting on top of the counter. An image of it holding macaroni salad flashed into my mind. “Sal? Where’d you get this bowl?”

“I got it from Amos.”

“When his folks came, they said you didn’t. Remember?”

“Maybe it was his mother’s.” Mom took the bowl from me and looked it over herself. “Is that where ya got it, honey, your mom?”

“He don’t have a mom. He said so himself. Ain’t that right, Sal?”

He slowly nodded while Mom set the bowl down with a sigh and leaned back against the counter, staring at the pantry. Her eyes caught on the can of Crown Prince Sardines. She smiled as if it were her best idea ever as she grabbed the can and pulled its lid off. She warned Sal not to move as she began to place the sardines on top of his head.

“What are you doing?” He smiled. To him life could get no better.

“I’m makin’ you a crown because you are a prince and your momma is a beautiful queen who loves you more than you’ll ever know.”

After she laid the last sardine down, she set the can on top of the counter and stepped back to see Sal in full. “Yes, you are a prince.”

“The Prince of Darkness?” He looked afraid she would call him devil.

“My dear, sweet boy, you could never be anything but the Prince of Light.”

“I wish you were my mother.” Sal’s whisper seemed to echo off the walls.

“Oh, my darlin’.” The sardines fell to the floor as she grabbed him into her and held him tight. “I can be her for as long as you need me to, my dear, sweet love.”

He deserved to have a mother hold him like that, and yet I found myself not wanting it to be my mother. As if by embracing him she put herself in danger. For a moment I allowed myself to believe Elohim. That Sal’s feet clacked like cloven hooves across the ground. That he was the forked tongue, the red demon, hell every day of the week. Something to keep back behind a chain-link fence. Away from hearth and home. Away from those you love the most.

“I don’t know why you’d wanna thief for a son.”

Mom gave me one of her looks, told me to just hush now.

“What?” I shrugged. “It’s pretty obvious he stole that bowl and spoon from somewhere.”

“Oh, he didn’t steal anything.” She let go of Sal and he hated me for being the reason.

As she began to pick up the sardines with heavy sighs, I kept at it.