Tiffany McDaniel - The Summer That Melted Everything

I went to get the bowl and spoon off the tracks, but Sal told me to leave them.

“That’s the ending of the story,” he said. “Something broken.”

Together we watched as the train roared over first the spoon and then the bowl, its broken pieces scattered to the ground.

“You know, Fielding, the thing about breaking something that no one much thinks about is that more shadows are created. The bowl when intact was one shadow. One single shadow. Now each piece will have a shadow of its own. My God, so many shadows have been made. Small little slivers of darkness that seem at once to be larger than the bowl ever was. That’s the problem of broken things. The light dies in small ways, and the shadows — well, they always win big in the end.”

THIS IS ME. Teeth marks here. Teeth marks there. Being eaten one bite at a time. I smell myself on my breath. Feel myself swallowed and plopped to my stomach. Clean myself out from my own teeth with a toothpick.

It was Carl Jung who said shame is a soul-eating emotion. It doesn’t eat you in one big gulp. It takes its time. Seventy-one years, it is still taking its time.

I am for my own teeth. I am for my own stomach. I alone eat myself to the dark.

It was the end of August, and me and Sal were in the woods by the tree house. There I saw a metal bucket of stones. I thought maybe Sal was building onto Granny’s grave. Then I saw the paint on the stones. I picked a few up. They all had the same image of a boat. More than that. It was a ship given the details of something grand like an ocean liner. Then the name written on the sides. SS Andrea Doria.

“What do you think?” Sal came up behind me.

I was stunned at the details of the ships and how the same image could be done over and over again without miss.

“I painted them at night, while you were sleeping.”

I dropped the stones back into the bucket. “Listen, Sal, if these are for Mr. Elohim—”

“Shouldn’t they be? All his pamphlets and meetings. He has no right to keep on me. I’ve been good. I mean, I could be bad, Fielding. I could be really bad for him, I could be the worst thing ever. But they always take away the trouble, and I want to stay.

“If only he would just be good. Then we wouldn’t have to worry about any bad he’s done or could do. You don’t have to worry about the teeth if they get filed down. And that’s all I want to do. Just file his teeth down a bit, so we can all live together.”

“You can’t throw stones at ’im, Sal.”

“It’s not skin bruises I’m after. I want to take him down from the heart. Only the Andrea Doria can do a thing like that.”

He picked up the bucket. “Would you go to the schoolhouse, Fielding? Where he holds his meetings. I’ll meet you there in a few minutes.”

Feeling no more argument within myself, I went to the schoolhouse where Elohim and his followers were standing around a contained fire. Hunkering down behind a fallen log, I watched Elohim drop a wiggling burlap sack. The group crowded around as he opened the bag and reached inside, pulling out a garter snake similar to the one Dad had set free in the woods. The bag was full of them, and one by one, the followers grabbed their own.

By then, Sal had come along, hiding down beside me while I stared at the stone in his hand. I wondered if what we were about to do would be something we could never take back.

All eyes were on Elohim as he approached the fire with the snake in his hand, a harmless little black thing that slithered in and out of his fingers.

I’ve never forgotten the way he looked at that snake with hunger for its death. He started to chomp his teeth at it, biting large chunks of the air before swallowing big with an even bigger smile. All the while, the snake innocently twirled around his fingers, not knowing the flames were for it.

“Good-bye, boy.” Elohim tossed the snake like it was nothing.

The others followed. Snakes flying for the first time, landing in flames for the last. I closed my eyes and found another fire. One where snakes weren’t writhing in pain. One that was warming cold hands on a cold night, lighting the dark. Not one where hisses were cries. Not one that was pain slithering, trying to escape.

You could smell the foul secretion of the snakes. Mixing with that was the smell of their burning. You know the smell.

That car crash you’re passing. It smells like garter snakes burning. That airplane falling from the sky. Garter snakes. A husband collapsing heart down. A woman screaming. A child hit by a car called Father. You know it all smells like snakes on fire.

“See what I mean, Fielding? Doesn’t he deserve to be punished, even just a little bit?” Sal gripped the stone in his hand until his knuckles blanched.

I nodded, repeated his own words, “You can tell a lot about a man by what he does with a snake.”

You could lose your eyes, staring at that group. At their silent twinkling. I am still surprised by the excitement in their smiles.

I was once told writing in a journal could help me. Something about putting the pain on the page. So I got one and finished it in a day. I looked back to see what I’d written. Nothing but little lines, swooping and curving. Not one word. And yet didn’t it say everything? The way their smiles did? All the dark, all the hurt, scooped up, carried by curve.

Long after the last snake burned, they continued to watch the flames, in love with fire and so certain of what they wanted burned. It was hurt for them to finally douse the flames. They grieved, watching the smoke of their beloved churn away to the sky.

It was Elohim who called them up from their knees. The meeting was over and he was handing out vegetarian recipes. They quietly received them before glancing back at the fire, wishing it still huge and bright.

When Elohim was alone and humming over the snakes’ ashes, Sal stood and announced rather quietly, “I have the Andrea Doria. I have your Helen.”

Elohim turned and stared at the ship painted on the stone Sal held up to him.

“You little—” Elohim fell into a tirade of profanity as he took chase after Sal.

I went after them, running past the nearby tree house and through scratching briars and dry blackberry bushes while a woodpecker knocked on one of the trees overhead. I didn’t know where we were running to, but I wasn’t stopping, not even when a flying squirrel glided across the path in front of me.

Flying squirrels were usually seen only in the woods at night. It was as if the squirrel was saying, Go back, Fielding, before you make a mistake. You don’t belong any further, just as I don’t belong here in the light.

At that moment, I didn’t care where I belonged. I was all legs running after two souls more entwined than any of us could ever have imagined. Isn’t that a scary thing? To be soldered, sword to sword, the battle eternal and the win never had.

I realized Sal was leading us to the river, and once there, he threw the stone into the water as he said, “Best hurry, Elohim, the Andrea Doria is sinking. Don’t let her. She won’t forgive you a second time.”

Without hesitation, Elohim threw himself into the water, paddling his short arms up in big splashes to get to the stone that had already sunk. Still he dived down, only to come right back up empty-handed and gasping for air.

“I’ll give you another chance.” Sal reached into the bucket by his feet. “See if you can save this one.”

This was how it went. Sal casting a stone. Elohim splashing to get it. Splashing more to find it before it sank. It always sank. He became stupid-faced. Eyes frantic. Mouth open. Probably slobbering as he turned his face this way and that, his cheeks seeming to bobble in each movement. A slow-motion whale caught in the fisherman’s net. Turning and twisting, trying to be free but only getting further away from that very thing.