Tiffany McDaniel - The Summer That Melted Everything

He stared out the open window before him. His frown like a red land. A place you can imagine screams echo so well in.

“Funny it took a whole summer to get ice cream to a town in a heat wave.” He turned from the window to me and we looked at each other.

Mom on her hands and knees, dusting the already dusted bottom shelves. Dad sitting so still, staring up at the ceiling as if he’d heard someone walking just overhead in Grand’s room. Fedelia clanking a pot against another in the kitchen. Amidst all of this and more, me and Sal looked at each other and knew we’d never eat ice cream again.

“Do you hear that?” Dad slightly raised in his chair but did not get up. “I think I hear someone, up there walking.” He pointed toward the ceiling and Grand’s room above. “I should check, don’t you think?”

He asked no one in particular, still Mom was the one to answer as she stood up from her hands and knees, the duster something she used to tap the top of Dad’s head with as she passed and said, “It’s no one, dear. Just relax back now.”

And so he did as she said later she would polish the silver, but first there were the curtains to wash, never mind she washed them just the day before. She climbed the ladder and took them back down, piling them in the middle of the room while she diverted to some other cleaning task. Meanwhile, I reached over to the coffee table and picked up my chemistry book, trying to finish my homework.

School had begun a few weeks back. I was starting the eighth grade. My old friends, who weren’t my friends anymore. Flint and the whole gang, who still had their happiness like the whole world laughing. I found myself reaching toward them the way Sal had when they ran past him that first day. They ran by me too, as if I should know better than to think I could ever have youth that way again.

I did have my old locker. Same combination. Who would’ve thought a combination could make me so happy? But I liked having the same. It was from that old life, and sometimes I thought I could just spin the lock back to it. I could open the locker and find the old Fielding, a summer younger. I could open it to Grand. There he’d be, squeezed inside, and I could just pull him out. Dresden too. Just keep pulling out all the things lost.

Sal took a test to determine what grade level he would function at. According to his score, he’d be in high school already. Apparently, he was some sort of genius. Mom said it wasn’t a good idea for him to go to school yet with others. I guess she thought it would be a mad, glistening violence. Bullies and beasts lining up and all that. So a tutor came in and taught him in one of the spare rooms, which Mom eagerly cleaned out for a desk.

When I look back, I now know Grand’s death was the final vibration for Elohim and his group. The final fusing of them into a single sword pointed at Sal.

I can imagine Elohim at his meeting, saying Grand’s name.

Just a boy, a young god of Breathed who would’ve made us all proud. But he’s dead now. And all because of that devil. How many more gods will we allow the devil to kill?

We Blisses were too busy grieving to see the sword on its way to Sal. We couldn’t see beyond the dirt we felt buried under. I hadn’t even seen Elohim since passing him on the way to Grand’s funeral. I walked by him, sure. I passed his house when he was out on the porch eating his vegetables, but I didn’t see him. I had too many ghosts in my eyes. We all did.

I laid down the chemistry book and my homework.

“I wish it would snow.” I reached behind the sofa and laid my arm across the hot windowsill, my fingers dangling to the brick outside. Mom had taken the screens down to clean and the windows were left open to air out the house.

I looked up at the sky. It was like the fur of a coyote, tan in all the places it wasn’t gray. A bolt of lightning came in a slender flash. The thunder slipped in a low grumbling hello. In its wild self, it was finally going to rain.

“There’s something—” Sal cleared his throat “—there’s something I have to tell you all. About me.”

I brought my eyes down from the sky and saw Elohim’s face staring back at me. How canine his features looked. How his mouth seemed to foam. Just another rabid dog at the window.

“I’m sorry, Fielding.”

Elohim looked as though he might have meant it as he reached through the window and grabbed Sal. Dad quite possibly made a leap from the chair to the sofa. Mom quite possibly flew from the lampshade. I know Fedelia ran in from the kitchen, joining Mom and Dad, who each had a foot of Sal’s.

Elohim would not let go. For all his life, he would not let go of Sal, of Helen, of her lover. He held tight to all these things and that’s when the others appeared. They’d been so quiet, not your usual loud mob. Their silence was worst, stealing away our right to shut the windows and bolt the door. We didn’t even have time to scream. It was a silent struggle on both ends. Joining the battle, I wrapped my arms around Sal’s legs, pulling back with Mom, Dad, and Fedelia.

“Don’t let me go.”

Sal was looking at me. If only I were Grand. If only I had his strength. No one ever said it, but I know it was my fault they pulled Sal away from us. I wasn’t strong enough, and it was me who let him go.

That was when the screaming started. They were screaming cheers, we were screaming tears, and Sal was screaming fear. A rhyme of the ages.

Dad lost his slippers and Mom lost her heels as they climbed out the window, his bathrobe and her apron flapping as they gave chase. Me and Fedelia were behind them, but she broke off before we got into the woods. She said she was going to get the sheriff. No one had time to tell her the sheriff was in the mob. I suppose he always had been.

Fedelia’s parting words were for me to save the day.

I will, Auntie . I tried to believe I could.

Even before we got there, I knew it was to the schoolhouse they were going. The place in which their insanity had ripened and been brought to fruit. There in the middle of the schoolhouse was a wooden post they had newly erected. To this post they tied Sal as quickly as anybody has ever been tied.

Dad grabbed at the rope and punched a guy. Kicked another in the groin, but someone grabbed onto the back of his robe and yanked him to the ground by it. It took three guys to hold him down.

Mom was screaming somewhere on the other side of me. I know I looked at her face, but all I remember is seeing the edges of her dress. Edges turning and flailing under those who held her down.

I myself was scratching, biting, and kicking the shins of a guy holding me against him. It was then I saw Dovey with the gas can. Beside her was the woman in the rhinestone belt who had asked Sal if God was a nigger too. Together Dovey and this woman poured gas on the ground around Sal. They did it so steady, as if they were pouring milk in glasses for their very own dinner table.

I bit down on the man’s hand holding me until I drew blood and he let go. I ran to Sal. I almost made it too. I felt the rough of the rope at the tips of my fingers. I saw him smile with the hope I would be enough to save him.

It was Elohim who grabbed me back by my hair and slapped me down. By his orders, two followers came to get me. I hit one in the stomach. He hit me in the face. I bit one on the arm. He bit me on the hand. I wiggled and squirmed, but it only seemed to tighten their grip.

All I could do was watch Elohim light the match like it was the only right choice. I would like to say he was not smiling. I would like to say he was not happy as the match tossed through the air in slow motion like a thing that held all of time. Tumbling and flipping its flame down to the gasoline, where it lit in a bright, painfully beautiful burst.