“Deeper breath,” Sal whispered in her ear, his lips brushing her cheek. “When I say.”
She waited and when he squeezed her arm, her exhale carried across the pasture to the fence, where the flames lay down into the night.
There would be no answer then as to how he’d done it. At that moment, he was the one hugging the birthday girl while I stared off into the dark night.
“This will be a happy diary day.” She nuzzled into his neck. “I think The Little Prince will be my book of choice. Yes, the Little Prince who came from the sky.”
“I’ve read that. Doesn’t the prince leave a rose behind?” He held her tighter.
“I’ll only circle the words that say he takes her with him.”
* * *
By the time we left the pasture, the horses were lying down. The moon, still full in the sky, provided light for our walk back through the wooded hills, which sounded like crickets and looked like fireflies.
I again thought of Elohim, as I meandered around the trees, cupping my hands up around one of the fireflies and holding it in my palms like a jar. I could feel its tiny legs crawling on the underside of my fingers as my hands closed in around it. Feeling its space getting smaller and smaller, the firefly took to flight, softly tapping against my skin but not finding the exit.
Its flying got more and more frantic the smaller I made its space. I wondered what it was thinking as its body flattened between the contact of my palms. Did it plead for its life in its own bug-speak?
Please don’t kill me, there’s still summer left. There was a tree, that one over there, that I have yet to fly to the top of. I really wanted to see what the leaves are like up there. Please don’t kill me. There’s a star, way up there, I wanted to see if I could reach. I probably can’t reach it, but still I want to try. Please don’t kill me. I’m not finished yet.
When I opened my hands, the bug’s squished abdomen was bleeding what was left of its luciferase enzymes, which had been smeared onto my palms. Yellow like the blood of the chimney swift eggs. But not yellow for long, as it was slowly losing its illumination until all I had in my hand was something I could not take back.
“Hey, what’s that?”
Dresden was standing under one of the trees, pointing to the yellow orb up in its branches. By that time, we were in the hills closer to town.
“I can’t believe it. A balloon for my birthday. Isn’t that something?”
“I’ll get it for you.” Sal was already halfway up the trunk.
I brushed the firefly’s death from my hand and wiped that once-illuminated glow onto my jeans shorts as I stepped through the trees closer to Dresden and the tree Sal was climbing.
“I climb too,” I whispered to her over the hoot of an owl.
She sighed, almost irritated. “You’re not the one climbing now.”
I stepped farther away from her and watched Sal. He was an all right climber, though he had difficulty with a few of the limbs. Nearer to the balloon, he reached out toward its string but was still too far away. A step here and a stretch there brought him closer until he had the string in his hand.
The thing about branches is there isn’t much warning when one is about to break. It doesn’t groan, it doesn’t say, Look out below. It simply breaks, and sometimes you don’t have time to get out of its way. Sometimes it falls right on your head.
It was an everything bad sound. Think of all the bad sounds. A dropped glass. A 3 A.M. phone call. Hands slipping off the edge of a cliff. That branch and Dresden’s head made all those sounds and more.
I didn’t see the blood at first, not until I fell down by her side. I asked her if she was okay, but she said nothing. I said, “Move, Dresden. Goddamn you, please move.”
I could hear Sal grunting down through the limbs, landing on the ground behind me with a thud. He still held the balloon, so tightly, his nails were digging around the string into the other side of his palm.
I stood and wiped my eyes on my arm. “I’m gonna get help. Are you listenin’? Sal?” I shook his shoulders because all he saw was her. “Don’t be here when I get back.”
He finally brought his eyes up to mine. I couldn’t see his irises or pupils. The water was too deep.
“Go home, Sal. Pretend you were there all along. If they know you were here, climbin’ that tree, they won’t believe it was an accident. Not with what happened earlier with Alvernine. No matter what I say as a witness, they’ll say you hurt Dresden on purpose. So go. I’ll say it was just me walkin’ her home. We were under the tree. A branch fell. Simple as that. Okay?”
His hand ate down the string until the yellow balloon was at his chest. There, he pressed his nails into it until it popped.
I shut my eyes. “Please, Sal, say you’ll go.”
“I’ll go,” he whispered, still holding onto the string, the yellow remains of the balloon dangling at the end of it.
I opened my eyes and looked one last time down at Dresden, at the blood pooling on the ground behind her head. And then I ran. I ran as fast as I could, the fireflies lighting the way.
21
… moping melancholy,
And moon-struck madness
MADNESS. THE COMPASSING violin when in our head, the directionless chaos when out of it. Isn’t that what madness is, after all? Clarity to the beholder, insanity to the witnessing world. My God, what madness this world has witnessed. What beautiful, chaotic madness.
Did I tell you that the other night me and the boy went out into the saguaros? That’s the closest thing we got to woods around this trailer park. I asked him to bring the jam jar, the one we found on the side of the road. The jam was gone and the glass was clean as we strolled through the cactuses.
“Mr. Bliss? I don’t think there’s any fireflies out here. I’ve never seen any. Are you sure you did?”
“I never said I saw any. I just asked you if you wanted to go catch some.”
I stopped beneath a particularly big saguaro, not all of its large arms growing up but rather twisting and crossing in front of each other. I looked at the boy, who was peering into the empty jar.
“I guess you can’t imagine everything in the dark. Especially not fireflies.” I squinted past the saguaros, into the deep darkness. “Listen, kid. You need to stay away from me.”
“Mr. Bliss, why?”
Because I would be no good for him. I was becoming his Elohim. He was becoming my Fielding. I did say to myself if I went out there with the boy and we saw a firefly, just one, I said to myself I’ll try again. I would go forth in this world, finding instances of niceness and not turn from them. Niceness like the boy. Just one damn firefly, and I’ll be his friend and he will be mine.
Life would be all right to happen.
All its comedy and humor and joy I would let live and live with me in the fresh air and in the yard I would let the light color yellow. If only there was one firefly, if only. What was it Sal said about hope? It’s just a beautiful instance in the myth of another chance. Yes, a myth it is.
I know the boy won’t realize until he’s older, maybe not ever, but I’m doing him a favor. Getting him out of my life is keeping him outside the abyss. Without him, I will stay lonely in this long way, with both ends of forever pinning me to the flames. But he deserves better than to be used as the ladder out of hell.
“You make me sick. You irritate the good goddamn out of me, and I don’t care if your piece-of-shit dad is dead or if you and that bitch you call a mom are sad. I don’t give a fuck about you or your little insignificant life. You hear me?”