“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.
I was still looking at that burst when I heard Sal scream to me to remember Granny. Granny? The flames were all I saw. But then I did remember. Granny. The suffering. The gun. Yes, I remembered what I couldn’t do the first time. Would I stay the child? Or become the man Sal was asking me to become?
The flames burned through the gas trail around him, building higher and higher as they headed for him. He didn’t scream, but he did cry. I didn’t understand how a boy could have so many tears, yet not have enough to put anything out.
In love with the flames, the two men who held me loosened their grip as they watched the fire they couldn’t stop being in awe of. It was enough of a loosened grip for me to break away, to run past them, past Dad, watching me, his teeth gritting under the elbow plastered to his cheek.
I ran past the edge of Mom’s dress, to the tree house not far there in the woods. From the crate I grabbed the gun because it was the only water I had to put the fire out.
By the time I returned, the flames had made their way in the circle of gas around the tree, and were now at Sal’s feet, burning up his calves. The smell of his melting flesh was so thick, it packed into the nose as something solid. I thought my nostrils were going to split under the strain.
No one saw me with the gun. They were busy cheering the flames.
“Just look at him.” They laughed as he struggled to get free of the rope. “Just look at the devil wiggle.”
Sal never once screamed. I know he did it for Mom and Dad’s sake. It’s a hard thing for a parent to hear, that of their child burning alive. Sal loved them enough not to let them hear a thing like that.
“I’m sorry. Oh, God, I’m so sorry, son.” Dad’s crying left little room for his words. He was still being held down. Still fighting to not be.
Mom had a whole different fight. Each of her limbs were held by a person a piece, but her whole middle bounced up and down like she was on a trampoline as she screamed and called them bastards and bitches and fucking devils.
Truth be told, I thought a miracle would come, yellow and soft like a peach. If ever there was a moment for God to appear, it was right then and there. I waited for Him. For Him to save me from the choice of the trigger, because to squeeze it was to risk the wrong decision. A decision I could never come back from. It would tangle me. Follow me, choke me, scatter me, seize me for all sorrows. And yet, if I did nothing, I risked being Him. Just another God. A spectator of war.
The sound was like that of a heavy book falling from the top shelf, just magnified. How could two things so different share the same sound?
It was a sound that stopped all the others. All that remained was the crackling of the fire, which no longer burned a life, just a body, and there ain’t suffering in that except for the coffin’s loss.
The bullet was as successful as a bullet can be.
People let go of the things they’d been holding tight to. Things like Mom and Dad. Dad just stood there, his fingers like claws digging into his head as he stared at Sal’s body. Mom walked slowly, holding her arms out. She got so close to Sal, the fire caught on the edge of her dress.
In her unbelieving daze, she didn’t realize the flames at first, not until she felt their heat on her legs. She screamed she didn’t want to burn. Dad threw her down onto the ground, told her to roll while me and him threw the dry dirt, trying to suffocate the flames. But the flames continued on. They were eating her dress, they were eating her apron, until the rain fell sudden and strong.
Call it a miracle, or just call it weather. Either way, Mom was put out and Dad fell down beside her.
“Yes,” she whispered as he held her in a rocking way.
“Yes, what, love?”
“The rain is just the gift I need.” She tilted her face to the drops, thinking of the small jar of water sitting in the study.
The rain carried Elohim’s blood from the gunshot wound. It was him, after all, who I shot in the chest.
My plan for the gun was to shoot Sal, to stop his suffering of the flames. But his eyes told me to aim away from him. To aim at the reason for the suffering. And so I did, and Sal heard the bang before he died. He heard the bang and he lowered his head and went knowing what I’d done for him.
As Elohim lay dying, no one cared. No one held his head in their hands and told him to breathe, breathe, help is on the way. No one said, You’re a good, good man, and you matter.
No one cried for him or shouted at me, What have you done?
And what had I done?
I had shot a man. A man I once called a neighbor, a teacher, a friend. The best steeplejack in all the world. That’s what I told him once, and he’d smiled.
I shot all those things. The man who was the saving hand when I nearly slipped off the roof. The man I caught fireflies with one summer night. The man I’d known all my life. All shot to pieces by me. I shot all the bad, but damn it all, I shot all the good as well. That’s something you never quite come back from. That’s something that’s a fresh pain every day.