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Chris Drew​

The Front

 

    Alvin has been awake for the better part of an hour, but hasn’t yet opened his eyes. The rusty glow of daylight through his eyelids is enough. He listens. The television is on, but its sounds are muddled through the new sheetrock walls. He is balled up in a quilt his grandma made for him; it’s damp and he feels his own salt drying around the edges. Outside, the rumble of the Caterpillar reminds him of the day’s events. His left eyelid tugs open, breaking the sleep-crust dried in his lashes. His eye reels around for several seconds, searching out the dimmest part of the room. When the light becomes bearable, he opens the other eye and inspects the ceiling for a few moments, enjoying the blazing warmth of the bed. Finally, he unknots himself from the blankets and tosses them aside, expecting the usual winter blast that has met his nearly naked body each morning since early November. Instead, he finds a pleasant coolness, tingling where it dries him. He wonders why Dad has turned up the thermostat, then realizes he doesn’t hear the low rumble of the heater at all.
   He sits on the edge of the mattress for a moment, stretches ferociously, glances up at the Grand Funk Railroad poster on his wall, and then loops his glasses around his ears and heads down the hallway. He barely looks at himself in the bathroom mirror as he runs his bath. Brown steel-wool hair over his ears, pimples and the beginnings of pockmarks on his cheeks, smoke-tinted wireframes with greasy lenses on his eyes, and a stringy goatee on his chin that exists mostly because it is too painful to shave. As the tub fills, he sinks into the heat and drops his ears below the surface, giving himself over to the rumble-hiss of the running water.
   Later, with hair still dripping, Alvin pulls on his flared jeans and a Zeppelin T-shirt, then finds Mom in the kitchen washing holiday dishes. She’s overweight, but not morbidly so, and wears brown pants of some synthetic weave with a floral blouse. The flesh on her biceps wiggles as she wrestles with the roasting pan.
   “Morning, Mom.”
   She doesn’t turn. “Morning, Alvin.” Then, after a beat, “There’s some ham left in the fridge from yesterday if you’re hungry.” Her voice sounds scratchy, but he wants to ignore it. She cries sometimes.
   “Everything okay?”
   “Oh, I’m fine,” she says, but he sees her shoulders tighten as the Caterpillar revs its engine down by the highway. “It’s just—the TV’s so sad this morning.”
   “What’s on?” he asks, moving toward the family room to find Walter Cronkite narrating over a montage of film clips on the Zenith.
   “…assumed the presidency after the death of Franklin Roosevelt and guided our nation to the final cessation of hostilities with Germany and the Empire of Japan. He’d been ill and in the hospital for most of the month, and doctors revealed yesterday that he’d slipped into a coma. Again, this morning brings news that Harry Truman, thirty-third president of the United States, has died. And now, for further—”
   The war photographs shown over Cronkite’s narration are similar to the black and white picture nestled among the clot of family photos on top of the television set. One of them shows Dad beside the rubble of a bombed-out house during World War II. 
   Alvin steps back into the kitchen. “What did he die of?”
   “They’re not sure yet, sweetie. At his age, who really knows?” She smiles now, and if she has been crying, he can’t tell. If only she wouldn’t call him sweetie.
   “Is Dad already working down at the old house?”
   She scrubs at the pan. “He said to come down as soon as you’re dressed. And to make sure you put on your rubber boots. It’s muddy.”
   Outside, a warm breeze surprises him, and the thermometer hanging beside the wind chime shows seventy-two degrees. Alvin can’t remember ever going without long sleeves so late in the year. The Christmas tree is already lying naked on the brush pile, the latest victim of his father’s work ethic. He can see Dad across the pond, pacing around the Cat, occasionally gesturing to its driver, Lovell Potter, who has lived just down the road since before Alvin was born. Alvin likes Lovell, who is a volunteer fireman with Dad, but has lived in constant fear of Lovell’s son for most of his life. Shane Potter had harassed Alvin since the third grade, but the last eighteen months have been blissfully Shane-free, thanks to President Nixon. Alvin wonders if Shane enjoys tormenting the North Vietnamese as much as he did his neighbor. Not that his absence had led to any sort of social renaissance for Alvin. Antagonist or no, Alvin feels radically incompatible with most public situations, preferring the solitude of his albums and books, along with Mission: Impossible on Saturdays and Mannix on Sundays.
    He sits and looks through the front window at his old house. Its north face is torn open, and Alvin feels unsteady as he stares into his old bedroom, its paneled walls seeing direct sunlight for the first time. It had been his home until last summer, when Dad had finally gotten the insurance company to pay up and used the money to build the new house on the other side of the pond, further from the coal-trucks that rumbled by on the highway at all hours. 
    Pulling the oversize boots on and tucking each considerable pantleg safely inside, he hops off the porch and trots across the pond dam, still amazed by the freakish weather. As he approaches the house, the backhoe takes another bite out of the roof, scattering shingles. He stops near the well, seeing his own small handprints in the concrete, preserved there (he had always assumed) forever. Now he knows they’ll be pulled up and tossed on the pile with the rest of the detritus. His eyes raise in time to see the teeth of the backhoe bite through the wall of his old room, tearing it cleanly in half. He understands why Mom is upset.
   “’Bout time you got out of bed,” Dad shouts from beside him, making him jump.
   “I thought you were gonna wake me up.” He’d wanted to watch the demolition from the beginning.
   “Well, Lovell got here at six with the Cat, and I didn’t figure it’d do much good to try and rouse you that early.” Alvin is confident in Dad’s logic, but doesn’t want to admit it.
   “But you said—” His words are drowned out by the machine shredding another chunk of the roof, this time exposing his parents’ bedroom to the world in an obscene way. Dad heads back to the Cat.
   The house suffered its fatal wound two years before when Bertha Davies backed her Buick out of her driveway. She confused the brake and the gas, careened across the pavement, and struck the southeast corner of the house going forty. Alvin was listening to a Beatles record at the time, and the impact dug a ruinous scratch across the vinyl. The car knocked the floor of the house off its support beams, and though Dad had braced and re-braced, it became apparent over the next few months that the house was, as the insurance company had finally conceded, “foundationally unsound.”
   Alvin contemplates this as he watches the last shingles tumble down. Foundationally unsound. The new house is as sturdy as a bomb shelter, but as he watches the machine tear the floor open like a scab, allowing tons of rubble to drop into the basement, he thinks that the cost of a sound foundation is high.

    Nine grueling hours later, Alvin’s head is propped on sore forearms as he lies prone on the carpet in front of the television set. The news about Truman held Alvin’s interest for barely the time it took him to walk down to the house that morning, but Dad is glued to it. As Cronkite rehashes the key events of the Truman White House, he watches Dad chew absently on his fingernails, one of the few signs of tension in his father that Alvin has ever been able to decipher. He wants to ask him about it. Why Harry Truman matters to him in any way at all, let alone why the man’s death would bother him.
    Mom has taken advantage of a day without men to air the house out and do some cleaning. Other than bringing down some sandwiches around noon, this is the first Alvin has seen of her since morning. Her demeanor is much more composed than earlier, and she seems more concerned with her husband’s singular focus on the TV.
    “Mike, haven’t you seen enough of this for one night?” He continues to watch, not answering. She rolls her eyes at Alvin. “Maybe we could flip over to Channel Seven and see what the weather’s gonna do tomorrow. Might be kind of important, considering you’re liable to burn the whole yard up tomorrow if you’re not careful.” At this, Dad blinks, then looks at Mom.
    “Sorry, honey. I’ve just let myself get wrapped up in all of this. Remember the Enola Gay? Wasn’t a sweeter couple of words to be heard in the Philippines.” Alvin waits for more. Outside, the sun drops behind the rolling fields that have lain fallow since September.
    “I know, I know,” Mom says. “But that was a long time ago. I’m thinking about more pressing matters, like what you want to do about dinner. I’ve spent half the day getting the kitchen clean after yesterday, and I’d rather not mess it up again. There’s leftovers in the icebox if that’ll do.”
    Slowly, Dad’s eyes shift from the television to Mom, and Alvin sees him return from wherever his mind has taken him.
    “Why don’t we have the boy walk over to the Dog N’ Suds and pick up some corndogs and fries?” Michael Harris’s ability to devour untold numbers of corndogs is the stuff of family legend, and Alvin hauls himself up from the shag carpet to get his shoes as Dad walks to the set and switches it to the weather. The meteorologist thinks that if it stays this warm for another two or three days, the trees will bud. Alvin marvels at the idea as he laces his shoes.

    The air soothes his tired muscles as he walks down the road, listening to his Chuck Taylors slap the gravel under his feet. He wears shirtsleeves and thinks about Sharon Loveless’ breasts, having spied them when he caught an upside-down glance through his legs during pushups in gym class. The dark curves had mesmerized him. If only he had something to offer her. A sport, a reputation, a clear complexion. But he is Alvin Harris, whose greatest moment of notoriety was having his pants pulled down by Shane Potter at a basketball pep rally during his freshman year, whose C average and disdain of physical labor means he will most likely work the checkout line at the Jay-C store for the rest of his life. But for now, he can remember his stolen memory and enjoy the cool breeze.
    The glow of the drive-in is comforting after the quarter-mile of darkness. He’s made the walk often, but even at sixteen he still imagines glowing eyes and dripping fangs in the blackberry bushes along the road. As the yellow fluorescence of the Dog N’ Suds comes fully into view, Alvin hears the dissonance of a dozen AM radios bleating into the night sky. He can make out Gilbert O’Sullivan and Three Dog Night. As he walks, trying to extricate one song from another, the reason for the music hits him. He hasn’t stopped to consider that the warm weather would revive the county’s cruising scene during the last week of December, and he begins to wish he hadn’t come. Whenever he is around his classmates, his ability to relax evaporates, his next embarrassment being only one bungled reaction away. 
    The smell of deep-fried food meets him as he steps into the light, slipping between a Chrysler and a Ford to make his way to the order window. Mr. Abbot, the eyepatched owner, slides the wire screen open.
    “Howdy Alvin. What I can I get for you? Some corn dogs, I’m guessing?” The black cloth over his right eye is stained with oil splatters.
    “Yeah, and some fries. Dad’s done with Christmas food already.”
    “Don’t blame him a bit. Delia’s been making turkey salad all day back at home, and she’ll have enough to last a month of Sundays.”
    “I’m sure it’s good.” Even though the eyepatch creeps him out, Alvin likes Mr. Abbot. The occasional extra order of fries has long been an unspoken bond between them.
    “It is, it is. The mustard’s the secret, she says. Now what can I get you?”

    Alvin places his order and moves as far from the crowd as possible. The warm weather has brought the cruisers out in force, and his lack of wheels makes him feel out of place in the pack of hot rods and coupes. He leans against the faded menu painted on the side wall, crossing his arms first one way and then another. His body feels foreign with so many people around. Trying to blend in while his food cooks, his eyes focus on a car at the other end of the lot. In it, he sees a senior with his hand tucked under the “W” on a girl’s varsity sweater. It captivates Alvin as he tries to imagine what her breast must feel like. He thinks possibly a grapefruit, or a bean bag. His friend Phillip told him once that it was like a Ziploc filled with water, but Phillip also told him that he got to third base in the back of his Sunday School teacher’s car on the way back from a youth group trip to the bowling alley. The girl seems to be enjoying herself, and he imagines being the cause of that joy. Someone raises a voice nearby, but to Alvin it is three counties away. His day of hard labor is forgotten in the fantasy of the moment. Then rough hands grab the collar of his shirt.
    “Can’t you hear me, you fucking retard?” He is raised to his tiptoes by Hog Fowler, a football player and one of Shane Potter’s close friends. “I said, get your ass off the prices. I wanna see how much a foot-long is.” He pulls Alvin close. “But then, I guess you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, Harris?” The laugh he yarks out as he tosses Alvin aside is quickly picked up by the rest of his pack, some of whom step out of a ’58 Ford parked nearby. “What you want on your footlong, man?” Hog yells back toward the car through his snorty giggling.
    “Shit, I don’t care,” says a voice from the backseat. “Fucking surprise me.”
    Alvin’s heart skips a beat. Shane Potter. But Shane has been gone to the war for over a year. Alvin had worked all day with Lovell, who didn’t say anything about his son being home. He wonders if the public nature of the Dog N’ Suds will save him, but he knows it doesn’t matter to these people. This person. Alvin is used to being hassled, but only Shane has ever made it a special point of attention. Only Shane rubbed mashed potatoes into Alvin’s hair every day for a week in the ninth grade. Only Shane had pinned him in the back seat of the school bus and pulled his leg hair until he cried. Only Shane made sure that every member of the class of 1974 got a chance to see his yellowed Fruit-of-the-Looms. But Shane went to Vietnam, where Alvin hoped daily that he would die a bullet-riddled death.
    “Hey Potter, I think Harris here’s still afraid of you,” Hog says, snort-laughing. Abandoning the footlong, he grabs Alvin again by the collar and hoists him up. Alvin squirms against the steel grip as he’s dragged toward the Ford. Shane Potter’s face is framed in the open window, washed in yellow fluorescence like something from a horror movie. It’s changed, though. Leaner, possibly angrier. His hair hangs to his shoulders and his bottom jaw is lost in a wiry beard. Alvin’s flailing continues, becoming more violent, and he inadvertently elbows Hog’s face. A fist hammers Alvin’s nose and he tastes blood.
    “Hit me again, you little bastard, and I’ll break your fucking neck!” Hog shouts. His sour breath washes over Alvin.
    “Goddammit, Hog!” Potter’s voice booms. Alvin knows he’ll be out of the car and on top of him in seconds. He closes his eyes and thinks of the safety of his room, bracing for blows, but then Mr. Abbot comes tearing out of the back door of the restaurant.
    “Hey, you boys!” he shouts, leering at them with his good eye. “None of that on my property. Especially from you, Fowler.” Hog sneers, but looks away. “Now get in your car and vamoose before I call the marshal.”
    “Get in the damn car, Hog!” Potter again, and Alvin hears more anger in his voice. He adjusts his glasses, which have been knocked askance, and feels the warm blood congealing in his chin whiskers. As Fowler gets into the Ford, Mr. Abbot helps Alvin to his feet. He is aware of eyes fixed on him. The girl in the varsity sweater stares as the Ford pulls away, spraying gravel on the concrete.
    “You forget those boys. They’re not worth your time,” Mr. Abbot says, leading Alvin through the side door into the kitchen. “Whole lot of them ought to just drive themselves off a highwall and save us dealing them. Especially that beatnik Potter. Wish he’d stayed on the other side of the globe. It’s him gets Fowler up to no good.” They reach the sink and Alvin tilts his head back, tasting iron in his throat. “Now, let’s have a look at you.” Alvin does as he’s told, but hears the laughter through the screen door. 
    “Mr. Abbot, are you gonna tell my dad about this?”
    Abbot looks at Alvin for a moment as he pulls a cotton ball out of a box under the sink. “Tell him about what? Here, stick this up your nose. I don’t think it’s broke.” Alvin pulls the cotton apart and shoves half up his left nostril, then uses the damp rag Mr. Abbot hands him to wipe his face. “What you tell your dad is up to you. I’m just keeping the peace at my place of business. But you shouldn’t let yourself get pushed around. Those goons got less brains than one of these corn dogs, anyways.” He knocks a frozen one against the counter. Alvin chuckles.

    Alvin’s stomach does acrobatics the entire walk home. He tries to focus on the quiet peace of the night, but all he can see in his mind are his classmates’ faces laughing at him. He stops by the broken shell of his old house and pulls the cotton from his nostril, examining it in the moonlight, a crimson pellet. He tosses it in the weeds, lays a finger to his nose, and expels a clot into the gravel. As he sniffs, he can smell the rotten boards and mildew of the wreckage. Beneath these odors, he finds the faintest hint of the musty living room carpet. It always reminded him of coconut. Now the last of it escapes into the cool night air.

    Dad and Mom are playing Scrabble at the kitchen table. She finally got him away from the television. Alvin worries they’ll ask where he’s been. Dad is staring hard at the letters, but Mom looks up.
    “Mr. Abbot put some extra fries in,” Alvin says, looking into the bag to avoid eye contact. It hurts his nose to talk.
    “Nice of him.”
    “Anything going on over there?” Dad doesn’t look up.
    “Not much. Lots of kids out tonight. Warm weather, probably.”
    “Got their blood up, I guess,” he says, glancing at Mom. She puckers her lips for a moment, then looks down at the board.
    “Thanks for picking up the food,” Mom says. “Before you eat, someone’s in your room who’d like to talk to you.”
    “What?” Alvin’s eyebrows furrow. Who would be in his room? And why would his parents seem so unconcerned about it?
    “Just go see who it is. It’s not a murderer or anything.” 
    Alvin is lost. “Who is it?”
    “Just do as you’re told,” Dad says, puzzling over the tiles on his wooden cradle. Alvin wants to object, but walks slowly out of the kitchen. 
    “How do you spell sponge?” Mom asks as he walks away.
    At his door, he hears a tapping sound. Someone is flipping through his eight-tracks. Who would be in his room? Mr. Abbot, come to see if he’s stopped bleeding? His cousins are safely back home after Christmas, and Alvin doesn’t have friends who visit after dark. Warm light slices through the dim hallway from his bedstand lamp. He lays his hand on the slightly ajar door and eases it open. Shane potters stands at his stereo table, flipping with one hand through his album collection. He’s decked in an olive drab coat and has the longest hair Alvin has ever seen on a man. Shane hasn’t seen him yet, and there is total silence except for the clack of the tapes hitting each other. His first thought is to bolt back down the hallway, but that’s short-circuited by trying to process the scene. Shane Potter in his house? With his parents? And no one cares? 
    “Uh—”
    Shane turns his head and sees him. “Hey man, what’s going on? Your nose alright?”
    “I—think so. What—I mean—” Alvin recalls the Twilight Zone episodes he’s watch so many times on Channel 25 late at night. He’s suddenly convinced it’s a real place, gaining further confirmation when Shane turns from the albums and reveals a pinned-up sleeve where his left arm should be.
    “Jesus,” Alvin whispers, horrified.
    “Oh, the sleeve thing, yeah, that’s a trip, ain’t it?” Potter reaches up and flaps the sleeve back and forth like he’s waving a flag. “Lost that at Xuan Loc about a year ago. Still gives me fits.” He says the name casually, as if Alvin knows it.
    “Sorry I kept you from getting your foot-long,” Alvin blurts.
    Potter’s beard splits into a yellow-toothed smile.
    “Hot dog, huh? That’s great.” He chuckles. “Listen, sit down, will you? You look like a deer that’s got a whiff of something. I’m not gonna hurt you.” He pulls Alvin’s chair out from under the desk, and Alvin sinks into it without wanting to. Potter sits on the edge of the bed.
    “I don’t really know what—I mean, you were mad at me.” The angry face in the Ford window rises in his mind. “You let Hog hit me.”
    “No, man, I didn’t. Think about it. It was just a little while ago. Hog got shitty with you, not me.”
    “But you were mad.”
    “Hell yeah, I was mad. But at that dipshit, not at you.” The conversation makes less and less sense to Alvin.
    “Why?”
    “Because he was making a scene when all I wanted was a damn hot dog.” He laughs again, but Alvin hears an edge in it.
    “But—” Alvin doesn’t trust the person in front of him. “Wait, why didn’t you just get out and stop him. You let him hit me.” Alvin touches the tender left side of his nose. “You let him.”
    “Yeah, I did, which is why I’m here. I didn’t get out because of this.” Another tug at the pinned sleeve. “See, I’ve been back for a couple of weeks now and finally called up the guys and said I was ready to go out. They didn’t even know I was here. Nobody but my folks did. I made them promise not to tell.” Alvin doesn’t understand what he’s being told; the concept of an actual conversation with Shane Potter keeps tripping his mental circuit breaker. He’s never heard him speak this much. The only thing Shane has ever done is harass him like a hunting dog, hounding him until he’s too tired to resist. And now he’s in his house. His bedroom. “When I got there tonight, I didn’t feel like explaining things to everybody, so I just stayed in the car.”

    Alvin nods, pretending to understand. “Why are you telling me this?”
   “Because I’ve been beating the hell out of you since you started riding my bus.”
   “Oh.”
   “Listen, Alvin—” Has Shane Potter just used his first name? Retard, shithead, fuck-monkey, these are all familiar to him, but not Alvin. “—I can’t explain everything. I just want to say I’m sorry, face to face.” Alvin sees a shocking sadness in Potter’s eyes.
   “I just want to know why you’re here,” he says quietly, picking at the label of Honky Chateau.
   “Because this kind of shit makes me sick, man.”
   “What…?”
   “Jesus Christ, I’m not gonna spell it out for you. I’m just not gonna hassle you anymore, okay? Can you live with that?” The last words are loud, but no one appears in the doorway. He’s can’t believe what he’s hearing.
   “You guys aren’t going to pick on me anymore?”
   “Learn to hear what people say, kid. I didn’t say anything about any guys.” Alvin’s heart sinks. “All I’m saying is that I got no problems with you. You got your life, I got mine. Fair enough?”
   “I guess so. Sure, yeah.”
   “Good.” Potter stands up, fumbles in his pocket, then puts his hand to his ear and walks out of the room. Alvin doesn’t immediately follow, but sits in the chair and listens. Potter speaks to his parents, but he can’t make out words. When the door closes, Alvin nearly knocks over his chair as he hurries to the kitchen. 
   “Did you have a nice chat?” Mom asks, as if he’d been talking to the guidance counselor.
   “I guess so.”
   “Wanna talk about it?”
   “I don’t think so.”
    He leaves them sitting at the kitchen table and walks back to his bedroom. He would love to talk about it, but what could he say that would make sense? He feels altered. Like the weather. Even his bedroom seems different in some basic way, as if it’s not entirely his now. It feels corrupted. Or maybe just changed. 
    After lying awake for several hours thinking of the night’s events, his mind finally wanders back to the girl in the varsity sweater, and he falls asleep to the hushed tones of Elton John singing about putting the devil down.

    The next morning, Alvin walks into the living room to find Dad once again glued to the Truman coverage. The clock reads 9:33. In his entire life, he’s never found Dad watching TV at half past nine. It’s a live report from Independence, Missouri, where Truman’s casket sits draped in an American flag.
   “Ready to get to work? I’ve been waiting on you.” Alvin doubts that’s the reason he’s still in the house.
   “Just gotta get my boots on.”
   “Make sure you grab a long-sleeved shirt, whether it’s warm outside or not. You’re gonna need it.”
   They walk from the new house toward the remnants of the old, crossing the pond dam that runs between them. The warm weather has brought the fish out of their winter lethargy, and hungry bluegill prowl the water’s edge. Alvin starts the walk thinking he won’t speak about last night’s events, as if by not giving them voice, they’ll become imaginary. By the time they get to the pond dam, though, his need for confirmation overwhelms him.
   “You haven’t said anything about last night.” Silence hangs for several seconds, broken by a splash on the far side of the water.
   “What do you want to hear?” Dad says without breaking his stride. Alvin thinks on this. He doesn’t know. Maybe just assurance it happened.
   “What did he say to you and Mom?” How long had Shane been there before he arrived? Five Minutes? Ten?
   “You mean did he tell me what happened at the Dog N’ Suds?” Dad’s tone is indecipherable.
   Alvin had forgotten his injury. “I guess he did.”
   “Good guess.” Dad coughs hard and spits into the pond water, where the smaller fish shoot straight to it. He takes out a Pall-Mall and lights it.
   “So what do you think?” Alvin doesn’t like revealing his concerns to Dad, much less prodding him to respond.
   “Well, if you’re wondering if you’re in trouble, you’re not.” The thought had never crossed his mind.
   “But what about Shane? Are you okay with him?” Alvin doesn’t really know what “okay with him” even means to Dad, but here, between the water’s edge and the ruins of their old life, Dad stops and faces Alvin.
   “Shane and I talked before you came in. I know as much about him in some ways as anybody now, I guess. Know he’s picked at you for years, but if that’s all it was, he would’ve been gone before you got home.” He takes a long drag from his cigarette. “That boy’s got coping to do, more than you might understand. Part of that means setting a few things right.”
   “So everything’s okay?”
   “Depends on what you call ‘okay,’ I guess. He’s changed. But change can be good, long as you don’t worry over it. My advice, son, is to be glad about it and move on, because you’re not gonna see it from his side anytime soon. Least I hope you don’t.” Dad turns and lopes up the last few steps to the rubble pile. Alvin follows and they stand for a moment, looking down the concrete steps that used to lead to the basement. Now they lead to splintered timber and torn shingles. Not a house at all.
   Dad looks up at the trees and the power line running across the front of the property. He seems content with what he sees and descends the steps to the edge of the pile. He slides his silver Zippo out of his pocket and cups his other hand around a clump of insulation between two broken beams. It catches without effort, and Alvin watches Dad admire his own handiwork for a moment before ascending the stairs and joining him in the grass.
   “Couldn’t have asked for a better day,” Dad says, gesturing toward the trees. “Wind’s perfect. It’ll blow away from the power lines. Just gotta keep it under control.” He smokes his cigarette down to a wet blob, then flicks it into the pile.
   They tend the fire for the rest of the day. It burns slowly at first, the flames stretching lazily up lengths of two-by-four. Alvin thinks it might never fully catch, but then the wind rolling from behind the pile begins feeding it, and in no time wood, carpet, and tarpaper blazes. Alvin walks around the perimeter, spraying the grass with the hose Dad has extended from the new house. In places, it’s too hot to approach, and he has to spray in a high arc just to hit his target. Dad is right about the long sleeves. Alvin’s eyelashes feel as if they’re curling in on themselves, and his hair is too hot to touch. Sometimes it seems like the fire’s getting away from them, but he follows Dad’s instructions, and it never escapes them fully.
   As the sun sinks, the roar of combustion starts to die down, and Alvin joins Dad upwind of the black smoke rolling off the shrinking pile. He knows his old bedroom carpet is in the smoke, as are the old clothes they left behind. They’re reduced to their basic elements, having shed the forms he knew. New things, no longer ruled by their old, rigid strictures. The wind is their home now, and Alvin’s birthplace departs on the warm December breeze.
   He searches for words. “I didn’t think it’d burn like this.”
   “Wood that dry, all it takes is a spark. That’s why we needed to do it before it happened on its own. Better to when you want it to.” Alvin imagines the fire out of control. Even the new house wouldn’t be safe.
   “Dad?”
   “Yeah?”
   “Why does all this Truman stuff bother you?”
   “What?”
   “Last night during the news, and then today when I woke up. It’s like you knew him or something.”
   “Never met the man.”
   “Then what’s the big deal?” He watches Dad light another cigarette, clamping it between his lips as he puts his gloves back on.
   “What does it matter, Alvin?”
   “It doesn’t, I guess. I just wonder if something happened is all.” The fire blazes as Dad’s brow furrows.
   “Things happened. Just like things happened to Lovell’s boy, but some of those things don’t need to be revisited, I guess. Life moves forward for a reason.”
   Dad walks to the other side of the house, leaving Alvin to watch the last particles of the house burn down into the basement. 

    The next day, the weather finally breaks, ending the unnatural warmth and dropping the mercury. The trees do not bud. While Dad watches the burial of the former president up at the new house, Alvin tends the last of the ashes left smoldering in the open cinder-block pit of the basement. He wears a heavy work coat as he stands at the front of the pit, looking across the lake toward his new house on the hill. Mom stands in the window, gazing down at the thin wisps of smoke. As the first drops of rain begin to fall, the glowing ash-heap hisses and steams, and before long, the vapor obscures his new home. As he stands in the freezing downpour, all he sees are the ashes that fill this pocket in the earth. A coal truck rumbles in the distance as he stares into the embers, their ghostly afterimages lingering when he closes his eyes against the rain.
 


 

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THE COURTSHIP OF WINDS

© 2015 by William Ray

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