Through the fire, p.2
Through the Fire, page 2
Dayton's grunt sounded like a lifetime of judgment wrapped up in one short sound. Nick necked the beer before they got around the far side of the pyre and wished he'd had another one when he rounded its corner. His brother looked drunker than he had two minutes ago, although Nick thought the greeting then had been the performance, and this was Chris's real state.
The Black woman he leaned on was nearly as tall as Chris even without the shit-stomping boots that laced all the way up to just beneath her knees. She also wore her thick curled hair tied up in a poof that added four inches to her height. The harsh lighting sharpened her cheekbones to blades, and her jaw stuck out like she was waiting for somebody to punch it.
She was a paramedic, and intoxicated people tried, not infrequently. They almost never succeeded.
The other one, a broad-shouldered white guy, had shoulder-length hair that looked like a film team was always tending to it. He'd always been shorter than the other two, but he was also a lot smaller than Nick remembered.
Everybody was shorter than he remembered.
Cheyenne said, "Fucking hell, Nick," and let go of Chris to come hug him. "When'd you sprout another three inches?"
"I don't know what everybody's complaining about," he said hoarsely, into her shoulder. She smelled like cloves and wood smoke. "It's not even an inch a year since I've been gone. You look good, Shy."
"I always look good. You look like shit." Cheyenne let him go and gave him an appraising once-over followed by a sharp glance at Chris before her black-eyed gaze came back to Nick.
He got it. If he looked like shit, then Chris looked like the bowels of hell. Shy always had been good at expressing things with a couple of cutting glances.
Dayton took over holding Chris up when Jake released him and came in for a hug, too. "Nick." He wasn't just shorter than Nick remembered. His voice had deepened, too, an always-rough edge in it turning to a burr. "Glad you're home, man."
"Me too. What—" Nick's voice broke and he stopped the question before it went any farther.
Jake's eyebrows drew down as he pulled back from the hug. "What, what?" Barely a heartbeat passed before he figured it out. "He didn't tell you? Jesus, Chris—"
"I didn't think he'd care!" Belligerent intoxication, then sulky defensiveness, filled the words. "I didn't think he'd come home."
Nick, quietly, said, "It's all right," to Jake, whose eyes all but disappeared under the depth of his frown. "Seriously," Nick said, still quietly. "It's okay. C'mere, Day, let me do that, Chris weighs twice as much as you do."
Dayton and Chris, both equally offended, said, "Nuh-uh," and earned a soft chuckle from the others. Nick stepped in anyway, taking Dayton's place in supporting Chris.
Chris didn't sober up instantly, but he suddenly was able to take his own weight and keep his own balance. "Forget it, Nicky. I'm good."
"Yeah. I know. Just like always." Leaning on friends came hard enough to Chris. Leaning on Nick, figuratively or literally, went beyond the pale. Some things in the universe were constants. The sun rose, the sun set, and little brothers were for taking care of, not relying on.
Jake, a couple steps away, recognized that and drawled, "Shit," with a quiet intensity just loud enough to be heard.
Nick ignored him, sort of. "Is Dakota coming or are we just waiting for midnight?"
"She'll be here. She said she would." The words carried a heavily-implied unlike you that Nick ignored, too. Dayton heard the implication, too, and drew breath to defend him, but Nick shook his head. They would have plenty of time to fight those battles later. He just wanted as much peace as could be had, right then.
Dayton gave him a deadly look that would have been more alarming from somebody who wasn't a solid thirteen inches shorter than he was, but he appreciated the effort. Jake said, "You must have driven all night," like he'd just figured it out, and Nick nodded.
"Some friends drove me. They're over…" He waved toward the other side of the pyre. "Dayton brought them hooch."
"Right." A note of grim amusement came into Jake's voice. "I'll go make sure they're still conscious, or at least in their car and under a blanket so they don't freeze to death."
"Only Tyler had any, but yeah. Thanks."
Jake disappeared around the pyre. Cheyenne eyeballed the brothers, then jerked her chin at Dayton. "C'mere, Day, I got a thing to show you."
"Shy, I've been telling you for years I don't want to look at your thing." Dayton went with her anyway, because she and Nick were both sober enough to understand the point was leaving the brothers together, not showing anybody anything.
Chris, though, stared after them both with continued belligerence, albeit with an appreciative edge. "They'd be a hot couple."
"Cheyenne makes anybody she's standing next to at least twenty percent hotter. Chris, what happened?"
"Dad went out on a hunt, man, and he didn't come back."
Threads of ice, much colder than the winter air, seeped through Nick's belly and wrapped around his spine. "A hunt? Not a bounty?"
Chris gave him a disgusted look and started searching for another bottle of beer. "Like a bounty could take Dad out."
"Chris…" Nick looked for somewhere to sit, and, not finding it, crouched as if he couldn't take any more news standing up. "What was he hunting?"
"Buffalo, Nick, what the hell do you think he was hunting!" Chris had found a bottle, but he threw it against the pyre, glass shattering as it hit the dry logs.
"I thought you guys…" Nick put his fingertips against the frozen earth, balancing himself. "I thought you stopped hunting when I left."
"Yeah, sure, right, of course we did. Seriously, no, why would we do that, the money's good—"
"The money's shit."
Nick looked up to see Chris shrug expressively. "The money's shit," he agreed. "At least for the freaks. Somebody's gotta do it, though. Somebody who knows what's out there to hunt."
"Dad did. So how…?"
"Well, he obviously didn't know about this one, did he!" Chris obviously would have thrown another bottle if he'd had one to hand. "It was a fucking vamp, Nicky. There's a hundred things it coulda been and Dad got iced by a weak-ass vamp. And I wasn't there to save him."
"It's not your fault." Nick couldn't look up from watching the heat of his fingertips melt spots on the frosty ground. A litany of guilty thoughts, ones he'd tried to excise years ago, ran through his mind like a song. If he hadn't left, if he hadn't wanted something different, if he hadn't been the disappointing son… "It isn't your fault, Chris. Dad would have brought you if he'd known—"
"I should have known!" Chris's explosive anger brought Nick to his feet after all. "I should have known, if I'd been there, if you'd been there, he'd still be alive if—"
A woman's voice said, "Fucking hell, Christopher, shut it before you say something we all regret," and threw a wad of burning cloth onto the pyre.
CHAPTER 2
"Jesus Christ, Dakota!" Chris jumped forward to knock the cloth off the pyre before the wood went up. "What the hell, you don't get to do that, you don't get—"
"Nicky won't and you're too caught up in your drama to—oof." Dakota Martinez grunted as Nick stepped up and hugged her with more ease than Chris could ever do. He heard a muffled, "Nicky," spoken into his brother's shoulder, and Nick's more muted response. It was easy for Nick, so goddamn easy all the time, just out there with his feelings and shit. Women liked that. Everybody liked that. Chris rolled his jaw and looked away from the hugging pair.
"Come on. Kody's here now, so let's get this party started."
"What do you think I was trying to do," Dakota asked, exasperated, as Nick released her from the hug. She stalked over and pulled Chris into one, too, roughly, like he'd avoid it if he could. She said, "You okay?" into his shoulder, and to his own surprise, Chris muttered, "No."
"Yeah, didn't think so. Don't be too hard on Nicky, okay?" Kody stepped back half an inch and grabbed Chris's face in her hands, making him look down at her. She was dark-haired and pale-skinned and skinny, like a wraith in the headlights, but she was strong. "Okay?"
"Yeah. Yeah, okay, whatever." He tried to pull away, but Kody held on, scowling at him until he had to put his hands on her wrists and break her grip. "Cut it out, Kode. You don't gotta mother-hen me. I'm glad you came. Now let's do this thing."
"You and me are gonna talk later, Chris."
"Later I'm gonna be too drunk-ass unconscious to talk, but if you wanna crawl into bed with me I'll do my best by you."
Dakota rolled her eyes and swung away from him, grabbing a bottle off the pile by the pyre. "To John Cassidy!"
A shout of agreement went up, mostly from the other side of the pyre. There weren't enough voices, but Chris couldn't do anything about that. Their dad hadn't mixed much with the people in Sterling, and even if he had, inviting people to a funeral was one thing. Inviting them to a body-burning was something else. And most of the old man's friends were bounty hunters, spread all over the country. Getting to the ass end of Colorado, even in a year without much snow, wasn't exactly the fastest or easiest trip to make. He should probably be grateful as many people as were there had come.
Nicky had come.
Nick had barely been his little brother anymore when he'd left, and sure as hell wasn't anymore. Younger, maybe, but not littler. Chris had seen a couple pictures of him on social media since he'd left, not that Nicky knew that, but you couldn't tell somebody was six five or something from a photo on the edge of the Grand Canyon. He didn't look like somebody who needed taking care of, anymore. His hair had grown out until it was almost as good as Jake's, and his shoulders had filled out until he looked like an adult.
Their dad had never seen him looking that way, and never would.
Chris finished the beer he was holding, then yelled, "To our old man!" in the wake of Kody's shout. He got a bigger roar from the gathered mourners, and cuffed Nick's shoulder. "C'mon, let's do this thing. I bet Kody brought Molotov cocktails to light it up with."
"We're not blowing him up, Chris." Nicky sounded old and tired, like he couldn't wait to be done with it and out of here. Neither could Chris, not that he had anywhere else to go. He pulled a thin stick from the pyre and stuck it into the ball of rags Dakota had tried throwing on the pyre, letting it come alight with the rags' dying flames. Nicky, silently, did the same, and without talking about it they went around the pyre in opposite directions, like they were torch bearers at an official occasion.
Which he guessed they were, but it didn't feel like it. Somebody else could have arranged pomp and circumstance, but not Chris. Nicky could have. The only thing Chris could do was mutter, "The old man was a bastard, but I guess he was our bastard. I'm gonna miss him," and thrust the flaming stick through the pyre branches toward the kindling and straw within.
Nicky ducked his head, hiding a pained smile, and said nothing as the gathering gave another mournful shout. He added his own flame to the pyre, and, like Chris, stayed within touching distance of the catching wood until the growing fire's heat drove him back, step by step. Chris fought the impulse to fall back in step with him and instead held his place just a moment or two longer, until he couldn't breathe from the heat. They retreated with every step like that, Chris staying just ahead of Nicky, just that much closer to the fire as he stared up through the wavering air at the flames engulfing his dad's white-wrapped body.
He didn't think he cried, but if he did, the heat seared tears off his cheeks before anybody else saw them. Nicky's jaw was bunched like he was trying to fight them, but tears, gleaming orange in the blaze's light, leaked down his face when Chris finally glanced at him.
Nobody else was even close to them. They were too near the fire, for one thing. Nobody else had even tried to stay as close to it as they had, but more to the point, people were obviously given them their space, too. Jake was less than ten feet back, but not much, his green eyes as orange as Nicky's tears in the firelight. The Geography Girls were another couple steps back, their arms wrapped around each other. Dayton's hair looked red, and Cheyenne's dark skin ate the light until she glowed with it. Kody just reflected the light like she was a mirror, her skin flushing with heat.
Nicky's college friends were about the same distance away, but standing closer to Nick than Chris. The guy, darker than Cheyenne, was as warmed by the fire's tones as Shy was, and kept glancing back and forth from the pyre to Nick, like he couldn't quite believe they were really burning a body. The girl watched Nick like she was worried, but not surprised.
Everybody else fanned out behind them in a semi-circle colored yellow and orange from the front, and stark white and black from behind, thanks to the headlights. They mostly held bottles in their hands, but a couple of the men had taken their hats off in respect, and the few women, far enough away from the fire to feel the chill, wrapped their arms around themselves as if warding off the cold.
Nicky looked all alone, against that backdrop. Tall and young and alone, standing too far away from anybody else to be comforted. Chris tried to memorize the image anyway, then fell back another couple of steps to stand beside his brother. After a long time, Nick, hoarsely, said, "My ass is freezing," and Chris gave a hard, unwilling blurt of laughter.
"Mine too. Wanna get another drink?"
"Man, I wanna…" Nick's silence drew out before turning into a sound too ragged to be a sigh. "I wanna fucking scream, man. I wanna throw bottles at that fucking pyre and watch them explode and just fucking scream, Chris."
Chris, wordlessly, handed the bottle he held over. Nick took a long drink from it, then threw it, without screaming, at the fire. It shattered, and his fists clenched like he was holding back a sound. Chris looked over his shoulder, catching Jake's eye, and Jake jerked his chin in acknowledgement.
A couple minutes later engines revved, and a few minutes after that, the only light on the plain was from the fire. Nicky looked back once, and Chris, thick-voiced, said, "Jake'll take your friends back to Dad's place, or to a hotel in town. I'll call him when we're done here."
Nicky nodded. "Why don't you get the rest of the bottles."
Chris hesitated. "You still gonna be here when I get back?"
There he was. The little kid he remembered, there in the lost dark eyes and unhappy set of his brother's mouth. Nicky didn't answer, not out loud, but Chris went around the fire to get the bottles without being afraid Nick would be gone when he came around the other side again. For a while they alternated between drinking and throwing booze, watching bursts of blue flame explode where the raw alcohol hit the searing heat. Chris could hardly himself screaming over the sound of the flames, and didn't know if he said anything or just yelled at the dark and the stars and the fire. Nicky didn't, for sure. Nicky just howled it out, until all of a sudden he stopped, and when Chris looked, he was on the ground, forehead pressed against earth softening with the fire's heat, hands clenched in the icy mud.
Chris sat beside him, clumsy in the cold, and pulled Nicky into his arms. Nick curled muddy fists against Chris's shirt and cried like he was a kid, his whole body shaking with sobs. Quieter tears escaped Chris every once in a while, but mostly he just kept his head bent over Nick's shoulders until the worst of it had passed.
The pyre hadn't exactly burned itself out by then, but it had died down a lot, its heat having made soup of the frozen ground. Chris was pretty sure his butt had turned to solid ice and was wondering if he could convince his brother to stand up when Nick muttered, "I think my shins are frozen in place. Or they will be if we don't get up before the fire dies any more."
"Yeah." Chris levied Nick up, then accepted Nick's hand and let him pull him to his feet. "Can't go until it's burned out, though."
"No, but your truck's warmer than the ground." Nick, looking pained, glanced around. "Your truck is here, isn't it?"
"Other side of the pyre." Chris gestured and Nick started limping around the fire, like his legs hurt from being pressed into the cold ground for so long. Chris felt just about as stiff and clumsy, though, so he didn't give Nick hell. "It won't start getting light for another couple hours, but it should be pretty well burned out by then."
"I know what time sunrise is, Chris." Nick's voice, thin with irritation, came over his shoulder like a knife.
"Jesus, I didn't mean you didn't fuckin'…" Chris, lip curled, climbed into the truck and reached into its skinny back seats to drag a blanket onto the front seats. "Don't get mud everywhere," he warned as Nick got in the other side.
"I'm not the one whose butt is covered in it." Nick unfolded the blanket down the cab anyway, and reached for the sun visor.
Chris knocked his hand away, getting the keys out himself and putting them in the ignition. The huge old engine rumbled and cold air blasted from wide-open vents. Nick said, "Fuck!" and grabbed the blanket, trying to pull it out from under Chris and over his own legs.
"Knock it off, asshole! There's more blankets in the back!"
Nick twisted over the back of the seat, which had been funny enough when he was a kid and not like six four. Chris cackled as elbows and knees went everywhere. "You look like a giant spider, man."
"There's not a blanket back here, there's a frickin' hundred and seventy pound tool box oh no sorry you're the hundred and seventy pound tool—"
"One ninety, and I can still kick your ass."
Nick came back over the seat with a couple more rough wool blankets and wrapped up in them both, one over his legs and the other over his shoulders as he hunched toward the heaters, which were starting to warm up. "Like to see you try. I forgot how cold it gets up here."
"California made you soft, man."
"Yeah. And I liked it." Nick ducked his head, retreating into a woolly ball of silence. Chris put his hands on the steering wheel, which was cold, and flexed his fingers around it until it and they warmed up some. After a while Nick unfolded from his hunch and rubbed the blanket over the shins of his jeans.
"Sun won't be up for another hour," Chris said over the heater's blast. Nick stared sideways at him and he shrugged. "Just saying."
