Burn, p.11
Burn, page 11
Again they packed up. They took their time. The sun was warming their bones and unfreezing the crickets, who chirped with ardor out of the grass. When they were ready, Jess hitched the webbing tumpline around his waist and Storey picked up the girl and they went on up the middle of the road.
* * *
At the top, at the edge of the woods, with a clear view down across the hayfields to the village, they stopped. Jess dropped the webbing strap and picked the binoculars off his chest. As he had before. Storey set down the girl, who blinked at the town as if she had never seen it before. Maybe she never had, not from this vantage. Storey slipped the slung rifle from back to front and sighted at the lighthouse and scanned. Now there was no movement at the top of the tower, no movement anywhere. Through the binoculars Jess picked up the two bodies on the bricks of the wharf plaza and winced. Hopping over them was a flurry of birds, the white of seagulls and the black of crows.
The men were in no hurry. They studied every structure, every inch of street they could see. Nothing. Storey said, “I guess we can walk right down.”
“We’ll be wide open. On a straight road, against the backdrop of a hill.”
“We don’t have much choice. I mean if we are set on going in again. Right? With the footbridge blown? It’s either this or the boat.”
“Yeah,” Jess said.
Storey reached for the water bottle over his shoulder, in the pocket of his pack, drank.
Jess said, “I was thinking I could go down first. I would draw any fire and…well, I could scout. I could wave you in if all is good. Go to the base of the lighthouse, say, and take my cap off and wave. And you don’t come down unless I take my hat off.”
The girl could not take her eyes off the village. She reached up blindly for Storey’s hand and he slung the gun and took it. He looked down at the mane on top of her head, the darker-brown ears, glanced at Jess. “You will have no one to cover you. I can’t cover you from up here.”
“I know. But. We kinda gotta look for”—he caught himself, mouthed—“her mom.”
Storey nodded. “How much ammo do you have?”
Jess shrugged. “None. Just what’s in the magazine.”
“Take my rifle. I still have half a box.” Storey began to unsling his Winchester. Jess held up a hand.
“No. I’d rather have what I’m used to.”
“Well, how many? You better check so you know.”
Jess dropped his pack. He picked up the Savage and jacked the lever, and the top-loading magazine began ejecting shells. He kept working the action until the gun was empty. Only three shells lay on the road. He picked them up, pushed the brass one by one with his thumb back down into the breech and worked the lever one more time so that a shell was chambered. He felt with his thumb that the safety slide on the tang was snugged back tight. Good. Ready. He nodded at Storey, said, “I’ll wave my cap,” and walked out of the trees, right down the middle of the smooth dirt road.
* * *
When Jess was seventeen, he was helping Storey’s sister Cecily mount Lupine, her sweet big-boned mare. She had a set of three steps with handrails to a platform that was just big enough for her and another to stand on. With Lupine’s halter tied to a ring, the horse rarely tried to move off or even shift when Cecily got on or off her, and Jess was convinced that the mare loved the girl as the girl loved the horse. Cecily loved her so much that the biggest picture in her room was a photo of the strong brown Lupine standing chest-high in flowering alfalfa and looking in three-quarter profile at something that piqued her interest. Her ears were forward and her shiny dark eyes held a sweet attention, and she looked somehow noble and loyal and brave, but mostly as if she was capable of a simple and unbreakable love. It was a powerful portrait that did not belie the horse’s character.
So Jess did not even tie the lead rope, he just ran it through the ring, as he’d done before. The mounting platform was a perfect height, which allowed Cecily to maneuver with her cane and pivot and sit against the top of the saddle, and then, with help, bring her right leg up and over. Once she had straddled Lupine and fit her boots into the cup of the specially made tapaderos that covered the stirrups, she was remarkably stable.
“Thanks,” she said to Jess. “I’m good.” She felt the top of her head with her good hand. “Shoot, I forgot my helmet. Can you please hand it up?”
“Sure.” It was lying on grass worn nearly to dirt, a black, velvet-covered hard hat. He trotted down the steps and jogged around the back of the mare and had crouched to pick it up when the horse suddenly swung her butt around and kicked. It was not an annoyed feint but a full strike that caught Jess in the ribs, left side, and blew him off the ground as a grenade would, and left him with no breath and somehow on his back unable to move. He blinked upward. Fleets of purple clouds sheared low over the treetops, and they were painted by a long August light that freighted them with maybe heavenly significance and he thought he might have died. But through his trance he heard screaming, “Mom! Mo-o-o-om!” and blinked to see Lupine’s big eyes looking curiously into his and he felt the whiskers of her nose against his cheek and smelled her warm hay-meadow breath as she sniffed him. Apparently, there were no hard feelings.
Somewhere up there was Cecily, because he heard her alternately yelling “Mo-o-o-o-om!” and “Jess, Christ, can you speak?” The breath had been knocked out of him, which was always scary. Also, it hurt to breathe and he was sure he had bruised, maybe broken, ribs. Hannah ran up from the garden, wiping the dirt off her hands onto her cutoffs, and her face replaced the horse’s. She leaned close, and her straw-blond hair—which she could never contain with a chopstick—brushed his nose, and her expression was frightened and concerned. He remarked for the first time that she had a spray of freckles across the bridge of her nose that scattered out like broadcast seed onto her sunburned cheeks. “Jesus,” she said. “Jess. Oh God. Can you move?”
He tried to speak.
“Hold on!” she said. “I think I read not to do that.” She must have sat up, because her face was replaced by streaming clouds. “Can you wiggle your toes? Jess!”
He wriggled. He heard, “Phew. How about your hands?”
He felt one of his hands lifted in hers and he was relieved that he could feel the roughness of dried dirt and the warmth. He wriggled his fingers and squeezed. “Good!” she said. He lifted a knee. He breathed. “I’m okay,” he croaked.
“No, you’re not.”
“I just got the wind knocked out.” He tried to sit up, and a bolt of pain went through his left side. “Ribs,” he said.
“Is your head okay?” Hannah said. Her hands were on his head now, cradling and feeling for blood. Feeling his temples gently and rooting into his hair and surveying his scalp.
“Yes. She kicked me in the side.”
“Whewww.” Hannah’s gust of relief. He wasn’t paralyzed or concussed. “Can you wait here for a sec? I’m going to get Cecily down and then we’re gonna get you some ice, okay?”
“Okay,” he murmured. He was actually quite happy to lie back flat on the grass and not move and watch the dense clouds.
Sometime later—he would not have known if it was minutes or hours—Hannah’s face came back into view and he felt her hand on the back of his neck and she was kneeling beside him and helping him sit up. He winced and she said, “I know. I’ve broken ribs before.”
“Me, too. Playing soccer.” He tried to smile.
“No point in going into Brattleboro,” she said. “There’s nothing they can do but tell you to take it easy and not do anything that hurts.”
“Yep.”
“Let’s get up out of the barnyard. I’m gonna walk you to your room and get some ice, okay?”
“Okay.”
They walked slowly, and there was a certain point in his stride that sent a sear of pain into his chest. He put one arm over her shoulder and he noticed how hard the muscles were in her back, the strength there, and it surprised him. It shouldn’t have: she spent most of her time outside, either on horseback or splitting wood or working the garden. They went through the outside door to the left of the tack room and into the hutch with the big window and she eased him down onto the bed. “Does it feel best to be on your back?” He nodded. “I’ve done this before,” he said. “I can tell it’s just a bruise.” “Still,” she said. “Hold on. Ice and ibuprofen.” She tried to smile as she went back through the door, but he could see that she was terribly concerned.
He might have fallen asleep in those few minutes. Or passed out. When he opened his eyes again she was gently pushing his shirt up and he heard her whisper, “Ow, oww.” And he felt the ice pack go gently against his side. “There.” She turned for a glass of water on the bed table and then she thought better of it and whispered, “Let’s help you sit up first. You can’t drink the water lying down, but I think you better take some Advil.”
She leaned toward him. Her left arm went behind his neck and he breathed the warmth on her skin, which smelled like sweet grass. Her stray hair fell against his cheek and her dirt-streaked, white open-necked linen shirt fell loose from her freckled skin and he noticed with a shock she was wearing no bra and her breasts were smooth and much paler than the rest of her and her nipples were small and pink, and the next shock was that he felt himself get instantly hard. He was wearing nylon gym shorts, which offered little resistance. As he tried to help her help him sit up his face came into her collarbone and top of her breast and her right hand reached down between his legs to the bed for support and brushed him. He heard her breath catch. “Here,” she said, and her voice was husky, “good. Here, swallow these, good, and drink.” He drank. But his whole world at the moment was not the water or the four pills or the pain but her neck and the smell off her work-heated skin, which was grass and summer brook, and the freckles that wandered onto the tops of her very pale breasts inches from his nose, and her hair, which streamed down onto her collarbones. Her right hand had found purchase on the quilt between his thighs and now, as she supported his head with her left and he tilted the glass and he swallowed, he felt her shift as if to help him and her forearm bumped into him where he was hard and then she said huskily, “Good?” and he wasn’t sure if she meant swallowing the pills, and he nodded. She took the glass from him gently and set it on the table and then she leaned into him and kissed him. He had kissed girls before, but her lips were soft and plush and unhurried. At some point she shifted forward and his mouth was on her breasts outside her shirt, and at some point she lifted it enough and he was surprised how cool she was, and then she stood briefly and worked off her cutoff shorts and in the flash of the image—her standing in the now stormy light of the window in nothing but her gauzy gardening shirt, reaching back to slide out the chopstick and let her thick hair fall—he thought maybe he was dead, maybe he really had gone to heaven.
He was seventeen and it was his first time. She never said, “We can’t tell anyone,” but he never did. Not Storey, not anyone. She was not sauced, as she often was by the end of an evening. She was clear-eyed. There was no shame in her eyes, and no desperation, either. He thought about that later. There might have been both, in spades, and it would have been a much different act. She did not condescend, or embarrass him with instruction, or take any high ground at all. She met him right where he was. And since she had prepared him a thousand dinners, and suggested afterward a thousand times that he and Storey help Daniel with the dishes, and had taken him to a thousand soccer games, and cheered wildly when he or his best friend made a brilliant play or scored a goal; and since she had helped him hundreds of times with homework and listened with delight as he shyly recited his poems; and since she had yet somehow kept a respectful distance and let him know in a thousand ways that she was not his mother, that his mother knew him best and had the final call in all things…it seemed natural and right that she lead him now into this new territory. There was a hunger in her that pressed and tugged him like a steady current and it was not scary but somehow magnificent and it allowed him to relax and give himself. She seemed to know that it was his first time and that he might trigger easily and she made love to him very very slowly and he let her carry him.
Years later he thought it should have been a confusing, maybe traumatic memory, but it wasn’t. When he remembered the afternoon he felt gratitude. The fact that Storey, had he ever found out, might have killed him was another matter. But maybe the strangest thing about the episode was that after she eased off him and smiled—it was kind and grateful and warm and maybe a little sad—and said, “You rest. I’ll get you more ice in, like, an hour,” and after she dressed and closed the door gently behind her…after that they carried on as they had before. He came over for meals, spent nights, went on training runs with Storey, and ended by helping Hannah and Cecily in the barn, or Daniel in the shop. It was not as if it never happened, but that the moment was so sweet and natural it would never interrupt the flow of their lives.
That’s how it felt then. But it did change, if subtly, the dynamic between the boys. Because ever after that Jess felt he owed Storey a debt. For simply concealing a great fact in his life. And for having a connection with Storey’s mother that felt significant and deep, if brief—a connection that Storey could never have. That part felt a little creepy, and as much as Jess tried to banish it, a tendril of shame and the sense of a deep debt remained.
Which was why, he thought now, as he picked up the rifle and walked out of the trees: Why I am walking down this straight dirt road across an open hayfield in full view of whatever rifle scope. Why I am leaving Storey in the woods. Why if I die in the next minute it will be okay, and just.
* * *
He did not wish to die. But if he lived long enough, and got drunk enough, he might tell Storey everything, which would not be good. Nor could he now think of a good reason to live. That was the thing about living: there didn’t have to be one. You put one foot in front of the other, as he was doing now. Scuffing the packed dirt overlaid with fine gravel and sand. Whistling softly. Hoping the shot would not come, and wishing it would…so that the heartbreak would be quenched forever, tandem et in aeternum. He had lost his wife, his dog. Ha! How did I get like this? I am like a country song. Except he really did need to get through this day and the next—to help Storey get home. And now the girl. Reasons enough. And a morning like this morning, with strong coffee and a friend and sunrise in a meadow.
Nor was making love to Storey’s mother a capital crime. Even as he walked down into bright sun and noticed the first morning wind push through the tall tawny hay grass as if a hand were passing over…he thought that he’d been lucky. It was not a first screw, it was not two teenagers fumbling and afraid, he was lucky that his first time had been love. Because he did love her, as deeply as one can love. Didn’t I? Yes. And she loved me, too. And he thought, as he walked and braced himself to die, that every love is like a fingerprint or the unique timbre of a voice and that there was no name in any language for the love he felt for Hannah. It was not incest, it was not a first crush, it was not the adoration of a revered teacher, or the transference ignited by a therapist’s unconditional acceptance, or the depthless affection for a lifelong friend. Be honest: it was all of these and so could not be any one. Relief. It was a Long Island Iced Tea of love from which three sips could knock you flat, and so he had been shaken and intoxicated and euphoric. And he’d had a hangover, which passed. And he remembered mostly the surprise, like a cliff edge, and the delight of falling, and the pure wonder. And the sense that he had been extinguished, died, and at the same time felt pleasure that could barely be distinguished from prayer or pain. Good enough.
Months later, senior year, he took up with his first girlfriend, a boarding student from Oregon. And the first place he brought her was not home, up on Dusty Ridge, but to Storey’s house. Hannah’s and Daniel’s and Annie’s and Cecily’s. And they had fêted her as a guest of honor, and honored her as another accomplished equestrian, and she and Hannah had hopped bareback up onto the two most spirited and difficult horses and galloped into a cross-country run that Gwen would never forget for the rest of her life. She came back soaking wet and told Jess breathlessly that they had pushed the horses to leap off a three-foot ledge into an ice-cold pond and swum them across a quarry. Who did that? And Jess almost cried when the two women came out of the barn after putting the horses up and feeding them, came out arm in arm, damp hair straggled, faces turned toward each other and laughing. How blessed he felt then.
But now he had to admit that something snagged. Something hooked in the gut. Admit that maybe there had been something deeply wrong with all of it.
The boom shattered the thought. The shot exploded, and he dove into the high grass off the right ditch.
* * *
There was only one shot, and as the percussion rolled out over the lake and echoed away, he knew in the roundness of it that the blast was from a shotgun, not a rifle. Which meant a killing range of fifty yards max with double-ought buckshot. And he was now at least 250 yards from the first houses at the south edge of the village. What the hell? Who would waste a shot and alert him at the same time? He was flat in waist-high timothy and the seedheads swayed above him and he crawled around so that he was facing the road. The road was straight and ran down into the south end of the plaza beside the wharf—under the lighthouse—and so there were plenty of windows and porches with a clear view of the track. A shotgun did not have a scope, but there might be another shooter, near the first, who did have a rifle with long range and optics, and he had just learned from Storey that there was a good way to find out. He took off his cap and hung it over the end of his gun barrel and pushed it out across the ditch and into the edge of the road. Nothing. Whoever had fired the shotgun was far enough away not to see this bit of movement unaided. Okay. We are already dead, right? Wasn’t that the point of all these musings just now? The samurai creed, the yell of Russell Crowe in The Gladiator. He had yelled something like that, hadn’t he? To his men before the charge? Jess stood. What a crazy bastard. Who on earth…? Fuck it. He stepped up out of the ditch and began walking again down the road.
