At the End of the Day I Burst into Flames Read online

  Senior year of high school, for sure, so I’d have been seventeen. In an elevator that broke down, getting nervous, and sitting between the second and third floor of the high school’s main building. We were both running late to class, though that didn’t really matter at that point. Class would be over long before the fire department would get us out.

  I sucked at math anyway.

  Emergency lights glowed and colored the elevator’s insides in deep red. Heard voices, faculty, I guessed, but they sounded a million miles away. Everything will be all right was their mantra.

  The air inside the elevator bunched up your underwear and made your t-shirt feel one size too tight. Not the kind of warm that makes you sweat, it just made you uncomfortable. The red lights didn’t help, either; it looked like we were in an oven.

  Or in Hell.

  I thought about my morning, thought about homework, missed classes, anything other than broken elevators.

  Emily had a kindness. Always first to say hello in the halls. She would hold a door open for you, even if her own hands were full. Emily, quick to joke, loved puns, though I rarely heard her laugh. Instead, she smiled. The better a joke the wider her smile, until her brown eyes were hardly visible. I felt very relaxed around her, even though I didn’t have the nerve to approach her. To my young senses, Emily had a kind of perfection usually reserved for dreams, like the hum of something fantastic.

  You see, by this point, my addiction to love had already taken hold of me but my supplier was long gone. I needed a fix. Emily was my clumsy attempt to get high.

  “You shouldn’t chew on your nails,” Emily told me. “It’s a bad habit.”

  She was right and I know I blushed. My embarrassment went thankfully unnoticed. Red lights made all other shades obsolete.

  People kept going on outside the elevator shaft. They tried to put us at ease, I suppose, but they sounded anxious. I decided to drown them out.

  Then, I spaced out looking at that red light and I thought about a boy named Stephen.

  ***

  I had known Stephen since grade school. An awkward kid, but super smart, and always wore the same red sweatshirt when we were very little. He looked like a big candy apple and I told him that, once. He kicked me in the balls. First time we’d really interacted.

  The second time was also the last day he lived in my neighborhood.

  Stephen shared the house across the street with his mom. His parents never married but his dad would come around every once in a while. This was back when my dad was still alive.

  Stephen and I rode the same school bus and we would make the same walk home every day. Neither of us was too fond of one another. I thought Stephen to be nothing but a chubby, weird dork. He thought I acted like an insensitive moron. We didn’t know anything about each other, but we never really made the effort, so we would just glare at one another.

  Every once in a while we’d mutter insults under our breath.

  To irritate him, I walked on his side of the street, which forced him to walk on my side of the street. I loved doing this because I knew that he’d eventually have to cross over in order to get to his mom’s house. When we crossed paths, we’d enact our little ritual.

  As soon as Stephen walked in an earshot, I uttered a very soft, “Bitch.”

  To which Stephen would reply, “Asshole.”

  The exchange enabled us to remind each other that we were there and we existed.

  I let my eyes wander to Stephen and tried to anticipate when he would cross and I saw something that I initially thought looked like garbage all heaped together at the end of Stephen’s driveway. But it wasn’t garbage day and what I saw wasn’t bags. It was clothes.

  A body lay by the road in front of Stephen’s house. The body had been his mother.

  I dropped my books and turned toward Stephen. The clatter caught his attention. He looked at me and then beyond me and I could see the change in his expression. His eyes widened, mouth drooped into an ugly frown and that quickly became a scream. He flung his books to the street and he ran to his home. I held out a hand, as if I could grab all his pain and yank it away from existence.

  I couldn’t hear Stephen’s screams.

  I couldn’t hear anything at all.

  Sound had disappeared. I’m not entirely sure I was even in my own body. I had become a camera, a simple observer to an event for which I had no way to compartmentalize.

  Every moment slowed down and drew out to such a length that I could literally see between the seconds.

  Time grinded to a halt like ancient clockwork.

  Darkness and light became as a curtain, which rippled and pulled apart to reveal a human shape whose eyes shone like dying stars and whose clothes were fashioned from shadow and fog.

  Death looked at me from the void outside of time.

  He held his palms outward, as if this body and the boy’s grief were a gift to me.

  The ghost of Stephen’s mother peered at me through the black folds of Death’s cloak, and then the specter retreated from reality, back through the curtain of light and illusion.

  Time returned to normal and I heard mournful sobs like gasps of air.

  A chubby little boy rocked his mother in an obscene reversal of their relationship up to that point. Stephen cried so much that his mother’s hair had dampened. An image of my own mother rocking me and singing a lullaby comforted me for all but a brief moment. Stephen’s lullaby articulated itself by way of streaming tears, screams and pleas for help.

  Stephen’s wailing sounded like a heart breaking forever.

  And I ran to him.

  The trees were just sprouting leaves, some more developed than others, but still enough to shade us from the sun. Stephen threw his arms around me and I put my arms around him. Neighbors started coming out of their homes to see about all the commotion.

  Dad marched out into the street. He heard Stephen screaming and figured we were fighting. Like he and Momma would fight.

  Sometimes I could hear them through the walls. Always at night. They thought I was asleep.

  Dad told me Stephen’s mother succumbed to the heat and she died exerting herself. Stephen moved into his father’s house that evening.

  I felt Stephen’s fingers as though they were pressed into my back the whole night. I thought of him as a ghost and never realized how often he would return to my life and haunt me.

  That’s when the bad dreams began. Nightmares about men made of fire.

  And the terror of seeing between the seconds where Death watched and waited.

  ***

  His legs were thick as his arms, like hams you’d see in the deli window at Christmas. He had height at his disposal, always looking down, always imposing. But there was a smile, and his eyes would disappear and you knew you were safe. His voice was deep and when he picked you up, the grip had the same foundation as the ground below. His skin was cheap soap in the morning, salty musk and oil at the end of a hard day. He made me small, insignificant.

  I felt like his whole way of being was as a mountain to climb and I was unprepared for the journey, set up from birth to fail him, and thus fail myself. As a child, he had been God Above, but now he was a man, rough around the edges and used, a blunt instrument that was well-loved and then forgotten, replaced by something newer, more efficient, but somehow less.

  “I have the fire inside me,” he said, smoke billowing from the cuffs and collar of his shirt.

  He burst into flames.

  And he reached for me.

  This is the dream, and I have it often.

  ***

  Emily and I dated at the end of high school and when high school ended we dated in college. I’d lost love twice by then and was bound and determined not to lose it a third time. Ours was a courthouse wedding.

  I took a freelance gig for school credit that turned into a full-time illustrating position and I proposed to Emily after graduation. We married the following summer. She landed a teaching position.

  Emily educates second graders at Collinsville Middle School, just outside of Edwardsville. A grade school teacher, she’s the yin to my yang. I make more money but she gets better benefits. I know it sounds resentful, but with two kids we could use the extra cash.

  Our oldest, Brandon, is in high school. He doesn’t smoke. Brandon plays football. He’s a quarterback at Edwardsville High School. I tried to get him interested in art and even writing but neither stuck. He’s too much like his mother.

  Emily and I go to all of Brandon’s games. He plays really well, I think. Emily was a sports fanatic when we were younger. She played softball for Wood River. I would go to see her games, smoking habitually in the stands. Emily says Brandon plays well, and I believe her.

  I think Brandon is homosexual. I brought this up to Emily last night. My hope was that Brandon would come out to us, though it didn’t look like that was going to happen. Unfortunately, at this point my time was running short and I felt like I needed to say something before I was gone for, well . . . forever.

  “Honey, you ever think Bran is different?” I lowered my glasses to let her know I was serious.

  Emily had just come up from the laundry room; a full basket crammed under one arm. She dumped the clothes on our bed and turned toward me.

  “Why in the hell would you of all people worry about him being different?”

  “He’s never had a girlfriend, for one.”

  “But he’s only—”

  “Seventeen, Em. Yes, I am aware of his age.”

  “He’s a shy boy.” Emily balled her hands into fists and rested them on her hips. I could see her working the inside of her cheek. She took a defensive stance, though I had no idea at that time what she had to be so defensive about.

  “Okay,” I sa
id. “Why does he play sports if he’s so shy?”

  “He says it’s out of habit.” She turned away from me and toward the laundry. “He’s not gay, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “You mean you asked him about it?”

  “Months ago.”

  “So you think he’s gay?”

  “No.” She threw a pair of folded socks which smacked me in the chest. “Look, I get it. You didn’t have a good father figure in your life, so you’re trying to fill that hole, but you’re just being paranoid.”

  Emily edged close to the truth. Paranoid, yes, but not because I wanted to fill some hole left in my life by my father. I knew my end approached even if Emily did not.

  I had seen the fire in all its glory.

  ***

  Dad died within days of my seventh birthday.

  Mom used to wait outside for me when I got home from school. I loved to see her wave from the lawn. I used to think she waited for me outside because she hated me fighting with Stephen but he was gone and she was still there and still waiting. Mom always told me fighting’s no good and that I ought not get into fights with other boys and especially not to fight with girls. She said it wasn’t nice and that it hurt their feelings. Mom once told me how to tell if a girl has been upset.

  Look at her fingernails. Happy girls always have long, pretty nails.

  Mom had very nice nails that she kept painted red, but they never went past the tip of her finger.

  Sometimes I heard her cry.

  I had asked my dad what was wrong. He would say that she had fallen down, or that she had burned herself with the curling iron, or that she had bit her lip. Dad slept in the living room some nights.

  Sometimes, Dad would come home and say awful things to Mom. He bullied her into their room and I could hear them shouting. I listened to them for a long time. One night, Dad came into my bedroom. The room was dark and he was silhouetted against the hallway light. He crossed his arms and leaned against the door. I smelled something sour in the air. He came over to my bed and sat down. I think he was crying.

  He was a big guy, my old man, so when he sat on my bed I rolled right into him. He stroked my hair. I saw his face clearly. He looked at me, his lips quivered. A trickle of snot ran from his nose and he breathed through his mouth. He raised his hand and I thought he would hit me.

  “Can’t stop what’s coming, son.” He clenched his fist tight and his arm trembled. He stared up at the ceiling. Don’t know what he saw but I like to think he was angry at God and not me.

  Dad put his hand down. He kissed my forehead. I fell asleep shortly after he left the room.

  The next morning, we gathered in the kitchen. No snow on the ground outside but I remember frost and it was real heavy, like the Good Lord saw fit to cover the earth in cellophane. Dad wore nothing but a pair of briefs and I am almost dead certain that he complained about the heat, because I remember thinking how strange it was that anybody could complain of heat when their breath hung in the air like tiny clouds.

  I mean we weren’t exactly rolling in dough back then. The heat in the house stayed off until the first snowfall of the year. So, even though I could see a breath in the air, well, that still wasn’t snow on the ground.

  “Grab a blanket. Sit in the kitchen,” Daddy would say, and he’d turn on the oven, letting the heavy metal door sit open just a hair.

  I’ll tell you what, that oven made a pretty swell fireplace.

  We had some good times in that kitchen, huddled together and wearing blankets and playing cards or telling stories. Mornings in that kitchen, like we were at camp. Hell, that was some thirty-odd years ago, but even now I am inclined to go into my own kitchen and turn on the oven before I even think of running up the thermostat.

  I remember Daddy saying something like, “It’s hotter than blue blazes in here.”

  Momma and I sat at the kitchen table already bundled up in our blankets and when he said that, well, I had to look at him to see if he was joking around.

  That’s when I realized he was steaming. Not the angry kind—mind you—but really steaming, like a pot left to boil too long.

  Momma said, “Maybe you ought to sit down, baby.”

  I don’t recall Dad walking over to the table as much as I can remember the sound of his feet on the linoleum floor. Every step made an ugly little sucking sound, like his feet were sticking to the ground.

  He looked wet, like slick plastic, like a Halloween costume. And he still steamed after he sat, but he wasn’t sweating. I guess, in retrospect, it must have been too damn hot to sweat.

  Our last exchange went a little something like this:

  I said, “Dad, you feeling bad?

  “I feel a might bit funny,” he said, and then his eyes burst out of his head. “Oh shit.”

  Daddy burst into flames.

  Momma started screaming, “Baby, baby, baby,” over and over and louder and louder.

  I sat there like a bump on a log.

  Momma beat and whipped Daddy with her blanket but the blanket offered no help. That fire wasn’t going out. Daddy finally got up and pushed her away from him.

  He ran through the house all ablaze, running into walls and doors and furniture. I figured he must have been looking for a way out. Momma couldn’t do much more than sit on the floor and scream every time he hit something, so I started yelling out directions for him.

  “Go left, Daddy!”

  “Watch out for the ottoman!”

  “Watch out for the chair!”

  “Put out your hands! That’s the pie safe you’re touching.”

  And once he knew that he was standing in front of the pie safe, well, blind or not, the man knew that house pretty well. He was at the front door lickety-split and then out into the yard. Momma picked herself up and went following. So did I except I didn’t scream like she did.

  Daddy kind of stumbled a bit outside and for some reason he started over towards the neighbor lady’s place. The frost melted before him like a crowd separated for a great man, or the way folks in westerns used to back out of the streets when there was going to be a gunfight. He fell right in front of the door to the neighbor lady’s house, and that’s when the fire became too much for his body to hold.

  Now, it was real strange, but when Daddy was bouncing around our house he never once lit anything else on fire. Maybe he left a smudge of burnt skin here and there, and of course his hair went up quick and smelled something awful, but nothing caught, nothing went up along with him.

  That changed right quick, though, and fire belched out from his fallen body and started eating away at Ms. Mackeninny’s house.

  With Ms. Mackeninny inside.

  I’ll tell you, I thought Momma was screaming to beat the band, but man oh man did Mackeninny make a racket.

  That’s about the time all the neighbors came out to see the fuss, to see the greatest fire they’d ever seen.

  Mackeninny stopped screaming long before the fire department showed up.

  I watched them hook their great big hose to the hydrant up the street. They came running up the yard and they were ready to blast the house with a horizontal waterfall. When they pulled the valve, that hose farted out a trickle of water about as powerful as my showerhead. Back then it was awful intense, but I have to admit it’s kind of funny to me now.

  Daddy used to tell me that, when it came time, I ought not to worry about a fancy funeral or anything like that.

  “Don’t put me in no box, either,” he’d say, and then Momma would get so mad.

  “You don’t want to be buried next to me?” She’d ask.

  “I don’t want to be buried at all,” he’d reply.

  “You don’t love me.” She’d say.

  “It has nothing to do with loving you,” he’d say. “I want to be cremated is all.”

  “Fine, be cremated. But if you go before me then I’m just having your ashes dumped in my grave.” And that’s about the time in the argument where she’d stick out her chin and nod her head as if it were the period at the end of a sentence.

  “Ah, goddammit.” And that is what Dad would say when the argument had ended.

  Momma stayed true to her word. After the fire, we scooped up whatever we thought might have been Dad and we put it in two different envelopes.