Chasing Fireflies

by Charles Martin

when my demons rose out of the past and reminded me that I’d been left on some street corner and that I wasn’t good enough even for my own parents, that hand told me otherwise.

He led me down the dune and into the water. I stood knee-deep as the waves crashed into my legs. I’ll never forget the power. It took my breath away. Unc did that too. And then he gave it back.

When we reached the truck, he lifted his head high to heaven, took off his hat, and opened his mouth wide. The rain pelted his face and wet his tongue. He shook his head, opened my door, and smiled. “Free water. Never pass it up.”

He must’ve known or talked to somebody at my last home. Us foundlings never slept much. You could get through the days okay, but nighttime was the hardest. It’s when you remembered and wondered.

There, on that bank, soaked in that water, basking in that sunshine, lying on that man’s chest, I hoped for the first time that my real dad would never show up and take me home.

So, if your mind is telling you that God slipped up and might have made one giant mistake when it comes to you, you remember the firefly’s butt.”

“If God can make a firefly’s butt light up like a star, then anything is possible. Anything.”

“You know, you’re not the only one with a hole in your chest. Girls get them too. We just fill them differently.”

I’m no expert, but I know one thing about anger—it’s like alcohol. At some point, if you pour enough in there, it’s coming back up. You may think you’ve built up a tolerance, but the truth is this—no man, not even Unc, can bury it so deep that it doesn’t erupt at some point like Vesuvius and splatter your soul across the earth. There was a time when I wanted to be around to see the eruption, but now I’m not so sure. ’Cause I’m not sure what that would do to Unc.

“So I said, ‘Sir, you’re not really gonna like the story I’ve written, but if I could fill in these last few pages, you might.’ He just looked at me, like he knew what I wanted to ask, so I went ahead. ‘Can I go write these last few pages and come back when I’m done?’ He studied me, then smiled and nodded. I turned to the person behind me, said, ‘Hey, save my place,’ and walked down the steps and out the door.” Tommye laughed again. “When I left, every hand in the place was up.”

That’s life. You take the bad with the good. Rise up through it. Live in the midst of it. It’s the bad that lets you know how good the good really is. Don’t let the bad leave you thinking like there ain’t no good. There is, and lots of it, too.”

Thorns don’t stop you from sniffing. Or putting them in a vase on the kitchen table. You work around them.”

Men spend their lives asking Who am I when the real question is Whose am I? I don’t think you can answer the first until you’ve settled the second.

“Inside you is a thing worth putting on a pedestal—worth putting out there for all the world to see. That piece of rock might have been knocked around, roughed up a bit, considered scrap, and thrown on the trash pile . . . but that’s only because they don’t know what’s on the inside. They can’t see like Michelangelo. ’Cause if they could, they’d know that there’s something in there that’s just waiting to jump out. Like there is inside you. I’m sorry for the hammer and chisel. I wish life didn’t work that way.”

I walked off the porch and began skipping across the pasture, snatching at the stars. Sketch watched me with a tilted head. Then my jar lit up like a riverboat lantern. We spent an hour running across the pasture chasing fireflies. Unc too. By the time all three of us were out of breath, we’d shoved half the Milky Way into that jar.

“Words that soak into your ears are whispered, not yelled.”

Have you ever been in a boat on a river or lake and been approached by people in another boat? They throw you a rope and then, in order to help, you pull the two together and place one foot on each boat, holding the two off each other but close enough so that passengers can jump from one to the other. That’s what my life was like: standing on two boats, anchored to nothing, with constant waves and wind—just one wave short of going over.

“What do you do when you’ve hooked one that might snap your line?” I knew where this was going. “You loosen the drag and let him run.”

“He said he gave up what he couldn’t keep to gain what he couldn’t lose.”

five ways of “knowing”: personal experience, revelation, empirical evidence, logic, and hearsay.

“Care for the roots, and the flower will bloom all on its own.”

“Don Quixote saw things as God intended them, not as what they’d become. He said, ‘I come in a world of iron, to make a world of gold.’” Unc shook his head and spoke, almost to himself. “I like that.”

All because some crazy windmill fighter convinced her that the mirror don’t always tell the truth.”

Tween now and whenever I get home, I’m gonna paint my canvas, and come sundown, I’ll lie down in the water, let the waves wash me clean, and leave the rest to God.

“Every boy is born with a hole in his belly. If his dad don’t fill it, it festers and becomes an aching black hole—one that he’ll spend his waking hours trying to fill. Mostly with things that do him more harm than good.

I know this about boys: we are all born with a dad-sized hole drilled in the center of our chest. Our dad’s either fill it with themselves, or as we grow into men and start to sense the emptiness, we medicate it with stuff. Usually addictions.