Chasing Fireflies

by Charles Martin

During peak tourist season, visitors stroll the sidewalks, sniff the same air, and wrinkle their noses. “Something die?” Technically, yes, the marsh is always dying. But then the tide returns, trades old for new, and the canvas gives birth again.

“Boy, you couldn’t pour pee out of a boot with instructions on the heel.”

We walked an old path, one beat down over time, where the tender bamboo shoots reached up and brushed our thighs—it was the earth’s welcoming chorus. They were glad to see her too.

If you can’t speak, then how do you laugh? And if you can’t laugh, then how do you cry?

my brother’s taught me a couple things . . . the first is that meanness don’t just happen overnight, and the second . . .” He got quiet and flipped his glasses back down over his eyes. “Well . . . it don’t take a very big person to carry a grudge . . . so, forgive your enemies”—he chuckled—“it messes with their heads.”

At bedtime they led me to my room on the second floor; it sat on the front of the house just across the hall from theirs. It had a small bed and one dresser. Above hung a ceiling fan, and you could see the underside of the tin roof. I didn’t want to go to bed, but they tucked me in, turned out the light, and pulled my door half-shut. 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. I heard the front door shut, so I climbed over to the window and looked out. He walked out beneath the moonlight into the yard, grabbed the sprinkler, and connected it to the hose. Then he turned the water on and aimed the sprinkler at my corner of the house. The water rose in a high arc over the porch and above my window, and fell lightly on the tin roof above. Three minutes later I was asleep. And ten hours later, I woke up having slept like the dead.

Before Willee and Lorna took me in, I’d bounced around a good bit. The first couple of times, I’d go into a new home and open up my heart, and then they’d beat me, or stick me in a corner and collect state money, or feed me food and nothing else. So I turned cold, too. Why? Because you can’t hurt cold. If you get all warm and fuzzy for each new set of arms, you learn that most, if not all, are just as cold as the last. So you learn that if you turn cold, they can’t hurt you. At least that’s the lie you tell yourself.

“The only monster you need to worry about in this life is the one that stares at you from the mirror each morning. You tame him, make friends with him, and the rest of life is nothing you can’t handle.”

We passed a Krispy Kreme, and the HOT NOW sign was lit up bright red. In the Disney movie The Jungle Book, one of the characters is a snake named Kaa who is gifted with hypnotic powers. Whenever he wants to exert power over someone, he starts singing this silly song and his eyes start making circles that give him total mind control over his victim, who was, in most cases, the orphan boy Mowgli. Whenever Unc sees that sign, his eyes look a lot like Mowgli’s.

A few minutes later, Unc walked up next to me and hung his arms across the fence railing. In his hand he held an empty mason jar with holes punched in the lid. He stood there a long time turning the jar. Inside, a single lightning bug fluttered off the sides of the glass. Every five or six seconds, he’d light his lantern. Unc turned the jar in his hand. “Scientists say that these things evolved this way over millions of years.” He shook his head. “That’s a bunch of bunk. I don’t think an animal can just all-of-a-sudden decide it wants to make light grow out its butt. What kind of nonsense is that? Animals don’t make light.” He pointed to the stars. “God does that. I don’t know why or how, but I’m pretty sure it’s not chance. It’s not some haphazard thing he does in his spare time.” He looked at me, and his expression changed from one of wonder to seriousness, to absolute conviction. “Chase, I don’t believe in chance.” He held up the jar. “This is not chance, neither are the stars.” I was hurting inside, and the streaks shining on my face didn’t scratch the surface at telling how much. He tapped me gently in the chest. “And neither are you. 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.”

“Damaged souls look for other damaged souls. And when we find each other, we coexist. Out there . . . we were just medicating the black hole inside each of us.

To some boys, Turner Field is better than Disney World. It was for Unc and me. Back then it was called Fulton County Stadium, but it’s the same thing: the Braves played there.

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

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.”

“Sometimes good judgment comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from bad judgment.”

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. First horse, then cart. Identity does not grow out of action until it has taken root in belonging.

“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.”

after a lifetime of wondering, I finally knew the story of me. Love does that. It names the nameless and gives voice to the voiceless.

I make a living with words, but sometimes words can’t say what needs saying.

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.