The Summer That Melted Everything

by Tiffany McDaniel

“During the course of his year from one birthday to the next, the man would shorten the rope. He would swat the knot away, and from there, whenever he was the reason for the bruise, for the wound, for the shivering terror, he would take the ax and chop off a piece of the rope. He swore that if ever his evil lunged so far and for so long, making the rope short enough to make a noose, he would hang himself, knowing he had put the sun under the wheel and run over the light one too many times. “The wife and child thought well of the man’s purpose with the rope. That he documented his sins by it and bound himself to the crack of his own abyss. They believed he would one day no longer sweat with the blade of the ax but that he would sit calm and peaceful within the circle of unbroken rope. That is the hope of the abused.

“The son knew if he helped his mother, he too would get poured upon by his father’s lava and he was still burnt from yesterday. If the boy had it to do over, he would do something to help his mother, but something is hard to come by when you’re only nine years old and stalked by the shattering blow. You are so exhausted that to not be beaten is to squeeze into the crevice of light, even if it means your mother is beaten in your place. “It was a terrible day to be hurt in the kitchen. The sun coming in the windows, the spots of light looking like lemons scattered across the floor. The screen door opening the room to the sweet air and the clothesline outside, where the just-washed dish towels flapped in the breeze. “All the while, the woman lay there on the floor, doing her best shield. That was her way. To be still. To take it and all its killing. It was like seeing a handkerchief try to cling to a window screen during a tornado. You knew she would lose in the end, and when the blow to her face came, there was no more clinging to the screen for a chance.

He was sorry about earlier, he said as he looked down at her trembling hands folded on her lap. When it got later, he always got sorry about earlier. “She said it was all right. The way she always did.

I looked up at the sky and the God who should’ve done better.

Grand’s body wasn’t heavy but his death was, and sometimes I thought I’d have to let go of the handle because the burden was just too much.

The ride back home was a quiet one, and while Dad was just as far from me as the front seat, he seemed to be farther away in the low of some deep field. Come on up from the field, Dad, is what I wanted to say. It’s what I should’ve said, but I left him there. I always left him there. Grand’s death had and would always cause little spaces between us all. Between me and Dad, me and Mom. Between the two of them. Little spaces we got good at keeping. Sometimes we’d walk toward each other like it was hard, like we had water up to our waists and it was a fight to move through it. That’s how Dad walked toward Mom when we got home. When we got home and she, having been waiting, held her hands hard into her waist, almost like a punch to the gut. Dad struggled through the water to get to her, his grief leaning back behind a smile to say, “You know, my love, the funniest thing happened on the way to the cemetery…”

I did have my old locker. Same combination. Who would’ve thought a combination could make me so happy? But I liked having the same. It was from that old life, and sometimes I thought I could just spin the lock back to it. I could open the locker and find the old Fielding, a summer younger. I could open it to Grand. There he’d be, squeezed inside, and I could just pull him out. Dresden too. Just keep pulling out all the things lost.

“Sal said to me I might have to defend the devil just once in my life. I said I didn’t think I could do that. He said to defend the devil is to defend the broken glass. “When glass is whole, it’s good. When it’s broken, it’s bad. It’s swept up. It’s thrown away. Sometimes thrown away too soon. Think of a window, Sal said. Imagine a violence breaking that window. All those shards of broken glass fall to the floor. “The violence is inside the house now, wrestling you. It could kill you, so you grab one of the shards and stab. The violence dies and you are saved. Saved by the broken glass. Isn’t that a funny thing? To be saved by the bad. “Sometimes, not sweeping that bad up and throwing it away will save you in the end. It just might. So to defend the devil means defending the good of the bad. That’s what I was doing, Fielding. Hoping that all those folks are just shards of broken glass and one day in the future, they’ll save someone by being just that.

I’d look at that light, squint into its brightness, and think I saw Sal’s eyes looking up at those birds just as he always had. After all, that’s how I knew Sal was no devil. Because of the way he looked at the birds.