Aquaboogie

by Susan Straight

  “Nigga, please,” she said. “Why the hell would I want to look at a damn fire? Cause that’s where you’ll end up. All these years, that’s all you want to do, sit and watch flames. Every damn summer, Darnell.”

  “Wasn’t nothing else to do. Go shopping at the mall with my Gold Card?”

  “No. Uh-uh, don’t try and put it on me. You got some death wish, like you want to try hell out before you get there. Popping and burning, and you in a trance. All week I gotta think about you getting hurt, and you got the nerve to want me looking at fire now.”

  “That’s just the baby talking,” Esther said. “Y’all ain’t gotta holler and argue.”

  “If that’s how the baby talks now, I’m in serious shit when it gets here,” Darnell said, getting into the Fiat. He was glad his father had gone inside. “Come on, Bren, I’ll take you home.” He knew better.

  “Take me to the movies, somewhere so I don’t have to sit at home and wait for you again. We going out now.” Her feet angled outward, like she was off-balance, and Darnell wanted to get out and put his hand behind her back, to straighten it, help her to the car. But he couldn’t. His shoulders, heavy as sandbags, held him against the seat.

  “I’m gone,” he said softly, starting up the car, and he didn’t watch their eyebrows.

  The sun slid away, a dull nickel, while he tried to remember which of the small roads led closest to that part of the river-bottom. Red glowed near the Jurupa Bridge: he saw the flames bend forward, slanted by the wind before they climbed the sky again. He drove to the end of the road, around a swath of cleared land, and found the taillights he knew would be gathered there.

  The older white men with baseball caps and binoculars, the ones he’d always imagined were ex-firemen, they leaned against their cars and pressed at the barbed-wire fence sagging in the sand. A lone palm tree caught and the top burned wildly, a sparkler held still to the sky. Darnell stood far from the others, hearing kids on bikes behind him, voices high and threading through the dark. The flames were maybe seventy-five feet, but they were far away, shimmering in the bamboo. He wasn’t close enough for the shaking silence he wanted, and he paced back and forth, snapping twigs under his feet in time with the cracks of the fire. Brenda used to sit in the open doorway of the car, last summer, two summers ago, and she’d fall asleep, lean back with her feet still on the ground. Her knees were round and pale as faces, watching him. The panic fisted inside him again—his father would have taken Brenda home by now. Her father hadn’t even spoken to her since she told him about the baby. Darnell heard the murmurs of the men and went back to the car. He watched the fire pulse until the others were gone; the flames shifted away, and cold ashes stung inside his nose. Trying a few more of the rutted narrow roads, he drove and swerved at the dead ends; none came closer to the glow.

  The dashboard swam in front of him. The apartment was dark when he passed by slowly, not even TV light in the curtains.

  “None of your buddies here? No Jack Daniels, Yukon Jack?”

  Fricke shrugged. “High alert. I have to be sharp.” He smiled and poured Darnell some coffee. “I knew you’d be back early.”

  “Yeah, I watched the sky,” Darnell drawled, sitting at the table. “I sniffed the wind like a good rangehand.” The windows began to turn purple and lighten. “Why you up?”

  He raised his brows. “Why are you?”

  “At least eighty-five yesterday, and the wind’s still up,” Darnell said. “You tell the boss man I left?” He raised both hands. “No-wait, it doesn’t matter anyway, doesn’t really matter what I do, right?”

  Fricke looked at him. “You ever want to toss a match? When you were a kid, waiting for one, you ever throw a match just to see?”

  Darnell stared at his eyes, blue like Levis, old ones. “No.”

  “I did. I was thirteen. Got caught, ended up in Juvie.”

  Darnell stood up and put his cup in the sink. He heard muttering from the hall—Perez and Doyle were awake. “So?” he said, but then he held his lip with his teeth.

  “It’s December third.” Darnell didn’t know what to say. The sun edged out and the sky was immediately bright as noon. No moisture wavered anywhere.

  “Scott’s to’ up again, huh?” he said.

  “Does that mean he’s playing dead?”

  “What?”

  “Toe up, playing dead.” Fricke raised his foot stiffly.

  “Shit, man, you guys and your r’s. Whore of the day. Ho. Tore up. To’ up—he’s drunk.” He went outside to dump the trash.

  By the time they got the call, before lunch, the fire had been going since early morning, just about the time he and Fricke had been drinking coffee and looking out the windows. On the truck, Fricke said, “It was way deep in the canyon and the lookouts didn’t even see it till now. Big time. Zero humidity, and the fuel’s right. Up there behind Ortega Camp.”

  “What kinda asshole’s building a campfire now?” Scott said.

  “Uh-uh,” Fricke said. “Target shooter sparked it. That brush hasn’t gone up in fifty, sixty years. Crews are coming from Ventura and San Diego. We got the west flank, cause there’s a bunch of new houses out there past Seven Canyons. I’m sure the residents aren’t home, since they drove their Beamers to L.A. to work this morning.”

  “What are you talking about?” Perez said.

  “Nothing. Hope you guys slept good last night.”

  They passed the houses, behind a wall and wrought-iron gate that said “Canyon Estates.” Farther up the highway, they dipped over the ridge and Fricke said, “Your date, gentlemen. She’s gonna take you through the night.”

  They started the line, leaning into the wind, and Darnell felt the prickle above his hipbones, stronger even than when Brenda pulled her fingers up his thighs. His shoulders stretched wider, skin melting away. “Goddamn this wind!” Scott shouted.

  “Goddamn a target shooter!” Corcoran shouted back, and smoke flew into their mouths.

  Fricke ran down the line, back to the truck, and Darnell saw the smile. The wooden handle was slippery-slick in his hands, the creosote flying in chips. He couldn’t hear the others, only the roar he knew was coming toward them. He could never tell what time it was, but they were facing the sun when the tankers dropped water and phoscheck. The liquid hung thick in the air for a moment before it dropped.

  In the early darkness, they could see the south flank racing up one of the canyons; they went over the ridge and down into the next descent, and Perez went out with a bad ankle. Fricke muttered beside Darnell, closer in the dark, and the roar was like a blanket over them, high above the harsh breathing and cusswords, the skittering of animals against leaves and branches.

  The wind lifted the smoke and then brought it back around, gusting even harder toward midnight. The metallic taste of what he’d eaten still ringing in his throat, he lay down with the others. “If the wind shifts, it’ll be here in fifteen minutes,” Fricke said. “Just catnap.”

  Darnell felt the decomposed granite, crumbly against him. Seven Canyons—he remembered Fricke telling him about the firestorm that swirled through there, so many years ago. Like a bomb, a tornado, he’d said, picking up speed, running down the chutes and charring a crew of seven. Each of the canyons was named for them. Darnell thought hard—Miller, that was one of them, and Schmidt. The next gust was so hard it threw pebbles against Fricke’s gear, next to him. Darnell stood up. He imagined bears running from the fire, toward him, coyotes low and tails streaming, raccoons humping along. The fire ate at the chaparral in waves, rolling fast as a tumbleweed. He thought of the heliotorch—the narrow flames men would drop in the spring. The police helicopter he’d see every night on the Westside, at home. He gripped the shovel and walked away from the others. Fricke was wandering around, on lookout, he knew.

  Up the canyon, toward the ridge where the fire would crown. Fricke would see it and yell, “Crowning!” The others would stagger to their feet, clumsy as bears in all their gear. He began to run toward th
e shaking silence, the air being pulled by the flames, pushed by the wind. If you dug a hole six feet deep, you’d have enough to breathe when the firestorm raced over, sucking the oxygen from your breath, your mouth, reaching all the way inside to pull it from your lungs. He stopped to touch a tree, felt it shaking, and closed his eyes—the roar was close, strong. And then it was a deer, bursting from around the tree, a doe leaping into the canyon and past him. He remembered them, their bellies tight in the spring, walking slowly up the napalmed feed trails, their round pale awkwardness the same color as Brenda’s bellyskin, which was lighter, thinner, every time he went home. He turned, the wind-smoke swirling around his ears, crowning now. Fricke? Was that Fricke calling “Tucker!” or one of the others cussing in his sleep? He lay next to a white boulder, a dome beside his arm, the trembling in his face, his coat an envelope he could breathe inside. He saw the veins inside his eyelids, the veins along Brenda’s hips, traced and crossing on a map. His boots pointed to the sky. Toes up. They were heavy, and he flapped them against the ground, letting them fall to the outside and then pulling them back inward, up, pounding the toes together so hard he felt his shins quiver. He had to keep up the pounding until Fricke came.

  back

  PASHION / JANUARY

  EVERY NIGHT I USE to think, I have to get up, because it always like this. Wait, listen, hold my own breathing till I hear him. I would breathe in his rhythm, try and take in the air he done let out his mouth, back then when it was still sweet and warm, like years ago. Most of the time now it smell sick, and there not enough of it for him, so how can it be any left for me to pull in? Now it stink like sores cover up too long, like the mess inside his lungs, but then when I turn away, the wind blow through the cracks in the window, pushing past my shoulders so cold, and at least L. C. air warm on my face. His breathing use to be strong and deep, so loud I wonder how big them ribs must be. They curve up like a huge turtle shell, then his belly cave in below. I would have my face hard by his chest when we first marry, and the fold in his shirt rub my cheekbone real soft, fall and rub again, put me to sleep even if I were worried about something. I would start to sleep on his bones, be so tired after washing for all them people, and later in the night, I always wake up to find my head done slid down to his stomach, resting there. Now his coughing shake the whole bed, shake loose dreams I don’t want in my head. Everything just tremble for a minute when he stop, and I wait. I don’t sleep at all, the whole night. Sometimes I be tired, sometimes no. But I lay here all night with my head up in L. C. back, be afraid to dream, afraid to let him breathe without me. I know each breath count.

  It was a time when I would just get up with the shaking, stay out in the kitchen till the sun come up. When I first know he was sick, I would wait every minute out there at the table, wait for him to leave this world, his breath sound so bad. The air catch in his chest like a fingernail drag down a screen. I hear him cough and wonder did he still see them tiny sparkles behind his eyes like I do when I cough real deep? Them little showers of light I used to watch when I were a baby girl, red and falling I use to see, and then I would cough even more. L. C. must don’t see them after all these months of coughing. They must be use up.

  Back then, when I realize he were coughing all through the night, into each morning and don’t stop, not worse and not better, I couldn’t stay in the bed and listen. When the sky start to get purple then, I would put on the grits, the only thing he eat, and everything was quiet but for L. C. The cars ain’t started yet for the morning, the people still asleep, and the pot clink just a second, like money, on the stove. The grits falling out the bag, marking the minutes like sand in a egg timer I seen at a white lady’s house. One morning the light in the kitchen seem to turn pale so slow, and I couldn’t hold nothing inside. I let the tears sink into the grits and disappear, not like when you catch them on your cheek or in a tissue and they stays wet and clear. Salt sinking into the grits, salt I pour on top, through my fingers. I never cry so he can see me. I heard him pushing hisself up on his elbows, heard the bed cracking exactly that, and he call, “Pashion?” the way he do. I stood there next to him holding the water glass, but he just looked at me. That weren’t what he need. He lay back down, had his eyes open, shake two or three times like a cold bird. I know he trying to push that cough down in his chest so I won’t get out the bed every night. I seen the window shade moving in the draft, seen his eyes look away from me. Soon enough I be cold and trying to keep warm. I won’t be making no trail, whispering my feet across the floor like the widow upstairs, rubbing over my head back and forth trying to pass the night.

  I stay in the bed now, keep my head in the hollow down his back. When we first marry, forty-nine years ago, I were sixteen. That winter, I use to watch L. C. put oil on his arms, his chest, reach up and try to get it on his back. He were always in a hurry to get to work, cause we been in the bed playing, and he couldn’t reach nothing but the sides of his back, under the shoulders. Gray skin got left all ashy in the valley between the muscles. I use to pull the oil in from the sides and rub it down the center, where his backbone like a river. Now when I lay here, I keep a ear to that valley and wait, listen to the bubble in his chest like water running.

  The walls get settle long after midnight, cracking and popping, and I can hear the rats running through they trails. I know I’m fixing to think the same things all night, every night, like there only a few certain sounds and seeings left in me. I wait for those few. I can look at the wall and see wood, not cinderblock. When we first move to California, after the mine closed, I spent all my time looking in the street, seeing the light shine off the cars and puddles. All I want to look at then was West Virginia and my porch shadow, when the moon full and the birches outside my door look silver thin like needles in with the black trunks of the other trees. I use to watch the sun going down behind the buildings here, put my face up to the screen while I was cooking, and sometimes when it was a breeze, I could smell the night coming like we were at home, clean like water and trees was close by. The wind stop, and then I smell the air coming back out the room behind me, warm from the greens on the stove, but like somebody else’s air. L. C. knew. He came up behind me and said, “It get dark too fast here. It be light and then gone. No shadows.”

  We came cause L. C. cousin Rosa tell us Rio Seco warm, better for his lung. But the rent so high. We have to stay in a senior apartment, no house.

  I look at the walls and see wood floors, the wood I split for the stove, the sides of the washtub I had my face in trying to get the black out of L. C. clothes. I smell the boards and trunks of trees when they get wet, smell the smoke.

  Sometimes I think I can’t lay here no more, I can’t wait for them seeings and listen to these walls with they little feet scrabbling and hear the sound L. C. make in his chest all night. I want to get up and be far away from him, take down them shirts I hang to dry in the kitchen, put one round my back and sit up in the front window. I see the shadows of them shirts from where I lay, I see the way they hanging over the stove. They L. C. old flannel ones, the only thing he wear now. This morning I caught myself fixing to pull out a sleeve turn the wrong way; it was light-color in the sun, all the checks and stripes pale as nothing, so I reach in to get the cuff and then I realize that is the right side. The shirt too soft and thin, like the back of L. C. arms when I pull him over on his side so he can breathe.

  But if I get up, if I leave, he can feel the bed shake, and he call out for me. This bed tell you anything. Long time ago, he were trying to get in this bed real quiet, been out late and knew I was fixing to get mad. He was easing into the sheets and a spring busted and shot up through the mattress. Scratched him on the behind like a cat, long and deep, and I laughed so hard. He still got that scar. I use to run my finger down the scab when it were healing, wait for that right minute to catch him there, just to hear him cuss and fuss.

  I seen how he got most all his scars, because we was together so young. When I marry him, Mama say, “Pashion,
he a baby, only twenty. He got nothing.” She want me to wait for someone with more, a older man from town want a young wife. But I don’t want no old man like she had. I never remember my father, only my mother walking all them years, fourteen years, like the widow upstairs. A house empty, no deep voices and nobody to hear her feet on the floor, only the dogs sleeping under the house.

  It start to rain. I can hear the cars on the streets blocks and blocks away, moving like a fast touch of wind. And a train, so tiny calling that it could be a dog howling in somebody trees. It be so cold now, in winter, and my fingers curl up like I’m fixing to push the scrub pad round the sink or the floor with my knuckles, getting a stain off. My hands don’t come straight. When I yawn, seem like my back relax and a big chill of air go in my mouth. Then I start shivering and can’t stop till I stiff up my back again. It like the air inside me now, and it determine to stay cold. Mama use to say, “That why you cover the mouth when you yawn, so nothin bad fly inside.” But my fingers too bent up, and if I put my hand close to my mouth, the nails touch my cheek hard like a rake.

  I can see by the shadows in the kitchen it about five in the morning. It get darker for a while, the darkest cause the moon gone. I push my face closer to L. C. back, and I can feel the rib bone under my cheek, feel that rasp inside him come right out the skin. What kind of black they say in his lung? What color? Black like his eyebrows use. to be? Like when his fingernail use to fall off, a purple black? He use to bang one up every week at work. Black inside the nail, inside the finger. His skin still smooth like a flower petal beside his eyes, I look every day, and the sleep stay dry as dust in his lashes sometimes in the mornings. In a while, cars start passing on the street, sending noise up to the window to mix with his breath, with all the feet that start to walking in the building, on the sidewalk, all shaking and humming like waiting in a church.