The Dragon's Playlist

by Laura Bickle

  Nothing happened. With a growl of frustration, I flopped over, and kicked at the offending piece of metal. I booted it as hard as I could, but it barely groaned in answer.

  Damn it. I ran through the inventory of the things I kept in the trunk of the car. Maybe I could get a good grip on it with the clamps from the jumper cables and work it free. I began to belly out from under the car.

  A vehicle rushed past, close enough to the Chevette to cause it to rock. Pebbles spewed in my face. I swore, rubbing at my eyes. The vehicle stopped several feet ahead, backed up.

  This could be good, or it could be bad. It could be good if a good Samaritan stopped. Bad if it were someone with bad intentions toward a young woman in the middle of nowhere.

  The engine of the vehicle shut off. Judging by the big tires, it was a truck. A door slammed, and a pair of grungy work boots crunched toward me.

  My fingers dug into the gravel. It would take a lot to dislodge me from under the car, but...

  The boots stopped at the front bumper of the car, and a man squatted down.

  He was familiar: light brown hair, hazel eyes, wide smile. My heart leaped three scales into my throat.

  “Hi, Di. Fancy meeting you here.”

  My sweaty hands tightened. “Hi, Jason.”

  Jason was my high school boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend.

  Damn it.

  CHAPTER 4

  I’D REALLY HAD NO INTENTION of seeing Jason again after I left for college. I figured I’d ride off into the sunset, and he’d continue to mind the ranch.

  That was the plan, anyway, agreed to without rancor as we sat in my tire swing about a year ago. It had been my idea, not his. Moving forward to freshman year and all. Shiny new beginnings.

  But my heart inexplicably twitched when I grasped his hand. Whether it was simply a flutter of familiarity or something else, I couldn’t tell. Maybe moving backward.

  Gravel scraped against my jeans as he hauled me effortlessly out from under the bumper. I stumbled awkwardly, trying to avoid falling into his arms like some clichéd romcom actress. I wound up with my butt planted against the hood of the Chevette. I snatched my hand away a beat too quickly and knotted my filthy fingers behind my back.

  Time had been good to him. The sun had faded his blue jeans, lightened his brown hair, and tanned his arms and face.

  His gaze fixed on my blue hair. He reached out reflexively to touch it, then pulled away. “You look good.”

  “You, too.” I rubbed the back of my neck, hiding behind that fall of blue and blond hair.

  “How’s college?”

  I looked down. A lump of bruised pride rose in my throat, and I couldn’t speak. He was probably just making idle conversation, but the question was too sharp. Like talking around a mouthful of glass. All I could do was shake my head.

  He knew me well enough not to press.

  He knew when I was close to tears.

  Jason moved toward me. I thought he meant to hug me, but he dropped to the ground to crawl under the car.

  I rubbed my drippy nose, grateful for the privacy.

  “I see your problem,” he muttered from underneath the chassis.

  I steadied my voice. “Yeah. That big metal thing that looks like a casserole dish.”

  “Yup.”

  I bit my lip. It was probably gonna be expensive. Nothing that made that much noise was ever cheap. “Is it the oil pan?”

  A squeaking, grating noise emanated from under the car. “Nope.”

  I heard something break, the stress of metal, and shut my eyes. Damn it.

  Gravel skittered against my ankles as Jason crawled out from under the car. In his dirt-blackened hands, he held a perforated tray of metal. “Here you go.”

  I took the piece of metal from him. It was still warm, heavy. “What is it?”

  “The heat shield from your catalytic converter.”

  I knew what a catalytic converter was. When it went out on a car, your engine light came on, and it smelled like rotten eggs. Three hundred fifty dollars, easy. “Oh.”

  He rubbed his hands against his jeans. “Don’t worry. You don’t really need it.”

  “It’s okay to drive?”

  “Oh yeah. Just don’t go off-roading on any dry grass, or you might set it on fire.” He grinned and pantomimed flames with his fingers.

  I sighed happily and hugged the grungy metal to my chest. “Thank you.”

  “No problem.” He gestured back at my car with his chin. “You heading home?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ll follow you back to your house to make sure nothing else falls off. Been meaning to say hello to your dad for a bit, anyway.”

  “He’s...not well.” My throat closed up.

  “I know.” He started to say something else, but stopped himself. “I’ll come, if that’s okay with you.”

  I nodded wordlessly as Jason walked back to the truck. After chucking the broken metal into the backseat of the Chevette, I cranked the engine. He waited for me to pull onto the road first and followed behind me.

  I glanced back at the rearview mirror, at his silhouette beyond the glass.

  Nothing from my past seemed far behind.

  *

  “Look what the cat dragged in!”

  I wasn’t sure which one of us was the cat, in my mother’s eyes. She’d grabbed Jason and kissed his cheek before she kissed mine. My parents had always loved Jason, and he’d been a fixture at my mom’s kitchen table for years. Perhaps selfishly, I’d expected that to end after we’d broken up. A solid finale. It seemed as if I’d left, but he hadn’t.

  With casual familiarity, Jason headed toward the living room. He didn’t flinch to see my father ensconced in his chair and plastic tubing. He plunked down right beside him on the couch, and my father’s eyes lit up.

  “How’s the game going?” Jason gestured at the buzzing television.

  “Eh,” my father rasped. “Cleveland’s down three at the bottom of the fourth.”

  “Their pitching’s good this year.”

  “Not as good as last year.”

  I stood in the doorway to the kitchen, listening. Behind me, my mother was taking a pan out of the oven and humming to herself. Before me, my father and Jason chattered about the banality of baseball. It was almost as if the doorway rendered me invisible, caught me on the threshold of an almost-normal world that sounded like the tinny crack of a bat and smelled like roast beef.

  Maybe it was the new normal.

  My mother broke the spell: “Could you grab the dishes, Di?”

  I moved automatically toward the cupboard, counted out four plates, and moved to set the kitchen table.

  Mom shook her head. “We’ll eat in the living room. Your father has a hard time sitting on these chairs.”

  My mother scooped roast beef, potatoes, carrots, pearl onions, and homemade gravy onto the dishes. My mouth watered; college dining hall food was gray and tasteless compared to my mother’s cooking. I brought the plates out into the living room, mindful not to spill gravy on the carpet.

  Jason had set up a TV tray close to my father, and I arranged his plate and silverware in front of him, then put the rest on the coffee table. My mother brought a sweaty pitcher of iced tea and my favorite glasses from my childhood: faded tumblers from a fast-food restaurant that were decorated with Smurfs. She perched on the edge of the couch, fussing over my father’s food, cutting his roast into chunks. Jason sat in the middle of the couch, leaving me the end. Both my father and Jason were transfixed by the game, making critical observations about player stats while the ice crackled in our glasses.

  I watched and listened from the margins. The normalcy seeped into me. My father smiled at a double play and grimaced at the strikeouts. It was good to somehow see that he was still in there, though a lot quieter and feebler than before.

  I’d been afraid of him. Not just afraid to see him broken and dripping gravy on his t-shirt, but afraid the way a small child was scared of the first p
erson she saw in a wheelchair. I was ashamed of that. But some of it melted away as he grumbled and cheered with Jason:

  “Damn shortstop has a hole in his glove.”

  “Maybe, but I think the Sox pitcher has a nice fastball. Nice enough to sink the Indians.”

  “Feh. He’ll wear out. He always does.”

  I cleared away the dishes with my mother, wrangling sticky plastic wrap over the leftovers. My father had eaten very little.

  Jason opened the refrigerator door, almost as if he lived there. My mother pointedly turned her back to him. He took two beers from the fridge, winked at me, and slipped back into the living room. I heard the tops of the beer cans cracking open and my father’s happy sigh before my mother turned on the dish water.

  “So...Jason’s been around, I take it.” A statement, not an accusation.

  My mother scrubbed the dishes with a steady circular motion. “Yes.”

  I didn’t know how to feel. Mostly, I was just confused. “You know we’re not seeing each other anymore, right?”

  “He’s done a lot for your dad.”

  I cast a glance at the living room wall. What exactly was he trying to pull?. He’d always been a good guy. But the beer-fetching and game-watching with the ex-girlfriend’s dad was a bit much. Like he was trying to work his way back into my life. “Look, Mom, I—”

  “Your father doesn’t remember the accident.” My mom plunged her white knuckles into the sink, below the lemon-scented foam. “But Jason was one of the men who pulled him out of the mine after the cave-in.”

  “Jason?”

  It then occurred to me that I hadn’t asked Jason what had happened after we’d gone our separate ways. I knew that he hadn’t applied to college—he didn’t have the money for that—but he’d talked about joining the Highway Patrol or becoming a deputy. Maybe someday getting a peace officer certification and becoming a forest ranger. As hazy as they’d been, his ambitions hadn’t extended far from this place. My mind flashed on him as maybe a paramedic, a first responder. He’d always been that knight-in-shining-armor sort of guy.

  “He works with your father at the mine. His ventilation crew was working in a different part when the alarm went off. The foreman said he was the first one there, digging with just his hands.” My mother swallowed audibly. “He won’t admit it to anyone, but the firemen called him a hero.”

  My hand flew up to my mouth. I stood with my mother at the sink, put my other arm around her while her shoulders shook and the soap bubbles popped.

  *

  My father eventually fell asleep in front of the television, and my mother sat beside him on the couch, nursing a cup of coffee. I grabbed my violin case, and Jason and I walked outside, our feet crunching in the gravel driveway. The fireflies had just come out, and he grabbed at one. He’d always been good at that—he could catch one without hurting it. When we were little, he’d fill my empty peanut butter jar full of fireflies.

  He held his closed fist out to me. Light leaked from the seams of his fingers. In the dimness, I could see the black mine dust ground into his cuticles, like my father’s. He smiled.

  This was a game we’d played forever. I tapped his fist with my index finger, wordlessly. At that direction, he opened his hand. The unhurt firefly crawled over his palm, flickering hesitantly.

  I extended my hand, palm up, and he delicately pressed his fingers against mine so the firefly could crawl into my hand.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Meh,” he said. “No big deal. That piece of metal is useless on your car, really.”

  “That’s not what I meant. For...” I took a deep breath. “For my dad. For everything.”

  He ducked his head and looked away uneasily. “I wish I could’ve done more,” he said softly, putting his hands in his pockets.

  The firefly gained its bearings and flew from my fingertips into the darkness.

  We walked into the woods, without making a conscious decision to do so. These were familiar patterns. Old habits. I pulled my violin from its case and plucked at it as we meandered slowly, hammering out bits of a melodic cadenza. Jason put his hands to his mouth and called for barred owls. I smiled at the sound, a whoo-whoo-who-whooo that crawled past my idle notes into the darkness. It was a way of speaking and not speaking that seemed to fill the time, until I had to ask:

  “How did it happen?”

  “The mine collapse?”

  “Well...that, and...why are you working at the mine? I thought you were going to take the test to be a forest ranger?”

  He shrugged, kicked at a white pebble on the path. “They put my application on file. Aren’t going to be hiring a new class until next year, the guy at the station says. With the economy and all... Anyway. I’ve got a military recruiter up my ass. Says if I go in enlisted, he can guarantee me a position in military police. Word got around, and everybody seems to like a hero. Or what they perceive as one.”

  He paused at the foot of my tire swing tree to call the owls again. I set my violin down and climbed into the creaky swing. It spun lazily, and he gave the tire a shove.

  “You’re gonna join up and go to the Middle East?” The idea introduced a pang of fear into my stomach.

  He shook his head. “Nah. There’s nothing green there. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I liked the idea of maybe getting to see the world some. But...I don’t like the idea of being told what to do with my whole life. Of being told to go live in a sandpit somewhere and shoot people. Too much like being owned.”

  Darkness whizzed past me on the tree swing, the fireflies making streaks of light. “So you went to work for the mine instead?”

  “Yeah. Until something better comes along, at least.” He turned away, and his voice faded. “I wanted to save up money for forestry school. Money is money. And it’s more money than flipping burgers down at the Greasy Gulp.”

  I nodded.

  He exhaled. It sounded like frustration. “So...your folks say college’s been good for you.”

  I swallowed, hoping he couldn’t see my face in the dark. “It looks like that’s done.” That was the first time I’d actually said it, and the acknowledgment tasted metallic, and sharp, and real as a bottle cap.

  “How do you figure that?”

  I rubbed my cheek with the heel of my hand. “I mean, I want to go back. I really do. Maybe in fall. But…there’s only so much money to go around. And with Dad sick…it’s kind of shitty and selfish for me to be worrying about taking Calculus III in the fall and not falling behind. I just don’t know…how long this is going to last.”

  “The situation with the money or your father?”

  I shook my head, refusing to answer.

  “You’ve always been a nice person, Di. A little too nice for your own good. Responsible.”

  I snorted.

  “I know of what I speak.” His voice sounded bleak. “Doing the right thing.”

  “You don’t regret it, do you?” I challenged. How could he regret saving my father, being the hero, saving money for the future? How could he?

  “No.” It came out as a sigh. “No.”

  I picked at a hangnail. “Went to go look for a job in town today.”

  The tire swing swung slowly to a stop.

  “Not much there,” he said.

  “I’m thinking the grocery store. I’m old enough to work in the deli, now... Might be better than cashiering.”

  “You know, I could talk to my supervisor at the mine.”

  I blinked as I drifted to a stop, the toe of my sneaker poised in the dirt. “Be a miner?” I hadn’t considered it before. Not at all. But there was no reason for me to have thought it before.

  “I think you’re a bit too short for that.” He laughed. “And I shudder to imagine the damage you could do with a pickaxe.”

  I punched him on the arm. “I could bring that mountain down in a week.”

  “The office girl, Gabby, is going on maternity leave. You remember Gabby Martin from high school?”r />
  I dredged my memory. Gabby had been the class valedictorian, on the flag team. I was trying to imagine her with a kid. She was my age. “No shit?”

  “Yup. She’s ready to pop.” Jason held his hands three feet from his stomach. “Huge.”

  “Wow.” I couldn’t fathom it.

  “If you want to come down tomorrow, talk to Mr. Peters. He’s at the construction trailer. I’ll put in a good word for you ... I’m on his good side, lately.” He said the last bit with darkness.

  “Thanks. I mean it.” I felt really inadequate at that moment. And unsure that I wanted to work for the company that had put my dad in his recliner. But I didn’t see many other choices for good money. The other applications that I’d harvested were for minimum wage jobs. Little help to the family or my college fund. Maybe I should just swallow my pride, be a grown-up, and do what needed to be done...and stop holding myself above the others I loved.

  “It’s no problem, really. They need to find someone who can keep the books and do the payroll. With a year of college, you’ve probably had more math than anyone there but the engineers.”

  He called for the owls again.

  I stared down at my dusty shoes. “So...what did happen? With...my dad?”

  He was a shadow against the trunk of the tree, and it was a while before he spoke. Maybe he was listening for owls…or maybe he didn’t want to answer.

  “They’re still trying to figure it out. They were lucky, by all accounts, just initial excavation on Sawtooth Mountain. They were barely twenty feet underground when a methane bubble ignited. At least, that’s what we think, now. They’re inspecting the equipment to see what might’ve thrown up sparks, but...” He shrugged. “None of the methane detectors reportedly went off, so the EPA and the greenies are gonna be all over our asses.”

  “Greenies?” I remembered the flyers from the New Age store.

  His mouth flattened into a hard line. “Bunch of tree huggers from out of state have been protesting the last several weeks. They’re not so much interested about the safety issues as they are about water contamination. But I expect they’d use any ammunition they can get to keep us off Sawtooth Mountain.”