by Allison Rios
Blinding light shrouded the horizon the way the sun did in the clear, early mornings of the small town. The air felt warmer somehow and AJ suddenly understood why – the light was no sunrise. It was fire. From the east to the west and back again, the orange and yellow monster ripped across the horizon stealing not only the food in its grips, but also the hopes and security of the people who grew it from tiny seeds just months before.
“Oh, shit,” he whispered, his body twitching with the urge to help somehow, anyhow. “What … what can we do?”
His thoughts stalled at the feeling of Helen’s hand on his arm.
“There’s nothing,” she said, the sadness more evident now in her voice than her simple tears had been. “The men are out there doing what they can to stop the blaze but it’s too much. It’s just too much. Everyone is going to lose everything!”
“I’ve got to go help,” AJ said.
His eyes transfixed upon a blaze both frightening and magnificent in the same breath. By then Max had woken up and the two pushed their way through the door and into the yard.
“This is not a good omen,” Max whispered.
The slow movement of AJ’s feet stretched into a run, no thoughts other than the need to stop the fire. If he had glanced down, he might have noticed he was hardly dressed to battle a blaze – except that maybe the least amount of clothing might help withstand the heat.
He reached the gathering of men, stretched out in a line and moving the heavy steel watering systems where they would best stop the burn as dirt edged its way between the toes of his shoeless feet. Others were attempting a controlled burn of some of the crops to prevent the further spread. Most of the rest of the town – women, children – were gathered on the streets, watching all of their hard work literally burn up into a thick sheet of gray smoke that rose into the sky. Mothers held their children close, cradling their heads in a futile attempt to assure them that they would be just fine, that there would still be money for food that year. AJ scanned the faces and it was evident to him that the children knew better – their Christmas presents were burning in those very crops. Somehow though he knew their tears weren’t for the lost gifts, but rather the pain that this would cause the parents who loved them.
AJ joined in the fight, using the very muscles that had been writhing in pain earlier to push the heavy sprinklers around. The curves where the muscles rose up out of his skin were highlighted by the sweat that drenched him and the light of the brightly colored fire in front of them.
Addie nearly stopped pushing, losing her grip on the sprinkler as she watched him. He had no ties to this town that she knew of – Gram had described him as simply a drifter. He himself said he’d be leaving soon. Yet here he was, she thought, putting out a fire that did not affect him one way or the other. He went where he was needed, offering the strength of his arms where other arms needed it, lifting a tired and defeated farmer to the safety of the street when the man had lost all energy.
He looked like a soldier; a superhero from a movie. The pleas of the man next to her woke her from the dream state, snapping her back to the reality of the fire in front of her. She went back to pushing, the system moving nowhere no matter how hard she threw her weight forward. All of a sudden the metal began moving and as she glanced upward, she saw hands. Her eyes followed the lines of the arms until she saw tattoos; in particular, a rugged cross. She studied it, the ridges of the cross inked as though they were chiseled from stone, which was appropriate considering his body seemed to be a statue carved from the same.
“Push, Addie!” he yelled, mostly to distract her.
He didn’t need her help, even she knew that. He was trying to assist her while allowing her to keep the dignity of her efforts alive. She leaned her weight into it with him and the steel began to move.
Hours later, the fire’s blaze transformed into a sunrise as the last of the fire dwindled. The bright oranges and reds from the sun were not reassuring, however, despite their ability to change the idea behind the colors from raging agony to a thing of beauty. Fatigued and covered in soot, those from the town sat down in what was left of the crops.
The shards of plants dug into their skin leaving cuts and scrapes as a reminder of the morning’s pain. AJ didn’t even feel it; he was numb. Tired and numb.
Next to him on the ground sat Addie, her crumpled body lightly shaking – from the morning chill or the realization of what had happened, he didn’t know. Instinctively, he inched nearer and pulled her into his arms. The soot and dirt didn’t matter; neither noticed it. What he did notice was the stream of tears penetrating her soft, pink cheeks. Her eyelashes were amazingly long and he couldn’t believe he hadn’t noticed them before. She curled into his side, burying herself in his chest to hide the pain she was feeling.
“One hell of a week,” she whispered, starting to laugh.
She couldn’t stop it. The high-pitched sound escaped her lips in lengths and she tried to muffle it unsuccessfully.
“I’m sorry – I shouldn’t laugh! Why am I laughing? Oh my God, this is awful!” She kept going though, unable to shut off the faucet.
The laughter wasn’t long-lasting, quickly replaced by an onslaught of tears that would have blended in at a funeral. He pulled her even tighter to him, the arms that had been so strong hours before as they maneuvered steel into place now softer than she could have imagined.
The warmth of his body eased the shakes she had, although a new set arose from the strength of her sobs. They were the sound of a future lost; at least this year’s future.
AJ carried her back to her house, opening up the familiar screen door and setting her on her bed. He wanted to stay but knew better; Gram had already taken over caring for her. AJ let himself out and slipped back over to the B&B.
“Look at you,” Helen whispered.
She noticed the cuts on his body. Cuts that in hours would be gone and he’d have to find a way to explain or resign to wearing pants and long sleeved shirts for a while.
“It’s no big deal. I’m just going to go back up to bed.”
“Not like that you’re not. Come here. You’ve got to clean those up or they’ll get infected.”
AJ didn’t fight her; it would have been a losing battle. He pulled up a chair at the counter while she readied a bowl with soap and water.
“I can see that you still love her,” Helen said, her gentle hands erasing the bloody evidence of a painful evening.
The wounds left behind, like the vision of that fire, would be enough to keep the event alive in his mind for years if not eternity. Her hands moved soothingly, tenderly over his body, trying to be the mother he no longer had.
“It’s not that simple, Helen,” he replied.
His eyes glued to the white linoleum tiles beneath his feet. It was only then he realized he still only had his shorts on, but oddly didn’t care. It seemed so irrelevant after all they’d seen.
“Then make it simple.”
“Helen, I don’t want to talk about this.”
“I don’t care. How about that?”
She craned her head around his shoulder so that he could see her. Her grin was too much – no matter how much he wanted her to drop the topic, he also wanted to wrap her up in his arms and pretend she were his mother.
“What happened with you two? I see the way you look at her; I saw how you two were just a couple weeks ago. What happened?”
“Life. Life is what happened.”
“Life always happens,” she replied, the sound of water dripping off the rag and ringing in his ears as she twisted the old hand towel over the sink. “If you just let life happen, you’re going to miss out on a whole lot, young man. Sometimes we have to make things happen instead of waiting for fate.”
“That sort of defeats the purpose of fate, doesn’t it?” he said with a raised eyebrow, thinking he caught her.
“Fate is whatever you make it, son. You think that our lives are really all planned out for us by the cosmic forces or God o
r whatever you believe in?”
“Yeah.”
He did – he was proof, wasn’t he? And he knew for a fact that lives were indeed predestined. No one knew what the outcome of their life was, but the path to get there had been determined long ago. The gift he’d been given was a fate. It wasn’t a choice of his. Well, not entirely.
She pulled up the stool next to him and sat down, one hand on his solid back, the other folding over his hand resting on his leg.
“Fate is not a plan that is already in place for us. It’s an excuse people use when they’re too weak to make choices for themselves. It’s a backup plan, a way to claim that they don’t need to grow up and live their own lives.”
AJ cringed. It actually made sense.
“My point, kiddo, is that you need to stop thinking that the whole world has this plan in place for you and start thinking about what your own plan would be. If that girl is the one you want, then do something about it. Or you might just find that ‘fate’ finds someone for her while you get to watch.”
She was nothing if not smart.
12 BULLIED
As a little girl, Addie had been a spitfire. It had been more a defense mechanism though, a way to protect herself against the constant taunting from the cruel children at school, who mocked her for her crazy mother.
The teasing bothered her at first, sending her home as the final bell rang in the school building with a heart full of anger and a face full of tears. She grew as scared and terrified of her mother as everyone else seemed to be, eventually joining in their mocking of the woman less to fit in and more to feel relief at being able to openly be mad at her.
As the years went on she found herself in high school. Although there weren’t many bullies in her class, the small number had turned their attention to the more important matters of teenagers – the opposite sex. The taunting dwindled and the stares decreased. She still didn’t have any real friends and after how she’d seen children act and turn on each other, she wasn’t sure she wanted any. Being alone in a bubble of quiet was something she much preferred.
The loneliness grew though, leaving another rip in her heart that began joining up with the one her mother had left. She’d gotten so numb to feeling anything – blocking out the anger, the sadness, and the fear – that her body seemed to have built immunity to emotion. It had protected her over the years, keeping out the words and actions of others so that the notions behind these things would not penetrate her soul. Now, as she watched the couples littering the miniscule hallways of the high school, she felt more alone than ever and yearned to feel needed and loved by someone. She wanted that unconditional love.
The choices hadn’t always been grand and she took to accepting any attention doted on her from the boys at school. Good or bad, closeness blended into jealousy or possessiveness and all those emotions made her feel as though she belonged to someone. She had never really belonged to anyone, save Gram, and despite the cruelty behind some of the boys she dated there was a small hope that she was really theirs.
Robert changed all that. He’d come in and rescued her from poor decision after poor decision. He’d made her his friend first, opening her eyes to the possibility that friendship can fill that loneliness she had built into her life. His words and actions surpassed a knight in shining armor, as he taught her to believe in her worth and have faith in the world.
“You’re beautiful, you know that?” Robert said, sitting next to her on the roof of his truck as they watched the sunset on the horizon in one of her most vivid memories.
He’d told her she was pretty a handful of times, but beautiful had never escaped his lips.
“Shut up,” she said, feeling the blush burning the olive skin on her cheeks. “You have to say that.”
“I don’t have to say anything. I want to say it.”
The blush burned brighter, her eyes unable to look at him. He made her feel – well, that was it. He made her feel. And that was something new to her. She liked feeling anything but hurt.
“You want to go out sometime, Addie?” he asked, gently looking her way as his white t-shirt moved in the breeze and wrapped more tightly to his body. “Like, a date?”
“I thought you don’t date.”
He’d told her he wasn’t going to be dating anyone anytime soon. Why was he changing his mind all of a sudden?
“I don’t. Not until you were ready. I wanted to wait for you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah,” he laughed, his tanned hand sliding over across the hood to scoop hers into it. “Yeah, for you. You said you’d never really had a friend when we first met, so I thought that might be the best way to go at first – give you something you never had. I think we’re pretty good friends now, right?”
“Right.”
“Then, I want to give you something else you’ve never had and that’s the love of a boy who really cares about you. Who knows you inside and out like a book he’s read a thousand times.”
Had he just used the word love, she wondered? She had to be hallucinating.
“Robert…” she whispered, pulling her hand out of his and folding her own fingers together on her lap as her legs gently dangled off the front of the truck.
“Is that a yes?”
“We can’t.”
“What do you mean we can’t?”
“I mean, you’re you. And I’m me. And we can’t.”
“Addie, that makes no sense. I want to. Don’t you want to try?”
“I’m broken, Robert. I’m a broken person and I’m okay with that now. But you are this … this bigger than life person, this good person, and you would be ruined if you dated me.”
“Ruined? That’s a little much.”
“I’m like napalm to reputations, Robert.”
He laughed. She truly was a drama queen.
“I like napalm. Especially cute napalm.”
“Robert! It’s true! I mean, look around here. Everyone in town would talk. You’d be labeled in the same class as the losers I’ve dated, branded for life as the same. People would crucify you.”
“I don’t care what people think.”
“Yes you do.”
“No I don’t.”
“Well I do. It’s bad enough I’m such a let-down. I am not taking someone decent down with me.”
She lay back on the hood of the truck, tucking her hands behind her head. The boy was crazy, she thought.
“Addie, sometimes, it’s not your choice. Life, it just happens. It’s not our choice who we fall in love with; it just happens.”
“What did you say?”
“I said it’s not always your choice.”
“After that.”
“I said I love you. You know I do. There’s no way you couldn’t know. I’ve said it to you a thousand times.”
“As a friend.”
“We’ve always been more than friends Addie,” he whispered, placing his hand in between hers instead of pulling hers away into his, giving her the control she needed over the situation. “I’ve just been waiting for you to be ready, taking everything slow.”
“You don’t love me. And I can’t love you.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
The question caught her off guard. She didn’t know which was the correct clarification.
“Can’t. We’re too young.”
“You’re honestly going to say that Addie? All you’ve been searching for is someone to love you. It’s all we talk about! Well, all you talk about and I listen to. How this guy broke your heart and that guy was a cheater. Now you’ve got someone real right in front of you. Someone who wants to love you the way you want to be loved. Someone who already does love you like that. I’m here and I’ve been here and I am never going to walk away from you. Even if you can tell me without hesitation that you don’t love me, I will still be standing next to you tomorrow as your friend, waiting for the day you might change your mind.”
“Robert!”
“Don’t think about
it. Don’t say anything. I don’t expect you to just be in love with me. I want to be here with you, in this moment. In tomorrow’s moments. That’s all. No pressure. We’ll go as slow as you want. I can just hold your hand for a year if that’s what you need.” He smiled at her and she finally looked back at him. “You’re worth the wait, Addie Jenko.”
She smiled, the tears stinging her eyes as she fought to keep them from breaking the dam and flowing. She wanted to tell him she loved him too, but she already knew he knew it somehow.
As the sun set on the horizon, Addie finally found what she had been searching for as long as she could remember: a real home. And she found it in him.
13 SEARCHING
Addie lay on the couch with Rose intertwined in her arms, sound asleep. She’d been trying to recoup the rest, energy, and strength she had lost the night before. As she went over the images in her head: the intense heat from the fire, the sound of tears as the town wept in unison, the smell of smoke still – and perhaps, permanently – etched into her clothing, she realized her thoughts kept going back to AJ.
She didn’t really know him. But damn if her heart didn’t feel like it completely did.
The unknown was the worst. She could deal with forgetting things, she figured. The thought of people lying to her, covering things up – those were the unsettling thoughts which bothered her. She was anxious and wanted to shift, but held her spot so as to not wake the sleeping little girl beside her.
Who was he to keep the truth from her? And Gram was the worst – Gram refused to talk at all. Not one peep. Addie would ask and Gram would walk away from the conversation, a stoic look upon her face. It’s not like she could ask the vast expanse of friends she had in town. There weren’t even rumors that she caught whispers of – just dead silence. And for a town like Lee, the silence in and of itself spoke volumes.