Tender as Hellfire

by Joe Meno

  The Chief’s eyes looked black and stern. The folds on his face tightened into a serious plain of red flesh as he went on with this unrelenting bullshit. Don’t get me wrong, as far as the adults in town went, the Chief seemed like one of the few of them I wouldn’t want to set fire to. I guess he had a kind of nobility about him.

  “My father took me out into the woods to observe an old ritual among our people. The passing of a boy into manhood.”

  He took a swig from the flask. I didn’t look away. I wanted to see if he would cough. He did.

  “He lit a sacrificial fire and asked the great earth spirits to welcome me into manhood, to help me break from my childish ways and become a leader of our people the way his father had. My father took me to the sweat lodge and we sat there for two days and prayed to Coyote and the Four Winds, and there we had visions and he told me of the promise I would fulfill to our people. On my birthday, my father took me on a great hunt.”

  His eyes were twinkling like stars in the sky, far away and silver and blue. He was drunk now for sure.

  “There was an old wolf that had been raiding our chicken coop ever since I was a child. This was no ordinary wolf. No. This was a great spirit wolf with the marking of Coyote, the trickster. He would leave only two paw prints, side by side in the snow where he tracked. Two prints like a man. He would wring the chickens’ necks but not touch their eggs, and when my mother would collect the eggs and crack them open, there would only be blood. My father had been tracking the wolf for years. He was a great hunter. He would set traps for the wolf, and when he would go to check them, they would always be empty. He had raised a whole litter of dogs to track the wolf. The pack he had raised fought with the wolf a dozen times, but the wolf would always escape. Only once had my father ever really seen the wolf, and it was that time I was ten and he had taken me with him to hunt pheasant. This all made it very clear for him. My father said that the wolf was waiting. The wolf was waiting for me to be old enough to hunt it.”

  I guess I was starting to get pretty interested as the Chief took another swig.

  “On my thirteenth birthday, my father and I set out to hunt the wolf. He brought his dogs along and I had my mighty Winchester .22 and he had his compound bow and we tracked the two-footed wolf down into a shallow valley all covered with snow. Two paw prints ran down the valley, side by side. The walls of the valley were too steep for the wolf to climb out of. The valley ended in an old brick dam that was also too steep to climb. My heart was filled with fire. I felt humbled. If I shot and killed the wolf, I would be made a man. If I somehow missed, I would forever lose my father’s respect. My father stopped at the ridge of the valley and nodded to me. He unleashed the pack of dogs and they ran down the ridge. They tore through the snow. They barked loudly. They disappeared into the darkness. They had the great wolf trapped. I could hear it. I marched down the trail and then looked back at my father. He stood there like a mountain, with his hands in his pockets. He could tell me nothing else. I was on my own. I switched off the safety on my gun. The mighty barrel had turned to sweat in my cold hands. The dogs were silent now. The cold white wind was silent now. All was quiet. Everything was waiting. Would I be made a man like my father? Or would I fail and bring shame upon myself?”

  I guess my own hands were covered in sweat too. I couldn’t The Chief leaned in even closer, his big gnarled nose nearly touching my ear.

  “The dark shadows of the valley fell upon my back. There was the end of the valley. There was the old dam. There were my father’s dogs, who were silent. They sat there completely still. They sat beside one another in a kind of half-moon. The wolf was there, in the darkest part of the valley. He was white and silver. He was black. His head was huge. His front haunches may have came up to my shoulders. His snout was long and sharp. His eyes were the deepest blue. He stood completely still, staring right back into my eyes, his sides breathing with the cold in my chest.

  “Then he moved. A silent move, a move of grace. He ran through the dogs, right up the middle of the valley toward me. I felt my finger along the trigger. I felt his heart in my throat. His eyes were my own eyes. His breath was my own breath. The wolf bounded right before me. I closed my eyes. I heard him speak. I pulled the trigger. There was no sound. There was nothing. Then there was only a sigh, like snow falling on soft ground. The sky above me turned black. The wind whipped against my face. The game had ended and I turned back.”

  My face was bright red as I waited for him to finish. But he was silent. I tapped on the counter, staring up at him.

  “What the hell happened? Did ya kill it?” But the Chief only leaned back, lowering his head. His eyes sparkled a little, then turned black. It was like something had welled up in his face that made him look fine and dull and old. He stared down at me and shook his head, then pulled a pack of Marlboros from behind the counter and slid them across to me.

  “Dollar eighty-nine,” he mumbled.

  “What? Well, what the hell happened? Did ya kill it?”

  “Do you want the cigarettes or not?”

  I guess I stood there, dumbfounded, looking up into his dark face. He didn’t even see me anymore. I placed my money on the counter, still stunned. He hit the cash register and placed the money inside. I backed toward the door, feeling all the weight of my body in the back of my knees. The little bell above the door rang as I pulled it open.

  “I killed the wolf,” I heard him whisper to himself. He let out a hard little cough that made my lungs hurt in my chest. “That was the worst day of my life.”

  The cigarettes felt like a thousand pounds in my hand. They were slick with sweat. Somehow I was already outside my trailer. Somehow I had walked home already.

  There was nowhere else in town I would even consider trying to buy cigarettes or dirty magazines from after that. Even if some other place would have sold them to me, the Chief’s Filling Station had some kind of hold on my heart. I used to go there about every other day after school, buy some smokes like an old pro or maybe just a candy bar, and old Chief would always be there behind the counter, a little drunk but as stern-faced as a priest. He was one of the few people in that lousy town who seemed like he had any kind of heart at all, drunk as he may have been.

  “Do you know what is out there waiting for me?” the Chief whispered one day. I had placed a Mars Bar on the counter.

  I stared up into his gray face and shook my head.

  “Nothing. No one,” he grunted. He took a long pull from his flask, licking his lips as he swallowed. “No peace. No sleep. No father, no mother, no wife. No baby. There is no great meeting place. There are no feasts. Those are poor dreams a fool believes so that he may feel better about being deceased.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “You don’t believe in heaven?” I asked him.

  “No.” He hit the Sale button and the cash register drawer flew open. “If there was a heaven, it would be a cold, cold place. There is nothing good waiting for anyone when they die. There is only your fear. Only your fear, which is cold and black.”

  I counted out my change, dime, dime, quarter, and slid it across the counter. His breath seemed to gather around him in great gray fumes. He was drunk worse than I had ever seen him before. Then I noticed something. There was a tiny blue baby shoe sitting on the counter beside the register. There were two small silver bells tied to the ends of the laces. Those laces were untied and frayed, dangling and worn. The rest of the shoe looked nearly new. I stared at it, biting my lip. The Chief looked me in the face, then pushed the shoe away, dropping it in a drawer.

  “My boy,” he whispered. His eyes were filling with tears. He began to scare the hell out of me. He reached across the counter and grabbed my shoulder. “How old are you?” he said between breaths.

  “Eighteen,” I muttered. His eyes were dark black and huge. His lips were pink and looked dry enough to bleed.

  “How old are you?” the Chief shouted now, shaking me hard.

  “Eleven!” I let out like a cowa
rd, dropping the candy bar from my hand.

  “Eleven,” he said with a smile. “You’ve had eleven years to yourself. Eleven years to breathe.” He held me in place and I felt my knees knocking together. His face seemed enormous and very wrinkled. His skin branched out all over his face in thick grooves of flesh.

  “There is nothing to believe,” he whispered. Thick tears broke down his cheeks. “Tell me what am I supposed to believe …”

  His fingers were digging into my shoulder, gripping my collar. My bottom lip was trembling. My eyes were filling with tears too. I guess it felt like he was right inside my heart, like what he was saying was coming right from my dreams.

  “There is no good. No good in this place, is there? There are things you love and things you have that all go and burn and die. There are things that are part of you and your heart that fall to pieces and leave you stranded like a dog.”

  He shook me once.

  “Tell me what will help me …” he muttered.

  “Please just let me go,” I whimpered.

  “Tell me what will help me …”

  “You’re hurting me,” I whispered, trying to pull free. He let go, his long, thin fingers turning loose as I tripped backwards, falling to the floor.

  “I am sorry,” he said quietly. “I am sorry. Take whatever you want. Take it all. You can have anything you want.”

  He laid his head down on the counter and began to sob. I slowly pulled myself to my feet. His voice was like an old woman’s as his shoulders shook. His sobs were dry and hard and empty. I began to back toward the door. My fingers moved along the silver door bar. I began to pull it open slowly. The bell above it gave a little twinkle.

  The Chief lifted his head and stared into my eyes. “Don’t go to sleep. There are so many ghosts waiting for you there.”

  I felt a cold shiver run down my spine as I ran out and then back to the trailer park and into my bedroom, trembling under my covers until my older brother, Pill, came home and told me to get lost so he could look at his dirty magazines alone. I went outside and crawled under the trailer, right between the thick gray cement blocks, smoking a cigarette, waiting for all the mobile homes around me to light up and for my mother to call, Supper’s ready, and for my brother to give me a shot to the arm so that none of that whole afternoon would have felt the way it did and everything would seem okay again, but it didn’t happen. My mother called, then again, and I just sat under the trailer until French came out and asked me, “Are you okay, pal?” and I nodded and felt all the ghosts in the world moving toward me in the dark that had just fallen.

  “Do you believe in ghosts?” I asked my older brother as we washed up for dinner.

  “What, are you some kind of baby?” he snickered, rubbing his wet hands on his T-shirt.

  “No, I just …” I didn’t finish and Pill stared me in the face and squinted a little.

  “There’s no such thing as spooks,” he said.

  “What about Jesus and all that? Souls and all that?”

  “Jesus. You mean spirits? You mean like … Dad?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “He’s dead. There’s nothing else to it.” He wiped his hands on his shirt once more.

  “But you think he’s in heaven, right?”

  “I dunno.” Pill’s face looked mean. “He died stealing something. I dunno how it all works. He could be in heaven. He might be in hell too. It doesn’t matter. It ain’t your problem.” He patted me on the shoulder and then frowned.

  “But you said there ain’t ghosts, right? So what about God? You believe in Him still, right?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think He does anyone any good but Himself.” Pill opened the bathroom door and stepped out.

  My hands were still wet. I sat on the toilet wiping my hands on the towel. My older brother didn’t understand. I was convinced that we were both cursed because of our dad, because of what he had done, and how he had died. I was pretty sure that the Chief was right. I was pretty sure that there were ghosts all around and that sooner or later they’d catch up with me.

  “Dough, you coming to dinner?” my mother called.

  “Yeah!” I shouted back. I hung up the towel and made completely sure I was out of the bathroom before I reached around blindly and flicked off the light.

  the king of the tango

  Out of nowhere, I began to wake up every night and hear the same strange song, usually just after I had fallen asleep. I’d push open the red curtains that hung from the window in our bedroom and stare out at the new silver trailer next to ours, watching as a square shadow moved in the dark to the beat-beat-beat of the night. Usually at about midnight, the old man next door would put on an old tango record and shut off all the lights and then begin dancing, sometimes naked, sometimes not, swaying alone in the quiet dark. His name was El Rey del Perdito. In the day, I’d seen his long gray face and full black pompadour, hair that didn’t look like it belonged on his withered old head. He was large with big shoulders like an old athlete and moved very slow, except when he was dancing, and then he was like dynamite. I guess I had never seen anything like it before in my life. We had lived in that trailer park for nearly two months, and by then I had just about refused to be amazed by anything.

  From my bedroom window, I could hear his bare feet as they shuffled and slid across his tile floor. The mobile home would rock a little as he moved, stepping in time to the exotic music that boomed from behind his shiny yellow curtains. I would see the flicker of candles along the windows and his shadow moving on the walls, back and forth, back and forth, swaying in time to the rhythm of the music and his very sad heart, his wide feet sliding across the floor as his thin shadow spun about.

  One night I heard French get up and mutter to my mother, “Jesus. It’s past midnight. The damn boys have school tomorrow. Doesn’t he have any goddamn consideration?”

  I kept listening, hearing El Rey’s feet move as the tango singer’s voice peaked, shaking the windows in the old man’s mobile home. I flinched as I caught a glimpse of his bare back when he crossed in front of his window. Pill snored in the bunk bed above mine, and I guess I was afraid to wake him, to let him know what was happening.

  “That’s it. I’m going over there!” French yelled.

  “Oh, don’t be silly,” my mother said. “It’s fine.”

  “It’s fine?”

  “It’s nice. It’s kind of romantic.”

  I rolled my goddamn eyes and laid back down in my bed. I was pretty sure I heard my mother let out a laugh. I shook my head and pulled the pillow over my face as they started doing it, the thin walls of our trailer rocking with their movements. I gritted my teeth and stuck the corners of my pillow in my ears. Heck, I wasn’t stupid. I knew my mother and French did it. But having to listen to it, right in the middle of the goddamn night, and with the old man next door dancing and singing along with the record, it was too much. I shouted some curse word and then French laughed, my mother trying to stifle her giggle.

  I woke up the next morning, got dressed, ate some cereal, and watched as my mother gave French a long kiss goodbye right in front of us. She sighed as he took his lunch bag out of the fridge and disappeared, hurrying out the screen door to work. Pill-Bug sat beside me, gulping some cereal down, dripping milk all over his shirt.

  “What the hell was that last night?” I mumbled.

  “What?” My mother glared at me with a funny look in her eyes.

  “What was all that noise?” I was trying to embarrass her so that they’d never think about doing it while I was around ever again.

  “The new neighbor next door,” my mother said, “is a dancer.”

  “No, not that,” I grunted, staring my mother cold in the eyes. “The other noise.”

  “What other noise?” My mother dropped her gaze and poured herself some coffee. She looked over her nails as if they were the most interesting things in the world.

  “You know, the other noise.”

  “I’m su
re I don’t know what you mean.” She took a sip of coffee very smugly, still staring at her nails.

  “C’mon, Mom, you know what I mean. It’s disgusting.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re grossing me out,” I mumbled.

  “Well,” her face became bright red, her eyes still fixed on the rim of her coffee cup, “I am sorry. I forgot whose house this is.”

  “Yeah. It’s gross as hell,” Pill grunted, staring her in the face. “You’re supposed to be an adult and all that. Can’t you wait until we aren’t around to do that stuff? It’s sickening. Really.”

  “Well, some of the things you boys do gross me out a little, to be quite honest. All those magazines in your bedroom. Don’t you think that makes me feel a little grossed out?”

  Pill’s face went bright red. My mother looked right at him and he lowered his head, finishing off his breakfast in one quick gulp.

  “Those are Pill’s,” I said.

  “I’m gonna be late for school,” my brother said and threw his cereal bowl into the sink. He grabbed his books and shot out of the trailer. My mother smiled a little, whistling to herself, washing my brother’s dirty bowl. She scrubbed it clean, then placed it in the dish rack to dry. Her eyes met mine silently. There was nothing else to say. I looked away, shoving another spoonful of Crunchy-O’s in my mouth. The lines of her shoulders were soft and round as she wrung the dish towel and stared out the kitchen window, still whistling to herself.

  Then she turned, kind of studying me, and said, “After school, you better come by the parlor.” She stood beside me, touching my unruly brown hair. “You really need a trim. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, hoping she’d forget. But when I ran out after Pill a few minutes later, she mentioned it again, and I knew better than to ignore her, unless she started revealing all the terrible secrets she had on me.

  I did not like the beauty parlor. All the women there made me want to squirm. With the cackle of those ladies’ awful cigarettetinged voices, and their gossip, and their whispering, it was enough to make me squeal in pure agony. The Curl Up ’N Dye Beauty Parlor was located in town a few blocks from the Pig Pen supermarket and a few streets over from the hardware store. One Thursday every month, my mother would cut my damn hair and I’d have to endure that awful pink parlor filled with cheap spray perfume from blue tear-shaped bottles and fork-toothed gossip I wasn’t supposed to understand.