Tender as Hellfire

by Joe Meno

  BLOOOMMM!!!!!

  All the blood shot from my ears and I felt myself crying, crying like a girl, mumbling more stupid prayers to myself as that man’s black form kept moving close.

  “Here …” Pill whispered. “Here!”

  He slid the barn door open and shoved me inside, giving our dumb three-legged dog a push. He pulled the door closed, then yanked me by my shirt, drawing us deeper inside the dark. It was quiet and steady and full of that awful stench of death. Nothing made a sound but our breathing. Nothing moved but our shadows along the dirty wood walls. Then I made the awful mistake of stopping and looking up.

  Without a doubt, I knew this place was haunted. It was darker than any nightmare I’d ever had, darker than the Devil’s own shadow, covering everything with death and gloom, touching our faces like his thick burlap cloak. There were all the tiny silver spires and spindles of spiderwebs crisscrossing overhead, making all kinds of shadows which breathed and moved like a thousand tiny eyes, like a thousand tiny lips whispering my name. I could make out the shape of the sagging old horse, still lying there rotting, nesting with thousands of sleeping flies. There were the heavy wood beams creaking overhead, burned in a single spot by old man Furnham’s rope. There were the old cardboard boxes of clothes and dry goods that would never be used. All these sad, sad dreams that came to die, hiding in this awful patch of wood and dirt.

  My older brother tugged me toward the center of the barn, looking around for somewhere to hide, and then I could feel it, his hand was trembling, his hand against mine was cold. He was shivering like there was something here in this barn that he had seen in all his worst dreams too.

  The Devil’s dark red shadow swept overhead, his serpentine head shrieking with an empty smile, as the deputy fired into the night air once again.

  BLOOOM!!!!!

  I looked into my brother’s face. He was completely quiet and still, staring up into the dark space above our heads. There it was. I could read it in his eyes. They were wide and empty and full of the same kind of fear. He had seen it too. He understood. I could feel him shaking, sweating all over, unable to keep his body still. He had seen the same thing. We had been having the same dream. Our old man had led us both here. The same stretch of lonesome road that disappeared somewhere in the dark. The same hollow shadows and blackened forms. I could almost see my old man’s rig parked somewhere close. I could almost see him lying all alone, left for dead along the side of the road. I could feel the Devil moving above us in the dark, ready to strike, ready to steal both me and my brother’s lives. This was it, then. The end of it all. The end of all our darkest, most hopeless dreams.

  My brother pulled my shirt again and shoved me behind a stack of wooden crates. He pushed the dog beside me and then squeezed into the rest of the space, holding his breath, still gripping my arm tight.

  The wide barn door creaked open.

  “This is it, you little bastards! I’m warning you. Come on out now!”

  The deputy squeezed off another round and then stepped inside the barn—BLOOM!!!!! I could feel his shadow moving right over my face. I could feel his hot breath seeping right through the air. I could feel him grinning, gripping his gun by his side tight. He might just find us and holler at us and let us go. As long as there was still some light, we might still be fine. As long as we weren’t left alone with him in the dark, we could make it out okay.

  The deputy grunted a little to himself, then slid the big red door closed. All the light disappeared from our faces. Immediately we fell straight back into the dark. The dog panted heavily by my side, but didn’t make a sound. It held its face against my shirt and stood still between me and my brother, its thick shoulders going tense as the deputy’s footsteps moved closer.

  “Think this is all some game, huh, boys? All some kinda joke?”

  His black shoes moved over the dirt. Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.

  “Make a damn fool out of me, huh? Make me chase you out here in the dirt?”

  His shadow wobbled a little, following his drunken steps. Scrape. Scrape. Scrape. Then he stopped.

  “You don’t know what I’m battling inside! You don’t know what it is that’s got me hurting!”

  His voice rang like blood in his throat. I could hear him breathing hard, angry as hell, gripping that gun tight.

  “All of hell’s come down on me today, boys … Looks like you’re about to get the worst end of it now.”

  The deputy laughed to himself a little, stopping to catch his balance. The dark space spun around him, shaking him loose. His shadow faltered, cutting across our skin.

  “Where the hell am I?” he kind of whispered to himself. “Let my goddamn mind go out on me.”

  The dark crashed right down on his head, nearly knocking him to his knees. He staggered about a little, fighting to keep on his feet, dangling the gun by his side. All the dumb hatred and anger spun on around his skull, making him unsteady.

  Then he seemed to sense something moving over his head.

  Something up in the beams.

  He looked up and lost his balance and fell to his knees.

  “Val?” he screamed. “Val?”

  He stumbled forward a little, falling against some crates. He fought for some breath, still shaking, gripping his gun in his hand tightly. He wiped some drool from his mouth and lifted his head. He fought to stand. Just stand. He squinted around to see, still buckling at his knees.

  Then he caught something out of the corner of his eye.

  There, right there, three shadows flashed before him in the dark. He squinted again, then nodded to himself.

  “You …” he muttered, and cracked a smile like he was surprised, happy to have seen us there. “I found you here.”

  All the blood in our bodies turned cold. All our hearts turned to dust and crumbled into red dirt. My brother held my arm hard and tight. Our breath just disappeared.

  “You …” I heard the deputy whisper. “You did this. You two little bastards …”

  The leash went loose in my hand and all the words I had ever wanted to say my whole life poured right out of my mouth like a knife: “Kill, Shilo, kill!”

  Our big white dog leapt forward and struck, clamping his jaws around the deputy’s neck. Black blood flickered through the air and dotted the cold ground. My older brother had me by the sleeve of my shirt and out the goddamn barn door and into the damp gray field before we heard the cold, solitary shot ring out.

  BLOOM!!!!!!

  Tears fell right from out of my eyes. I knew right then we had to go back, go back in and get our poor, poor dog, to save him from all the ghosts and wicked things trapped inside, but my brother held me by my shoulders and in my awful heart I knew it was all too late, too late, too late. I fell to my knees and down into the dirt and just let myself cry. My brother held my shoulders tight as we sat like that forever, cold and still and staring at that empty barn, wishing we were all dead, me crying like mad until a siren broke through the dark, flashing with bright red lights.

  The gunshots had woken all the neighbors, and within a few moments the old gray-haired sheriff arrived in his squad car, parking beside the deputy’s prowler, hustling across the field in his Stetson hat and white pajama shirt.

  “What happened here, boys? Where’s the deputy?”

  My brother just shook his head and didn’t say a word and pointed to the goddamn barn.

  “Okay, all right, boys, stay where you are,” the sheriff huffed, and walked past us. The old gray-faced man pulled out his big shiny Smith & Wesson gun and stepped up to the barn door and listened inside. Nothing was moving. It was already done. The sheriff twitched his white mustache a little, then fought around for the barn door latch. “Goddamnit, where’s the latch?!” Then he found it and gave it a pull.

  The barn door opened with a creak and I stood beside my brother and looked inside and then, right then, I knew it was all over.

  Our poor ol’ dog was dying.

  Shilo laid on its side, trembl
ing a little in a pool of its own blood, twitching its feet and wagging its tail like the dumb dog it was. Me, I ran up past my brother and the goddamn sheriff and fell right where that poor dog laid. I ran my hand over its soft white side and saw the huge red bullet hole that had been dug in its white coat. My whole face was covered with tears but I didn’t care, I didn’t give a goddamn who saw me like that. That was my only dumb dog and now it was dead.

  “Don’t move, boy!” the sheriff shouted. “Don’t move, okay?” I nodded and stayed still, holding my dog around its bloody neck, crying to myself and not caring in the least.

  The sheriff stepped inside and flicked on his flashlight. The light burned through the dark and all at once the blackness separated, vanished, disappeared. But there was nothing there. There was no one in there.

  “Mort?” the sheriff called out. “Mort!”

  But there was no reply. Not a word or whisper. He was gone. Gone, gone from our miserable sight.

  “Mort, give me a holler if you’re all right! Mort?”

  The sheriff stepped into the middle of the barn, shaking his head. His flashlight struck the dark red spots of the deputy’s blood, which shimmered and shone, drying up in the dirt.

  There was no body beside the spots. No sign of that bastard breathing his last breath.

  The deputy was gone.

  I lifted up my head and stared above, into the weave of cobwebs and wooden beams. It was dark up there, dark and empty and still. The sheriff’s light flashed overhead. There was nothing there. That deputy was gone. Taken in that barn by the Devil’s horns and thick red cloak. There was nothing, not a trace, not a shadow, not a sound, to make me believe he was still alive. In that moment, I was certain that wherever he was now, he was worse than dead.

  “This just ain’t right,” the sheriff mumbled, flashing his light into the corners of the barn. All the shadows moved and parted, then fell back into place. But there was nothing. He had been taken back into the darkness that had hung just over his shoulder for most of his life. “This ain’t right at all. A man just doesn’t up and disappear.”

  I nodded to myself, not saying a word. I held my dog around its neck as it kept fighting to breathe, twitching its hind legs. Its breath smelled like copper and was all warm along my sleeve.

  “It’s okay, boy,” I whispered. “It’s okay.”

  Our dog became still and tensed, tightening itself in my arms. Then it was too late. Then it really was gone. I was sobbing like a damn fool and Pill had his hand on my shoulder and the sheriff stopped looking around and led us out of the barn and we stood there while he searched around again.

  “Mort? Mort?” we could hear the sheriff call out, but there was no sound in reply, no sound but me and my brother breathing hard as we stared at the dark shape of that awful barn. I sat down in the dirt and pulled my knees close to my chest and my older brother stood right there beside me, holding my shirt, glaring hard at the outline of that barn’s wooden posts cutting across the black sky. It was done. It was all done. I could very nearly hear what Pill was thinking, standing there, gripping my shoulder tight—the thin snap of the match against the black strip, then the quick burst of flame, something to burn that whole night out of his mind, something to make sure that none of this would remain in place.

  He was already gone too.

  That night had somehow taken all of his hope.

  The sheriff stepped out of the barn and took us to his car and had the dispatcher call our folks and then they came to bring us home and me and Pill sat in the backseat of my mother’s crappy blue car, unable to speak, unable to utter a goddamn word.

  “What were you boys doing out there? What happened to the dog?” French asked. His face was all white like he had just seen a ghost. There were lines from a pillow along the side of his face. “What did you boys do out there?”

  The lonesome road flashed under the headlights of our car as me and my brother stammered a little, trying to think of something to say. Something to explain it all. But we didn’t know. We just didn’t really know.

  “This is it,” my mother cried, turning to face us in the back-seat. Her white face was serious and bare, there was no shiny blue eye shadow or lipstick. Her eyes were wide and red and sore from her tears. “This is the last time I get called on by the police. Do you understand? You’re both heading off for military school in Aubrey in the spring if things don’t start to change.”

  But I really didn’t hear what she said. It was all over now and I felt like I was already home and in my bed and fast asleep and just dreaming a whole new kind of dream, a dream where you have no idea how it’ll end.

  Me and my brother laid in our beds, still unable to speak.

  I could hear him turning over, grinding his teeth, fighting with his own awful thoughts. I laid on my back, doing the same.

  What had really happened? There were things in that barn and out in the night and in my own heart that I was sure I’d never understand. Even after it all, when my poor Shilo got buried in the gray dirt beside a weeping willow right by the road, and even after someone found the Johnny Cash cassette and the goddamn bottle of sour mash in the deputy’s car, even after they ruled it was some sort of awful heartbreak he sure must have felt, even after all that, there were things about that night that I just couldn’t understand. Maybe that was the way. Nothing could have changed how it all ended for the deputy, I didn’t think. He would have slept with someone else’s wife just once and met the end of some angry husband’s butcher knife before too long. I was sure of it. But my poor dog. My poor dog. There were a million ways in my head that I could have saved it. Maybe none of them would have really worked. That dumb dog wasn’t born to do much more than fight and kill and then end up buried in the dirt, but it had; it had borrowed a place in my heart and marked its bloodstains on my sleeve and left a kind of quiet I did not like. But it was gone. That couldn’t be changed. There was nothing for me to do but fight against all those weepy thoughts on my own.

  That night I laid in my bed, hoping to hear that dumb dog’s breath in my ear, but it never came. My brother was just as quiet as me, probably letting his thoughts roam outside of the trailer and onto that dark black road, past the barn and the deputy’s squad car, past the whole town and fields and trees, out into the future and into some distant spot that seemed just like tomorrow but was farther and farther away still, the days that hadn’t even arrived and wouldn’t for some time, weeks and months and then years away, and then out into a place that finally seemed so distant that I lost track of what he might be thinking and had to just shut my eyes and give in and fall asleep.

  Snappppppppp.

  That night I had another dream. I dreamed my brother was sitting on the edge of my bed and was staring right at me. He started talking to me as I was trying to sleep. He frowned a little and patted my shoulder and whispered a quiet goodbye.

  My brother was going away.

  “Don’t do it,” I mumbled. His face looked blurry and older than it should have been. “Don’t burn it down. Don’t go off and leave.”

  “This is all I can do. I gotta set things right. It’s gotta burn. I need to leave. That way we’ll both be free. We’ll both be free.”

  “But it won’t do any good.”

  “Sure it will.”

  “You can’t just leave. What about me? And Mom? And ol’ French? What will they say?”

  “They don’t understand. I can’t change the way I am.”

  “But they ain’t that mad,” I pleaded. “They ain’t gonna really send us away.”

  “No, maybe not now, pal. But it don’t really matter. It’s only a matter of time before I foul up again and then that’ll be it. Then I’ll be dead or in a jail or even worse. And I couldn’t stand for you to watch it all happen. Don’t you worry, pal. I’ll be okay. I swear. Everything will be okay.” He patted me on the shoulder like he was so much older and disappeared into the unlit night.

  That dark dream shook through my bones. />
  I shot out of my bed as soon as I was awake and looked up at his empty bunk. I pulled on my jeans and shoes and ran out of the trailer, nearly knocking the lousy screen door from its gray frame. The sky was still blue and black, it wasn’t even dawn yet, maybe around 3 o’clock, three lonesome hours since midnight. There were still some stars up in the sky and the clouds hadn’t gathered anywhere in view. I ran down the front steps and around the bend of the gravel drive and then out onto the long dirt road, and right then I could see it, sitting square against the horizon, the Furnham’s blackened barn with thick gray plumes rising from it like ghosts, a great red fire burning brightly at the building’s wooden posts.

  I saw something else too, I guess.

  There, like a cloud of smoke and dust, as bright as the fire but cold, a truth so cold and hollow that I could feel it in the ends of my toes.

  He had been wrong. My brother had been wrong about it all.

  Burning that barn wouldn’t do anyone any good. Not for me or my brother or any of the memories of the things trapped inside. All those things were already done. He couldn’t free himself of the past like that. Now I knew. Now I could see it. I had tried hard to bury or break all the things I didn’t understand too. But seeing the fire now, I could tell it wouldn’t ever work. We had both been wrong. Now he would never be free from it all. Not even by running away. Burning that building wouldn’t do anyone any good. Pill could have changed. He could have made a try. But he didn’t. He just lit that fire and then ran away. He hadn’t learned a thing from that night. He hadn’t learned a thing from living in that awful place.

  The gravel was cold against my bare feet. I shut my eyes. I could feel them swelling up, ready to cry. I could almost feel that fire moving along my face. I stood there for a long time, not moving or making a noise, until I was sure that that barn had been burned completely to the ground.

  The sky was still dark.

  The taste of smoke hung in my throat.

  The night was not yet over, but my brother was gone, long gone, never to be heard from again, left only in my mind as a name and a single shot of a photo no one had ever had the chance to take; a desperate gray-eyed boy, by himself on a silver bus, headed south, lost and alone, fighting to forget all the things that hung in his awful dreams, where the reach of a fire would somehow always glow.