Fire Is Your Water

by Minick, Jim;

  “Women cook,” her mother replied and handed her a fork to beat the eggs.

  Ada still didn’t like the kitchen, its dark confinement, or recipes written to confuse her, or worse, the stove that once caught on fire. But she could cook breakfast while her mother slept.

  She slid the biscuits into the oven and pulled out the skillet to fry ham and eggs. When she opened the refrigerator, Ada saw the slab of ham and slammed the door shut. Bile slid up the back of her throat. The ham looked like her mother’s raw flesh.

  Ada took a deep breath and opened the refrigerator again. She grabbed the bowl of eggs and then the ham. The skillet was already hot; she sliced off two pieces, which sizzled in the pan. She took another sip of tea.

  Her father entered and said good morning, nothing else. He poured coffee and sat at the table to read the paper, but he just stared at his hands, the pages not turning.

  Ada flipped the ham and thought about last night. After Uncle Mark left, her father had kept apologizing to her and her mother, so much that he’d started to cry. “I shouldn’t’ve put that hay up. I thought it was dry. Rain was coming and so I rushed it. And now this.”

  Ada had left the kitchen after that. She had only ever seen her father cry at his parents’ funerals, didn’t want this new memory, so much already broken. She went out to the meadow to check on the animals, and then she just wanted to sit on the back ridge, far from the house and the remains of the barn. Later, when she snuck back in, the light in her parents’ bedroom was already out.

  This morning, neither Ada nor her father knew what to say, so Ada served his ham and eggs and took a plate upstairs to put on her mother’s bureau, her mother still asleep.

  After breakfast, they headed out to do the milking. Ada wore her mother’s bonnet and followed her father. She wished Nathan was behind her—like we’re kids again, she thought. They passed her mother’s bed of peonies, the patch of horseradish by the garage. Halfway across the wide dirt lot that separated house from barn, her father stopped in the mud. She didn’t want to look, but how could she not?

  Before them lay the black bones of the barn. Metal sheets of roofing twisted under timbers or rested scattered in the meadow like shiny leaves torn from a giant tree. One piece rocked in the breeze, a steady thump-thump, thump-thump. The rock walls of the bottom floor still stood, blackened and crumbly. Their window holes framed the sky. The smoke, the rock walls, the rubble—all of it made Ada remember those photographs of bombed-out cities from World War II. Smoke stung her eyes, filled her nose, and she tasted the wetness of charcoal. She forced herself to focus beyond the debris, where the orange globe of sun broke the horizon.

  “Hard to believe,” her father said softly. Three chickens pecked at dead crickets. One bird hopped up the cement steps that used to lead to the corncrib. A cow mooed from the pen, so her father turned to walk up the hill. Ada fell in behind.

  In the shed, their milk cows waited, heavy udders sagging. The bossy ones pushed others away, but most faced out toward where the barn once stood, their eyes cloudy. Belle mooed when she saw Peter, her loud call sounding different with no wall to bounce from in echo. Ada rubbed old Molly’s jaw and watched Star, the new cow, against the far wall of the shed. Her back was slick from the burn. She didn’t look at them.

  Daisy, another cow, nudged Ada’s hip. As she petted her, Ada realized, This is Seven’s daughter. She wished she hadn’t remembered.

  Her father pulled out his toothpick and looked over the herd. “Haven’t had to milk by hand in fifteen years.” He handed her a bucket and pointed to the corner. “I washed out the old milk cans. Not sure what the co-op will say, but hopefully they’ll take it.” He turned to the nearest cow, and Ada did the same. They settled on their stools, held buckets between their feet, and began the slow process of squeezing out the warm, white fluid.

  Ada rested her forehead against Daisy’s flank. She closed her eyes, felt the cow’s warm skin, its slow, steady breaths. If the creamery didn’t take their milk, they’d have to dump it out on the pasture. And they needed that milk money to pay for a new barn. They both knew this, just like they knew these cows would have to be milked, by hand, two times a day, until the barn was built.

  As she milked, Ada tried to think about something else—her job at HoJo’s, the patch of blueberries, a few of them ready to pick. She tried to recall the last time she had healed, just the other day, when she’d chanted over Ellie’s little girl, who had an earache. But that seemed too long ago for a memory now pierced by flame.

  And Ada couldn’t stop the questions: Why did God let the barn burn? Why kill Seven? And why couldn’t she heal? What had she done to anger God? But that was her grandmother’s God, a woman who always feared everything, her God of the Old Testament. Ada believed in the New Testament, its loving God. Things happened. God didn’t cause them. No, she didn’t want to believe in an angry, vengeful God, but it still was hard not to wonder.

  She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and kept milking.

  Two hours later, after the cows had been put out to pasture, Ada and her father circled the debris. The air hung heavy with humidity, the morning breeze gone. Sweat seeped down Ada’s neck, and heat rose off the ashes. Her father chewed his toothpick and kicked a charred rafter. She remembered the hayloft where they used to build forts, the chicken coop she stole into for eggs, and the warm, steamy comfort of the lower barn every morning and afternoon at milking. The barn had been so old, older than her father, older, even, than her grandfather.

  Peter stepped around a twisted, metal window frame, the glass gone. “Damn,” he whispered. “Damn, damn, damn,” he said louder.

  “No need for that, Peter Franklin.” Her mother surprised them. She walked across the lot, her hands bundled.

  “Mama, you shouldn’t be out here.”

  “Oh, I can’t milk, but my eyes still work. I can help look through the rubble.”

  “Why don’t you just go back inside?” Peter said.

  “And what, watch you two? I’ve already had enough of that. I’ll be all right. Just let me look. If I see anything, one of you’uns can pull it out.”

  Peter shook his head, while Ada moved closer to her mother. “How are you, Mama?”

  “Oh, it hurts some, but not terrible. And don’t go babying me neither. My feet ain’t frail yet, nor my head.”

  Nor your tongue, thought Ada.

  Her mother’s face softened. “I’m sorry, Ada. I just hated being trapped inside while you did all the milking. I’ll be OK out here looking.” She touched Ada’s cheek with her bandaged fingers.

  Her father pulled on gloves and climbed into the rubble. Her mother followed, and so did Ada. She couldn’t imagine rebuilding, yet this was their only choice. If she closed her eyes, the barn still stood—the long stretches of red walls, the bright sheen of roof, the weathervane rooster that only moved an inch because of so much rust. Daddy always threatened to climb that roof and oil the rooster, and Mama scolded him down, saying, “We don’t need that thing to work.”

  Now the rooster was a blob of melted metal somewhere in this black mess. She wanted to hear it squeak again. Last night, the wind had pitched a new tune with nothing to rub against, nothing to bother.

  They looked for anything to salvage—chains that hadn’t melted, a pitchfork or shovel. Ada stumbled, bent, and tossed, her gloves turning black. Her father picked through boards, while her mother kicked the cinders. Dust burned Ada’s eyes. Layers of charcoal crumbled under her feet.

  They found a few links of chain, a warped shovel, and one of Peter’s record books, the pages brown at the edges but the words and figures still readable. They uncovered little else. Then her father stopped throwing boards and just looked down onto a timber.

  “What is it, Daddy?”

  “Come look.”

  They stared at a post they had walked by every day. It was a chestnut log Ada’s great-grandfather had felled up on the mountain, dragged by horse to this homestead, and hewed sq
uare. Once the new barn was completed, Jacob A. Franklin had carved his initials and the date, 1859.

  Peter fetched his ax and chopped out this one section of post.

  AFTER the morning, Ada craved something green and alive. She slipped through the makeshift fence and entered the orchard, where she wandered from tree to tree. The peaches hung like little lanterns, the apples like shiny green globes.

  Past the orchard, Ada hiked over a small rise and out of sight of the rest of the farm. There, in a small bowl of land sat the farm’s newest venture—a half acre of blueberries. Long rows filled the remains of what used to be a beautiful hayfield, one of her father’s favorite spots. But in the late ’30s, the turnpike had “bought” ten acres, the highest, back section. Now, the high-banked road overshadowed the cove and cut off the mountain. Trash along the fence marked the edges, and traffic noise hung over the hollow like a constant, invisible fog.

  Ada shaded her eyes and scanned the field. This was her project, these were her babies. She had read about a New Jersey woman in the Saturday Evening Post who had acres of blueberries on her farm. Ada had stared at the photographs and showed her father. At first he was skeptical, but eventually she convinced him. The two worked out a budget and marked off rows. That next spring, two years ago, they planted five hundred bushes.

  Ada bent to inspect. Each bush had a scattering of berries, not enough to open to the public but enough to fill the root cellar. She had waited a long time for this, anticipating the first sweet bite.

  Some of the earliest varieties already had turned blue. Ada picked one and spat it out, the tartness so strong. She picked another and this time found sweetness, more than she had imagined. They’ll all be ready soon, she thought as she rested on the grass. A pair of black birds—crows or ravens, she couldn’t tell—circled high overhead, wings almost touching, a spiraling dance to their own low caws.

  Ada closed her eyes, but sleep wouldn’t come. She couldn’t visit these berries without thinking about Jesse. He had helped plant the bushes, his big hands hauling six at a time to where she crouched and planted. His big hands that had held her so tight.

  Jesse lived in Roxbury, five miles away but in the next county, so they never went to the same school. Ada hadn’t met him until she was a junior in high school, he a senior. Her youth fellowship had a Halloween party at Osbaughs, and they invited several other YFs from nearby churches, one of them Jesse’s. He showed up in his varsity jacket, all muscles from football and working with his father, hauling block and mixing mortar. Dark brown eyes peered out over a dimpled smile. Twice he caught Ada looking at him, making her blush.

  They went on a hayride over farm fields and back roads, the wagon tires whirring underneath. Someone had a bag of shelled corn, so at every sign, the boys threw kernels for a loud clattering. Any barking dogs got corned, too. Jesse sat beside Ada, and she was glad the night hid her crooked teeth because she couldn’t stop smiling. They had to sit close, the wagon full, and on the whole ride, Ada felt the warmth of his thigh next to hers. He didn’t throw any corn, and they couldn’t really talk because of the loud tractor. But he pointed to the stars where they both saw one fall. Ada thought it a sign and let herself lean a little closer in to him.

  When they returned to Osbaughs, Jesse picked something up off of the wagon floor. He opened her hand and gave her two corn kernels that had grown together. “Us,” he whispered in her ear. He closed her palm and squeezed her hand. His calloused fingers were so rough Ada thought they would cut her fingers. She wished they had.

  The next weekend he came to the Franklin house. They walked down to the pond to fish for bluegills. He didn’t seem to mind her voice, didn’t ask about it like other men. Those others came because of her hazel eyes and good figure, but then they always paused when she spoke. She’d come to expect this, come to test strangers by their reaction. She knew she sounded odd, like the staccato squeak of a rocking chair. The ugly voice started when she turned twelve. Before, she had loved to sing in church or when she brought in the cows. Since then, she only played the piano. The specialist examined her throat and found cysts on her vocal cord. He said they could operate, but she might not ever speak again. So the cysts stayed. They caused no harm other than making her sound like she was always hoarse, for the rest of her life.

  But Jesse never asked about her voice, which had pleased her at the time. They started going on double dates with Ruth Sisk and Bill Mowers. Sometimes they went bowling or on picnics to Dublin Gap. Usually, the foursome caught a movie. The first time Ada and Jesse kissed was on a bench at the drive-in theater, From Here to Eternity playing. She had loved that kiss scene on the beach, even with the wedding ring, even though she knew it was wrong. But in the car, Ruth wouldn’t shut up, so they found a picnic table on the side, under a tree. The big picture loomed over them. They couldn’t hear it, since they were away from the car speaker, the actors speaking without sound. Jesse leaned over to kiss her on the cheek, but Ada turned and met his mouth. She wanted to taste. She was glad she did.

  They double-dated for six months before Daddy allowed her to see a movie with just Jesse. Afterward, Jesse took her for a sundae at The Treat. While they ate, he fidgeted and glanced out the window. Soon, three girls came in, one wearing a Chambersburg varsity coat. Ada didn’t recognize them, wondered what they were doing here far from their town. Jesse tried to ignore them, but Ada could tell he watched out of the corner of his eye. After they ordered, they walked into the dining area, and the one with the jacket said, “Why, hey, Jesse. Imagine meeting you here.” She batted her eyes and ignored Ada. The varsity jacket was blue and white and obviously belonged to a football player. “I just love this jacket,” she said. She looked at Ada then, and that’s when she noticed the name on the jacket—Shupe. Her stomach rolled, and she calmly put down her spoon. The girl laughed and finally spoke to her. “Oh my, I see you didn’t know. He’s really my boyfriend.”

  Ada slid out of the booth and started walking. Her homeplace was fifteen miles from Shippensburg, and she was bound to walk all of it that cold spring night. Jesse ran after her, yelled that it wasn’t what it looked like, but she ignored him and marched on, the cars busy on Route 11. He disappeared for a bit, and Ada thought he had gone back to her, whatever her name. But no, he soon came up beside her in his car. Ada wouldn’t stop, so he yelled across the seat, out the window. “She’s my ex-girlfriend, Ada. She never gave me back my coat.” Ada didn’t believe him, remembered him wearing it at the Halloween party. “We broke up right after that,” he explained.

  It started raining, hard, so she got in his car and sat as far from him as she could. He talked, said her name was Tammy, said he never loved her. All Ada said was “Take me home.” At the driveway, she didn’t even let him pull in. Her last words were “Don’t ever call me again.” She ran through the rain and up the stairs to her bedroom, where she finally cried.

  Even now, a year later, she spat out the bitterness like that first unripe berry.

  LATER that afternoon, Ada found her father and Uncle Mark holding Star, the burned cow, for the vet to examine. The men had Star pinned in a makeshift stall, her head tied so tightly to a post she could hardly move. She tried to kick, so they leaned heavy against her. The stench of burned flesh hung over them.

  Dr. Blake had a white handlebar moustache that wiggled when he talked. “Easy now,” he said to the cow. He placed huge swaths of bandages over the worst burns on Star’s back. The gauze darkened and soaked up the seeping fluid. “Brace yourselves. This’ll get her riled.” In one quick jerk, the vet ripped off the bandages and all of the cow’s scabs. Star stumbled. She arched her spine and bellowed so loudly that for a moment Ada was back in the burning barn with all of the other cows. She had to look away.

  “Have to get the scabs and dead tissue off,” Dr. Blake shouted over the cow to her father, “for the new skin to grow.” He wadded up the soiled gauze. “Need to do this every day. Then you need to lather this ointment on and cover it ag
ain for a day. I can do this, or you.”

  Uncle Mark calmed the cow while her father walked with the vet to his car. From the trunk, Dr. Blake pulled medicine and more gauze, and Peter listened as the doctor talked for a long time. Then Peter handed him some bills, and the vet drove out the lane.

  Her father turned to Ada and his brother-in-law. “Dr. Blake just lectured me on what he called our useless voodoo. Said it was a waste of breath. To not even bother with powwowing. Said we better make sure we give her these pain pills.”

  Peter shook the bottle. He held it at a distance like he didn’t know what to do with it.

  Finally, he faced Uncle Mark. “Should we put her down?”

  Uncle Mark held up his hand and turned his back.

  Peter fell silent, as Uncle Mark moved his hands above the cow’s back. It took him a long time to whisper over the whole raw area. As he did, Star stopped bellowing. Her spine eased out of an arch and her eyes closed. Soon she breathed in a series of long, slow sighs.

  “I guess not,” Peter rubbed his face.

  Uncle Mark shook his head. “No, we’ll get her fixed up. The vet’s right about taking her bandages off every day, but you don’t need to give her that pain medicine. The Lord will take care of that.”

  They released the cow and watched her trot into the meadow with the others. A few of the cows smelled her back, and one tried to lick it. She kicked and galloped down to the stream to stand under a walnut tree by herself.

  Her father turned to other chores, leaving Ada and Uncle Mark. “How are you doing, Ady?” Uncle Mark asked.

  “Fair to middlin’,” she tried to joke.

  Uncle Mark gazed at her longer than usual, and Ada had to look away. The two stood in silence, watching Star.

  “Have you checked Mama’s hands?” she asked as they turned to walk.

  Uncle Mark nodded. “I changed her bandages this morning. For what she’s been through, she’s doing well.” He opened his pickup and settled in the seat. “She’s starting to heal,” he said as he leaned out the window, and Ada knew the rest of his sentence—“The question is are you?” Uncle Mark would never be so direct, and yet, for a moment, his gaze was. He started the truck and threw up his hand in a wave as he drove out the lane.