Chasing Fireflies

by Charles Martin

  Unc looked at me. I knew what he wanted.

  “What other things?” I asked.

  “Just get to the hospital. Room 316. You’ll see.”

  “Anybody gotten anything out of him?”

  “No. That’s your job.”

  The phone clicked, and Unc looked out my window and across the pasture dotted with palm trees and a few of his Brahman cows.

  I grabbed my car keys and looked at Tommye, who had lain down on my bed, pulled the sheet up, and closed her eyes. “You staying awhile?”

  She nodded. “Not going anywhere.”

  I walked over to the bed and placed my hand on her foot. “That’s what you said last time.”

  She rolled over and looked at me. Tired would have been an under-statement.

  I walked down the steps and into the barn, where I found Unc already sitting in the passenger seat of my truck, hat on and buckled in. “Where you going?”

  “With you.” He pointed out through the windshield. “Drive.”

  Is it just me, or has the world picked up speed since I stepped out of jail? The shower and deodorant would have to wait—as would the view off my bow.

  My vehicle is a 1978 Toyota Land Cruiser, and her Christian name is Vicky. On my seventeenth birthday, after two years of penny-scraping and nonstop daydreaming, Unc matched my savings and helped me buy her. She’s forest green, sports a black padded roll bar, large worn mud tires, winch, manual locking hubs, four-speed transmission, and front and rear pipe bumpers, and she’ll go most anywhere. Judging from the freshly dried mud along her wheel wells, that remains true whether I’m in jail or not. You can take the kid out of the candy store, but not the candy store out of the kid.

  One feature that allows her to do this is the snorkel intake that runs up out of the hood and along the passenger’s side of the wind-shield. A snorkel intake feeds oxygen to the engine. Most stop at the top of the engine, while this one is about seven feet in length. It has its history in Africa, where British guides and explorers who needed to ford rivers could do so in water that rose up over the hood and steering wheel. Vicky’s snorkel allows her to drive through water that would cover up the steering wheel. Though I’ve never done that to her, it’s something to dream about.

  Last month Vicky turned over two hundred thousand miles. We celebrated with an alignment, oil change, and a fish dinner on the beach. She rides a little stiff, her springs creak, she’s showing rust bubbles around the rivets of her wheel wells, and she seldom sees the northern side of seventy miles an hour. Despite all this, I like her for many of the same reasons I like the marsh—when in her, I breathe deeply.

  Which is something I desperately needed now. I pressed in the clutch, slipped the stick into first, and rolled out of the barn. We pulled onto the drive, and I shifted into third. The wind swirled around me—a hug from Vicky. That’s when it hit me, the thing that’d been on the tip of my tongue since Tommye pressed her face to mine. I touched my face, rubbed the tips of my fingers with my thumb, and looked out beyond the dotted white line. There was no doubt about it.

  She was burning up.

  Chapter 2

  We pulled down the drive but were intersected by the unkempt Lincoln Continental of Peter “Pockets” McQuire. He was nicknamed after the holes in his pockets—his clients discovered that no matter how much money they put into them, he always had room for more.

  He waved us down and passed an envelope to Unc. “William . . . it’s a copy of our appeal.”

  Unc nodded.

  “If that doesn’t work . . .”

  Unc waved him off. “Pockets . . . there is no more ‘if that doesn’t work.’ After twenty years of legal maneuvering, I’m out of money.” He slipped his glasses down and looked at Pockets. “Most of which you have. If you weren’t so dang good, I’d have fired you a long time ago.”

  Pockets smiled. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.” He pointed at the envelope. “It sits with the judge now. I think we’ve made a good case. And I think you’re in the right.”

  Unc looked out through the window. “That ain’t never changed.”

  “Remember, William, I’m on your side.” Pockets began rolling up his window. “Always have been.”

  As we drove off, Unc nodded and whispered over his shoulder, “That’d put you in the minority.”

  The wind rattled through the bikini top, carrying with it the strong smell of salt marsh and the train that had appeared alongside me—doubles filled with cars headed for the ports in Brunswick and Jacksonville. Hollow and haunting, the sounding horn thrust me into the only memory I had of my father.

  As best I can figure, I must’ve been about three. I had heard the distant, hollow horn, crept out of the house, and tiptoed down the drive. I think there might have been grass beneath my feet, and maybe it was wet with dew. Somehow I made it through the station house and jumped off the loading platform to the tracks to place my half-dollar flat across the track. I remember a cat, maybe gray, possibly a tabby, brushing alongside me. Its whiskers were long. The steel rail felt cold to my fingertips, as did the shard of amber glass I did not see that sliced into my foot. I remember the sensation of falling, of hearing something crack in my rib cage, of landing on the tracks and not being able to breathe, and of warm liquid on my foot. Lastly, I remember trying to get up, but—like Gulliver—I was tied down.

  I tried to scream, but when I opened my mouth all I felt was a knife in my side, and all I heard was the horn of the train. I reached behind me, trying to free the belt loop from whatever held it, but couldn’t. I remember the blinding light of the train and the warmth in my shorts—I had seen what a train could do to a penny.

  Like a record that’s scratched, the soundtrack skips again, but I think I heard footsteps, maybe boots, because today I don’t so much see them as feel them. I saw a flash, a long shadow crossed over me, big hands wrapped round about me, and I felt the belt loop pop off like a shirt button.

  Another skip. I opened my eyes and saw the rusted underside of the train cars whizzing by just inches from my head. As the wheels screamed to a stop, they skidded against the steel rails and showered me with orange sparks that stung my cheeks.

  Up to this point, the memory is like an Ansel Adams photograph: I feel long whiskers, hear the rib crack, see sparks, touch cold steel, and sense warm wet jeans. But here, at this moment, it blurs. Fades. Blacks out. Like the projector jammed and the lamp burned a hole in the tape. I turn to see him—the man connected to the shadow and the arms—but all I see is a hole where his face was, and when he opens his mouth all I hear is the film tab slapping the machine through the feeder.

  No matter how many times I play and replay the tape, I cannot hear him and I cannot put the words back in his mouth. And yet I know, when he opens his mouth, he calls me by my name. My real name. The one he gave me.

  For twenty-five years since then, through three foster homes, two boys’ homes, and finally to Unc and Aunt Lorna’s house, I have listened to the names people call each other and me. Hoping, some-how, to hear the whisper of my own.

  I’m told that because I’m a foundling—aka a “doorstep baby”—I was given a name upon discovery. The director of the home assigned names to the nameless much as meteorologists do to hurricanes. Evidently it was a busy year, and the staff had progressed through the Vs when somebody pitched me overboard. Sometimes I wonder if Moses ever felt the same way. The story is that come Monday morning, the staff threw all the “W” names that they could think of into a hat. That done, they repeated the process for a first name—in much the same manner as people pick lottery numbers.

  Even now, when someone calls me by the name on my driver’s license, Chase Walker, it’s as if they’re asking for someone else. Like my entire life is one of mistaken identity. I know this because when they say it, it doesn’t fill in the blank on the tape. If you want to know what I’m talking about, spend an entire day introducing yourself as someone you’re not, and then listen when people call you by
that name. You’ll understand.

  When I was thirteen, tired of living between hope and nowhere, I saved my money and bought a book of names, something pregnant couples flip through at night, and read five thousand names aloud. Alone in the woods I whispered, then shouted, trying to remember. But his voice, like the Silver Meteor, no longer rides these tracks.

  Chapter 3

  The Brunswick hospital has never been much to look at. It is the definition of function over form. Not waiting on me, Unc strode out of Vicky and was the first to punch the button for the elevator.

  As a farrier, Unc spends a lot of time in barns and around horses. Given this, his uniform, if you want to call it that, is pretty simple. Dirty hat (either a Braves baseball cap or his dirty Gus hat, depending on his mood and whether or not the Braves are in the pennant race), a denim long-sleeve shirt (snaps, no buttons), faded Wrangler jeans fraying behind the heel, old boots twice resoled, leather belt with WILLEE stamped across the back, and either a red or blue hand-kerchief tied around his neck. He says it keeps the dust off, but I tell him it looks like a bib and he should use it to dab the sides of his mouth. Because the Braves are up five games, and because Chipper hit a three-run dinger last night, he’s wearing his cap right now.

  We stepped onto the third floor and walked down the hall to room 316. A guy in a suit sitting in a chair reading a SWAT magazine stood when we walked up. He looked at me. “You the reporter?”

  I flashed my credentials.

  He nodded, shrugged, said, “Good luck,” and opened the door.

  The room sat in the corner of the hospital where two large windows poured heavy sunlight onto the whitewashed walls. The TV was off, and the kid sat in a chair looking out the window. He was drawing in a spiral notebook. He held the pencil sideways—like an artist sketching with charcoal—and his hand made quick strokes. He heard us walk in, tucked the pencil behind his ear, closed the notebook, and folded his hands across it. He sat cross-legged in the chair and wore only long pajama pants covered in baseballs.

  I pulled up a chair and sat quietly alongside him. For a minute, I said nothing. I scanned the skin on his back, looking at the random pattern of scars, while Unc circled us. When he got behind the kid, he managed a quick, short breath and sucked unconsciously between his teeth. He wiped his nose, took off his hat, and leaned against the window, shaking his head. A second later, he cussed under his breath.

  The kid was skinny, pale, and covered in ant bites. Puss leaked out from beneath white gauze on his back and trickled down his spine. Unc walked out of the room to the nurses’ counter, grabbed some pads, and then knelt in front of the kid. He showed the clean pad to the kid and said, “I’d like to use this to wipe off your back. That okay with you?”

  The kid nodded once, but never took his eyes off the floor. He reminded me of a yellow Labrador puppy I’d once seen in a humane shelter—thick, dirty hair matted like a Brillo pad, big round eyes glued to the floor, floppy ears that hid half his face, tail tucked between his legs, and oversized paws that he was years from growing into.

  Unc held out his left hand. “Here, you hold my hand.”

  The kid’s eyes darted from the floor to the hand.

  “If it hurts at all, you squeeze my hand.” He paused. “Deal?”

  The kid slowly placed his hand inside Unc’s.

  Remember that game in grammar school where one kid places both palms on top of another kid’s outstretched palms and then pulls them back before the other kid slaps the top of one? And remember how, if you were the kid whose hands were on top, it was to your advantage to press ever so slightly? That’s what I thought of when I saw that kid place his hand in Uncle Willee’s.

  Unc peeled off the yellowed gauze and gently patted the trickle. He placed two more clean pads across the festering wound and then helped the kid sit up and lean back where the pressure against the chair held the pads against his back.

  The kid slid his hand back and stared at his lap.

  Unc knelt next to him and said, “All done.” When the kid didn’t respond, Unc pulled a lollipop out of his shirt pocket and said, “You know . . . you should never take candy from strangers?”

  The kid eyed the green candy, bit his lip, and then continued studying the floor.

  Unc pulled off the wrapper and held it out. “Good, let’s keep it that way.”

  The kid hesitated, like he didn’t intend to fall for this trap.

  Unc saw his hesitation and set the candy on top of the wrapper on the notebook. “Whenever you want it.” Unc stepped back, and the kid’s hand slowly cupped the lollipop.

  I looked at the notebook and made a conscious decision to lower and soften my voice. “What you drawing?” Since we had walked in, I had yet to really see the kid’s face. Until now, I’d only seen the top of his head and the first inch or so of his forehead.

  He let go of the end of the sucker and flipped open the notebook. Spread across two pages was a sketch of the moment when the front end of a train collided with what looked like an old Impala. This was no child’s stick drawing, and it was no cartoon either.

  “Is that your car?”

  He shook his head.

  “Is that the car you were in?”

  He nodded.

  “What’s your name?”

  He pulled the pencil from behind his ear, drew a question mark, then circled it.

  Seconds passed. I tried again. “Until the age of six, folks called me something different every time they shuffled me from one home to the next. I didn’t know what my birth certificate said until Unc here showed it to me.”

  He shot a glance at Unc’s boots.

  “You ever seen yours?”

  He shook his head.

  “What do people call you?”

  He turned to a clean page and wrote in block letters: SNOOT.

  I studied the page. “They call you anything else?”

  From the moment we had walked in, his left leg had been bouncing like Pinocchio tied to an invisible tether held by a puppeteer above the ceiling.

  “What if you could pick any name . . . and you knew folks would call you by it . . . what would you pick?”

  The hand stopped, Pinocchio’s tap dance quit abruptly, and the kid’s head slowly turned toward my feet. After nearly a minute, he turned back to center, and the puppeteer tightened the slack.

  For the first time, I noticed that most of the pages in the notebook were covered in sketches. “Will you show me your notebook?”

  He turned to the first page and held it open on his lap. I put my hands behind me so he’d know I wouldn’t take it, and leaned in. The realism was stunning yet, based on what I had seen walking in, so was the speed with which he sketched. He flipped the pages while Unc looked over my shoulder.

  We saw a rundown trailer on blocks with a fat, collared cat sunning itself on top and a German shepherd burrowed in the dirt below with two, undoubtedly pink, flamingos thrown off to one side. One of the heads had been chewed off. One high-top basketball shoe, the laces untied with a hole above the big toe, sat at an angle before the front door. Beer cans and Jim Beam bottles riddled the grass around the front door. A clothesline hung off to one side. Men’s underwear, a woman’s thong, a few pairs of jeans, and one pair of kid’s faded jeans hung from it. A tall live oak rose up from behind the trailer and towered above it. A fifty-gallon barrel cut in half and resting on its end sat front and center, flames rising above the rim. A bag of charcoal had been tossed aside and lay crumpled nearby. On the door hung the number 27. All the windows were open, and a huge floor fan had been lodged in the bedroom window on the end.

  I tried to find his eyes, but he lowered them further. “Can I turn the page?”

  He nodded, and I slowly turned the page—again putting my hand behind me.

  The second page contained a close-up sketch of what looked like a massive and muscled right hand, covered in grease and calluses, wrapped around a pair of pliers and squeezing like a vise. The pliers were pressed
against what looked like the back of someone’s arm or shoulder blade, and pinched inside the nose of the pliers was a fold of skin, maybe an inch long and half an inch in width. The next picture, or frame, showed the hand and pliers just after they had ripped the skin off the arm.

  I compared the kid to his pictures. First his arms, then shoulders and back. His skin was a wartorn canvas. Including the one beneath the gauze, I counted sixteen scars. Each one was about as long as the nose on a pair of pliers.

  The kid’s head had been buzzed short, and entire random patches of hair were missing. They’d been pulled out. His shoulders, bony and narrow, fell off like waterfalls at the edges. His fingernails had been bitten down to the quick, and his feet were that kind of dirty that no single bath would clean.

  Unc studied the pictures, the kid, and then me. His lips were sort of wrapped around the left side of his mouth, and his front teeth were chewing on the inside of his right cheek. Every few seconds, he’d spit out what looked like a dead piece of skin.

  I knelt next to the kid, trying to level my eyes to his. Without touching, I pointed to his arms. “Who did this to you?”

  The speed of the hand on the tether was tapping double-time and now controlled both his left leg and right hand. His head moved from Unc’s feet to mine and then back to center. Finally, he shut the note-book and crossed his arms.

  I sat on the floor in front of the kid and pointed. “What’s his name?”

  Now his head began bobbing along with his leg.

  “Can you draw it?”

  The hand slowed, the bouncing stopped, and a few seconds later he quit moving altogether.

  I tapped the notebook. “Show me.”

  He pulled the pencil from behind his ear, opened the book, and in a matter of three minutes sketched a man from the waist up. Dark hair, mustache, sleeves rolled up, big biceps, beer belly, shirt untucked and unbuttoned, a cigarette dangling from his lips, tattoo of some creature with a snake’s head on his right bicep and a naked woman wrapped in a much larger snake on his left forearm, long sideburns, and a name patch ironed on his chest. It read Bo.