Chasing Fireflies

by Charles Martin

  “You’re still making statements.”

  “When I finally found and interviewed one of the guards who drove you to Brunswick from prison, he said something I’ve never understood. He said William McFarland did not cry. The Willee I know would have cried his eyes out.”

  Unc seemed lost in the memory, and if it had an impact, he kept it hidden.

  “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “Unc . . .” I cracked open a peanut, which squirted me in the eye with salty juice. “After twenty years of rumors and people whispering behind your back as we walk down the street, I’d like to know.”

  I was in a bad place. I had tired of fighting the demons I couldn’t see.

  “I’ll admit, guilty or not, your life has pretty well sucked, but how’d you like to be me? I grew up under the rumors. Hearing people whisper behind your back and never knowing if they were right or wrong. I didn’t ask for this. I got brought into it . . . you brought it on yourself.”

  Even now, I wish I could take that back.

  He waited a long time, then nodded.

  “You mean . . . you did it?”

  He shook his head.

  “Then what are you saying?”

  “I know that it’s been hard on you.” He paused. “Maybe the hard-est on you.”

  “So?”

  He sucked on a peanut and shook his head again.

  “Why won’t you tell me?”

  He slid his glasses off his nose, wiped his forehead with his shirt-sleeve, and cleared his nose. When he sat back and put his hat back on, tears broke out of the corners of his wrinkled eyes and fell off his sun-weathered cheeks. He stood, walked to the end of the porch, and adjusted his belt. His voice was strained and weak. “Signing that release to the state to let them have my . . . my son . . . was the second hardest decision I’ve ever made.” He sucked through his teeth, then spat.

  I watched him walk away, and knew that I’d hurt him. It was selfish, and I knew it. “Uncle Willee?”

  He stopped, his back to me. I wanted to take it back. Bridge the chasm. But it was too late. His big, broad shoulders were slumped.

  I wasn’t mad at him. Not really. I was mad at my real dad for never driving up that road. That, too, hit me after the fact. Maybe wanting to hide my own mystery made me want to expose his. I’d lived most of my life thinking there was something wrong with me, that I was somehow defective, so I thought if I could take the attention off me . . . but it was a stupid thing to do.

  “What . . . was the hardest?”

  He tipped his hat back, scratched the back of one calf with the toe of the other foot, then walked off through the muscadine vines, through his tomato bushes, and into the greenhouse to talk to his orchids. I didn’t see him the rest of the day.

  That night, I wrote another letter to my dad.

  Dear Dad,

  I lied. I never quit looking out the window.

  Chase

  Chapter 34

  I left the boat just after six and arrived at the house a little before seven. Unc, who was usually gone by now, sat at the kitchen table with Sketch. The kid’s mouth was covered in syrup and butter, and half a stack of pancakes sat on his plate. He hardly noticed me when I walked in.

  The chess set sat on the corner of the table—a match half-played. Unc was intently studying the board. His face told me he might as well have been studying quantum physics.

  On the refrigerator, Aunt Lorna had taped three sketches. The first was a peacock, the second was Bob the Turkey, and the third was an orchid in bloom. Each looked as realistic as the thing itself.

  It was Sketch’s move. He shoved a forkful of pancakes into his mouth, moved his rook, and captured Unc’s bishop with barely a look at the board. Unc sat back, tilted his hat, sipped his coffee, and leaned in toward the board again.

  I poured some juice and stood next to Aunt Lorna, who was packing bologna sandwiches. I looked out the window toward the barn, where the lights were off. “You seen Tommye this morning?”

  Aunt Lorna shook her head. “She left shortly after you last night.”

  “When did she get back?”

  Aunt Lorna placed four sandwiches inside a large Ziploc bag and shook her head. “She’s not.”

  She served me a plate of buckwheat pancakes, which I ate while I watched the kid beat the pants off Unc. An hour later, swimming in the sleepy buzz that follows a heavy dose of flour, sugar, and fat, I leaned back in my chair, sucked on a toothpick, and watched Unc read my story in the paper. Red must’ve stopped the press to get it in—with a small paper, anything’s possible.

  Around eight thirty, Mandy opened the screen door and waved. She looked nothing like the woman I’d seen at the table across the glass from Reuben. She wore a blue T-shirt, faded jeans, running shoes, and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. All she lacked was a Braves cap. Aunt Lorna served her a plate of buckwheat pancakes, and she started swirling them with syrup. She spotted the newspaper folded up on the corner of the table. “I read your story.”

  Comments like that are two-part. Writers learn this. “And?”

  She sank her teeth into the pancakes and spoke with her mouth full. “Something’s different.”

  I grabbed a stack of cards and began shuffling them on the table. “That’s what Red said.”

  She mumbled through the wad of pancakes in her mouth. “Good editor.”

  She finished her pancakes and then pulled me out on the porch for what I sensed was attorney-talk. First she looked back inside the house to make sure Sketch wasn’t listening.

  “I want to run back by the trailer behind the bottling plant. I’d like to take Buddy inside and watch his reaction.”

  I considered this. “What do you hope to gain?”

  “Don’t know.” She shrugged. “It’s just a hunch that he might show or tell us something we missed.”

  “Okay, but we don’t need to spring it on him.”

  “Agreed. You want to tell him, or me?”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that.”

  I went back inside, and Sketch met me with a deck of cards. I shuffled, dealt us two cards each, and set the deck between us. Sketch eyed the cards, did not look impressed with my challenge, and picked up his cards. He studied them, then raised his eyebrows and held them there: my move. I looked at my hand and realized I hadn’t dealt myself a very good one—a pair of eights.

  I slid a card from the top of the deck and said, “I’ll take one.” It only made matters worse. “You?”

  He tapped the table one time, then laid down his cards. At first he laid down a seven and a three. Then he laid the third card—a face card—across the other two.

  I laid mine down—a pair of eights topped with the face card I’d just picked up. Then I pointed at Mandy. “Ms. Parker and I think we found the trailer that you sketched in your notebook.”

  He listened without changing expression.

  “We’d like to go back by there today on our way to Atlanta.”

  He looked at Mandy, then back at me.

  “It’s empty. No one’s home.” I shrugged. “Except a bunch of cats.”

  Surprisingly, his reaction wasn’t negative. He simply nodded one time, and then looked at me as if to say What else you want to talk about?

  “Okay, then.”

  The trip to Atlanta was turning into more than I bargained for. Unc got whiff of the Braves game and shook his head. “Ain’t no way on earth I’m letting you go to Turner Field without me just so you can come home and tell me about it for the next three months. Especially not when they’re this close to winning another pennant. Besides, I need to go along for Buddy, to explain the rules of baseball.”

  Being that this was now a road trip, Unc insisted on driving, and when he traveled, he liked to do so in style. He backed Sally out of the carport and drove around the front. Because a hearse is custom-fitted to carry long pine boxes, rear seating can be a problem. Backseats h
ave to be retrofitted in if you plan to carry people who want to sit upright. Unc had taken care of this a few years back, but it did little to stem the thought that you were sitting where countless horizontal bodies had once lain.

  Unc patted the black top. “Mandy, meet Sally.”

  “Oh, this . . . she . . . has a name?”

  Unc nodded. “Ain’t she a beauty?”

  “Unlike anything I’ve ever seen.” Mandy slid into the seat, hesitant to lean back, and slowly looked around.

  When we pulled out of the drive, Sketch sat in the front seat devouring the scenery out the windows and listening to Unc talk about baseball while Mandy and I sat in the back fighting over the direction of the air-conditioning vents. The only trouble with leaving was that Tommye hadn’t shown. I wasn’t sure if that was bad, but I was close to certain that it wasn’t good.

  Because I knew I wasn’t much competition, I placed my Apple lap-top on Sketch’s lap and showed him how to work the touchpad to play a game of chess. I set the computer level on novice, and he began playing the machine. Fifteen minutes later, he’d beaten the computer in three straight games.

  We drove beyond the Zuta, its gargantuan pine trees spiraling up into the horizon, and then west along Highway 25. While Unc asked Mandy where she was from, where she went to law school, and just generally made small talk, I found myself lost in the rows of pines, the power lines, the telephone poles, the cypress swamps, and the yellow deer crossing signs. I didn’t realize how quiet I’d been until Mandy tapped my shoulder.

  “You in there?”

  “Huh?”

  “Yeah, you.”

  “Oh, yeah . . . just—”

  “Don’t mind him,” Unc broke in, “you ought to see him when he really gets constipated.” Mandy laughed, and he continued, “He can chew on an idea for days before he lets you in on it.”

  “I do not . . .” It was a feeble attempt.

  He looked at me and said quietly, “She’s fine.”

  “Huh?”

  “She went to see your Uncle Jack.”

  “What? Why didn’t she tell me?”

  He shook his head. “She had a meeting in town and then said she wanted to get a few of her things out at his place.”

  “But . . . she was gone all night.”

  “She’s a big girl.”

  “Yeah, but . . .”

  Unc paused. “What do you do when you’ve hooked one that might snap your line?”

  I knew where this was going. “You loosen the drag and let him run.”

  He nodded and looked out the window, lifting his sunglasses back over his eyes. His voice dropped almost to a whisper, like he was talking to himself. “Then you pray they don’t shred your line on an oyster bed.”

  We arrived in Jesup about twenty minutes later and drove around the back of the bottling company. Sketch shut the lid on my laptop and sat clutching his notebook. I tapped him gently on the shoulder.

  “Hey . . . nobody’s here, okay?”

  He nodded and pushed his glasses up on his nose, but didn’t look at me. We pulled up in front of the trailer and parked. I opened his door, and he stepped out. He stood a minute, taking it in.

  When Mandy walked up the steps, he followed. She pushed open the door and sent cats scattering to the far corners. Sketch stepped across the threshold and did something I’d never heard him do. He whistled.

  Two seconds later, a large tabby cat with no tail came out from underneath the back of the couch. Surprisingly, it wore a collar and looked wellfed. In fact, it was huge. This one could have starred in a Disney movie. It walked up to him, and he knelt and picked it up. The cat purred, rubbed its whiskers against his face, and licked his nose. Evidently they’d done this before. After they’d said hello, he held the cat in his arm and showed me the collar. Clipped to the buckle was a round, silver nametag.

  Mandy looked over my shoulder while I read it aloud. “Bones. I take it you know her?”

  He frowned at me, turned the cat over and showed me its belly, among other things.

  “Oh . . . sorry. I mean him.”

  He nodded.

  Unc stepped around me and said, “You know, we been needing a good cat around the house.”

  The kid looked up at Unc as if the freedom even to make such a request had not occurred to him.

  Unc rubbed Bones’s head. “Oh, yeah. This is my kind of cat. Big. Tough. Got one heck of a name. He’s coming with us.”

  I knew that Unc had never cared too much for cats, and Unc knew that I knew. He thought they were the prima donnas of the pet world. But I had the good sense to keep my mouth shut.

  The kid looked toward the bedroom like he was waiting for some-body bigger, with more authority, to walk in the room and set Unc straight. When it didn’t happen, he set the cat on the couch and then walked to Unc and put his hand out—another thing I’d never seen him do.

  Unc smiled big as the brim on his Gus hat. He stooped a bit, gently shook the kid’s hand, and said, “You’re welcome. And it’s my pleasure.”

  We walked through the trailer, following Sketch. He walked from room to room, not really touching anything, just looking in. When we got to the bedroom, I touched the handle to open the door, but he reached out, touched my hand, and shook his head.

  Coming back down the hallway, he walked into the bathroom and knelt at the end of the tub where the faucet came out of the wall. He tapped on the corner board below the tub and tried to pull it back, like he wanted to open a miniature sliding glass door. When it didn’t budge, he started looking around the bathroom. Not finding what he wanted, he opened his sketch pad and drew a picture of a flathead screwdriver.

  I shook my head, while Unc reached into his pocket. He pulled out his two-bladed Barlow pocketknife and clipped open the smaller blade. He passed it handle-first to Sketch and said, “Careful. It’ll cut you.”

  The kid inserted the tip in the crack, pried slightly, and the piece of wood budged just far enough to get his fingers inside. He carefully closed the pocketknife and handed it back to Unc, who held his hands out like a stop sign.

  “No, no. That’s bad luck. Always hand a knife back the way you got it.”

  The kid put his fingernail in the groove, reopened the knife, and passed the handle back to Unc.

  “You got one of these?”

  Sketch shook his head.

  Unc squatted on his heels, eye-level with him. “You mean to tell me you don’t own a pocketknife?”

  Sketch looked at me, then slowly shook his head.

  “Well, that ain’t right. I reckon you better keep mine.”

  Sketch looked up, surprised.

  Unc twirled his hat in his hands. “Yeah, long as you’re a guest in my house, you better hold onto that. It’ll cut most fishing line and clip orchids, and you just never know when you might need it.” He poked me in the stomach. “Just ask him.”

  I smiled, reached into my pocket, and pulled out an exact copy of the one he’d just given away. Sketch studied both, his chin lifted almost an inch, and then he slipped it into his pocket.

  Kneeling on the floor, he pulled back the board and then reached his arm as far as he could back underneath the tub. We heard something clank a few times, then he slid his arm out, pulling an ivory-colored plastic box with him. It rattled like it was full of marbles. He sat Indian style on the floor, unlocked the little brass clasp on the box, and flipped it open. When he did, both sides met squarely in the middle and turned into a travel-sized chess set. With all sixty-four squares staring up at us, he slid open one of the two drawers and pulled out a baseball card. He rubbed it against his chest, shining the face side, then handed it to Unc.

  Unc flipped it over, and his eyes grew big as half-dollars. “Whoa . . . where’d you get this?”

  Sketch shrugged, pulled one of the bishops from the box, and shined it on his shirt. He studied a few other pieces, then closed the lid, locked it, and tucked the box under his arm.

  Unc handed the card b
ack. “Well, don’t lose it. By the time you get there, it might pay for half your college education.”

  The kid shook his head, slid the card into Unc’s shirt pocket, and tapped it twice.

  Unc said, “No, son, I can’t . . .”

  The kid poked Unc in the stomach, pointed at his shirt pocket, nodded, and walked out of the bathroom.

  Unc looked at me. “Well, I’ll be . . .”

  “What?” I said.

  “He just gave me a Hank Aaron baseball card.”

  I watched Sketch walk down the hall, pick up the cat, and walk out the front door, the cat in one arm, the box in the other. “Well, I’d say you got the better end of that deal.”

  Mandy pulled Unc aside. “Mr. McFarland?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  She smiled, crossed her arms, and rubbed the toe of one running shoe across the shag carpet. “You really think it’s safe to give the boy a knife?”

  “Ms. Parker?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Sooner or later, somebody somewhere is gonna have to trust that boy with something.” Unc looked through the jagged edges of the trailer window. “Becoming a man don’t happen overnight. It’s something that’s passed down. That boy’s behind. But he can catch up.” He stuck his thumbs in his pockets and waited.

  “But sir. Don’t you worry that—”

  “Aw, I been cleaning horses’ hoofs with it all week, and it’s duller than a round ten-penny nail. Probably won’t cut a wet noodle.”

  I knew this, too, was not true, and Unc knew I knew. But I also knew that this was one of those cases where he was right and what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.

  “You realize that if he cuts himself, and you take him to the emergency room to get stitched up or cleaned up or whatever, child services will be knocking on your door before the Betadine dries.”

  “Well, then . . . looks like I’ll just have to doctor him myself.”

  I laughed, and Mandy looked at me. “What?”

  I held up my right hand and showed her the faint outline of a twenty-year-old scar on the first knuckle of my thumb. She shook her head and turned to walk out, pulling her sunglasses down off the top of her head. “I don’t even want to know about it.”