Fiery Rivers

by Daefyd Williams

  “Guh mornin’. Grab a coupla foldin’ chairs from the utility room,” Marie instructed. “Want me to fry some eggs an’ bacon?”

  “Nah, we’ll just eat some cereal like the boys.”

  “Mornin’,” Adam said, as he mopped up the last vestiges of egg with a crust of toast. “Bet you’re not lookin’ forward to workin’ in this heat, are ya?”

  “Ah, it don’t bother us none. Does it boys?” he said to Devon and Del. “We get ‘er done, no matter what. Right, Mel?”

  “That’s right,” Melda agreed.

  Dwayne brought the chairs from the utility room, and they both sat down at the kitchen table and helped themselves to Cheerios. Dwayne ladled two spoonfuls of sugar on top of his cereal. “Got any more toast, Sis?”

  “We sure do. Just gimme a minute to put ‘em in the toaster.” She got up from the table and went to the counter. “You plannin’ on bein’ done in eight ars?”

  “Why, with your boys workin’ as good as they do, we’ll prob’ly be done before that, right boys? Why?”

  The boys shook their heads yes.

  “Brother Doyle’s showin’ a film tonight about him ministerin’ to the lost souls in Haiti. I thought you an’ Mel might wanta see it.”

  “Why, that does sound innerestin’. Has he done saved all the souls in Franklin, that he needs to be goin’ to a fern country to save more?” He grinned.

  “Now, you know better’n that, Dwayne,” Marie admonished him as she handed him and Melda each a piece of toast on a saucer. “He ain’t saved all the souls in Franklin. God told him to go to Haiti this past spring. He was just talkin’ a few nights ago about listenin’ to God’s still, small voice in his last sermon. Adam was really moved by it.”

  “That’s the God’s truth,” Adam agreed.

  “Oh, yeah?” Dwayne said. “Are you plannin’ on goin’ to Haiti, too?”

  “Now, no. I ain’t plannin’ on goin’ to Haiti, but I b’lieve God got sump’n’ in mind for me. I just doeknow what yet.”

  “Hm,” Dwayne said, as he slathered the toast with peanut butter and grape jelly and gobbled it down in three bites. “I thoughtchou liked Brother Doyle.”

  “I do. I’m just startin’ to think that God wants more from me.”

  “Well, I’m shore God will show you the way in time.”

  “I’m shore he will,” Adam agreed.

  After breakfast, Dwayne and Melda got into the pickup truck and the boys climbed into the back. They sat with their backs toward the cab to be out of the wind as much as possible.

  “Wha’djou think Daddy was talkin’ about at breakfast, Dev?” Del asked.

  “I doeknow. Wha’djou think?”

  “I doeknow. Sounds like he might be thinkin’ about movin’ us somewhere.”

  “Ya think?”

  “I doeknow. I’m just guessin’.”

  They spent the day carrying garbage cans from the sides and backyards of homes in Preble County and emptying them into Dwayne’s pickup truck, the sides of which had been made taller by the addition of sheets of plywood supported by two-by-fours. The boys would take one can and Dwayne would carry another. Often, the boys’ can was too heavy for them to hoist up and over the side of the truck, and Dwayne would have to help them. Since the cans had been sitting for a week in the hot and humid Ohio heat, the contents of some of them were wriggling with maggots and fetid with kitchen offal. Sometimes the boys would lose their grip and the can would lurch to one side, spraying the boys with garbage and maggots, which landed on their shoulders and in their hair and went down their backs. When that happened, they would brush each other off until they could see no more garbage or maggots. They wore their shirts outside their pants so that the maggots that went down their backs would land on the ground and not inside their underwear. As the day progressed, they would stand atop the garbage and tamp it down with their feet so that more garbage could be added, sometimes sinking into it as far as their knees. By the end of the day, they smelled like garbage and had blackened arms and faces from sweat mixed with barbecue ashes.

  At lunchtime, they stopped at a carry-out and had lunch—bologna sandwiches on dry Wonder bread, Royal Crown colas, and Mike-sell’s potato chips. The boys relished this part of the day. At home, they rarely had soda pop. For dessert, they were given one Hostess chocolate cupcake, also a treat.

  “Well, boys. We’re gittin’ it done, ain’t we? Just a few more ars an’ we’ll be takin’ shars an’ gittin’ ready for church,” Dwayne said, as he took a large bite from his sandwich. “You boys like Brother Doyle?”

  “I reckon,” Del said. In truth, he couldn’t remember going to any other church but his.

  “You boys ain’t saved, are you?”

  They both shook their heads no.

  “Well, ya might wanta start thinkin’ about that. Hell is a hot place an’ eternity’s a long time.”

  They shook their heads in agreement.

  “Well, hurry up an’ eat your cupcakes. We gotta be hittin’ the road again. Time waits for no man.”

  They quickly licked the chocolate frosting off their fingers and climbed back over the sides of the truck and onto the garbage. As they were pulling away from the carry-out, Devon glanced at the words on the white sign below the eaves of the carry-out. COLD BEER. SODA. SANDWICHES. CIGARETTES. “Sandwiches?” he thought. “Is that how you spell it?” All his life, he had heard everyone in his family say, “Samwidges.” He suddenly realized that everyone had been saying it wrong, including him. It was “sandwich,” not “samwidge.” It was the beginning of an awareness that there was something different about his family.

  At the end of the day, the truck was filled with garbage. After the final pickup, they spread a green tarpaulin over the top of the garbage and fastened it with ropes to holes at the top of the plywood so that the garbage would not fly off on the way to the dump. The boys climbed up into the cab and squeezed between Dwayne and Melda.

  “Well, boys, we done real good. It’s not even five an’ all we gotta do is empty the load. We oughta be home by six, plenty o’ time to take a shar an’ go see that movie,” Dwayne announced.

  “Mm hmm,” Del agreed.

  “You boys gonna grow up to be fine husbands someday,” Melda added, “maybe even preachers.”

  “I doeknow ‘bout that,” Devon said. “I like science.”

  “Science?” Dwayne asked incredulously. “What can you learn in science that ain’t in the Bible?”

  “Oh, things,” Devon replied.

  “Like what?” Dwayne pressed.

  “Last year we learn’ that there were spots on the sun,” Devon continued, remembering that he still had blurred vision, “caused by magnets on it.”

  “Heh heh,” Dwayne laughed. “Magnets on the sun? Why, they ain’t no magnets on the sun. All it is is a ball o’ fahr, like hell. An’ that’s what you’re gonna burn in forever an’ ever if ya don’t git saved an’ ask Jesus to forgive you o’ your sins.”

  “That’s right,” Melda agreed.

  At the entrance to the dump, Dwayne paid the attendant five dollars to enter.

  The attendant smiled and asked, “How you doin’ today?”

  “Purty good, now that we’re done for the day,” Dwayne replied.

  “I hear that,” the attendant said, wiping his forehead with a dirty handkerchief. “I don’t know how you boys do it, liftin’ them heavy cans all day long in this heat.”

  “Ah, it ain’t too bad. Not as hot as hell’s gonna be if you ain’t saved.”

  “Ain’t that the God’s truth?” he said. “You all go on in now. Find yourselfs somewheres that ain’t been bulldozed today.”

  “I think we can do that,” Dwayne said, smiling. He found a spot where the garbage dropped off sharply into more garbage and backed up the truck so that the truck was just at the edge of the garbage cliff. He turned off the engine. “Well, boys, let’s get ‘er unloaded.” He got out and began untying the ropes on one side of the truck. Devon
and Del started untying them on the other. Dwayne pulled the tarpaulin off and then unlatched the gate at the back of the truck, and some of the garbage tumbled out. Then all three of them climbed up onto the garbage, grabbed the snow shovels that had been hanging on the outside, and started shoveling the garbage into the pit. As they were shoveling, Dwayne suddenly let out a whoop, “Hoo-ee! Look what I found!” He held up a baby gray mouse by its tail. It squirmed and tried to climb onto his fingers. “Ain’t he a purty feller!”

  “Can I have ‘im, Uncle Dwayne?” Devon asked excitedly.

  “Wha’ chou gonna keep ‘im in?”

  “Jus’ wait! I’ll find sump’n’.” He began pawing through the garbage.

  “Dev, you know Mommy ain’t gonna let you keep no mouse.”

  “I can ask ‘er, can’t I? Found sump’n’!” He held up a small yellow plastic tumbler. “This’ll work.”

  “How you gonna keep ‘im in there?” Dwayne asked. “It ain’t got no lid.”

  “I’ll cover it with this.” He held up a fragment of black kitchen tile. “I’ll hold this on top.”

  “Well, come an’ git ‘im then,” Dwayne said, holding the mouse out towards Devon. He dropped the mouse into the tumbler, and Devon quickly covered it with the tile.

  “Put ‘im on top o’ the cab till we’re done,” Dwayne instructed. “Then ya can take ‘im home.”

  “Thanks, Uncle Dwayne,” Devon said.

  “That’s my tip for you for the day,” Dwayne said, smiling. “Why don’tchou see if you can find one, Del?”

  “I don’t want no mouse,” Del answered. “Mommy’s not gonna let ‘im keep that one.”

  “I can ask ‘er,” Devon said. He was excited. He had never owned a mouse.

  On the way home, as they sat with their backs against the cab in the bed of the truck, he would peek under the tile at his little ball of fur. It would look up at him, its whiskers twitching. He loved it.

  Dwayne had once been fearless. When he was three years old, he would scavenge along the sides of the road until he found a cigarette butt and then take it back to the house where his brothers would light it for him. He would sit on the front porch and smoke it while his brothers laughed at how cute he was. When he was a teenager, he performed foolhardy antics such as doing a handstand on the upper chord of a bridge, one hundred feet above the brown, swirling water below just to impress his brothers. That all changed after he met Melda.

  She lived in Germantown, and they had met when they were sixteen after a basketball game. They began to date, and Dwayne began to change. He stopped his risky behavior. He began to be afraid of the dark and developed a morbid interest in death. He fantasized that the Dark Master was going to surreptitiously creep up behind him, coldly embrace him, and snatch him into the underworld if he were ever alone. Consequently, he never let Melda out of his sight.

  Melda had been raised in darkness. The blinds in her high-ceilinged Victorian brick home were never raised. Candles were the only source of light her mother would allow in the house. “To keep the evil spirits at bay,” she would whisper. She insisted that the candles be kept burning all day and night, every day. Melda grew up with a macabre fascination with illness, death, and putrefaction. She felt at home picking up maggot-filled rotting meat and the detritus of other people’s lives on the garbage route. Her highly intelligent older brother, Nick, had wearied of the fetid breath of death breathing down his neck daily and had finally escaped the darkness and his mother at the end of a rope in his closet.

  Devon approached his mother cautiously as she stood over the stove, holding his hand firmly against the tile atop the plastic tumbler. “Mommy,” he asked with trepidation, “can I keep sump’n’?”

  Marie brushed a wisp of red hair off her forehead and looked down at him. “What?”

  “Can I keep ‘im?” He lifted the tile so she could see the bright eyes of the mouse looking up at her.

  “Aaaaahhhh!” she screamed, “Devon, that’s a MOUSE! Git that thing outa this kitchen, right now!”

  “But, Mommy, he’s just a ba-.”

  “DEVON! You heard me! Go let that thing go, right now!”

  Devon turned and, crying, ran out of the kitchen through the utility room. He let the back door slam.

  “Devon, you need another taste o’ tea?” she yelled after him.

  “She won’t never let me do nothin’ I wanta do,” he thought angrily. He walked to the front of the garage and saw Uncle Jonnie weeding the rows of corn with a hoe. “Look what I got, Uncle Jonnie.”

  Uncle Jonnie stopped hoeing and turned to look at him. “Why, honey chile, why’s yo lettin’ yo eyes leak?”

  “’Cause Mommy won’t let me keep ‘im,” he pouted.

  “Who?”

  “Him.” He removed the tile and the mouse climbed to the top of the tumbler and peered over the side.

  Uncle Jonnie smiled broadly and gently lifted the mouse from the tumbler and cupped him in his weathered, wrinkled palm. “Why, ain’t he the puhtiest little brudduh Ah ever seed. What yo gonna do wif ‘im?”

  “Can you take ‘im somewhere an’ let ‘im go, somewhere where he’ll be happy?”

  “Why, show can. Ah takes ‘im down by duh ribbuh where he can find lotsa tasties to eat. Be lack hebben foe ‘im.”

  “Thanks, Uncle Jonnie.” Devon began to feel slightly better. “I’ll see ya later.” He walked around the side of the garage, across the back porch, and into the backyard.

  “Yassuh, we see ya soon.” Uncle Jonnie raised his hand to his lips and kissed the mouse on its head. “Yo’s the puhtiest piece o’ God Ah ebbuh did see, an’ dat’s duh troof.” He unbuttoned the left pocket of his red-and-black flannel shirt and eased the mouse inside. “Now, yo takes a nap in dere till Uncle Jonnie finish wi’ duh hoein', an’ den we gonna take you down to duh ribbuh.” He went back to his hoeing.

  Devon morosely walked behind the gas tank which sat in the middle of the backyard and sat down, pressing his back against its cool aluminum surface. It was lozenge-shaped, eight feet long and four feet high, with what looked like the conning tower of a submarine (the gas intake valve) atop the middle of the tank. “She won’t never let me do nothin’ I wanta do,” he mused. “He was jus’ a little bitty ol’ mouse. He woulden bite nobody.” His mind began to wander. He remembered that he had once seen something behind the tank in the same place he was sitting now that still perplexed him. Del, Ron, Doug, and he had been playing king of the hill on the tank. They were laughing and shouting, trying to see who could remain the longest atop the tank when it happened.

  Ron had been standing on the tank, pushing everyone else off with his hands and feet, Del and Doug were where he was sitting, and he was standing a few feet from them. Doug suddenly jerked down Del’s shorts and underwear, leaned over quickly and began to suck his bird. Del shoved him away and angrily shouted, “What are you doin?! Git offa me!!”

  Doug smiled and said, “Nothin’. I was jus’ tryin’ to blow up your b’loon.”

  “Don’t ever do that again, or I’m gonna send ya to chaos!” Del shouted. This was Uncle Dwayne’s favorite phrase. He pulled up his underwear and shorts and angrily went into the house. Doug and Ron went home.

  “DEVON! Are you out there? Come inside an’ take a shar so you can eat supper!” Marie yelled from the back porch.

  He stood up. “OK. I’m comin’.”

  She went back into the kitchen, and he went into the bathroom and took a shower, washing the black dirt and sweat off his arms, legs, and face until he felt human again. Before he washed his bird, he lifted it to look at the underside. It was a darker color than the rest. He had always wondered about that dark patch and why the head of his bird was visible while Del’s was not. Del’s was completely covered by skin.

  While the adults went to church to see Brother Doyle’s movie about his soul saving in Haiti, Marie allowed the boys to stay at the Browers to watch the Saturday night westerns on television. The boys were thrilled to
be allowed to watch TV, as they had no television in their house. Watching television was a sin and an abomination in the eyes of the Lord, and Adam had never allowed that instrument of the devil into his home.

  Devon had joined Boy Scout troop thirteen at Mrs. Fugate’s house on Bruce Drive behind their house six months ago. Mrs. Fugate never did any activities with the boys; she just let them watch TV and eat potato chips and drink pop, which was alright with Devon, as pop and potato chips were hardly ever in his house and television was always a pleasure. No matter what was on, he couldn’t take his eyes off it.

  One afternoon, however, Mrs. Fugate came into the family room, turned down the TV, and announced, “Listen up, guys. The district is havin’ a competition to see what troop can build the fastest race cars. Now there’s a block o’ wood and instructions on the dining room table for each o’ you. You’re s’pose to work with your dads to build it. The competition is in two weeks. Any questions? Alright then, you can go git your wood and instructions. The competition is on August 13th, a Saturday, at First Christian Church on South Main Street. Can you all remember that?”

  Everyone shook his head yes and rushed into the dining room. Each boy had a block of wood eight inches long, four inches wide, and three inches high sitting beside a plastic bag filled with parts and an instruction booklet beneath it.

  “Now, there’s some pitchers o’ different cars that you can build in the back o’ the book. You and your dad can decide which one you wanta build, and we’ll see you in two weeks at six o’clock at the First Christian Church.”

  “Wow! This is gonna be fun!” Devon thought. “Daddy’s good with his hands. I know I’m gonna be the winner.” Clutching his precious booty, he excitedly rushed home to tell his father the good news.