(2007) Chasing Fireflies - A Novel of Discovery (38 page)

Unc continued, "One of my favorite musicals is The Man of La Mancha. It's based on a story written a long time ago, somewhere in the 1600s." He looked at me. "For those of you who just chewed on the covers while you fished your way through school, that'd be the story of Don Quixote."

A few of the jet set looked at me and laughed.

"Old Don, he saw things a bit different than most. Lot of folks thought he was just flat crazy. Maybe he was. He saw windmills as evil giants. He once turned a barber's basin upside down, pulled it down like a baseball cap, and called it a golden helmet. Saw his old horse as a trusty stallion. Thought the old inn was a castle and its innkeeper a lord. Lastly, he saw Aldonza, the inn's prostitute, as a virtuous lady. Pure. Unblemished. Radiant. She protests, tells him that she was born on a pile of crap, what she calls a dung heap, and she'll die on one too." He hung his thumbs in his jeans. "Old Don doesn't hear a word she's saying. He just shakes his head and calls her Dulcinea. Her real name. The name he gives her.

"Don Quixote saw things as God intended them, not as what they'd become. He said, `I come in a world of iron, to make a world of gold."' Unc shook his head and spoke, almost to himself. "I like that."

He looked out across us. "'Cause he never gave up, Aldonza began to see not only herself differently, but the whole world too. Aldonza, like a caterpillar, became something new and different. Something clean. A butterfly ... Dulcinea. All because some crazy windmill fighter convinced her that the mirror don't always tell the truth."

Unc wiped his eyes, chewed on his lip, and kicked at the grass. He reached behind him and pulled the tarp off the granite tombstone that stood next to her coffin. It read:

TOMMYE LYNN McFARLAND

1976-2006

MY Dui civA

Unc looked down the drive, beneath the canopy of pecan trees. "'Tween now and whenever I get home, I'm gonna paint my canvas, and come sundown, I'll lie down in the water, let the waves wash me clean, and leave the rest to God...." His voice cracked, and he shook his head and wiped his nose on his shirtsleeve.

Most everybody was crying-their eyes draining out the inside pain. The woman holding Bones was using the cat's back to dab her face. Finally, Unc sat down. We all just sat looking at the coffin, wondering what to do. Somewhere near the foot of that simple wooden box it hit me-her wing had healed, she'd flown away.

Aunt Lorna looked at me, so I stood up and took Unc's place. The grass beneath me was green, but crushed down from his boots. "We closed the coffin 'cause ... well, we just closed it. But, if you want to say good-bye, you can open it. She'd probably like that. Sometimes it helps.

"Unc and I won't take her to the cemetery 'til after lunch." I pointed to the porch. "Tommye liked chili, so Aunt Lorna made that. We got some crackers, iced tea, Tabasco sauce, and ... you all can stay as long as you like."

We sat there a long time. One by one they stood, walked to the coffin, and paid their respects. Some touched the top, a few opened it, and some even kissed her on the forehead. Finally, Lorna started serving plates, and pretty soon the porch was filled with people. Unc walked off toward the greenhouse and closed the door. I sat on the front row trying to make sense of the box in front of me.

While I sat there, one of the girls walked over and sat down. She carried a folder, thick with clippings and other papers. She handed it to me and whispered, like she didn't want to wake Tommye, "She'd want you to have this. I lived with her for a time. She talked about you often."

I opened it up and found most every article I'd ever written. She'd scribbled on many of them, underlined sentences, and written things like, "Sounds just like you." "How'd you know that?" Or "Come on, tell the truth."

Sketch appeared at my side. His glasses had slipped down onto the end of his nose and chili stained his shirt. He was carrying his chess set. He walked over to the coffin and looked like he wanted something.

"You want me to open it?"

He blinked, then nodded. I lifted the lid and watched him slowly look over the edge. He sucked in a short breath, then forced himself to exhale. He opened his chess set, pulled out a single piece, polished it on his pants leg, and then laid it gently on her chest. He touched his finger to his lips, pressed it to hers, then slowly stepped back and walked to the porch. I closed the coffin, but not before eyeing the chess piece.

It was his queen.

I y midafternoon, Tommye's friends thanked us and then disappeared as quietly as they'd arrived. I don't know if she would have liked knowing they were here or not, but something inside me tells me she would have. Around five o'clock Unc appeared carrying two shovels. Lorna and Mandy kept Sketch at the house while we slipped Tommye into the back of Sally and pointed her bumper toward the Buffalo. We drove slowly to the edge of the water, slid her coffin into Unc's canoe, and waded into the water. We pushed her across and because she was light, she floated easily. We floated her around the northern end of the island and beached the canoe not far from the gravesite. Two hours later, as darkness fell around us, Unc lit a lantern and we finished up the digging by its light. We worked slowly, neither of us needing to speak. Sweat trickled off our faces and dripped onto the black soil below. A few feet to our left lay the graves of Unc's first wife, Suzanne, and his young son.

Around nine o'clock we lowered her body into the hole. Unc held one side of the rope and I the other. I thought it fitting-Unc was holding Tommye's rope one final time.

Leaning on our shovels, we stared down. The lantern flickered low, several bugs circled in characteristic frenzy, and in the darkness, the tree frogs and crickets sang a final lullaby. Unc looked like he wanted to say something, but every time he opened his mouth, no words came. Finally he looked at me. "I'll be 'long directly."

I nodded, slid my shovel over my shoulder, and walked out through the Sanctuary. I slipped down into the water, waded through, and passed Vicky sitting waterlogged and at an angle. Water was flowing across her seats and bubbling up under the hood and out the grill.

I left Sally for Unc and walked home. A high moon lit the road and cast shadows across my feet. I thought of Tommye, eight years old, running through the Zuta, bloodstained and scared, her innocence stolen. Then I thought of Uncle Jack, and my anger swelled.

I got to the house, climbed up on the porch, and slipped down into the swing. Mandy's car was gone and Sketch's light was off. Across the pasture, fireflies lit the air. I looked for comfort, but found none. Instead, the emptiness blanketed me.

At three in the morning, Lorna shook my shoulder to wake me. "He's not back."

"Unc?"

She nodded. "I think you'd better go get him."

I jumped off the porch and ran barefoot down the dirt roads and back into the Zuta. The moon was still high, and my shadow stretched out before me. I reached the headwaters, and Sally was right where I'd left her. I slipped in, chest-deep, where the warmth of the water surrounded me, patted Vicky as I waded by, and climbed up the bank on the other side. That's when I heard the screaming.

I stopped and tried to listen above the sound of my own breathing. I could make out no words, but what I heard scared me. It was the sound of pain. I ran through the ferns, the dirt soft beneath my feet and the branches tearing at my chest like the arms of a jealous lover. The further in I ran, the darker it became. Dark rain clouds had moved in fast, covered up the moon, and the temperature had dropped maybe ten degrees. I shivered as the breeze wrapped around me. I got my bearings, turned right, and headed back toward the grave site and the sound. I cleared the magnolias and palm trees, ran through the heart of Ellsworth's creation, around our fire pit, and out the other side. In the darkness, a man stood over the grave, arms raised high, fists clenched, and head angled up. I crept forward just as the rain came down. Big drops that soon drenched me in a torrent. The sheet of rain drowned out the screams, but I could see his body shaking in the dim light of the flickering lantern. I slipped around the other side and hid myself in the bushes.

Unc stood over the three graves, screaming at the top of his lungs. His face was contorted, painted in pain. He paced back and forth, first to his wife's grave, then his son's, then Tommye's-now mounded with dirt. Every few steps he'd stop, lift his hands high, clench his fists, and shake his head. He'd torn off his shirt, and his jeans were soaked clean through. Noise, unintelligible words, poured out. The indecipherable tone of a broken man. Lightning crashed above us, thunder spread across the sky, and the rain puddled at my feet. Soon it ran in trickles across the roots and drained off into the Altamaha-carrying our sweat and Unc's tears.

As quickly as it had come, the rain stopped. Huge drops cascaded off the trees above and landed on my shoulders, chilling me from the outside in. Fog rose off the water and swirled into the trees above.

The lantern burned low, casting an eerie light on Unc, who seemed to grow up and out of a black hole in the earth. Having either exhausted himself or reached his limit, he crumbled and hit his knees, then began falling backward. I cleared a few tree limbs and reached him just as his head and shoulders swayed backward toward the graves. I caught him in my arms and laid him in my lap. His eyes looked at me, but they were focused somewhere out beyond the Milky Way. His body was rigid, every muscle a bowstring. Vesuvius was erupting, and a lifetime of pain was exiting Unc's body. For minutes, I just held him. His body was quivering, and every few seconds he'd let loose a gutteral moan that echoed off the trees above and then spread out over the water that surrounded us.

Unc was breaking.

I wrapped my arms around him, cradling his head in my hands. Everything in me hurt, but every time his teeth ground together, I knew that my pain didn't compare with his.

After the lantern had burned itself out, we sat beneath the canopy of the Sanctuary, wrapped in the ripe smell of freshly turned earth and angry sweat. Somewhere in there, he drifted off, and I laid his head down on Tommye's mound. I watched his body slowly relax. The only sound was the grinding of his teeth. An hour later his fist opened, and his big hand lay limp on the ground beside me. The moon had reappeared and shone down, bringing out the blue in his veins and the white of his palms.

I studied his hand. So many times he'd placed that same hand on my neck and chased away my demons. Now I sat helpless, unable to stem the tide of the demons that tried to kill him. I wanted badly to swing back, to return to the battlefield and rescue the wounded-but comfort was not to be found or offered.

Sometime later, he stirred and opened his eyes. He stared at the underside of the trees, studying the leaves and the sky that shone between. Finally he spoke. "We were just kids. Jack was a senior, and I was a year behind him. We were driving back at night, don't remember where we'd been, but we were in Daddy's Cadillac, and Jack was driving. Going too fast. Somewhere 'round a hundred. This mangy old dog, a long-eared beagle, got caught in the headlights and decided to cross the road. I remember it was limping, nose gray, hobbling across. Jack floored it, swerved out of his way to hit it. The bumper caught it square. It spun sideways through the air, landed in the ditch, and lay there wailing.

"I got to it first. Remarkably, only its leg was broken. I picked it up and carried it to the car, but Jack appeared from behind the trunk with a pistol. He never even asked. He just walked up, stuck the barrel to the dog's head, and pulled the trigger. He'd been waiting for me to pick it up so the target would be still. The dog went limp, a huge hole in its head. I looked at Jack, and he was smiling. Enjoying it. Evil down to his core." Unc paused.

"I don't know how he got that way. Same dad, same mom, same town, same life. I used to think I had something to do with it, that maybe I could bring him back, but then ... well, I couldn't. The next day I buried that dog and promised myself that I'd never forget that night. Never forget that old beagle." He looked at me. "And every time I bury somebody I love, I remember."

An hour later we walked up the porch steps, where Lorna met us with a tearstained smile and a cup of cold coffee. He wrapped his arms around her, kissed her, and said, "Honey, I've got to do something. Something that's been a long time in coming. I've got to bury one more person." He pressed his forehead to Lorna's. "You wait on me 'til I get out?"

She nodded. "Only if you're right."

Unc toweled off his face and said, "I've been right my whole life. I'm not about to change now."

We loaded into Sally and backed out. Sketch stood in the drive, arms folded, blocking the car. Scared but unmoving.

Unc rolled down the window and studied him. "Well, if you're gonna hang around here very long, you might as well see what you're getting yourself into. You coming?"

He nodded.

Unc pointed at the scars on his arms. "You might not like what you see.

Sketch shoved his hands into his pockets and shrugged.