Beneath the Bonfire Read online

  Outside the bar, the stars were out, all of them. A billion profusions of light, and closer in, a matrix of lightning bugs hovering off the earth, their own galaxy, blinking on and off and flying their loopy green circuits. I watched the progress of a satellite and spat into the parking lot, feeling my body go limp, the edges of the planet soft and fuzzy. It felt like maybe I was about to drift off into my own orbit, out over the soybeans and corn, over the silos and barns, and I have to say, I was ready for that strange levitation. Ready to start my ascent to wherever, ready to feel weightless, the cord linking me to my known life snipped sharp and clean. And I wanted that lift-off too, just to float off away from everything for a while, only to come back, slide back between my own bedsheets beside Nadine, her naked shoulder alpine and creamy smooth above the sheets.

  Just then Sven burst out of the bar, the skinny girl behind him, her lipstick a little smeared and the top button of her jeans loudly unbuttoned. It broke me from my spell.

  “Go, go, gogoogogo!” Sven said, pushing me with his hands, shooing me toward the Camry. I fumbled for the keys, dropped them in the dust and gravel of the lot and got to my knees, looking to find them.

  “God damn it, I’m drunk,” I slurred.

  Sven scooped the keys off the earth in a kind of motion I have seen performed only in jai alai videos and dragged me up too, up off the parking lot, throwing me into the car and somehow bending underneath the wheel and gunning the small engine within a matter of seconds. Sitting in the passenger seat, more than a little stunned, I realized that I had swallowed my chew of Red Man. I would pay for that later, I knew.

  “What’s the fucking problem?” I said. “Was she too beautiful? Jesus! I thought we were having a nice time!” I watched her figure shrink in the side mirror and even gave her a sad little wave.

  But Sven was vigorously shaking his head and touching his neck with those long fingers. He looked like a man bitten by a she-vampire.

  “You all right?” I asked, coming up out of it, trying to clear my head.

  “You left me!” he said. “You left me, Lily!” He punched the steering wheel and the horn beeped feebly in the night. He punched it again and we flew through the humidity of the evening like some drunk bird, squawking obnoxiously as the countryside tore past.

  “Jesus, Sven, I’m sorry, I thought you were cool. I mean, she was beautiful.”

  “I can’t fuck up,” he said. “All right? I can’t fuck up.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, confused.

  “I can’t do that, man. I just can’t do that kind of shit.” He was almost chanting it, as much to himself as to me.

  “She gave me a hickey,” he said, motioning sternly to his throat, where the bruise seemed to glow boldly, one link in an otherwise invisible necklace.

  I started laughing, then caught myself, choking on it. Sven punched me good in the arm.

  “What the fuck am I supposed to tell Tessa!” he said. “Huh? What the fuck!”

  He hit the brakes just then, pulling over too quickly, and my head went into the dashboard. Hard. I knew my nose was broken from the blood in my mouth and down my throat, the iron taste of cutlery there, like sucking on a butter knife.

  “Aw, Christ,” Sven said. “Fuck, I should have warned you. I just … I don’t know what the hell is happening to me tonight. I’m sorry, man. I’m so sorry about all this.”

  He reached over with his long arms and hugged me. We were two men in the countryside, embracing each other. One bleeding badly, the other with a neck sucked raw by a Russian ballerina succubus. The world was quiet and densely humid. There were frogs in the ditches, croaking and groaning. The brake lights of the Camry glowed red against the night behind us and I was happy for the gentle glare. Even though I loved Sven, I did not want to die in that way, rear-ended by some farmer with a sixer on the bench seat of his pickup.

  “What am I going to tell Tessa?” he asked me, his body draped over me, sniffles of fear and regret coming from his mouth and nose.

  “All right, all right,” I said. “Get off me for a second so I can stop this bleeding.”

  I reached into the backseat and grabbed some Kleenex to stuff my nose.

  We sat in the car halfway off the road and ruminated. I hadn’t realized how drunk Sven was, and now I knew, as I snuck a glance at him behind the wheel, his eyes filled with tears, his long fingers again on his neck, his pompadour totally askew. I didn’t want him getting in trouble, either, and I knew that I wasn’t going to come out on top of this one, unscathed or unpunished.

  “All right,” I said. “I got it. Get out of the car.”

  * * *

  And that was how we came to fight each other in the middle of county highway DD, in the red lights of my Camry. It wasn’t much of a fight, because it didn’t need to be. I instructed Sven to bend down a bit so that I didn’t have to jump when I punched him, and I had him close his eyes. I slugged him under the right eye, closer to the cheekbone, and he went down on the asphalt, laughing and then feeling the pain like a scrape against cement.

  “Now,” I said, “I’m sorry, but we need to add some more love bruises to that giraffe neck of yours.”

  I’ve never seen a man so happy to take a punch as Sven was then, and after a few more hooks and uppercuts we took a break, panting on the asphalt, my knuckles bloody on their stumps, my hands tired and sore. I stood up underneath the bath of starlight. Sven did too. I took a deep breath.

  “Now me,” I said. “Just not the teeth, okay?” A moment later I frowned, eyeing his incoming fist. It reminded me of Little League. The many times I stood terrified in the batter’s box, waiting to be nailed by a pitch that only ever landed in the catcher’s mitt.

  But this time, I was well beaned.

  * * *

  We pulled up in front of their apartment and Sven shook my hand. He looked at me seriously and happily, and I could see that the fight or the rest of the drive had sobered him up.

  “Got your story straight?” I asked.

  “Do you?” he asked.

  “A bad fight in a redneck bar. We tried to break it up, and instead the bar turned against us. We were so drunk we probably couldn’t find the place with a map.”

  “That’s a big ten-four,” he said, and we shook hands again.

  * * *

  “Bullshit!” said Nadine. “Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit! I don’t believe that crock for a second. Couldn’t find the bar with a map. Tried to break up a fight! You know that after you passed out last night Tessa calls me at three o clock in the morning. Says Sven has a black eye and a cut lip. Says there is blood all over his clothes. Bruises all over his neck! What the hell?”

  I decided to really sell that neck part. I could see that even if she didn’t believe all the details, the lie was doing its work. We had juked them, deked them off their skates. The Russian ballerina was lost on that limitless prairie of lightning bugs and dive bars, and Nadine and Tessa were never going to be the wiser.

  “Whaddaya want me to say?” I said feebly, apologetically, “One of those redneck bastards had a sleeper hold on Sven, and I really thought we’d had it. Lights out, you know? But then I got a boot to that guy’s toes and Sven was able to break loose. Tell you what, wouldn’t want to see what that guy looks like today. No, sir.”

  I sucked air through my nostrils, still throbbing with pain. It was a Wednesday morning before Nadine had to leave for school with Lola, and I had already called in sick to work, thinking that if I could fake illness the next two days I might be healed up for next week and never have to explain myself to the boss. I took a long drink of orange juice and batted my eyes at Nadine.

  “Tessa blames this on you,” Nadine said. “She blames all this shit on you. Said Sven had never even come home drunk before he met you.” Her voice was cold. Lola was at the table too, eating pancakes, her feet swinging off the chair. Her plate was awash in maple syrup, the pancakes floating like lily pads.

  “Lola!” Nadine sa
id. “Get your bag ready and go to the car, okay, honey? I’ll be there in a second.” She leaned in low beside my face and I looked down. Our story had done its work, but I knew how far I had fallen. Lola squirmed down below the table and ran off to her bedroom, her face sticky with syrup and butter.

  “Anyway, you’re done with all that, aren’t you?” Nadine hissed. “You hear me? Done. Grow up.”

  And then, so much worse, and whispered even quieter: “Be a man.”

  Knockout.

  She’d swung from her heels and broken my jaw. And down went Lily. Down went Lily.

  * * *

  The house was empty after she slammed the door, so I went to the couch with a glass of orange juice and flipped channels, my belly sour, my face sore. Even a pillow hurt. The telephone rang and I let the machine answer it. It was Sven, but I didn’t know what to say anymore. I knew our time had come.

  “Hey, it’s Sven. Look, I just want to say how sorry I am about everything last night. I hope you’re all right. Nadine told Tessa that your nose wasn’t broken too badly and that it won’t look bad forever. Anyway, I just wanted to let you guys know that I’m looking forward to those five boxes of Thin Mints. I’ll be over there later to pick them up. Take it easy. Bye.”

  Sven was good people. Through and through good people. Decent and square. But I was too. I was good people too, and I was taking it all on my chin. Nadine was pissed. Tessa was pissed. And I was losing my best friend. Not because I had necked with a Russian ballerina in the bathroom of some country bumpkin bar, but because Sven had, and was either too smart or too dumb to get his skinny ass out of the bind.

  I stood up from the couch and went to the refrigerator. It was nine o clock in the morning, but I decided to have a beer and lick my wounds. The orange juice was a nice chaser to the beer and I drank like that until lunch, when I was hungry and found the cases of Girl Scout Cookies in the basement and carried them up to the couch, where I stationed myself in front of the television, eating until I could not eat more, opening up box after box, and deciding that Thin Mints were my favorite. For the second time in twenty-four hours, I passed out with the television screen before me, aglow with happy faces, happy for another Today in New York City.

  The doorbell rang and I was covered in the crumbs of my daughter’s cookies. I rubbed my eyes, shut off the TV, and went to the door. It was Sven. Black-eyed and broken-lipped, his throat garishly decorated in a chain of bruises, he craned his face to look down at me and I could see there was real sadness there. Sven was my friend and I could see that he understood that we were done.

  “Come in,” I said. “Want a beer?”

  “Why not,” he said. “Could be the last one, the way Tessa ripped into Nadine last night. Oh, and I got a check for Lola’s cookies.” He handed me a check and I put it underneath a magnet on the humming refrigerator.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m in the doghouse for sure on this one. How’s the eye?”

  “You got any ice?” he asked.

  So we sat that way until five, by which point Nadine might be home with Lola from day care, Sven holding a bag of frozen broccoli on his face, both of us drinking beer and eating Girl Scout Cookies in silence, just the sound of our jaws working.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said.

  “It’s all right, things’ll cool down. You know how these things are. They’re upset.”

  “I know, but it’s my fault. Not yours. It was me in there with that girl, not you.”

  “Yeah, but I left you. And I took us to that place to begin with.”

  I didn’t know whose fault it was anymore, and maybe it didn’t matter. The whole thing was so dumb and I was losing my best friend in the world for it.

  He put his bottle up and drained the last dregs. “Come on, you didn’t leave me,” he said. “I just said that. That was all on me. That was on me, and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that because I didn’t want or need it anyway. You know?”

  I didn’t understand at first, but then I did and I nodded and we stood up. I was acutely aware in that moment of our trajectories in life, and how Sven was like the NASA space shuttle, his path nearly a vertical stairway, a plume of thick white cotton smoke beneath him as he raced toward the sky. He was the only person I’d ever met who could’ve been an astronaut; he was that good.

  “Take it easy, Sven,” I said, clasping his forearm, which fit like a broom handle between my fingers.

  “Take it easy, Lily,” he said, slouching down to hug me, his little pit bull.

  MORELS

  The best piece of advice that I ever had

  Never go to church with blood on your hands.

  —Charlie Parr

  THE THREE MEN MOVED OVER the south-facing slopes above the valleys, their faces low to the ground, eyes sweeping the forest floor like midday searchlights. Their pursed lips clamped joints of marijuana, and over their shoulders their smoke went like the thick white whiskers of a beard in vain neglect. Bathed in the tang of the smoke, they wet their lips occasionally with bottles of beer that they carried through the forest in a heavy backpack, the bottles a set of oddly muted chimes.

  “Too early,” said Rimes. “Too goddamn early. Hard frost last night. That’s no damn good.”

  “They’re going to be popping,” said Coffee confidently. “They’re gonna start popping and we’ll be right on top of ’em when they do.”

  “I’d like to see that,” said Deere. “I want to see ’em come out of the earth. You think anyone’s ever done that before? Like one of those time-elapsed movies of clouds moving or something?”

  Rimes and Coffee ignored Deere, whose eyelids drooped heavily over his dull and dilated pupils.

  The elm trees were champagne flutes cracked black against the sky, and they went to those dead trees and hovered around the trunks, where the bark peeled off in great scabs. The apple trees not yet softened with white-pink blossoms were craggy and lichened, stingy with their buds, and the men congregated beneath those trees too. They walked everywhere together, a band of stoned foragers, carrying their mesh bags of morels. When one man stopped to roll a joint, the others stopped too, and he would roll each man a fat cigarette. When one man stopped and dropped his pants to his ankles, the other two would do likewise, and they might be seen, backs to one another, urinating into the forest as if their counterparts were invisible strangers.

  Not yet noon the day had grown hot. They removed their sweaters and Deere stripped off all his shirts and went about the forest like an animal clothed only in pants and boots. His body was ethereally white and he seemed to glow as he wobbled clumsily around, dimly observing the world through his own kaleidoscopic perspective.

  “I’ll take another beer,” said Rimes to Coffee, who reached over his own shoulder into the bag of bottles and produced two, one that he passed to Rimes and the other that he raised to his own lips. They tapped bottles and made a small noise. They watched Deere and shook their heads.

  “Stoned out of his dome,” said Rimes.

  “Tell you what,” said Coffee. “You get that man out of his suit and tie and he loses his fucking mind.”

  Deere worked in electronic security. When he explained to Rimes and Coffee the inner machinations of his workday, he could see their eyes glaze over in confusion and he understood. He lived in a make-believe world of numbers and letters and electronic pulses and at his office he rarely saw women or talked to other men in conversations that were not monosyllabic or socially awkward. So when Deere found himself in the woods with Rimes and Coffee, he let loose and the other two men obliged him, guarded over him, even. Coffee had herbal tea in his truck to hide the traces of Deere’s marijuana binges. Deere had the kind of employer who paid well but insisted on quarterly urine samples.

  “How much we got?” asked Rimes, mopping his forehead as he marked the progress of the rising sun.

  “Maybe a pound and a half,” Coffee said. “Not much considering we been out all morning.”

  “Well,” said
Rimes, “my vote is we go find a bar, eat some lunch, have some beers, and come back midafternoon when these damn things start popping.”

  “I won’t argue with that,” said Coffee.

  “Hey, Deere!” yelled Rimes.

  Deere turned to his friends from the bird’s nest he’d been examining with some melancholy in the low-hanging branches of a nearby apple tree.

  “Goddamn eggs are blue as the sky,” reported Deere, shaking his head in wonder. “Baby blue.” He walked toward Rimes and Coffee and then past the two men, down the hill and toward their camp and vehicles. “Somebody put some food in my gullet,” he said without turning back to look at his friends. “I’m famished.”

  Rimes and Coffee looked at each other and smiled.

  * * *

  They had all grown up in those unglaciated hills; that part of the world left intact by the last glaciers that steamrolled the surrounding land, leaving it utterly flat. The Driftless Area, like a postcard of what had been. It was a place on earth unlike anywhere else, and as children they had merely used it as a playground, a place to swim or hunt or build their secret forts. They built faulty rafts to float the rivers and streams and stalked the forest creatures to test their own stealth. As children they had run together like their own small clan, learning the caves, coulees, draws, hollows, and springs bubbling up out of the planet like a good wound, giving up the coldest, sweetest water.

  Deere had left for the city and started into computers at the right time and before almost anyone else. He’d done well for himself, with a big house in the suburbs. He had married, which surprised Rimes and Coffee when it happened and they were called to his side in a great urban cathedral to be his groomsmen. As a child, Deere had been the smallest and skinniest of them all, and he wept when the other two boys outran him or hid from him among the sumac or deep inside a cave. He had failed as an athlete, been terrified of girls. But then one day he was a man, their friend, more successful than anyone they’d ever known, with a beautiful wife who had the look in her eye of a woman deeply in love with a decent man who saw only her and no one else in the whole world. Deere’s marriage had stunned Rimes and Coffee, and they had drawn into themselves, into each other, becoming not unlike circus Siamese twins sharing a torso and limbs. With Deere off and married and out of their world, they lived within the hills, two loud coyotes running from bar to bar, chasing women, wrecking trucks, wasting motorcycles. At the end of their evenings they built fires on the banks of the river and stared into the flames, looking for things they didn’t know.