We climbed up hay bale steps to the sweltering top of the barn. In the corner, strung between a wood beam and the siding, was a perfectly formed spiderweb, a huge brown-and-black spider in the middle. The height, the spider, and the potential for an explosion made me tingle nervously.
“Lighter, flamethrower,” he yelled and handed me the can and the Bic. “Sergeant, take out that gook bunker—now.” I hesitated, not knowing whether to start the spray first or the lighter or whether the whole thing would combust in my face. “Sergeant, what is the delay? The enemy will be on us; burn em—now.” I lit the lighter and pointed the can at the web and pressed. A thick flame rushed out, engulfing the spider. It tried frantically to escape Armageddon, making it only an inch before curling and dropping twenty feet to the floor. Very cool.
“Aren’t you afraid of catching the barn on fire?” I asked, breathing heavily from the excitement.
“Yep, but if I wasn’t, this wouldn’t be nearly as much fun. An I figure the only way the barn’ll catch fire is if the can blows up, which’ll kill me so I won’t get into any trouble for burnin down the barn.” It made sense.
We crawled over the tower of hay to a Vietcong safe house on the other side of the barn. Buzzy slaughtered them all with a wide swath of the aerosol flame.
“Kevin!” Pops called from the house.
I looked at Buzzy and we jumped off the hay and ran out of the barn to Giggins Hoo, where Pops and Esmer were talking.
“You’re still fifteen cats short and making little progress.”
“I found Buzzy. He was in the barn.”
“Hello, Buzzy. How are you at herding cats?”
“Cats is hard to pen,” he said. Esmer nodded agreement and pushed up onto his toes and back down gently onto his heels. Buzzy went into the house and came out with a jug of milk and a discarded tuna-fish tin.
“That’s quick thinking, Buzz,” Pops said and grabbed his bag as Buzzy led us back to the barn. He poured the milk into an upside-down pail lid and offered the tuna to an immense cat with a tattered left ear. Soon the trough had eleven cats drinking.
Pops loaded a syringe. We looked for the remaining four cats but gave up after about ten minutes, all agreeing that the stragglers would have to risk rabies.
“Them others ain’t barn cats,” Esmer instructed later on the porch. “They come an go as they please.” Pops and Esmer rocked and talked for half an hour about Cleo’s college prospects while Buzzy and I built a fort in the hay bales. Pops finally called me down and we walked back to the house slowly.
“Can Buzzy sleep over tonight?” I was craving some younger conversation and companionship.
“Not this weekend; your dad is visiting. Maybe Monday. Esmer?”
Esmer shrugged. Buzzy and I swapped excited grins.
“Monday it is. Esmer, you take care of yourself, call me if you need me,” Pops said. I nodded good-bye and walked to the truck with Buzzy.
“See you up at the tree house tomorrow?”
“I’ll be there,” he replied.
I climbed into the cab and Pops turned the truck around. As we pulled away, Cleo Fink was jogging up the road, turning sideways every twenty feet, then jogging backward, then to the front. I looked back at him as we passed with Giggins Hoo shrinking in the distance—Esmer Fink on the porch watching his pride work the Fink’s Hollow Road.
My father arrived with evening, and after dinner I walked to Smith’s Ice Cream with a fist of quarters he had given me Judasing my pocket. It was dark when I returned, and I could see him and Pops on the porch. I hid in the shadow of the hickory and listened to the anger in Pops’ voice seething and popping like fresh fire, dressing the air with disgust, disappointment.
“I don’t think this is the time to be placing blame, Edward.” The words came slow and measured. “In fact, what you just said may qualify as the most asinine statement ever uttered on this porch. No, I take that back; it’s the second-most asinine statement. You probably remember the first.”
“I’m not blaming the boy, Arthur. I’m just saying that this whole thing could’ve been prevented if he’d just done as I taught him.”
The words came to me as a blistering spear. A picket-fence post driven into my chest by a hurricane. I knew that my father blamed me for Josh, but actually hearing him say the words to Pops bludgeoned me, making my knees so weak I had to brace myself against the back of the old hickory in a half squat. My hands were shaking and I think at that moment I actually felt my heart tear.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Edward, when has a kid always done what his parents taught him? If Annie did what I taught her, she never would have married you.”
“Very funny.”
Pops didn’t respond.
“It didn’t have to happen, is all I’m saying.”
The comment caused an immediate stir in Pops. “But it did… it did happen,” he urged. “You can’t get yesterday back, and all the could’ves, should’ves, and would’ves aren’t gonna make your boy heal and your wife whole again. You’ve got a woman almost broken from what she saw and a boy carrying enough guilt for five religions and all you can do is point a finger and say, ‘This is who caused it; this is who we’ll blame.’ For once in your life, Edward, put the needs of your family before your own goddamn self-centered desires.”
“You don’t know what I’ve been through.”
“I don’t know what you’ve been through? You idiot, for the last four weeks I’ve been living with what you’ve been through.”
My father was quiet, then ventured a new line of discussion. “She seems better.”
Pops calmed himself. “She’s eating now. Audy Rae took her to Paul’s for a new hairdo, but it’s like she’s on horse tranquilizer. Comes in and out of touch. I’m still looking for that one spark that will bring her back to us, that one hook that will start to make her heal. I know it’s there somewhere. Audy Rae’s been a big help, doting on her and talking with her until she’s talked out. We need that spark, though.”
“How’s Kevin doing?”
“Ask him yourself.”
“I’m planning to, but I wanted to talk to you first. How is he dealing with it?”