Boner tore his gaze away from Lock and stared at the car. “The Raven is back,” he said, his voice so low that I could barely hear it.
“The Raven is back.” Lock held out the keys. “Take your old lady home, Boner.”
Boner lunged at Lock, and the two of them hugged tightly. Grace and I held each other’s watery gazes.
I didn’t think my heart could burst again today, but it did right then.
My old man took the keys and got me in his Camaro. We led a long line of bikes through the mountain-carved tunnels and eroded granite pillars of the Needles Highway, over the hairpin curves, and down the long winding road through the Black Hills back to Meager.
Back home.
A week after the wedding, Boner took me to the Jacks’ favorite tattoo parlor in Deadwood owned by their long time friend, Ronny. Looking through Ronny’s amazing array of artwork, I secretly made plans to get fireflies tattooed on my rear and up over my back after I had the baby. Today, Boner had a plan for a special tattoo for himself. He had Ronny brand the poem he had written for me over his heart and down his torso.
I was speechless.
I was humbled.
I was honored.
I was in so much deep fucking love.
There have been many more poems since—some long and some short ditties. A few are nonsensical, a few are philosophical; yet, for the most part, they all express joy, not sorrow, not pain. So many are dirty, but all of them are simply true expressions of whatever Boner is feeling in that instant. He hides them for me to find around our house. I’ve found them in Becca’s drawers, in the bathroom medicine cabinet, in between the bottles in my spice rack, in my makeup bag, inside a rain boot, in my pillowcase, in my underwear.
But that poem, the first poem, is still the most special one of all. I lay kisses over it on his chest every night before I fall asleep in his arms and every morning when I wake up, folded in his embrace.
Every morning.
I’ve captured my firefly
At long, long last
And she glows
She glows
Like a star in the dark
Like a flame in the cold
Heat in my lost soul
My Firefly
At long, long last
No prisoner to take
No lid to close
She is free
yet she glows in my heart,
For my heart has no walls,
It’s clearer than glass.
And she shines within me,
The wild light of my dark night.
I swallowed her tears,
I took them in then threw them at the sky and made them rays of light.
JILL ENTWINED HER FINGERS with mine as the nurse attached a wide belt over her huge belly. The quick thumps of Super-baby’s heartbeat filled the delivery room, and Grace and Jill squeezed each other’s hands.
The heart—alive, pumping, circulating blood, maintaining life for this little being, working so hard to do the thing it had been created for.
My breath bottled up in my chest, and my legs suddenly felt weak.
“Mi corazón.” My mother’s elegant throaty voice came back to me, her hand ruffling through the thick waves of my hair, her final kisses of the day caressing my face before sleep would claim me. Without those gifts from her each night, something was always missing. The night would be empty.
My heart.
An odd floating sensation overtook me, and the baby’s quick heartbeat pulsed with my own. I rocked back on the heels of my boots.
This was Grace and Lock’s baby.
This was urgent life staking its claim among us.
I wanted to match it, sing with it, breathe with that heartbeat.
Can you hear it, Dig?
“Honey? Are you okay?” Jill asked, raising her head.
“Yeah,” I breathed, kissing her hand in mine. “Yeah, I’m good.”
My eyes went to Lock, his lips pressed together, his sleek black hair in his eyes.
The two weeks leading up to the baby’s due date, Jill and I had been very responsible in following the doctor’s orders to help Mother Nature do her thing. Jill had taken long walks around our property, and we’d fucked every chance we got.
Jill would come loud and hard each time. “I’m telling you, there’s nothing like pregnancy hormones. I wish I could jump you myself, but that’s physically impossible these days.”
I’d stroked the side of her hip. “No worries there, Firefly.”
She’d grinned lazily at me from our bed.
The day before Jill’s due date, her contractions had started coming frequently, and we’d headed for the hospital. The urge to push had overwhelmed her, and her water had broken in the truck.
Now, with my wife bracing herself against me and with Grace and Lock on her other side, Jill got into her breathing and pushing zone and used her diaphragm muscles—just like the seminar we’d faithfully attended with Grace had taught us—to push Super-baby out in under three tries.
I had my eyes on the doctor as the last of the baby’s body squeezed out of Jill.
The doctor’s face split into a huge grin. “It’s a boy!”
“It’s a boy? A boy?” Jill shouted.