He had already prepared himself to be a father. Already prepared himself for what his son would be. He would’ve looked like him. Been strong like him. That’s how he pictured him. Truth was, he didn’t care. That child would never have to lift a dumbbell into Otis’ heart. His love was easy.
He would have praised his son for dropping the football when others booed him for not catching it. He wouldn’t have cared if his son was scrawny. Couldn’t fight. Didn’t know who Arnold Schwarzenegger was. If he was fat. Ate candy bars and television shows and smelled like sofa cushions. Just as long as he came. It was the not coming that Otis couldn’t handle. The not having the son to see.
Sal knew this. That was why he went to the pile of broken glass. He picked up one of the larger shards and offered it to Otis with instruction to take the glass out into the night.
“Every light that reflects will be your son.”
Otis, the man who would later die at 660 pounds of pure fat, accepted the sliver of glass and went out the door with his head down. It was his sudden shriek that made us run out to the porch.
He was looking into the mirror, the sharp edges of the glass cutting his palm in his tight grip. He was smiling at his son, he said. None of us told him it was just the porch light and always would be.
Long after he left, we could hear him. Seeing his son. Hollering that very thing into the dark for all of Breathed to hear. Sharing it somehow made it more than streetlights, more than house lights, more than cars coming his way.
16
I sung of Chaos and eternal Night
—MILTON, PARADISE LOST 3:18
AUGUST WAS. A housewife taken in for heatstroke. A nursing home put on a bus for the next town. A pepper in the mouth. Another cow dead. Another fly landed. A woman cutting her hair—cuts to get cool, they called them. A fury. A baby crying but not heard over the fans. Dovey home from the hospital. An air conditioner kicked. Dovey going to Elohim’s meetings. Another ice cube melted. Another farmer cursing. Water shortages. Otis staying home and dismantling the crib. Wells going dry. A man throwing up his lunch because it’s just too damn hot. August was.
And by the beginning of it, news of our heat wave stretched across the nation like one long sentence looking to never surrender to a period.
“Boiling,” said the Chicago Tribune, while The Boston Globe called the town a “Torrid Furnace.” The San Francisco Chronicle was a telephone dialed to meteorologists who blamed the depleting ozone layer, while the Omaha World-Herald wrote extensively about the barren fields and how farmers kneeled in the loss of their crops.
The Indianapolis Star had a quote from an environmentalist who was certain our dying livestock and infestation of flies were the prologue to the disease in us, while The Miami Herald listed Breathed at the top of its list of the ten worst places to spend summer vacation.
Then there were the articles less about the heat and more about Sal and what they called his “devil delusion.” The Columbus Dispatch quoted a prominent psychiatrist who gave an abridged diagnosis of pediatric schizophrenia while The Washington Post gave a detailed description of the therapy and miracles of modern medicine used to treat such a disorder.
The Baptist preacher interviewed by The Clarion-Ledger ignored any verdict familiar to the lexicon of the medical and instead said Sal was an energumen, a person possessed. The preacher went further to say that he would be more than happy to perform a Mississippi-style exorcism—for a small donation, of course.
The focus of other papers like USA Today was on Sal’s race, and their articles were narrations from the NAACP, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Al Sharpton. To them, Sal was just a black boy who by calling himself devil was personifying the white man’s claim.
There weren’t as many journalists to come to Breathed as there were articles written. Most of them phoned it in or relied on their fellow journalists, lifting the common themes of heat and race. Those who did come rarely stayed more than a couple days. The heat got to them. The people who wouldn’t talk got to them. Not even Elohim and his followers had anything to do with the newspapers. National news was something Elohim did not want to make.
These reporters especially wanted to speak to the family with the boy. Of course to the boy himself. Every notepad, every big city accent, asking, “Say, aren’t you—?” we ran away from. Some chased, shouting they just wanted to talk. We ran faster. They wheezed and cursed over their urban knees. And we ran faster.
Aside from Sal’s race, the town got darker that summer, beyond a Midwestern tan. No hat, no shade, no night could keep you pale. The heat had its own sun. Even housebound Mom came away with a cook to her normally rinsed skin.