By the time we left the pasture, the horses were lying down. The moon, still full in the sky, provided light for our walk back through the wooded hills, which sounded like crickets and looked like fireflies.
I again thought of Elohim, as I meandered around the trees, cupping my hands up around one of the fireflies and holding it in my palms like a jar. I could feel its tiny legs crawling on the underside of my fingers as my hands closed in around it. Feeling its space getting smaller and smaller, the firefly took to flight, softly tapping against my skin but not finding the exit.
Its flying got more and more frantic the smaller I made its space. I wondered what it was thinking as its body flattened between the contact of my palms. Did it plead for its life in its own bug-speak?
Please don’t kill me, there’s still summer left. There was a tree, that one over there, that I have yet to fly to the top of. I really wanted to see what the leaves are like up there. Please don’t kill me. There’s a star, way up there, I wanted to see if I could reach. I probably can’t reach it, but still I want to try. Please don’t kill me. I’m not finished yet.
When I opened my hands, the bug’s squished abdomen was bleeding what was left of its luciferase enzymes, which had been smeared onto my palms. Yellow like the blood of the chimney swift eggs. But not yellow for long, as it was slowly losing its illumination until all I had in my hand was something I could not take back.
“Hey, what’s that?”
Dresden was standing under one of the trees, pointing to the yellow orb up in its branches. By that time, we were in the hills closer to town.
“I can’t believe it. A balloon for my birthday. Isn’t that something?”
“I’ll get it for you.” Sal was already halfway up the trunk.
I brushed the firefly’s death from my hand and wiped that once-illuminated glow onto my jeans shorts as I stepped through the trees closer to Dresden and the tree Sal was climbing.
“I climb too,” I whispered to her over the hoot of an owl.
She sighed, almost irritated. “You’re not the one climbing now.”
I stepped farther away from her and watched Sal. He was an all right climber, though he had difficulty with a few of the limbs. Nearer to the balloon, he reached out toward its string but was still too far away. A step here and a stretch there brought him closer until he had the string in his hand.
The thing about branches is there isn’t much warning when one is about to break. It doesn’t groan, it doesn’t say, Look out below. It simply breaks, and sometimes you don’t have time to get out of its way. Sometimes it falls right on your head.
It was an everything bad sound. Think of all the bad sounds. A dropped glass. A 3 A.M. phone call. Hands slipping off the edge of a cliff. That branch and Dresden’s head made all those sounds and more.
I didn’t see the blood at first, not until I fell down by her side. I asked her if she was okay, but she said nothing. I said, “Move, Dresden. Goddamn you, please move.”
I could hear Sal grunting down through the limbs, landing on the ground behind me with a thud. He still held the balloon, so tightly, his nails were digging around the string into the other side of his palm.
I stood and wiped my eyes on my arm. “I’m gonna get help. Are you listenin’? Sal?” I shook his shoulders because all he saw was her. “Don’t be here when I get back.”
He finally brought his eyes up to mine. I couldn’t see his irises or pupils. The water was too deep.
“Go home, Sal. Pretend you were there all along. If they know you were here, climbin’ that tree, they won’t believe it was an accident. Not with what happened earlier with Alvernine. No matter what I say as a witness, they’ll say you hurt Dresden on purpose. So go. I’ll say it was just me walkin’ her home. We were under the tree. A branch fell. Simple as that. Okay?”
His hand ate down the string until the yellow balloon was at his chest. There, he pressed his nails into it until it popped.
I shut my eyes. “Please, Sal, say you’ll go.”
“I’ll go,” he whispered, still holding onto the string, the yellow remains of the balloon dangling at the end of it.
I opened my eyes and looked one last time down at Dresden, at the blood pooling on the ground behind her head. And then I ran. I ran as fast as I could, the fireflies lighting the way.
21
… moping melancholy,
And moon-struck madness
—MILTON, PARADISE LOST 11:485–486
MADNESS. THE COMPASSING violin when in our head, the directionless chaos when out of it. Isn’t that what madness is, after all? Clarity to the beholder, insanity to the witnessing world. My God, what madness this world has witnessed. What beautiful, chaotic madness.
Did I tell you that the other night me and the boy went out into the saguaros? That’s the closest thing we got to woods around this trailer park. I asked him to bring the jam jar, the one we found on the side of the road. The jam was gone and the glass was clean as we strolled through the cactuses.