Faces in the Fire (30 page)

She shook out a cigarette, offered him one. He refused, and she lit her own, then blew it out the side of her mouth as she squinted through the blue smoke at him.

“You shouldn't do that,” he said.

She stared. “Shouldn't do what?”

“Smoke. You're pregnant.” The statement shocked him as much as it obviously shocked her. He hadn't known she was pregnant, hadn't planned to say anything; his mouth opened, and the words just came tumbling out before he knew what he was saying.

He watched as she slowly, methodically stubbed the cigarette on the floor next to her.

“What's with the gloves?” she asked.

He looked at his hands, held them up, as if noticing for the first time that he was wearing gloves. Obviously, without really thinking about it, he'd somehow slipped them on again. How could he answer that question, especially to a woman who should be dead right now? She'd touched the bare skin of his hands, after all.

“Long story,” he said.

She started coughing, seemingly uncomfortable with the cigarettes. Or maybe she was just uncomfortable with him. She stood, her knee cracking as she did so.

Stan half wondered if he'd be able to stand himself; his whole body felt drained.

“Probably a heart attack,” the woman said from above him. “Or a stroke. His body's going to be in shock for a while. Probably won't fully come back around until he's in the hospital.”

He looked up at her, and she offered her hand. He stood without taking it.

“I can take it from here,” she said.

“What do you mean?” He brought his hand to his face, scratched at his cheek, even though it did nothing through the thin latex of the gloves.

“You've been itching to bolt ever since I got here,” she said. “Probably would have if I hadn't come over.” She glanced over at the chair where he'd been sitting, now on its side. “And I'm guessing that's an even longer story.”

It felt like he was the one who'd had the stroke; his mind, his body, refused to move.

Catfishcatfishcatfish
, he said to himself, trying to call
the comforting image to his mind: the dark-gray image of the fish surrounded by burning orange. But the catfish refused to enter his thoughts, refused to calm him.

“So go,” she said. “Most of the time, you only get one chance to run.”

He nodded, stepped backward, stumbled as his knee gave a slight hitch. He turned, concentrating on the front door, which hung open just a few yards away from the open center of the living room.

He went to the end of the short wall leading to the front door before he stopped to look at the woman again. As if one last look would make everything perfectly clear. She gave him a quick nod, her arms folded across her chest as if she were hugging herself against a chill.

In the distance, Stan heard the thin whine of a siren rising as he closed the door behind him.

2.

A few weeks after Stan killed the gym teacher, the Sherman Tank began in earnest with the death of his grandfather.

Heart failure.

That's what everyone said. Doctors, family, friends. Even Stan himself said it when asked. But deep inside, Stan knew it wasn't a heart that killed his grandfather. It was a hand.

His own hand.

He hadn't meant to, just as he hadn't mean to kill Mr. Sherman. It just happened—happened, in fact, before the storm created by Sherman's death had even passed. He was still getting stares in the halls, whispers behind his back. And of course, he was still hearing that odd statement from Kurt Marlowe, rattling in his mind again and again:
You told him
not to touch you
. That phrase had been a constant companion in the few weeks since Sherman's death.

It especially came to him when he touched other people with his hands. He had done that, of course. Members of his family, the few friends who would still come over after school, the grief counselor who made a habit out of taking Stan's hands in her own and talking about how SORRY she was this HORRIBLE THING had happened to SUCH A FINE YOUNG MAN.

They all lived, of course. But that was only because Stan didn't understand the curse clearly yet. He wouldn't understand that until Grampa Mick died.

Grampa Mick introduced him to catfishing. All kinds of fishing, really—wet and dry flies, spinners, bait—but it was the catfishing that stuck with Stan. Mainly because it was magical, a certain kind of alchemy with mud and water.

To pull catfish from the murky depths of the mighty Missouri River, you didn't even need a fishing rod or specialized line. All you needed were several large hooks, a length of twine, lead weights, and bait. Sometimes blood bait, sometimes garlic, sometimes plain earthworms.

Stan clearly remembered the last catfish setline he checked with Grampa Mick. Near Fred Robinson Bridge in the Missouri Breaks, just a few hours from his grandfather's small farm on the undulating waves of eastern Montana's plains.

Stan was a city boy, but each summer he got shipped out to the rural reaches of Montana to spend a few weeks on his grandparents' farm.

For Stan, those were weeks filled with magic. And after the incident with Mr. Sherman, he was especially ready. Following a couple weeks of harassment and silence and counseling at school, his mother had decided maybe he could just skip the last week of school to go visit Grampa Mick and Grandma Velda.

Stan enthusiastically agreed; he was ready to leave his life in the city behind, pretend nothing in the world existed except his grandfather, grandmother, and the whispering wind that sighed through their creaking farmhouse.

So when Grampa Mick told him they were going to spend a weekend at Fred Robinson Bridge, Stan knew what it meant. It meant fishing for sauger, sure, but it also meant putting out setlines for catfish.

Anticipation filled him on the ride to the bridge. It was early June, right before the big paddlefish snagging season, which meant few people would be on the river. Just a few locals, like Grampa Mick. They talked about the city, about disappointments and hopes, about books they'd recently read and movies they'd recently seen.

But not once did Grampa Mick bring up the incident with the gym teacher. No “Tell me how you're feeling” or “Anything you want to talk about?” or “It's okay to be angry.” Grampa Mick just treated him like he was . . . normal. Grampa Mick, perhaps alone among all people on earth, had an innate understanding of what happened inside Stan's own mind.

Which was to say he always remembered there were things you'd rather forget.

When they finally reached the bridge, they pulled into the campground and picked a spot to park Grampa's rusty old Dodge pickup. The campground stretched away from the river, a few swaths of trees lining the riverbanks of the muddy Missouri. Grampa Mick set up their camp in silence, and Stan was glad to just listen to the current of the river, smell the caked muck on the breeze, stare into the dusty blue sky in that silence.

Eventually Grampa Mick spoke. “Maybe try for some sauger later this evening. Could put out a few catfish lines now.”

Stan nodded eagerly. He loved the simplicity of catfishing, the elemental feel of it. They walked through grass that was still green (but would be brown in a matter of weeks), making their way to the bank, Grampa Mick clutching the twine, hooks, and blood bait.

When the river came into view, it was high—higher than Stan remembered it being the year before.

“Late runoff this year,” Grampa Mick said, as if reading his mind. “Snow stayed in the mountains to the end of May.”

Stan nodded, staring at the muddy brown water of the Missouri as they walked along the riverbank. In the distance, downriver, they saw a few boats creasing the water's surface.

“Too early,” his grandfather said.

“For what?” Stan asked.

Grampa Mick nodded at the boats drifting on the current.

“For paddlefish. River has to drop some first.”

Stan stared at the boats in the distance. One was adrift on the current, spinning slowly; the other was anchored, a man on the deck casting line from a huge pole and reeling it in, again and again.

Abruptly, Grampa Mick dropped to his knees on the overhanging bank, pulling out his twine and hooks along with the blood meal pellets that would be bait. He began measuring lengths of the muddy white twine by stretching his arms. “Paddlefish probably won't start hitting heavy until next week—later than usual. Ah, but the catfish . . .” He snipped the twine and looped a mass of hooks and leaders on the end. “The catfish will always be here, won't they, Stan? Couldn't get rid of 'em if you wanted to.”

Stan nodded, still staring at the boats on the river. He turned his attention back to his grandfather as he began to let the setline drift out into the current. They repeated the process four times, both upstream and downstream from their camping spot, before Grampa Mick asked if he wanted to have a little lunch.

Stan nodded, and they returned to camp for ham sandwiches and crackers. They ate in comforting silence, and Stan thought about the boats in the current, the fishermen on the decks, casting and reeling, trying to snag a paddlefish. So much different from catfish and setlines. Paddlefishing was pure chance: you had to hook a paddlefish, lying on the bottom of the river, pull it to the surface with one of the large snag hooks.

Catfish, on the other hand, emerged from the bottoms on their own. They came to the blood meal, to the bait, following their instincts and their hunger.

After he and Grampa Mick had finished lunch and read in the camper for a while, Stan asked if they could go check the setlines. Something inside him was eager to see the setlines, to pull them from the muddy river and discover what might be waiting.

Grampa Mick looked at his watch. “Barely been two hours,” he said, as if protesting.

But he wasn't. Not really. Grampa Mick wanted to go too; Stan could tell.

“No harm in checking 'em,
though,” Grampa Mick said through a broad smile.

They returned to the bank and their setlines, dull excitement brewing in Stan's stomach. The first three lines were all empty; some muck and vegetation attached to the hooks, but the blood meal, now soggy and mud-colored itself, remained undisturbed.

But as his grandfather pulled on the fourth setline, it began to pull back and move on its own.

His grandfather smiled, working the line. “Looks like we got one.”

Stan watched, fascinated, as his grandfather fought the catfish on the line, man versus nature. After about five minutes the catfish came to the surface, revealing its whiskered face and silver backside.

“Good size,” his grandfather remarked. “Get that gaffe.”

Stan gripped the hook in his hand, waiting. His grandfather motioned him to the edge of the overhanging bank, handed him the twine.

“Hold this tight,” Grampa Mick said, taking the gaffe from him. “He won't make this easy.”

The words stuck with Stan for years afterward.

Stan did as instructed, holding the twine, feeling his tenuous connection with the creature from the deep, its every motion and movement telegraphed to him. He watched as his grandfather went to his knees and raised the gaffe. For a moment, he wanted to cry out “Stop!” when he saw his grandfather raise the gaffe, but the moment passed and the gaffe swung down, catching the fish behind one of its awkward front fins.

Grampa Mick pulled the fish from the water, swinging it behind him and onto the bank in one fluid, practiced motion. He pinned the catfish's head to the ground, working at the hook deep inside the mouth.

Stan stood, transfixed, sure the catfish was gazing at him, as if expecting him to stop the inevitable.

Within moments, it was over. Grampa Mick went back to re-baiting the setline, and Stan tried to ignore the catfish flailing in the tall green grass of the bank, its every movement taking it farther down the incline. Farther away from the water.

Later, back at camp, Grampa Mick showed him how to clean the catfish, remarking how this particular one—“about seven pounds”—was the perfect size for eating.

First, Grampa Mick made a long cut down the stomach. Then he turned the fish over and nailed it, stomach down, to a dead tree stump and made two more cuts along the back, around the dorsal fin.

Through it all, the catfish writhed, its round mouth taking in gulps of air as it fought to stay alive.

Stan closed his eyes, unable to watch as his grandfather filleted the fish. He answered politely whenever Grampa Mick explained what he was doing—filleting the sides, cutting away the cheeks—but his eyes remained closed.

Even so, he still felt the fish struggling.

That evening, his grandfather cooked the fillets and cheeks of the catfish, and they sat beside the campfire with plates balanced on their knees.

Stan pushed around the meat on his plate, but he didn't eat. Instead he looked into the campfire, staring at the remains and the carcass of the fish burning in the flames.

He won't come easy.
His grandfather's words, echoing in his head.

As he watched the fish's carcass burning in the spitting flames of the fire, he could swear he still saw it struggling. Moving. Trying to escape.

Trying to swim through the fire that consumed it.

“How's it?” his grandfather asked through a mouthful of meat. Stan looked across the campfire at Grampa Mick, staring at the face etched in hard relief against the light of the flames. He thought he could see white pieces of the catfish's flesh stuck in his grandfather's teeth.

Stan smiled, opened his mouth to speak. “It's—” Instead of his normal voice, a choked squeak escaped. He cleared his throat and tried again. “It's good,” he finished.

His grandfather smiled, set his own plate down, stood with some effort, came around the fire. Stan tried to ignore the skeleton of the catfish still burning.

Grampa Mick patted his shoulder, ruffled his hair. “That's my favorite boy,” he said. “That's my favorite boy.”