Beneath the Bonfire Read Online Free

used to have parties at that church,” I said, “chainsaw parties. That’s how I met my wife.”

 
    RAINWATER
    T HE OLD MAN and his grandson sat on the porch swing watching it rain. They swung according to the old man’s rhythm; the little boy’s feet dangling, his shoelaces untied, still inches off the sinking porch. Water collected in the grooves of the dirt and grass two-track driveway, and toward the barn chickens bobbed their heads and cooed low, high-stepping as they pulled earthworms free from the saturated black soil. A flag drooped heavy on its rusted and listing pole.
    â€œWhere’s my mom?” the boy asked, not unhappily. He wiped his nose and looked at the old man, who simply stared off, away, blinking his pale blue eyes slowly. “Grandpa?”
    The old man scooted his grandson closer, rubbed his towhead with a thick old hand. She was late, a day late, and every number the old man dialed went unanswered. He could not say that she was in danger; she was wild and always had been. She dropped the boy with him on Friday afternoons, like a package. Left him without food or toys and sometimes without extra clothing. What did the old man know about taking care of a child?
    So Friday nights he and the boy drove into town, ate supper at the diner beside the railroad tracks, watched passing trains, shared a sundae. Drove to the hardware store and bought die-cast trucks and tractors, little-boy underwear, overalls, thick socks, T-shirts, and sweat shirts. The little boy falling asleep across the bench seat of the old man’s pickup truck as they jostled down county roads and toward the fallow farm, where the old man would park, admiring this little boy before lifting him out and carrying him inside, to his own bed, where he lay the boy and pulled the sheets and the gray wool blanket up and over his shoulders and kissed his forehead and touched his little-boy ears and then sat listening to his alarm clock tick and waiting for the sound of his daughter’s car to come down the driveway until at last he went to the kitchen and poured himself a cup of cold coffee and wrung his hands and wondered silently how he had failed her.
    â€œHold on a minute,” the old man said. “Hold still. Be back in a minute.”
    â€œGrandpa,” the boy said tentatively, and the old man recognized the edge of fear in the boy’s voice, at the thought of being abandoned for even a second. The boy looked at him balefully.
    The old man motioned through the screen door, inside the house. He cleared his throat. “I’ve got to pee.”
    The little boy nodded uncertainly, and the old man went inside, careful not to let the screen door slam. Walked through the sitting room with its ancient TV and grandfather clock and duck paintings and dusty duck decoys and taxidermied deer mounts and tired furniture. Into the bathroom he went, closing the door lightly, and wiped beads of sweat from his forehead. Maybe, he thought, she wasn’t coming home this time. His urine came haltingly. He stood in front of the mirror afterward and washed his hands, looked at his face: his white hair, the broken blood vessels across his nose and cheekbones, the loose skin beneath his chin like that of a turkey, two days’ worth of whiskers. I ought to look better for him, he thought. I have to be strong.
    From the porch he heard a little voice: “ Grandpa, Grandpa, Grandpa …”
    In the kitchen he found a tin cup, then padded back to the boy on the swing, who sat smiling up at him.
    â€œHere,” the old man said, handing the boy the cup.
    The boy looked down into the cup. “It’s empty.”
    â€œYou ever drink rain?”
    â€œNo, Mom won’t let me go out in the rain.”
    â€œWell, I’m saying that you can.”
    â€œIt’s okay. I’m not that thirsty.”
    â€œWell, all right then, go get me a cup.”
    The boy slid off the swing, approached the