Beneath the Bonfire Read Online Free Page B

clothes in the dryer.”
    â€œGrandpa,” the boy said, “could you taste the clouds?”
    The old man looked toward the flooded driveway, held the cup in his hands, so small.
    â€œGrandpa?”
    â€œCome on,” the old man said. “I’m not gonna ask you twice.”
    Inside, the old man drew a hot bath, steam warming the small white-tiled bathroom. Behind him, the little boy removed his clothing, then stood on tiptoe and peed into the toilet. When the old man stood and shook his red hand of the hot bathwater, there was his grandson, stark naked, pale and smiling. The old man handed him a new bar of soap.
    â€œWhen you’re done, call me, and I’ll bring a warm towel.” The old man averted his eyes. So long since he’d seen another person naked, least of all a child. “I’m gonna throw these clothes in the dryer.”
    *   *   *
    In the basement, he tossed the ball of wet clothing into the dryer and started the machine. The whitewashed walls of the cellar bled with rainwater, and in the dark corners of the damp room, an unseen cricket sounded slowly. He sighed deeply. More thunder, even closer this time. The single hanging lightbulb flickered. The floorboards above him seemed to shiver. He took the stairs slowly. He could hear the water still running in the bathtub, the little boy talking, singing to himself.
    The old man walked out to the porch, held his bony shoulders in his hands. He kicked peeling paint off the floorboards with his boots; great chips sloughed off and then went sailing out into the yard. Sat down heavily in the swing, watched his driveway become an ephemeral stream, and waited for his grandson to say his name.

 
    SVEN & LILY
    S VEN WAS SEVEN FEET TALL. He was a beanpole of a guy with a little paunch of a belly and big goofy hair that he was always combing. At bars he stood behind the scrum at the rail and looked at his hair in the mirror behind the bottles and coiffed that kahuna wave of a thing up another four inches on his head. Sven and my wife went to med school, and she was always trying to get us together. To make us buddies, like you do with little kids or maybe dogs, I don’t know. You push two things close enough that they become one thing.
    Sven was good people, and I didn’t know at first if we could be friends. He was smart. Smarter than me by a country mile. He read biographies of the presidents for fun, and had opinions about the Episcopal church and fuel efficiency and even good Southern barbecue. He didn’t give you that vibration of a guy who liked to drink or smoke or steal looks at women, either. And he was tall. Sven was close to a foot and a half taller than me. He called me Lily, for Lilliputian. Nobody had ever given me a nickname before Sven; even my wife didn’t call me honey or sugar. But when we were at the bar, shooting stick or throwing darts, he wouldn’t call me Lily because he didn’t want other people to get the idea that he thought I was small or deserved a girl’s name or whatever. But I started to think of myself as Lily, and if you asked me what my name was at a bar, a few beers into things, I might tell you it was Lily.
    We became partners, Sven and I. We looked after each other. Like brothers, but closer too, because most brothers I know aren’t half as close as me and Sven were. Sven would go to the wood for you. He was loyal, dependable, I’ll say that. The kind of guy you can count on, which seems to me to be a diminishing resource these days. He didn’t have much meat on his bones, but he was rangy and he could grab dudes before they got to him. Once he had them, I’d come along with a pool cue or an eight ball and do the rest. But Sven was good people always. He didn’t start those things, and I don’t mean that we were always mixing things up, because we weren’t.
    But we would a little.
    Sven didn’t like to fight. Bad guys