“Hmm? Oh, it’s barbecue sauce.” He quickly licked it away.
“What vegetable you put that on?” I looked over his head to the table, a fly circling the gray bowl of macaroni salad.
He didn’t answer. He was slowly lifting his heels off the ground, standing as tall as his toes would allow. All the while, his stare with the boy was something solid, as if their eyes were impaled on the same thorn.
The boy stood taller himself and seemed a little braver. Even his urine spot was no longer a failing, as it was nearly dry, especially in that heat.
Elohim had been an authority on the porch. From there, he could look down on us. But in the yard, standing in front of us, all three feet seven inches of him, we had the advantage of height and were looking down on him. It was as if this was confidence for the boy who knew short men shrink in the shadow of the still-growing adolescent.
“Do you have any ice cream?”
The boy’s question caused the muscles in Elohim’s neck to go to rope.
“To be honest, it’s because of the ice cream that I’m even here.” As if he could not smile, the boy licked his lips.
“I don’t have no ice cream.” Elohim’s hands balled up into fists that shook at his sides, his voice shaking with them. “I have none. Did ya hear me, Fielding?” He turned to me. “I have no ice cream. Anyone want to check my house, they most certainly can.” He looked worried someone was going to take him up on the offer.
“You look like the type of man to have a freezer full.” The boy seemed an inch taller than he had stood before.
“You are mistaken.”
“I must be.”
“You better watch out, boy.” Elohim reached up to stab his finger into the bruises on the boy’s collarbone. “Watch what you speak. You keep sayin’ you’re the devil, and one of these days, someone’s gonna believe you. Then whatcha gonna do? You’re either gonna be the leader of their belief or the victim of it. Both are dangerous things.”
Elohim goddamned his way back toward his porch.
“Where you goin’, Mr. Elohim?” I called after him.
“Gotta check on someone.”
“Someone, Mr. Elohim?”
“Something, Fielding, I said I’ve got to check on something. Now, you get on outta here. And take your snake with you.”
“I’m sorry about your fiancée.” The boy’s words were soft as he looked up at the birds flying overhead.
“How’d you know about his fiancée?”
Elohim took not a step toward the boy but a step back. If I had doubted any fear he might have had in seeing the boy, there was no doubting it in his backing stride. “It all comes out now, does it?”
The boy dropped his eyes to Elohim. “It’s a miraculous thing, how a ship floats. Always a tragedy when it sinks. So many died. Your love among them. For that, sorry just doesn’t seem enough to say, so I won’t say it but I’ll mean it just the same. I want you to know, water is not so bad to die in. I assure you. At first it burns in your chest—”
“Burns?” Another trembling step back from Elohim.
“Yes, you feel fire in water.”
“Fire?” Each step Elohim took made him sound so far away.
“Yes. Fire. Then it goes out. The water puts it out. You don’t feel the rest. It’s just a slip into a sunset death. It’s what I’ve taken to calling drowning. I’ve spoken to many drowned souls, and they all say they’ve seen bursts of colors surrounding a very bright yet falling light. Doesn’t that sound like a sunset to you?”
“Is what you’re tellin’ me supposed to comfort me?” Elohim backed up the porch steps. “You tellin’ me that my heart burned—”
“Just for a moment,” the boy carefully interrupted. “She burned for just a moment.”
“And it was a moment too long. You need to burn to feel just how long it was for someone like her. How would that be? To burn?”
If a look could start a fire, it would have been the one Elohim gave before stomping into his house. The way he slammed the door sounded a lot like the start of a war.
“You shouldn’t have told ’im all that.” I sighed and started walking away. “It was like you were throwin’ her bones in his face. You gotta learn how to talk to folks better or they’re really gonna start believin’ you are the devil. How’d you know all that stuff anyways?”
“Even in hell we get the newspaper. And those obituaries—well, I don’t know who writes them, but they are awfully descriptive, almost terribly so. Sometimes all you want to hear is a name, not the direction their blood took after leaving the vein.”
Was he serious? In other boys, I would’ve been able to tell. There would be a spark of mischief in the eye, a started smile, a half cock to the head. He was none of these things. He was tired eyes and a yawn, after which he watched the birds fly above.