Torch

  “Try not to be afraid,” he said, wishing he could hug her.

  The door opened and the other guard—Fred—popped his head in and, seeing Tommy was there, stepped aside to let Tiffany through the door. Lisa turned to see what was the commotion.

  “Hi,” Tiffany called to Joshua meekly, the first time she’d ever addressed him directly.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi,” Lisa said, turning back to look curiously at Joshua. Sometimes people had visitors at the same time and they had to share the community room, but he felt too self-conscious to explain that now that Tiffany was in the room. He considered, for an instant, introducing them, but immediately cast the idea aside.

  She followed Tommy hesitantly across the room and sat at the far end of the table and waited while he chained her to it.

  “So,” Joshua said quietly to Lisa, trying to act as if Tiffany’s presence had no effect on the two of them and their conversation. “What else?”

  Tommy got the cardboard divider that sat in the corner of the room and propped it on the table, blocking Tiffany from their view. Paintings that Pat McCredy had forced them to do were tacked onto the divider. “Paint for me your inner child,” she’d commanded.

  “What else?” asked Lisa, feeling self-conscious too, Joshua knew. Silently, he tried to purge all the lustful thoughts he’d had for Tiffany, as if Lisa might be able to read his mind. “Oh. My mom’s throwing me a baby shower next Sunday. It was supposed to be a surprise, but then I found out because Deb said something in front of me at work and then they just went ahead and told me. It’s going to be at Deb’s house.”

  “I knew about it. Claire told me.” In his peripheral vision, he could see his inner child hanging from its tack—a page painted entirely black with an explosion of orange and red and yellow at its center. A fire in the back of a cave is what it was, though Pat McCredy insisted it was something else entirely: something vaginal, signifying his desire to go back to the womb.

  “They’re doing a money tree, where everyone brings a card with money inside and hangs it on a tree and then we can buy what we want.”

  “That’ll help,” he said, stroking her beautiful arms, all the way up to her elbows. Her skin was like nothing else on this earth to him. “I sure wish I could be there.”

  She smiled at him, a light flickering in her eyes. “You couldn’t anyway, honey. No men are allowed.” She glanced at the divider, her eyes scanning the paintings without seeming to take them in—the blobs of color, the mad spirals and lopsided hearts, and the one that was blank almost entirely, aside from a nearly transparent daisy at its center. Tiffany’s, of course.

  “Lisa,” he said, wanting to distract her so she wouldn’t focus in and ask which was his. Abruptly, she turned back to him. He sat silently for a moment, trying to think of what to say. “I hate it in here so much. I want to come home.”

  “I know you do. I hate it too. But we only got one more week of this.”

  “I was thinking I could put my name on the list at the oven factory,” he said, though the idea of working among the heat and toxic fumes filled him with dread. “It’s a good job. Good money.”

  “It is, Josh. I think you should.”

  “It might take a while before I can get in, but at least I can get my name on the list. It would be a positive step that I could take for our future,” he said, hearing, to his remorse, a glimmer of Pat McCredy in his voice, hoping that Tiffany was not hearing the same thing.

  “A couple more minutes,” Tommy said to them, and Lisa shut her eyes, then opened them and smiled sadly at Joshua.

  “What about me?” asked Tiffany from behind the cardboard divider.

  Joshua picked up Lisa’s hand and pressed it to his lips, kissed it, then held it there. It was easier, at the end, if neither one of them said anything. They simply looked deeply into each other’s eyes, silently telling each other things. He told her the same things that he’d told her each visit, but now he felt that he meant it more than he ever had, compelled, he sadly realized, by the proximity of Tiffany, who now, suddenly, repulsed him.

  “I’ll bring them to you when they come,” Tommy said sternly. “There ain’t nothing I can do.”

  “I know it,” Tiffany said. “I just hope they didn’t have car trouble. My mom’s been having trouble with her car,” she said to no one, the chains clanking lightly against the table, unable to keep herself from gesturing with her hands as she spoke.

  “Who’s coming?” asked Lisa, without taking her eyes off of Joshua, then she turned her head and stared at the divider.

  It took Tiffany several moments to realize she was being spoken to.

  “My kids,” she said at last. “And my mom.”

  “How many do you have?” asked Lisa, still holding on to Joshua’s hand.

  “Two. Two boys. They’re four and five.”

  “How sweet. It’s nice they’re so close in age. They’ll always be friends.” She gave his hand a squeeze, then released it and stood. She liked to stand before Tommy came and told her it was time. Joshua stood too and went around the table for their goodbye hug.

  They could see Tiffany now, over the divider. The sheet of her glorious hair, the sharp jag of her nose, her tiny fierce eyes looking up at them, an expression on her face as if she were seeing Joshua for the first time.

  “Lisa, this is Tiffany, by the way. Tiffany, this is Lisa,” said Joshua, putting his arm around her shoulders. “My fiancée.”

  That night, even after his nightly cry, even after he’d stood and blown his nose, Joshua could not fall asleep. He lay listening to the silence of the jail and the underground hallway that wrapped around it for so long that he began to hear the sounds he’d never detected before: an unidentifiable ticking from the direction of the guard’s room, the hum of the soda machine that sat in the hallway beyond the reach of the inmates, and, most annoyingly of all, the in and out of Vern’s breath as he lay sleeping a few feet away.

  The ticking from the guards’ room brought to mind a particular bird that appeared in Coltrap County every spring. Joshua could remember the precise call of the bird—tick-tick-tick, click-click-click—but he could not for the life of him remember what the bird was called. It was a special bird, rare. People from the Cities came up to see it, parking their cars on the side of the highway where it bordered the Midden bog, spending hours looking through their binoculars. His mother had done a radio show on the bird a few years back.

  He thought about Lisa. About her visit and what they’d said to each other and the way they’d kissed goodbye for so long that Tommy had had to intervene. He thought, What if she did die? What if something went wrong during the birth and then he was left with a baby to take care of? Claire would help him, he reasoned. And then his mind leapt again—what if Claire died? Or Bruce? Ever since his mother died, this was what he feared. That everyone would die—and they would—he knew they would, but he feared that they were going to die soon, which was different from knowing they would someday. At night, alone in the apartment, stoned, all those months, or lying next to Lisa, buzzed on a few beers, he’d been able to make up a place in his brain so when everyone died he’d be ready for it, but now, here in his jail cell, there was no place. The only place was him, alone in his body, alone in his life, having to make it all okay by himself, from scratch.

  He let himself think it. He forced himself to think it: if Lisa died and Claire died and Bruce died and the whole world died but him and the baby, he would be okay. He would find a way. He lay there thinking honestly for the very first time of the baby. The baby itself. His son or daughter, whom he did not yet love. I do not love my baby, he thought, like a mantra, remorsefully, to himself. And then tiny tendrils of something began to creep into his mind—questions like, Will it be smart or dumb? Nice-looking or ugly? Cry night and day or sit around all silent and dazed from staring at the lamps? His tears welled up again and he sniffed.

  From the darkness, came Vern’s voice. “You doing okay ove
r there, bud?”

  Joshua instantly went silent, as if suddenly frozen solid, refusing even to take a breath for several seconds.

  “Yep,” he said when he was able to. He went to the toilet and unwound some paper from the roll. “I think I have a cold,” he explained and cleared his throat hard and blew his nose.

  “It’s the damnedest thing,” said Vern.

  Joshua did not reply. He had no idea what the damnedest thing was. He went to his cot and lay back down again and stared at the faint light of the yellow-painted sun.

  “I can’t sleep here for nothing,” said Vern after Joshua thought he’d fallen back to sleep already. “I lay here every night and oh, sure, I try to sleep. My dad used to say just close your eyes and act like you’re sleeping and pretty soon you will be sleeping, but that never worked for me.”

  They lay in silence together for another several minutes. Joshua would not allow himself to believe that Vern had heard him crying every night, that all the while he’d thought he’d been asleep, Vern had been lying next to him, hearing it all.

  “I suppose it’s that I got so much on my mind,” said Vern.

  “Yep,” Joshua said noncommittally. He did not want to encourage Vern to tell him what was on his mind.

  “I suppose you do too.”

  “Yep,” Joshua said again.

  “What with the baby coming and all. You picked out any names for it yet?”

  They had, but they’d vowed to not tell anyone what they were. “Luke if it’s a boy and Iris if it’s a girl,” he said into the darkness.

  “Them are nice,” said Vern. “Or it could be both—you never know if you could have twins, a boy and a girl, and then you could use both Iris and Luke.”

  “It’s only one. They have the tests, where they know.” He turned to Vern, but couldn’t see him. “The ultrasound.”

  “Oh, sure they do. Now back when I was born, there was no way telling. So first I come out and then lo and behold there’s another one in there, and out comes Val. He was born seventeen minutes later, so I’ve always been the oldest.”

  Joshua closed his eyes. He hoped they would sleep now, or pretend to sleep, silent and private together like they always had been, but then Vern said, “There’s been something I always wanted to say to you—or I suppose, in truth not always—but since I been in here, since I found my new path.” Joshua could feel the tension in Vern’s voice, the tension in their little cell. He opened his eyes and folded his hands on his chest and stared at the painted sun. A rustling sound came from Vern’s direction, as he sat up and then turned to face Joshua. “In the past, with you, at the café, I didn’t always behave like I should’ve. Like the good Lord put me on the earth to do.”

  “That’s okay,” said Joshua, wanting to stop him as soon as he could.

  “No, it ain’t okay, so don’t just go saying it is,” insisted Vern so loudly that Joshua feared he’d wake the other inmates up, and then he continued on in a reverent hush: “I’m gonna have to beg your forgiveness.”

  “You’re forgiven,” whispered Joshua instantly, and then, “There’s nothing to be forgiven for.”

  “Please don’t say that,” Vern said mournfully. “Please let me take responsibility for the harm I’ve done. It’s part of my path. This is a road I must walk—the road of taking full responsibility for the consequences of my actions—or I can’t get any further down the path.”

  “Okay,” said Joshua timidly, hoping to simply end this.

  “Okay then, bud. For that I’m deeply grateful.” He was silent for several moments, to Joshua’s relief, but then he went on: “For the good and the bad. For everything that has come my way. Them are the things made me who I am today. Them things made it so it’s with this face that I may greet the Lord.”

  “Yep,” said Joshua, not wanting to seem rude, nor interested.

  “Another thing I wanted to say is something I’ve never said and that’s how sorry I was to hear about your ma.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Do you believe in angels?” asked Vern.

  Joshua thought for a few moments, and then told him the truth. “I don’t know. It’s still something I have to figure out.”

  “I got this feeling that they’re real,” said Vern. “Sometimes I get the feeling that your ma’s in here, watching over you. Right here in this very room—her spirit.”

  “I wonder sometimes,” said Joshua, staring at the sun.

  “She’s following you around,” Vern pressed on. “Hoping you’ll be happy.”

  “I am happy,” he lied. The same pressure he’d felt when he’d last seen Bruce rose again. A heat like whiskey, pushing against the back of his face, misting his eyes.

  “That’s all a parent wants. That’s all I ever wanted for my Andrew.”

  “You did?”

  “Oh, sure—even though I failed him, even though I wasn’t the way I should have been. I hoped he’d be happy with his life. You always love your kids. You’ll see. That’s how you’ll be.”

  “I want to be a good dad,” said Joshua, speaking words he’d never spoken to Lisa.

  “You will, bud. There’s no doubt in my mind, that’s for sure.”

  “I suppose we should try and get some sleep,” he said after a while, and then he heard Vern shifting on his cot to lie down.

  “Good night,” said Vern.

  “ ’Night,” said Joshua.

  The pressure rose behind his face again and he lay there feeling it without trying to push it back. The heat and the vapor, the whiskey and the hand, the hot sting of what he was just beginning to imagine was love.

  17

  IT HAD BEEN CLAIRE’S IDEA to look after the house, much to her almost immediate regret. She’d made the offer in a burst of the kind of misplaced nostalgia and unvarnished optimism she was given to from time to time—brought about, on occasion, by a glass of wine, or a particular song, or the way the light was hitting a stand of trees. In this case, it was Iris. The way it felt to hold her—her brother’s daughter! she couldn’t help but exclaim—in her arms. Iris brought out things in Claire that she thought were dead or lost forever, and also things she’d never known were there to begin with. Tender, essential, happy-sad emotions that made it seem a terrible shame that things had gone the way they had with Bruce—and Kathy, Claire was reluctant to add even silently to herself, even in her most magnanimous mood, but she added it anyway, and then she picked up the phone.

  “Hello,” she said, trying to sound calm and pleasant and not even remotely drunk when Kathy answered—she wasn’t drunk, but she’d had a drink and it came flooding into her brain the moment she heard Kathy’s voice. “This is Claire,” she said overly concisely, as if she were teaching diction.

  “Claire! Hello!” Kathy boomed, almost hysterically. They had not, since Kathy had became Bruce’s wife, actually spoken before, or rather, not so directly and only to each other. They had chatted every now and then crossing paths at the Lookout or in town. They had sat several feet away from each other at Lisa and Joshua’s place, marveling over the baby.

  “Bruce told me that you were going out of town in a couple of weeks and I wondered if you needed anyone to look after the animals.”

  “Oh!” said Kathy. “That’s sweet. But you know, we’re going to be camping, so we’re taking the dogs and—well, actually the horses will need looking after and the chickens.”

  “And Shadow,” Claire said, more collected now that she’d gotten the gist of it out. “I mean, I wouldn’t stay there, the nights or anything. I just thought … if you needed someone to come out.”

  “That’s very nice,” said Kathy. “But only if you’ve got the time. I could ask my folks.”

  “I can do it. I’ll get Josh to help me.”

  “Great.” There was a beat of silence and then Kathy said, “Well, Bruce isn’t home or else I know he’d want to talk to you.”

  “Okay.”

  “He can talk to you about where the key is now
and everything. We moved it from its old hiding place.”

  “I have one on my ring,” said Claire, and then wished she hadn’t. “Good.” She paused. “I’ll let Bruce talk to you about the details later.”

  When they hung up she called Joshua immediately, even though he was at work. He had a job at the oven factory now, thanks in part to Lisa’s mom’s boyfriend, John Rileen, who was a manager there and had pulled some strings. When the secretary answered, Claire insisted that she go out onto the floor and bring Joshua back to the phone, a thing she was supposed to do only in emergencies.

  “We’re housesitting for Bruce and Kathy,” she burst the moment he said hello.

  “What?”

  “They’re going camping in Arkansas, on some honeymoon they never had, and I said we’d take care of the place.” She attempted to modulate her voice so it sounded both casual and authoritative at once, so he would not dispute anything she said, but it didn’t work.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Claire. I have my job and Iris. I never said I’d stay out at the house.”

  “We don’t have to stay there!” she said, as if that would change everything, but he didn’t reply. “Okay. I know you’ve got to get back to work. We can talk about it more later.”

  She hung up the phone and shot out of her chair and paced around her apartment, galvanized by what she had done, what she’d said she would do, with Joshua or without. She tried to imagine the house now, with Kathy’s things inside. She had been to Kathy’s little cabin once years ago, but she’d only stepped inside the door, dropping something off. In honor of her profession, Kathy had on display a collection of black and white mugs shaped like cows, their tails the handles, their comical faces jutting out near the curvy rim. Claire imagined them in her mother’s kitchen now, sitting on the shelf above the sink. But then she couldn’t imagine anything else, or at least not anything else about the house. Her mind jangled and jumped from one thing to another, to a series of disconnected memories of home. Of her mother standing on a chair pounding a nail into the wall to hang one of her paintings, the tiny, secret veins that flowered at the backs of her knees. Of the way Bruce’s hair would look, knotted and flattened, in the winter when he removed his hat after wearing it all day. After a while, she was able to see it, but only from a distance, as if she were standing at the end of the driveway. The house, the chicken coop, the barn, and Bruce’s shop: the tribe of buildings that used to be home.