stars pulsed once, all together, and withdrew like barnacles.
“You don’t respect my wishes. You don’t give me space to grow,” she said, her voice still loud, something exploratory in the way she raised it to new heights.
She got in her van. Its taillights flared and scorched off along the driveway.
The night lulled, and a fire began on the back of the property. He was burning hundreds of leftover Christmas trees, the light blurring in the frosted window glass. Ever since I could remember, he’d loved building fires: garbage on the property, tires and old appliances, wood from rotting sheds, and once a camper that fit on the back of a truck. He’d piled branches and dead pine and spruce on top, and then doused it all with so much gasoline that he’d had to pour a long thin trail of it far away just to light it safely. We’d crouched together, and he’d dropped the match. The flame zipped like a shark’s fin across the grass and the heap burst skyward, the air sucked in and up, sudden heat against my face. It got so hot that Christmas trees turned to ash before our eyes, and the metal of the camper sagged and collapsed. He’d stood with his hands on his hips and laughed, and I’d wondered why burning things felt so good, like yawning or stretching in the middle of class. Maybe he was trying to feel that way now, all alone burning trees.
I went to the mudroom and put on my boots and pulled the door from its warped frame. Frozen air spilled over me, and I followed the hard earth of the driveway back.
Halfway there, I came to a ditch, the spine of the buried culvert visible where big trucks carrying trees had passed. Beyond that was the tossing light of the fire. The cold stung my skin, the night silent but for cars on the road. I hadn’t had time to get used to this farm, the sheds and barn unexplored, the forest scant and far away, beyond a frostbitten field.
My heart clenched as the world came unstrung. The lights of the house drifted out toward the road. The rising moon slipped a little higher in the sky, bumping over the stars.
I took a few more steps and stopped, my rapid breath misting, the smoldering center of the fire a red eye. I couldn’t see him. Sparks rushed up through the chill air, planing as they cooled and died. When the wind shifted, the heat warmed my face.
He called my name.
Fear released from my chest, and I continued over the baked earth. He was just beyond the fire, his arms crossed, and I stood next to him.
“She’s upset,” he told me.
I made myself appear calm and asked matter-of-factly, “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know,” he said, as if he might want my advice. “Maybe we can all go on a trip. Sometimes, when you go on a trip and come back, things are better. Sometimes that’s all it takes.”
I pictured this, a long journey, days and days with trees and mountains outside the windows, and then him saying, “This is far enough.”
Firelight shone on his cheekbones but hid his eyes, and though I worried that he might tell me to go back inside, he didn’t.
“Things will be better,” he said, and in his voice I heard my mother’s, the sadness and uncertainty and fear, and I knew that something had changed.
✴
ONE NIGHT I fell asleep reading on the couch and I heard my parents come in the front door after arguing. They walked into the living room, and I didn’t open my eyes. I sensed them above me. My mother said she’d take me to my bedroom, but my father told her that he’d do it. He lifted me, my cheek against the coarse fabric of his shirt, my arm hanging. I could have opened my eyes and said I’d walk, but in his gentleness, I knew he wanted to carry me. I breathed the odors in his shirt, pine sap and coffee, gasoline and sweat, but I didn’t drift asleep in this safety. I felt angry to be this little boy.
After he’d closed the door, I turned on my lamp and read. It was the only way to feel calm.
The next day, at my new school in the city, I jostled through the morning crowd, kids turning and saying, “Hey, watch it!” I fell asleep in class. I forgot my homework. When kids talked about the presents Santa had brought them, I said Santa didn’t exist. “Only babies believe in Santa,” I told them. “Get over it.”
A girl began to cry. I heard someone say he hated the new kid.
During recess, I explored the sprawling grounds. I despised everyone. I couldn’t talk to others without wanting to hurt their feelings. As I turned the corner, five boys appeared before me.
“Hey, it’s the new kid,” Tom said. He was in my class, tall and blond, his bangs neatly brushed back.
The kids formed a half circle and began closing in.
Years ago, when I started first grade, my father had given me talks about fighting, as if I weren’t heading off to elementary school but to become a mercenary. He’d warned me never to show fear and said that I should terrify my enemies.
“Fuck you, dog-shit-faced cocksuckers!” I howled.
The boys backed away, but Tom broke from them, ran forward, and kicked me in the balls. I dropped to my knees, the air gusting from my lungs.
“Run!” he shouted to his friends. “This kid’s crazy!”
They raced off while I held myself, waiting for my body to work.
Back in class, Jamil approached me. He was fast and known as a good fighter, and that morning, near the school entrance, I’d seen him push down another boy, fart in his face, and speed off.
“I don’t believe in Christmas either,” he told me. “It’s a bunch of crap. Do you want to be friends? We can beat up Tom after school.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Let’s beat him up.”
As he passed the information through class that I was challenging Tom to a fight in the alley between two brick buildings, I could hear myself describing the victory to my father. But an hour later, walking into the alley, I began to tremble.
Tom was with his friends, their shirts rumpled, wet with the interminable winter drizzle. Rain beaded along Jamil’s hair as he stood at my side, saying, “Go! You take him!”
Tom shoved me in the chest. I got him in a headlock. We stumbled against the wall, the bricks rasping our clothes like sandpaper.
His friends tried to jump in, but Jamil blocked them. He kept slapping them in the face, dancing from side to side as if guarding a volleyball net.
“What’s wrong, pussy?” he shouted. “Tom can’t fight for himself?”
Tom popped out of the headlock. From behind me, he tried to dig his fingers into my eyes. I rammed him backward into the bricks. I threw my body against him again and again until his head struck the wall with a wooden sound.
I spun and punched him. He just stared, his nostrils too large and dark. Blood began to drip from one of them. His eyes teared up. He ducked and grabbed his backpack and ran. He disappeared down the alley, his jacket flapping.
I had blood on my lip from one of his fingernails.
I hurried to the pickup zone. My brother was on the sidewalk. His eyes
