could look after his sister, or he could torment her. Daniel was moving right past losing his virginity to wondering what kind of parent he’d be.
“I’m a fucking idiot,” he said to himself.
The deflated sensation intensified as he entered his cul-de-sac and saw his father hoisting a massive limb before letting it flop down on top of the growing debris pile. Daniel used the bottom of his shirt to wipe the sweat from his forehead. As he started up the driveway, he scanned the yard for his sister, but didn’t see her anywhere. His mom was also absent. Carlton had moved off to another tree with the chainsaw; the last tree had become nothing more than a dashed outline of its former self, a line of sawdust marching down the row of jumbled logs. Daniel waved at Carlton as he peered up at him through his safety goggles. His stepdad pointed in a tall arch as if over the house, signifying perhaps that the rest of his family was in the back yard.
Daniel dropped his book bag by the garage and hurried around to the back of the house. Yet another pile of twisted limbs lay jumbled at the end of the drive. His mother and sister were just beyond it, talking to one another, their gloves off.
“Am I interrupting?”
Daniel walked slowly in their direction. Zola turned her back. His mom wiped at her eyes and shook her head.
“You guys need any help back here?”
“We’re fine,” his mom said, which was the opposite of how they looked.
“How long is he gonna stay?” Daniel asked, taking a guess at what was upsetting them.
“He says he has a friend in Charleston he can stay with,” Daniel’s mom said. “So just until the phones work or he can get a ride some other way.”
“And we’re gonna make him sleep in the toolshed until then?”
“He’s
“I think there’s more for you to do in the front yard.”
Daniel let out a sigh. He hated being excluded, but he thought he understood their wanting to be alone. “He says he’s quit drinking,” Daniel told them. It felt like a feeble attempt. His mom glowered at him over her shoulder, her brow wrinkled and lips drawn tight. Daniel turned and headed back around the house, his elation from a few minutes prior completely and utterly smashed.
For the next several hours, he barely saw his mom or sister. It was only when he was dragging something down the driveway, walking backwards, that he might catch a glimpse of them working slowly and methodically on their brush piles in the back yard. He and Carlton and his father worked with few words. They alternated between disentangling limbs and hauling them to the street, and stacking the green firewood Carlton chopped up between a rare pair of still-standing trees.
When the chainsaw ran out of gas, Daniel’s father offered to get more out of the toolshed, but Carlton waved him off and insisted on going himself. That left the two of them, father and son, piling logs, the yard silent of the tree-chewing machine, the distant buzz of a few other saws and the chirping of some returning birds to keep them company.
“I’ll be moving on just as soon as I can,” Daniel’s father finally said. “I hate that I’ve brought so much tension here.” He threw a log on the pile. It landed with a solid and ringing clunk.
“So the boat’s gone?” Daniel asked quietly. He remembered days anchored out on the river with the old houseboat. His dad would grill out on the roof while he, Hunter, and Zola trailed behind on the swift current, clinging to fenders and life rings strung out on chewed lines and suspect knots.
“Yup,” his father said, then cleared his throat. He turned and wrestled with one of the biggest logs, almost as if to punish himself.
Daniel remembered helping him toss the lines on the boat that last time. When his father had puttered down the intercostal waterway over a year ago, Daniel had watched from the dock and had suspected they were both gone forever, boat and father. Now one of them was back in his life. The other sounded as if it had been demolished in the storm.
“I hope Hunter gets back before you go,” Daniel said. He wasn’t sure why he wished that, but he did.
“You picked out a college? Or are you gonna go to the community center with Hunter next year?”
“Probably go with Hunter, unless I get some kind of scholarship. My grades are good enough, but they want you to have all these other things. Club memberships, community events, summer camps, volunteering and whatnot.” Daniel shrugged. “I’m taking my SATs again next month before I send some more applications out. I’m hoping I can get some money from Wofford if USC and the College of Charleston turn me down.”
His father nodded and threw another log on the ever-higher wall of circular bricks. “You dating anyone?” he asked.
Daniel laughed. He felt close to telling him about the girl down the street, but already his delusions of their status felt ridiculous. He didn’t even want to explain why he wouldn’t be around when the rest of them were eating canned ravioli for lunch.
“Not really,” he said.
“Probably best to wait until you see where you’re living next year,” his father said, almost as if consoling him.
Daniel felt like arguing, like saying a year was too long to be alone—he felt with a burning rage that he needed to
“Whatcha thinking?” his father asked. He looked Daniel in the eye. “Or do I not want to know?”
Daniel shrugged. He looked at the tall pile of logs shouldered between the two trees, dappled light filtering through the gaps. “We should start a second pile,” he said. He thought about how rarely they used their fireplace in the winter—mostly just for ambiance around the holidays. Normally, they picked up a bundle of split wedges at the grocery store, a cloth handle stapled to one of the logs, and paid who knows how much for one fire’s worth. What they had stacked, once it was split and dried, would last them for decades. It would be sold with the house, he suspected. More than once, probably.
“How about over there?” His dad pointed to two other lucky trees, which would soon hold the remains of their fallen kin.
“Looks good,” Daniel said.
He picked up one of the larger logs before his dad could. Carlton came around the corner with a red canister in his hand, a dark mass of fuel and oil sloshing around in the lower half of it. The three of them fell back into their silent routine, working against the backdrop of the roaring and chewing chainsaw. Now and then, they would take breaks and drink warm water from the cups on the stoop. When Daniel did so, he marveled at the idea of the three of them doing yard work together. There was no force in the universe, he would’ve thought a week ago, that could have coerced him to do half as much with either man, much less willingly.
21
Daniel’s mom took the news of his lunch plans in stride, her face showing more shock and bemusement than any pain of abandonment. Daniel used the excuse that he had to go back for their phones and his Zune, anyway. After stripping off his sweat-soaked clothes and sponging off with some soap in the upstairs tub—a bucket of downstairs tub water at his feet—he toweled off, pulled on a fresh pair of shorts and a new shirt, grabbed his backpack, and sped out the front door. The smells of heating tomato sauce faded behind. Outside, as he strolled through his neighborhood, a different smell greeted him: it was the smell of campfires, of burning wood. More than one rising column of gray smoke beyond the trees of his neighborhood signified the beginning of the great fires it
