Lucie told her son he should call the bandaged man Daddy. She told him that this man, this stranger, was his father. The boy had little memory of him, and with the man’s whole head wrapped in bandages, there was no face for him to recognize. The boy didn’t seem to think it odd that he had no father at home since his mother took such good care of him. He never thought a father was needed. Lucie said this man had gone off to war and been terribly hurt. Burned. She had not spoken much to the child about the man because she never expected to see him alive again. She thought it best. The man survived the war, though his face had been burned away in a battle, burned so badly the doctors had taken skin from his legs and sewn it onto his face. He had gone through a long recovery in another country.
Now he was home. Daddy.
Though Lucie called the boy Trieste, he knew his real name was Charles, and that he was named after his father. He knew he was four years old but not like other children. He could not speak like them or play with them. Their noise and energy made him scream, and he could not tell them what was the matter when he screamed, so Lucie kept him away from other children. She moved him far into the country, away from the town of Ste. Odile. She told him she would teach him everything he needed to know herself. He tried to learn numbers and letters as his mother taught him, but he had a hard time remembering them and using them in the way she wanted him to. Especially numbers. He seemed to only be able to see them as things that were oddly alive and able to duplicate or reduce themselves endlessly, not as just marks on paper. He had always loved the old story of the salamander his mother told him, of how it was born from fire and crawled out of burning logs. When his mother wrote 3 + 2 on a paper, Trieste saw five individual salamanders wriggling out of a flame in his head, and he knew the answer to the problem was 5. Lucie slowly understood her son’s way of seeing things, and she was patient and full of love for him. Even at four years old, Trieste knew this.
Their small house in the Saline Marsh was their own world apart. They had pullets and geese and a garden and a big, fighting terrier to keep the foxes away. Trieste named the big dog Rudy Benko, a name that popped into his head the moment he laid his eyes on it, that afternoon when their friend Marie gave him to them.
Their only neighbors lived a long walk north along Saline Creek: Genevieve Gothard, the wildcrafter, and her husband Mesmin. Genevieve had given herbs to Trieste’s mother to cure her sadness and others which were meant to calm the boy and make him better able to be near other people and learn more easily. None of these remedies seemed to work. But after they had lived in the small house a while, Trieste seemed calmer, and he was learning a little better, and he noticed his mother became a bit more cheerful. Trieste’s duties were to gather the eggs from the chickens every morning and to feed Rudy Benko. He enjoyed doing these things and felt that when he did them, he was adding to his mother’s happiness.
Trieste made one friend in the few times he’d attended the Church of the Holy Mandilion in Ste. Odile. Her name was Ady Stauffenberg, and she was one month older that Trieste. Ady’s mother, Marie, owned a car, and every few weeks, she and Ady would come out to visit them. Ady’s calm and patient nature never upset Trieste or made him wish she were gone, and Marie and Lucie were great friends and always had many things to talk about.
Two months before his father was due home, Marie and Ady visited them. The mothers had coffee and toast with preserves in the kitchen while Trieste and Ady sat on the front room floor, cutting pictures from magazines and pasting them on paper to illustrate stories they invented. It was one of their favorite things to do. They had made four story books illustrated with pictures this way. They were only allowed to make their picture books where their mothers could watch them. Once they had gone into Triste’s room and set one of their books on fire. Trieste tried to explain to the mothers that he no longer liked that story book, and since he couldn’t stand the idea that it would still be in his home after he no longer wanted it, he needed to burn it. Lucie told her son it was the only time she ever thought of spanking him.
“He has been in London for many months,” Lucie said, refilling Marie’s coffee cup. “He’s had five surgeries to rebuild his face. He has been under the treatment of a Dr. Gilles. Harold Gilles, who has been treating soldiers with horrible injuries from the war: facial disfigurements, burns, shrapnel injuries, and the like. Charles’ face was nearly burned away. Dr. Gilles is experimenting with a procedure where he replaces burned skin with skin taken from other parts of the victim’s body. It’s called reconstructive surgery, but they never look…the same. In fact, in spite of the surgery, the victims still look, quite grotesque, I’m told.”
“Those poor men! Who would think a thing like that would work?” Marie said, sipping her coffee. “It almost sounds like the Frankenstein story in real life! Oh, Lucie…I hope that wasn’t the wrong thing to say! I say such stupid things sometimes. Charles has written to you?”
“No. He is unable. He has lost sight in one eye and is nearly blind in the other. There is an orderly caring for him, Mr. Hogue, who has written me of Charles’ progress. He says Charles is a shattered man, shattered…of course. Unpredictable and full of rage. Mr. Hogue hopes being home and that being with his family again will be restorative to Charles, give him peace, and make him the man he was before the war. But…how can that be? Marie, how can Charles ever be a father to Trieste again? How can he be a father to a child like that?”
The day Trieste’s father returned to his family was a very hot August day. They could hear, above the sound of the cicadas, the car coming from some distance away, and so Trieste and his mother walked out into the yard to watch for their visitor. The car was a green sedan with US GOVERNMENT on the license plate. The car pulled off the road in front of their cottage and parked on the dry grass of their front yard. Trieste grabbed his mother’s hand and held it tight.
“Is this Daddy?” he whispered to his mother.
“Yes, it’s him,” she said. “He has suffered very much. We must do what we can to understand him and make him feel welcome and…at home.”
“But why does he have to come and live with us?”
There were two men in khaki military uniforms in the front seat of the sedan. The driver got out of the car and opened the rear door. The dark form of another man was visible in the back seat. The other soldier approached Trieste and his mother. He was carrying a red folder and a small leather bag. He touched his hat.
“Mrs. Barre? Lucie Barre? I’m Lieutenant March.”
“How do you do, Lieutenant. I didn’t expect…”
“I’m a liaison of the War Department with the office of the Supervising Surgeon General of the Public Health Service. As Dr. Gilles of the British Army performed experimental reconstructive surgeries on some American service men, the War Department and the Supervising Surgeon General have agreed to track the physical healing and psychological progress of these subjects and to keep Dr. Gilles and his associates informed so that their treatment of future wounded can be improved. Private Barre…your husband, was one of the more severe cases and is of great interest to Dr. Gilles and Dr. Trevellian, the alienist. They felt they were making no new progress with his mental state, his depression, and that keeping him confined in a hospital wouldn’t be a real test of his ability to re-assimilate back into his old life. They thought he might do well to be back home with his family. This is all experimental.”
“Experimental!” Lucie said. “But what are we…how are we to cure him? My son is special, unusual. He can’t cope with this.”
“He is your husband, ma’am. It will do him a world of good to be with you and your son again,” March interrupted. He knelt down and looked Trieste in the eye. “You’re Charles Junior, are you? You must be glad to have your daddy home?”
Trieste looked quickly at March and frowned. “I don’t know who he is,” he said and buried his face in his mother’s apron. March stood.
“He needs your care and kindness, Mrs. Barre,” he said. “He won’t
recover without them. Here is his file.” He handed Lucie the red file and leather bag. “Remove his bandages tomorrow and do not reapply them. In the bag, you’ll find morphine and instructions for its use. Also extract of aloe if he needs it. Keep him out of the sun and in a calm state. Don’t cook if he is in the kitchen with you. He is terrified of fire, as you would expect. There is a journal in this folder. If you would keep a record of his progress, the Supervising Surgeon General will be in your debt. We need to gather information about these men. It’s all new country to us. I’ll be back to check on him in a month and bring you fresh supplies. You don’t have a telephone?”
“We’re not rich, Lieutenant.”
The dark figure in the back of the sedan stepped out into the sunlight with the driver’s help. Charles had become alarmingly thin and stooped, but seemed taller than when Lucie had last seen him. His head was wrapped in bandages. The driver took his arm and helped him walk slowly toward the house. Trieste broke away from his mother and ran inside.
“He’s nearly blind,” March whispered. “He has some vision left in his right eye, especially of things directly in front of him.” Lucie walked slowly toward her husband.
“Charles,” she said, touching his arm, “I never thought we’d see you again.”
“Neither did I, Lucie,” Charles said. His voice was wet and vague and his words were barely understandable. Lucie held his arm for a moment. She was uncertain about or unwilling to express any further affection.
The driver handed Lucie a small suitcase.
“We are going to leave you now, Private Barre,” March said. “I’ll see you in a month. Remember, healing will be slow, and your family wants the best for you. Understand this is difficult for them, too.” March and the driver returned to the car and in a moment were out of sight along the dusty road.
Charles made a wheezing sound and swallowed hard. Lucie held his elbow and guided him into the house. At the front porch step, he tripped, and she steadied him. “You know I’m as good as blind?” he snapped at her.
“I’m sorry, Charles. I didn’t think.”
“I’m sorry. That wasn’t much of a greeting, was it? Why did you move out here anyway? So far out here away from town?”
“It was best for Trieste. Charles junior.”
“The boy has to learn to adjust, like I do.”
In the front room, Lucie led Charles to his old chair, and he collapsed into it. He exhaled loudly as he sat. Lucie sat opposite him on the sofa. Charles’ mouth was not bandaged. His lips were swollen and pink, and his teeth looked elongated and discolored.
“Are you hungry?” Lucie said. “Can I get you something to eat?” She stood.
“Just some water. Where’s my son? I can’t say how much I have missed the both of you.”
“He’s here. He may need a little time to get used to having you…”
“Where is he?”
Lucie could see Trieste’s shadow from where she stood, behind her bedroom door. “Trieste, honey,” she said, “Come here. Daddy wants to see you. He missed you.”
“His name is Charles. Don’t you want to call him by my name?”
“It’s his nickname. It’s what he’s used to. Let’s not argue about this now. Let’s get him used to having you…to being a family again.” Lucie walked quickly across the front room toward her bedroom door. She held her hand out toward Trieste, and after a moment he took it. “Come on, Son,” she said.
Lucie led him into the front room. Trieste pressed firmly against his mother, refusing to look at the strange, bandaged man.
After a moment, Charles spoke.
“You don’t remember me, but I’m your father.” The words were garbled and indistinct. “Can you look at me?”
Trieste whispered to his mother, “I can’t understand what he’s saying.”
She knelt down beside him. “He said he’s your father.”
“I know he is!”
“You’ll be able to understand him better as time goes on,” Lucie said. “You have to get used to each other again. It will take time, as Lieutenant March told us.”
“I know you don’t know what to make of me, especially looking like this,” Charles said. “I won’t force it. We have time. All the time we need. Right now all I want to do is rest. Lucie, I want to lie down for a while.”
Lucie watched him walk into her bedroom, kick his shoes off, and collapse onto her bed. He had chosen the right side, her side to sleep. She went into the kitchen and heated up some succotash for Trieste.
The next morning, Lucie cut the bandages off.
Charles had had a restless night, and Lucie didn’t sleep at all. Their double bed seemed suddenly small to Lucie, and she didn’t see how she could ever get accustomed to sleeping with him again. When he touched her shoulder, she flinched and moved a few inches away from him. A few times, she felt herself drifting off to sleep, but at those moments, he would gasp for breath or say something about their wedding day or Trieste’s birth at Bonne Terre Hospital and how they loved their new son, loved him even more as they realized the infant didn’t respond to them and connect to them as a normal baby should.
In the morning, Charles said he was anxious to get the bandages off, and he insisted that Lucie do it before breakfast. Charles sat at the kitchen table while Lucie rummaged through the kitchen drawers looking for her scissors.
“Trieste,” she said, “where are my scissors? You and Ady were using them…”
Trieste walked silently into the kitchen holding the scissors in his left hand. He was sucking his thumb.
“Oh, Son,” Lucie said, “don’t tell me you’re sucking your thumb again. You stopped that months ago!”
“Get your thumb out of your mouth!” Charles said. “Are you a baby?”
Trieste ran into the front room and hid behind the sofa.
Lucie carefully placed the scissors blade under the bottom edge of the bandage and began to cut. As she cut, an odor of suppuration escaped from underneath. She turned her head away, choking, and thought she might vomit.
“On with it! Finish it!” Charles demanded.
Lucie slowly continued cutting, holding her breath for long stretches at a time. The interior surface of the bandages was wet and stained pink, and she shuddered when her fingers brushed against it. In a few minutes, she had cut the saturated cloth completely away.
“Oh, Charles!” she exclaimed, before she knew she had said it.
It was not a face but a mask of misplaced thigh skin which looked now like a crust of dry mud spread across missing features with holes for eyes crudely and unevenly punched through. It looked nothing like the face of a natural man but like a hideous impersonator in a disguise haphazardly put together. The eye-holes were mismatched: the right one small and round and the left one distended and oblong, incompletely covering the damaged flesh under it. The left eye was obviously sightless: a gray film covered it. The right eye fluttered and blinked painfully. The lips were swollen and red and stretched out from the elongated teeth which were always visible. The nostrils extended above their normal limit, well above the tip of the nose. There was a patch of hair left at the top of the head. Lucie gasped, and she heard her son in the front room crying. Rudy Benko was barking excitedly at something in the yard.
“Are you in pain?” Lucie asked after a moment. “Do you need the aloe?”
“I am always in pain. Look at me. How could I be anything else? Get a soft cloth and dry off the seeping areas. And shut that dog up. What the hell is he barking at?”
Lucie did as he asked. She dabbed carefully at the pink eye orbits, lips, and ears. “Trieste, see if you can quiet the dog down,” she said. Trieste went outside.
Charles whimpered almost inaudibly. He picked up a hand mirror he had brought from his wife’s dresser and looked. “Oh,” he said. The word trailed off into a sob.
He stood and walked into the front room, drawing shuddering breaths as he tried to mask his emotions. Trieste came back
inside and moved behind the couch. The dog had stopped barking. Charles sat in his chair and slouched against the back.
Lucie saw that the wet skin of his neck was touching the fabric. She thought to ask him to let her put a towel behind him, but she kept silent.
Rudy Benko started to bark again. Trieste ran outside and came back in immediately.
“It’s a possum in the tree,” he said. “Rudy Benko always barks at possums. I can’t make him stop.”
“Son,” Charles said. His voice was weak. “Charles, come here. Charlie…Trieste. Come here a minute.”
Lucie walked into the room. She stood at the back of the couch and held her hand out. Slowly, Trieste took it. He stood.
“Son,” Charles said. “You need to look at me. Look and get used to it. The doctors can do no more for me. This is as good as I am ever going to look. We’ll all be together from now on, so you need to get used to me. I know we can do it.”
“But momma and me moved here,” Trieste said, clinging to his mother’s side. “You weren’t here when we…”
“Where my family is, is my home. I am here, and I want you to get used to it. I am the only father you’re ever going to have. Okay?”
Trieste nodded his head.
“I’ve been home since yesterday, and I haven’t had a hug from my son yet. Now, I don’t expect you to, not right away, but you could shake my hand.” Charles extended his right hand.
“Give him more time, Charles,” Lucie said. “This is so much for him to adjust to.”
Charles exhaled painfully, dropped his arm, and seemed suddenly angry. “It’s an adjustment for me, too! This is my family and my house. I am here to stay, so everyone better adjust! Look at me, Son. LOOK!”
Trieste looked timidly at his father.
“Get used to me and my face, boy. Get used to it, because I am here for good.”
“I know!” Trieste mumbled. “You said it before. You keep saying it.”
The next morning when Trieste got out of bed, he found his parents were up already, his father sitting in the front room having coffee. Lucie arose with her husband and made the coffee, serving it to him on the sofa. He sipped the hot liquid loudly, dribbling much of it on his chest from a mouth that never seemed to close completely. She returned to the kitchen to make breakfast. Trieste did not like the sound his father was making, and he went back into his room and put his fingers in his ears.
After breakfast and after Lucie had cleared things away, she prepared for Trieste’s lessons for the day. In a kitchen drawer, she kept a book of the alphabet, a book of arithmetic, geography, reading, and penmanship. She stacked these on the table next to an Old Tecumseh tablet and a wide carpenter’s pencil, newly-sharpened with a paring knife. Charles watched her as he refilled his coffee cup and returned to the front room.
“Why are you teaching him this stuff now? He’s only four,” he said.
“He’s very bright,” Lucie said, “but he has his problems, and I want him to have every advantage. He’ll need every advantage. No time like the present.”
“If you treat him like a freak, he’ll always be a freak,” Charles said as he shifted painfully on the sofa.
“He’s not a freak!” Lucie said, looking angrily at her husband. “Don’t call him that! Don’t say that so he can hear it!”
“He needs to be in school with other kids. When the time comes, I want him in public school. If he doesn’t learn how to be normal, he’ll never be normal. It’s just stubbornness in him, as I see it. What will the future be like for him if you coddle him like this?”
The phrase stuck in Trieste’s head: “What will the future be like?”
“Charles, you don’t…” Lucie stopped herself. She needed to be calm for Trieste’s lessons. If she wasn’t, he couldn’t concentrate, and he would learn nothing that day.
“Don’t think you can put me off, Lucie,” Charles went on. “Don’t think you can drop the subject or change the subject and then do what you want because I forgot about it. It’s not just the two of you and me in the background keeping out of your business…I love him too, in case you’ve forgotten. We both decide what’s best for him, not just you…” Charles’ voice faded away. This burst of emotion had exhausted him.
A week after Charles’ return, Trieste found he could stand to be in the same room with him. If his father spoke a few words, Trieste could tolerate it, but if Charles spoke more than a few sentences or tried to reprimand him or his mother, he ran from the room, disappearing under a bed or up a tree in the yard. This would enrage his father at first, but he didn’t seem to have the energy to sustain his anger.
In the second week after Charles’ return, they had visitors. Bill Wiek, wounded at Argonne, had lost his right eye, part of his jaw, and his right arm below the elbow. He had spent most of a year in a bed next to Charles’ in the hospital in London. Both men found they had developed a taste for brandy while in France, and Wiek had promised Charles that if they both recovered, he would present his friend with a case to celebrate the fact. As good as his word, Wiek had just been mustered out at Fort Dix and was being driven by his younger brother Les, back to his home in Galveston.
Lucie offered the Wiek brothers dinner, but they declined, saying they would eat back in Ste. Odile where they had a room in which to spend the night before they continued their trip in the morning. Trieste stayed in his room, and after an hour of attempting to be polite and cordial as the men finished a bottle of brandy and started another, Lucie left them and sat with her son on his bed, reading to him until they both fell asleep.
In the morning, Lucie found the front door standing open, and Charles asleep on the sofa, drooling from his twisted, red mouth and snoring loudly. He smelled of alcohol. She decided to leave him there, undisturbed, for as long as he needed to sleep.
Just after ten o’clock, Charles woke, walked out onto the front porch, and vomited violently onto the Rose of Sharon bush. Then he went back into his room, got into his bed, and fell asleep again.
At noon, Trieste took his alphabet book, a pencil, and tablet out to the front porch. He lay on his stomach on the well-swept boards to practice writing his letters. A small squealing sound on the north side of the house was followed by barking as a possum ran past the porch and up the maple tree in the front yard. Rudy Benko was right behind the possum, barking wildly, nearly catching the animal before it skittered out of his reach. The dog stretched up the tree trunk as far as he could reach and continued barking excitedly.
“Rudy Benko, shut up!” Trieste yelled. “You’re being too noisy!” The dog continued to bark nonstop for many minutes.
Suddenly the front screen door flew open, and looking back over his shoulder, Trieste saw his father standing behind him holding a heavy revolver that he had seen in his mother’s chest of drawers once.
Charles had not noticed his son there, lying on the porch. Trieste saw in his head what would happen next but he could make no sound to stop it.
His father raised the gun and shot. Rudy Benko yelped and collapsed to the ground. Charles shot again, and red spray blew from the dog’s head onto the tree trunk.
As Charles lowered the gun and turned back toward the house, he saw that Trieste was on the porch and had witnessed what he had done.
“Charles!” Lucie screamed as she rushed out the front screen door. “Are you out of your mind? Are you insane? How dare you!”
“Can see well enough to shoot a damn dog…if you thought I couldn’t,” he mumbled. “Damned dog that wouldn’t shut up.” He walked back into the house, feeling his son’s eyes on him all the way.
Trieste made no sound. He put his thumb in his mouth.
Lucie looked at her son. He looked back at her, his expression as blank as when he had watched the first snowfall last winter. His mind had vanished into some other place, as she had noticed in him more and more as he got older.
“Son, I am so sorry…”
Lucie took a spade from the shed behin
d the house and buried Rudy Benko under the tree where he died. Trieste tried to help her, but she sent him to the back yard until she finished the job.
Late in the afternoon, Lucie put a pot of water on the stovetop and began to cut up potatoes into it. Trieste sat at the small kitchen table drawing the troll under the bridge from the story of the Billy Goats Gruff his mother had read to him the night before. As Lucie set the table, she noticed Trieste’s troll was nearly bald with a tuft of hair at the top of his head, and he had a single eye. As Lucie watched him, Trieste drew a circle around the eye.
“Momma,” he said, never looking up from his drawing, “why does he have to live with us?”
“You should stop asking me that question, son. He will be here from now on because he belongs here. We all just have to get used to each other. I’m sorry about the dog and sorry you saw that happen. All I can say is, your father is not himself yet. He would have never done something like that before…You’d better put that away,” she said, nodding toward his drawing. “We’ll be eating soon.”
Taking a match from a box on the shelf above the stove, Lucie struck it and lit it. The blue flames engulfed the bottom of the cooking pot. A terrified moan came from the kitchen doorway. As Lucie and Trieste turned, they saw Charles falling backward against the china cabinet in the dining room.
Lucie gasped.
“Oh, Charles, I’m so sorry!” she said.
Charles groaned in pain and struggled to get to his feet. “Lieutenant March told you about that! He told you not to light a fire near me!” he screamed.
“I didn’t see you there, Charles! If I had known…”
Charles stood silently for a few moments. His breathing was erratic and he appeared shaken.
“I’m okay. I’m okay,” he said. “Not your fault. I came to say I’m sorry about the dog. I wanted to say I’m sorry to both of you, especially you, Son. A terrible thing to do…”
Trieste said nothing and continued to draw. Trieste was learning that he could stop hearing the arguments his parents had or anything they said. He could make himself stop listening and think about other things and places no matter how close or loud his parents were. He sat at the table, his drawing in front of him, and he watched the blue flame roiling under the pot. He imagined he saw a salamander, newly-made and perfect, wriggling free of the flames.
In the evening, Charles said he was thirsty and needed a drink. He took a bottle of brandy from the pantry, opened it with some difficulty, and returned to his chair in the front room.
As Lucie cleaned up the kitchen after supper, headlight beams flashed across the wall. The front door was open, and she recognized Marie Stauffenberg’s gray Ford. Ady pushed open the passenger door and jumped out of the car.
“Who is that?” Charles demanded.
“It’s Marie Stauffenberg and Ady, her little girl. They are friends of ours. I can’t imagine what they are doing here now.” Lucie dried her hands and hurried out the front door. “I’ll see what they want Charles. You can just stay here, I’m sure they won’t stay…”
Trieste ran out the front door ahead of his mother and out into the yard. He hugged Ady, who seemed surprised by his excitement. Lucie followed close behind him.
“Marie, what a surprise,” she said.
“I’m so sorry to drop in on you like this,” Marie said, “ We haven’t seen you in a while, and we had to go by Ady’s grandma’s to get her prescription filled, and I wanted to return your juicer. I found mine under the sink! And I wanted to see how things are going with Charles back…”
“Oh, Marie,” Lucie said in almost a whisper. “This isn’t a good time. He has been drinking. He has taken up drinking…”
With a terrified whimper, Ady suddenly ran to her mother and hid behind her.
“Child, you like to knocked me over…” Marie began.
“Why are they here, Lucie?” Charles had appeared on the porch. His speech was noticeably slurred now. “Don’t you want them to come in?”
“Momma!” Ady was in tears.
“Be still, honey,” Marie whispered. “I’m sorry, Charles. I never just drop by. I’m Marie Stauffenberg. Rude of me. We’re going. We’re going now.”
“Go on then. If you’re sure you don’t want to sit and talk…have a face to face…” Charles mumbled.
Marie looked at Lucie for a long moment but said nothing more. Marie helped her terrified daughter back into the car. In a moment, they were gone.
Charles went back into the house and returned to his chair. He took another long drink of the brandy, spilling much of it on his shirt.
Lucie and Trieste remained in the dark yard for many minutes. Lucie knelt down next to her son.
“Ady was frightened,” she said. “She wasn’t expecting to see your father like that. We didn’t have the time to warn her, did we? People who don’t understand what your daddy has been through, won’t understand…”
“I know, Momma,” Trieste nodded. “People will always be scared of him because he looks like that. Grown-ups and kids. Always. And we will always have to live with him.” He took his mother’s hand. “Come in with me.” He led his mother up to the porch and into the front room.
To Lucie’s surprise, Trieste led her to Charles. The two of them stood in front of Charles for a few moments.
“Well?” Charles said, at last.
Trieste looked directly into his father’s dead eyes, which he had never done before that moment.
“I want to know why you want to live in a place where nobody loves you?”
“Trieste!” Lucie gasped, as she pushed the boy behind her.
Charles stood in a rage. He reached drunkenly for his son, but Lucie pushed him away, and he fell back onto his chair.
“Go to your room, Trieste!” Lucie cried. “And lock the door!”
Trieste did as his mother told him.
Trieste heard a crash as though a chair had been thrown over. “You turned him against me!” his father screamed. “You haven’t done anything to make this work!”
“I won’t argue where he can hear us.” Lucie said. “Come outside.”
The back screen door opened, and Trieste could hear their voices out in the dark yard, fading slowly as they moved toward the woods. He looked out his window but could see nothing beyond the small oval of light from the open kitchen door on the black grass. Their voices were further away now, but he could still make them out as they moved toward the salt marsh.
“You hate me. You wish I had died over there…”
“That’s nonsense, Charles! You can only see your own pain. You haven’t tried to understand what we are going through. What about us?”
Trieste heard his mother make a sound like she had made once when she tripped on a root and fell. A little moan of muffled pain. Then he heard nothing at all for a very long time.
The darkness was silent, and suddenly Trieste felt there must be silence across the whole world. Everything was quiet and muffled, and he knew was alone. Knew he was the only living thing in the dark world, a ruined world, and that things as alone as he was could never find happiness.
After many minutes, Trieste heard the back screen door open. He heard footsteps outside his bedroom.
“Go to bed, boy,” his father said.
“Where’s Momma?” Trieste said. “She reads to me.”
“Not tonight. She’s upset. She’s walking to…cool off. Go to BED!”
Trieste sat on the floor under his window. He knew his life was now broken and could never be repaired. He knew he was alone or worse: he knew he could do nothing but share his life in this small, isolated house with this hideous man. Trieste knew this was impossible.
Trieste did not move from the floor for more than an hour. He didn’t expect to hear his mother come home again, and she didn’t. He could hear his father snoring in the front room, and he knew he would be snoring still in the morning and that his mother would not be there with him. He opened his door and went into
the kitchen. He pushed a kitchen chair next to the stove and found the box of matches on the shelf above it.
As soon as he entered the front room, he could smell alcohol. It was a smell that was familiar to him now, and which he never wanted to smell again. His father had spilled much of it on himself as he got drunker, before he fell asleep.
Trieste approached the grotesque man snoring in his chair. For a moment, he watched him struggle to draw air through his swollen lips. Fire could never make something as perfect as a new salamander, he knew: it could only make a monster like this man.
Trieste struck a match, and when he dropped it on his fathers’ chest, he was surprised at how the flame leapt up as though it were anxious to be born.
The man, Charles, who called himself father, awoke suddenly and screamed. He swatted frantically at the flames, screaming and crying in pain and terror. His panic spread the flames across his alcohol-soaked body, and he fell to the floor, setting the sofa alight, screaming as he was consumed.
Trieste ran into his room and crawled under his bed. He knew the flames would never reach him. He knew it because there was no such image in his mind showing that he would be hurt.
In a little while, the fire had died down and there were cars in front of the house. A man out on the highway had seen the smoke above the trees and had come to help. He had sent another driver to get the fire department and sheriff in town. The man was a farmer who had been to a tavern. He came in through the back door and found Trieste in his room still hiding under his bed.
In a short time, the Sheriff was there, and a fire truck, but since the fire was nearly out, they just watched the scene to make sure a fire didn’t grow or spread. Soon after that, a large woman in a black car arrived. She told Trieste she was from the state and that she was there to look after him and take him to a safe place. The large woman was very kind and had a soft voice that made Trieste feel less alone. The woman gathered some of Trieste’s clothes and a few wooden toys. She asked him if he was ready to go. The only answer he could make was, yes, he was. After all, he knew he could not live in a half-burned house alone. The thought would have frightened his mother, and he would feel very bad to frighten her. He moved toward the front door.
The large woman’s hand was on his head, gently guiding him toward the waiting sedan. He stepped across the threshold out into the night. With her kind encouragement, he started the dark walk forward toward the car and to all the ruined years to come.