Page 97 of Second Start: Family
“It’s okay. We’ve got it beat for now. But we’ll need to watch it tomorrow and the next day. We need you rested for that and for…” The judge’s decision. “…tomorrow.”
An official Dan didn’t recognize came up then, saying to Hall, “Hell of a mess. Now we gotta figure out what caused it.” The man looked at Dan. “Kids smoking’s been behind the last two grassland fires I heard about.”
His father grunted, dismissing the guy and his insinuation.
Dan said, “I wasn’t smoking.”
With his throat raw and clogged it sounded weak. He hated that.
The man looked away from Dan, toward the charred ground and muttered, “Yeah, right.”
“Dan said he wasn’t smoking, he wasn’t smoking.”
His father said it with no drama, but as a flat statement of fact. An immutable truth. He added to the official. “If it’s important you know how it started, look elsewhere.”
“Not a lot of lightning this time of year,” the man grumbled.
“There was thunder.”
“Maybe. Maybe somebody dragging a tailpipe or muffler.”
His father leaned on his shovel, watching the guy amble away, mumbling.
“Go on back to the house, Dan.”
Dan looked at his father then. Really looked at him. The first time he had since … well, he didn’t know.
There were tracks through the grit that covered his face. Faint marks across his forehead, where layers of ash had crashed into each other when a frown shifted his skin like plates of the earth in an earthquake. A layer or two of grime had been displaced along the fault lines. And a stark smudge showed on his chin, like he’d rubbed his hand there and gotten down almost to the skin.
But the marks Dan couldn’t take his eyes off were down his cheeks and along the side of his nose. Like tears might make.
They weren’t fresh marks like the one on his father’s chin. They might once have shown that much contrast, but they’d been dusted over by later ash, so they’d mellowed, nearly blending in.
Not like when Dan had caught sight of his father through the flames and smoke. Not like when he’d seen his father’s face, but hadn’t taken in what he’d seen. He’d been focused on the voice. The voice promising it would get him away from the fear that threatened to burn him from the inside out. The voice telling him what to do to be safe.
Maybe he couldn’t have let himself see then what his eyes took in and remembered now. Couldn’t let him know that his father — the voice telling him what to do — was afraid, too. That his father cried.
For him.
“Go on. Go to the house, Dan.”
“Okay.”
His legs felt like rubber. Somehow they carried him to the house, filled with people.
At the back porch, a man he might have known if he’d had the energy to look at him more closely in the shadowy light told him there was no water in the house and if he wanted to wash he needed to go around to the old pump. The man took his arm and led him there, pumped the handle. The man put a hand to his back and bent him over to stick his head under the weak wash of water.
It revived him enough to wipe his face on the towel he was handed, to peel his grimy shirt off. Even to leave his shoes outside on the porch. The kitchen and family room were lit by battery and kerosene lanterns. Men shifted around in the eerie light. Eating sandwiches, talking on cell phones, cursing batteries that went out, drinking from thermoses.
“You should eat something, Dan.”
That was Gramps.
He shook his head. He should say no thanks, but he couldn’t do more than shake his head.
“Okay then, get some rest.”
He didn’t even nod. He shuffled toward the stairs, into the dimness the lanterns hadn’t defeated.
