okay. Drive slow.â
âDad.â
âNow, son.â
Armando opens the driverâs door and gets in. He lowers himself onto the seat and takes in the burning tree, his fatherâs back to him, and he squeezes the wheel hard and he reaches his feet out to touch the brake and gas pedals. He has practiced driving twice in their old van, but this is a newer Aerostar, electric doors and windows and side mirrors, and already he has decided not to adjust anything, but the seat is too far away and it takes him several nervous seconds to find the button that brings him closer to everything. Armando turns the key in the ignitionâkeys left in the vanâthen lights on, dashboard to life, a little brake, and he grabs the shifter and slides it to reverse, off the brake, and movement. The lights of the van spotlight his father as he pulls back, and once Armando reaches the road leading out, he shifts to drive but keeps his foot on the brake. He wipes his hands on his pants and peers over. A thought comes to him, and he watches the lit tree, his fatherâs hands on the top of his head, a piercing certainty: his mother will never wake.
On the drive back Armando keeps it at thirty miles per hour. He focuses on the road, how close the vanâs right-side tires parallel the shoulder, anticipating oncoming headlights, late-night loggers, but after thirty minutes of slow driving he enters a space of half awareness and replays the tree lighting, the glass jug, his fatherâs shiny face ranting, the invisible smoke flowing into the night. He considers his father, a man who seemingly knows everything but knows how to do little, who showcases benevolence and service, a diehard Broncos fan, a hugger, quick to smile and encourage. Heâs also someone who attends every fire station open house to climb on the trucks, a man who lights a match and blows it out after every bathroom trip, a person who, no matter the intention, has burned someone to death.
While his father was in prison, his mother would tell him and his sister that the fault was the dead manâs for not heeding the warnings as the fire crept toward his log home. Never a passionate vocal defense, but it was practiced, and soon she stopped talking about blame altogether. Sometimes his mother wouldnât come home at night, and heâd call the dentistsâ office where she worked, and theyâd inform him that sheâd left hours before. Once she called him from Raton to tell him that there were extra frozen waffles in the freezer in the basement, that this would take care of him and his sister until she returned, but she was always home on Sundays, when she would dress up and haul them to church, a family procession he didnât dread unless it was NFL season and the Broncos played the early game.
Driving down off the Front Range he passes a large truck heading in the opposite direction, and although he canât make out the driver, Armando imagines a Forest Service uniform and a sidearm. He slows the van and pictures his father standing near the fire. When the truck pulls up to the still-burning tree, will his father run? Laugh? Align his wrists for cuffs? Then the startling thought that he might have to be the one to pull the plug on his mother if his father is in jail. He doesnât know the rules, but as he speeds back up for home, he thinks of standing over the hospital bed when the doctor hands him the form to sign, points, says, âSign here.â His messy signature materializes.
When Armando arrives home, his sister is watching
Xena: Warrior Princess
and eating a bowl of Corn Pops.
âYou stink,â she says.
The next day thereâs nothing in the
Colorado Springs Gazette
about a fire, no rumors at his school, and when his father shows up at their house two days later he wears new clothes.
âWeâre going out to eat,â he says.
Â
Armandoâs mother wakes up twenty minutes after O. J. Simpson
James M. Cain
Jane Gardam
Lora Roberts
Colleen Clay
James Lee Burke
Regina Carlysle
Jessica Speart
Bill Pronzini
Robert E. Howard
MC Beaton