Burned into the Night (a short story)

It was dark outside and getting cold

January 1965

I stood with my dad at the edge of a rushing creek. Two high banks were close enough together to jump across, but the other side was farther away than I remembered. The icy mud and the steady current threatened to catch anyone that missed the jump.

“Not too late to go home,” Dad said. “No shame in that.”

I couldn’t turn back now. Not with him watching. I slid my backpack off my shoulders and gave it to him. Shifting my weight from foot to foot didn’t help my numb toes. Dead leaves crunched underfoot as I shot forward and sprang over the racing water. Then I came down on the other side. I wiped the grin off my face, turned to Dad, and waited.

He threw our bags over to me. Each toss brought a twinge of pain across his face. He looked at the water, then at me, and he saw I was watching him.

“Come on,” I said.

I knew he wouldn’t make it as soon as his feet left the ground. He crashed into the opposing bank at chest-level. His feet dangled in the water, and if I hadn’t grabbed his hand he would have gone under. He held back his other hand to protect his bad shoulder, but I grabbed that hand too and pulled him up.

“Cutting it close, Pop.”

I leaned down to help him to his feet, but I stepped back when I saw his eyes. They blazed.

I picked up our bags and held his out, this time careful not to look at him. I hadn’t come out here for a fight, especially one I couldn’t win. He huffed and got to his feet and yanked his bag from my hand.

We found the path to our campsite overgrown with thorny bushes and branches. Some areas we kicked through, but we backed through rougher patches. The thorns ripped through our clothes and any skin they could find, as though eager for blood.

We both saw it when we came over the last hill. What else had we expected? The black pit under a boulder where we had built campfires for what seemed every weekend was gone, in its place the same decayed leaves scattered across the rest of the forest. Any trace we had ever been here was gone.

“Better get some wood,” Dad said. “It’ll get cold soon.”

I caught a look from him when he passed me. The blaze in his eyes had dimmed enough for me to meet them, but he looked away and kept walking.

“I think I saw some good pieces back there,” I said.

“Too thin,” he said. “Fire’d go out before you saw the smoke.”

“I’m telling you. I saw — “

“No.”

“Fine, Pop. You lead the way.”

“Oh, so now I’m in charge?”

“Aren’t you always?”

“You think that’s funny.”

I let him get a few steps ahead of me. When I caught up he already had several branches cradled in his arms. He pointed out which ones I should grab, and I only took those, trying not to think about what he’d forced us to leave behind.

Back at the campsite, we cleared away debris, roots, and any growing vegetation from where we would build the fire.

Dad picked up bits of twigs and small branches. “You got plans to see Carla before you sign your life away?”

“I saw her last night.”

He passed a handful of twigs over to me. “She give it up?”

“Dad.”

“Well?”

I turned away from him. It was dark, but I could feel my cheeks burning. I gathered the small branches and twigs into the shape of a cone.

He said, “Asking if she said goodbye is all.”

“I told her I’d see her soon.”

“You tell her you love her?”

I stopped and looked at him. “What do you care?”

“Just wondering if you lied about that, too.”

I took a box of matches out of a side pocket on my backpack. “You want to make a fire or not?”

“That’s why we came out here, isn’t it?”

I struck the match against the side of the box. The match burst into fleeting brilliance. I held my hand around the flame to shield it from the biting wind. The twigs almost caught, but the match burned down to my fingers and I dropped it. I grunted and took out another match.

“You’re doing it wrong,” Dad said.

I struck the second match and moved it into the breathing space beneath the twigs.

“Not like that,” Dad said. “You’ll snuff it out.”

The twigs caught fire so I let go of the match, but a second later the fire went out. I took out another match. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Then why are you screwing it up?”

I got onto one knee and looked at him. “What’s your problem?”

“You’re letting it go out.” He held up the smoking end of a half-burned twig. “I just hope you didn’t knock her up.”

“What?”

“Charlotte, can you imagine if you’d done that?”

A kernel in the fire popped out of existence. It startled me into wakefulness. I thought I’d been there. Now I was.

“You know how you raised me,” I said. “I’d do right by her.”

And I would, if anything like that had happened.

Something like that had happened. But I wouldn’t know whether something else had happened until I was already gone.

“Hard to do right by her when you’re dead,” Dad said.

“Will you lay off it?”

The moon and stars lit his face and each wrinkle, scar, and crevasse. “What do you want me to do? Say you aren’t making a mistake?”

“How about pretend to have a good time?”

“That what your mother say we should do? Come out here and pretend everything’s okay?

“That’s great,” I said. “Just great. Bring her into this.” I went back to tending the fire.

“Don’t pretend like you don’t know why I agreed to come out here,” Dad said. “Christ, it’s like you want to get yourself killed.”

I could tell him why I was really going to fight, but I supposed that wasn’t what this was about. He didn’t understand. He never would. This was the only way to pay for what had to come next. Without it, I didn’t care if I died. The risk of death was worth it for a chance to truly live.

I started rebuilding the twigs so they would have a bigger pocket of air along the bottom.

“I talked to your mom, too.”

I stopped messing with the twigs and didn’t move. “You wouldn’t call her.”

“She said she doesn’t want you to go.” He touched my shoulder, and the warmth of the gesture made me jerk away. He said, “Son, if not for me, for her. You know I’m right.”

Son.

Son.

Even now, he couldn’t.

Even now, he wouldn’t.

I stood up and kicked the cone of twigs. Then I kicked the ground and sent up a spray of dirt. “This was a mistake.” I picked up my supplies and put them in my backpack. Dad sat and watched me. He was still sitting and watching when I put on my backpack and walked away. I didn’t have to run. He hadn’t chased after Mom, and he wouldn’t chase after me.

When I heard the rushing water, I ran so fast I felt I would soar across the banks. But I knew I wouldn’t make it as soon as my feet left the ground. Too late, I sensed the weight of my backpack. I slammed into the wall of the bank, barely high enough for my fingers to grasp at the top. Then the current took me.

Cold water hammered into my body. My feet touched the bottom, just once, but then the current picked me back up. I clawed at the face of the surrounding banks, but my fingers slid off the icy mud. Water flooded my nose and mouth, and suddenly I was choking on what felt like slivers of ice that stabbed into my throat and lungs.

My arm caught on something thick. I reached for it, hoping I could hold on and climb out. Instead it grabbed me and raised me out of the water. Then I saw him. Only one good arm and he was still as strong as an ox.

“Come on,” he said. “Grab my arm. I got you.”

I grabbed his arm and held on until he pulled me out of the water and we fell onto the ground, heaving.

He sat up and pulled me into a sitting position. He rubbed my shoulders and my face, then he just looked at me. “We got to get you warm. Come on.”

Once we were back at the camp, my father helped me take off my wet shirt and coat. Then he took off his jacket and put it around my shoulders. It felt good. He built the cone of twigs, set it aflame, then added branches. In a short time the fire was big enough for him to leave it be and come sit with me in the warm glow.

“You all right?” he said.

I nodded.

After a while, he said, “This isn’t easy.”

“I know.”

“What am I supposed to tell people? Charlotte’s dead…and I didn’t try to stop her? What do you say to a thing like that?”

“Tell them you were right.”

He didn’t have anything to say to that.

“Tell them your daughter got herself killed,” I said, turning from him and almost welcoming the emptiness of the remaining cold night together.

He put his hand on my shoulder. I looked at him and met his eyes, and now I saw what the blaze inside them was made of. “I don’t want to have to tell them anything.”

Now it was my turn to go silent. In place of words, the heat sent waves through the air between us, a warmth we couldn’t help but share.

We stayed up through the morning, watching the fire and waiting to see how long it would last. We never spoke again of the war, nor of my decision to go. And though I later returned home, many others did not. What remained instead was the cold emptiness of what we’d lost against the little warmth lingering through the night.

THE END (DAMN GIRL, THAT’S DARK)