Bone Fire

They settled finally on Smoky, The Adventures of Robin Hood and Artemis Fowl. Ke

Mr. Simmler tilted his head, studying the layout. “So I can.” He played the four over, but now his concentration was broken and he laid the deck aside. “What have you got there?”

Ke

When they left the Carnegie it wasn’t late enough to drive home and fix supper, and still hot as the welding shop, so they parked where the Fourth Street Bridge used to be. Bikes were tilted over among the cottonwoods, and they could hear the screams of boys, a dog barking, the laughter of older children. McEban stepped out of the truck and Ke

“Anybody watching?” he called, and when McEban shook his head he peeled down to his underwear and pulled the trunks on, kneeling on the seat to tie the cord at the waistband. “Mr. Simmler looks like he wishes he was dealing cards in a Western movie.”

McEban smiled from where he stood with a boot up on the front bumper. “As far as I know he’s never worked anywhere but the library.”

Ke

They started slowly toward the creek, Ke

“Was that Clyde or Claude?” McEban asked.

“ Clyde.”

“How can you tell?”

“Claude’s fatter.”

Across the creek on the far abutment, two high-school girls in bikinis were lounging on towels with a tall boy standing between them drinking a bottle of beer. One girl was smoking, and all of them were watching a black Labrador swimming hard after a floating yellow te

“I’m going to do it today,” Ke

“I thought you already had.”

“I could have, but I wanted to wait till you could see me.”

“I’m glad you did.”

They walked out across the backfill to the top of the broken concrete and looked down. Below them the water was green and deep and flat, and downstream the fat twins had wedged themselves among the rocks where the stream turned white and foamy, churning against their shoulders, and they called out again and again as though something unexpected and mildly obscene was happening. “I’m getting a massage. Oh my God, I’m getting the very best massage.”

“It looks farther down when you’re up here,” Ke

“Yeah, it does.”

“I think I better see how cold the water is first.”

“That’s what I’d do.”

The boy climbed down the side of the abutment, where the retaining wall had fallen away in ruin, the rusted rebar showing through, and waded out into the pool. He stood waist-deep, shivering, and McEban tried to imagine what had happened to the bridge and why he’d never wondered about it before. It was already gone when he was a boy, to fire or flood or poor design, and suddenly it occurred to him that he’d taken this, like most of his life, as a matter of course.

The black dog climbed out of the creek, sheeting water and lunging up the slope between the girls, bracing to shake mightily, and they screamed, turning away and throwing their hands up to shield their faces. All three of them were laughing, and the boy set his beer down and worked the ball out of the dog’s mouth, bounced it once and then threw it in a high arc upstream. The dog leapt without looking, and they all shaded their eyes against the glare to watch him hit the water, go under and come up as the ball smacked down at the head of the pool, everybody applauding and hooting, feeling lighthearted and forgetful of any lesser afternoon.

Ke

McEban climbed down to the water’s edge, pulled off his boots and socks, rolled up his pants and walked in up to his knees. The fat boys were jumping in holding hands when his cell phone rang, and he worked it out of his pocket and said hello.

Ke

“We have to go,” he said.

“Now?”

“Right away.”

Someone threw the ball again and they heard the dog hit the water.

McEban stood up, stomping his feet harder into the boots. “You think this is something you’ll remember?”

“Sure,” Ke

“Today.” McEban swept a hand toward the abutments. “All the times we’ve come down here. When you’re older you think this is something you’ll remember?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” the boy asked, but he felt scared. Like he hadn’t jumped. Like he’d chickened out and they both had agreed it was a feat he would never accomplish.

They’d been mostly quiet on the drive home. McEban said something about the weather, how he preferred the longer days of summer in spite of the heat, and he’d nodded in numbed agreement. His face felt heated, and something seemed to be fluttering behind his breastbone. The only thing that felt fine was his new haircut, beaded with creekwater, the breeze providing a welcome coolness. That was the best part of the trip.

But here they were home and he’d changed out of his wet swimming trunks, standing on the porch with his backpack leaned against his leg, waiting for McEban to be done talking with Rodney. He shifted his stance, adjusting the basketball against his hip. He’d thought about packing his baseball and glove, but didn’t know how a game of catch would go over in Laramie. He knew he could shoot baskets by himself. He watched the men at the pickup, thinking he might be getting sick, and then he was sure of it.

“I need to see you for a minute,” he called. His voice sounded frail and he cleared his throat.

They turned, staring at him, and he knew for a fact he was the last person he could think of to figure out that this friend of his mother’s was his real dad, and that McEban had always known it.

“I’m sorry,” he said when McEban stepped up beside him.

“For what? Did you set fire to something?” He was trying to make a joke, but it didn’t come out fu

“I’m getting sick,” the boy told him.

“You were fine a while ago.”

“Now I feel like puking.”

They heard the pickup door open and watched Rodney pull the keys out of the ignition to make the dinging sound stop, then lean back into the shade of the cab.

“I don’t like it either, Ke