Hold Steady the Raft
Copyright 2003 B.A. Myint


My eleventh birthday fell on the hottest day of a rainless summer – a summer I spent watching the sun make slow arcs across a cloudless sky. After two rainless months, the elm trees had become parchment, and the pine needles, matchsticks. When the brushfires began in August, the man on TV assured everyone the flames were under control. But the drought persisted and pretty soon an inferno was racing across the hills that hemmed in our little corner of the Hudson Valley.
It was David’s idea to go camping. The evening before my birthday, while our parents were busy packing, the two of us snuck out through the garage and drove up into the park. Even though our house was miles from the fire line, our mother was worried that we were going to be evacuated so she wanted us to box up the valuables in case we had to leave.
As we drove up into the mountains we could see the flames licking up in the distance. We floated out to a small crumb of an island in the middle of Silvermine Lake where we pitched our tent and fell asleep to the smell of smoky dusk air.
The next morning, we fished off the rocks and took breaks when the sun swelled up. At high noon, David threw his shirt in the tent and sunbathed out in the open but I ducked under the shade of a mountain laurel. The shrub was bursting with flowers so that over the course of the afternoon, several times I had to brush off the thin yellow layer of pollen that had gathered on the lap of my jeans. According to the man on the TV, it was the hottest summer since 1885.
"Do you mean to tell me," said my brother, shading his eyes from the sun, "that in all the years before 1885 none was hotter than this one?"
David always asked those kinds of things. My parents, both of whom were working at the time, said his first year at college had made him a cynic. I counted backwards in my mind; eighteen-hundred and eighty-five years back to the birth of Christ and then back to the Ice Age.
"How many years were there between the Ice Age and baby Jesus being born?" I asked him.
"Don’t say it like that," he said.
I slapped some pollen off my forearm. "Say what?"
"Baby Jesus."
"What’s wrong with saying ‘Baby Jesus’?"
"It’s infantile. It makes you sound like you’re five-years old."
"That’s what Sister Ellen calls Him," I pointed out.
"She’s full of shit," he said. "Her and her green stockings."
I could have warned him that he could go to hell for saying that, but David wouldn’t have cared. When he came back home from Cambridge that summer he declared he was an Atheist and refused to go to church. Our parents tried to force him at first, but David just dug in his heels and refused. My mom spit venom when the topic came up at the dinner table, but, like her, David was hard-headed. My father once said that changing David’s mind was like to trying to pull a sapling out of the earth.
"I’d like to jump in the water right now," I said, picking at a clump of moss. Where the waves rode up onto the rocks, the water glittered like a fishing lure held up to the light.
"Then why don’t you?" he asked. "Mom and Dad aren’t around." David poured the last sip of Pepsi into his mouth and threw the can into the woods.
"You know why," I said. That summer cursed me with a string of ear infections. It was from swimming in dirty water, according to our doctor, so I was ordered to stay away out of the creeks and rivers. The doctor said I had taken so many antibiotics, I was starting to get immune. Still, sitting beneath the laurel that day, all I wanted to do was climb down the rocks and lower my body into the lake, taking a deep gulp of the cold, green water. But those infections had taught me a painful lesson, so much so that the mere thought of jumping in sent pins into my ears.
We sat for a while and watched the helicopters soar overhead. They were scooping water out of the lake with huge 1,300 gallon buckets that they would carry off in the direction of the fires. That afternoon we counted four lumbering S-64 Skycranes. Each one had two giant wheels arched out its sides, like a weightlifter holding two barbells. David read out their serial numbers and I scribbled each one into my notebook. We started keeping track of the helicopters earlier that summer. The book was almost filled up with all the ones we had recorded.
"If you could have any helicopter," I asked David, "which one would you pick?"
"Which one would you pick?" he asked back.
"I like the Skycranes best."
David shook his head. "Vertols are better, as a matter of fact."
"Why?" I asked.
"Two rotors," he explained. Days before, David said he had spotted one flying over a nearby lake. He had snuck out of the house that evening and left me alone to pack up the china. I’d been hoping to see a Vertol ever since.
"Can a Vertol carry more than a Skycrane?" I asked.
"It could carry away this whole lake!"
"I don’t believe you!" I laughed. And David just sat there breathing in the sunlight. "I think you’re lying," I said, waiting for a response.
When the helicopters stopped coming over the tree line and the chopping of their
engines vanished into the distance, we wandered down to the water and threw rocks at sunfish for a while.
"If you’re not going in, let’s head back," said David. "I’m starving."
All afternoon the sun had burned down on our gear so the shoulder straps of the rucksack sizzled into my shoulders as David slumped it onto my back.
"Stop wiggling around," he said.
"Hold on," I answered, hooking my thumbs beneath the straps. "It’s burning my arms."
"Get in the boat and I’ll throw some water on you."
I don’t know why he called it a boat. It was just a cheap raft we bought at Caldor’s, no bigger than an inner tube.
I wobbled down to the water. The edge of our dad’s cast iron hibachi dug into my back through the nylon. While David held steady the raft, I dropped myself in. The sudden weight shift sent one of the sides dipping underwater and suddenly I could feel my jeans soaked through the back of my thighs.
"Be careful for Christ’s sake," he yelled.
I told him the pack was too heavy and suggested we stick it in the raft and swim it back to shore. David didn’t answer. He just gave the straps around my shoulders a sharp yank and tightened the chest harness under my neck.
"David," I said, as he pushed us out into the water, "what if I fall in?"
"What if I leave you behind?"
I said nothing.
"Then take this paddle," he said, "and keep us from listing."
I could barely dip the paddle into the water, being weighed down on my back like an upturned turtle. I tried not to think about what would happen if I tipped in, with the weight of all the gear anchored around my neck. When we got to the middle of Silvermine, we could see no sunfish in the colorless water. There were only the thick strands of bladderwort reaching dirt-green tentacles up from the bottom. As our boat drifted by, each tentacle undulated like the hands of a Hawaiian dancer. Once in a while I’d look through the murk and see a flash of snapping turtle.
"David," I croaked, "can you loosen the strap under my chin? It’s digging into my neck."
He lurched over and grabbed my paddle. "Wait," he said. My shoes were now covered in water. I clutched the edge of the boat and it felt soft in my hand. I wondered if we might have punctured it on the rocks.
David squinted his eyes. "There’s a state trooper on the shore."
The valley swarmed with state troopers that summer. The shopping plaza in the center of town was blanketed with their cruisers. They especially patrolled along the lakes, to keep watch for brushfires and illegal campers.
"Is it officer McCarren?" I asked.
David nodded. My brother had the greatest vision around. I hadn’t known that a person could have better than 20/20 eyesight until we got our eyes examined together. His eyes were loads better than mine. When I looked out over the shelf of water, I could hardly make out the shape of McCarren’s hat.
"Do you think he saw our campfire?" I asked.
"Just stop paddling," he said. "We’ll wait here till he gets bored and leaves."
We lingered there in the middle of the lake, without a single thing to shade us from the sun. I could see my skin getting darker by the minute. We were taking in more water now. I reached down and bailed a couple of handfuls back into the lake.
"How many times do I have to tell you to stop wiggling around?" said David, and I laid back, steadying myself with my foot. It seemed like hours passed as I looked up into the empty sky listening to the sound of my strained breaths and the trickle of water seeping into the raft.
"David," I said. "Aren’t you afraid of going to hell?"
"Shush."
David was sitting across from me dipping his paddle into the water. He was determined to sink a water stryder that was skipping toward the raft. When the insect would not go under, I could see David’s jaw working like a bunch of gears. He looked like my mom, the way his high cheekbones pulled the skin tight around his jaw. There were times—frequently, I have to say—when he’d catch me staring at him, trying to the identify the parts of his face that resembled my mother’s. It was like deciphering a code.
A minute went by and I whispered, "I’d be afraid of going to hell if I were you."
"How can you be afraid of something that doesn’t exist?" he asked.
I heard what he said but it made no sense so I ignored it. "Mom said I’d go to hell if I stopped going to church," I said.
"I just said there’s no such thing as hell."
"So where do people go who can’t get into heaven?"
"Don’t be obtuse," he pronounced. He looked out on shore where McCarren was sitting in his car. "Go the fuck away," he yelled. And I thought about how cool it must have been inside that air-conditioned cruiser.
Slender fingers of smoke rose up from the hills and into the sky. Although the wind was drifting away from us, the air was heavy with the smell of ash, sharp and acrid like the stench of a burning house. We could hear the tractors in the distance plowing through the forest to dig breaks in the woods. When the trees fell, they creeked like old doors before exploding onto the forest bed.
After a while, David continued. "There’s no heaven either," he said. "And before you ask, there’s no purgatory. Do you want to know why you believe in that stuff?"
"No." He was getting nasty again.
"You just believe that stuff because they keep drilling it in your head. It’s called ‘conditioning’."
"So where do you think people go when they die?" I asked.
"Nowhere."
"How can you just go nowhere?"
He told me to close my eyes and hold my breath. I held onto the raft in case he tried to push me in.
"Now," he told me, as if he had said this before. "You know that feeling that whenever you want you can open your eyes and start breathing again?"
I nodded my head.
"Imagine rolling that feeling into a ball and throwing it into the water."
"And then what?"
"That’s it."
"What’s it?"
"And what’s left, is what you are when you die."
"David?" I said.
"What?"
"I think that’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said to me—"
"Hush up," he said, looking ashore. "I think he’s leaving."
***
The deer were standing two and three abreast along the side of the road as we zoomed by. Even before the drought we were accustomed to the sight of deer nibbling on the shadbush and Japanese barberry growing on the shoulder. But once the forests began burning, the valley flooded with wildlife. Now the deer lined up along the side of the road as if they were going to join Noah himself. There were animals everywhere. We even caught a glimpse of a black bear lingering by one of the picnic areas and they never came around civilization.
Driving was treacherous. David sped around one blind turn and a huge twelve-point buck suddenly appeared in the middle of the road. We were going to hit him. Time suddenly froze and the earth seemed to slide the animal toward us. I remember shaking my head, picturing the poor deer crashing over the bumper and sliding up the hood—its skull shattering the windshield and its antlers hurling toward us like a chandelier of daggers. I looked at David. Both his hands were on one side of the steering wheel now, yanking it down as if ringing a church bell. The car swerved hard. For a moment we were headed straight for an embankment. David swerved again. The tires squealed and the quick turn threw my weight against the door. I looked at my brother as we continued down the road but he said nothing.
At last we reached town. When we pulled into the restaurant the tread-worn tires of David’s old Saab crunched over the pebbles in the parking lot. We pulled up next to a Channel Six news van. At first it was a big deal seeing reporters but lately we’d grown used to the cameras and even stopped walking in the background when an interview was going on. Now that evacuations were starting, journalists were knocking on doors to find out how people felt. They even showed up on our doorstep at dinner one evening, since our parents’ house sat at the edge of the park.
We jumped over the tangle of wires and waved to the news crew who recognized us from before. One man with giant earphones on his head was shooing away a family of wild turkey that had wandered in front of the camera.
***
We tore into the fried chicken and french fries as soon as they arrived at the table. The last thing we’d eaten was a box of dry cereal that morning and it was already dusk.
"What do you think officer McCarren thought while we were floating out there on the lake?" I asked my brother.
"He was probably wondering what the fuck was taking us so long to get back on shore," he said, taking a big gulp of orange soda. We laughed and high-fived. David was always nicer when we were in public together. He was a lot more like my mom that way.
"He could have been hiding out for us on shore," David said. "Lucky for us he wasn’t."
Earlier that summer officer McCarren caught us lighting roman candles off the top of the water tower. David showed me that you could launch fireworks from up there and watch them soar over the lake. As the flares rocketed up into the sky, their reflection would appear in the water. He said he wanted me to see how the two would slowly converge until the two met and disappeared.
"That was a big deer you almost hit," I said, taking a sip of orange soda.
"Tell me about it," he said, stuffing a bunch of fries in his mouth.
"Twelve pointer, easy."
"Ten, as a matter of fact," he said. "Four on one side and six on the other."
Outside, the reporter was interviewing our waitress. The man with the earphones was holding a long microphone with what looked like a fur hat hanging off the end. The wild turkeys were on the other side of the road strutting through the tulip trees and hickories.
"What are we going to do after this?" I asked David.
"Whatever you want," he said. "It’s your birthday."
"Mom said we have to help her pack stuff up tonight," I reminded him.
"Forget that nonsense," said David.
"It’s not nonsense," I insisted. "She said we need to be ready to go."
David rolled his eyes. His mood could change so suddenly in those days. He was irritated at me again. "Nonsense," he repeated. "This is why I want to go back up to Boston."
I was under the impression he was home for the summer. "What about the notebook?" I asked. He leaned back in the booth and scanned around the room. Across from us, a busboy was sweeping up the floors and putting the chairs up on the tables.
"Don’t go back to Boston," I said. "Stay here. It’s nice here."
He looked at me and shook his head, "You go home. I’m going up to the water towers to watch the fires."
"No," I said. "I’ll come with you. I want to see the Vertols, too."
"If you think it’s so important to pack, then go pack," he said, pulling himself out of the booth.
"Where are you going?" I asked, "You have to pay."
"Don’t you have your birthday money?" he shot back at me.
I felt the blood leave my chest.
"Keep your skirt on," he said. "I’m just going to take a piss."
The reporter outside finished her interview with our waitress and the two talked casually for a while. The camera crew walked across the road, stepping around the turkeys to take a wide angle shot of the restaurant. One of them spotted a porcupine walking out of the woods and the whole troop sprinted down to see it. As time went by, it began to occur to me that David was taking a long while in the bathroom. I was just about to go check up on him when I saw a glitter of light shining from the parking lot. He was jumping into the Saab. I wanted to wale against the glass with my spoon but we had skipped out on checks before and I knew I didn’t have much time to run out of there.
As I scrambled across the road, I could see David pulling away. He didn’t even look back as he disappeared around the bend.
So I wouldn’t be spotted, I hiked through the thicket for a while and then stepped back onto the road once I was out of sight of the restaurant. I swore my way up the road on my two-mile walk back home. Headlights appeared in the distance and I thought they might be David but then they passed by in a blur of steel grills and flat beds and I swore at him some more when the silence returned.
Where the road took a steep incline and began to wind, I walked a little more slowly, expecting something to jump out at me, for the smoky air blocked out even the moonlight. What if a black bear were to attack me? Do I try to outrun it? Should I play dead? My first instinct would be to run. I couldn’t remember which one I had been told to do. My tennis shoes suddenly began to slap loudly against the cracked pavement and I felt the darkness undressing me. I wondered what my mom would think if I were mauled trying to run when I should have played dead.
To quell my fear I played a game in my mind. I convinced myself that David would be waiting around the next turn. If I stuck tight along the curve, I told myself, his car would slowly appear— the dirty white paint still throwing off light even in the dying glow of the evening and him, in his Harvard t-shirt leaning on the hood with his arms crossed. He’ll be there, I repeated to myself. He’ll be right there. I kept telling myself that David would return but even as I said it I could feel that naïve belief disappear— that endless repetition could somehow turn fiction into fact.
There was something around the next turn, but it was not my brother. At first all I could see were the upturned legs and thought a table must have flipped off one of the pick up trucks. I walked closer to it. It was an animal; a fawn, small enough that I could have picked it up in my arms. Two faint tire tracks led up to where it had been hit. It was lying on its back, motionless, except for its legs, which moved like those of a dog sinking into a dream. I felt ashamed but could not resist looking between its legs. From his ear, a drop of blood fell.
I crouched down next to his body, so close I could smell him: his breath smelled like fresh cut grass and raspberries. He must have been a hungry thing. When he inhaled there was only fur and nothing underneath; not a single ounce of muscle or fat, only a slender dent of ribs, thin like my grandmother’s fingers. He struggled to inhale as if he knew that each breath released a little life into some vast nothing. He gazed down the side of the pavement. I listened to him wheezing. His eye was a perfect opal.
That was when I saw a cruiser winding up the road and I assumed it was after me for running out on the check. I sprinted over the shoulder and dove into the bushes. When the car slowed to a stop, it switched on its lights and painted the immediate forest in alternate blues and scarlet reds. Because of the glare from his flashlight, I couldn’t make out the face of the man in the car but from the silhouette of his hat I knew who it was. As he walked out to look over the body, I stooped down closer to the ground, slowly though, since each movement sent dead leaves shuffling.
The man knelt down next to the fawn and put his hand on its forehead like it was a benediction. He lowered the legs down so they rested against the blacktop and then he smoothed down the fur along its side. The white spots twinkled like stars as McCarren ran his hand back and forth.
McCarren stood up and walked back to the cruiser. He was going back to radio a wildlife vet. That’s what my parents did once when they found a lame eagle hopping through their garden. Suddenly, I saw him ignite a flare and a burst of orange spots appeared before my eyes as if I had glanced into an August sun.
McCarren reappeared through a cloud of orange smoke, steadying his hat with his left hand. My eyes struggled to focus against the blazing light. When the spots began to fade, I could see him unholstering his gun. Time passed differently than before. Now everything moved quickly as if choreographed. McCarren took three steps back and lowered his gun. The fawn dragged a hoof against the blacktop.
I screamed at McCarren to stop but it was too late. As the gunshot crackled through the mountains, each hill seemed to reinvent the sound. Close behind, my fading voice chased after it until both converged in the distance and all that was left was the indelible stillness – as bottomless and dark as the night that surrounded us.
# # #

-- -- --
B.A. Myint is an editor at a trade magazine in New Jersey and a graduate student at Columbia University. This is his first short story to appear in a literary venue.


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Hold Steady the Raft
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