Burning Bright - By Ron Rash Page 0,24

the ground, but it’ll soon enough melt and you’ll be able to ride it.”

Jared’s mother looked up.

“Wasn’t that nice of your daddy,” she said, her eyes bright and gleaming. “Go ahead and eat your cereal, son. A growing boy needs his breakfast.”

“What about you and Daddy?” Jared asked.

“We’ll eat later.”

Jared ate as his parents sat in the front room, passing the pipe back and forth. He looked out the window and saw the sky held nothing but blue, not even a few white clouds. He thought about going back to the plane, but as soon as he laid his bowl in the sink his father announced that the three of them were going to go find a real Christmas tree.

“The best Christmas tree ever,” his mother told Jared.

They put on their coats and walked up the ridge, his father carrying a rusty saw. Near the ridgetop, they found Fraser firs and white pines.

“Which one do you like best, son?” his father asked.

Jared looked over the trees, then picked a Fraser fir no taller than himself.

“You don’t want a bigger one?” his father asked.

When Jared shook his head no, his father kneeled before the tree. The saw’s teeth were dull but his father finally broke the bark and worked the saw through. They dragged the tree down the ridge and propped it in the corner by the fireplace. His parents smoked the pipe again and then his father went out to the shed and got a hammer and nails and two boards. While his father built the makeshift tree stand, Jared’s mother cut more stars from the newspaper.

“I think I’ll go outside a while,” Jared said.

“But you can’t,” his mother replied. “You’ve got to help me tape the stars to the tree.”

By the time they’d finished, the sun was falling behind Sawmill Ridge. I’ll go tomorrow, he told himself.

On Sunday morning the baggies were empty and his parents were sick. His mother sat on the couch wrapped in a quilt, shivering. She hadn’t bathed since Friday and her hair was stringy and greasy. His father looked little better, his blue eyes receding deep into his skull, his lips chapped and bleeding.

“Your momma, she’s sick,” his father said, “and your old daddy ain’t doing too well himself.”

“The doctor can’t help her, can he?” Jared asked.

“No,” his father said. “I don’t think he can.”

Jared watched his mother all morning. She’d never been this bad before. After a while she lit the pipe and sucked deeply for what residue might remain. His father crossed his arms, rubbing his biceps as he looked around the room, as if expecting to see something he’d not seen moments earlier. The fire had gone out, the cold causing his mother to shake more violently.

“You got to go see Brady,” she told Jared’s father.

“We got no money left,” he answered.

Jared watched them, waiting for the sweep of his father’s eyes to stop beside the front door where the mountain bike was. But his father’s eyes went past it without the slightest pause. The kerosene heater in the kitchen was on, but its heat hardly radiated into the front room.

His mother looked up at Jared.

“Can you fix us a fire, honey?”

He went out to the back porch and gathered an armload of kindling, then placed a thick log on the andirons as well. Beneath it he wedged newspaper left over from the star cutting. He lit the newspaper and watched the fire slowly take hold, then watched the flames a while longer before turning to his parents.

“You can take the bike down to Bryson City and sell it,” he said.

“No, son,” his mother said. “That’s your Christmas present.”

“We’ll be all right,” his father said. “Your momma and me just did too much partying yesterday is all.”

But as the morning passed, they got no better. At noon Jared went to his room and got his coat.

“Where you going, honey?” his mother asked as he walked toward the door.

“To get more firewood.”

Jared walked into the shed but did not gather wood. Instead, he took a length of dusty rope off the shed’s back wall and wrapped it around his waist and then knotted it. He left the shed and followed his own tracks west into the park. The snow had become harder, and it crunched beneath his boots. The sky was gray, darker clouds farther west. More snow would soon come, maybe by afternoon. Jared made believe he was on a rescue mission. He was in Alaska, the rope tied around him