Burning Bright - By Ron Rash Page 0,44
A diamond can cut through glass, I’ve heard, but I ain’t so sure anymore.
One night I dream I’m falling. There are tree branches all around me but I can’t grab hold of one. I just keep falling and falling for forever. I wake up all sweaty and gasping for breath. My heart pounds like it’s some kind of animal trying to tear out my chest. Lynn’s got her back to me, sleeping like she ain’t got a care in the world. I look at the clock and see I have thirty minutes before the alarm goes off. I’ll sleep no more anyway so I pull on my work clothes and stumble into the kitchen to make some coffee.
The books are on the kitchen table, big thick books. I open up the least one, a book called Astronomy Today. I read some and it makes no sense. Even the words I know don’t seem to lead nowhere. They just as likely could be ants scurrying around the page. But Lynn understands them. She has to since she makes all As on her tests.
I touch the cigarette lighter in my pocket and think a book is so easy a thing to burn. I think how in five minutes they’d be nothing but ashes, ashes nobody could read. I get up before I dwell on such a thing too long. I check on Janie and she’s managed to kick the covers off the bed. It’s been a month since she started second grade but it seems more like a month since we brought her home from the hospital. Things can change faster than a person can sometimes stand, Daddy used to say, and I’m learning the truth of that. Each morning it’s like Janie’s sprouted another inch.
“I’m a big girl now,” she tells her grandma and that always gets a good laugh. I took her the first day of school this year and it wasn’t like first grade when she was tearing up when me and Lynn left her there. Janie was excited this time, wanting to see her friends. I held her hand when we walked into the classroom. There was other parents milling around, the kids searching for the desk that had their name on it. I looked the room over pretty good. A hornet’s nest was stuck on a wall and a fish tank bubbled at the back, beside it a big blue globe like I’d had in my second-grade room. WELCOME BACK was written in big green letters on the door.
“You need to leave,” Janie said, letting go of my hand.
It wasn’t till then I noticed the rest of the parents already had, the kids but for Janie in their desks. That night in bed I’d told Lynn I thought we ought to have another kid.
“We barely can clothe and feed the one we got,” she’d said, then turned her back to me and went to sleep.
It’s not something I gnaw on a few weeks and then decide to do. I don’t give myself time to figure out it’s a bad idea. Instead, as soon as Lynn pulls out of the drive I round up Janie’s gown and toothbrush.
“You’re spending the night with Grandma,” I tell her.
“What about school?” Janie says.
“I’ll come by and get you come morning. I’ll bring you some school clothes.”
“Do I have to?” Janie says. “Grandma snores.”
“We ain’t arguing about this,” I tell her. “Get you some shoes on and let’s go.”
I say it kind of cross, which is a sorry way to act since it ain’t Janie that’s got me so out of sorts.
When we get to Momma’s I apologize for not calling first but she says there’s no bother.
“There ain’t no trouble between you and Lynn?” she asks.
“No ma’am,” I say.
I drive the five miles to the community college. I find Lynn’s car and park close by. I reckon the classes have all got started because there’s not any students in the parking lot. There ain’t a security guard around and it’s looking to be an easy thing to get done. I take my barlow knife out of the dash and stick it in my pocket. I keep to the shadows and come close to the nearest building. There’s big windows and five different classrooms.
It takes me a minute to find her, right up on the front row, writing down every word the teacher is saying. I’m next to a hedge so it keeps me mostly hid, which is a good thing for