Free Burning Bright: Stories by Ron Rash Page A

Sawmill Ridge. I’ll go tomorrow, he told himself.
     
    O n 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 aroundthe 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 dragging a sled filled with food and medicine. The footprints weren’t his but those of the people he’d been sent to find.
    When he got to the airplane, Jared pretended to unpack the supplies and give the man and woman something to eat and drink. He told them they were too hurt to walk back with him and he’d have to go and get more help. Jared took the watch off the man’s wrist. He set it in his palm, face upward. I’ve got to take your compass, he told the man. A blizzard’s coming, and I may need it.
    Jared slipped the watch into his pocket. He got out of the plane and walked back up the ridge. The clouds were hard and granite-looking now, and the first flurries were falling. Jared pulled out the watch every few minutes, pointed the hour hand east as he followed his tracks back to the house.
    The truck was still out front, and through the window Jared saw the mountain bike. He could see his parents as well, huddled together on the couch. For a few moments Jared simply stared through the window at them.
    When he went inside, the fire was out and the room was cold enough to see his breath. His mother looked up anxiously from the couch.
    “You shouldn’t go off that long without telling us where you’re going, honey.”
    Jared lifted the watch from his pocket.
    “Here,” he said, and gave it to