Free Blood Makes Noise by Gregory Widen Page B

did. Smile. It provoked her.
    “You’re a chickenshit, Mike—is that the right word?”
    “Close enough.”
    “You’re not happy with your life. When are you going to wake up and do something about it?”
    “You don’t know me, Barbara.”
    “Sure I do. You really think this new fatherhood thing fools anyone? You’re a rotten son of a bitch, Mikey. You think if you ignore something long enough it’ll just go away. Well it’s not going to. Not this time. Not unless you do something about it.”
    Old, ugly truths. Barbara shifted her gaze to something neutral. The edge of the planet maybe.
    “Do you ever think about those nights?”
    “Sure.”
    “Bullshit.”
    “I do. Honest.” It sounded stupid and high-pitched to himself. Barbara smiled and shook her head.
    “You never were a fun drunk…”
    The temperature didn’t drop much but the sky darkened and darkened till it seemed to glow with darkness. Stars raked powerfully over them, and the dusty breeze stilled and bedded for the night.
    Fluted glass lanterns appeared as small cliques formed around wrought-iron tables. Most of the party had stumbled off to home or bed in the guesthouses, leaving remaining knots of laughter, toasts, and ghost stories tossed into the insect cry.
    Michael was with Karen now, alone in their own warm circle. Her eyes caught the night and it hurt Michael to think that her eyes probably sparkled all the time, but he didn’t notice likehe once had. She touched his hand, let her hair fall into her face as she studied the fingers. And Michael felt the world sharpen for just a second. He leaned over, reached up under her cotton blouse, and touched their child.
    They made love in the guest room. Careful. Mindful of the life pressed between them. And it was better, fuller for the care. Afterward they stood naked at the window and watched heat lightning flash somewhere over Montevideo. There had been lightning that first time in Michael’s college dorm, a slashing storm that shook the walls with fury. They had stood at that window too, and below them blue stutters of light had lit up green, copper roofs. They’d counted softly together the space between each flash and its following thunder. “One, one thousand…two, one thousand…three, one thousand…” All night, a chant: “One, one thousand…two, one thousand…three, one thousand…” Till the storm passed with dawn.
    From the guesthouse now they could see sputtering arcs low in the sky. But neither of them counted, for on the pampas no thunder followed the lightning. Like everything else in Argentina, it was different.
    On the way home they blew a tire and limped into the pampa town. It was Sunday morning, everyone in church but a few suspicious dogs circling the only gas pump. Michael got out, walked to the storefront, and pressed his face to the dusty glass. A kitchen was on the other side, quiet, the beginnings of a noontime meal on the counter. As he pulled his face away he saw the kid on a stool in the corner, planted absolutely still in profile, his gaze—as best Michael could see—fixed on the blank wall across from him.
    Michael rapped on the pane, and the kid’s head pivoted, not startled, slowly toward him. He was maybe ten, good looking but for a brutal scar that ran ear to ear across his throat. His hair was lighter than most here, reddish.
    “Tire. We need our tire fixed,” Michael said in Spanish. Something seemed off about the kid, who only after a beat rose from his stool and opened the door.
    He put the tire in a barrel of water, felt for the leak’s bubbles. Karen had wandered down the dirt main street to the town’s tiny plaza. Michael stayed with the car, watched the kid watching the tire. When he looked up, Michael saw what was off. The eyes. The kid had the eyes of a tight, ruined adult. Michael smiled. The kid looked back down at the tire.
    Michael pushed off the car and walked across the street to a weedy lot between two low adobe buildings. A