Free The Wonder of All Things by Jason Mott Page A

in his voice. “It’ll focus the sunlight enough so that it heats it, just like a magnifying glass, and that’ll start the fire.”
    “That sounds like something you read in a book somewhere,” Tom said. “I don’t know which one, but I guess it’s true enough. Just be careful of believing what you read in books. Books are okay enough, I suppose, but too many people forget that there’s a real world out there and that they can touch it, feel it, smell it.” He continued striking the stones together and, slowly, a small thread of smoke began to rise from the pile of brush. “There it is,” he said. He began blowing gently into the base of the fire. “There we go,” he whispered.
    But Wash did not see. He looked off into the distance and thought of all the books he had read, all the places he had visited in his mind, all the stories that swirled around inside of him each and every day, like an ocean he had been building up inside himself over the years, page by page, word by word. The ocean was vast and limitless, filled with joy and sadness, terror and betrayal, the deaths of friends and the final fate of enemies. And it was at this moment, as his father lay on the ground, making a fire, as he kneeled across from him, watching the man huff and puff gently into the growing fire, not looking up, not looking around at the world, but only looking into the fire, into the immediate obstacle before him, this was when Wash understood both who his father was and who his father was not.
    “There we go,” Tom said, smiling. The small thread of smoke had grown into a long, silver chain rising up out of the air. Tom took more small pine needles and placed them on the growing flame. The fire sizzled and the flame leaped up. “Now we’re making something happen,” he said. “Now we’re building a future.”
    For the rest of the day Wash did not ask his father about singing or about books. He gave up talk of folk songs and he did not make any more references of characters he’d read about or scenes he had enjoyed. He only listened as his father talked about fire and all the different ways to build and maintain it. He answered “Yes, sir,” at the proper intervals. He smiled when he felt it was what is father wanted. He spent the afternoon watching the dream of who he thought his father would be if he ever came back to him die, piece by piece, in the firelight.
    Yet he could not deny the way that being with the father who had been gone for so long made him remember the family they once were. He remembered the small things: the lavender scent of his mother’s hair, the roughness of his father’s hands as the man lifted him into the air and spun him the way fathers sometimes did. He remembered the sugared strawberries his mother used to make. He remembered the way his father argued with sports announcers while watching football games. And he remembered how it all ended.
    They were in the car together, rumbling over the highway with Tom behind the wheel. He was a construct of muscles and brown hair staring out through the windshield and chatting, now again, with Wash’s mother about what she picked out for dinner. Wash was buckled into the backseat, barely tall enough to look out of the window. He lolled back in the seat and watched the clouds as they passed in their predictable patterns, punctuated now and then by the upper quarters of buildings that he remembered from previous shopping trips. His mother turned on the radio and sang along with it and he sang along when he could. There was the sound of their voices mingled with the music and the sound of cars passing from time to time as the blue sky swept along silently, stretching out over the entirety of the world.
    And then there was a squeal of the tires and Tom cursed and the sky turned at an awkward angle. The angle steepened until the boy could understand that the car was rolling, over and over. The car trembled and Wash was thrown back and forth in his seat belt