Foreigners (37 page)

Out of the darkness Bull hears a noise. Strange. Out of place here in the woods. At first he cannot make it out. Not crickets. Not critters in the underbrush. Not the wind. It's something more melodious, like singing.

And it is singing. Faint and hymn-like. And there's something else, something straining just beneath the song: a banjo.

He turns to Darryl.

“Yes,” he says. “Yes, I want to do this.”

“Well, hot dog,” chirps Finnegan. Bull had forgotten he was with them.

He feels Darryl press the dry stick into his hand and then the flame of the lighter lights up his son's face.

“The wick, it'll be pretty dry, Pop. So you better throw it as soon as it catches.”

He watches as the small yellow flame licks the fuse and waits for it to ignite.

“What if it doesn't work?”

“Relax, Pop,” Darryl says confidently. “It'll work.”

And with that the fuse sparks to life, and Bull is reminded of the sparklers he used to buy for Darryl and Darlene when they were still children and how they used to run through the backyard writing their names in the air.

“Come on, Bull,” Finnegan yells out of the darkness. “Get rid of the thing.”

And Bull draws his arm back, feeling the stretch in his pectorals and the wound-up elastic tension of the tendons in his elbow. He plants one foot firmly on the ground in front of him and pushes off hard with the other. His arm begins an exquisite arc, starting from behind his head and extending upward. At the zenith his fingers open and he feels the stick of dynamite leave his hand and watches as it soars out into the air before him, out and out, a perfect toss, the sparkling fuse spitting needles of brightness into the black night. For a moment it seems to pause, suspended in the void, as if hanging from a string, before it begins its descent, falling, falling into the chasm, its glittering ember growing dimmer and dimmer until it disappears. There is utter silence. Even the far-off singing has stopped.

Then the night roars with great force and Bull falls backward, landing with such a thump that he bites a chunk out of the tip of his tongue. But he is laughing. Even as the blood starts to stain his lip, he is laughing, thinking of the fish, the Jericho trout, its muscles as stiff as a board as it sinks to the bottom of the quarry.

He can hear Darryl's voice close to his ear, and though he's yelling, he sounds far away.

“Pop? Pop? You okay?”

“Great,” Bull hears himself slur, swollen tongued. “Oh, boy. I'm just great. It was just like an open-field tackle.”

With Darryl's help, he pulls himself to his feet.

“You're bleeding,” Darryl says, sounding much closer now.

“Yes, I am, son. Yes, I am.” Then he takes his son's face in his hands. It's been so long, so long since he's reached out and
touched him the way he's so wanted to. “Do you know what kind of fish drowns, Darryl?” he says, feeling so happy, so much happier than he has in more years than he can remember. “Do you, son?”

He can feel Darryl shaking his head.

“One that's too afraid to swim,” Bull shouts out and looks up to the night sky, laughing. “That's what kind. One that is too goddamned afraid to swim.”

COMING AUGUST 2009!

THE FALLEN
NAVIGATES BRILLIANTLY THE SHIFTING TERRAIN OF
RIGHT VERSUS WRONG IN A HEARTBREAKING STORY OF LOVE,
FRIENDSHIP, AND THE BETRAYAL OF BOTH

It is the winter of 1944, and the newly liberated city of Naples has become an
ever more dangerous place. Among those charged with maintaining the military
security of the city is a young Canadian lieutenant named Thomas Greaves.
Greaves seems naive at first, but it soon becomes clear that he has demons to
exorcise, and that he sees his time in Naples as the opportunity to atone for a
tragic mistake made on the battlefield. His plans go awry though, and Greaves
lands in the murky world of gangsters and black marketers.