That Fire's the Whole World

“Perceive” by Irakli Mirzashvili

I know the drill same as everyone else: stand up there, sob your face red and raw, let everyone tell you how brave you are. It’s all bullshit, sure, but just about all the kids are sitting here in Jimmy Dodge’s living room. Each Wednesday, Jimmy’s parents open their home to the rest of us. The prayer group’s called Athletes for Christ, and even though it was started for kids on the basketball and football teams, not everyone plays a sport. I sit here watching my classmates contort their faces in ways that make no sense. They break down in tears. Press hands to their chests. Howl confessions through snivels.

I’d stay home if I could, but Ma and I have an unspoken agreement: if I come here once a week, she doesn’t ask about the cigarettes that go missing. Truth is, the pills and wine keep Ma pretty fogged. She might have no idea about this agreement.

It’s late April, and the days stretch longer. Even though a heatwave hit early this year, the Dodges haven’t started their air conditioning. The blinds split sunlight across the carpet. I’m sitting cross-legged in the back behind half a dozen rows of kids I’ve known since kindergarten. Some of the kids come straight from practice, and everyone’s sweaty. The air reeks of crusty socks, jockstraps, locker rooms.

Mrs. Dodge treads gently up and down the rows. She pours Coke into little plastic cups the other kids hold out, hands out cookies wrapped in Kleenex. Jimmy’s parents are always doing little acts of kindness, but it’s only because they think it will get them easy entry into heaven. As if feeding us near-expired Chips Ahoy! will get you a seat next to Jesus at the next Last Supper. Besides, Jimmy’s a dickhead, and I can’t imagine how they could make up for that fact. I pluck threads off their carpet, say no thanks when Mrs. Dodge reaches me. But I take the cookies when she insists—it’s not like Ma’s putting anything in the oven nowadays. It’s not like we even have an oven, not one that works.

Coach Tarp is our youth minister, or at least that’s what he calls himself. I don’t know what kind of training you have to undergo to call yourself a minister, but whatever it is, I don’t imagine he’s done it. He’s pacing back and forth up front, the same pre-sermon ritual he performs each week. He’s a nervous guy, mean if you snap back at him. Sweat soaks through his shirt. He cracks his knuckles, wrenches his neck ‘til it pops. All the other kids give him hell, but he brings it on himself. I just keep my distance. A couple years back, when we were gearing up for eighth-grade finals, his wife up and died. Ever since, his sermons have been different, darker. He’d been all love the sinner not the sin, but now you get the feeling he can’t wait for a blaze to eat away whatever’s left of the world. Maybe he just wants to be dead with his dead wife. Maybe he just wants us to be dead.

He delivers his speech—repent for this, beg mercy for that. Coach Tarp stops pacing now. The side conversations all meld together into a single buzz. He swipes the sweat off his brow. He clears his throat once, then again, and the room falls quiet. He says we’re all sinners. He yells about the rapture. He warns of hellfire. “Eternity,” he shouts, his voice hoarse with anger. “Y’all know how long that is?”

Some of the kids volunteer to share their stories. They put on a big show. They gripe about all the struggles they’ve faced in life, brag that their souls thrashed in the undertow of sin until the Lord wedged his way into their hearts. Then, they bawl their brains out. I don’t know why no one can just be normal. We all have to swallow the dollar-menu slab of shit the world serves up.

I never volunteer to share my piece. My parents never went to church, anyway, and I didn’t get why Ma all of a sudden wanted me to find Jesus when my old man passed. It’s not like he believed—he said it was all a crock. I handle myself just fine. When I was little, I couldn’t hold back the waterworks. I broke down all the time. When a gameshow contestant on the TV spoiled their shot at cashing in. If I saw a stray dog with ribs sticking out. Whenever the good guy got gunned down in a western.

***                        

We break for the night around eight o’clock. I start out through the better neighborhoods in town, pass houses with flowers out front, head toward home. Nighttime falls like a corpse tossed from up high. I think about Coach Tarp screaming, the other kids crying their faces swollen. I try to remember the last time I cried. It’s no use. I spark one of Ma’s cigarettes, turn down the unpaved road unravels toward the trailer park.

***

Saturday comes and Ma sends me to Piggly Wiggly to fetch smokes. She’s worked out an agreement with the cashier. He knows what kind of shape she’s in, and he’s the only one who will sell to me.

The walk there, the sun’s a mallet. I pass through the automatic door and cold air nearly knocks me on my ass. Mothers toss canned vegetables and cereal boxes into their buggies. Small children chase behind them. Our cashier’s on shift. He’s around thirty, thirty-one, a face like someone who’s always wanted to skip town but can’t make it happen. He nods at me. “Your mom hanging in there?”

I can usually do the small talk, but the pity on his face today is too much. “She’s doing real good, actually.” At the moment, she’s on the couch watching a Jeopardy rerun for the third time since she woke up, slugging cabernet straight from the bottle, and chewing her depression pills like hard candy. “She took up gardening. Does yoga a couple times a week.”      

He smiles with such kindness I almost feel for him. “Glad to hear that.”  

“In fact, she’s planning to go back to school. Wants to study chemistry. She’s training for an ultra-marathon. Also recently started painting, even sold a piece for a couple million to some gallery in New York.”  

The cashier’s face drains. He fixes a hard stare on me. I worry for a second he might reach out and take hold of my collar. After a minute, he says, “Fuck off, kid,” shoves the Marlboros across the counter along with the change from a twenty.

I wad the bill, stuff them into my shirt pocket. I don’t tell him thanks or bye. At the automatic doors, I glance back over my shoulder. He’s got this look, all wounded. Outside a car alarm blares in the lot. Crows stab their beaks at one another, fight over a piece of bread on the pavement. I send them scattering either way with a stomp of my heel. I tear the cellophane apart, cut through a pair of pickups. Head down, I nearly slam right into Coach Tarp as he slinks out of his Buick. It’s a piece of shit, a beat-up old sedan with rust wrapped around the wheel wells. 

“Watch out, kid.”

“Sorry, Coach.”

He looks down at the Marlboros in my hand.

“They’re for my mom.” It’s technically true, so I make my face honest as possible.

“She ask you to open them too?”

I want to stay respectful, get out of here quick as possible, but it just comes out: “She recently lost all her fingers in a freak yachting accident.”  

“Maybe I ought to phone her up. She might want to know how you speak to adults.”

“No, sir. I’m sorry.”

Shame burns hot behind my cheeks. I make to leave, but he grabs my shoulder, sinks fingers into the flesh.

“Wait. You takin’ care of her alright?”

“She doesn’t make it easy, sir.”

“Thing like that’s not easy.” He presses down the point of his thumb. A grown man hasn’t touched me since my old man passed. A clod catches in my throat. He lets loose, pats me on the back. “Be good to her, son.”

I take off across the lot, a pinch in my heart. I palm the pack until a cigarette pops and then check over my shoulder. Coach Tarp’s gone. I flick a match, suck in a lungful until the smoke pinches inside my chest. Fuck him, I think. I’m glad the others give him shit. Like he knows anything about Ma and me. People say he’s had it rough since cancer killed his wife, even quit coaching for a couple years, slept in his sedan for a while. It’s probably just talk, but I don’t know why he’s got to take it out on us. Everyone’s got someone dead in their past.

***

Everything went to shit after I found my old man. Ma started watching Maury Povich and Oprah. She thought she’d become some kind grief counselor. Every day, she asked whether I’d processed my feelings. She even said it like that. “Have you let yourself process your feelings?”

I’d shoot back, do my best stab at her voice, that low, cigarette-scratched tone she’d taken on. “Have you let yourself process your grief?”

She’d grab her face, give me that old injured look, then waddle back to her room, a bottle of wine in her clutch, ribbons of smoke trailing behind her.

I don’t tell her, but I’m trying. I don’t tell her I’m worried I might not be able to cry anymore. I don’t tell her that, on hot days, I go out and stand barefoot on a steel manhole cap in front of the trailer, wait until I’m near sure my soles will bleed. I don’t tell her I press my ear to the bedroom wall at night, hear her whimper herself to sleep. I don’t tell her I lie in bed picturing my old man the last time I saw him, slumped over on the toilet with a bullet hole in his head. I don’t tell her nothing helps. I don’t tell her that no matter what pain I force myself to feel, no matter what mangled memory I drag up, I can’t force out a single tear.

***

Wednesday’s back, and I’m sitting in Jimmy Dodge’s living room again. His folks still aren’t running the AC. It’s a furnace in here. Mrs. Dodge passes out snacks, that same crooked smile on her face. She takes a seat in the back.

Coach Tarp’s face flashes red. “Accept Christ into your heart.” It comes out like an order. He might as well be telling us to crank out twenty pushups. “Imagine you’re in a big building that’s burning up. A fire truck pulls up out front. You gonna say, ‘Hey, firefighter, sir, no thanks, not me,’? That fire’s the whole world. It’s one big building up in flames.”

He pauses, fixes his look on someone up front. A few students fidget in place. “Jesus, he’s your firefighter. You’re just too dense to see it.”

Mrs. Dodge is on her feet, clapping. “Amen, amen.”

Someone in a middle row shouts, “Amen.”  

The door groans open behind me. When I twist back and see Al stepping in, a half hour late, he slams a foot against my ass. It’s quick and hard, sends a shock up my spine. He grins. “My bad.”

Al finds a spot up front, cramps himself between others. He’s a jerkoff. Ever since he came to town in the second or third grade, he’s made a mission out of giving kids who won’t hit back a hard time. I imagine a knife plunged into his chest, a screwdriver lodged in his neck. But someone yawns and Coach Tarp slams a hand on the little podium. He raises his voice. “Compassion.”

***

Next Wednesday, we’re a month out from summer break. Coach Tarp runs his finger through his hair. I wonder how much he’s lost since the last time he checked. Everyone gets seated. The sermon starts. The way Coach tells it, we’re all sinners, each and every one of us. We need to change course. But there’s hope, he says.

Al’s up front, elbowing his buddy in the flank. They laugh, plant their hands over their mouths to muffle it.

Coach Tarp ignores them. “We don’t have much time left.” He smiles something angry. “Any day now, hellfire will burn through the ground beneath us. Chaos comes next. Pandemonium. Cheating. Lying. Robberies. Killing. That’s why I want to talk about compassion today. If you haven’t got right with the Lord yet, it’s time. Right now. It’s time.”

Coach Tarp bangs on. I tune him out. Kids appear up front, weep. Prayer group ends and I set off for home. Halfway back to the trailer park, I fish a cigarette from my shirt pocket. It’s cracked in the middle, a broken bone. I tear the top half off and puff what I can. Grey smoke curls in front of my face. There’s hope, I hear Coach Tarp saying. Fucking prove it, I think.  

***

A couple weeks pass. Ma stops asking about my grief. She gets back from work, plants her ass in front of the TV. We only exchange a few words now and then. The most I hear her say comes out in mumbles after she thinks I’m already asleep.

The second to last Wednesday of the school year, Coach Tarp’s still hung up on compassion. But his tone’s different, softer. “Funny thing about the Lord is he isn’t stubborn,” he starts. “He’ll forgive you alright. You just have to let him in. What’s that called?”

No one offers an answer at first, so Coach Tarp prods. “C’mon now. You know what I’m talking about. What’s that called?”

A pale hand shoots up somewhere in the front. Whoever it belongs to lets it fall just as quick. Coach Tarp clears a knot of frustration from his throat. “It’s compassion. Right? Compassion?” 

He ends his sermon. A line forms at the head of the living room. Mrs. Dodge’s sitting in a lawn chair she’s set up to the side. She rocks back and forth, smiles. One by one the volunteers take their spots. They recall Christ battering into their souls. All around me, football players, girls from the volleyball team, let tears stream down their faces. In their telling, their souls rambled. Glided up and down the streets around town. Shivered across the Piggly Wiggly parking lot. Drifted past the soft, purple glow of the football stadium’s lights.

My guts tighten. I can hardly stand it. What have they lost? And who gives a shit about it, anyway?

Jimmy Dodge’s turn comes. He scratches his neck, nervous. He says he got drunk, smoked cigarettes, pocketed twenties from his mom’s purse. Traded Adderall for a hand job. Mrs. Dodge places a hand over her mouth. Coach Tarp leans forward, nods. “But I’m so grateful,” Jimmy says. “Who knows? I could’ve ended up in jail. But the Lord’s looking over me.”

Coach Tarp slaps his hands together. “That’s right. Once you start headed down that path, could take you somewhere you don’t want to be.”

Jimmy takes his time. He thanks God, his parents. He thanks Coach Tarp, his classmates who turn out for the prayer group every week. “My parents did everything so that I could get it together.” He ticks off a list of the gifts the Lord has given him: “The glory of his grace, a place in heaven, a starting spot on the football team.”

Yeah, yeah, I think. I could throw up hearing it all, but everyone’s got their faces warped in what must be sympathy. Then, it rips into me like a gunshot. I know what waits ahead. A lifetime of floating around town, from the trailer park to Piggly Wiggly, from the Piggly Wiggly back to Ma conked out on the couch. 

I scan the room for a distraction. Mr. Dodge steps out of his office, unfolds a lawn chair next to his wife. They lean forward, bob their heads at one another now and then. I remember Ma alone at home, on the TV the same Jeopardy reruns she use to watch with my old man. I remember the way they tangled into one another on the couch. Mr. Dodge clasps Mrs. Dodge’s hand, then swings his other arm around her.

I look away. My stomach rolls. My heart knives my ribs. I raise my hand to ask for a breather. Al beats me to it. “Coach Tarp. Russ and me—” He nods at his friend next to him. “We need a moment to take it all in.”

Coach Tarp, for the first time since I’ve come to prayer group, makes a face that looks like it’s meant to show support. “It’s a lot to process, isn’t it, boys?”

Al flattens his own face. “A whole lot, sir.”

I get up from my spot, step toward the entryway. I search for an explanation, but no one notices me. As the door shuts, I hear Coach Tarp saying something to the others. It’s an awful tough sight, a sad sack who gets duped that easy.          

***

Streetlights burn hard in the dark. Trees cast shadow veins on the pavement. I cross the street and sit beneath an old Sycamore, light a Marlboro. Al and Russ plod outside, then disappear around the side of the house.

A few minutes pass and they appear in the yard again. Walking toward Coach Tarp’s Buick, they’re laughing. Al’s using the bottom of his shirt to cup something. He wedges whatever it is beneath the driver side door handle.

“That’s fucking gross,” Russ says.

Alvin laughs again. “Dog shit in the fingernails.”

I can’t say I do what I do next for Coach Tarp. Who knows why anyone really does anything? Who knows if anyone really does anything for anyone else. But I’m tearing ass across the street, hurtling headfirst toward Al. I’m in the air, the grass green and shadowed beneath me. My face crashes into Al’s ribcage first. I’m scrambling to my feet, clutching for shirt collars. Swinging wide, clawing, missing. Stumbling, flat on my ass. Eating a fist to the face, then another.

Al punts me hard in the ass. Russ spits in my hair. Pain shoots sharp and fast through my sides. Dirt finds its way between my teeth. When they’re done, I look up at the sky, black and purple and so low I can hardly breathe. I lie there for a long time, listen. Al and Russ laugh, go back inside. If anyone in there’s crying loud enough to hear, the throb in my ears silences it. I get up and dust off my knees, turn toward home. A hot breeze rushes me. I spit a mouthful of blood onto the pavement. I pack my shirt pocket. The last cigarette I took off Ma’s gone.  

***

On the walk back, the stars blink. Clouds smash into one another. The night unfolds like a sheet. I cross an empty golf course. My shoes squish on damp grass. I track footprints across the Piggly Wiggly lot. I turn down the last bend, follow the unpaved road back to the trailer.

Ma’s on the couch, snoring. I’d normally leave her, but she’s so thin, it takes almost no work to heave her up. She groans, mumbles. I get her to the bedroom, kiss her forehead. I know I ought to do this kind of thing, some little act of kindness, when she’s awake, but something’s wrong with me.

In the kitchen, I grab a dishrag, then wipe away the wine Ma’s spilled on the coffee table. I kick off my shoes, sit on the couch. There’s a Jeopady rerun on the TV. A woman guesses the wrong word and her winning’s tick down to nothing. I switch the channel, and a cowboy takes a bullet to the chest.  

I remember the day we moved to the trailer park, a few weeks after my old man went. We loaded the car with whatever we could fit, then tossed the rest in the dumpster behind the Piggly Wiggly. Ma gassed it and we headed out past the edge of town. She swung a hard right down a dirt road that cut through a field of waist-high weeds, all potholes. A box of my clothes bounced around in the back. A Diet Coke can full of her cigarette butts spilled at my feet. Kids ran in the field, making wide circles. They hurled stones at each other. Ma pulled up to the last house on the last street, tugged the emergency brake.

“A fresh start.” She looked like she had more to say, but whatever had knotted up inside her, she couldn’t knock it loose.

A commercial for stray animals comes on. I flip it back to Jeopardy. The woman’s shaking her head now, shocked. I think of my old man turned into nothing but a bunch of dust and bones in the earth. Ma waking up whimpering. I wonder if that’s what it’s like for Coach Tarp, putting his wife underneath after so many years together, after watching cancer gnash her up. For a second, I can see it all spread out in front of me, all the reasons I ought to feel sorry for a guy like that.

A throb’s in my cheek, a spot where Al caught me good. I scrape a smidge of dirt from between my teeth. Each breath rakes my ribs from inside. I try to drag up the worst pain I’ve ever felt, but it’s no use. I turn off the TV. The room clicks. Moonlight moves through the blinds. I stare at the ashtray on the table. There must be twenty, thirty butts in there. I slip my lighter from my pocket, flick it a few times. One of the cigarettes is hardly smoked, partly buried beneath the others. I sit there a long time, waiting for something to happen, before I finally lean forward and dig my fingers into the ash.

About the author

Patrick Strickland is a Greece-based writer and journalist from Texas. His short stories have appeared at Pithead Chapel, Five South, The Broadkill Review, and Porter House Review, among others. He's the author of three nonfiction books, including the forthcoming You Can Kill Each Other After I Leave (Melville House 2024).

About the Artist

Irakli Mirzashvili grew up in a family of visual artists in Tbilisi, country of Georgia, and enjoys working in oil pastels, creating collages, and photography. His artwork has been exhibited in the United States and Georgia and was most recently featured in Phoebe: A Journal of Literature and Art. After living in rural Alaska, the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and the great plains of Kansas, Irakli resides in the Austin, Texas, area. He earned degrees in political science and law.