Where There's Smoke Read Free Page B

dread-filled, from here to there, and here the ball is kicked to there, and there it’s booted – at the very moment I’ve chased it down – somewhere else. The sun is on my face and then it is dark. My brother, my blood and bones, confessor and protector, came in last night, he must be sleeping downstairs, and – as always when he comes – I find my hand on my heart and my mind wide open and wheeling.
    I get up and wash my face. The water from the cold faucet is warm, it smells of dirt. Downstairs, an old habit forestalls me looking at the sleeping form on the couch, and then I look. My brother, Thuan, comes bringing no clues where he’s been. As always, he lies on his back. His mouth is open, his eyelids violent with their shuddered thoughts, and even under the thin sheet I can see the heavy limbs, flat and parallel as though lying in state. He has a powerful body.
    I make some coffee in a plunger – not bothering to keep the noise down – and take it outside to the back deck. Surrounded by cicada song I sit down, stare out. Something is wrong. Why else would he have come? I wonder where he’s been but then why does it matter? Away is where he’s been. I think of his last visit three years ago, then Baby’s visit a few months later – how quiet and uncertain she was, how unlike his girlfriend from those rowdier times. Before leaving she hesitated, then asked for thirty dollars; I gave it to her and never saw her again.
    Against the darkness, other faces from that shared past occur to my mind with stunning vividness. Even closer, thicker, than the dark is the heat. Another scorcher on the way. Somewhere out there a forest is burning, and a family is crouching under wet towels in a bathtub, waiting as their green lungs fill with steam and soot muck. I test the coffee’s temperature. As often happens at this time of morning I find myself in a strange sleepbleared funk that’s not quite sadness. It’s not quite anything. Through the trees below, the river sucks in the lambency of city, creeps it back up the bank, and slowly, in this way, as I have seen and cherished it for years, the darkness reacquaints itself into new morning.
    He’s there now, I sense him, but I say nothing. Minutes pass. A line of second lightness rises into view beside the river: the bike trail.
    â€˜You still got my old T-shirt,’ Thuan says. Even his voice sounds humid. He comes out, barefoot and bare-chested, stepping around my punching bag without even feinting assault.
    â€˜Sleep okay?’
    â€˜If you mean did I drown in my own sweat.’
    He’s feeling talkative. ‘You came in late,’ I say. ‘There’s a fan.’
    He pads around the deck, inspecting it. Since he was last here I’ve jerry-rigged a small workout area, a tarpaulin overhang. I painted the concrete underfoot in bright, now faded, colours. He lowers himself onto the flat bench. Then under his breath he says, ‘All right,’ as though sceptically conceding a point. He shakes his head. ‘This bloody drought,’ he says.
    â€˜I know, I’ve been going down there,’ I say, nodding at the river. ‘Bringing water up – for the garden and whatnot.’
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜You know.’ He’s making me self-conscious. ‘The herbs and stuff.’
    â€˜I mean why not just use the hose?’
    I glance at him. Where has he been that there aren’t water restrictions? Then I catch his meaning: who cared about the water restrictions? What could they do to you?
    A shyness takes hold of me, then I say, ‘I dreamt about Saturday sports.’
    To my surprise he starts laughing. He lifts up his face, already sweat-glossed, and bares his mouth widely. Yes, he’s changed since I saw him last. ‘Remember when you broke that guy’s leg?
    And they wanted us to forfeit?’
    I tell him I remember, though in my memory it was he, and not