Winner - CWA First Chapter Contest - “Those Who Favor Fire”

By Lana Orndorff

Part 1

The Moment They Thought It Would End

Senator Joe Charles

One of my first childhood memories involves splashes of blood on a cement floor. Not quite tall enough to climb into the family truck without a boost, I couldn’t have been more than five or six at the time. My father and uncle had just come home from hunting, the body of a large, lifeless deer in the back of one of their vehicles. I was too small to actually help, but old enough to be curious. Decades later, burning truck fumes, the coppery smell of blood, or the icy sting of early winter still trigger this memory.

I remember standing close to my father — careful not to get in his way— as my male role models spread a tarp out in front of the truck bed and pulled the carcass down. The thwack of its dead weight sent a low echo throughout the garage. The deep red hole in the animal’s neck was almost as dark as its open black eyes. Always an observant kid, I was mesmerized by those orbs. How they looked like the marbles I had been playing with in the living rooms minutes ago. The urge to pluck out the deer’s eyes and flick them across the floor was squelched only by my newly developing conscience.

After finishing their beers — likely not their first of the day— my father and uncle carried the deer's body into the corner to hang it. I don’t know if they tripped or lost their grip, but one of them, I can’t recall who, dropped his side of the plastic sheet that cradled the deer. The body thumped, and blood splattered at my feet on the cold cement floor.

“God damn it! Joey, go ask your mama to come out here.” His words, while loud and frightening, sounded like they were tripping over each other on the way out of his mouth. Thinking back as an adult, I know he was slurring, but at the time I didn’t notice. He was always slurring. It was just how Daddy talked. My parents got into a fight that night. A screaming, throwing things, slamming doors kind of fight. I snuck out to the garage to avoid the sounds of war in my house, no fear of the dead animal hanging inside. The garage door, having been closed for several hours, released a horrendous metallic odor that physically knocked my little body back. As I jumped away from the stench, stray pieces of gravel from the driveway poked and pierced my bare feet. I think I had gone in there to try to wipe up the blood stains. That’s why mama was mad. But, I ended up hypnotized by the Rorschach-like stains on the floor, lying there examining them until I fell asleep. From one angle they looked like a marching band in a parade, musicians carrying tubas, flutes, and drums down a street. From another angle, I saw three raccoons standing by a river. From yet another, flames engulfing a house.

I don’t remember anyone ever actively cleaning up the stains, and they are still there to this day. I bought the house in 1992. Not to live in, but to preserve as a piece of my personal history. I didn’t want anyone else looking at the blood stains and interpreting them as they pleased. The blood soaked into the porous cement, a silent witness to life's milestones — my initial taste of beer, the first car I parked, the first deer I skinned. The day I graduated from North Brook High School, June 14, 1974, I punched my father in the face for the first time while standing on those stains. My friends and I were in my garage toasting to never having to set foot in that school again, when my father came in and called me a “queer” due to my plans of going to college in the fall. Since the day I was born, he had incorrectly assumed I would follow in his footsteps and become a  mechanic. Thus, my father took my desire for higher education as an insult to his own choices. Having permanently stained greasy hands and an aching back from being hunched over all day was not how I was going to spend my life. I was 18, in love, had a full scholarship to the University of Mississippi, and was ready to rule the world. But those blood stains, I realize now as that thick coppery smell is filling my nose again, were an omen. 

Until earlier tonight, I had managed to keep my promise— the one about not coming back to North Brook High School— for fifty years. I was busy. Double majoring in business and economics. Moving back to north-western Georgia for a few years so we could start our family near mine and Delilah’s parents. Buying a starter home. Running a successful chain of clothing stores. Purchasing a larger home. Beginning a political career. Moving to Washington D.C. Raising four children. Buying a vacation home. Watching our ten grandchildren grow up. Becoming one of the most influential people in the Senate. I had no time, I told myself.

I did come back, though, and that choice will haunt me for as long as I have left in this life. Once upon a time I was eighteen years old, strutting through the doors of this school, a letterman jacket proudly displayed on my broad body, Delilah Sumner in her cheerleader uniform on my arm, and not a care in the world. But earlier this evening, sun-splotched, wrinkled hands reached for the same recently-shined door handles. A man nearing seventy, one I barely recognize in the mirror most days, walked tentatively through these hallways feeling the surrealness of the changes time has made.

Technologically speaking, the alterations are a vast improvement, but now the building feels generic, or maybe just overly sanitized. Not like it did in the seventies. A slight buzzing sound and random flickers used to give the main hallway of North Brook Senior High School some character, like we were potential victims in the beginning of a horror movie. LED lights have changed that. Those bulbs emit steady rays of light in the hallways and classrooms. More reliable, but much less exciting. The lockers are still burgundy, but electronic locks replace the metal circles of the combination locks we were required to bring from home. Several hours ago, I searched the innumerable experiences in my brain trying to remember which locker was actually mine. Now, I pretend it is the one I am laying in front of, the number 206 etched on the gold-colored plaque. My eyes are heavy, so I let them close. In my mind, I am eighteen again. Handsome. Athletic. Optimistic. Ready for the unknown. Completely unaware that in half a century, I will be bleeding out in this hallway, holding a cold, lifeless hand in mine.

More scenes from my life play slowly for me. No images flashing before my eyes like people say. My mind started with the day the blood stains splattered on the garage floor, then moved on to playing football in the backyard of my childhood home with my brother. Then I fast forward all the way to Delilah and I sitting in my backseat, planning our future, our bodies intertwined under the moonlight. I was the best husband I could be, considering I was a Senator for the last thirty-one years, and duty to my country always came first. It had to. Unlike running a business, entering politics ignited an excitement in me I had never experienced. Giving hope and a feeling of safety to the people who voted me into office was my passion. All politicians ruffle some feathers. That’s how we know we’re doing our jobs. I was the type that refused to sit back and let others run my country. My voice became that of my constituents, those who felt unheard and pushed away. Those who were scared of losing their jobs and freedoms. My family was sometimes collateral damage, but I will never be sorry for the choices I made. Delilah understood that.

Voices exist in the distance. Hot and cold alternate in waves through me, but I cannot feel any specific part of my body. The liquid pooled beneath me seems to be devoid of any temperature— an odd realization, I think. Blackness encroaches from all edges of my vision, framing the new high-tech lockers. A boom rings out through the hallway again, and the floor vibrates beneath me.