You Know That, Don't You

“Is it just me?” Luke said. “Or are there fewer fireflies out here than there used to be?” He swept his arm across the yard. Bourbon sloshed onto his fingers.

Debbie looked up from her spot on the bench. Her eyes followed his arm across the darkened grass to the shed, and then beyond that to the place where the shadows swallowed everything. She took a sip from her own glass.

“I mean, way fewer,” Luke said. He licked his fingers. “None, really. I don’t see a damn one. Do you?”

Debbie shook her head.

“When we were kids,” Luke said. “I mean really little, Mom let David and me camp out here. I’m telling you, the whole yard was lousy with them.”

He swayed a bit. Debbie figured he had started on the bourbon before she arrived. A bottle rested in the grass beside the bench. In the dark, it was hard to see how full it was. A cooler of ice sat nearby.

Luke reached up and scratched at his stubble. “You could read a book by the light those little bastards gave off.”

“When did your parents buy this place?” Debbie said. She shifted her weight. The bench seat sagged more than she remembered. She patted it. “Was this here already?”

Luke looked at the bench as if just realizing it was there. “Winter, 93'?" he said. "I was ten, I think. I feel like it was already here. I mean, I don’t think we brought it with us.” He sat next to her. He draped one arm across the back of the bench. Not around her. Close enough, though. “It must have been here,” he said. “We painted it that first summer. I’m pretty sure it was that first summer. Maybe the next. Me and Dad.” He looked into his glass.

“David too?” Debbie said.

“Yeah,” Luke said. “Him too.”

He’s right about the fireflies, Debbie thought. They used to be everywhere.

She looked into the shadowy place beyond the shed. She remembered lying in those shadows, and telling David about how the fireflies reminded her of Christmas lights. She remembered him laughing in his David way.

“What do you think of this?” Luke said. He held up his drink. “Good shit, yeah?”

Debbie wondered when Luke had started drinking bourbon, or drinking at all. She remembered the time she had swiped two of her Dad’s beers, and had gone to meet Luke in the dark. Luke had barely touched his. Too scared of getting caught, she remembered. Too scared of a lot of things.

She didn’t think this new way suited him. Or maybe she didn’t like that she thought it did.

“Do you smell that?” Luke said. He sniffed. “Woodsmoke. It’s woodsmoke, isn’t it?”

Debbie nodded.

“What kind of crazy bastard’s got a fire going in July?” Luke said. He laughed at his own observation, and looked around the yard again. “You know,” he said. “David was no good at getting fires going.”

She tried to remember the last time Luke had been in town. Years, she thought. More than a few.

He looked older. Heavier around the middle. And sadder, she thought. So much sadder.

She was older too, she knew. And heavier. She didn’t think Luke noticed. He wouldn’t say so, she thought. Even if he did notice.

She wondered if David would have noticed. He wouldn’t have said anything either. But she wondered.

She scanned the yard. Not much had changed. A few trees were bigger, maybe. A few were gone. The shed was still there. And the shadows behind it.

She thought about that one dark place at the very back. Near the fence. Where the trees bunched a little tighter and the grass was patchy. The place where she and David had found each other that first summer. And the next. Where she and Luke had found something too. But that was later. That was after.

“Woodsmoke,” Luke said. “There it is again.” He shifted closer on the bench. “Guess it has a certain romance though, doesn’t it?”

He’d go back there right now. She almost smiled. He won’t say it, she thought. He won't push. It's not in him. But if I asked-.

A feeling came over her that she couldn’t quite claim as either disappointment or relief.

We could, she thought. He had good hands. We could say it’s for old-time's sake.

She let herself consider it.

Luke shifted again. He settled his arm on her shoulders.

He’ll talk too much after. He always did.

She remembered how she and David had moved together in the shadows. How when they finished, David would roll onto his back and just look up at the trees, or rest a hand on her hip. Silent. Still. He hadn't flinched on the nights when she pulled away. He hadn't cared when she lit a cigarette.

She took another sip. The bourbon burned less now.

She thought about Luke. Furtive. Fidgety. Always asking how it had been for her. Always worried about who might come looking for them in the dark.

Luke swirled his glass and leaned into her. She felt a finger begin tracing the curve of her shoulder.

Some kissing, maybe, she thought.

He kept tracing.

Some touching.

Maybe we could.

Her gaze followed the line of grass from one yard to the next. Past this neighbor, and that neighbor, and all the way down to the house she’d lived in when they’d first met.

Her family had moved in just after school let out for the summer. She had been there a week, she remembered, when she had first spotted the brothers tossing a football in their backyard.

She was sixteen that first summer.

So was Luke.

David was eleven months older.

“Irish twins,” the boys had said.

She had always liked that.

Luke's fingers were still moving. Debbie studied her glass. “I read somewhere it has to do with the heat,” she said.

“What?” Luke said.

“The fireflies. They don’t like it.”

“Oh.” Luke said, without looking. “Yeah.”

He’s somewhere else, she thought. Back in those shadows, maybe.

“The house feels wrong,” Luke said suddenly. “Like something’s been moved but I can’t tell what.”

“That happens,” she said.

“Does it?”

“It does.”

Debbie wondered if David's senior photo was still framed on the mantle. She thought about asking.

“Do you ever wish you could go back?” Luke said.

“Go back?”

She remembered how David had hated putting on that tuxedo at the photographer’s studio.

“Like, back to before,” Luke said. “You know? To before life did all the things life does."

“So sentimental,” she said.

He gave a snort and quit tracing. He took his arm off the back of the bench.

“After you moved away,” she said. “And when David left. It was like that. Things looked different. Things sounded different.”

“When David left,” Luke said.

“Don’t do that.”

A car passed by on the road out front. Debbie listened as it downshifted. It went up and over the hill, and the sound disappeared as it rounded the bend and headed further out toward Emmitsburg.

“You know they’re in bed before seven most nights?” Luke said. He reached for the bottle.

“Your folks?”

“Yeah.”

“So?”

“So— remember how you used to have to wait until late to sneak into David’s room?”

“You knew?”

“I knew.”

“We always thought you were asleep.”

“You weren’t as quiet as you thought.” He uncorked the bottle. “And I didn’t want to ruin it for you. For either of you.” He poured. Debbie noticed how his hands didn’t hesitate. He offered her the bottle. She shook her head. He replaced the cork and set the bottle back in the grass. He opened the cooler and grabbed some ice. She could tell he was somewhere else again. She didn’t have to wonder where this time.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He held up a hand. He shook his head.

“It was cruel,” she said. “We were cruel. Me and him both.”

“Shut up,” he said. He took a long swallow.

“You didn’t deserve—."

"I said shut up." He lifted the glass again and drained it.

Debbie scratched at the bench with one finger. She tried to think of the next thing to say. Luke leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. His glass dangled from one hand. The ice was starting to melt.

A large truck came down the hill from the opposite direction. Its airbrakes thudded as it slowed. The driver shifted at the bottom, and a loud hiss escaped. The engine gave a growl as the truck rolled by the house, and then on toward the center of town. Soon it was quiet again.

“I want to tell you something,” Luke said.

Debbie stopped scratching and looked at him. “No,” she said. “You don’t.”

Luke blinked. And blinked again. She thought his eyes looked wet. She took his hand. and raised it to her cheek. She pressed it there and closed her eyes. Then she opened them and kissed his palm.

“I could never be him, could I?” Luke said.

She put his hand between both of hers. She sighed.

A moment passed. Debbie felt him squeeze her fingers. She saw his jaw tighten, and felt him pull his hand back.

“Luke,” she said.

He didn’t answer.

“Hey. Luke.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s not your fault. It never was. You know that, don’t you?”

Neither spoke. She kept her hand on his shoulder. A breeze rose, then fell. The woodsmoke was gone.

“I miss him,” Luke said.

She wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist. She took her hand off his shoulder and picked up her glass. “Pour me another drink.”

He reached for the glass. She heard him grab the bottle. Heard the twist of the cork and the sound of two glasses being filled. She wiped her eyes again and looked past the shed, out to where the shadows swallowed everything. She tried to spot the trees in the far corner, but it was too dark to see anything. That was the point though, wasn’t it? She smiled through a sniffle, and saw herself lying under the branches with David. The two of them listening to the wind push through the leaves. She remembered how the stars and the fireflies blinked and flickered between the branches, and how sometimes it was hard to tell which was which.

Something flashed in the darkness. So fast she couldn’t be sure. There, then gone. She looked where it had been. Nothing. Luke was saying something, but she couldn’t make out the words. He sounded far away. He could have been anyone talking.

I'll tell him, she thought. When I see it again. I'll make sure he knows.

“Debbie?”

Any moment now, she thought. Just a little longer.

“Debbie?”

Shut up, she thought. Just shut up. Don’t you see? Just be still. Her eyes burned. She didn’t blink. “Come on,” she whispered.

She heard ice clinking in the glasses, but it sounded like something else. Something she couldn’t quite name. David would know, she thought. And she looked and she looked.