To Choke Up Like That

Five of us were sitting around a fire; the other three—I mean other than John or me—I didn’t know. They were part of our traveling group but we hadn’t really learned each other’s names yet. (I think John had pointed Hannah out the day before, when we had started traveling the red desert, but I’m not sure.) The wind was blowing across the fire, I remember, and the sparks were all going to one side and falling in the sand that looked colorless at night except for just around the flames. John had his guitar on his lap, and he was drawing hard on a cigarette. We had just called our parents for the first time in two weeks. When John started telling stories the others listened in; they moved in closer to him. He had always been good at that sort of thing—talking, I mean.

“There was this time,” he said, “I was eight and I liked to play with sticks. I liked to pretend they were swords, and this time I was hacking away at the branches in the woods. I was so stupid I swung at a nest and the damn bees spilled out all over me. I had to be taken care of for a month because I swelled up so much from all the stings, but my father wouldn’t let me stay in the hospital. He yelled at them until they let him check me out, and then he made Mom take care of me in bed for the whole month.”

He told stories that had happened back in Vicksburg, back in America, as if it were just me and him, though we had only gotten to know each other here, in Australia. He put down his cigarette and breathed in the desert air and blew it out away from us the same as smoke.

“Fucking bees,” he said.

“I know. I’m allergic to them,” I said.

“What happens if you get stung? You swell up?”

“Yeah. Swell up, get hives.”

He pursed his lips like he was going to whistle but he didn’t. He asked about the hives.

“They’re like big pimples,” I said. “But they’re, like, inside-out almost. That’s how a lot of people die—they get them in their throat and they suffocate.”

“That must be terrible,” he said, “to choke up like that.” I nodded. “Tell me about a time you got stung.”

“The first time I was stung I was up in Maine and I was really young,” I said, “six or seven or something. We used to go up there every year to visit friends, and we stayed in one of their houses. It was right on a lake and the water was warm in the summer and sometimes you could see moose. And there were always loons crying at night.”

“Tell me about getting stung,” he said. His hand rested under the strings of his guitar so that his fingers hung into the hole in the middle.

“Why don’t you play something?” I asked.

“Go on with the story,” he said. “It’s a good story. You’re allergic and you were stung by bees.”
I shrugged. One of the others got up and cleared off. I was supposed to go on this trip with my brother, but at the last minute he couldn’t make it. John was the only one who could. I had to convince him. “My parents liked to have the path around the house clear of pinecones,” I said, “and one day my mother asked me to clear them off for her while she went out on the paddleboat. I had no idea what a pinecone was, I guess, because I was so young—I picked up a wasp’s nest, and they had to rush me to the hospital. I got the swelling and the hives. There were four or five stings, and one, I remember, on my earlobe that hurt like a son of a bitch.”

“Like a son of a bitch,” he repeated. “I worked as a plumber this summer with my father,” he said. “We were at this old man’s house in the middle of the summer in the heat. It was this broken-down, dilapidated piece of shit, and we were working on the well outside where there was this big beehive—and the bees were out of control. My father was up under the well housing and I was on the outside, handing him tools or something. The bees were staying up near the top of the house so we thought we were all right, but then one of them came down and got me, bam, right in the fucking temple.

“And my dad was still there up under the well housing, and he was laughing and saying, ‘You’re bee bait, son.’ He liked to say stuff like that. He was safe under there, and all you could hear was his laugh coming out, and it made me laugh too. And then the other guy working with us—he came in his car and right when he got out a bee stung him by his right ear. Even the old man came out of his house and got stung. And the whole time Dad wouldn’t get out of the well,” he laughed. His laugh turned into a hiccup. This was his first trip away from home.

The wind blew again and he took another deep breath. The cigarette burned down to his fingers, and he flung it into the fire and lit a new one and stared at it.

“Allergies,” he said.

He shivered. The kid on the end—I think his name turned out to be Andy—got up, wiped his hands on his pants, and started back over to camp. I guessed John was feeling homesick; I guessed the others didn’t want it to spread to them.

“I was on this fishing trip one time,” he continued. “It was me, my uncle, and a buddy of mine. Dad was working, so I was supposed to get one for him. Well, we hadn’t caught a thing all day, so I thought I’d try the artificial bait. I took Dad’s baiting rod out of the truck, cast it into the water, and sure enough I got a hit. I started reeling it in, when a bee came down and stung me on the thumb, and it hurt like a son of a bitch but I held on to Dad’s rod.

“Shit. I was reeling it in and trying to shake the hurt off at the same time, and my uncle and my buddy were both cracking up, trying to take Dad’s rod away from me, shit, but I wouldn’t let it go, I just kept holding on and trying to bring that fish home. I wanted that fish so badly.” He sat up and leaned toward the fire and rubbed his hand on his forehead and laughed. Only the girl, Hannah, was left with us. She came in closer, and then she moved from beside me to the other side of John. He was still laughing. She looked sympathetic. He pushed the guitar off his lap and laughed until tears came out. That surprised me a bit but to be honest, I was laughing too. I was thinking about fishing in the desert. John hadn’t told us yet that his father had passed away. Hannah rubbed my best friend’s back and looked at me as if I were one of those photographs of ghosts, the ones that happen when a stranger walks through the frame. I didn’t get it. For the rest of the trip I wished my brother had come.