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his eyes adjust after being closed. “Hey. Your mom pretty upset?”
I look at him sardonically. “Right.”
“What was that all-”
Uncle Dave sighs, his lean body hunched over as the trampoline sags underneath him. He reaches into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes, but they aren’t there this time; he must have left them on the deck. “Before Colleen and Michael died...” he beings.
My grip tightens on the metal frame of the trampo- line. I’m bracing myself for a discovery I’ve always suspected was lurking beneath the surface. But as the seconds morph into minutes and the sound of birds chirping and pine boughs swaying fills the space between us, the moment of discovery fades into the heavy summer air. Frustrated, I walk to the middle of the trampoline and begin jumping. I don’t care that the vibrations of the mat are jiggling Uncle Dave. I imagine him bouncing off the trampoline, forced off by my anger, and smile. I don’t care if I’m being insensitive to Uncle Dave’s past, all the trauma he’s been through. Trauma that caused him to sell off the lakeside two-story house and fishing boat when Colleen and Michael died. Trauma that’s transformed him from a content family man into maritime hermit. Uncle Dave has teased me. Teased me with knowl- edge, ripping it away at the exact moment I’m most venerable to its promise.
Uncle Dave hops off the trampoline, scowling at me, but he doesn’t disappear into the trees, back toward the house. Instead, he leans against a tree and watches me run through my tricks. I bounce higher and higher, no order to the pike jumps and seat drops as the days’ event whirl through my mind spawning new ques- tions about my family, some of which will go unan- swered for a long time. Uncle Dave’s head follows my progress, bobbing up and down. No one, except the
birds and chipmunks, has seen my front-flip.
I build my jump height back up, legs aching from the exertion. Tree trunks, trampoline mat, blue sky, and tree trunks. I repeat this litany in my head before arching forward into the flip. Tree trunks, trampoline mat...and an explosion of pain. My back seizes up and a band of fire erupts across my shoulders. My eyes are open, but I’m blinded by a flood of tears. I can’t breathe, the wind has been knocked out of me, so I gasp like a dog choking on a bone. My head spins and I wonder briefly if I’m going to die until someone begins rubbing my back, talking in a soothing tone as I sob in the fetal position.
Footsteps pound toward the trampoline. A hospital is mentioned, but no one attempts to move me. Some- one, my mom I think, wonders how a trampoline came to be on our property. All the while, Uncle Dave’s hand never stops rubbing my back. He even dabs at my eyes with his handkerchief, never mind that it smells like motor oil. When I stop crying and can finally breathe normally, he helps me into a sitting position. My legs dangle over the side of the trampoline while he inspects my shoulder.
“You’re going to have one hell of a bruise, but nothing is broken,” he says more to mom who holds the neck of my shirt open.
“Still, an x-ray couldn’t hurt,” she says.
Uncle Dave shrugs.
“Do you think you can walk?” Mom asks me.
Mom and Uncle Dave help me down and insist I lean on each of them. We hobble out of the forest, par- ticipants in a six-legged race gone wrong. Dad spots us and hurries across the deck and onto the grass, arms pumping determinedly at his waist. But then he stops. The sunlight is bright, bouncing off my tear- stained face, mom’s pale skin, and Uncle Dave’s belt buckle. I lean against Uncle Dave as mom goes to tell dad what’s happened. I squint through the sunlight, breathing in the familiar scents of Marlboro, river water, and cheap beer. Dad’s face runs through a series of expressions: shock, worry, relief. But there’s another expression that flits across his face as he gazes at me leaning against Uncle Dave, one I recog- nize because I have hungered for and been denied it: revelation.
Dilley is a writer and holds an MA in Literature from the University of Utah. Her work has been published in Idaho Magazine and Orson’s Review. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and English bulldog.
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