Soon the Light Will Be Perfect

by Dave Patterson

  XII

  My brother pedals his bike in front of me as cars careen past us on the road. I pump hard to keep up. He only let me come along if I promised not to ask questions, so I don’t ask where we’re going or if he thinks it’s a good idea to be riding our bikes in the breakdown lane of the only major road in town. Even if he was inclined to answer questions, I doubt he’d be able to hear me over the steel-belted traffic.

  It’s hot, and I wish I’d brought water. I didn’t know we’d be riding so far from home when he agreed to let me come. I hope he has water in his backpack. Despite the heat, it’s a relief to be out of the house.

  An eighteen-wheeler whirs past us on the road, and I struggle to keep my bike from going into the ditch. My brother is unaffected. He doesn’t look back to check on me.

  We approach the bridge over the dam for the lake at the edge of town. There’s a tight gap between the guardrail and the traffic, and I consider turning around and heading home, but I don’t want to go back to our suffocating house. I squeeze the rubber grips on my handlebars and pedal across the bridge, holding my breath. Water spills out through cracks in the dam into the mouth of a stream. When we reach the other side of the bridge, I let out my breath.

  On the lake, a few boats move across the water. It’s a small lake. Last year the town told residents not to eat any fish pulled from the lake, explaining that mercury levels were high enough to kill an infant. Because of this, not many people use the lake anymore. Most of the waterfront houses have for-sale signs stuck in the front lawns. But the lake looks beautiful today as the sun sparkles off the surface. On the way back from wherever we’re going, I decide it’s so hot I’m going to jump in at the boat launch—most town kids still swim in the lake despite the mercury.

  After we pass the lake, my brother turns onto a dirt road. The forest is thick in this part of town and the houses become spread out. I wonder if we’re going to the Native burial ground my brother is always talking about. He says that if you enter that sacred place you’ll be cursed forever. I remember the story of Larry Anderson hanging himself with his belt because he couldn’t shake the curse after he was laid off from the plant. He had started digging around the burial ground in hopes of finding something of value to sell so he could keep his trailer. He didn’t find anything other than the curse.

  Even this thought can’t make me return to our house.

  A half mile down the dirt road, the forest opens, exposing the gravel pit where Cory and Justin’s uncles work. Dump trucks move dirt and gravel through the big gash in the earth. Dust coats the inside of my mouth, and suddenly I know exactly where we’re going.

  My brother pedals at a steady pace as we work our bikes up the hill leading to Pinewood Estates. I’m slower than him. He pulls a hundred yards ahead and crests the hill, disappearing from view. I’m alone, caught between the desire to escape my current life while I pedal toward our old trailer park. The forest on either side of the dirt road flickers in the sun. The only sounds are my rubber tires grinding against the gravel and the leaves on the birch trees rustling in the wind.

  At the top of the hill my brother appears on his bike. He waves for me to follow.

  Two mountain peaks rise behind the letters of the Pinewood Estates sign. The trailer park kids joke that the mountains look like tits. Beyond the sign, rows of trailers stretch out into the distance. I haven’t been back since we moved out of our trailer. Our departure from the park into our new neighborhood was a victory. A fucking triumph. In school being labeled a park kid means that only kids from trailer parks will talk to you. Even in the gifted program, the other students didn’t want to work with me. Only strange Shane Donaldson would be my partner for projects. When we left, my brother made sure I understood how grave it would be if we ever had to move back.

  The trailer park looks smaller than I remember. The vinyl siding of the units are coated with dirt from the road. Kids younger than us chase each other around a telephone pole with squirt guns. The small trailer lots are littered with trucks on cinder blocks, dissembled bicycles, plastic children’s toys and patches of unmowed crabgrass.

  “What are we doing here?” I ask my brother.

  “I told you not to ask questions,” he says and keeps pedaling.

  We enter the park at the first street. I’m relieved that my brother doesn’t ride toward our old brown trailer at the far end of the park. He doesn’t want to see it, either. We ride fast to keep from being recognized by anyone we used to know. We no longer belong to these narrow roads or the cheap metal doors slamming all afternoon.

  At the back of the park, kids our age play a pickup game on the cracked basketball courts. A boy named Josh who lives in the red trailer down from our old one yells something at us. We pedal faster.

  At the end of the park where the forest begins again, we ride onto a dirt trail. We’re familiar with the entire trail system in these woods, knowing where the children ride bikes and the high school kids smoke shitty weed and the adults do drugs that smell like burning plastic. Car tires and sun-faded beer cans are strewn throughout the forest floor. A mattress with a brown stain lies off to the side of a trail. I blush when I think of the stories I’ve heard about that mattress. We work our way deeper and deeper into the forest.

  My brother presses back on his pedals and his bike skids.

  “Do you have water?” I ask.

  He looks at me and says, “Don’t be such a bitch.” He laughs, but takes off his backpack and removes a plastic soda bottle filled with tap water. As I drink I notice a pack of Marlboro Lights like our mother smokes.

  “Give me one of those,” I say.

  He pulls out the soft pack and removes a cigarette. “You shouldn’t smoke,” he says. “I should have never let you start.”

  “But you did,” I say. “So give me one.”

  He tosses me the pack and the book of matches. I drop my bike and sit on the ground, smoking my cigarette, enjoying the burn in my lungs.

  “What are we doing here?” I ask again.

  He doesn’t respond. He places the heels of his sneakers against a maple tree and carefully paces out five steps away from the tree trunk.

  “Here,” he says. He turns to me. “Toss me the shovel in my bag.”

  I open his backpack and find my mother’s wood-handled garden trowel, the metal edge browned with rust. I toss it to him. He kneels and begins digging in the soft dirt.

  “Shit,” he says after digging down half a foot. “It’s not here.”

  “What’s not here?”

  He walks back to the maple tree and stands with his heels against the trunk. “I was younger then,” he says to himself. “Maybe my strides were shorter.” This time he takes five smaller steps away from the tree. On his knees, he digs with the trowel. After a few minutes the blade hits a hard surface. My brother reaches into the hole. He pulls out a cigar box that used to sit on his windowsill in the bedroom we shared in the trailer. He wipes black dirt off the lid and takes the last drag of his cigarette, mashing the cherry against the steel trowel and tossing the crushed filter onto the ground. He stares at the box.

  “Open it,” I say.

  He doesn’t look up from the box. “I was hoping I’d be able to find this.”

  “What’s in it?” I ask. “Your girlfriend bury your balls in that box?”

  He glares at me, and I understand that if I mention his girlfriend again he’s going to beat the shit out of me. I look away and take the last drag off my cigarette. I crush it against the bark of a tree and toss it on the ground with the other countless cigarette butts littering the forest floor.

  My brother says, “I buried this in case we ever had to move back to the park. I’ve heard Dad talking about the plant. He tells Mom things are bad. Something about damaged guns. He’s sure he’s going to lose his job—”

  “We’re moving back to the park?” I ask. Sweat
builds on my scalp. It’s been on my mind all summer as I’ve eavesdropped on my parents talking. We’ll be back to school in a month; we just started to shake the label of being trailer park kids. “We can’t go back to being trailer trash,” I say.

  “It doesn’t look good from the way Dad’s talking,” he says. If my father gets laid off like the other men at the plant, we’ll be back in this park and there’s nothing my brother or I can do about it. I wonder if the curse that supposedly caused Mr. Anderson to hang himself ever really existed. Perhaps the curse he wandered into wasn’t a Native burial ground, but simply being unemployed. For a moment, instead of Larry Anderson hanging from a brown leather belt in his old pink trailer, I see my father swaying lifelessly. I shudder and the image vanishes.

  My brother looks down at the cigar box. “Before we left the park, I buried fifty bucks in here as an emergency fund. I thought it would help us keep the house if times got tough, but that was fucking stupid. Fifty bucks won’t help. Now I just want it to buy weed with some kids in the neighborhood. We’re going to sell some of it and smoke the rest.” We stare at the cigar box with its faded red logo on the lid. He brushes the top again then lifts the lid. He’s quiet for a moment as he stares inside the box. “What the fuck?” he says, letting the lid fall open, revealing an empty box.

  “I cursed us,” he finally says. He shakes his head. “I shouldn’t have buried this money. I shouldn’t have doubted us. It was so stupid.” An angry look grows over his face, and he begins pacing back and forth.

  But I know that he didn’t curse us—it’s my fault. It always has been. I can’t tell my brother this as he stares into an empty cigar box behind the trailer park, because I’m afraid he’ll kick the shit out of me, beat me until my ribs snap. And I’ll deserve it. All summer, since I burned the eggshell blue bra I stole from the woman at church, I’ve been snatching bras from clotheslines in our neighborhood. In the middle of the afternoon I sneak into backyards and marvel at the bras and underwear of our neighbors. I slink across lawns, slide along the backsides of houses, crouch in bushes, pull the fabric from clotheslines and leap fences until I’m home in my room. The shoebox under my bed is filled with bras of every color and size. I’ve become a connoisseur of my desire, a deviant unable to control his cravings. At the bottom of the shoebox, wrapped in a hand towel, I’ve even kept the eggshell blue bra, the fabric charred and the underwire exposed. I snuck out to the woods at night to retrieve it from the scorched ground. While my mother lies in bed tortured by cancer and chemotherapy and my father fights for his job and works on the table in our garage, I’ve given in to my perversion, shoving padded cups into my mouth. I want to stop, but I can’t. It’s a sin, the stealing, the lusting, but I can’t help myself. I ache for it. I act upon it and am satisfied for one pulsing moment. At church when I serve as an altar boy I think about the box of bras and the euphoric release, even when I plead with myself not to. I knew it could send me to hell, but now, with my brother standing over an empty cigar box and our family on the verge of collapsing back into the trailer park, I understand that the implications of my actions are much worse. I’ve brought this punishment upon us. I’ve prayed for it to not happen. I vow to destroy the shoebox of bras and underwear when I get home from the trailer park. But even in this moment, convinced that my actions have caused my family’s misery, I know I won’t.

  “Only one other person knew this was here,” my brother snaps. He kicks the box across the forest floor.

  “Who?”

  “Josh Roy,” he says.

  “He was playing basketball when we rode by,” I say, the anger fully eclipsing the shame.

  “Yes,” he says. He tosses the trowel in his backpack and puts the straps over his shoulders. He mounts his bike and says, “Let’s get the money.”

  We race through the dirt trails toward the park. When we pop out of the woods onto the road, gray clouds block out the sun.

  Our bikes scream toward the basketball courts, but when we get there, all the kids are gone. The orange rubber ball sits under the basket. My brother rides over to the ball, gets off his bike and punts it into the woods. He mounts his bike and starts to ride with a cruel look smeared across his face.

  We start toward the other end of the park, headed for Josh’s trailer—we’ll have to ride by our old place, but it doesn’t matter. Above us, the entire sky is covered in gray clouds, like a sheet metal roof on one of these shitty trailers. In the distance, thunder sounds.

  It doesn’t take long to get to the other end of the park. Before we turn onto our old street, we both slow down. My brother only hesitates for a moment before he starts pumping again.

  When we get to Josh’s red trailer, my brother skids to a stop and lets his bike fall on the small patch of grass. He leaps up the steps two at a time and bangs on the metal screen door, yelling Josh’s name.

  Josh appears at the door and smiles at my brother. “Hey,” he says, walking out on the porch. “Why didn’t you stop when I yelled to you at the basketball court?”

  My brother flashes a quick smile.

  “What?” Josh says.

  My brother’s only response is to rear back and swing his fist at Josh Roy’s face. There’s a popping sound as my brother’s knuckles connect with the stunned boy’s temple. Filled with a rage that’s been welling all summer, my brother stands over Josh, saying, “Where is it?”

  Josh only holds his face, writhing on the porch, crying.

  “The money,” my brother says.

  When Josh doesn’t get up, my brother looks down at his left fist and lets out a cry. He tries to shake his hand, but yelps in pain and cradles his fist close to his body.

  The trailer door clangs open. Josh Roy’s father steps onto the porch. He eyes my brother clutching his hand, then looks at me still on my bike in the driveway. He stands over his crying son. “What did you do to this kid?”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Josh cries.

  “Then why is he on my porch, yelling about money?” Josh’s father is short and squat; he’s a powerful man, mean to his son—and a drunk.

  “I didn’t do anything,” Josh squeals.

  My brother sits on the steps, taking quick breaths. I drop my bike and move to him. He uncovers his hand. His two bottom knuckles are swollen, like there’s a golf ball under his skin. He attempts to open his fist and shrieks in pain.

  “Why are you back here?” Josh’s father says to us.

  I’m too frightened to talk, and my brother is in too much pain. I help my brother stand and he lifts his bike with his good hand.

  “Don’t come back,” Josh’s father says.

  We start down the street. When we’re a few trailers away from Josh’s, my brother mounts his bike but nearly falls over when he tries to grip the handlebars.

  “Are you okay?” Standing on the side of the road is a woman younger than our mother. Her smile is too hopeful to belong among these slouching trailers.

  “I think he broke his hand,” I say.

  My brother begins to protest, but his words are smothered by pain.

  “Can we use your phone?” I ask.

  The woman says to follow her, and we push our bikes a few trailers down until we stop in front of our old trailer. The woman walks up the steps that our father built when we lived there. When we don’t move, she says, “Come on.”

  I start up the steps, but my brother sits on the neatly kept lawn, holding his fist. Inside, the old familiar smell I expect doesn’t greet me. The new owners have painted over the white vinyl walls with blue paint. Their furniture is arranged differently. If it weren’t for the wood-grained cabinets that I watched my father router on the lot where my brother now sits, I wouldn’t even know it was our trailer.

  The woman takes the black phone off the hook and says, “What’s the number?”

  I tell her, and as she turns the rotary dial, I reali
ze I’m going to have to explain to my mother where we are—if she’s even able to answer the phone.

  The woman hands me the receiver. It rings over and over until finally my mother’s voice says, “Hello.”

  I don’t answer.

  “Hello,” she says again. The way she’s composed her voice—soft, present—she doesn’t even sound sick, like somehow I’ve called my mother before her stomach became riddled with tumors. Again she says, “Hello.”

  When I finally speak, I spill out the day’s events of the bike ride, the trailer park, the buried money and my brother’s broken hand.

  “Where are you calling from?” my mother asks.

  “Our old trailer.”

  “You mean from the park?”

  “No. Our old trailer.”

  “How did you—” She stops. “Stay put. I’ll come get you.”

  The dial tone resonates in my ear for a few moments before I hand the phone back to the woman.

  “My mom’s on her way,” I say.

  The woman removes a pitcher of lemonade from the fridge and asks if I’d like a glass. I would. I take a seat at the kitchen table while the woman fills two glasses with pink lemonade. She sits next to me and slides a glass across the table.

  “Do you think it’s going to rain?” the woman says.

  I drink from the lemonade. The syrupy liquid coats my dry throat. I look outside.

  “We could use the rain,” she says. “It would break this heat.”

  Outside, my brother slumps on the lawn.

  She takes a drink from her glass. “You used to live here?” she says. “I heard you on the phone.”

  “We did.”

  “Paul and I plan to move after the baby comes.”

  “Baby?” I say.

  The woman lifts her T-shirt, exposing a small, protruding belly. I’m embarrassed to see her pink flesh. “It’s a little early to start telling people,” she says, “but I think I can trust you to keep a secret.” We stare at her stomach until she pulls her shirt down. “Did you like living here?” she asks.