The Brothers K

by David James Duncan

  But I say nothing.

  “All right then,” Beal murmurs, wearing a perfect replica of the kingdom tourists’ half-happy half-miserable smiles. “Would anyone care to offer a closing prayer?”

  Then Vera Klinger—who I’d completely forgotten here beside me—starts waving her hand and craning her body like she’ll die if she’s not chosen.

  As usual, Beal pretends not to see her. But as usual, no one else volunteers. Finally Beal looks at her. And they both look desperate. But as usual, Beal’s desperation climbs back in its boxcar, while Vera’s doesn’t budge.

  Brother Beal sighs, and gives her a grim nod. Sixty-some heads bow—and sixty-some bodies stiffen in their chairs, knowing all too well what’s coming. Vera closes her eyes tight, and draws a breath so deep it sounds more like a sob. The torture begins:

  “Nyearest Nyeesus!” she calls out, her voice, her whole body quivering. “Nank nyou!, nank nyou!, for yall nyour nyimmy nyimmy nmlessings, nand for nthis nay of Nhristian Nyellowshipt!”

  At the words nyimmy nyimmy Micah uncorks a snicker—and there are lots of answering snorts today. Maybe there always are. Maybe I just hear them today because I’m stuck next to her. My stomach clenches. Most of me wants to snort with the others, but part of me, remembering the pool in the kingdom, makes me gouge my knuckles in my eye sockets and fight to hear her prayer, “Mlease, nLord!” Vera cries, as if she’s pleading with an ax murderer. “Mlease fornivvus our snins and nrespassenth! Nwee are nso nunworthy, nso nvery nvery nunworthy!”

  Noses blow violently; half-stifled giggles circle the room like pigeons trapped in a barn. Beal keeps his head bowed, but clears his throat and steps threateningly around his podium. “Nopen our narts, nwee veseech nThee!” Vera prays.

  “Narts! Narts!” Micah moans, and the pigeons flap even more wildly.

  Irwin says he heard there’s an operation that can fix lips like Vera’s, but that her parents feel the thing’s a special cross God gave her to bear. Everett says it’s the parents who deserve the cross: somebody should nail their upper lips to one, he says. Peter says her name means “Truth,” and that she has nice eyes, and might be pretty when her mouth gets fixed. Whatever she might be, however she feels, she’s on some kind of rampage now:

  “Nyelp us to nlove nyou nmore and nmore!” she prays as Micah laughs outright, “and nmore and nmore!” she pleads as girls grab Kleenex, “and snill nyet nmore!” she begs as boys fizz up and overflow like jostled bottles of pop. “Nenter our narts!” she cries, her voice breaking, her body trembling so violently it makes my chair tremble too. “Nenter nthem now! Nright now! Nwee are nso nlost, nso nvery nlost, nwithout nThee!” And even as it occurs to me that this must be real prayer—even as I see that what is being laughed at is the sound of someone actually ramming a heartfelt message past all the crossed signals and mazes of our bodies, brains and embarrassments clear on in to her God—when I open my fists and peek at Vera I see a face so exposed, so twisted with love, grief and longing, that if she was my sister I would take off my coat, and I’d wrap her up and hold her, and I would beg her never, ever to do this naked, passionate, impossible thing again.

  “On Yeesus!” she gasps. “Nyearest nLord! How snorely nwee need nthy mresence!”

  “Snorely!” someone croaks.

  “Amen,” growls old Sister Harg.

  “Gugh!ugh!ugh!” goes Micah.

  “Thank you, Vera!” Beal bellows, hoping to put an end to it.

  “Nmake us nworthy, Nlord!” she cries, hearing nothing but her prayer. “O mlease! Nmake us nworthy!”

  “Amen!” shouts Sister Harg.

  “Gugh!ugh!ugh!”

  Vera’s prayer goes on forever.

  Irwin’s HISTORY OF MY DAD continued

  Chapter 5. The Four Big Things

  Like any kid with half a brain Hugh wanted to go to college, and he got full atheletic scholarship offers from Washington and Oregon State College, the Univercity of Oregon and Idaho, and I think maybe Montana and California too. But life was not so simple as where I’m sitting for a talented young ballplayer of not quite eighteen years of age by the name of Smoke! There was college on the one hand, sure, but on the other hand four big things came butting in to royally confuse the issue.

  First off Marion got cheated out of her War Widow money by the U.S. Goverment inspite of her husband getting murdered while escaping from Germans protecting that very Goverment! This continues to kill me to this day! There sits Uncle Sam on his fat duff, saying that because Marion was English and not a natural member of our country they weren’t going to give her one red cent, and all along he’s using a language known as English to cheat her in! Sure, Marion had refused to become a U.S. citizen, and sure, she may have imported elsewhere if her kid hadn’t loved it so much here. But Everett Senior was no less dead due to that! And what about young Hugh’s share of the dough? So as the result of the nerve of some people and their fat desk jobs in Washington DC, Marion Becker Chance was left in the Poor House, causing Hugh great concern.

  “I DON’T WANT THEIR STINKING MONEY!” he reports Marion yelling at the time. “I’LL JUST GET A JOB!” he reports her yelling. But her only jobs in Pullman so far had been babysitting professor’s wives’s kids for ten cents an hour which the stupid professor’s wives would then get to gabbing and forget to even pay, plus being Chairwoman of a bunch of local Atheist and Pacifist Groups who in spite of how they just drank coffee and wrote boring pamphlets to each other had got Marion pretty well blackballed there in Pullman as far as real jobs were concerned. “GO TO COLLEGE ANYWAY!” she screamed at Hugh. But Hugh Chance was not the sort of young man to sit around happily eating goldfish in raccoon coats or play ball and read Shakespeare while his own mom starved to death. “I WILL MAKE IT!” she kept screaming. But “HOW?” Hugh screamed right back. “AS A FORK-THROWER IN THE CIRCUS? AS AN ATHEIST TEA-PARTY HOSTESS? AS A TEN CENTS PER HOUR BABYSITTER?” As a result of this line of questioning Marion got so insulted that she has never quite forgiven Hugh to this day. Anyhow, her freshly widowed state and resulting money troubles was the first of the big things.

  The second big thing was when Laura’s mom Beryl died of the bad heart Hugh had noticed evidence of so clearly the night she ditted out and kept calling him Wilver. This left Laura, Marv and Truman orphaned on their own, which though sad to Laura was fine by Marv and True since it put the kibosh on the big plan to pack them off to an Adventist college. They had both quit high school, hit the streets, and started looking for work when some sort of church social workers found them, sent them back to school, and stuck them in Adventist Foster Homes they hated so much at first that it was a surprising shock to all concerned when they gradually grew to love them. What happened was that Truman got fostered right next door to the body shop where he learned the excellent body work he still does to this day. And Marvin struck it even luckier, getting stuck out on a big wheat ranch where he not only learned about farming but discovered that the place contained a daughter known as Mary Jane as well, a big strapping girl with a laugh like all outdoors who thought Marvo was a total joke from Cleveland at first, but later on flipflopped and married the guy!

  Meanwhile Laura was having no such fun. She was too old for Foster Homes, knew no one to live with in Walla Walla, wanted to go to college wherever Hugh went to if she could only get excepted, but was a whole year behind him thanks to Hugh once skipping a grade, plus her report cards weren’t such hot stuff either. As the oldest kid she had also inherited the unpayed rent and funeral bills and was too proud to take and chuck them in the trash where they belonged. So while living in a dive of a boardinghouse trying to finish high school Laura worked swing shift at a skuzzball factory making fake meat out of soybeans there in Walla Walla to pay for the dive of a boarding house, meanwhile smiling at Hugh on their dates all the while, saying stuff like “I’m doing fine, Hun!” Fortunately Hugh saw this as just one more load of the same type of crap Marion kept feeding him when she’d scream, “I WILL MAKE IT!
” These were two lying damsels in distress if ever there was one, was Hugh’s thinking. So Laura’s tough situation was the second big thing.

  The third big thing was that right at this point who should come tromping up to Hugh’s doorstep like a somewhat overweight cigar-chomping Angel from Heaven but the famous Chicago White Sox scout Bucky Koter! And what should Bucky do but offer Hugh a $3,000 bonus plus a guaranteed $2,500 per year salary for two years to sign! And the whole time Koter is doing this, what should Marion be doing but brewing him up a cup of coffee made out of half soy sauce, half almond extract, half stale Postum and half used MJB grounds boiled up in a filthy soup not fit for rats! And what would a great scout like Koter do but calmly drink it! This is an absolute true story, ratty coffee included! This was also one of the biggest bonuses and first two year contracts in Baseball History offered to a Schoolboy Wonder up to that point in time, which was not only a great honor but 8,000 Big Ones, more money than any young man Hugh’s age ever dreamed of! And in a way the even greater honor going on while Hugh read the fine print of the contract was when Marion asked Bucky if he’d like a second cup of rat-puke coffee, and Bucky calmly rejoindered, “Almost certainly, Mam! How delicious!” and drank Hughs’s health to the bitter dregs! Obviously, Smoke Chance was one hot prospect! So Bucky Koter and the 8,000 Big Ones were the third big thing.

  The fourth big thing was just a little thing really, just a little thought that started weighing Hugh’s mind as he was pouring over Koter’s offer while his mom was pouring out the ratlike coffee. Hugh’s thought was simply that even if they weren’t the Cubs, the White Sox were still Chicago. And the instant Hugh thought this he remembered how his own dad’s famous last words to him were written in the exact same type of screwed-up logic! Remember? He’d wrote, Although my Piper is not a Chicago it is still a Cub! So, WHAT A COINCIDENCE! was Hugh’s next thought, if it was even his own thoughts thinking by now and not the ghost of his dead dads’s brain doing the job for him! CHICAGO! MY BABYHOOD TOWN! the Mystery Brain continued, AS WELL AS THE TOWN MY OWN FAVORITE DAD ONCE CHERISHED FOND DREAMS OF ALMOST PLAYING PRO BALL IN! Okay then. These strange and ghostly reflections were the fourth big things!

  So there he was with four big things on the one hand and the one huge thing of A COLLEGE EDUCATION on the otherhand. What a decision for a young man to make of such an age!

  Yet in the end Love, and also Money, won out totally as they so often do! Hugh signed with the ChiSox! Then him and Laura were happily married in a small ceremony made slightly smaller when furious Marion Becker Chance refused to come. Marvin was Best Man, and an Adventist gal from the fake meat factory, Dotty, served as Best Woman. But whereas Marvo is now my favorite old hair-ratting dirt-farming uncle, nobody knows what became of Dotty, which is just about par for the course isn’t it? The first person you meet becomes your uncle while the next just drifts off like a cobweb. Somedays it’s a mystery just to be alive!

  Meanwhile everything looked about perfect for young Hugh and Laura if old Marion would only cool off, which she gradually started to do, like at about three o’clock last Wednesday. (I’m only kidding!) The main catch in life for the good-looking young couple at this point was how Everett Senior’s death by Germans happened before he got around to showing Hugh how to throw a decent curveball. Revealing to her husband that she had more than just another pretty face lurking between her shoulders, clear-thinking Laura pointed this no-curve problem out right off the bat. “High school ball with no curveball was one kind of ball, Hugh!” she cried. “But Pro Ball will soon be another!”

  “Hay I know I know I know I know!” was Hugh’s somewhat curt reaction, for he was already working his arm to the bone on the problem. Nevertheless, how right the young wife was!

  Kincaid:

  Camas/February/1963

  It’s Sabbath afternoon. Papa and me are sitting in the papermill parking lot, waiting for his friend Roy to get off work. Roy was supposed to be through at 3 o’clock, but the mill clock says 3:14, and nobody argues with the mill clock: its hour hand alone is half the size of a telephone pole.

  Back in 1960—not long after Papa lost the lawsuit that could have fixed his dead thumb—Jan Lacey, the guy who cleans the pigeon shit off the mill clock’s numbers, fell backwards out of the 0 in the 10 when a yellowjacket stung him. It was lunch hour, I guess, because a bunch of people saw it happen. They said he did a slow, sloppy backflip but landed right side up on the asphalt, neat as you please, right between two parked cars. He broke his pelvis, as I remember, and several bones in his legs and feet, but was healthy enough to be on the TV news later the same evening, so we all gathered round to watch. They showed the huge, high clock first, then panned slowly down the concrete wall to the place where Lacey landed. Next they took you right up to his hospital room, where he lay grinning at the bright lights and camera despite the casts and pulleys and cables holding all his broken parts in place. The TV news lady came up with a pretty good question, for a change. “What were your exact thoughts, Mr. Lacey,” she said, “what flashed through your mind as you plummeted down toward what must have seemed like certain death?”

  While the camera slid in for a close-up, Jan screwed his. face up and thought hard about it. He thought for several seconds—which seemed like an awful lot of thinking for somebody on TV. Then he said, “Oopseedaisy.”

  The news lady cocked her head, obviously not understanding. “Yep,” Lacey said, all solemn and nodding. “Oopseedaisy. Those was my very words.”

  We all found this funny, and laughed pretty hard. But when Papa heard it he almost died. I mean he writhed and howled in his chair till the tears streamed and his face and stomach cramped and he started coughing and choking. Then he caught his breath and started in all over again. All that evening, clear to bedtime, all any of us had to do was whisper “Oopseedaisy” and he would lose it again. I remember his whooping, his writhing, his wet, helpless face. I remember it all perfectly. I remember it because he hasn’t laughed once since.

  When I was little and Papa first started working the mill, I once heard him say that he’d become “a time-clock puncher”—and immediately I imagined him somehow climbing that huge concrete wall and literally punching the mill clock to a standstill. I thought he could do it if he wanted. I thought he could do anything, I really did. I’d never seen him play baseball, but from what I saw of him at home and gleaned from Everett’s and Mama’s stories, I believed Papa was Bob Feller, Solomon and Pecos Bill rolled into one. In one of my earliest memories, Papa is still in uniform, and so sweat-drenched it seems he’s been swimming, after an incomprehensible but apparently glorious feat called “Afore-hid Shudout.” Leaping from the back of some ballplayer’s old pickup, he dashes to the front porch, plucks me out of Mama’s arms, kisses my nose, then throws me so high in the air that at the summit of my flight I look down and glimpse an exquisite little forest of baby maple trees growing in our old wooden gutters. I dreamt of that forest for years afterward; beautiful dreams they were too—because in them Papa would throw me up again, and I’d just stay there, floating and looking for as long as I pleased. And there would be animals in the forest! Ant-sized coyotes, perfect little elk, mothlike owls, all grazing or gliding through the minuscule maples. I dreamt this so often that the wall between dream and memory finally gave way, and when I’d conjure the one time Papa really tossed me over the gutter, I could swear I really did see buff rumps and antler-flashes as the tiny elk dashed away through the trees. And though I mentioned it to no one for fear they’d think me selfish (or worse, think me adorable), when I was six and Papa crushed his thumb and had to quit baseball, I never cried or felt any real pity for him till I realized there could be no more Afore-hid Shudouts, and that he’d never throw me up over the tiny owl and elk forest again.

  And now. Now he’s sitting here beside me, gray-eyed, gray-templed, gray-faced, smoking a Lucky. Now he is always smoking a Lucky. It seems there’s nothing else in the world he really want’s to do.

&n
bsp; It’s foggy out, and getting dark already; I can barely make out the 10 that Jan Lacey fell from. It’s also cold. I don’t mention this, though, because the Fortyford’s antique heater is so full of exhaust leaks that Peter pukes and the rest of us get headaches if we ride any distance with it on, and neither Papa nor Roy nor even Uncle Truman can fix it, and there’s no point in griping about things nobody can fix.

  We’re giving Roy a ride home because his Travelall is in the body shop. He spun out on an icy bridge on the upper Washougal last weekend and raked one side of it along the guardrail. He caught two nice steelhead that day, though, and said the scrape was almost worth it. Even Papa hooked a fish that day, but he didn’t stick it hard enough and lost it on the third jump. He got skunked again this morning while we were at church. He almost always gets skunked. Roy has better luck, or maybe more skill. He loves fishing like Papa loved baseball, and has pounded the Washougal ever since he was a kid. He says the salmon and steelhead runs this year are the worst he’s ever seen, and that the shit the papermill keeps dumping in the river is the reason. Then Monday through Friday he works at the mill. He feels bad about it, but says that nothing else pays so well. Fishing sure as hell doesn’t.

  Papa’s window wing is open to let smoke out, but it seems to me it’s just letting cold in while the smoke gathers in a cloud all round his head. I stay slumped so it floats above me, but Papa’s hair and clothes, his breath and hands, everything about him reeks of Lucky smoke. Outside, though, the cold has spread mill smoke over Camas thick as a frosting over a cake, and even Luckies smell better than mill frosting. So I guess Papa’s window wing doesn’t matter.

  Tired of cold, stink and silence, I ask Papa what makes a papermill smell the way it does. He shrugs. He hates talking about the mill. Or I assume he hates it, since he never does it. But I hate being ignorant too, so I say, “I mean like scientifically. I mean, what chemicals or whatever make that awful yeast and sewer smell?”