The Brothers K

by David James Duncan

  “What would you have said,” Peter suddenly asked, “if Mama had let you finish your prayer?”

  Everett made a face. “It was silly. Forget it.”

  “Now wait,” Peter reminded him. “Like you just said, we’re in hot water with you. I for one would like to know why.”

  “Me too,” I put in. Irwin said nothing, though; in fact his eyes were closed, his face was still pale, his lips were moving, and I’d have bet ten thousand dollars that he was praying about or for that woman up in the Tri-Cities who’d stomped her baby. He was like that with his praying: he liked to take on the big jobs.

  “Well,” Everett began, “I warned you it’s stupid. But the other night, after Freddy’s little prayer, I got to thinking about how easy my life is compared to Papa’s. Then I started thinking what a strange notion it is that Jesus supposedly got strung up on a cross to save zillions of other people—as if his one life, in exchange for zillions, was some kind of even trade.” (Irwin visibly slammed the brakes on his prayer, and turned to listen.) “It didn’t make much sense to me, really,” Everett said, “but what I thought was: What the hell. If that’s how things actually work, why not propose a similar swap—on a much smaller scale, of course—to help Papa out. Why not ask God, if He exists, to let me do for Papa what Jesus supposedly did for everybody on earth. Why not ask to trade some of my good luck for some of Papa’s bad, just to get his life back on track. That was the general idea.”

  “That’s not stupid at all,” Peter said.

  “I don’t think so either,” I agreed.

  “Me neither,” Irwin said. “Except … I don’t quite get it. Yet.”

  Everett stood up and started pacing. “What I was feeling, Winnie,” he said, “was that maybe the reason prayers never get answered is that everybody prays the wrong way, and for the wrong things. People ask God for good things all the time, and never offer anything in return. But if God exists, if He really made the world and is all-powerful and all-wise and all that, then I figure He made all of the world, including the bad stuff. So if He ‘saw that it was good,’ He meant just that. From His point of view, bad stuff must somehow be ‘good,’ or at least must serve some sort of divine purpose. I was trying to give God the benefit of the doubt, see? And look where it got me!”

  “But Satan!” Irwin blurted. “You’re leavin’ the devil out.”

  “If God exists,” Everett said, “He made Satan too.”

  “Sure He did,” Irwin nodded. “But then Satan got proud and mean and was cast down out of heaven, and that’s why the world has evil in it! That’s why things like concentration camps and that lady in the Tri-Cities and—”

  “Stow it, ‘Iron Man’!” Everett said. “I’ve been to Sabbath School too. I’ve read the bloody material. And none of it changes the fact that if God knows everything, He sure as hell knew what His little dark angel would do after he was invented. If God is God, Irwin, there’s just no way some devil could be a match for Him. Just look in your Bible. Look for even one line that shows God worrying about Satan. It’s not God who worries about him, it’s religious people. And the reason they worry about him is because preachers tell them to. Preachers make big fat incomes by shoving Satan down people’s throats, so of course they dress him up in fangs and pull him like a rabid bat from their hats every week. But if you ask me, people sin because they want to, not because Satan makes them.”

  Irwin looked like he’d bit into a lemon, and Peter looked like chocolate was melting in his mouth. But Everett just looked like he was saying exactly what he believed—and I half wished Mama was there to hear it. “Anyhow,” he said, “the way I see it, God either made everything there is, Satan included, or He didn’t make anything, because He isn’t there. He either knows everything, or He’s nothing. He’s in charge of all of it, or none of it. So what I was thinking about prayer—especially ours lately—was that when people turn it into begging, when they use it to try to blackmail God into giving them nothing but miracles and money and new cars and babies and marriages and all that, what they’re really asking Him is to remake, or even unmake, what He’s already made. They’re asking Him to eat His words, His inventions, His art, His creation, all of it. If God is God, the only sort of prayer that seems to make any sense to me might go something like:

  “‘Hello there, God. I know Thy Will is being done today, as usual, and I think that’s terrific as usual. Of course to me Your Will looks like a crazy mess that’s getting the rich richer and the poor poorer and the innocent killed and babies stomped and starved and the whole world in danger of being blown up any minute by atom bombs and all. But You know all about me thinking that, since You made me. So, uh, sorry. And please, go right ahead and do Your Will no matter what I think, even if it kills us. Talk to You tomorrow, Lord! Love, Everett.’”

  Peter and Irwin were both grinning, but Everett looked dead serious from beginning to end. “That,” he said, “is why, at supper, I was gonna propose to God, if there is one, not that He change His will, not that He remake or unmake the life he gave Papa, but just that He hand me enough of the rotten part of Papa’s life, and Papa enough of the good part of mine, to get him back out on the ballfield. You see? But now”—he sat down, sighed, and shook his head—“now I see that I was just being stupid.”

  “Why?” asked Peter.

  “Why what?”

  “Why do you say your prayer was stupid? I like it! I like this transference-of-luck idea.”

  “It’s not the prayer that was stupid,” Everett muttered. “It’s praying to someone who isn’t there that’s stupid.”

  “But He is there!” Irwin bellowed.

  “Whisper, you moron!”

  “But He is.”

  “Then you do it,” Everett said. “It’s not too late. You’re the big believer, Irwin. Why don’t you ask God to put Papa’s bad luck on you and your good luck on him. Go ahead! Do it up good! And we’ll see how much it changes anything.”

  “I’ll do it,” I said.

  “Me too!” Irwin cried.

  “Then let’s everybody do it,” Peter said, laughing at the look of disgust on Everett’s face. “That way, if it works, we’ll spread the rotten luck over a wider area.”

  Everett shook his head. “I should be a damned preacher,” he muttered.

  “You are a damned preacher!” Irwin laughed.

  Then somebody knocked, hard, on the door. We all sat up straight, expecting Mama, and expecting trouble. But it was Papa. In his pajamas. Looking half asleep. And more than half dead. “Lights out and into bed,” he mumbled. “Now.”

  “We wanna do somethin’ real quick first!” Irwin pleaded.

  “Now,” he repeated.

  “It’s important, Papa!”

  “NOW!”

  Irwin started out of the room, but when he got behind Papa’s back he pointed at him, waved and nodded to us, and on his lips we read the words: Do it …

  Peter and I nodded back. Everett smirked and shrugged. I started to follow Irwin down the hall, but as I ducked under Papa he grabbed my shoulder. “Wait,” he said. “Kade’ll be there in a minute,” he called to Irwin. “Go to bed.”

  “Okay!” Winnie hollered back. Then he laughed the loon-laugh, and added, “Good luck, Papa, if you know what I mean, guys!”

  Papa cocked his head for a second, but was too tired to stay curious. Closing the door behind him, he staggered in, plopped down on the part of the bed Irwin had just vacated, rubbed his forehead and brows and eye sockets as if he couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong with them, then squinted miserably up at the OLY sign.

  Everett quickly leaned over and pulled the chain.

  Looking from Everett’s face to Peter’s to mine, Papa sighed heavily, and said, “You three are getting older.”

  We nodded, and waited for more, but the silence went on so long that his statement began to seem like one of those moronically undeniable assertions that certain thick-skulled adults make just to force kids to agree with them.
Fortunately, Papa wasn’t that sort of adult. “Irwin has grown bigger,” he finally said, “but in a way he hasn’t grown older. That’s why he’s not in here with us.”

  I felt my face and ears go red. We all knew Winnie was a bit childish for his age, but I never expected to hear Papa just say it outright. “Your minds have grown older, is what I mean,” he said. “And more independent. You’ve all figured out, for instance, that there are serious problems with churches, and serious problems with your mother’s brand of religion.”

  My brothers and I tried to control our feelings, but the thrill and relief of hearing a grownup we respected admit to a fact we’d been bandying about for years was too much: we broke out in three big grins.

  “I talked a long time to your mother about this,” Papa went on, “and she finally agreed—or at least quit disagreeing—with the idea that there’s no point in forcing you boys to go to church with her anymore. So from now on the churchgoing—for you three and for Irwin—is strictly on a volunteer basis.”

  Our jaws went slack. Then Everett whooped aloud, or started to—but Papa backhanded his knee and snapped “Shuttup!” so fast that the whoop came out sounding like he’d been punched in the gut. “I’m not finished,” Papa said, his face as hard as it ever got.

  Everett put a lid on it.

  “I don’t expect this new arrangement to change Irwin’s opinion of churchgoing one bit. And I won’t tolerate you teasing him about that, Everett and Kincaid. Or trying to educate him into sharing your beliefs, Everett and Peter. You boys are four very different animals, and the older you get, the more unalike you’ll get. So I want you to start respecting your differences here and now.”

  “I won’t say a word,” Peter said solemnly.

  “Me neither,” said Everett, trying his best to sound sincere, though the effect was somewhat marred by the shit-eating grin smeared across his face.

  “Another thing,” Papa said, “and this is just as important. Baseball—and I mean professional baseball—has got damned near every problem that churches and religion have got. Don’t you think it doesn’t.”

  Peter, to my utter surprise, was thoughtfully nodding at this bizarre statement. But when Everett and I glanced at each other, we both knew we were thinking exactly what we’d been told not to think. Papa saw it too. “You don’t have to believe me,” he said. “Learn it the hard way if you like. But I’m telling you the truth, as I see it. I’ve got beliefs too, you know. I don’t want my sons bowing down to boneheads and flags and false idols any more than Mama or Babcock or Moses and them do.”

  Seeing he’d lost me, Papa circled back round again. “I went to church as a boy too, Kade. Episcopal churches, most of these were, but they weren’t all that different from Mama’s. And I’ve been going to ballparks ever since. So based on experience, I’m telling you guys: baseball and churches have got the same boredom factor, the same hypocrisy, the same Pie in a Big League Sky, the same bone-hard benches, the same loudmouthed yo-yos mixed in among the decent fans in the pews, the same power-loving preacher/managers delivering the same damned ‘Do what I say or you’re doomed’ sermons. Hell, they’ve even got the same stinking organ music.”

  He was nodding his head the way Ed Sullivan did—as if he was two people, one agreeing with the other. But I couldn’t buy it. “Maybe I’m wrong,” I said, “but I like ‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame’ way better’n ‘Stand Up for Jesus’ or whatever.”

  He gave me a wan smile. “Sure you do,” he said. “Now. But wait’ll you’ve heard it five thousand times. You’re gonna find out it’s the same damned song.”

  Hmm. I’d never thought of that. Papa knew things I couldn’t possibly know. He was in his thirties. He was old.

  “One more thing,” he said, “and this is the most important of all. Just because you think church is boring and awful, and just because Mama made you go to church, doesn’t mean that Mama is boring and awful.”

  “I’ve never thought that and never will,” Peter said.

  “Good,” Papa said. But he wasn’t looking at Peter: he was looking at Everett—who was staring at the floor. “She’s giving you this new freedom willingly, Everett,” he said. “Not without a hell of a fight, of course, and not without fear. But this is one hell of a concession for a woman like her. Do you hear me?”

  Everett seemed to have turned to wood.

  “You’ve got to remember something,” Papa said. “You’ve got completely different backgrounds, you three and Mama. You come from different worlds. And your world may not be heaven, but believe me, for a good long while your mother’s world was a living hell. Are you listening, Everett?”

  He sighed, but nodded.

  “Look at me, then.”

  Everett looked.

  “If you knew your mother’s father,” Papa said, slowly, ominously, “if you boys knew the things that man put Laura’s mother through, and her brothers, and Laura herself, you’d not only understand why she is exactly the way she is, you’d respect her for it.” He paused, trying hard to control his anger, but more words leaked out: “If that man had lived, if I’d met up with him one more time—”

  “You’d of kicked his butt from here to Cleveland!” Irwin roared through the closet wall.

  “You shuttup and get to sleep!” Papa told him.

  We heard a muffled laugh, and a “So sorry!”

  “I don’t know,” Papa said, rubbing his temples. “I don’t know what I’d have done.” He took a long slow breath. “This may not come out right, but I’ll say it anyhow. Your mother’s girlhood was so terrible that when she finally discovered the Adventist Church, it seemed like absolute heaven in comparison.”

  He waited for our reactions. But we couldn’t react. None of us could begin to imagine anything that terrible.

  “That’s the real reason she went nuts tonight, by the way,” he said. “She wants to share her heaven with her kids. Do you understand? She wants the best for you, but gets it mixed up at times with what was once best for her. So it’s hard for her to stand back. Hard to let go. Hard to let you each seek your own sorts of heavens. Understand?”

  We nodded that we did. We may even have thought we did. But I know now that I for one certainly did not.

  Papa told us goodnight then, and we all went straight to bed. But because of our excitement over being free of church, Peter, Everett and I forgot something: we didn’t give a thought to the swap we’d talked about making—our good luck for Papa’s bad. Only Irwin (who was snoring like an Evinrude outboard when I slipped into our room) had remembered it, and prayed for it. And I’m not going to say his prayer ever made a difference. I’m not going to say it affected his life, or Papa’s, or that there’s a God or no God, or that we can or can’t share one another’s burdens. I’m only saying what happened that night. But in light of what later became of Papa, and what became of Irwin, it makes me very sorry—whether it made a difference or not—to have failed to ask for my share of the load.

  BOOK THREE

  Rebels

  & Scientists

  A poem, by the seven-year-old Winifred. Or rather, a poem by Basho, translated into English, printed in a 1951 National Geographic article called “What Now, Japan?,” discovered by Freddy years later in our attic, slightly but significantly revised by her, and entered in a Clark County School District Creative Writing Contest, where it received no award, mention or comprehension whatsoever. Nevertheless, a poem:

  Camas, Washington.

  Ah, Camas Washington …

  Camas Washington!

  CHAPTER ONE

  Gunshots

  Every consistently played fantasy sooner or later explodes into life.

  —Heimito von Doderer

  Gather an athletic millworker, a patriarchal matriarch, four testosteroneous teenaged boys and a tautology of first-grade girls under the roof of one rickety, four-bedroomed, one-and-a-half-bathroomed house and what you’d get, if that house were ruled by an ordinary mortal, would be abject cha
os. Fortunately for us, our home had always been governed by our mother, and Mama’s greatest gift, in fact her life’s vocation, was her ability to comprehend, integrate and orchestrate the 2,920 days (365 × 8) of the Collective Chance Family Year into a manageable series of events. With the possible exception of the ever-popular “Shuttup!” the piece of advice most frequently and profitably slung round our house had always been “Ask Mama!” She was a maestro at conducting her family. The kitchen was her podium, an immense wall calendar her score, and a piercing I-will-brook-no-nonsense voice the combination baton/scepter/cattle prod with which she set the tempo and integrated our multitudinous entrances and exits. Only she could tell you at all times which of her seven charges was where, doing what, returning home when, at which time she’d soon have them accomplishing such and such a task or keeping such and such an appointment. More importantly, only she could comprehend and wield the bewildering hierarchy of domestic values that made quick decisions possible and quashed most interfamilial conflicts before they could fester into feuds. What—to cite a historic example of these values—is the more important promise for a seventeen-year-old boy to keep: the one to take his seven-year-old sisters on their first-ever ice-skating excursion or the conflicting one to chauffeur his transportation’s grandmother clear across town and back for the year-end bash of the West Vancouver Women’s “Great Decisions” group? Don’t ask me. Ask Mama.

  The one Chance family member whose comings and goings she did not try to control was Papa—and the reason for this reluctance was not the force of his personality or the nobility of his character: it was Mama’s own Bible. The Holy Bible, according to Laura Chance, stated that the duty of the Christian Wife was to “cleave unto her Husband.” She never told us quite what this cleaving consisted of, and they did discuss Papa’s use of his time (often vehemently, and at unbelievable length), but Mama never commanded or threatened him when they disagreed, and if he was willing to pay the hell it took to outlast her in an argument, his decision was final. For these reasons the Cleaving Principle struck my brothers and me as one of the few promising concepts in an otherwise fairly emasculating scripture. In fact, Everett and I used to pore over our Bibles during Elder Babcock’s interminable sermons, hoping to stumble upon some long-forgotten verse in Habakkuk, Haggai or Hosea advising the Biblical Mother to cleave unto her sons as well. What we found instead was terrifying: Mama had somehow got it backwards! What the Bible recommended, in both the Old and New Testaments, was that the husband cleave unto his wife! Needless to say, we kept this grisly discovery to ourselves.