The Brothers K

by David James Duncan

  Our Problem, Part 2: Here’s where I imagine you wanting to grab me and say: “But the emphasis should be on gracefully. No romance need lead to babies if the parents aren’t ready. Not if they’d be driven into poverty or misery. Not in the age of birth control, family planning, safe abortions.” Remember the column you wrote at U Dub called “The Other Bomb”? The one about population explosion? One of the unfunniest, most powerful diatribes I’ve ever seen on the subject. I didn’t even know you yet, but it haunted me for days. The topic has always haunted me, Everett. Because no matter how devastating the arguments against untimely infants get, they’ve never made a real difference to something inside of me. What is that something?

  Our Problem, Part 3: I wish I knew. But here’s a possible clue. I am (as I kept trying to emphasize and you kept trying to deemphasize) an ex-Catholic. But my reasons for ex-ness don’t fit the typical Western Woman’s Agenda. If the Roman Church would merely reunite with the Eastern Church, reinstate the Latin liturgy, trade purgatory for reincarnation, saint Meister Eckhart, stop damning people for stuff like condom-use (though a lot of good the damned things did us!), allow women and married people to be priests, bishops and popes (or better yet dispense with the bishops and popes), I’d be back at Mass in a minute. Of course they won’t. Hence my ex-ness. But did you notice the popular woman’s complaint my list left out? I don’t know why I’m this way. I half-wish I wasn’t. But you can pick this girl up, shake her well, and pour and pour and pour and one result you will never see (unless I’m raped) is an abortion. I don’t think it’s murder, I don’t think it’s criminal, I don’t tell friends not to get them, I don’t even think my aversion is rationally defensible. But for this dinosaur, this lifetime, nobody but me, nobody’s business but mine, that aversion is an absolute.

  Which brings us back to last January. Do you see what was coming? At the time when I loved and needed you most, I felt positive that my news was going to bring all your “Other Bomb” arguments crashing down upon my indefensible absolute. And if by some miracle my absolute had held up, I imagined you, me and a colicky infant living in poverty in Shyashyakook—and I was afraid you’d grow to hate me. And if my absolute had fallen and I’d agreed to abort, I was afraid I’d grow to hate you.

  Our Problem, Part 4: My body. Remember telling me that you’d thought it was impossible but that my breasts had somehow become even more beautiful to you? Imbecile! Bigger is the word you were looking for! And remember teasing me, right before I left, about always locking the bathroom and turning the faucet on full-blast to cover my sound-effects? “Methane denial” you called it. And when I burst into tears you couldn’t help saying “Touchy touchy!” before you apologized. And I don’t blame you. I was touchy. But it was morning sickness, not “methane,” that I was trying to cover up. And I don’t know why, Everett, but those two little words, “touchy touchy,” felt like all my worst fears beginning to come true.

  Then the bleeding started. Not a lot of it. But it didn’t take much to scare me with the nearest decent doctors forty miles away and our joint income your $100 a month. As soon as I saw blood I was all through thinking. Terror took over. Terror of trapping you, terror of losing you, terror of losing the baby, our love, my life, my soul. So when you went to Victoria that day (to get me a Valentine present, I know, my poor sweet, I know!), I cried as I packed, cried as I tried again and again to write to you, cried when I gave up and cut out Dmitri’s America speech, cried clear to the ferry, stopped crying and threw up all the way to Port Angeles, then started crying again. Because I knew I was wrong. No matter what else was happening to me, I knew I was running away from love. But I’d come find you again, I told myself, just as soon as I knew things were okay inside me, soon as I’d honored my absolute.

  I drove to Lake Havasu City, Arizona—my mom and stepdad’s new home. And yes, it’s a “planned community,” yes, you’d hate it, it’s no dream of mine either. But my mom used to make a point, every time I came home from college, of saying at least once—in front of as many guests as possible—that if I ever got pregnant and wasn’t sure what to do about it, “Just come home and I’ll help you with everything except your decision.”

  “You’re embarrassing me!” I’d always whine.

  “Yes,” she’d say. “But only so you won’t be embarrassed if the situation does arise.”

  “Well,” I told her, patting my tummy when she answered the door last February, “The Situation is arising.” And—Lake Havasu planned community and all—she just hugged me, and has kept her word. She was even right about the guest test: I’m not embarrassed. I’ve seen doctors too, baby and I are healthy, and I know already it’s a boy. I’m keeping him too, Everett. I’m not going through this to give him away. Myshkin Lee, his name will be. After my absolute. (Do you know the prince in The Idiot?) And I know the naming should have been shared. I know that all of this should have been shared. But when I got so scared and ran, I lost all claim on you. That’s the reason I haven’t consulted you. Myshkin is not ammunition for a shotgun marriage. He’s not some kind of bait I’m using to try and win you back. He’s just someone I’ve chosen to love and live with and care for from now on. Except,

  Our Problem, Part 5: Though I have no claim on you, I have no right to exclude you from loving or caring for or living with Myshkin, either. You are as much his parent as I am, if you choose to be. I don’t want to complicate the issue, but I still have feelings for you too. Tons of them, to be honest. I just don’t want you to take part in anything you don’t believe in. Things like fatherhood are either in you, or they’re not. My only reason for driving back up here was to tell you how sorry I am about running away, and about hurting you, and about your brother. Except,

  Our Problem, Part 6: You’re gone. And probably in prison by now, Yulie says, for trying to help Irwin. I started blubbering when she told me, for all sorts of reasons. But Yulie just looked me in the eye that scary way she does, and said, “Cry if you have to, honey. But listen. The way you left him feeling, the kind of winter you put him through, you’re lucky he’s even alive. ’Cause no matter what he wrote in some damn paper once, that boy loved you with everything he had. And it was you, sweetheart, not him, who broke the trust between you.”

  Not till that moment did I see how inexcusable my leaving really was. Given the love between us, I had to share my absolute. If you couldn’t honor it, we could have fought, and then I could have left. But the sickness I felt the instant Yulie said “prison,” the sickness I feel this instant knowing you may be in a place where I can’t see you, can’t touch you, can’t reach you no matter how great the need—to think I’ve already put you through this sickness, for months! I can hardly believe I’ve done this. I’ve poisoned our love. I’ve poisoned your life. I feel so wrong now that it seems like pure selfishness to ask you to forgive me. (Yet I’m asking.) I feel so wrong that it feels like sheer divisiveness to say I love you more than ever. (But I do.) Yulie says you promised to write her as soon as you could, and she promises to phone me the instant your letter arrives. So I’m heading back to Arizona. I’d love to drive down via Camas in case there’s news of you there. But my condition is pretty showy and I don’t want to cause a stir. So I’ll wait for Yulie’s call.

  She and Corey have been wonderful. They send their love. So do the two of me. Until I hear from you, I don’t know what more to say.

  Tasha

  5. A Man from Spokane

  In a rest area by the upper Rogue River, beside three madrone-shaded picnic tables right next to the water, our Mira Loma-bound caravan bivouacked for its first major meal of the journey. Uncle Truman was sleeping off a six-pack in his camper, and after a long stint of driving I was relaxing at the Nomad’s highway-map dinnertable. But the prospect of a fresh-cooked meal had thrown everyone else into motion. Elder Joon was down by the river with Nash on his knee, handing him rocks, which Nash would first try to eat, then would toss in the river. Suncracker was sticking his whole head under, fetchin
g the rocks back. Uncle Marv was out under the madrones, loading up his big barbecue and loudly accusing Mama of having tidied his charcoal starter into nonexistence. Bet, Freddy and Randy Beal were marching around like soldier ants at Mama’s orders, cleaning and preparing the three tables, toting foodstuffs, beverages, lawn chairs, picnic supplies—and hiding the charcoal starter (Beal’s touch) right under Marv’s butt when he knelt down to blow on the kindling. “If he farts I’m a widow,” remarked Aunt Mary Jane, who was jammed in the Nomad’s galley with Mama, Nancy Beal and Linda, slapping out hamburger patties while the other three worked at a potato salad and a fruit salad and green salad and dressing.

  The only other member of our tribe who wasn’t busy was Ethel Harg. She was sitting across the map from me with her big, spotted, lizardy-looking forearms smooshed out over most of the eastern seaboard, and her face, which was usually just grim, was uncharacteristically glum. I had a fair idea what was bothering her too: dumb jokes and utensils flying in all directions, men and womenfolk making themselves useful—and her too rickety to join in the fray. For a pioneer-stock Old Testament woman like her, it must have been torture. I felt sorry for her—sorry enough that I decided to try to divert her with a little conversation, though I’d never dared talk with her outside Sabbath School in my life. While I was fishing around for my opening line, though, she idly opened a drawer next to the oven beside her—and this drawer turned out to be jammed full of typical RV detritus, all stowed in strict accord with my uncle’s Pig-in-a-Pen philosophy: fishermen’s hootchies and five-year-old gas receipts; grease-stained playing cards and the bean-stained wool sock Marv used for a pot holder; a petrified Elmer’s Glue bottle, a pair of Donald Duck sunglasses, a map of Phoenix, a half-eaten Mars bar …

  And one glance at this chaos and the Sister’s customary grimness was restored.

  Upending the drawer on the Atlantic, she began piling useful stuff across the Midwest, questionable stuff in the Deep South and garbage in a brown paper bag standing south of the Mexican border. Hoping the symbolism was unintentional, I glanced outside, where Marvin was now accusing Mama of having thrown away the mesquite chips she already had soaking in a bucket of water (she says they give off more flavor wet). When I turned back, Sister Harg was reading, with grim but obvious interest, the inside cover of a plain white matchbook. Since there were no matches inside, I expected to see the book deported soon. Instead the Sister slipped it surreptitiously into the pocket of her sweater, cleared off the entire Midwest with one sweep of her arm, emptied her Mexican trash bag out where all the good stuff used to be, and reinspected every scrap of paper or cardboard in the heap. For some reason this procedure caused her to rescue the lid of a used snoose can and the top of an old Post Toasties box. She then turned to me, and with the same unreadably grim expression growled, “Kincaid.”

  Involuntarily, as if we were still in Sabbath School, I piped, “Yes, Sister Harg?”

  “Would you care to know the secret of your aunt and uncle’s happy marriage?”

  This was not the sort of question I’d expected. “Sure,” I said doubtfully.

  “Verse,” she growled.

  This was not the sort of answer I’d expected either.

  “Original verse,” she added.

  The surprises were getting bigger. “Verse that one of them writes, you mean?” I said carefully.

  “Both of ’em, actually. Tag-team verse, I’d call it.”

  My face made it obvious that the concept needed explaining. Sister Harg met this need by simply handing me the matchbook. The inside cover contained five lines of writing. The first two were in the neat block lettering of my Uncle Marvin, the last three in Aunt Mary Jane’s unruly scrawl. And Sister Harg watched, with unadulterated grimness, as I read them. They said:

  A MAN FROM SPOKANE FELT SO AMOROUS

  HIS PLAIN JANE OF A WIFE LOOKED QUITE GLAMOROUS

  If he wasn’t so rude

  She’d have been in the mood.

  As it was she said, “Shuttup and scram fer us.”

  I wasn’t too surprised by the limerick. I knew my aunt and uncle pretty well. But I also thought I knew the Sister. Because of what I thought I knew, she had to wriggle, hack, and titter all by herself for a solid ten seconds before I dared crack a smile—and even then I only did it because the wriggling got me worrying about her colostomy bag. Then she handed me the Post Toasties flap. Again it was two lines by the ever-hopeful Marvin, followed by three in brutal response. These went:

  THERE WAS A YOUNG HUSBAND SO HANDSOME THAT HIS WIFE MARY JANE ONE DAY PANTSED’M

  And said, “Hold still my dear

  While I make you a steer.

  I’m plumb sick of you acting so glandsome.”

  “Shush!” went the Sister, peeking back at my aunt. But she was the one making all the racket. Fifty-some years spent teaching Sabbath School, this woman, and there she sat, happy as an anthropologist who, in some boringly Christianized jungle, stumbles onto the lair of a good old yoni-worshipping pagan.

  I said, “You’d think he’d learn to let her write the first two lines.”

  Sister Harg shook her head vehemently. “Him writing the first two, her the last three,” she growled. “That’s the secret of the marriage right there.”

  The various chefs and salads started out of the galley. Sister Harg quickly palmed her pilfered poems, gave Linda, Nancy, Mama, Mary Jane and their culinary efforts each a stern nod, watched them parade out the door, then gave me a heinously happy smirk and handed me the snoose lid. The writing this time went in circles to accommodate the lid’s shape. But the results were the same:

  A YOUNG MAN FROM SPOKANE WAS SO HANDSOME

  THAT HIS WIFE FOUND HIM WILDLY ENTRANCIN’

  So she captured some ants

  Dumped ’em straight down his pants

  And cried, “Honey, I do love your dancin’!”

  “Come and get it!” shouted Aunt Mary Jane.

  “Don’t he wish,” growled Sister Harg.

  6. Tea Leaves

  letter from the Wahkiakum County Work Camp to the Lake Havasu City planned community

  Myshkin! It’s a beautiful name, Tasha, I love him already. And I understand your fears, I forgive your fleeing, and I feel your love too, I see it pouring from your letter. And I want nothing on earth so much as to accept it. But I have to refuse it long enough to say to you first: three years. Thirty-six moons, Natasha. Picture Myshkin on a trike. That’s how long I’m going to be here. And it surprises me, I didn’t expect this of myself, but being trapped here, I find that I too have an absolute: I have to know whether you’re going to be able to wait for me.

  Not that I’m asking you to wait. Given my past, there’s sure as hell no moral grounds for my asking. And it was my conscience that put me here. I don’t expect you to share my punishment—and to get Myshkin through his first three years alone would be sharing it. All I’m saying, I guess, is that I know how beautiful you are, and how desirable, and I care too much about your happiness to ask you to just hand your middle twenties over to an incarcerated pen pal. Waiting for me (to borrow a line from your letter) is either in you, or it’s not. It can’t be forced. But this place makes me vulnerable to you, and crazy for you, in ways I can’t describe or control. I mean, I’m trying to resist you this very moment, I’m trying to sound guarded and dispassionate here! But your letter tore me so far open so fast that I can hardly keep from scrawling I love you I love you I love you till I run out of ink. And it’s terrifying, being this open in a place like this. That’s what I’m saying. Because if I anchor my heart on you again, and fall madly in love with Myshkin too, and if you then vanish, I just couldn’t bear it. Not here. If it didn’t just kill me, I know it would turn me into a scalded, twisted something we wouldn’t want to know. So consult your heart, Tasha. That’s what I’m asking. Read all the tea leaves before you write back to me. Remember my temper, my big mouth, all our differences, “touchy touchy.” Remember I’ll be an ex-con once I�
�m out of here, making ex-con money for life. Remember the beautiful parts too, if your heart seems to want to. But don’t “feel sorry for me,” or try to make up for last winter. Don’t “be nice,” I beg you. Say “I can” if you can wait for me—and know that I’m overjoyed to be Myshkin’s father But say “I can’t” if you can’t. If it’s ever going to come, let the end come now. And then, for both our sakes, and Myshkin’s, never write to me again.

  Love,

  Everett

  7. “No Comment”

  I’d been driving the Dodge wagon for hours, alone with Suncracker, trying to fight off sleepiness with some cowboy radio station that sounded as though it was designed to tranquilize cows. Fortunately, the effects showed: when our little caravan pulled into Yreka for gas, Elder Joon stepped out of the Nomad with a fresh cup of coffee for me, took one look at my face, and said, “The coffee is perhaps mine? And the sleeping bag is yours?”

  I could only moo my agreement.

  So Joon took over the driving, Freddy joined us and rode shotgun, and I climbed in back with Suncracker. I didn’t lie down right away, though. We had set out across that overgrazed but beautiful high plateau approaching Mount Shasta, and I wanted to let the landscape sort of lull me off to sleep. But as I eavesdropped on Joon and Freddy’s bantering, I was surprised to find myself growing less and less sleepy …