The Brothers K

by David James Duncan

  But when I unlocked and opened the basement door the naked bulb over the sink was already shining, and water was already running full blast into the sink. My first thought was that some comedian in the family had seen my fish and me coming and deliberately bushwhacked my surprise by turning on the tap in advance. Then I looked in the sink, saw the spread from Papa’s bed—and it was stained with blood.

  It was strange, what my mind decided to make of this: I didn’t think of Papa at all. Instead I looked down at my fish, wondered how on earth its blood had preceded it into the sink, looked back at the bedspread, and thought, I’d better wash that out fast or Mama’s gonna be pissed.

  Then I heard the door at the top of the stairs open. Irwin stepped through. And he had the sheets from our parents’ room in one hand, Papa’s blue flannel shirt in the other—and there was blood on these too. There was also blood on Irwin’s shirt. There was even blood on his chin. Yet his face wore no more expression than usual. He just looked at me blankly, then said, “He’s dead, Kade. Help me.”

  My mind was gone.

  I heard him say, “One big cough. No warning. Didn’t even seem to hurt. But so much blood. I tried to clear it, tried mouth-to-mouth. But he was gone.”

  I moved toward him, peering at the stained chin, at the shirt in his hands. But I felt no grief. Instead I found myself clinging to some simple confusion. Our father was dead—yes, apparently. That was his blood, and his shirt, yes yes. But some small oddity was blocking my feelings—and knowing what my feelings were about to become, I hoped never to remove the blockage.

  In a voice as robotic as his face, I heard Irwin say, “Everyone’s out, but they’re coming home soon. Nash and Linda. Mama and the twins. They’re just shopping. I need to change him. So please. Help.”

  I heard him say, “When Grandawma died, Bet and Freddy, remember? They cleaned her up so great. So it’s our turn. See?”

  I heard him say, “Help me, Kade. Now. He’s dead.”

  Then, not to my joy, but to my sorrow, I had it: the voice itself. Irwin was speaking. He was making sense. And our papa was dead.

  I started up the stairs. He started down. But when we met in the middle I could see he wanted to move right on past me, so I blocked his path. I needed to hug him. I tried to. But I couldn’t lift one arm. I looked at it. It was holding a huge salmon. I let it go; watched it flup, flup, flup down the stairs; heard, in the quick downward slapping, the exact opposite of all its silver body and spirit had been designed to do. “He’s dead, Kade,” the voice repeated, “and it’s a mess up there. Come on.”

  I started to sob, threw my arms around my brother, and hugged him and all that he held, hard against me. He stood with his arms down, stiff as wood or stone.

  “Help me,” he repeated. “Now.”

  –IX–

  Mama came home first. And saw what had happened. Then she just crawled right onto the newly made bed, and took the clean, freshly clothed body into her arms. I started to gasp, covered my mouth with my forearm, and moved as fast as I could out into the backyard.

  Irwin joined me after a while. We could still sort of see her through the window, and hear faint sounds. But I tried not to look or listen. I noticed that Irwin had on clean clothes, and that his face was washed, perhaps even freshly shaved. There was a load in the wash, and another tumbling in the dryer. He’d even managed somehow to clean my salmon. Seeing the way he was eyeing me, I realized finally that he had come out not to console me, or to seek consolation from me, but to inspect me for bloodstains. “Did everything look normal?” he asked in his dull, wooden way.

  I just gawked at him without speaking—as if I was him now, and he was me. I’d no idea what “normal” meant.

  When Mama finally called us in and I saw the tears still streaming, I began to cry again too. Then I rediscovered what “normal” meant: Mama took one look at me, scowled—and instantly stopped crying. I couldn’t stop even then, but I also nearly burst out laughing. Contrariness as deep as hers has got to be some kind of virtue.

  She had Irwin cover Papa with the unfinished afghan that Linda had been making for him. “His face too,” she said evenly. Then she had me call the fire department, as Papa had made her promise to do. (“Cheaper than ambulances,” he’d said, “and it’s smoke inhalation that’s killed me.”)

  While we waited for them to arrive, Mama asked me to recite the Lord’s Prayer, with some challenge in her request—the old Adventist versus Rebel tension, I suppose. To show her I didn’t mind I waited for the Amens, then threw in the Twenty-third Psalm. It may have been a mistake: when I heard myself declare that goodness and mercy would surely follow us all the days of our lives, the silence that followed—the genuine dead silence—was unbearable to me. Not knowing what to do, hoping Mama wouldn’t object to a little more Bible, I spontaneously recited a single verse from the Twenty-fourth Psalm—a verse I’d memorized way back in early Sabbath School because it reminded me a little of Papa on his pitcher’s mound. I said, “Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place?”

  For some reason, Mama began to weep again when she heard this. But for me there was something soothing in the words—something right about honoring the end of a life not with a statement, but with a question. So I said it again. “Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place?”

  Mama wept harder. And on the second recitation Irwin turned to watch me, and I saw—for the first time since he’d come home—a hint of an expression on his face. Anger was what it looked like, actually. But it was definitely an expression. So I said it again: “Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place?”

  His face visibly darkened. Mama kept weeping. I began again: “Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord?”

  But before I could finish Irwin cut me off with a gesture, pointed at Papa’s body, and said, “Him! Papa. That’s who. So shuttup!”

  And for some reason now, at the sound of his voice, the look on his face, I felt joy despite my sorrow.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Wake

  The room is sparsely furnished:

  A chair, a table, and a father.

  —Carolyn Kizer

  Camas/October/1971

  They’d talked about all of this, Papa and Mama had. Of course it hadn’t been easy. But near the end certain unpleasant possibilities had begun to bother Papa, and he’d wanted them off his mind. So. No preachers, no churches, no caskets, he’d told her. No long rows of cars with their headlights on. No funeral parlor, no hired speakers, no baritone soloist, no hymns. “A wake, Laura,” he’d said. “Not a mope. Just a remembering. Right here at home. If Elder Joon or Randy Beal come, make sure it’s as civilians. I want everybody free to talk. I want good food and drink for friends and family. And if any ballplayers come—and they’re all invited—I want ’em to feel at home. So serve beer.”

  Mama had looked mildly offended, but not very surprised, by all of this. But then the plot had thickened:

  “I want to be cremated,” he’d said—knowing full well that Mama, like any good Adventist, believed that death is sleep, and that the literal, physical body will be resurrected on Judgment Day. “This body’s had it,” he’d said when her face changed color. “It’s been good to me. But I don’t want it back.”

  Her reaction was wonderful in a way: she got spitting mad. What did he want? she’d asked. What would His Majesty allow? Could we sing the national anthem, or maybe “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”? Or were those songs, heaven forbid, too much like hymns? Could we hold hands while we drank our beer and tossed his ashes in the garbage? Or was hand-holding too sanctimonious for him?

  His reply had not been quite what she’d expected. He’d just reached for her hand, and held it hard, as he said, “God, I’m gonna miss watchin’ you do that.”

  Mama had sat down on the arm of his chair then, and Papa kept hold of her hand as he tried to explain. “One r
eason I want cremation,” he’d said, “is that it’s cheap, and money will be short. Another reason is that ashes keep—so you can include Everett in whatever you finally decide to do. And one other reason, or not a reason, really. Just a thought …” She felt his strength suddenly leave him. “This isn’t a request, Laura. Or even a hope. I mean, who knows what the future might bring? But one other thing about ashes keeping, see, is that if you wanted to … and if, in the end, you were still, well … single … then maybe I, they, you see … could be buried with you.”

  Mama had said nothing. She’d just slid off the chair arm, and down into his lap and arms. … …

  So there I stood in our diningroom—three days after his little sports-page obituary—staring at red roses, white candles, the polished wood of the table. Glancing now and then at the wonderful faces lined all the way around the room. And though none of the ballplayers among us yet seemed to be feeling anywhere near “at home,” Mama had kept her end of the bargain: every one of them was religiously holding a flat, warm, forgotten glass of beer.

  He’d left it to Mama to select his container, and she’d chosen—of all things—the same blue ceramic jewelry box in which she used to keep her Sabbath tithes and offerings. It gave me a turn to see it, full of powdered Papa on our dinnertable there. But once my intestines swung back around, it began to feel about perfect. Because what is an offering, really? What can human beings actually give to God? What can they give to each other even? And what sorts of receptacles can contain these gifts? Work camps and insane asylums, Indian trains and church pews, bullpens and little blue boxes … Who belongs in what? When do they belong there? Who truly gives what to whom? These were questions we were all struggling to answer not in words, but with our lives. And all her life Laura Chance had placed ten percent of all she’d earned in this same blue box before offering it—in the full faith that it would be accepted—to her Lord. So now, just as faithfully, she’d placed a hundred percent of her husband in the same box. That was her answer to the questions. And I’m hard put to think of another that would do greater honor to her husband, her Lord or her little blue box.

  Staring hard at the candles, the shyest man among us had sucked up the courage to speak first. “I’m no ninety-pound weakling,” Uncle Truman said. “But the first time we shook, that fella and me,” he pointed at the blue box, “he about crushed my hand to ribbons. He was that strong.”

  With that, Truman blushed red as the roses and dipped to his beer like a shy toddler to its mother’s neck. And I never heard him speak again all day.

  Bet half surprised me with an old Memory Verse: “Unless a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”

  This seemed to create some emotion among the Adventists, but things still felt a little abstract to me. Then Freddy came out with this:

  “Something Papa once told me, which he learned as a kid from his dad, Everett Senior. It’s been on my mind all week. ’Cause most of you know that Papa, he lost—” Her voice faltered. “He lost his dad too when he was about my age. Anyhow …” She drew a huge breath. “A hitting tip, this supposedly was. And Papa warned me it was nonsense. Except the thing is, he said, when you lose your dad young, even his nonsense—” Her voice stopped again. “Even his nonsense starts to make sense, and maybe even to help you. That’s what he told me. So here’s some of Papa’s nonsense, for my brothers and sister and me.”

  Another big breath.

  “He said there are two ways for a hitter to get the pitch he wants. The simplest way is not to want any pitch in particular. But the best way, he said—which sounds almost the same, but is really very different—is to want the very pitch you’re gonna get. Including the one you can handle. But also the one that’s gonna strike you out looking. And even the one that’s maybe gonna bounce off your head.”

  The general reaction to this speech was incomprehension, though toward the end some listeners began to shoot Freddy sympathetic glances: Oh dear, their faces said. The girl is babbling. Crazy with grief, the poor thing. But Peter, Natasha and G. Q. Durham all nodded when she’d finished. In fact, Gale looked moved to the verge of tears. But then he’d looked that way all day.

  Uncle Marv spoke up next. “But Smokey Chance, as I liked to call’m,” he said, “never bounced a pitch off a head in his life, except by accident.”

  “If you call stickin’ your noggin in front of a fastball on purpose an accident,” Aunt Mary Jane put in.

  “Using the bean,” Marv said. “Using the bean to get Laura and Hugh together. That’s what I call it.”

  There were baffled smiles from those who didn’t know the old family story, and patient sighs from those who did. The smell of roses was overwhelming.

  “He hurt people on purpose, though,” Johnny Hultz said. “Hurt our feelings, that is. First time I faced him up in Tacoma I poked a wrong-field double, and was cocky enough to think it wasn’t pure luck. So the next ten or twelve or, let’s be honest, thirty times I faced him, he popped and grounded and fanned me silly. And talk about the pitch that gets you looking! Papa T threw third strikes that left you standin’ there like a fencepost by the side of the road.”

  Tony Baldanos—now an ex-Tug and aspiring photographer—said, “Best pitcher I ever caught. Best pitching coach I ever watched work. Best coach or baseball mind, period. Present company included.” He gave his ex-manager, John Hultz, a pointed little smile.

  “But even Hugh,” said Papa’s friend Roy, “couldn’t teach me how to fly-fish.”

  “He taught me,” Freddy said, giving Roy a poke.

  “Me too,” I said.

  “Some people are just unteachable,” said Coach Hultz, smiling back at Tony.

  G. Q. Durham tried for the day’s only soliloquy, but it just didn’t pan out.

  “My job with the Cornshuckers, down in Oklahoma,” he began, “was to analyze junk, and if possible use it. ‘No offense,’ I says to Hugh Chance, first time we met, ‘but that’s why you’re here. White Sox say you’re junk, Senators say it, and I wouldn’t wonder but what you’re thinkin’ I’m junk yourself. But I say bullroar, Hubert! I say ballplayers are the car, not the engine. And when the engine stops runnin’, you don’t junk the car. You fix it. That’s why you’re here.’”

  There were smiles over this beginning, from those who didn’t know Gale. He was waving his beer around, foaming and overflowing it. But I’d seen at once that he wasn’t trying to be funny. He was furious. Furious with grief. “‘Hubert,’ I told him, that very first time, ‘you reek. Bum arm, diaper stench, bad attitude and all, you reek so bad of baseball I don’t see how you walk down a street on legs. Seems to me you ought to roll …’”

  Then the tears did start rolling, and Gale’s face and speech fell to pieces as he added, “But what I never, I wish I … I never had a son o’ my own, you know. An’ you were the—he was my … if there was one thing on this earth I never wanted, it was to outlive my Hubert!”

  With that he fell against Irwin and began to sob like a distraught child. And Irwin, with his wooden face, just stood there, stiffly holding him. Then Peter said, “I’d like to offer a little prayer.”

  Heads bowed fast, if only to escape the sight of poor Gale.

  “I wouldn’t dare imitate a certain style,” Peter began, staring at the blue box. “The loss of what’s inimitable—that’s what we’re here to mourn. But … but here’s the prayer part now, and this is a quote. Give us grateful hearts … our Father …” His voice broke on the last two words, as did most everyone’s self-control, till we were pretty much all trying to hold each other together. “Give us grateful hearts,” he croaked. “And make us ever mindful of the needs of others. Through Christ, Papa’s and Mama’s Lord, amen. And through love for each other, amen. And through our sufferings, if that’s what it takes, and our romances, our good housekeeping and our ballplaying, our friendships and our enemyships. Whatever works best, our Father. Make us mindful through
that. It’s time to eat now. That’s where you’d end this prayer, Papa, so that’s where I’ll end it too. There’s nothing much left to say but the obvious anyhow. Which is we loved you. And always will. Amen.”

  “Amen!” sobbed Gale.

  “Amen,” Irwin murmured, still expressionless, but still stiffly holding him.

  Amen.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Woodstoves

  “Do not be so anxious after doing something,” said Krishna. “Sorrow follows happiness, then happiness follows sorrow. One man thinks that it is men who slay each other; another that it is Time, or Fate. This is the language of the world. The truth is—”

  “The truth is,” Yudishthira shouted, “that like a straw mat concealing a deep pit, your dharma is too often a mask for deceit. You may be God incarnate, but in a hundred years I could not exhaust the tale of your felonies if I spoke day and night!”

  “Be calm,” Krishna said. “The wind is not stained by the dust it blows away.”

  “I am calm!” roared Yudishthira.

  —Mahabharata

  –I–

  In November 1971, Peter moved into a dive of a boardinghouse right in downtown Camas, then applied, and was accepted, for a graveyard-shift job at the Crown Zellerbach papermill. “What’ll you be doing?” Mama asked when he first mentioned the job.

  “Loading car-sized rolls of paper onto train cars with a giant forklift,” he said.