Building Blocks
Page 9
But Uncle Andrew burst out laughing, as if that was the funniest thing he’d heard. “What a lad,” he said. “What a lad.”
“Does it?” Kevin insisted.
“No, it doesn’t, so set your mind at rest about that,” Kevin’s father said.
“And do you know anyone can talk Thomas Connell out of anything he’s made his mind up to?” Uncle Andrew asked his nephew, with an easy smile.
Brann saw Kevin curl back up into himself. Then he made one last try. “But you didn’t ask me.” Big tears spilled out of his eyes. “You didn’t even ask what I wanted to do.”
“What children want can’t be counted,” Mrs. Connell said. “It’s enough trouble keeping them fed and clothed.”
Kevin ran out of the room. Brann heard him pounding up the stairs. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do, and he was busy trying to swallow past a lump in his throat. Whether the lump was sadness for Kevin or anger at Uncle Andrew and the Connells, Brann couldn’t tell.
Mr. Connell stood up. “I could use a beer,” he said. “Andrew?”
“A cool beer would not come amiss.”
“Then we’ll be back in a while,” Mr. Connell told his wife.
“I’ll have supper waiting.” She watched them leave, then pushed her hands on the table top to stand up. “You, Brann,” she said. “There’s peanut butter and bread. I’m going to fetch the children home, if you’d make up a plate of sandwiches. I don’t know how long that boy will sulk in his room—the old people need their tray. They won’t like it but pay them no mind.
Brann nodded. He watched her leave, watched the door swing closed behind her, watched her descend the steps with one hand on the railing.
“I’m hungry,” Suzanne said.
Brann made her a peanut butter sandwich and poured her a glass of milk. Then he made six more sandwiches, four on a plate for Kevin’s grandparents, two for Kevin. He put three glasses of milk on the tray. He turned on the light, put the heel of the loaf back into the breadbox, capped the peanut butter and lay the spreading knife in the sink. He looked at Suzanne. She stuck out her tongue at him.
“When you finish, wash and dry our dishes and go to bed,” he told her. She looked like she wanted to say no, but didn’t dare. “Whether it’s early or not,” Brann said, because he knew what she’d say next. “Or you can go out—and get yourself killed or something. I don’t really care a bit.”
He heard what he had said. One day with these people and already he was changed by them. How did Kevin stand it?
Brann was stopped by a sudden cold thought: Kevin stood it because he wasn’t like them; but Brann was enough like them for them to have an effect on him. He didn’t want to be like them. He wanted to be like Kevin—not exactly like, of course—but not like them. He picked up the tray. “Leave the light on for when your parents get back. OK?” Suzanne didn’t answer.
Brann carried the tray carefully up the two flights of stairs, watching the milk to keep down the sloshing. Before he went into Kevin’s room, he took a plate and two glasses down the hall. Kevin’s grandfather stood alone in the sitting room down the hall, looking out the window, his back straight. “I’ve brought you supper,” Brann said loudly.
“No need to shout. I can hear you,” the man answered, without turning around.
Brann took the tray to Kevin’s door. It was closed. He knocked. “It’s me—Brann.”
There was no answer. He balanced the tray on one hand and turned the knob.
Kevin was lying on his back on the bed. He didn’t bother to look at Brann. Brann put the tray down at the foot of the bed and looked at the boy. His light, spiky hair and his expressionless face and his deep gray eyes—Brann saw them all. He had seen them before, too, on his father.
“Buck up,” Brann said, as his mother often said to him. “How bad can it be, after all?”
An unwilling half-smile moved Kevin’s mouth. “Couldn’t be much worse,” he answered. He was holding a scrunched-up piece of paper.
“Could too,” Brann said, still sounding like his mother. “Look, I made peanut butter sandwiches. You want one?”
Kevin sat up. He dropped the paper onto the floor. It was a picture of Uncle Andrew’s farm. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m hungry. I wish I wasn’t. I thought that what I had to do was stand up for what I wanted. I wish I hadn’t—”
Brann sat gently on the bed facing him. “Never mind wishes,” he advised, biting into one of the sandwiches.
“You’re braver than I’ll ever be,” Kevin said. He began to take an interest in the conversation and to chew hungrily. “You kept your pants on. I didn’t think he’d let you.”
“He had to,” Brann said, pleased himself now that he was remembering it.
“Why?”
“Fate,” Brann said. He changed the subject. “What did you mean your father is scared?”
“What’s it matter? Anyway.”
“I can’t figure it out,” Brann admitted. “It seems to me he’s got everyone pretty scared of him.”
“Even Uncle Andrew,” Kevin agreed.
“Do you think,” Brann asked, “that he minded because you like your uncle better than him?”
The gray eyes looked at him, sad. “Naw. He doesn’t think much of me, or of Uncle Andrew. He’s not scared like that. He’s scared that if he ever stops working, he’ll lose the business. If there aren’t any jobs. Before we came here, and when he was out of work—and he’s scared that if he lets up for a second it’ll all happen again. I guess I can understand that.”
“Do you really have to work for him?”
“What else can I do? If Uncle Andrew doesn’t want me on the farm. Anyway.”
“You could refuse. You could run away.”
“Can’t,” Kevin said. “Besides, my mother’s going to have that baby and I’ll have to be in charge here. There isn’t anything to do. It’s just as bad for them as for me. But it doesn’t seem right, because we were so glad to move here. At first. But things change and people change to go with the things. I don’t know. But there isn’t anything I can do. Even if there was—but they need me here and I have to be where I’m needed. Even if I’m no good at it.”
Brann knew Kevin was right, but he couldn’t accept that. Kevin could, he realized. Kevin could accept losing his summer at the farm and being hammered on and taking care of the little kids and being whipped that way; and he didn’t even get angry. It was giving up, in a way, but it was something more too. Brann had a glimpse, just a vague idea, of the kind of courage Kevin had. Courage for facing the truth, inside himself.
Brann didn’t know if he had that kind of courage. In fact, he was pretty sure he didn’t, but he hoped he could learn it. And add it to the kind of courage he did have.
“Listen,” Brann said, moving the tray down onto the floor, “I have an idea. You’ll think I’m crazy, but listen.” Kevin lay back and folded his arms behind his head, his face blank. “I have an idea that this baby isn’t going to be a boy at all. It’s going to be a girl, and you’re going to like her, and she’s going to like you, and you’re going to be friends, all of your lives.”
Kevin closed his eyes and shook his head slowly, from side to side. “You are crazy.”
“Maybe,” Brann allowed, “maybe. But I’ll tell you what. Don’t say anything, don’t even think anything, but if it’s a girl and they name her Rebecca—then I’m right.”
“Anything you say,” Kevin said, his voice sleepy.
“You’ll remember?”
“I’ll remember everything about today. Except for meeting you, it’s been the worst day of my whole life.”
“If I was you I’d forget today,” Brann advised.
Kevin lay silent for a long time. “I guess so,” he finally said. “What about you? Nothing’s changed for you, has it? Whatever was wrong before, when you came in last night, is still wrong. Do you want me to help? Do you want to tell me? I don’t know what I could do, but there might be something.”
“OK,” Kevin said. “If you lived here you’d be my friend, wouldn’t you?”
Brann nodded and then remembered that Kevin couldn’t see him in the dark room, with his eyes closed. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess so.” It was the truth after all.
He sat and thought how funny that was. Then, when he saw that Kevin was asleep, he got up off the bed. Quietly, he kneeled down by the block fortress, the castle close, and dismantled the central building. Careful not to knock anything down, careful to do it exactly the same way, he crawled through the large gateway and curled up within the wall of building blocks, with the wooden floor under his shoulder. He was pretty tired himself. He could feel sleep creeping up to him like a wave on the incoming tide. For a minute, before losing consciousness, he felt a pinprick of fear: what if this wouldn’t take him back? This fear hurt him deeper than the belt could begin to reach. Kevin didn’t know how deep down inside frightened Brann could be. Or maybe he did. That was Brann’s last thought before he slept.
Seven
Brann opened his eyes to a bright yellow light. Sunlight. He snapped his eyes shut.
It hadn’t worked. He was still here. There. Then. He had been so sure that the blocks were the way back, but he had been wrong. A knot of panic contracted his body. What could he do? What terrible thing had happened to him?
His brain was frozen and didn’t work. He wanted, desperately, to go back to sleep. He didn’t want to have to think about what had happened to him, or what he should do. He was absolutely and entirely alone for all of his life now. Who would be Brann Connell then, his friend Kevin’s third child when Kevin grew up? Would Brann just be erased from the future? If he told Kevin what had really happened, would Kevin believe him?
This should have happened to Kevin, Brann thought to himself, trying to force himself back into the unconsciousness of sleep and out of this sun-brightened room. Kevin had the kind of courage to accept it.
The floor was hard under his shoulder. His body was stiff. In the background, he heard an unfamiliar sound, a smooth, sliding noise. Probably Mrs. Connell was sweeping the floors of the hallway. What would she say when she saw him still there? Brann wondered if he would live with the Connells now or go to an orphanage. His father never said anything about an orphan coming to live with them. Brann hoped he could be better at being a friend to Kevin Connell than he’d been at being a son.
He knew he had to open his eyes and deal with what had happened. Somehow. Kevin would help him.
He opened his eyes. He saw the wall of the castle close. The blocks had turned golden with the oils of many hands.
And Kevin’s blocks were almost white, because they were new.
Brann twisted around onto his back. His feet knocked over walls and towers. He didn’t notice that. He noticed instead, all at the same time, the damp cellar cement underneath him, the one yellow lightbulb in the center of the ceiling, and his father, Kevin Connell, forty-seven years old, his wide mouth tight at the corners after the morning argument with his wife. Brann’s father was planing down a long piece of dark-grained wood. The shavings curled off the top of the plane with a smooth, sliding sound.
His father lifted his head and looked at Brann. He smiled. “I thought you’d sleep forever,” he said. “Like King Arthur under the hill. To be reawakened in time of need.” His eyes within thick black lashes were muddy gray and secretive.
Brann could have laughed aloud. He felt like yelling. Instead, he stretched out his arms and legs as far as they could reach. The fortress tumbled down on him. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe I did. Maybe I am.”
He couldn’t stop grinning. He was home.
He sat up, then stood up. His shoulders and legs hurt. “What day is it? What time is it?”
His father started planing again. “It’s today, just like it was when you hid out down here. It must be near lunchtime. I’ve been down here—maybe an hour.”
“Doing what?”
“Planing.” His father didn’t say anything else.
“What’re you making?”
“Wood curlings,” with a reluctant half-smile.
“But why did you marry her?” Brann would never have asked that question of his father, but he didn’t remember that in time. It was a perfectly natural question to ask his friend Kevin.
“Well, I love her.” His father’s eyes were fixed on the smooth board. “She’s got drive, and there’s no one like her when she’s happy. And she loves me.”
“She yells at you. She hammers and hammers.”
“She cares about us, and about herself too. She fights for herself—if you don’t admire her—what she’s accomplished—you’re making a big mistake.”
Brann had never thought about that.
“I guess I figured that with all of her ambition and energy, she’d keep me up to the mark,” his father said. “I have a habit of letting things slide, and I thought she’d change that for me. But, nobody else can change you, that way. You’ve got to change things yourself. That’s what I was thinking about. You never knew your grandmother. My mother. Your mother is a lot like my mother, at least what I remember of her because I was pretty young when she died. In some ways they are very similar. She didn’t let things slide, my mother.”
“I guess not,” Brann agreed, remembering.
“You don’t have to humor me. It’s OK. Anyway, anyway. It’s fate and all that,” Kevin Connell said. He continued planing.
Brann stood right up close beside his father. It took some getting used to, his father being older than him again, and bigger again. “What about this farm, Dad?”
“What about it? I want to keep it and your mother wants to sell it.”
“No, I mean is it the one you used to work on with your uncle?”
“You know that.”
“Is it big?”
“Big enough to keep us in essentials, food and clothes. Not much else though,” Kevin Connell said.
“Is there a pond?”
“The Ohio River goes right past it—though you can’t call that water. It’s more like liquid sludge. I haven’t seen it for, oh, almost thirty years, I guess. But it was bad the last time I was there. I don’t like to think what that river looks like now. Or smells like. The farm has a couple of small creeks, no fishing streams, no swimming holes. Let’s not talk about it, OK?”
“But how come you stopped going there?” Brann insisted.
“I started working for my father in the summers instead. I was ten or so. That I remember, because he just announced that I wasn’t going back to the farm. I thought I’d die. But I didn’t, as you see. I toted bricks and stirred mortar. I learned how to build things from my father, do repairs, and plumbing too. My father was a worker, and he worked me. My brothers too, when they got old enough.”
“Did you do all right with him?” Brann asked.
His father shrugged.
“Dad? There are caves in that part of Pennsylvania, aren’t there? Did you ever go spelunking?”
“Whatever makes you ask a question like that?”
“I dunno.”
“You haven’t been doing that with your friends, have you? You do know it can be dangerous. Have you?”
Brann was tempted to tell the story, to find out from his father’s reaction if it had really happened. Then he remembered that he had promised never to tell—and he wanted to keep his promise to Kevin Connell. “No, I just wondered. I’m probably still half asleep.” Maybe it was all a dream he’d had. Why should that make him feel disappointed? After all, how could he have traveled back thirty-seven years in time and been himself, his father’s son, when his father was only ten years old. That was impossible.
“But it’s funny,” his father said. “Because I once had a nightmare about being lost in a cave. I can still taste the feeling of it—deep and dark, I don’t know what made me
have that nightmare. It’s the only one I remember from when I was little. Kids have such vivid imaginations. Tell you what, maybe it really happened, and if it happened it was something I don’t want to remember. But that’s not the kid of thing you forget, is it?”
“I don’t think so.” So, Brann thought, it had all been a dream. All the things he dreamed hadn’t really happened. The boy he’d spent that faraway day with hadn’t been his father really. He rubbed his lower lip with his fingers, to keep his mouth from drooping down the way it wanted to. He grunted with surprised pain. His lower lip was swollen.
“Anything wrong? What happened to your lip, Brann? You look like somebody punched you.”
Brann ran an experimental tongue over it. “Nobody punched me,” he said. “It feels like I cut it, I wonder why—”
Then he knew why. And that was why his body was stiff, too, because it hadn’t been a dream but a reality. Impossible, but real. There was one other way to check. “Dad? Why did you name me Brann? I mean, really why.”
Kevin Connell put down his plane and looked at his red-haired son. “The truth is, I don’t know. I honestly don’t. I was all set to name you Thomas, we’d decided. Then the nurse brought you in and I saw you—I’d not seen you before, remember. I held you, all eight squalling pounds of you, and the name—came into my mind. Exactly the way I said, Brann with two n’s. I didn’t even know it was a genuine name until I looked it up later. It felt so right for you; it was the name you were supposed to have. It was your name. I’ll tell you,” Kevin Connell said, “it may sound crazy, but I had this feeling. I’ve had it a couple of times in my life—knowing what has to be. When your aunt Rebecca was born, I had it then. When I first met your mother. That feeling is a good sign, as I take it. And that is all the truth I now about your name.”
Brann listened intently. When his father finished speaking, he bent his face down. He knew that his eyes were shooting gray lights out, and he didn’t want his father to see. It had happened, but his father had forgotten all about it. That was OK. If his father had needed to remember, then he would have. There was no reason for Brann to try to remind him.