by Dave King
I charge forward, out of the concealment of the trees. Ryan’s not wearing a helmet, and the little jump is built for disaster. I picture the long scabs he had on his arm and leg, and all I can think of is Rimet in the orange air. The years I paid for walking with the LT! I make a beeline for the gravel hill, and as the boys scatter I knock someone in the dirt. The cart speeds down the pile, and I see the kid’s shock as I spread my arms; is this when I realize it’s not even Ryan? Everyone’s yelling, and I am, too—I’m bellowing out “Ha-oo!” with no sense of what I mean. Just as he’s about to hit me, the kid turns on a dime, and the cart kicks up a cloud of dust. It narrowly misses a boy who’s appeared out of nowhere, then spins once and goes up on two wheels, toppling over with a dull clunk.
I rush to see that the driver’s okay. In fact, he’s already climbing from his seat, coughing slightly as he moistens his lips. He looks nothing like Ryan. I bend down to offer a hand, and he stares as if I’m a monster in the yellow haze. I remember I have a black eye now, to go with my scar.
“Howie! What are you doing!” In an instant, Ryan’s on me like a monkey, scrabbling at my shoulders and my T-shirt; as I stand up, he starts to fall. I catch him by one wrist and set him on his feet, and he flings himself at me, shouting, hitting my stomach with his fists, though he’s so wild the blows barely connect. I put my hands up to ward him off, and at the same time I want to pull him to me. His face is red, and suddenly, after all these weeks, he might actually cry. Stepping back, he glares at me with bared teeth and takes a swing that doesn’t come close. “What are you doing here?” he cries shrilly, then turns and dashes toward the woods.
The other boys kick the dirt; despite my appearance, I’m still some kind of authority figure. I reach down and set the little cart on its four wheels, then I kick the plywood jump off its bearings. I give the whole crew a disgusted look. Ryan’s Indians cap lies in the dirt at Greenshirt’s feet; I pick it up and shake it at him, then turn and follow Ryan into the woods.
I find him on a log with his arms crossed, staring at his feet, and again I’m struck by his not having run far. I sit down and pat his knee, and he jerks his leg away, his heel catching my shin. Down the path, the go-cart coughs and starts up again.
I don’t think Ryan meant to kick me, but I lift my leg and tap his shin in return. He moves his leg away. I lean down to look at his face, and I can see tear lines, like the tracks of snails, marking his dirty cheeks. I dust off his cap and place it on his head, then I run my hand over his narrow shoulder blades. He lets me do this, so I rub his neck, and when I rest my hand on the log behind him he’s almost cradled in my arm. “What are you doing here?” he mumbles.
I scratch my forehead. What am I doing here? I’ve got no answer. What was I doing at Sylvia’s dry-out place this morning, and what am I doing anywhere at all? I can’t think when I spent a more complicated day, yet now, surprisingly, I don’t feel so bad. I’m almost cheerful. For one thing, I’m giddy with relief at finding Ryan okay, at learning his truancies are no more than this. I think of what might have been going down, and my thoughts flood with sins I’ve not wanted to consider—petty theft, weird sex, drugs—then I put them from my mind. It seems remarkable that if I could speak I’d tell him he’s too young to be taking a go-cart through a homemade obstacle course, while all the time thinking it’s not such a big deal.
Ryan picks the bark from a section of log. I lean over to watch, and he tears off a strip and flicks it to the ground. Underneath, the wood is pitted with dark, tiny holes. A spider stretches its legs before moving out of view, and two gray, segmented creatures wander in circles, then move toward Ryan. He inches closer to me.
I watch him tear off three more inches of bark, and my heart goes out. I want so much for him, and I want his attention and admiration for myself. I want things to be easy and natural, and in the movie version of this scene I’d chuck him under the chin. Instead, I nudge him ’til he’s leaning against me, and he permits this with a little resistance. I exhale loudly, and he says, “What’d she do, hit you in the face?”
It takes me a moment; then I laugh. Ryan gives me half a smile, as though I’m crazy but more or less interesting, and I shake my head to tell him no, his mother didn’t hit me. I’ll never manage the word accident, but I give it a shot and come up with “Hipshuh!” He looks uncomprehending.
There’s a rustle on the path, and we look up. Three boys have stumbled upon us, and when the first stops abruptly they bump into each other like stooges. They eye us warily, and Ryan says, “You can walk here. We’re not gonna hurt you.” Once they’re gone, we get up to leave, too. We walk silently to the parking lot, and I’m thinking I could make an interesting tale of my adventure at the rehab clinic if I could only tell it. But I can’t, so we climb in the truck, and I’m turning the key when I have to say something. After the fiasco with Sylvia and the worries over Ryan’s whereabouts, some stock should be taken. I can’t just move on in silence.
I turn toward Ryan and point to the scar on my forehead. I run my finger along it, ducking my head so he can see how fat and spongy it is. If he wants to, he can touch it. He looks, but keeps his hands to himself. “You got that in a war, right?”
I nod, though in my sixteen days I saw precious little of battle. But what’s important is I bumped my head and got injured, so I tap his chest, then throw my hands up and make the sound of an explosion. For a moment I’m floating, and I think of the palm trees and the passing rocks, of the bright blue sky filtered in orange dust. I knock my skull on the window panel behind my head, and it makes such a thud that Ryan and I both jump. I could be dead now—easily!—but I’m not; I’m only injured. My head’s cracked open, and my fingers trace the blood rushing down my face. With my palm, I hold my brains in my skull. My eyes close very slowly, and when I come to, I clap my hand over my mouth. That’s how it happened, my friend.
Ryan blinks at me. This is the most complicated thing I’ve tried to tell him, and I hope it transmits. It strikes me he may think it’s cool to be a soldier, and though I’d love him to admire my guts and glory, that’s not the point now. I gesture at the wooded path and move my hands like I’m driving the go-cart. I’m driving along when I fly out of control, then I’m crashing, I’m in the hands of fate! I wave my fists and hit the window again, then the blood, the skull, the hand holding brains. I raise my eyebrows: wanna end up like me?
I think Ryan gets it, or some of it, anyway. I shake my finger at him and pat my chest, then I put my hands on his head. How precious it is! Maybe this is too much, because he pulls away. He takes the four Radnor Tag Day cards from the dashboard and mashes their edges together, his brown knuckles whitening. “You worry too much,” he says. “I know what I’m doing.”
I consider this. Probably it’s true. Perhaps he’s old enough or skillful enough to fool with a go-cart, but he’s dealing with me now, and I’m squeamish about injuries. I’m wondering how to convey this when Ryan blurts, “My mom would let me.”
To show what I think of this suggestion, I say, “Pffft!”
The go-cart boys are reappearing over the mound of dirt, and I raise my hand to indicate how big they are. Why, the bastard in green will be shaving soon! He sighs, and I cross my arms and shake my head no. He’s not to go there, and that’s final.
Ryan says, “You think I’m a baby.” I shake my head again. I don’t, but I’m making decisions. He bends one card in half and stands it on the dashboard like an upturned V. “What am I supposed to do for fun?” he says. But hell: there are millions of ways to have fun. Once school gets out I’ll take him swimming; I pantomime this. I look at the little bent card on the dashboard again and swing a bat. Or maybe he and I could take tennis lessons. As a teenager, I wasn’t half bad. What else?
“I wanna go to Aqua Splash Down.” It’s a water park in the farmland. I’ve never been there, but the commercials feature bare, young flesh. “They have a pool with a simulated wave machine and a really big slide,” Ryan says. I nod
. We can do that. He gives a satisfied look, then asks, “Do you think Laurel would want to come along?” I’m not sure, but I nod again. In this way we have a conversation.
22
THEY’RE ALL HOME WHEN we pull into the drive, drinking beer on the back stoop and playing a damn word game. As I turn off the engine I hear one of the boys say, “It was the best of times, but all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way.” This is the last thing I need.
Ryan climbs from the truck and runs toward the stoop. He frisks across the green yard like a puppy, and Laurel calls out, “Hello there, happiness.” But I take my time. The day’s finally gotten to me, I guess; my head hurts, and I’m feeling my black eye. I’d sneak to my room, but they’ve already spotted me. Laurel gasps as I approach.
“So that’s what she meant. Howard, are you all right?” I nod, flapping my damp shirt. “Do you need an ice pack?”
Nit says, “Hey, Howard, you run into a door?” Yeah, moron, that’s what I did. Nat cuffs his head, and maybe Nit realizes this is his dumbest remark yet, because he adds, “How ’bout a beer?” and disappears into the house.
Laurel brushes a strand of hair from her eyes. “You okay?” she murmurs, and touches my arm. I nod. “She called—his mom. Left a message sometime this afternoon, I guess. She sounded pretty upset.” She puts a hand to my forehead, then touches the skin beneath my eye, and I pull back. “Ooh . . . Well, that’ll wait. Drink your beer first.”
I sit on the step, and Nit brings a bottle of beer. Ryan’s teasing Ruby with a stick, and Ruby’s growling and wagging her fat finger of a tail. A breeze passes down all the back yards, touching each neighbor’s trees in turn, and when it reaches us I see my catalpa shimmer. I watch Ryan and Ruby skittering around, then Ryan runs toward the little stable building. He scoops up an old catalpa pod and flings it over the stable roof, then circles the yard and makes another toss, then another and another. He has boundless energy.
Nit says, “Frankly, Ishmael, I don’t give a damn,” but no one answers. Let them have their silly game. I lean my head against the railing and close my eyes, and I might even doze off. I breathe deeply, as though I’m already asleep, and the last thing I hear is Laurel murmuring in low tones.
By the time I listen to Sylvia’s message, the sun is setting, and the aimless sky is a hearty blue. I heave myself up and go inside, and the little alcove where my answering machine sits is in shadow. I hit an overhead light, and the stairwell pops in, hard and bright. A red number on the machine tells me there’s one saved message, and the first thing I hear is Sylvia sniffling.
“Hi, Howie, are you there? If you are, please pick up. It’s Syl.” She sniffs again, then says, “Howie, I swear to God I didn’t know you’d been hurt. If I had, I . . . This whole thing is really incredibly difficult for me, and I know you only came down to give me moral support, but I was just so—crestfallen—at not seeing Ryan there, not seeing my sweet baby boy that I—just, I . . . I’m going to have to be here a little longer than I originally thought, and I feel really—” She breaks off and blows her nose, and I picture the neat way she does it, folding the Kleenex in half, then folding it again and again. Then she collects herself, taking a deep breath and swallowing loudly, and I suppose she knows I’m imagining her doing this. “You’ve always been there for me, Howie. You always have, and you know I love you for that, because frankly, no one in my whole life has been nearly as—has been as supportive or consistent. But I don’t think even you or anyone else realizes what I’m going through, and just how hard it is. The shock of suddenly having your whole life taken away. All your support! To lose your home, your child, your job. To be stripped, stripped of everything that makes you feel like . . .”
Sylvia goes on, telling me all the things I can’t possibly know. I’m feeling drained now, and I’d forget the world, but Sylvia keeps speaking: high, rambling, full of sniffles. A door slams, and I hope it’s not Ryan, but of course it is. He comes in carrying the dog, but when he hears his mother’s voice he sets Ruby down, then stands in front of me, leaning on my stomach. I put my hands on his shoulders. At least Sylvia’s stopped talking about how rough it is for her; now she’s asking me to give Ryan a kiss. Ryan tilts his head back and looks up at me, and I look down and raise my eyebrows. I can feel the soft bristle of his hair through my shirt. His mother says, “Don’t forget, now, Howie, that I love him very, very much, that he’s my precious boy, and that I’m doing all this just so the two of us can have a better—” Then I reach out and turn off the tape.
II
23
I WAKE UP EARLY and do something I almost never do: stay in bed for a while. These days I’m busy the moment my eyes are open, but today I just sit up and look at the half-lit world. Outside, dawn has broken, and the crown of the catalpa is a grayish softness. On the next street over, rooflines are emerging. The house behind us has a turret room just like ours, and as I blink out at the morning its metal weather vane flashes like a struck match.
I look around my room. It’s a nice room, with two tall west-facing windows, and it’s been mine since the day the folks and I moved in, though it no longer seems like any boy ever lived here. Gone are the psychedelic posters I put up in high school, gone are the yearbooks and Rat Fink statuettes, the troll-doll bong, the concert memorabilia and other teen doodads. Gone is the glass terrarium where Dakota, a rose-patterned corn snake, lived from my tenth birthday until sometime in my twenties; gone is the autographed photo of the Milwaukee Braves. But not everything has been tossed out. My old clarinet is somewhere in the attic, I know, along with two or three military souvenirs I don’t ever want to see again and a carton of report cards and school photos and childhood drawings, all carefully boxed up by my mom. She packed away stuff from her own childhood and my dad’s, too, and as I sit watching the catalpa molt slowly to green, I wonder whom she thought I’d be leaving our possessions to.
We got this place for a song, and though for years restoration was my folks’ main preoccupation, I was permitted to do what I wanted with this room. My father’s mother gave me a great big oak dresser that had belonged to her uncle, and over the years I gradually ruined it by covering it with STP stickers and Day-Glo peace symbols; then I started to strip off the dark finish and never completed the job. When I first came home and was convalescing, I’d sit in my chair and gaze at the half-naked side of that dresser and vow that once I was recovered I’d knock out the refinishing job. That would be the beginning of my brand-new life. These are the vows you make when you’re incapacitated, no matter how sentimental they seem later. Now I recall how I threw all that old stuff away. I balled up the posters and drove the half-stripped dresser to a construction site, where I heaved it into a Dumpster with all my might. It was Mom and me then, and after my dad’s death I’d withdrawn from the low life and started at the convent. I threw out almost everything I owned and painted this room white.
I hear a door creak, and Laurel pads to the bathroom, followed by the click-click-click of Ruby’s nails. I close my eyes—ten more minutes—and when I open them again, the day has arrived at a full-tilt summer greenness, and the sky is blue. Across the room, there’s now a shorter chest I picked up at a furniture-in-the-raw place, with a couple of photos on it. The largest is my parents’ wedding picture, and beside it stands a snapshot of Sylvia, taken my senior year. Someone—a girl I’ve cut from the frame—has her arm over Sylvia’s shoulder, and Syl is turning as I snap the shot. She’s smiling with her mouth open, showing her tongue. Sylvia always said the photo didn’t look like her, and though I carried her yearbook photo into the jungle, I prefer this one for the warm trust of her expression and for something familiar, a look at once distant and contented, that exists now only in photos.
I look at the other picture, the wedding shot. For years, people told me I resembled my dad, despite my mother’s bulkier build, and this picture shows him at the age I was when I came home injured. He’s all dressed up in a tuxedo, not at all how I remember h
im at the end: knotted and gnarled with an old man’s irritations, drunkenly carping about the system and the government, by which he meant what happened to me. In the photo he looks as he must have felt on that long-ago day, as if he was accomplishing something. I wonder briefly what a wedding day would be like.
I get out of bed. Yesterday in the parking lot I had an idea, and suddenly I want to put these photos behind me. I’ll move ahead. The floor is smooth and cool to my bare feet, and when I toss my T-shirt at the laundry hamper, it drops in neatly. Laurel’s in the hallway, dressed in a white kimono, a pale pink towel cocooning her hair. “Morning, Howard,” she murmurs, and I give her a smile. In the bathroom I see my eye has grown yellower and greener overnight.
24
DOWNSTAIRS, LIFE IS GOOD. Laurel has the door open, and the birds are making a racket in the yard. Puff, the neighbors’ old cat, has wandered over to stare at Ruby through the screen door, and between the dog, the cat, and the birds it seems we’ve got the Peaceable Kingdom happening here.
Laurel’s making borscht. She grins, brandishing her beet-stained hands, and on impulse I catch her wrists and press her palms to my face. “Howard, no! Oh, now look at you! That’ll look just like a strawberry mark!” She wets a paper towel and dabs the pink from my cheeks, and as she does so she adds, “Eye looks a bit darker today. How’s it feel?” In her Texas accent, Hah’s it fee-ul.
Nat comes in and turns on the radio, and though this shatters the serenity, I roll with the punches. The song that’s on is “Bad to the Bone,” and Nat’s strumming air guitar when Ryan comes in doing exactly the same thing: same sucked-in abdomen, same low-down, punchy look. Nat makes a little leap, and the two face off in the small space of the kitchen, hunched and glowering like bad things on a stage. Laurel says, “Crazy guys.”