Little Beasts

by Matthew McGevna

  Ivan immediately turned away as if he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t. Soon enough he composed himself. “It appears that our baby son went three rounds with an armed gorilla, Janet.”

  “Shut up, Ivan,” she snapped, “you’re drunk.” She turned to her son. “And you’ve been fighting. What have I told you about fighting? I thought you were with Dallas—wasn’t he there?”

  Ivan’s eyes came alive. “Oh-ho, he was there all right, and it was him who caused the whole thing. The baby in the manger himself.”

  “Shut up, Ivan. Who did you fight with?”

  “Me and Dallas and Felix, with these kids down the block,” James said softly.

  “He who lives by the sword, shall—” his father started.

  “Why were you fighting?” his mother interrupted.

  James looked back and forth at his parents. “They chased us through the woods,” he answered.

  “Love thy neighbor and all that,” his father said.

  “What were they chasing you for?” Janet asked. She moved toward him and turned his head to the side so she could inspect the bruise. She tried to run her fingers across it, but James knocked her hand away.

  “We stole their wood and tools. They were building a fort.”

  “No, son.” His father seemed to sober, his tone funereal. He reached over and grabbed his son’s arm. “You never steal. There’s plenty of wood and tools right here in your own backyard, no need to go and monkhouse with someone else’s things. You should never steal. It’s a chicken-shit thing to do.”

  “Ivan, shut up,” Janet said, turning to her son. “You fight again, and you’ll be grounded for the rest of the summer. Go to your room.”

  “But about the stealing, son—”

  “Ivan, go somewhere. I don’t care where, but go somewhere.”

  “All right, I won’t get involved,” Ivan replied, holding both palms out in submission.

  James rose from the table and left. He disappeared down the stairs to his bedroom, a small space in the back corner of their semifinished basement. The walls were lined with a cold wooden paneling, painted blue for James, after it was originally pink when Janet used it as an arts-and-crafts room—a hobby she quickly abandoned when it didn’t end up bringing in any extra money. The floors were made of a rough wood, painted a cool gray, with an area rug circling the center. His bed was pushed against the far wall, while a shelf hung just feet above it, displaying his small collection of books. A tome of fairy tales he hadn’t read in a while. A 1982 almanac. A book about whales his brother had bought him three years ago. The spines were lined up, but tilted like dominoes, and James had used one of his dad’s old cowboy boots as a bookend. Across from the bed stood his dresser and a small mirror hung on the wall above it. A dead plant sat in the opposite corner, a gift his mother had bought to “liven up the room,” though James never remembered to water it. The thermometer mounted on the wall above the plant was broken, and in the winter, James had to manually connect the two wires for the heater along the baseboards to kick on. Often his father came down to do it, and nearly every time, he’d vow to have it fixed. “But for now,” Ivan would say, “this’ll take the chill from your little bones,” while James clutched his quilt.

  James didn’t protest his banishment because that was precisely where he wanted to be, especially at night, after his father had had his fill of whiskey and his mother was empty of patience. Besides, with his neck throbbing, and the pain reaching up into his ears where he could feel his pulse, all he wanted was to lie down and close his eyes. He emptied his pockets and placed the little wire man Dallas had made for him on his dresser. Then he climbed into bed and softly nuzzled under the sheet he used as a blanket in the summertime.

  He stared up at the ceiling and wondered what fate the other two were suffering. No doubt, Dallas hadn’t told his father, because he would never hear the end of it. Maybe he would tell his mother. Felix’s parents wouldn’t care, so long as he didn’t do anything that could get them sued. His father Simon would be concerned with who’d won—a competitive streak ran through him that often took hold of his senses, like the time the neighbors threw a block party and he’d joined in the three-legged race with Felix. To win, he’d dragged Felix crying down River Drive, while the boy twisted his body to soften the scrapes from the asphalt.

  James wanted to avoid another fight, at least until September, for if there was anything he feared, it was the threat of losing the freedom of summer.

  He began to think about his brother’s comments, which seemed to increase the throbbing in his neck. I can fight all right, he thought to himself. But what did he mean by sensitive? I fought two kids today. Two kids, and I knocked over that little Brock kid. What was I supposed to do? He thought about this for a moment. He was confused. What am I supposed to do?

  James heard two stiff knocks on his door, and he sat up and peered into the darkness. Switching on the light, he remained silent, listening. Then he heard his father’s mumbling voice.

  “Son. Open the door, son.”

  James wanted to pretend he was asleep, but he knew his father would persist. He always called him “son” when he wanted to complain. Reluctantly, James crossed the floor and opened the door. The light fell on his father’s figure, swaying in the doorway. Ivan squinted, made blurry eye contact, nodded, and pushed his way into the room. He was carrying a small glass, and a clear sandwich baggy with white pills. Two spoons were lodged in his right hand. He crossed the room and sat down on the edge of the bed. James sat beside him and stared at him with curiosity. Ivan looked at James for a passing moment, before he nodded and burped as he spoke.

  “Good that you’re okay, son.” He reached into the inside pocket of a nylon jacket he had all but inherited from Kevin and pulled out a blue bag. He broke whatever was inside it, and massaged the bag until it grew ice cold in his hands. “Whereabouts did they chase you?” he asked as he reached over and placed the cold compress on James’s neck. The boy winced from both the pain and the cold, and then took over holding the compress.

  “Back close to the Estates.”

  “Ah, there’s tons of trails near those Estates. I used to take you on the horse through there.”

  James was already nodding. “I know, we ran down the trail when we started getting chased.”

  “It’s a good length, that trail. The Indians used to use it for trade and travel. Back when I first bought this place, James, there were woods as far as the eye could see, and the stream opened up into the river, and we used to get the horse to pull firewood back from deep in the woods. All those fires we used to have . . .”

  James nodded. He’d heard these stories. “Well, it’s all houses now. We ran smack into a fence.”

  Ivan shook his head. Emptied two white pills onto one of the spoons and placed the second spoon over it. Crushing the white pills into a powder, he continued to shake his head.

  “That’s a real shame. Now when I bought this place, there were no houses back there at all. That’s a real shame, to put a fence up like that.” He emptied the white powder he’d made into the glass and reached into his other inside pocket to pull out a small pint bottle of whiskey. He poured some whiskey into the glass and stirred the drink with one of the spoons.“I don’t understand it, myself. Why would you buy a nice piece of wooded property and then fence it all in? They could have owned horses, they could build a nice little boat house at the bottom of the hill to put canoes in, they could have cut a foot trail down to the water. What the hell’s the sense in building a big fence right down the hill? Here, I want you to drink this.” His father handed him the whiskey glass. James stared at it, then back up at him.

  “That’s alcohol,” he said, stunned.

  His father grinned. “It’s got a couple aspirin in it too. It’s good for these type of things. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

  “Mom says don’t drink alcohol,” James muttered.

  “Your mother says I’m a drunk,
you’re a drunk, everybody’s drunk. I think she’s drunk. Here, take this, it won’t kill you.”

  James held the glass and peered into it. It looked a bit like iced tea, until he raised it to his nose and took a whiff. His body reacted with a chill that sent his small frame wriggling. His father laughed.

  “Come on, now, get a good swig.”

  James raised the glass to his lips and started to drink.

  “Good job, make sure you get the last of it, or you’ll miss the aspirin. Atta boy.”

  James finished; chills ran down his spine, and he retched a couple dry heaves. He coughed, and cleared his throat.

  “Good for congestion too,” his father added.

  The two of them sat for a while; Ivan told his son the aspirin and whiskey would help put him to sleep and take some of the throb out of his bruise. James could tell his father was still bothered by the fence, but now he was on the subject of Mr. Darwin.

  “He goes about town with his Christian stuff, and that’s all well and good, but . . . it’s not what you need to know. It’s not good for kids to hear about when they’re so young. All that duty and all that heaven and hell. Time enough for counting when the dealing’s done, that’s what I say.”

  James stared blankly at his father, who by this time was rambling as if he were alone in a room somewhere, laughing at his own jokes. Then his face turned serious and brooding. “One day . . . one day he’s going to push too far with me, that priest of theirs.”

  James knew he was speaking of Minister Roberts, the Darwins’ spiritual counsel at their church. Every time his father would see the minister pulling into the Darwins’ driveway, or ministering door-to-door on River Drive, he’d come barging into the house howling about it. James never understood why his father hated him so, but it was well known that this was the case.

  Ivan’s face brightened up again, as a new memory surfaced. “Did I ever tell you the story about what my father . . . your grandfather did to a priest a long time ago?”

  James shook his head. This was a new story, one he’d never heard. He sat up, but his father reconsidered.

  “Maybe we’ll wait for another time,” he said, slapping his son on the knee and rising to his feet. “If I speak too badly about religion and all that, you know who’ll have my head in a jar somewhere?” He pointed his index finger to the ceiling.

  “God?” James asked.

  Ivan’s face went sour. “God? Hell no, your mother.” He took back the whiskey glass and swept away all evidence that he’d been there. “God,” he repeated. “I’ll take my chances with God.”

  After Ivan checked to make sure he had everything with him, after he told James to keep the cold press on his neck as long as he could, after he asked his son not to mention the whiskey to his mother because it was just better for both of them, just as unexpectedly as he had arrived, Ivan backed out of the room and closed the door, leaving James dozing off from the aspirin and whiskey. The raindrops hitting the window pane tapped a light rhythm, and sent James reeling off into oblivion.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  NO MATTER WHAT MEDIUM David Westwood worked in, paint, pastel, charcoal, or pencil, he wanted to see the world in contours. The shape of an object, and its relation to other objects, was the most important aspect of reinterpreting reality. The way he saw it, humans were too self-absorbed to pay attention to the shadows and colors of a thing. Humans make out the shape of an object, and will only pay more attention if it moves awkwardly, or threatens to take their lives. A tiger is a collection of six cylinders with an oblong shape at the head, until, of course, it’s bounding across the jungle, growling toward an unsuspecting village full of dancing little children. Then the tiger is ivory teeth, and fire orange—legs roped with muscle—and the time is late afternoon, as the sun casts a deep shadow across the scene, and “eyewitnesses” are able to describe every blade of grass. David Westwood believed this in his heart. He wanted his own work to bring it right to everybody’s stupid little attention.

  Across town, on the western side of Turnbull Road, David sat in the garage he had converted into a studio, and worked away at his latest still life. He propped up a cow skull, a tea bag, three jars of spaghetti sauce, a can of Campbell’s Soup, and wrapped them in the American flag he’d taken down from his front yard. His father had displayed the flag with the rest of his neighbors in a spontaneous, communal spark of patriotism after what had happened three months earlier at the embassy in Beirut. It was the spirit of the times, the neighbors said. He’d had numerous arguments with his father over taking the flag down until he finally did it himself, while his father was pulling a double shift as a security guard at a King Kullen in a rich town further east. If worse came to worst, he thought, he could always sidestep a battle by telling his father that he needed the flag for a still life. His father wouldn’t be any more impressed. He’d probably scan his eyes over the canvas, breathing through his mouth. Not getting it. But if the flag served some purpose, he’d most likely acquiesce.

  Half his heart was in his work, but the other half was tormenting his mind over the fact that he had just called Julia and she hadn’t answered. Was she practicing her violin? Was she out with some other boy? Who knew what she was doing. What brainless crap she was being talked into by her brainless friend Krystal. He took a thick charcoal stick and slid it across the page, lining the outer shape of the cow’s skull. He didn’t lift the charcoal from the page, but dragged it down to catch the contour of the spaghetti jars. Usually, when he drew, he would tap into a trance, as if he were hypnotized. He’d lock into the still life, running his fingers across the page, eyes fixed to the object, as if his hands were just physical manifestations of what he saw. He was left-handed, and used this advantage to smear his palm across the lines, to follow every curve his eyes followed, and blend it naturally into the paper. When he came out of the trance, he would be able to look down at the outside of his left hand and see the dark charcoal covering his flesh from the tip of his pinky down to his bony palm. It was the sign of a hard day’s work.

  But today, every time he began to fall into a rhythm, his mind would snap back to Julia on the other side of town. The thought made his lines bolder. The charcoal sticks in his hand would break and roll to the floor. David felt a kind of sadness that had no beginning and no end. He felt a pain in the back of his eyes. His chest was heavy, and he didn’t know exactly why. All the world was in order, as far as he knew.

  Julia was likely at her violin, unable to hear the phone. Chin up to receive the wooden curve at the nape of her neck. Other wannabe artists at T. Walter High were probably running the streets, eating fast food, getting stoned with their friends. Not home creating more brilliant work than he was, which is what he feared the most. His mother was home from her work waiting tables at Windmills Diner. His father was out, probably sitting in his rent-a-cop car watching out for vandals at King Kullen. Despite these reassurances to himself that all was in order, there was still something deep down that scratched at his mind like a cat begging to be let in. The focus he had longed for was lost in this nagging mist of fear and sadness. He had taken his dinner out of the oven and brought it into his studio to eat. He had closed the door to keep the dog out. He had taken out the garbage, handed his mother her glasses, and told her to leave him alone for the rest of the night. All he’d wanted was to be left alone, and now he was. He could hear his ears ringing. He stood up, put the charcoal stick down, opened the garage door, and disappeared into the warm, wet Turnbull night.

  * * *

  David didn’t know what he was going to say or do when he got to Julia’s house, but he knew he was heading there. The rain was getting heavier with every step he took up Turnbull Road. Julia’s house was to the north, a good mile after Nino’s Deli. The rain was falling in fat, round, July drops, slowly at first, until the wind picked up, and David could hear it hitting the street hard. He hadn’t thought to grab a jacket for his walk. He was wearing jeans and a light T-shirt, which was cover
ed in charcoal dust, paint, and glue. The rain had made the charcoal run, like mascara, down the front of his shirt until it resembled the face of an old woman awash in tears.

  By the time he’d reached Nino’s Deli, he could look up at the streetlights and see the rain pouring in swirled sheets, twisted by the wind. Blown across the sidewalk. It pushed against his body. It was warm out, but he was soaked through and shivering. His clothes sagged heavily at his feet, yet he plodded along, bending his face to the wind, and ducking from cars packed with teenagers riding the shoulder, hoping to soak him with puddles. David endured this torment. He dared not reach back and give any of them the finger. They would surely slam on the brakes and make him eat that finger.

  The closer David got to Julia’s house, the more his heart raced. He became more hopeful with every stride that she would be home: that her parents would be out somewhere. He kept his mind focused on her face. The face she’d often give him at school, at the end of the hallway, when she hadn’t seen him all day. Her eyes would come to life. He remembered how quickly he had fallen for her because of them. In fact, it was Julia and those splendid eyes that caused him to believe what he did about art. Before he had met her, he was just like the rest, obsessed with appearances. In May she emerged from a gaggle of cheerleaders in the hallway and fixed her eyes on his. They were locked. They stared at each other until they both disappeared from view, in the thick people-stream of backpacks and laughter. Before that day, David only saw the nameless faces of his classmates—ugly scowls, smug grins, judgmental eyes. But when Julia’s eyes captured him, the rest fell away into blurry shapes, moving about in the hallways, stepping across his path. That moment changed his focus. Every time he dared to imagine himself famous, standing in the midst of reporters and in snapshots at the entrance to his splendid new show, he imagined himself giving credit to Julia, who’d be leaning on a wall off to the side, demurely smiling and sipping from her wineglass. Turning away from Warhol’s offers to videotape her. Julia was in all of his daydreams.