by Charles Rose
“You’re the one who should go to the police, but if you won’t I will.”
“That you’re not going to do,” Ray said.
“Don’t be telling me what to do, little man.” Mason Rackstraw was thumping his fist in his hand. “Let me tell you who’s going to hear about this. My good friend Chief Cosgrave will hear about this because I’m going to tell him personally you know where your panel truck has gotten to.”
“You do that. Oregon’s one big place.”
“Chief Cosgrave will know how to find that woman. He’ll have her back here in no time. All I have to do is pick up the phone.” Mason nudged Flo’s shoebox with his foot, toed the bristles in Flo’s hairbrush. “All I want is that truck back, son.”
Ray picked up a claw hammer. A cutout of Homer Brown, his daddy Mason Rackstraw, there was the chief, don’t forget Chief Cosgrave, they were all there where he’d put them. A school bus had its flat stop arm out. Because the things he’d created wouldn’t move Ray might have cracked his daddy’s head like an egg. But he knew it was too late for that.
Once his daddy was out of the trailer, out of the trailer and out of his life, Ray finished the school bus he was working on. He painted it and set it up with the others. He cut out another school bus and he painted that one too. Then he went outside and put on his sandwich boards. He couldn’t picket downtown on Sunday night, nobody would be there. So he’d do his picketing in his own backyard. From the Sno-Cone sign to the school bus, counting steps, one and two and three and four and five and six.
Chief Cosgrave was standing in front of the Sno-Cone sign.
“If I’m wrong, Chief, please set me straight, but I believe you are trespassing on my daddy’s property.”
Chief Cosgrave’s flashlight beam cut a figure eight on the school bus windows. “It was your daddy who asked me to come here. He told me you threatened to bop him on the head with a claw hammer. And there’s a matter of a missing panel truck. You wouldn’t happen to know what happened to it?” The chief stopped wiggling the flashlight beam because he had to turn off his scanner.
“Anyone could have stolen it. I’m always leaving the keys in that truck.”
Chief Cosgrave sidled along the Sno-Cone sign. He zigged the flashlight beam up and down, in Ray’s face, at his feet. “All right, we’ll forget about the truck. And what you nearly did to your daddy, I’m willing to overlook that too.” Chief Cosgrave produced and lit up a cigar without interrupting his flashlight performance. “Let me tell you something, Ray. My daddy was like your daddy was once. He used to whale the living daylights out of me. Or he’d come up behind me and kick my ass if he even suspected I’d done something wrong. Hell, I even thought he was right. But if it had gone on, I might have done something drastic. I might have gotten myself in big trouble. But it didn’t go on. Something happened.” Chief Cosgrave took his cigar out of his mouth, put it in again, took it out, training the flashlight beam at Ray’s feet. “My daddy, he got pissed off at me once because I wouldn’t bring him the newspaper. He got out of the porch swing and tried to kick my ass one time too many. He was chasing me all over the front yard, and he skidded on one of my roller skates. Oh yes, I was to blame for that too, but it didn’t matter who was to blame because my daddy, he broke his right leg in two places. All those weeks he was laid up, he thought about what had happened to him. After that, he didn’t kick my ass. Not once did he kick my ass or lift a finger against me in anger. He was careful not to get near me after that.”
Ray wished he had learned how to roller skate, but since he hadn’t, what did Chief Cosgrave’s story have to do with him? “I never hit my daddy with that hammer.”
“You might have killed him. You know that, Ray. If you had, my problems would be over.”
“Well I didn’t and they aren’t.”
“Oh aren’t they? I think they are. Because, you see, either you get your ass out of Ott or I run you in for disturbing the peace. I mean now. Right here in this backyard.”
Ray couldn’t believe that could happen, not in his daddy’s own backyard. But the chief’s glowing cigar said it could. So did the lights in the neighbors’ windows, doors opening, people coming out of doors and hanging out of windows, including Mason Rackstraw brushing his teeth.
“You can see for yourself, you are disturbing the peace. I mean as long as you have a potential for disturbing the peace and folks are around to be disturbed, I can arrest you. I’ve talked to our mayor about this, and our mayor he talked to Judge Popwell. Judge Popwell construes disturbing the peace as potentially disturbing the peace, even if the accused is on his own property. And this backyard isn’t even your property. So every time you turn on that bandsaw, well draw your own conclusions. You’ll get six months in jail for sure. In my jail. How’s that suit you?”
Ray saw what Chief Cosgrave was driving at, and he also saw him put out his cigar and unhitch the handcuffs on his belt.
“You coming quietly, or are you leaving this town?”
Chief Cosgrave kept the flashlight beam puddled at Ray’s feet so Ray would be able to think about the choice he had. But Ray didn’t want to think about anything. Instead he looked for a sign, in the sky, where else?
The sky looked like it usually looked when there was cloud cover, no stars visible. Then an old woman who had had a life once, a ghost woman coasted out from behind a cloud, her arms spread out like she was doing a swan dive from a very high diving board, dipping down over Ray’s school bus, trailing flaky sparks like a comet, zooming up again, up up in the sky, into a cloud bank, gone forever.
There were days when Flo Mayfield saw Ray all over Portland. Passing the Church of Elvis, Flo thought she had seen Ray entering. Flo had seen Ray wearing blue sunglasses in the Washington Park Rose Garden. Looking out over Portland from Washington Park, she saw Ray floating over Mount Hood.
Sitting quietly on her favorite bench on Pioneer Square, Flo was watching a woman with frowsy gray hair play “Blue Skies.” The woman’s music was attached to a music stand with a pretty pink plastic clothespin. The sky overhead was darkening. Not a chance, Flo thought, for the sky to be blue, not today, tomorrow, she would see. It hadn’t started to rain yet. Two teen girls in red ponchos went by. “That’s exactly what I said to him,” one said, “what did you think I would say?”
When she saw Ray get off the trolley, Flo wouldn’t go to him right away because a school bus on Pioneer Square had to stop in front of her. Its stop arm shot out. Flo waited for it to fold in.
Kelp
Here is Carl doing his dance in the parking lot. Carl works for Florida Power, but he thinks of himself as a potter. He does pottery and takes it to arts and crafts fairs. Kathy told me they couldn’t afford the trip out here, even though Carl wanted to see Oregon, so I offered to pay for his place on the coast. I didn’t want them spending much time at home because Tony wouldn’t go for that.
Tony has gone into his shell. This happened before, in Menlo Park. I could understand it then. His mother died of emphysema. Tony couldn’t grieve and he couldn’t forget, so our life went bad. In Oregon we started over. Tony got a good job with Hewlett-Packard, in Corvallis. We bought a nice house in a suburb. We’d had two good years together. Then Tony goes into his shell again. Lying in bed beside Tony, I think of us playing the alphabet game, the four of us driving to the coast. I see an A. I hear Holly say that’s on a license plate. No license plates, I hear Tony say, that makes the alphabet game too easy gang.
Here is Carl in the parking lot, scuffed cowboy boots, black Levis, blue denim shirt with the sleeves hacked off, gray, black-beaded Stetson. I have all this on the camcorder. Carl picks up my daughter Holly and swings her up off her feet. Carl’s big hands encircling her small hands, this big man towering over her, Carl swings her through whirling space. My turn! Now it’s John’s turn. Carl swings John out by the wrists. John yells but nothing will happen to him. I tighten my grip on the camcorder. Wh
at we did that night on the beach, yes pulling me out of myself. If I could take it back I would, I have this brass bell in my brain that deafens me with its nos. With Tony the nos are padded felt, of a piece with our way of life.
Here is one last shot of the Oregon coast. The lighthouse tipping the headland like a giant brow in a mountainous head, the endlessly incoming heaving waves, I get that all on tape. I put the camcorder back in its case, jauntily sling the strap over my bony shoulder, grope in my purse for my car keys, remember I gave them to Carl.
Carl tells Kathy, sit in the back seat with the kids. Carl will be the navigator. Kathy spreads out in the back seat. She has put on more weight since we went to the coast. She tears open a package of pretzels, gets settled for the ride to Corvallis. It’s hard to believe she was thin once, really pretty. She didn’t have to wear a bra when we were girls in Florida.
We can’t do the alphabet game, for there aren’t many road signs on this road. Kathy does whale riddles with the kids. What did the whale do when his piano sounded funny? Holly says he called the piano tuna. What did the whale do when he couldn’t pay his bills? He called a loan shark, from Holly again. Two days ago we went whale watching. I have it on tape, the backs of the whales and their tail flukes sliding out of the sea. The swells were deep down, not choppy. That’s how it felt up front on deck. I was keying in to deep-down swells. My turn! My turn!
Kathy hung over the stern rail, seasick, spitting, miserable. She wouldn’t ask Carl to turn back. He’d rented the boat for two hours. Carl wasn’t with either one of us. He was above us, on top of the cabin, up with our boatman who’s letting Carl steer, his hands on the wheel, his face pushing into the wind.
There is an accident up ahead on the road. Cars are lined up ahead of us. No sign yet of an ambulance. Carl gets out with Holly and John. I tape Carl flapping his Stetson, whooping, going yi yi yi. Carl does what he feels like doing. The day I met their flight in Portland, we had a picnic lunch in Washington Park, in the rose gardens looking out at Mount Hood. I had to bat away the honeybees. Carl let a bee light on his ham and cheese sandwich and opened his mouth to eat it. Bee sandwich, he said, and snapped his teeth. It’s on tape. Carl’s bee sandwich, Kathy’s submarine, my wispy watercress.
About an hour away from Corvallis we come to a railroad crossing sign. The sign is precautionary. Do not loiter on the tracks, it says, for the unwary. Kathy and Carl say the sign is a joke but for me it isn’t that funny. People need to be told to look out for themselves. I say a child could get hit on his bicycle. Just waiting around for the train says Carl. Kathy says there are too many signs out here. She says no one in Florida would put signs in the fields, like rye grass, corn. I point out reddish brown from a field. When the rye grass is cut the fields are burned off—that isn’t labeled, I say to Kathy. Kathy complains about no smoking signs, do this, do that signs. She says there are too many no-nos today. I let this pass, keep my eyes on the road.
We stop in Corvallis for groceries and beer. Carl buys a case of Oregon beer, microbrewed here in Oregon. I’m aware that he’s picked out a cheaper brand. He carries the case of beer to the car. I look off at the hills, the Douglas firs, the hazed-over mountains behind the hills. Holly has to go to the bathroom. Kathy crosses the road with Holly to the convenience store’s clean women’s rest room. I have Holly on tape pulling Kathy’s hand. Carl comes up behind me. He puts his hands on my hips. He takes the camcorder. He tells me he wants me on tape. You’re doing all the taping. Know what that means. Means you’re not here. So I pose for Carl as Miss Sultry Siren, hands on hips, come-hither smile. Then I thank Carl for going for beer. He doesn’t have to know it isn’t our brand.
Here we are at nine-o-one Spruce Lane. Carl’s standing on his head, his long legs and back and buttocks reversed, elbows out, triceps on view. Kathy’s outside on the patio. She’s smoking another cigarette. I’ve lost track of how many she’s smoked today. She smoked in the back seat coming back from the coast. My daughter Holly’s opposed to smoking. She also keeps tabs on how much I drink. If I have more than two glasses of wine, I hear about it from Holly. I had my third glass during dinner. The children are watching Carl’s headstand. Tony must be behind me for I feel his breath on the back of my neck. He wants me tonight, of that I am sure. But it won’t be like it was once.
Here we are in the hot tub, Kathy, John, Holly, and me. Pools and streamers of churning suds circulate in our heated water. The tiles are blue, the rim is white, the boards are treated, resinous oak. A birdhouse hangs over Kathy’s head, friendly, red pine fence colored. One of our Oregon finches tunes up.
Carl has the camcorder. The eye of the camcorder covers his eyes. I lower myself into the water, crossing my arms to conceal my breasts. Kathy cradles her breasts in her hands, stands up, sloshing water. She asks Carl to get her a cigarette. John and flat-chested Holly hop up and down like wary birds. Carl isn’t going to get in the hot tub with us. He says he’s allergic to hot tubs. They soften him up like too much sleep. Hot tubs are for softies, he says.
Here we are on the patio. Carl is wearing his netted shirt. Now I see the tattoo on his chest again—a hula girl and a mermaid in sun-slicked colored inks. Here’s Tony doing yard work. It’s Saturday, weeding and mulching day. Tony uncoils the garden hose, untangles a looped green snakelike snarl that has unaccountably configured. Kelp that night on the beach—feels like, looks like garden hose. Or swollen scallions, soggy, spongy leeks with yellow green leaves like artichoke leaves. K in the alphabet game. Now I try to reverse the comparison. A garden hose feels like kelp, even here in my own backyard.
Tony’s weeder is kicking up dirt. Weeding goes on with him constantly.
— Any word on when Carl will stop being Carl?
— I haven’t heard. Maybe after he leaves.
— Seems to me you left Carl’s type in Florida.
I am holding the garden hose, watching Carl sweep off the patio with pronounced, exaggerated strokes of the broom.
— Things that get left can come back again.
— Like Carl and your sister. How many proms was she queen of?
— Two. One in high school. One in college.
— And the best she could come up with was Carl?
— Yes, the very best.
— Don’t forget, she was also a cheerleader. Which you weren’t.
— I didn’t need to be, not for you.
But Tony knows I don’t mean it, not in the way I would have once. Carl waves at me, and I try not to smile at him. Tony he goes on weeding. He’s squatting, his knobby knees spread like a little man I could pick up and kiss, but not now, not how I am now.
Here are Tony and Carl watching a documentary about catching alligators that Tony’s sister in Florida videotaped. The tape was run on Tampa TV and won a prize in a state competition. Tony and Carl drink our microbrewed beer. The fine points of catching alligators are demonstrated by an expert. You grip them firmly by the snout. There are classes, teachers, students. The teacher is showing his sweet young thing how to grip an alligator’s snout.
I’m taping two men watching a videotape. Tony’s never been close to an alligator. The tape ends where it began with a cracker woman who lost one hand to a gator she didn’t spot in time. She got back to the road and flagged down a car and got to the emergency room in time.
The alligators are doped with a hypo, netted and taken to tourist traps where tourists with cameras take photographs of gators chomping raw chicken meat. Carl turns, gives me a wink.
Here we are having dinner. I did a meatless lasagna. Kathy did a spinach casserole. Carl says he will do the dishes. He does them at home but not all the time, only when Kathy lets them pile up. Carl does all the plumbing and wiring, and he carries the garbage out. Kathy does all the woman’s work. Kathy tells us she’d rather have it that way. She’ll do as she was brought up to do.
— I do like I was brought up to do.
Carl does what he wants to do. If Carl wants to go fishing that’s what he does. Kathy talks out of one side of her mouth when she’s uncomfortable and doesn’t want to show it.
— If there’s something he wants that I don’t want he goes after it without asking me.
— I don’t just ask you, Kathy. I tell you what I want. If you don’t like what I want to do, then I think twice about doing it.
Holly asks Carl what he does, what it is Carl thinks twice about? Carl says you wouldn’t be interested. It is Kathy who cares what Carl does.
— I let Carl know what he can and can’t do.
— You will do that, Carl says.
— Most of the time I let you know. And I draw the line on some things.
— Like what, Uncle Carl, from Holly.
Carl grins.
— Like sharing my secrets with little girls. That’s one thing your aunt draws the line at.
— What secrets?
Holly, please don’t ask, we don’t want to know Carl’s secrets.
Tony’s salad fork stays close to his lips. I’m afraid he’ll get up from the table. I might have to handle this by myself unless Tony takes the kids with him.
— Carl hasn’t got any secrets. He has things he wants to keep quiet about.
Carl picks up the pepper shaker. He has this magical shrinking powder. It shrinks nosy children to the size of mice. I breathe easy. I see that Kathy is relieved. Tony doesn’t get up from the table. Carl looks at Holly then at John. He shakes pepper out on the palm of one hand and rubs his hands together.
— Who wants pepper? Who’s first?
Here we are playing volleyball at nine-o-one Spruce Lane. Our friends, the Lamars, are here, and our other friends, the Vanmeters. Carl’s team is trailing by six points. It doesn’t matter who wins, but I know Carl wants to win. I see Carl waving the Stetson going yi yi yi on the road coming back from the coast. He’s wearing the Levi’s, the netted shirt. His hula girl twists and his mermaid flops. By the time Carl’s breath slows down, they are in their usual dance and splash.