Castle of Days (1992) SSC

by Gene Wolfe

  Have you ever noted how eager it is to close when you have pulled out your hand? You cannot write The Future on the outside of an envelope; the box would cross that out and stamp Dead Letter Office in its place.

  Still, I have a tale to tell; and a tale untold is one sort of crime:

  I was in the army, serving in Korea, when my father died. That was before the North invaded, and I was supposed to be helping a captain teach demolition to the ROK soldiers. The army gave me compassionate leave when the hospital in Buffalo sent a telegram saying how sick he was. I suppose everyone moved as fast as they could, I know I did, but he died while I was flying across the Pacific. I looked into his coffin where the blue silk lining came up to his hard, brown cheeks and crowded his working shoulders; and went back to Korea. He was the last family I had, and things changed for me then.

  There isn’t much use in my making a long story of what happened afterward; you can read it all in the court-martial proceedings. I was one of the ones who stayed behind in China, neither the first nor the last to change his mind a second time and come home. I was also one of the ones who had to stand trial; let’s say that some of the men who had been in the prison camp with me remembered things differently. You don’t have to like it.

  While I was in Ft. Leavenworth I started thinking about how it was before my mother died, how my father could bend a big nail with his fingers when we lived in Cassonsville and I went to the Immaculate Conception School five days a week. We left the month before I was supposed to start the fifth grade, I think.

  When I got out I decided to go back there and look around before I tried to get a job. I had four hundred dollars I had put in Soldier’s Deposit before the war, and I knew a lot about living cheap. You learn that in China.

  I wanted to see if the Kanakessee River still looked as smooth as it used to, and if the kids I had played softball with had married each other, and what they were like now. Somehow the old part of my life seemed to have broken away, and I wanted to go back and look at that piece. There was a fat boy who was tongue-tied and laughed at everything, but I had forgotten his name. I remembered our pitcher, Ernie Cotha, who was in my grade at school and had buck teeth and freckles; his sister played center field for us when we couldn’t get anybody else, and closed her eyes until the ball thumped the ground in front of her. Peter Palmieri always wanted to play Vikings or something like that, and pretty often made the rest of us want to too. His big sister Maria bossed and mothered us all from the towering dignity of thirteen. Somewhere in the background another Palmieri, a baby brother named Paul, followed us around watching everything we did with big, brown eyes. He must have been about four then; he never talked, but we thought he was an awful pest.

  I was lucky in my rides and moved out of Kansas pretty well. After a couple of days I figured I would be spending the next night in Cassonsville, but it seemed as though I had run out of welcomes outside a little hamburger joint where the state route branched off the federal highway. I had been holding out my thumb nearly three hours before a guy in an old Ford station wagon offered me a lift. I’d mumbled, “Thanks,” and tossed my AWOL bag in back before I ever got a good look at him. It was Ernie Cotha, and I knew him right away—even though a dentist had done something to his teeth so they didn’t push his lip out any more. I had a little fun with him before he got me placed, and then we got into a regular school reunion mood talking about the old times.

  I remember we passed a little barefoot kid standing alongside the road, and Ernie said, “You recollect how Paul always got in the way, and one time we rubbed his hair with a cow pile? You told me next day how you caught blazes from Mama Palmieri about it.”

  I’d forgotten, but it all came back as soon as he mentioned it. “You know,” I said, “it was a shame the way we treated that boy. He thought we were big shots, and we made him suffer for it.”

  “It didn’t hurt him any,” Ernie said. “Wait till you see him; I bet he could lick us both.”

  “The family still live in town?”

  “Oh sure.” Ernie let the car drift off the blacktop a little, and it threw up a spurt of dust and gravel before he got it back on. “Nobody leaves Cassonsville.” He took his eyes from the road for a moment to look at me. “You knew Maria’s old Doc Witte’s nurse now? And the old people have a little motel on the edge of the fairgrounds. You want me to drop you there, Pete?”

  I asked him how the rates were, and he said they were low enough, so, since I’d have to bunk down somewhere, I told him that would be all right. We were quiet then for five or six miles, before Ernie started up again.

  “Say, you remember the big fight you two had? Down by the river. You wanted to tie a rock to a frog and throw him in, and Maria wouldn’t let you. That was a real scrap.”

  “It wasn’t Maria,” I told him, “that was Peter.”

  “You’re nuts,” Ernie said. “That must have been twenty years ago. Peter wasn’t even born then.”

  “You must be thinking of another Peter,” I said. “I mean Peter Palmieri, Maria’s brother.”

  Ernie stared at me until I thought he was going to run us into the ditch. “That’s who I mean too,” he said, “but little Peter’s only a kid eight, maybe nine.” He glanced back at the road. “You’re thinking of Paul, only it was Maria you had the fight with; Paul was just a toddler.”

  We were quiet again for a few minutes after that, and it gave me time to remember that tussle on the river bank. I recalled that four or five of us had walked up to the point where we always tied the skiff we used to cross over to our rocky, useless island in the middle of the channel. We meant to play pirates or something, but the skiff had dragged loose from its moorings and was gone. Peter had tried to get the rest of us to search downstream for it, but everyone was too lazy. It was one of those hot, still summer days when the dust floats in the air; the days that make you think of threshing. I caught a frog somehow and hit upon the idea for an experiment.

  Then I remembered that Ernie was at least partially right. Maria had tried to stop me and I had hit her in the eye with a stone. But that wasn’t the big fight. It was Peter who came to avenge Maria then, Peter with whom I rolled snarling and scratching, trying to get a grip on his sweat-slick body in the prickly weeds. Ernie was right about Paul’s being no more than an infant, and there had been a scrap with Maria; but it was Peter who’d finally made me cut the string from the frog’s leg and let it go. Side by side we had watched the little green animal hop back toward the water, and then, when it was only one jump away from dear safety, I had lashed out and suddenly, swiftly, driven the broad blade of my scout knife through him and pinned him to the mud.

  The Palmieris’ place was called The Cassonsville Tourist Lodge. There were ten white cottages and a house with a café jutting out of the front to support a big sign that said EAT like Buddha commanding the grasshopper.

  Mama Palmieri surprised me by recognizing me at once and smothering me with kisses. She herself had hardly changed at all. Her hair had gone gray at the temples, but most of it was still the glossy black it had been; and while she had always been fat, she was no fatter now. Maybe not quite so solid looking. I don’t think Papa really remembered me, but he gave me one of his rare smiles.

  He was a small, dark, philosophical man who seldom spoke, and I suppose people meeting the two of them for the first time would assume that Mama dominated her husband. The truth was that she regarded him as infallible in every crisis. And for practical purposes Mama was almost right; he had the inexhaustible patience and rock-bound common sense of a Sicilian burro—all the qualities that have made that tough, diminutive animal the traditional companion of wandering friars and desert rats.

  The Palmieris wanted me to stay in Maria’s room (she had gone to Chicago to attend some sort of nurses’ convention and was not due back until the end of the week) as a guest, and insisted that I eat with the family. I made them rent me a cabin instead at five dollars a night—which they swore was the full rate�
�but I gave in on the eating. We were still talking in that disjointed way people do on these occasions when Paul came in.

  I would not have recognized him if I’d met him on the street, but I liked him at first sight; a big, dark, solemn kid with a handsome profile he had never discovered and probably never would.

  After Mama made the introductions she started worrying about dinner and wondering when Peter would get home. Paul reassured her by saying he’d driven past Peter walking with a gang of kids as he’d come out from town. He said he’d offered his brother a lift but had been turned down.

  Something about the way he said it gave me the willies. I remembered what Ernie had said about Peter being younger than Paul, and somehow Paul gave the same impression. He was wearing a college sweater and had the half cocky, half unsure mannerisms of a boy trying to be a man, yet he seemed to be talking about someone much younger.

  After a while we heard the screen door slam and light, quick steps coming in. When I saw him I knew I had been expecting it all along. It was Peter, and he was perhaps eight years old. Not just another Italian-looking kid; but Peter, with his sharp chin and black eyes. He didn’t seem to recall me at all, and Mama bragged about how not many women could bear healthy sons at fifty like she had. I went to bed early that night.

  Naturally I had been keyed up all evening waiting to hear something that would show they knew about me; but when I fell asleep I was thinking about Peter, and I hadn’t been thinking about anything else for a long time.

  The next day was Saturday, and since Paul had the day off from his summer job he offered to drive me around town. He had a ’54 Chevy he had pretty much rebuilt himself, and he was very proud of it.

  After we had seen all the usual things, which didn’t take long in Cassonsville, I asked him to take me to the island in the river where we had played as boys. We had to walk about a mile because the road doesn’t come close to the river at that point, but there was a path the kids had made. Grasshoppers fled in waves before us through the dry grass.

  When we got to the water Paul said, “That’s funny, there’s usually a little boat here the kids use to get out to the island.”

  I was looking at the island, and I saw the skiff tied to a bush at the edge of the water. It looked like the same one we had used when I was a kid myself, and who knows, maybe it was. The island itself interested me more. It was a good deal closer to shore—in fact, the Kanakessee was a good deal narrower—than I had remembered, but I had expected that since everything in Cassonsville was smaller, including the town itself. What surprised me was that the island was bigger, if anything. There was a high point, almost a hill, in the center that sloped down and then up to a bluff on the upstream end, and trailed a long piece of wasteland downstream. Altogether it must have covered four or five acres.

  In a few minutes we saw a boy on the island, and Paul yelled across the water for him to row the boat over to us. He did, and Paul rowed the three of us back. I remember I was afraid the little skiff would founder under the load; the silent water was no more than an inch from pouring over the sides, despite the boy’s bailing with a rusty can to lighten the boat of its bilge.

  On the island we found three more boys, including Peter. There were some wooden swords, made by nailing a short slat crosswise to a longer, thrust into the ground; but none of the boys were holding them. Seeing Peter there, just as he used to be when I was a kid myself, made me search the faces of the other boys to see if I could find someone else I had known among them. I couldn’t; they were just ordinary kids. What I am trying to say is that I felt too tall out here to be a real person, and out of place in the only place where I really wanted to be. Maybe it was because the boys were sulky, angry at having their game interrupted and afraid of being laughed at. Maybe it was because every tree and rock and bush and berry tangle was familiar and unaltered—but unremembered before I saw it.

  From the bank the island had seemed nearer, though larger, than I recalled. Now, somehow, there was much more water between it and the shore. The illusion was so odd that I tapped Paul on the shoulder and said, “I’ll bet you can’t throw a rock from here to the other side.”

  He grinned at me and said, “What’ll you bet?”

  Peter said, “He can’t do it. Nobody can.” It was the first time any of the boys had spoken above a mumble.

  I had been planning to pay for Paul’s gasoline anyway, so I said that if he did it I’d get his tank filled at the first station we came to on the way home.

  The stone arced out and out until it seemed more like an arrow than a pebble, and at last dropped into the water with a splash. As nearly as I could judge it was still about thirty feet from the bank.

  “There,” Paul said, “I told you I could do it.”

  “I thought it dropped short,” I said.

  “The sun must have been in your eyes.” Paul sounded positive. “It dropped four foot up the bank.” Picking up another rock, he tossed it confidently from one hand to the other. “If you want me to, I’ll do it over.”

  For a second I couldn’t believe my ears. Paul hadn’t struck me as someone who would try to collect a bet he hadn’t won. I looked at the four boys. Usually there’s nothing that will fire up a boy like a bet or the offer of a prize, but these still resented our intrusion too much to talk. All of them were looking at Paul, however, with the deep contempt a normal kid feels for a welcher.

  I said, “O.K., you won,” to Paul and got a boy to come with us in the skiff so he could row it back.

  When we reached the car, Paul mentioned that there was a baseball game that afternoon, Class “A” ball, at the county seat; so we drove over and watched the game. That is, I sat and stared at the field, but when it was over I couldn’t have told you whether the final score was nothing to nothing or twenty to five. On the way home I bought Paul’s gas.

  It was suppertime when we got back, and after supper Paul and Papa Palmieri and I sat out on the porch and drank cans of beer. We talked baseball for a little while, then Paul left. I told Papa a few stories about Paul hanging around with us older kids when he was small, then about me fighting with Peter over the frog, and waited for him to correct me.

  He sat without speaking for a long time. Finally I said, “What’s the matter?”

  He re-lit his cigar and said, “You know all about it.” It wasn’t a question.

  I told him I didn’t really know anything about it, but that up to that minute I was beginning to think I was losing my mind.

  He said, “You want to hear?” His voice was completely mechanical except for the trace of Italian accent. I said I did.

  “Mama and me came here from Chicago when Maria was just a little baby, you know?”

  I told him I had heard something about it.

  “I have a good job, that’s why we come to this town. Foreman at the brick works.”

  I said I knew that too. He had held that job while I was a kid in Cassonsville.

  “We rented a little white house down on Front Street, and unpacked our stuff. Even bought some new. Everybody knew I had a good job; my credit was good. We’d been in the town couple months, I guess, when I came home from work one night and find Mama and the baby with this strange boy. Mama’s holding little Maria in her lap and saying, ‘Look there, Maria, that’s-a your big brother.’ I think maybe Mama’s gone crazy, or playing a joke on me, or something. That night the kids eat with us like there was nothing strange at all.”

  “What did you do?” I asked him.

  “I didn’t do nothing. Nine times outa ten that’s the best thing you can do. I wait and keep my eyes open. Night time comes and the boy goes to a little room upstairs we weren’t going to use and goes to sleep. He’s got an army cot there, clothes in the closet, school books, everything. Mama says we ought to get him a real bed soon when she sees me looking in there.”

  “Was Mama the only one … ?”

  Papa lit a fresh cigar and I realized that it was growing dark and that both of us had
been pitching our voices lower than usual.

  “Everybody,” Papa said. “The next day after work I go to the nuns at the school. I think I’ll tell them what he looks like; maybe they know who he is.”

  “What did they say?” I asked him.

  “They say, ‘Oh, you’re Peter Palmieri’s papa, he’s such a nice boy,’ soon’s I tell them who I am. Everybody’s like that.” He was silent for a long time, then he added, “When my Papa writes next from the old country he says, ‘How’s my little Peter?’”

  “That was all there was to it?”

  The old man nodded. “He stays with us, and he’s a good boy—better than Paul or Maria. But he never grows up. First he’s Maria’s big brother. Then he’s her twin brother. Then little brother. Now he’s Paul’s little brother. Pretty soon he’ll be too young to belong to Mama and me and then he’ll leave, I think. You’re the only one besides me who ever noticed. You played with them when you’re a kid, huh?”

  I told him, “Yes.”

  We sat on the porch for a half hour or so longer, but neither of us wanted to talk any more. When I got up to leave Papa said, “One thing. Three times I get holy water from the priest an’ pour it on him while he sleeps. Nothing happens, no blisters, no screaming, nothing.”

  The next day was Sunday. I put on my best clothes, a clean sport shirt and good slacks, and hitched a ride to town with a truck driver who’d stopped for an early coffee at the café. I knew the nuns at Immaculate Conception would all go to the first couple of masses at the church, but since I had wanted to get away from the motel before the Palmieris grabbed me to go with them I had to leave early. I spent three hours loafing about the town—everything was closed—then went to the little convent and rang the bell.

  A young nun I had never seen before answered and took me to see the Mother Superior, and it turned out to be Sister Leona, who had taught the third grade. She hadn’t changed much; nuns don’t, it’s the covered hair and never wearing makeup, I think. Anyway, as soon as I saw her I remembered her as though I had just left her class, but I don’t think she placed me, even though I told her who I was. When I was through explaining I asked her to let me see the records on Peter Palmieri, and she wouldn’t. I’d wanted to see if they could possibly have a whole file drawer of cards and reports going back twenty years or more on one boy, but though I pleaded and yelled and finally threatened she kept saying that each student’s records were confidential and could be shown only with the parents’ permission.