by Julia Holmes
I tilted my head back to see the men high in the Great Tree. I could see their boot soles clearly, as if they were standing on the surface of a clean, cool river and I was looking up from the riverbed. I smiled at the sight, the men hanging about in the trees, rapt, the spectators studying the cake or watching us on the stage. The theatrical workers navigated their ropes, whispering terse directives to one another. I saw the brothers on their branch, the elder brother watching me with cold intensity, the younger muttering apologetically to his hands. My brothers.
Bedge cleared his throat; he shifted his weight from one leg to the other. The river emptied forever into the gray harbor. My heart swelled with longing for my mother, with love for the crowd before me. After all these years, the sight of other people could still be the most beautiful.
The Bell Ringer, announced Bedge in a voice that was so successfully theatrical it made my blood run cold. The man in the black jacket regarded me from the bottom of the platform steps, his hands shaking visibly as he clutched the hood, the length of rope. What a heartbreaking disappointment a father could be when one held him up against the beauty and complexity of the world that had existed before him. Perhaps he was no one, only a man who had stolen precious hours from me, time I might have spent with my mother while she was still in this world. The man in the black jacket climbed the wooden steps and was soon beside me. I stared straight ahead, looked deep into the empty streets. I could hear the river emptying into the sea; I could hear the fountain churning, the soothing illusion of infinite action.
In the poor light, the stone facades of the distant buildings looked as if they had been cut from coarse gray paper, and I imagined I could hear the cellophane rustle of counterfeit fires burning in their fireplaces, could reach out and touch anything in the world, no matter how remote. This world, however imperfect, was all that my mother had left me. I was frightened. Bedge, I whispered. He ignored me. Rust-colored leaves gusted across the park and toward the river. The air was drafting coolly up from the surface of the water. I could see out of the corner of my eye that the man in the black jacket was trembling, staring at his hands, the tools that they held. My neck ached from the strain of standing at attention before the crowd. The man in the black jacket whispered, Meeks. I ignored him.
If I could hold in my mind everyone who had ever hurt my mother and within the final act destroy them, obliterate everyone who had hurt my mother by hurting her only son, perhaps I would. There is no grief as deep as a mother's grief, as never-ending; no one knows her grief but her. Other scenarios, other visions of life, are forever presenting themselves, but one must choose how to live, choose whether or not to betray the people who introduced you first to this world. I knew this story by heart, the story of Captain Meeks and of my brothers and sisters. Was I my own man or was I theirs, or did I belong, eternally, to my mother?
The crowd had begun to chant my name: Meeks. Meeks. Meeks.
I was trying to imagine what it would be like to feel the terrible coarseness of the heavy rope as it fell against my neck; I was trying to imagine what it would be like to smell the old fabric of the black hood as it fell across my face, and then I saw a man break away from the shadows and run. What a heartbreaking and beautiful sight! I wanted to call out to him, to shout: Run! Run! A lone figure, his legs pumping wildly as he ran through the dusk toward the black horizon; he ran, turning this way then that, racing toward me, then away, as the Brothers of Mercy gave chase. Look how energetic and hopeful these lifeforms are! How vigorous and blind and greedy to the end, the man churning through the thinning air, the Brothers of Mercy, sleek and holy-looking, closing in on him. Run! Run!
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Julia Holmes was born in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, and grew up in the Middle East, Texas, and New York, where she is an assistant editor at Rolling Stone. She is a graduate of Columbia University's MFA program in fiction. Meeks is her first novel.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First and foremost: thanks to my family, especially to my parents and to my brother, Justin Holmes.
Many thanks also to: Nadia Aguiar, Kirsten Axelsen, Mark Binelli, Heather Brand, James Buresh, Brian Evenson, Manuel Gonzales, Kira Henehan, Hillery Hugg, Jessica Lamb-Shapiro, E. Tyler Lindvall, Sam Lipsyte, Ben Marcus, Kelly Mendonca, Dinaw Mengestu, Lydia Millet, Robyn O'Neil, Alice Peck, Melanie Suchet, Wells Tower, Marcela Valdes, Teresa von Fuchs, Brant Lake Farm and the New Politeness. The deepest thanks to PJ Mark and Jedediah Berry, who made this book possible.
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Table of Contents
To Lucy and Richard Holmes,
The Brother's Tale, Part 1
MAY
The Father's Tale, Part 1
JULY
A Brother's Tale, Part 2
A Father's Tale, Part 2
SEPTEMBER
A Brother's Tale, Part 3
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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