by Janis Owens
“My God,” he muttered when we found it. “I can’t believe it. I’m damned if this isn’t the same spread.”
“Well, no one comes up here very much,” I said by way of apology, though he just peeled back the nubby spread that was perfectly gray with dust and peered at the underside like an archaeologist opening a tomb.
“By God, it is the same spread,” he murmured, then lifted his face and gazed around the dirty, cobwebby room in wonder. “Jeez, that’s weird. I can’t believe my maps are still up—it’s like time travel.”
Me and Kenneth just looked around at the faded old maps that covered the walls like peeling, cracked wallpaper, always had, for as long as I could remember.
“How long have they been here?” Kenneth asked, as they looked ancient, antebellum, at least, though Gabe said they weren’t that old, but the same age as me.
“That’s right,” I said, suddenly remembering what Simon had told me the weekend of Lori’s wedding, “you put them up the summer you lived here. You wrote a book. You taught Sim to swan dive.”
“Who told you that?” Gabe asked with a quick, curious look.
“Sim,” I answered slowly, smoothing back one of the old maps that had curled in on itself. “A long time ago.” Then, of the maps, “Why didn’t you take ’em with you?”
But Gabe didn’t answer right away, just stood there looking around the room, his hands in his pockets, absently chewing his lip.
“Well, I left in kind of a hurry,” he finally said, then strolled along the wall and told us the names of all the battles: Gettysburg and Sharpsburg, Chancellorsville, the Western Theater, occasionally adding a further bit of comment (“Where Jackson was shot by friendly fire,” or “Where Pickett got that ass whipped”), speaking of them with a familiar affection, as if they were old friends.
Long after me and Kenneth had gone downstairs to supper, he stayed up there cleaning and rearranging, still at it the next morning when Mama sent me up to get him for church. It was late by then, after nine, Sim and Missy already gone, though when I got to the apartment, I found Gabe still in his pajamas, posed in front of one of the maps, thumbtack in hand.
He smiled when he saw me, called good morning, though I just tipped my head to the house. “Mama says to come on,” I told him. “We’re all ready.”
But Gabe didn’t seem to get it. He just stared at me blankly a moment, finally said: “I’m not going, son.”
I was the one left staring then, because around our house, church attendance was mandatory, no options, no excuses. Saying you had decided not to attend was like saying you’d decided to quit brushing your teeth. I didn’t quite know what to make of it, finally just asked the first thing that came to mind: “Are you saved?”
I don’t even know why I asked; I guess I was still trying to identify him; pinpoint exactly what he was, though Gabe is constitutionally unable to answer a question in a straightforward manner (worse than Mama, even) and took a seat on the edge of the desk, told me in this weary, patient voice: “Clay, listen: I’m saved, sanctified, Holy Ghost–filled, water-baptized, grew up at Welcome, went to church three times a week the first eighteen years of my life. I know every verse of ‘Amazing Grace’ by heart and more of the King James Version of the Bible than Jerry Falwell. It’s just that Sundays are the only time I have to work on my book. Tomorrow I take my place as, you know, chairman of the board at Sanger, and my book has been lying up here gathering dust for ten years. It’s time I got snapping, worked it out—you understand?”
Now, if there was anything I understood intimately at that point in my life, it was a father figure who worked ’round the clock, pursued by the demon of ambition every waking hour. So I just nodded, said something like, “Oh,” then trudged downstairs to Mama, who was waiting at the door.
“He ain’t coming,” I told her. Then, at the furrow that appeared like magic between her eyes: “He’s already saved.”
Mama, who’d fought the War of Ambition with Daddy for twenty years, didn’t look too convinced, just snatched up her purse, muttered: “I wouldn’t be so sure of thet.”
Well, poor Gabe; I knew he was in for it then, because when Mama lapses into her old hick accent, watch out. But Sunday was still my day with Grannie, so I really didn’t give it much thought, at least not till sometime later, in the middle of the night, when I was awakened by the quiet tread of feet on the creaking old floors of the hallway. I was immediately awake, always on the alert for any phantom slaves that might be lurking about, though the ghostly figure that came through my door didn’t confront me with a message from beyond the grave, but just dissolved into the darkness of the bottom bunk.
For a moment, I just lay there, then carefully peered over the edge of the bed, was relieved to see that it was just Gabe. He was hardly visible in the winter darkness, identified only by the dull sheen of his pajamas and the outline of his jaw that was clenched just like I clench mine when I get mad. (Daddy used to call it “jacking that jaw,” as in: “Don’t you be jacking that jaw at me, young man.”)
For a moment, I just hung over him like a bat, then whispered: “Gabe?”
“Yeah?” he answered in this tired, whipped voice, and just that quickly, I knew what was up: that Mama had waited till they were in the privacy of their bedroom before she gave him his spanking, and dang, I was embarrassed, thinking she was getting as bad as Lori, who was as sweet and agreeable a little redneckling as ever decorated the passenger seat of a truck, at least till the moment she got that ring on her finger. After that, Curtis couldn’t so much as fart without her being on him like white on rice, about taking too many days off work, and not making enough money, and not getting home on time.
I didn’t know what to say; finally settled on the obvious: “You and Mama have a fight?”
“Yeah,” he repeated with a sigh. “You heard?”
“No,” I said, returning to my bunk and speaking into the darkness. “Daddy used to sleep in here when they’d fight.”
“Did he really?” he asked with a little more interest.
“Yeah.” I yawned. “But he never made it till morning. Bed’d be empty when I woke up.”
He grunted at that, a grunt I couldn’t read very well, not having been around him too much. It might have been a grunt of interest, or disgust, or maybe tired resignation. I was lying there trying to identify it when he spoke again in this casual, conversational voice: “So, d’you like Rocky?”
There was no one else in the room, so I figured he was speaking to me, though I didn’t have a clue in the world what he was talking about. I was thinking about this kid at school named Rocky Smith who I’d known in, like, the fourth grade, was wondering how Gabe would know him, when I realized he was referring to a movie poster of Rambo that I had pinned to the wall above my dresser.
“You mean Rambo?” I asked. “Ain’t you ever heard of Rambo?”
“Oh, yeah,” he answered easily. “Rambo. Yeah, I heard of him.” He was silent again for a moment, then offered: “They made a lot of them, didn’t they? Two or three?”
“Three,” I told him with great authority, for I’m kind of a Vietnam expert, at least where the movies are concerned. “They’re making the fourth one in Israel right now.”
Gabe made another noise at that, of interest, I assume, and we talked about Vietnam for quite a while, me debating the relative merits of Platoon versus Rambo, Full Metal Jacket versus First Blood, which is how I knew about Vietnam, from the movies. On his part, Gabe discussed it with the same authority he’d talked about Gettysburg, till I finally couldn’t keep my eyes open a moment longer, fell dead asleep.
When I woke up the next morning, the bottom bunk was empty, as predicted, though our midnight conversation had caused me to oversleep and I didn’t have time to ponder it too much. I just threw on my clothes and scrambled downstairs and out the door, making the bus stop just as old Bus 96 creaked to a massive halt, Kenneth saving me a seat up front like he always did. Local gossip being what it
is, a lot of people already knew that Mama had remarried, my fellow students pleasantly weirded out by the fact that my new stepfather was also my uncle, though no word of Gabe’s gayness had leaked out, so no one made too much of it.
They probably just figured it was the kind of thing us Rich White Folk did, married our cousins to save on taxes or something, the day passing easily enough, with only one twist: as I walked out of seventh period, Mrs. McDonald handed me a stiff white envelope, told me to give it to my mother. Now, this kind of official notification usually didn’t bode well for me and I wanted to rip it open immediately, but contained my curiosity till I was on the bus, when Kenneth (who is my official document reader) carefully opened the flap and read half a dozen legal-looking forms that were signed by all these official people.
“It’s an appointment for testing,” he finally offered when he made it to the last page, “on January eighth. Gosh, that’s quick. It took me, like, two years to get tested.”
“Tested for what?” I asked, though Kenneth just shrugged.
“Gifted, I think. Yeah, it’s an IQ test, see? Mrs. McDonald must have recommended you. Cool.”
I suddenly remembered Gabe at the door Christmas Eve, telling me he was taking me out of special-ed and putting me in Gifted, though I didn’t believe him at the time, because even at a poor country school like Lincoln Park, being sent out to the special-ed portable had a definite social stigma, like a tattoo on your head that read: DUMB AS A POST.
That’s the local term for learning disabled, and let me tell you, I’ve heard it applied to me on many an occasion, and always in this shocked, incredulous voice, like: How could it be? My brother was an honors student, a four-year letterman, my sister a virtual prodigy—how could one family produce such a sad variety: an achiever and a genius, and then, well, me.
It was one of those unfortunate mysteries of life, first detected in kindergarten when I was still heartbroken over leaving the comfort of my sagging old house, and a little puzzled about all those letters and things they were always trying to make you memorize. I mean, I knew the “Alphabet Song” already, or at least the beginning and the end, and it wasn’t till halfway through first grade that I realized that memorizing the middle part was a very big deal, indeed.
Such a deal that my failure to recite it meant that Mama and Daddy were called in for conference after conference, and flash cards were bought and many a weary evening was spent with Mama or Missy (or sometimes, Daddy or Sim) holding up letters and numbers and looking at me with these faces of sincere amazement.
“It’s an eight, Clay, an eight!” Missy would positively shout. “Gosh, we’ve done it fifty times!”
Even Mama would look concerned when it was her time to hold the cards, even piteously beg: “Baby, just concentrate. Pay attention.”
Then she’d hold up some word like BIG or AN or THE, and I’d look at it and concentrate with all my might, but nothing would ring a bell. Sometimes I’d venture a guess, and if I was right there would be universal rejoicing, but most of the time I wouldn’t be, and more conferences were called and more flash cards bought, till I was finally packed off to a neurologist in Tallahassee, who gave us the word on the dyslexia.
After that, I was taken out of regular classes and placed in a special-ed classroom that housed disabilities ranging from normal-looking dumbos like myself, to kids with autism and hyperactivity and even one (Travis Davies) with cerebral palsy. We all knew why we were there: we were the school gimps, the dumbos, the doofuses, the polar opposite of the tiny percentage of the school population that was officially designated Gifted, who wiled away their afternoons in a bright little classroom by the cafeteria, doing fun nonsensical things like playing chess and building Lego cities and studying the Life of Bach.
To even be invited for testing was a big deal, and as soon as I got off the bus that day, I ran home as fast as my little legs would carry me, wanting to discuss it with Mama, to ask how this miracle had come about, and how and oh, how could anyone expect me to pass an IQ test when I couldn’t even read? I mean, I could make my way through a comic book or a TV Guide, but I still had a lot of errors, and as for my handwriting, it was just junk, pure and simple, just crap. I mean, it embarrassed me so much that I never wrote publicly because I wrote like a total retard, I really did.
But when I got to the house, I lost my nerve the moment I walked in the door, for Mama was hosting a bridal shower for a girl at Welcome that night, and when she is consumed with one of her creations, be it a bedroom or a bridal shower or a rose garden, she can get kind of snappy, all her creativity and attention on the matter at hand.
I didn’t even tell her about the testing notice, just attached it to the refrigerator with a magnet and tried to lie low, though I was too wired to stay still, kept wandering downstairs, running into her, getting in the way. I was hoping Gabe would come in, but he was holed up in the old apartment, working on his book, I assumed. I would have liked to have gone up there and showed him the testing notice, and in a perfect world, even confessed my doubts about making the grade. But I was too embarrassed to bring it up, and had gone downstairs one last time to lay in a few supplies for the evening—cookies and mints and a cupcake or two—when I came upon Gabe standing at the counter in the kitchen, eating grapes.
He was obviously about as thrilled as me with the idea of sharing the house with a bunch of chattering women, though before I could make a comment, Mama came around the corner, all dressed and lovely, with that crazed creative gleam in her eye.
“Clayton?” she snapped. “Didn’t I tell you to stay upstairs? It’s seven o’clock; the ladies will be here any minute. Now, get going—”
I was making noises of excuse when Gabe straightened up and told me in this weary, fatherly voice: “Run get your coat, son. I’ll take you to the movies.”
I was immediately interested, though I’d already seen the movie that was playing in town (Lethal Weapon); Miss Susan had taken me and Kenneth on Friday. When I told Gabe, he just popped a handful of grapes in his mouth, said, “This is different. It’s about Vietnam, showing in Tallahassee. It starts at eight. We’ll have to hurry.”
Well, he didn’t have to ask twice. I flew upstairs and got my jacket, and once we were on the interstate, cruising west at about ninety miles an hour, I got up the nerve to bring up the Gifted Program in a sly way, told him how much fun they had in there with the Legos and the Life of Bach. He was so agreeable that I even summoned up the courage to mention the testing notice, that he was very casual about, only saying, “Really? Good. I think your appointment is on the eighth.”
“It is,” I said, and wanted to discuss it more, though I didn’t want to baldly admit that I didn’t think I could read well enough to pass it, just observed that it was quick; that it’d taken Kenneth two years to get tested for Gifted.
“Dumb-asses,” was Gabe’s muttered reply, though I don’t think he was referring to Kenneth, but maybe the school board for taking such a long time to test him.
I just agreed with a great roll of my eyes, as if this was just an evident truth we all lived with, didn’t bring it up again as we got off the interstate and navigated the crappy Tallahassee traffic toward the FSU campus that is just huge, enormous, full of snaking side roads and dead ends. Fortunately, it’s where Gabe got one of his degrees, so he knew his way around, took us straight to the auditorium where the movie was showing, already in progress when we sneaked in, so that it was kind of hard to follow.
After a while, I realized it wasn’t actually a movie, but a documentary, the kind you see on PBS, though I was cool with that. I liked seeing the steaming jungle and helicopters; the automatic rifles and crew-cut Marines. I was casually scanning their faces, wondering if any of them might be Uncle Ira, when I realized the soldiers on the screen were like, naked, lying on the floor with these Vietnamese women who were also naked, or at least topless.
To tell you the truth, I didn’t know what they were doing down there, at least not unt
il Gabe inhaled sharply at my side, muttered, “Shit,” in this tight little voice.
Well, I knew what they were doing then, or at least I thought I knew, and must say I watched it with a great conflict of emotions, thinking on one hand: My gosh, that’s the way sex really looks? Because it was so different from what you see in the movies, so less (how can I put this?) active and yipping, the soldiers carrying on conversations like they were having their nails clipped or something.
On the other hand, I was also kind of breathless and tingly, the way you are that first happy moment in any movie when yes! The woman is taking off her shirt! Though the tingles passed quickly, replaced by this growing unease, because these women weren’t thin and sexy, like Molly Ringwald or Demi Moore, but plump, round-faced farm girls, smiling at the camera the whole time, trying to be agreeable to the soldiers who were just treating them like crap, making jokes about them, laughing in their faces.
I could feel my heart begin to beat hard in my chest, not the thump of desire, but anger, tears of outrage very close to the surface, though I didn’t cry, of course. I didn’t want Gabe to think I was a child or something; didn’t want to spoil the fun. I just sat there and quietly sniffed as the action moved on to even sadder sights: toothless old women talking about how their villages were bombed; a family of thin, ragged children crying by an open grave, holding up a photograph of their dead father.
By then, the pressure behind my eyes was so strong it made my sinuses hurt, though I managed to stay dry-eyed to the end, even thanked Gabe for taking me when we got back to the house, then creeped upstairs to my bed like a whipped dog and lay there in silence, tearless and depressed. I guess I’d held back so long I’d clogged my tear ducts or something, because my head hurt like heck, but I couldn’t let it go. I just lay there replaying little snippets of the movie in my head, the fearsome implications of Mama’s reaction growing in me, knowing that if she found out, then it would be all over but the shouting for Gabe. I mean, he was already in hot water about the f-word, and missing church; what would she do if she found he’d taken me to a dirty movie?