She said, Why you wearin a hat in the car? In this heat in here?
Brother made no reply but started the car. She watched the gloved hands holding the steering wheel like it was a red-hot poker bent in a circle.
You see ’em, see his hands? she asked the boy. He had his face in the Mason jar, sniffing sweet fumes. He didn’t bother to answer her.
Still within the ghost time, they were at the woman’s house in a blink of an eye. The girl was on the porch swing with the woman. She could hear the boy, thump-thumping upstairs. The windows were open and up on screens all over the house.
The thump-thumping was like day, which came and went, like rain, and like the pump in the basement of the house, thumping on and off in the flash-flood time of spring. Spring was now. It could flash flood at anytime.
Who knew this? Did the girl know this? It was Tree who knew, who was emerging now from the girl.
Gone be a warm day, ninety or more, I bet, the woman said brightly to Brother, who had been there once and had come back again. He was standing in the shade near the porch. There was a young maple tree right by the steps. Brother stood there, his hat in the leaves.
Why you over there, Brother? the woman said. Whyn’t you come on up here?
Brother came quickly up on the porch.
He got a sunburn, the boy had said when they were in the car. Now the girl said it.
He got him sunburned, she said in her small voice, saying parts of words she knew. They were not always the right words. They were what she knew and she used them for everything. The woman didn’t know that. Neither did Brother.
The boy knew. Upstairs, he thumped harder. He heard her say, Let me down. Down. I want down, and he knew she was talking about Brother’s face. The boy knew a lot.
See you got your straw out, the woman said to Brother. She let the girl slide off her lap, for the child had said she wanted down. The girl scrambled up again, on Brother’s lap this time. She was whimpering, saying, Let me down, but meaning something entirely different.
Tree was emerging from the child. She was coming out of it. She could feel it happening.
I’m here in this place, she thought. What has happened. Something will happen that took place when I was here before.
Will you pick me up some books? the woman asked. Tree had heard her ask for number books once before.
I have to go. I got to hurry, Brother told her. Tree saw his face go still. He had hidden an expression of pain and sadness.
The girl cried out. She raised her arms to Brother.
I’ve seen her do that before, Tree thought. Brother will put her on his head a minute, before he leaves.
And it happened as Tree had seen it happen before. Brother swung the child down again into the woman’s lap.
Got to go, Sweet, Brother told the child. With ghostly suddenness, he was in his car. Tree was with him, almost under his skin, as if she meant to drive the car herself. She was so close to Brother, she shared some of his pain and sadness. She knew how to keep it hidden.
Tree had an urgent desire to get things over with. The place of these people was beginning to come apart for her. She needed soon to get back to her own place, her own people again.
Where we going, Brother? Tree said. He could not hear her.
In this dream-place, or whatever it was she was in, Brother was no longer the eighteen- or nineteen-year-old handsome dude she’d first seen on the street and then through the table. Now he was old enough to be her uncle, which he was, or even her father, which he wasn’t. In the car with her now, he was a middle-aged man. But he had on the same clothes, the same beautiful suit and shirt, as he had the first time she’d seen him.
Two ages of the same ghost, wearing the same suit.
And she didn’t know why.
Always got to run errands for her, shoot, she heard Brother say to himself. We gone be late for the game!
The car was flying. It screeched to a halt at his home across town. Tree knew he lived alone. They were in the house. All was dark. Window blinds were green, drawn down against sunlight. The rooms were still and shadowy.
Why won’t he turn on a light? Tree thought.
He put a night light in a wall socket behind an easy chair. By this faint light, he contemplated his dim reflection in the mirror. Face, ghosty, barely visible. His hands fluttered to his face. Cain’t stand no more, he moaned.
There was pain in his face and hands and arms. It was down his back. Tree couldn’t imagine how he lived with so much pain day after day. For he was awfully sick with something.
Brother’s home was not much of a home. Just mostly empty, dark space. There was but one picture in the whole place. It was on his dresser. A framed photograph of ten or so people all standing facing the camera. Behind them was a shiny convertible. There was a short, thin, older man in the middle. There were four young men on one side of him and six women on the other. The men and women, at various stages of youth. Ten children, Tree counted. One would be the woman on the porch swing. Tree recognized Brother as the youngest-looking boy. She had never seen the other children. The faces of the remaining three boys in the photograph had been Xd out. Big Xs across their bodies.
Staring in the mirror, Brother had forgotten what he came for.
In the drawer, Tree told him. Lookit, there are the number books she want. Just get them for her.
He couldn’t hear her talking. But just before he left the house, he remembered. He got the books and hurried out. He had to meet friends in the next town. He would pick up one person here, not far away. And they would all drive to Cincinnati to the night ball game. Cincinnati Reds at the beginning of the season. Brother was faithful and wouldn’t miss one night game. He had a season ticket. Drinking, talk and laughter, chicks, was what the Reds game was about. Down by the river. Forgot all their troubles. Brother took an umbrella against the strong sun. His friends no longer made a joke about it.
Can I go, too? Tree asked him. Never been no ball game before.
Only the men went. Brother didn’t bother mentioning this fact to the woman with the girl. She never asked to go.
Tree was in the car going fast. Brother was late for the one pickup in the town. He went to the northside, where there was a ball-bearing plant. Standing on the street near the plant entrance was a man waiting, as Brother brought the Buick to a screeching halt beside him. The man looked alarmed at how close Brother had come to his feet. But he didn’t flinch.
He was in the car, taking Brother’s place. I’ll drive, the man said.
Tree knew the voice; found it soothing. Who are you? she asked him, who you belong to?
Brother slid over, not looking at the man. Nor did the man look at Brother.
He drove. You look sick, he said to Brother. Brother made no comment back. Neither Brother nor the man knew Tree was there.
She cried out, Listen! I’m talking to you!
They wouldn’t answer. She gave it up. The man drove. The back of his neck was clean-shaven. His hair above the collar was crinkly and dark. He smelled freshly shaved. The plant must’ve had a shower room.
Got to take some books to her, and we already late, Brother was saying.
I’ll bring em to her on the way back. She can’t do nothing with them tonight, the man said.
Tree thrilled at the sound of his voice. It quieted her and was soothing.
She’ll be mad if she don’t get them books first thing in the morning, Brother said.
Be back by five A.M., the man said. She don’t get on her route before ten.
What if we don’t make it back? You know. What if we get too simple and have to stay the night? Brother said. Or if I get sick like I do sometimes after an outing.
You worry, and you only her brother, the man said. He laughed. I’m her husband; you let me take care of her. We coming home after the game. I got to work tomorrow.
So do I, Brother said, weakly.
So the man is the father of the girl and boy, Tree thought. The woma
n is my mother and the man is my father. The girl is me and the boy is my brother.
It was the first time she had thought it all out.
Be bad if Johnny Nab stop us and find these books, Brother said.
Better place, under the seat, the father said. Brother stuffed the books in the space beneath the front seats.
The father had to move his legs and take his foot off the gas so Brother could maneuver.
There. Done, Brother said.
The father tooled the big Buick through the south town. On the outskirts, he drove like a maniac, the way Brother did. He was in a hurry to get to Wilberforce and then on down the highway to Cincinnati.
You a stone driver, Tree told him, proud of him. But if he was her father, why couldn’t she remember him? Why didn’t she know anything about him?
He drove fast over the curving, twisting country road. Tree wasn’t scared. She was watchful, amused by the flood of flowing colors and the dark and light of day that streamed by them. She had her eyes on the road when a car appeared out of nowhere, going in the opposite direction. Sparkling sun glinted on its windshield. It must have been almost at once that another object appeared, but on their side. She failed to see it and the man failed to see. She’d been watching Brother and the way he seemed to be pretending to sleep. But his eyes were open. She saw this in a casual glance in the split second before disaster was on them. Suddenly Brother lifted his arms in a shield. Terror twisted his mouth. But then, in a breath of a second, he made an act of will. He never warned the father driving.
As the car passed, they came out of deep shade into blinding sunlight. Right before them was a woman on a red bicycle. The terrible suddenness of her position in their path had the impact on them of a tank or a freight train in the wrong place. A tornado right there in the road where you couldn’t miss it. Her rightful place was on the other side of the road with the oncoming cars. Instead, she was a deadly shade on a blood-red bike. Startled, like a flushed deer. She had on a yellow play suit. It blended with the brilliance of the sunshine.
Just unlucky, crossed Tree’s mind, in that suspended moment when they in the car and the stranger on the bicycle were snared by a tragic day. All was still, poised and suspended, as though time had taken a swallow. The red bike was a still shot. The terror-stricken stranger had her feet balanced on the pedals. Tree noticed she had small feet in brown sandals.
The father didn’t have time to choose the ditch at the side of the road. All he could think of was getting the enormous car away from the young woman. Couldn’t bear the thought of it smashing into her, all that blood! Instinctively he slammed his foot on the gas pedal. Swerving, the car became airborne, missing the ditch entirely. He had no chance to warn Brother to hold on. There was an open field; they were going to come down in it, perhaps blowing all their tires.
Brother was not braced for the crash. But he had been first to realize what would happen and yet he had not informed the father. Tree had no time to brace herself for the impact.
I’m not here—am I? she thought.
She was in the car, seeing everything in minute detail in the second or two it took for all of it to happen.
They were in the air. Brother’s door flew open. Brother was falling out; leaning, leaning out. The father reached for him in a convulsive clutching, but his hand closed on thin air.
Brother leaped high; his eyes were closed. The car door swung in as the car dived.
No! said Tree.
The door caught Brother beneath his chin. His head snapped back. His eyes opened in astonishment. Tree heard a sharp crack. Brother spun through the air. He was a rag doll, falling.
The car took forever to come down. But it was going to crash.
Let me out! Tree, thinking, not even time to holler it.
Not supposed to be here!
She threw herself through the upholstery, through the trunk of the car. She was pushing through the round table, fighting her way back into her own place. Forcing, willing herself, she was getting to where she ought to be.
In the little room. Panting, trying to breathe, she thought her lungs would burst. Tree was holding onto Dab. She had her arms wrapped around his waist. He held her by the shoulders. For a moment, she couldn’t think, couldn’t speak. Then, “Dab. Dab,” she whispered.
“Yeah? Yeah?” he said.
She breathed hard. “It was awful, just awful. But you were there—you saw what happened.”
“I was tied,” he told her glumly. But he spoke in his brave, manly voice. “Me, all tied. Yeah.”
“Oh, no!” Tree gasped. For it was never the same for the two of them. They might go at the same time through the space Rush held, but they saw and heard and felt individually.
She kept a close watch on Rush through the table. Still there, he was a young man holding sunlight and spring time in his free hand. The other hand he held up to his ear, listening. His eyes were dead eyes.
Why he standing up so dead? Tree thought.
He was a young ghost through the table. But he was a man old enough to be her father when Tree had been in the car. A man, killed.
Dab trembled with her weight against him. He was too weak to hold her. She let him go and wrapped her arms around herself.
M’Vy was there in the dark. She found the courage to turn on a light when she realized they had come to.
Tree spun on her when the light went on. “You close the barn too late,” she said. “He already going. See how he fading?” Tree watched as Brother and his grace of mysterious light seemed to fade out in the distance.
“Tree. I ain’t seen not one thing. Not in the table. Not anywhere,” Vy said.
“You had to see him,” Tree said, but without conviction.
“But I’m not saying you and Dabney didn’t see my baby brother. He didn’t cross over for me to see him. Oh, I know ghosts,” M’Vy said. “Lord. He came for the two of yo’w.”
She went to them. She touched Tree lightly, then folded her in, holding tightly. Gently Vy stroked Dab on his shoulder. It was her heartfelt attempt to be kind to him. She knew what she had done to him in the past. Her only boy child was born silly. Had half a mind. It made her sick to think about it. She couldn’t help it; he made her sick to death. She blamed him for his own half-wittedness. Knew she was wrong. How could a mother feel that way about her own child? But she did; she had from the time she realized he was going to be so different. Dab turned her stomach. Always had.
Tears welled in her eyes. She bowed her head in shame.
Chapter 11
EVERYTHING HAPPENED SO FAST, Tree didn’t get the chance to talk to M’Vy about the car wreck in Rush’s place. She wanted to ask, did it truly happen? Did you brother die?
But Dab had collapsed in the hallway outside the little room. Afraid of the little room and what she could sense, feel, but could not see there, M’Vy had hurried them out. And Dab had keeled over.
Tree had the sensation of him slipping fast. He had been right beside her; then he was like a thin column of air rushing to the floor. She moved to stop his fall, but she was too late.
“Get him into bed,” M’Vy urged. Tree was pulling at him, trying to hit him.
“Don’t! Don’t!” Dab shouted at her. “Who! Who, un-huh?” he said in a frenzy of wild talking. “The clean water walking all over. Throw me in the clean water!”
He whipped his body around on the floor in a fit. His eyes rolled back. Vy held his tongue until Tree could go fetch a washcloth. Then Vy rolled it and placed it between his teeth so he wouldn’t swallow his tongue.
“His temperature up high. His pulse racing,” M’Vy said, clasping his hand and wrist. Tree had never seen a big woman like her move so smoothly doing her job. But each time she touched Dab, he hollered in pain. Finally she gritted her teeth against his hollering and picked him up. She heaved him over her shoulder with his arms pinned under him. With the washcloth in his mouth, Dab couldn’t cry out too loudly. He was too weak to kick.
V
y got him in bed with the covers pulled up to his chin.
“Now. We make a search,” she said. Dab was out of it, not hearing much beyond his own moaning.
“A search?” Tree asked.
“We search the whole room,” Vy told her. She had taken the cloth from Dab’s mouth. He had calmed down and appeared to be moaning himself to sleep.
Tree had never searched for anything, except at church a few times when there were Easter-egg hunts. She had been a little girl then. How long ago had that been, she wondered.
She and Vy searched Dab’s room while he slept. It wasn’t like searching for a mislaid belt or lost watch stem. Once Tree had had to get down on the floor and practically comb it to help M’Vy find her watch stem. Found it, too.
“Don’t believe you eyes,” Vy told her now. “Believe what you can or cain’t feel. Feel under the chair. Feel behind the bureau. Sure’s I’m me, we’ll find something under or in back of.”
Tree found a stash under the windowsill. Two envelopes of pills. M’Vy found MJ taped to the back of the headboard.
No wonder he lay in bed half his life, Tree thought “He a stone junkie?” Tree wanted to know. She felt bad for him inside.
“Naw, he not,” Vy said. “He just want to shut down some pain and feeling crazy, he don’t know why. Tree, he a long story.” Vy sounded sad, resigned. “Not the time for it now. But he don’t know the meaning of what he do. Lord.”
She sounded tired, but she searched the room thoroughly. She searched under the carpet. When she had finished, they had a stash to last Dab a month, Tree guessed. Maybe two months.
M’Vy kept watch over Dab. She stayed with him most of the day. Staying with him made her feel better, less ashamed of herself. She would gently rouse him and take his temperature. With Tree watching every move, she would spoon chicken soup down his throat.
“Can’t you give him some medicine?” Tree asked.
“Not yet,” Vy said. “I have to make sure I give him the right thing,” she said. “They got so many new medicines, never know how they work with the drugs in his system.”
Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush Page 10