When We Get There

by Shauna Seliy

  And then he held out his hand to me—it was full of seeds. He opened my palm, put them in there, and closed my hand around them.

  Chapter 22

  Slats and I got to Miss Staresina's wedding late in the afternoon when it was already spilling over with women in long-sleeved dresses and high-heeled shoes, their hair fixed, their perfume mixing with the smell of smoke and food and liquor. The men were in dark pants and good shirts and shined shoes. Marko was cleaned up and shaved, his hair newly cut. Mrs. Markovic wore a shiny blue dress with ruffles that showed at the edges of her apron. The whole town was there.

  I found Walter behind the bar. "I got these skates," I said and held them out to him.

  He grabbed them and turned them upside down to look at the blades, then he shoved them back at me.

  "I'm giving them to you," I said. "You can have them."

  "Those are girl skates, Lessar. Maybe you can wear them."

  "They are? How do you know? They're big though. I mean, they might fit you all right."

  "I don't want anything from you."

  "How can you be picky about it?" I said. "You got nothing."

  He walked away. A man sitting at the bar said, "People with nothing got a right to be picky."

  Slats was next to him, mixing salt and pepper into her beer, stirring around the ice cubes. "They most certainly do not," she said. "That's pure nonsense."

  The man laughed.

  Slats didn't smile. "It isn't funny." She called after Walter, "You take those from him, you hear me?"

  I stood there for a while, waiting for him to come back, and then I set them behind the bar.

  Miss Staresina favored gypsy songs and she'd hired a band I'd never seen before. They had different instruments than the bands that played the regular Croatian music. They had a violin, a couple of smallish guitars, and a single drum that a man played by sliding the heels of his hands across it. They all took turns singing the songs, going through a couple of languages and back again.

  The people dancing were all sweating, their clothes clinging to their skin. Marko was walking around the room opening the windows. The band wasn't taking breaks because everyone was throwing money at them and stuffing dollar bills in their shirt pockets. These were people from Banning who didn't have much money, and who a lot of times kept watch over what they did have with knives and bared teeth.

  Slats bought me a Coke, set us up at a table near the bar, and then went to get a closer look at the band and the dance floor. When she came back, she said, "They've all lost their minds."

  A state trooper walked in and took a long look at all of us. He talked to a few people, and one of them led him over to Marko.

  "Oh, Marko," Slats said. "Jesus Christ in heaven."

  "What?" I said.

  "It's about that fire."

  "What about it?"

  "If there's a trooper here, Marko's in pretty deep."

  Marko wiped his hands and held up a glass, offering the trooper a drink. The trooper didn't take it. Then they walked outside together.

  The music was loud. The band was singing one of the regular wedding songs—"May you live for hundreds of years," they sang. "May your sons grow like trees."

  "In deep, like what? Going to court or something?"

  "Or jail. Or having to pay for it."

  "Pay for it? How would they do that?"

  Miss Staresina was going from table to table, a trail of flower girls pulling her along. When she came to our table, she said "Hello, Mrs. Jankovic," to Slats, then put her hand in my hair and tugged it. "You'll come up for the dance, Mr. Lessar?" she said. Before they sold off the cake, they'd have a dance, where everyone would get a turn to have a shot of whiskey and dance with the bride for a dollar.

  "Sure he will," Slats said.

  "Think he'll start coming to school too?"

  Slats looked confused. "He hasn't been coming?" she said, but the flower girls were pulling at Miss Staresina's hand already, taking her to another table.

  "What's she talking about?" Slats said to me.

  Mrs. Markovic went outside. I got up from the table to follow her.

  "Where you going?" Slats said.

  "To see what's going on."

  "No you're not. You're going to stay where you are and explain to me what she was talking about. Sit down."

  "She probably has me mixed up with someone else is all. I'm going to see what's going on."

  "That trooper won't like people snooping around. You stay away. Marko can take care of himself. Most of the time anyway.

  "But I want to know what's going to happen."

  "I'll tell you what's going to happen. I'm going to clean your clock if you don't tell me what that teacher was talking about."

  I sat down. A big drumming sound pulsed through the room. More and more people came inside. Every once in a while I'd catch a flash of Miss Staresina's dress, see her tilt her head back laughing, put her hand on someone's arm or back. Even if some of the songs were too slow to dance to, people stood up anyway and wandered around on the dance floor, just to be closer to the music.

  Mrs. Markovic came into the club. Marko chased after her into the kitchen.

  I got up again.

  "Now where do you think you're going?" Slats said.

  "To get us something to eat. I'll be right back." She tried to grab my shoulder but I'd already stepped away.

  There was an opening in the wall, a kind of window without glass near the bar so that you could order things from the kitchen. Inside there were sets of roasters, two wide stoves with griddles, a big sink, and a refrigerator. I watched through it as Mrs. Markovic did something I'd never seen her do in all the thousands of times I'd been to the club—she untied her apron and pulled it off. While she was patting down her dress, she said, "That's enough, Marko. I've had enough. You know how it is. You know how it was with the rock on your chest. You take it and you take it and you take it, and then there's a day you get to the end of what you can take." She put on her coat. She brushed past me on her way out of the kitchen. Marko stood still watching her. Then she did another thing I'd never seen in all the times I'd been to the club—she left.

  I went into the kitchen. Marko watched the door as it slammed shut behind her. "Marko," I said. He looked just like he had in the refrigerator that day, blinking, like he was buffeted by surprises from all sides. "What did that trooper want?" I said.

  Trooper?

  "That state trooper. What did he want?"

  Walter came to the window. "She wants the dance to start now. Where's Mom?"

  Marko found a tray and covered it with shot glasses, then filled each of them to the top with whiskey. He told Walter to watch the bar. He handed the tray to me. "Take care of the bride, okay, Uncle?"

  I walked outside of the kitchen, slow and careful, trying to make sure the whiskeys wouldn't spill. People were already forming a line around the dance floor. A song started. A bridesmaid shouted at me to get it going.

  In the line were people who used to work at King, people from the Plate Glass, from the club, other teachers from the school. Miss Staresina didn't do much more than give them a turn around before letting them go. Pretty soon, I had to shout for Marko to get more whiskey. Every beat on the drum was like a hitch, a gear, in the room's machine. It seemed like everyone I'd ever seen in my whole life growing up in Banning came up to have a dance.

  The wedding was the same as all the others we'd had—no invitations on heavy paper, everyone just knew about it, and they all showed up at the club to buy some wedding cake and have a shot and a dance with the bride. I knew from the pictures that my parents' wedding had been just like it, only my parents had gotten married in the summer, and at some point in the day, my mother made everyone, even the band, walk out to the meadow she always liked down the street. Just as it was getting dark, my father realized his ring had slipped off his finger. He called a halt to the music, and everyone hunted around in the grass for it. The grass turned cold. The sky got
darker. Stars came out. And finally, Marko found the ring.

  When the line to dance with the bride was through, there were just two full shots left on the tray. Miss Staresina had one. Her new husband had one. I thought they were set to dance, but she thanked me for helping her out, took the money I'd collected, grabbed my hand, and pulled me out to the dance floor.

  Even with all the windows open, it was hot and my head felt like someone was pumping air into it, making me lighter and lighter. A good song started up, and the next thing I knew, we were spinning around. I felt like we weren't even in the room; we seemed to be floating above everyone, like she was carrying me in the folds of her dress. It was then that I saw Zoli standing just inside the door, a winter cap pulled down over his eyes. He was hiding himself, but I knew his slouch, the way he leaned against the wall. The door banged shut. He straightened up and pulled off his cap.

  Then it was over—the song, the dance. Miss Staresina planted me in a seat next to the dance floor. She and her new husband went out to the middle of the floor and stood still, holding each other, waiting for the next song. His hair was flopped down in front of his face. He'd taken his jacket off, and his tie was undone. She was smiling up at him like she was looking at the sun.

  The rest of us, though, we were watching Zoli. Greatgrandfather told me once that over in the old country, people died from love all the time. "Think of the music from over there," he'd said. "All songs are about love that is going to some wrong person. Love that is too nice for you, you don't deserve. Love that makes you tie bricks to your feet and walk into river." He said things were more organized in America—people didn't die from love.

  Zoli had shaved and gotten his hair cut, and seemed cleaned up, but he still looked all carved apart, down to muscle and bone. He'd walked through glass for my mother without hardly getting cut up. He'd probably lay down on a railroad track for her or step in front of a truck, and in my mind, neither of those things could hurt him. He'd always seemed practically invincible to me. But being away from her, left all to himself, worrying over where she was, I don't know, it looked like it just might take him under. Maybe Greatgrandfather was wrong, maybe you could still die from love, even in Banning.

  He ordered a beer, paid for it, and got change. Marko treated him just like a regular person. "Haven't seen you around," someone said at the bar. I couldn't stop staring at him, like when you come across a half-crazy dog and everyone says, don't look at his eyes, but you can't do nothing else but look.

  He moved over to a far corner of the bar. He kind of leaned over his beer, keeping to himself, like he didn't want any trouble, but something wasn't right in the room. I remembered my dad explaining to me that when certain kinds of particles were floating in the coal dust, nearly anything could happen. Someone could light a spark by slamming his lunch pail down and it could blow the whole tunnel apart.

  Zoli took something out of his pocket and laid it on the bar in front of him. I stood up and tried to see if I could tell what it was. He held up a piece, showing it to the guy next to him. It was one of the blackened bits of broken plate that he'd taken from the fire.

  A skinny girl with a violin took a turn at the microphone. She looked to be about my age, but when she started to sing, it filled up the whole room. She was singing in a language I didn't know, but that sounded familiar. One of the men with a small guitar stood next to her and played softly, just under her voice, like a whisper, like he was standing in the yard across the street and not right there in the room with us.

  Slats came over and said to the lady next to me, "Hey, you got to move, all right. I need to have a meeting of the minds here with my grandson." The woman didn't put up a fight for her chair. Slats sat down. "Do you think she's trying to break my heart on purpose or it's just something she's doing by accident? It's Hungarian, you know, same as what my mother used to talk in. Do you know how much hot water you're in with me?"

  Once she said it was Hungarian, I started to recognize a few words. I heard the word szep, "beautiful." "What's she singing about?"

  "Someone she used to know," she leaned forward and listened closer. "Or a place she used to go to? I don't know, it's just what people always sing about, something they lost. . . Zoli's in here, just came in." She looked toward the bar. "I think it's probably better if we go home."

  We got up and walked toward the door, but it was too late. Whatever the song or the close air or the liquor was doing, it had already worked through the crowd. You could feel it happening, the way you could sometimes feel rain coming, the second before you were trapped in it.

  I was used to missing my father by then, but a new way of missing him took a hold of my throat. He would have known what to do to make the wedding keep rolling along like it was supposed to. He might have stopped that girl from pouring that mournful song all over us, stepped close to the microphone and made some kind of joke. He would have gone behind the bar and gotten Marko and Walter away from Zoli. And Zoli would have finished his beer and put his cap back on and slunk out the door, and the party would have kept going on until it was so late that the sun would already be worrying the edges of the hills, and people would have wrapped their pieces of wedding cake in thin paper napkins and headed home, never knowing that the night could have ended any different.

  Marko seemed nervous. He was pouring someone a drink, then he turned around to put the bottle back, but he did it too quickly. He thrust his hand out and punched the bottle against the row of bottles instead of into the empty place where it belonged. The bottle he was holding was bigger and made of thicker glass, and the smaller bottles just sort of popped, broke apart. Liquor ran down the counter, all over the place. Marko said, "No one light any cigarettes around here."

  "You worried about starting a fire?"Zoli said.

  Marko ignored him. Zoli asked him again. A few people walked away from the bar. Other people turned quiet. It all happened so fast. Zoli was at the end of the bar, so all he had to do was get off his chair and turn around the corner and then he was behind the bar right next to Marko. He picked up a broken bottle by its neck, and asked Marko again, "You worried about starting a fire?" He jabbed the ragged edges of the bottle at Marko's chest. It didn't look like he'd gotten to him, but then Marko turned toward us and his shirt was running red.

  Slats was holding on to my arm. Walter took off like a shot out the door. Marko stumbled out from behind the bar and then past us, outside to the parking lot. Zoli followed him. People were trying to talk to the two of them, but it seemed like they were in a kind of bubble, just the two of them, like they couldn't hear or see anyone else. Marko looked at his shirt. Zoli went to his car and then he came back with that pipe he'd taken from Slats's house.

  I still wake up sometimes remembering the noise it made when Zoli hit Marko with that pipe. He hit him full on across his chest. Marko fell back, onto the ground, and then Zoli took to kicking him with his boots and hitting his sides and his legs with the pipe. It wasn't like other fights I'd seen in town. Everyone was rushing around, trying to get a hold of Zoli, calling for the police, for a doctor, for an ambulance. They knew right away what I couldn't quite understand. But that noise, the flat muffled noise of the pipe hitting Marko and something breaking inside of him, finally made me understand—Zoli was going to kill him.

  Marko held his arms up in front of his face. I felt frozen to the place where I was standing. My voice was stuffed inside my throat. Watching, I started to figure out something that the town had gotten wrong, maybe Marko wasn't in love with my mother. Not in the way they thought, maybe not even in the way he thought. It was something different, the way he always was looking out for the three of us. Never asking for anything. Drinking too much. Sleeping in that shack. He was like some kind of broken-down knight. I knew too that if something happened to him, that would be one more thing of my father's that wouldn't be around anymore. With my mother away, me and Marko were all that was left in Banning of my father—his son, his best friend. We were it.


  And every time the pipe hit Marko and made that sound, I knew it should've been for me. I knew I was letting him down, and wherever my father was, I was letting him down too. I felt my voice come rushing up from the center of my chest. "It was me," I shouted. "It was me."

  Zoli was swinging the pipe back to take another hit at Marko. I threw myself in front of him. Zoli stopped. "Get out of the way, Lucas, okay?"

  "I did that to your house."

  He squinted, "Maybe if someone put a gun to your head, you could do something that gutsy."

  It was me.

  "Move out of the way." He looked at his hands. There was blood on him. He seemed like he was surprised to find it there. He stood still long enough for the men to grab a hold of him. It took him a few seconds, but he got away from them. Mr. D'Angelo came tearing down the street in his patrol car. He and Walter got out. The crowd made way for Mr. D'Angelo, and he went straight at Zoli with his club. He hit Zoli's arm with a sharp hard tap and knocked the pipe out of his hand.

  Zoli lunged at Mr. D'Angelo with his fists, throwing punches where he could. Mr. D'Angelo kept twisting around him trying to get a pair of cuffs on him. He couldn't though, not by himself. Men from the club had to take hold of Zoli's arms and then they had to pin him to the ground. Someone held his head down with a boot while Mr. D'Angelo snapped the cuffs shut. They dragged him to the patrol car and sat him up in the front seat.

  They came back toward us. I turned around to look at Marko for the first time. His eyes were closed. There was blood all over him, all over both of us now. "Marko? Marko!"

  Mr. D'Angelo put his hand on my shoulder and moved me away from Marko. "I got to get him to the hospital. All right, Lucas?"

  Three men from the club picked Marko up.

  "Aren't you going to arrest me?" I said to Mr. D'Angelo.

  "Why would I do that?"