by Shauna Seliy
The men started to carry Marko to the patrol car. His arms were hanging down, his head was tilted back, and his eyes were closed.
"For setting the fire at Zoli's house. I did that. It was me he should have come after."
"No, son, that's not right. You don't have that figured out right. What Zoli did, he shouldn't have done to anybody."
They laid down Marko in the back seat of the patrol car. Mr. D'Angelo got in the car and drove off. Walter chased after them. He ran after the car until I couldn't see him anymore.
Slats took me back into the bar, to the kitchen, and wiped Marko's blood off me. After all the noise of the screaming and the rushing sounds going through my ears, it was strange how quiet it was in the club.
Miss Staresina and her new husband were sitting at the bar and she looked like she'd been crying. The band decided to reorganize themselves. The girl that had been singing in Hungarian, the skinny girl about my age, she started out on a real quiet song—she didn't even turn on the microphone. She almost seemed to just be singing it to herself. At first, they weren't words, she built the tune of the song by humming, la la la la-a. And I knew what was coming. I braced myself. It was the song I used to think protected my father in the mine, "Samo Nemoj Ti." She sang in Croatian this time, not Hungarian, but it still sounded like a language of strung-together wishes. "77 si rajski cvijet. Tebe Ijubitija necu prestati," she told us. You are a flower from heaven. I'll never stop loving you.
She didn't sing the song the whole way through, just a few lines over and over. My face burned with embarrassment that I ever thought something so small as that song could keep us safe, could keep us all together.
Chapter 23
They took Marko to the hospital in Brilliant, and then they had to take him to a hospital all the way up in Pittsburgh. None of the doctors at either place could get him to wake up. Walter and Mrs. Markovic stayed overnight in the hospital. No one seemed to know if Marko was going to be okay or not. Mr. D'Angelo put Zoli in the county jail for beating the life out of Marko and for resisting arrest. And the whole town held its breath waiting to find out if the police were going to have to charge him with murder.
It was Sunday, the day after the wedding. I was standing in the driveway waiting for Slats to take me up to Bedford when I heard metal banging on metal in the Plate Glass, yelling, then the sound of the metal getting dragged across concrete. I thought I heard Great-grandfather's voice floating out the windows. It was inside the scraping sound, not words or him calling out, just the pitch of his voice, its notes. I knew it was just a trick of echoes, but for a minute it seemed like the sound was a living thing, loose and gliding through the trees. I thought I could bring it back to the farm, if I could just get a hold of it, catch it between my hands.
Slats stayed in the waiting room and sent me to convince my mother that she should let Slats see her, and then we could all three visit. But when I saw my mother, I said, "I'm taking you out of here." She hugged me and pushed two chairs together. She sat down and patted the seat next to her, for me to sit. But I wanted to get out of there. I said, "We'll tell them it's time for you to go back. Me and Slats'll help you at home. We got Great-grandfather doing better. Me and him went outside and fixed a piece of fence."
"He's sick?" She looked worried. Her voice was quiet, and her words came out slower than they should have.
I sat down. She looped her arm through mine. "No," I said. "Me and Slats fixed him . . . We're practically doctors."
She smiled, but she closed her eyes too, for a second, like she might fall asleep.
I said, "Do they give you that medicine that makes you shuffle when you walk? Thorazine?"
"How do you know about that?"
"I told you, I'm practically a doctor."
"Ha. No. They didn't give me any of that. Not yet anyway." She took a big breath and said, "Listen, I got to tell you something. Everything happened so fast when you were here before . . . I'm sorry about all of this . . . And . . . Isn't this something, I've been planning this out for days, what I was going to say, and I just. . . Well, it can wait a minute." She started to tap her foot back and forth, like she was nervous. "How are you, L?" she said. "Did you go talk to Eli about the farm? Did those animals come back?" She nodded a little toward the window. "Tell me how things are out there."
". . . Something happened to Marko."
"What?"
But there was too much. If I told her about him, I'd have to tell her about what I'd done to Zoli's house and what had happened to Great-grandfather's pear tree. I didn't know how to start. I said, "How come we only save pictures of people, and not other things about them?"
"Like what?"
"Like how they sound when they talk. How come people don't try to save that, you know, on a record or something. `
"You can't just make a record. You need a special machine." Outside the room, people were walking up and down the hallway. Visitors, patients, nurses, doctors. "I guess you're right though," she said. "I mean, it'd be nice to have other things, but people do tend toward the concrete. They like to have a picture, not something like a voice."
"Remember how Dad used to say we should go up to visit that place where the old-growth trees are still living, Hearts Content? Maybe if we went up there, that'd be like saving something, not like a picture, but, you know, doing something he wanted to. I don't know. Do you think it's a real place, even? Me and him couldn't find it the one time we looked at the map. He could have made it up. Great-grandfather told me about this place, Banning Two. He talked about it like it was real. But I found out that he made it up. That's what he calls the place where his friends went to, his friends that are gone, you know, dead."
"Hearts Content. Sounds nice. If Jimmy made that up, he did a good job of it. You have to like the sound of a place like that, don't you, L? But what were you going to tell me before? What happened to Marko?"
I still had the feeling that if I started tell her, I wouldn't be able to stop talking. I said, "Slats brought me here. She wants to see you. She's downstairs."
She unlooped her arm from mine and put her hands in her lap. "Well, see, that goes back to what I was trying to tell you before. I don't know that I can do this, have you seeing me. Like this." She opened her hands and looked at her palms.
"She doesn't have to come up," I said. "I'll tell her I forgot about her."
"I don't think you understand about me not wanting you, or her, up here—"
"We wouldn't have to take the bus back, if you left with us. She's got Brown Lu here." I was talking really quickly, my words running together. "We could just drive away. If you don't want to go back to the house. We could go wherever you want. Even we could go up to Hearts Content. Find out if he was just handing us a story. We'll drive up to the Allegheny Forest and . . . " I stopped talking and caught my breath.
"Oh, Lucas . . . I'm sorry."
I knew that meant she wasn't coming with us. I looked out the window. I said, "I heard they grow pigs out here, like on a real farm."
"If you get better, they let you go outside and do farm work."
"Really? Sounds backwards. Seems like if you got better, they'd let you go to the movies or something."
"I don't know. I think I might like it, but you have to be feeling better first, so, well, I haven't been out there."
"I think Great-grandfather's farm is coming apart. He told me you used to like to swim in that pond of his. Is that true? I'd never get in that water. It looks like old coffee."
A ruckus broke out in the hall; it sounded like a couple of chairs falling over.
"I haven't done that since I was a kid. It was the only pond I knew though—I probably thought they were all that color."
"Mom, how long are you going to be here? I heard some people stay in for like years and years."
"Sweet, I need you to try to listen to what I'm telling you about coming here—"
Two guards and a nurse ran past the room we were sitting in. They were carrying between them what lo
oked to be a big set of sheets. "What's going on out there?"
"They're frozen, those sheets. They stir them in tubs full of ice.
"What are they for?"
"The people that are real worked up, the nurses use the sheets on them."
"Why?"
She took a long breath. She didn't yell at me very often. She'd leave my dad to do that kind of work. Or sometimes when he wasn't around, she'd call Slats over. But the few times that my mother did yell at me, she did what she was doing just then, that long inhale. She looked right at me. "I mean, what I've been trying to tell you is that I'm decided about it. I don't want you coming up here, L. Not anymore, okay? I want you to stay in Banning. Keep getting yourself through school, and getting those good marks like you've always done. I'll see you soon, but not here, okay? I'll see you another time."
"Why?"
The guards walked past the door again, going the other direction, and they had a patient with them. They were holding him up, one on each side of him. He wasn't yelling or anything, but he was long and lanky and he kept twitching away from them. They had to pull him down the hall.
"Because you shouldn't be seeing these kinds of things. You shouldn't see that man like that. You shouldn't see me like this. I got to protect you in the only way I can now. It doesn't mean I don't love you to the ends of the earth, but, just, you take care of things at home, take care of Slats. Even if I do have to stay for years and years, I don't want you coming back here." She covered her eyes. "I'm sorry, Lucas. I'm sorry." She got up and walked out the door. I went after her.
She started down the hallway. In the other direction I saw Helen and her mother chasing after the guards and the man the nurses were going to use those icy sheets on. Helen's mother was shouting at the guards, "Now come on. He's all right now. He's okay now." It was Helen's father.
The guards barreled through a set of swinging doors. The doors swung back and knocked Helen's purse out of her hand—all of her things went flying. I went over and crouched down on the floor with her and helped her put everything back in her purse. She looked up at me like she didn't remember me, or didn't know me, then she took off after her dad. Before I stood up, I saw, under a chair, her lipstick case, the one with Billy's cigarette. She'd missed it. I grabbed it and yelled after her. "Hey!" I said. "Hey!"
By the time I turned back to my mother, she was gone.
Chapter 24
The farm was crowded with great-aunts and great-uncles that night. They milled around talking about Greatgrandfather and their bosses and their kids and how they needed to hose down their aluminum siding and re-pave their driveways. The other boys had found some of Great-grandfather's old mining equipment stored away in the cellar and they kept asking me to come look at it. But I stayed in the kitchen with Slats, where we sat without talking and stared out the windows or into our glasses of Coke. She hadn't said a word since I'd told her about what happened with my mother, and all the way from Bedford to the farm, she'd made little almost-crying sounds. I couldn't stand it. I'd pulled my hood forward over my ears.
Kaya said to Slats, "You all right?" She pointed at me, "You two don't look right."
Slats didn't say anything.
Kaya said, "Well, we all got things to worry about here but . . . " her voice trailed off and she looked up, toward the stairs. We all turned to see what she was looking at. Greatgrandfather was standing there, smiling. He was wearing blue workpants and a collared white shirt. His face was shaved clean and his two hairs were brushed back. It was the first time they'd seen him out of his pajamas since Christmas.
"Daddy?" Kaya said, like she couldn't quite be sure it was him.
He came down into the kitchen and then went into the dining room. We followed him. He still couldn't talk, but he could whisper a little, and he could throw his arms all over the place to let us know what he was thinking. He was in terrific admiration of all the liquor that had been assembled while he'd been recovering. Usually, at parties, we'd have a card table set up for the bottles of whiskey and vodka and pear brandy, and a few jars of moonshine cherries. They'd been bringing by things to eat and drink since he'd gotten sick, so they'd have something there while they sat in the living room, taking turns to go up and sit with him. There was so much liquor collected by then and so many plates of apricot roll and cookies, that they'd done away with the card table altogether and started using the dining room table—it was covered.
Great-grandfather opened a bottle of pear brandy and poured himself a shot. Everyone took this as a sign of his recovery and they started to drink the pear brandy too. They started talking, louder and louder. Great-aunts and great-uncles who hadn't been there earlier in the night showed up, and pretty soon the house was ringing with arguments, stories, songs—just like it always used to.
Benci though, he kept quiet and he stayed in a wide chair in the corner of the living room, watching. I went over and sat next to him. He handed me his cup of whiskey. I don't think he knew what he was doing, but no one at all was paying attention to either one of us; they had their eyes fixed on Great grandfather. It was a whole family, a huge, loud noisy family, breathing a ragged sigh of relief.
I drank the little that was left in the cup. He took it back and poured himself another one and then another one. The whiskey hadn't made me drunk but I felt like I had a lit match stuck in my mouth. I went to the kitchen and drank from the faucet. Slats came over and said, "I got an idea. Why don't we go over it, what she said up there. You know? Maybe she meant something different from what you think she meant. You tell me again all the things she said."
I shook my head and went outside. Great-grandfather was out there with some of the great-uncles standing near the porch. They didn't see me. I stepped away from them, out into the dark, and watched from there. They were passing around a bottle of Great-grandfather's pear brandy. I didn't understand why he wasn't worried about saving it anymore. They were all drinking it like it came out of a tap, making up toasts for each other. Great-grandfather looked like he did the night we'd walked the farm together. His cheeks were red. He kept breaking into choking laughs at the great-uncles and the things they said. The light from the porch shone in his eyes.
I'd put the pear seeds he'd given me in one of Slats's bank envelopes and put the envelope in my coat pocket. I felt them to make sure they were still there.
I walked down past the barn and up to the pear tree. I remembered the book I'd seen at the feed store. All there was to do for a tree with fire blight, it'd said, was to watch over it, look out for the branches that hadn't been ruined, and cut the rest. I guessed that the same thing might not work for a tree really torched with fire, but I went ahead and wiped what was left of the snow from the low branches and pulled at the burned bark.
Pear trees turn colors three times a year. The leaves change in the fall and spring like other trees, and when they blossom they turn all white and get to looking like big pieces of puffed cotton. I wiped down more of the tree, using the sleeve of my coat. It seemed to me that if Great-grandfather and I were going to get things right at the farm, like he wanted, we'd have to start with the tree, but I couldn't see any live parts left. No matter what I did, how much I wiped it down, the black of it glistened, stubborn and dead.
I didn't know it until I looked back at the house, but my eyes were blurred over. I was crying. I felt in my pocket for the envelope of seeds. The ground was still too frozen really to plant anything, but I didn't know what else to do. I dug a couple of lousy divots with my shoes and put seeds in them and covered them over. I wanted to wake up in the morning to some full-grown pear trees, bottles already on them.
I knew that if I went in the house, I wouldn't be able to get away from Slats. It was still a little warmer than usual and I had my big coat with the hood, so I climbed up into a deer stand from where I could see and hear and watch the party. I wished that I had a cigarette and I remembered that I did have one. I pulled Billy's out of my pocket. I thought of the way Helen had looked
through me, like I wasn't even there. I'd probably never see her again anyway, since my mother didn't want me going up there anymore. I went ahead and put it in my mouth. I could feel the paper start to sort of disintegrate right away. It had a strange taste, the melting paper, the old tobacco. I checked all the coat pockets for some matches, but there weren't any and I didn't feel like climbing out of the deer stand yet. I kept it between my teeth for a little while, then I put it back in the case.
The noise of the party was warm, and comforting, like some kind of heavy blanket. I fell asleep right there in the deer stand.
I dreamt I was in a busy train station. The man behind the ticket window asked me where I was headed. "Hearts Content," I said. He handed me a ticket. I held it tightly. I walked out onto the platform and opened my hand to take a look at the ticket. Only, there was no ticket, there was a butterfly, and it flew up into the air. In the sun, it flashed white then yellow then orange. It wouldn't stop flying around me, and then I understood that I wasn't supposed to take a train, I was supposed to follow this butterfly.
We were outside the train station, then we were in the woods. There were more and more trees as we went along, and the woods got darker, but the path held out, faint, harder and harder to see. I kept my eyes half on the ground and half on the butterfly.
I tripped on an old carbide can. It was in the middle of the path. Since it was something I always did when I found one, I got some snow, put it in the can, smashed the lid down hard, and ran back away from it. When it blew, thousands of birds I hadn't even noticed were there before, flew out of the trees around me, black birds, crows, barn swallows; they covered the sky.
Great-grandfather came out from behind one of the trees. "Dedka?" I said. "Where are we? What is this place?"
He came closer to me and I saw that he was bone pale, and had stubble all around his cheeks. "Lucas," he kept saying. "Lucas." He pointed behind him and I saw that the birds had been blocking my view, and that beyond the trees were mine buildings—a lamp house, a tipple. "Banning Two," he whispered. "It's Banning Two, where I am."