The Redeeming Power of Brain Surgery

by Paul Flower

  The sun broke free from the storm front and sent a shaft of heat through the trees. Jesse sighed and turned from the spot. Around him, the yard was glowing. He studied the half-acre of shaggy grass and weeds carefully, like he was a guy buying property. The peeled-paint and sagging-roofed house squatted uncertainly in the middle of the lot, about fifty yards back from the road. A dirt driveway looped up from the road and ended by the back door. Their old, rusty Ford Country Squire station wagon was parked in the driveway; the car leaned to one side on a flat tire.

  Jesse knew it wasn’t much, but he believed—he knew—that he could make the place better. He’d make sure the lawn was cut as nicely as those golf courses he’d seen in magazines. He’d get the house painted and have the car fixed. He’d maybe plant some of those little flowering trees in the yard to dress it up a bit. Mom said he had ambition. He’d show her just how much he had.

  The sun and the planning made him feel stronger, more in control, more like the man of the house. He started toward the back door, wanting a cold Pepsi and thinking he’d have a nice long chat with Mom. They’d talk about how they’d help each other, about how they were still on the same side, that they had to work together.

  She was at him before the door slammed behind him.

  “Where you been? I’ve been watching that clock for the past fifty hours waiting for you. Where you been?” Her voice jabbed from the cool shadows of the kitchen. She was at the table, cigarette smoke drifting in a haze around her head.

  “Been looking for Elvis, you knew that,” Jesse shot back, trying to set the tone he thought a strong man should take.

  Something rocketed out of the haze and smacked the wall to his right. It was Mom’s ashtray. It bounced off the water heater, clattered across the counter then fell to the linoleum. Ashes showered him, sticking to his wet skin and clothes.

  “You let him get away, didn’t you. You let that stupid addle-brained boy see the whole thing, then you let him get away.”

  “No, Mom...”

  Another object came zinging at him. This one caught him in the side of the head. Stunned, Jesse watched it tumble and skid across the floor. It was her lighter. His head stung where it had hit him, but he told himself not to touch the spot.

  “You don’t lie to me, boy. You left me here to clean up your...” the right words escaped her for a moment. “...that mess you made in the yard. Then you let him get away.”

  Again, Jesse felt the hate in his chest. He swallowed hard and took a deep breath, then another. Slowly, woodenly, he walked to the ashtray and lighter, picked them up, walked over to Mom, tossed them on the table in front of her, then pulled out his usual chair and sat down.

  They stared each other down; Mom, a ragged shadow across the upper half of her face, two fingers holding a cigarette in the air just in front of her freshly lipsticked lips, Jesse like a stone, his hands on the table in front of him. Finally, he spoke in a whisper husky with anger. “I did not let him get away.”

  “Then where...”

  He cut off her question with a wave of his hand. “You don’t worry about that.”

  The black-marble eyes flickered with something he’d never seen before. Respect? Fear? Jesse wasn’t sure. Clumsily, he asked the question that was gnawing at him. “What’d you do with, um... with the body?”

  The dark eyes gleamed. She took a long drag on the cigarette. “What do you mean, ‘What’d you do with it?’”

  “Where’d you put him? Where?”

  “You didn’t see him when you come in?” She smiled now, enjoying the game. “He wasn’t out back in the yard like you left him?”

  “No Mom, I...” Jesse was trying to maintain his composure, but the fear was back in his voice.

  She leaped up from the table, and reached for his hand.

  “Come see, baby. Come see,” she said, suddenly gleeful.

  Mom half-dragged Jesse down the shoulder of the road in the direction of town. He tried to slow her down, but she had a good grip on his hand. All he could do was scramble to keep up.

  They jogged and walked hand-in-hand for a mile or even two, maybe. To Jesse, who was already tired and wet and miserable, it seemed like they’d walked forever. Mom didn’t slow down until they reached a two-track trail that led off the road into the woods. Here, she stopped, nodded at an official-looking sign that marked it as Fire Lane 32b and gave Jesse a wicked grin.

  They walked rapidly down the fire lane, then a side trail that angled off to the right, and continued on until they reached the edge of a clearing. In the middle of the clearing was an old barn that seemed to have frozen in mid-collapse. To their left, a hundred feet away, was the remaining rubble of an old farmhouse. Only one wing of the place still stood; the rest had come down long ago. Small trees and weeds grew in the remains.

  “Good hiding place, huh?” Mom said, her voice raspy and ragged. She coughed, then struggled to clear her throat. “Nobody ever comes out to this place no more.”

  Jesse wondered how she could be so stupid. Elvis and his buddies explored every inch of the countryside like a bunch of stupid Indians. They loved places like this.

  “What’d you do,” he said between ragged breaths, “haul him down here in broad daylight and stick him in one of these old buildings?”

  “Yep. Used the wheelbarrow; likely broke my back flipping him into the thing,” she said proudly. “Covered him up; you’d of thought I was hauling a load of trash.”

  Jesse was speechless. This was wrong. It was all turning out so terribly wrong.

  She was off again, jogging toward what was left of the barn. “Come on boy. Come see. Come see,” she yelled. She tripped on the uneven ground and stumbled for several steps, regained her balance, then disappeared behind the barn. Frustrated, scared and too tired to argue, Jesse followed. He found her standing in the waist-high weeds by a small, windowless shed that was a tiny version of the barn. The building’s roof sagged and there were wide gaps between the dry, gray boards that made up the walls.

  “A smokehouse,” Mom said, opening the door and motioning for Jesse to come closer. The hinges protested with a groan. “I used to hide out back here years and years ago as a girl. I smoked my first cigarette back by this little place.” Another phlegmy cough interrupted her thought. “Smoked it with your daddy. Seemed the best place to bring him now,” she added quietly. She stepped to the side. “Go on in, baby. Say hi to the man.”

  Jesse wanted to run. He wanted to go home and take a bath and get a drink. He was thirsty and dirty. Filthy. The last thing he wanted to do was see the body again. This was all wrong. All so wrong.

  “No, no Mom,” he stammered and turned to leave. “I don’t... I don’t have to. I mean, I’m sure you did a good...”

  She let go of the door and grabbed him by his skinny upper arm. Her mouth was near his ear, whispering and smelly. “Go in. Go on. You can do it. Go on in there and sing him his favorite song.”

  Jesse frowned.

  “Go on boy. Sing that one song to him.” Before he could stop her, she’d guided him inside.

  She’d looped a rope around Dad’s chest and up under his arms, then over a rafter. She’d hauled him up to hang there like a piece of meat. It swung slowly in the gloom, lit by dusty shafts of sunlight and turned gently by the breeze wheezing through the cracks in the smokehouse walls.

  Jesse could barely hear Mom saying something about the body being safe from dogs and animals hanging like that. He avoided the man’s eyes. He could picture them up there in the shadows, gray and blue, forever staring into the universe, always saying, “Please no.”

  Tears pooled near Jesse’s heart. The feeling of death, the heavy sadness of it, swirled in the smokehouse. The door of the place creaked and clunked against the outer wall. Jesse could smell his Mom’s breath; he could feel it on the back of his neck. He should’ve run, he thought. He should’ve gon
e home to take a bath, to get clean.

  “You brought him here.” He heard the words whisper from his mouth, but didn’t feel them.

  “Yep. I wrapped him in a bunch of old curtains we had in the basement, then just piled him in the wheelbarrow with some coffee cans filled with dirt to weigh those curtains down. I about broke my back, doing it myself.” She started pacing as she rambled, sounding both animated and nervous. “You would’ve thought I was just pushing some old junk down the road. Of course, the cans kept falling off; that was the hard part—that and finding a place to stuff the curtains. I finally just jammed them into what’s left of the farmhouse.”

  Jesse swallowed a sob. He couldn’t believe this. The man couldn’t be left here like this. “Please son. Please no.” His father’s voice sang softly in his head.

  “What song you want me to sing, Mom?” he heard himself say from far away.

  She giggled. “Well, that one he was always humming—you remember. Being in a old smokehouse where your daddy and I use to sneak a smoke, you ought to get it. Don’t you get it, boy?”

  The body twisted and twirled lazily in the breeze like it was dancing, and Jesse heard the tune seeping into his head, drifting in from maybe last week, the week before—or had it been that morning? Maybe, he thought, he’d heard the man stumbling through the song as he worked on the lawnmower.

  “‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,’ right Mom?” Jesse whispered.

  “That’s it. That’s right. That’s the song right there. It’s that smoking song.”

  Chapter Six

  Donnel’s truck rumbled away as slowly as a receding thunderstorm. From her front steps, Lavern watched the rusty hulk, bathed in the hazy-glow of the streetlights, lumber down the street. When it was gone, she sighed and shook her head as if to sift the memories that fluttered like falling ashes in her head. Her eyes roved among the one-story ranches that lined the narrow street of the subdivision. Even in the dark, the houses were plain and disappointing. They all looked the same. Plastic picnic tables and broken toys huddled and half-hid in the shadows of the yards. A light, muted by pink curtains, glowed in a back room at the Tylers’ across the street. Their baby had been awfully gassy lately, Deeana Tyler had told her. Lavern imagined Deeana holding the baby as she hop-stepped the way she always did when one of her kids was fussing. Deeana would be cooing and singing as the naked baby head bobbed above her shoulder. Usually, the baby would calm right down when Deeana did that hop-step, at least that’s what her husband, Mike, said. Lavern, well, she’d tried the same thing when she’d volunteered to babysit for Deeana and Mike last week; the baby, a beautiful little girl they’d named Cindy after Mike’s mom, had just kept squalling.

  The smell of it, of baby lotion and the acidic sharpness of wet diaper, lingered. Head lowered, Lavern studied the vapor of her breath against the darkness. Finally, she turned and unlocked the door.

  Inside, a single lamp was on, on a living room coffee table. The house was silent and cool. Elvis, she knew, was asleep. Despite the beers and the late hour, Lavern was painfully alert, her nerves alive as bees in a hive. Quietly, she pushed the door shut, took off her coat, opened the closet door and hung the coat on a hanger, pushed that door slowly till it, too, clicked softly shut, then dropped her purse on the coffee table. She shuffled into the kitchen and rooted around in the refrigerator for a few minutes before settling on a jar of Cheeze Whiz. Back in the living room, she plopped on the couch, unscrewed the Cheeze Whiz lid, scooped out a glob of the orange goop and sucked it off her finger. As she wrapped herself in an afghan, Lavern stuck her free hand in the cracks between the couch cushions and pawed for the remote. She found it, pulled it free and pressed the power button. The bluish light from the TV warmed the room. The late, local news was on and Lavern held down the volume button, reducing the anchorwoman’s voice to a low murmur. She watched, only half interested, as the anchor started a story on possible layoffs at a couple of companies. When the picture switched to an extremely serious reporter in front of the plant where Elvis worked, an alarm in Lavern’s head told her to turn it up, but she ignored it. She was sucking on the Cheeze Whiz and letting her mind drift.

  Lately, Elvis’ nightmares had come more often. She’d begun to lie awake, waiting for the cadence of his breathing to change and for him to begin the awful slide into his mind. He’d mumble and groan, then twist the blankets and sheets away from her. On the worst nights, the dreams ended with him wet with sweat and sobbing in his sleep. She thought it was weird that you could cry without waking up. Weird.

  Lavern sighed. Elvis and Donnel didn’t know how much she already knew—how much she remembered. She could still see him running to her—his head swaying left and right with each long, lopey stride. He’d been a skinny, scrawny scarecrow of a boy and he’d come galloping across her yard that day, yelling her name between big gasps for air. She waited for him to reach her, thinking he was going to push her down and start a game of tag or something. “You’re it, Laverny-wormy,” she’d thought he’d say. Instead, he ran right up to her and threw his arms around her. He let her put her arms around him too; something he’d never let her do even though she’d always wanted to. As she lowered herself to a sitting position on the ground, she realized he was sobbing, and was covered with bits of leaves and dirt. He was sweaty, wet and dirty too, and he smelled awful. For a second or two, she almost hadn’t wanted to hold him.

  Elvis was just a boy and she was his friend. She wasn’t his girlfriend, he’d tell his buddies—just “a girl who happens to be my friend”—but that day, things between them changed.

  “What happened? What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “They... I... g... g... and... he’s... he’s... ” He tried to answer, but all he could do was shake his head and cry.

  It felt weird at first, holding a boy curled up like a baby in his mom’s belly, but she got used to it. And as she held him, for the first time she loved him. It wasn’t a little girl love, but a full-grown one—one that would last forever, like on TV.

  “Elvis you got to tell me. You got to tell what happened to you,” Lavern said, trying to drag the truth out of him. He didn’t speak; he just tightened against her, so she kept him close, sitting there under a tree in her backyard. They stayed that way for what seemed like an hour, Lavern rocking him gently while he sobbed. A lot of the time, Lavern wanted to push him away because he did smell, and it was so hot and sticky and the mosquitoes were awful. But for the first time, she felt like someone in love, or maybe, she thought, she felt like a mom; she’d always wanted to have a baby of her own, not just a doll baby, but a real one to hold and cuddle. As she held Elvis’ sweaty head against her chest, she rocked him. “Please, baby, tell me. Tell me what you’re talking about,” she said. But he just shook his head no.

  Lavern shivered as she pulled an afghan off the back of the couch and wrapped it around her. Later that day, long after Elvis had pulled away from her, mumbled “thanks” and run off again, she’d found out that Elvis’ father had disappeared. The word had gotten around town pretty quickly; back then, divorce was unusual. A man deserting his family, well, that just never happened.

  To Lavern, it seemed like something scary and mysterious had happened to make Mr. Icabone leave. Elvis had made it seem like something horrible.

  That night, after the disappearance, Lavern had stayed awake and thought about it for hours. Lying in the bed she shared with her sister, Brenda, she’d heard her mom and dad in the next room, talking about the Icabones. Lavern’s dad was a big, muscular truck driver with a loud voice and strong opinions about the “morals of the country” and “personal responsibility” and “doing the right thing.” She could still hear him going on and on about that “screwed up Icabone family” and “this world’s going to hell when you see a man leaving his family” and so on. Lavern’s mom, soft-spoken but tough like always, told him to quiet down. Lavern had been afraid then, thinki
ng her parents were missing something, that the story about Elvis’ dad leaving had something awful in it.

  The next day at church, she’d closed her eyes during congregational prayer time and prayed good and hard for Elvis. She’d prayed his dad would come home soon and that whatever was wrong would get set right so the world, especially Elvis Icabone, wouldn’t go to hell.

  Over Sunday dinner, Lavern had wanted to talk about what happened. When she was passing the corn to her dad, she opened her mouth and almost brought it up. But Lavern was stopped by another, stronger fear—that her father was looking for an excuse to make her stay away from Elvis.

  Then and now, Elvis’ family had been a mystery, Lavern thought, scooping another wet fingerful of Cheeze Whiz and slipping it into her mouth. Oh, she’d gotten to know his half-loony mom pretty well, especially after she and Elvis’d been married awhile. But when they were kids, even before his dad had gone away, Elvis had never let anyone visit him at home; no one, not one of the other kids, ever got to see his mom or dad or inside his house. Back then, Lavern was about the only one who’d known for sure that Elvis had a brother, although she’d never met him. The brother liked to be alone and liked to read a lot; Elvis had told her that once not long before his father disappeared. Elvis’d called his brother “a real smart kid who went to a smart kids’ program at Brickwood Elementary” instead of their school, Ballard Street Elementary. He’d spit the words out, like his brother was his biggest enemy in the world. When she’d asked him to tell her more, he’d changed the subject. He’d never said anything about being a twin.

  Just a week or two after Elvis’ father had gone away, Lavern heard the brother was gone too. When she had a chance, when she and Elvis were alone, she’d asked him about it. He’d gotten super angry, something she’d never seen before or since. Elvis shoved her to the ground and held her there, straddling her, his eyes wild and crazy. “Don’t you never talk about him or none of that again. Don’t you never. You promise,” he’d screamed. “You promise right now and forever. You’ll never ever talk about none of it.”