They both looked down. Disguised in a shoe mostly stuffed with leather, hiding beneath cotton pants, Julian’s bad leg taunted. It hung too short; in the intermittent light, it seemed not only withered but gnarled.
At a distance, Julian heard Elise talking. Explaining that fence lines needed to be walked and calving happened in fields, in the middle of the night.
He couldn’t bear to look at her. Instead, he glanced at the wagon tucked in with the plow and the cutter. Charlie used to pull him to town in that wagon. These days, Julian used it in the fields, to push himself down rows of carrots and corn, beets and tomatoes—when they needed planting, or pinching back, or harvesting.
The world, the wide, limitless world, shrank to the size of the barn where he’d once lain fevering in the night. Gathering as much pride as he could, Julian swallowed his heart and said, “I hope nothing but the best for you.”
Elise swayed, as if struck. When she spoke again, her voice came ragged and thin. “I wish you’d hate me.”
“Well, I’m sorry, I don’t.” Standing, he didn’t try to hide that he had to hop to get to his crutches. And he didn’t bother to try to hide anything else, either. Picking up the lantern, he suffocated its flame. Deliberate, he hung it on a nail, and added, “I imagine Mama will cut you a piece of cake to take home.”
He kept his back straight and his head high until he heard the door close behind her. The terrible stillness in his bones was building; a hard and ugly calm came over him. Then he dropped one crutch and tossed the other up to catch it by the foot. With perfect form, he twisted like a batter at home plate, and swung.
The lantern exploded. Hot glass and beads of kerosene marked him.
A few minutes later, Charlie popped his head inside. “Hey, Julie. You coming to your own party?”
“Yeah.” Scrubbing his sleeve across his face, Julian retrieved his second crutch and went to leave. A fine spray of fire stung his brow; he couldn’t tell if it was blood or blisters, but he didn’t really care.
“Lord, baby brother. What did you do to your face?” Charlie asked. Then he caught a glimpse of the shattered lamp and put a hand out to stay him. Concerned, Charlie lowered his voice. “Hey now, what happened?”
Brushing his hand away, Julian pushed past him. He had a plan now: wash up, have some cake, and let this day die. But because Charlie liked to worry, and worse than that, liked to talk, Julian turned back.
“Nothing. It fell off the nail.”
Charlie frowned. “Julian . . .”
“Nothing happened, Charlie. Are you coming or not?”
With another quick look at the wreckage, Charlie nodded. He was careful to shut the door firmly and to drop the pin in the latch.
Julian went back to his party and faked a hundred smiles. He ate cake, but skipped the ice cream, and opened his gifts slowly. There was a new watch from his parents and a chain from his brothers.
The sheet music from Elise, he burned later in private.
Six
As long as he moved from bench to bench through the night, Caleb found he could sleep in Central Park in downtown Los Angeles.
Bay trees hung low, crowded by sycamores and palms alike, darkening the paths in spite of the globe lights. The traffic on Olive Street never ceased, but then, the ocean had never been silent either. The constant hum of automobiles could seem like waves as long as Caleb closed his eyes.
Looking for work at The Pike had been a bad idea. A place like that let anybody hawk their wares; they didn’t care if good people were abused or tormented or worse. Old rage ran in hot tributaries beneath his skin.
Unreeling himself, Caleb stretched his back and his knees, and both still hurt as he approached the marble fountain in the middle of the green. Today would be better; today, he’d stay in the city.
As he took off his hat, he stared into the uneven water, then dipped his hands into it. Splashing his face and neck, he hissed at the cold shock. It didn’t clean like seawater. There was no scrub to it, no raw brace afterward when he lifted his face to the wind.
But this is what he had, and he would make do. He ignored the sideward glances thrown his way. He raised another handful and ran it through his hair. Let all of them in ironed shirts and new hats stare. They didn’t work for a living, did they? Load of princesses, all of them, hands silky and perfumed.
When one hesitated, as if he might dare say something, Caleb made a rude gesture that sent him scurrying away. Who were they to say anything to him?
Dipping another handful of water, Caleb drank deep. He swished it around to chase the old, sour taste from his tongue. Right before he leaned over to spit it back in the fountain, a nearby police officer cleared his throat.
After The Pike, Caleb couldn’t afford to draw more attention. He needed work; he needed a dollar to pay for a room, and a dinner that came hot on a plate instead of warm from the bins behind the Chinatown groceries.
Swallowing the water, Caleb put on a fake brogue and said, “Top of the morning to you.”
The officer narrowed his eyes. “On your way to work, then, are you?”
Caleb didn’t answer. Instead he wet his hand again and ran it through his hair as he stood. He knew he was being run off, but he couldn’t be forced to do it quickly. He leveled his black eyes to meet the officer’s gaze, a challenging cant to his shoulder.
In reply, the officer stroked his thumb down the gleaming club that hung at his hip.
Straightening his hat slowly with both hands, Caleb didn’t even blink. He smoothed his vest, patted his trousers dry, then even took the time to retie both shoes.
“Daylight’s burning,” the officer said. His face dimmed in splotches, little crimson signs to confess his discontent, even if his voice stayed milky calm. “Don’t want to be late, now, do you?”
“No, sir,” Caleb said, his voice thick with sarcasm. “Be downright stupid to stand around wasting time for no reason. I’m not a stupid man.”
No matter how fresh the morning air, no matter the spice of bay that clung to the park and freshened each step through it, Caleb couldn’t enjoy it. He was down to the clothes on his back, the shoes on his feet. Down to sleeping in parks and having nightmares about blood-wet calling cards.
Still annoyed, Caleb cut across the manicured lawn to the sidewalk. Cars jounced along beside him, the call of their horns like a flock of overexcited geese. They were stupid, graceless things, automobiles. Not like a ship on the waves, not graceful like those fine sailing girls at all.
Stepping in front of one, Caleb scraped his chin at the driver. Then he darted through a crowd of morning walkers to reach the shelter of a gold awning. The doors were locked, but Caleb waited until he saw motion inside and tapped on the glass.
“Not open,” the man called through it. His disheveled tie and unbuttoned vest testified that he hadn’t expected to see anyone so early.
Tapping again, Caleb pointed at the sign in the window. “Looking for work.”
The man lit up and he hurried to unlock the door. His watery eyes skimmed Caleb’s face, his damp shirt. But something made him smile anyway. “It’s only service and maintenance right now, so you know.”
Once, Caleb thought he might become a musician. Now his hands were hard, trained for hauling fishing gear or lathing wood . . . or mopping floors and fixing chairs in Clune’s Theatre Beautiful.
Offering his hand, Caleb said, “Fine by me.”
“The office is right this way,” the man said. “Having the hardest time getting this position filled, the war and all. Turned away any number of girls. Can you imagine?”
“Shame they don’t know their place.”
The man hummed agreeably, leading Caleb to a door at the end of a hall. Rounding his desk, he sorted through some papers until he found a half sheet and a pen. Glancing up from it, the man considered Caleb’s clothes, his worn hat, once more before pressing on. “All right, then, I’ll need your name for your packet . . .”
“Virgil,” Cale
b said, and leaned over to watch him write it. “V-i-r . . . That’s right, and Walker.”
If the manager suspected a lie, it never showed.
***
The house was a lie. His life was a lie.
Julian stood in the front foyer, looking up the stairwell. Patterned carpet climbed one side of it, held down by brass tacks that Dad replaced every year on New Year’s Day.
The other half was a scuffed flat built over the stairs—a slide. Pressing fingers against his temple, Julian could summon a vague memory from before the slide. His pajamas had feet, and Sam’s didn’t; they always got sent to bed at the same time.
That was back when his bedroom was upstairs with the rest of his brothers’. After he came in from the barn, carried in because he couldn’t walk, the pantry became his room. It wasn’t noticeably pantrylike, except sometimes when the radiator came on, he smelled spiced apples. Somebody must have broken a jar of them in there before all the shelves came out and his desk and bed went in.
Sitting on the stairs, Julian hoisted himself up, step-by-step on his rear. The crutches rattled as he dragged them. At the top, he slid down polished floors, until he could get up and get his balance. Tucking his crutches under his arms, he slowly walked the hallway.
Cluttered with Tarzan novels and ripe with the scent of aftershave, Sam’s room was exactly him. Mysteriously, a single roller skate dangled from a peg. Beside it hung a hosiery ad from a magazine—as close to a pin-up as Mama would allow in her house.
A messy spray of baseball cards teetered on the edge of the desk, a few drifting beneath Sam’s bed. The quilt was made from patches of his old clothes, the ones that Julian couldn’t wear, and old toys he’d grown out of. The velveteen in one square used to be a stuffed rabbit. A faded patch of gingham was once a pair of short pants.
Julian moved to the next room, the one with pale yellow wallpaper and curtains of white lace. Mama’s black sewing machine sat in its clever cabinet, and an ironing board hung from the wall beside it. Shelves held dry goods, threads and buttons, bags of rags for future quilts. The air in there smelled like laundry brought off the line, and his mother’s honey soap.
When he closed his eyes, Julian could see another version of this room. It was silver and blue, full of Charlie’s things, with a full moon hanging in the window. The rasp of dried stalks coming for him sounded so real in his memories that Julian had to look out, to make sure.
A field of emerald green, the corn outside had begun to show its tassels. Bladed leaves cut through the wind, wavering and bent.
His heart seized, a trill caught below his collarbone. He wasn’t afraid of the corn anymore, but the animal bit of his brain still took pause. Resting a hand on the frame, Julian breathed on the glass deliberately, then watched the fog fade. This was the last place he’d ever stood on two healthy legs, on two steady feet.
Somehow, they’d made him forget everything. That he watched the corn from Charlie’s room and used to have a bed in Sam’s. That there was a time when he walked up the stairs and back down, when he wasn’t tucked in the pantry or carried anywhere. That they used to go to the church in Connersville, the one with impressive steps. Once, Julian was sure, he’d climbed a tree and gone ice-skating.
Polio had wiped it all away, and his family had helped disguise it.
There were hooks in the downstairs rooms for his crutches. His chores kept him in his mother’s garden or tending the chickens; he detasseled corn and snapped beans. He put laundry on the lines and took it down again, but someone else hauled it inside.
Bitterness rose in Julian’s throat. He was older than Dad had been when he went out West alone, and he had nothing. Not a girl, not a piece of land, nothing—wait, not true. He had a morbid, ugly gift that his parents warned him to hide. The one extraordinary thing of his own, and they’d tried to erase that, too.
Leaning over, Julian stared at a dead fly on the window sash. A surge of reckless discontent filled him; it blotted out reason and contemplation. Drawing a deep breath, Julian blew on the fly. Its iridescent wings trembled, then it staggered across the sash.
The flash of oblivion came on hard. It was a swift punishment, and brief. Julian clutched the side of the window, his knee buckling beneath his weight. He blinked, and everything came back at once. All but sound; the ringing in his ears drowned that out.
Revived, Julian slid downstairs, almost crashing into the front door. Wrenching himself upright again, he threw open the door and stepped onto the porch. Blood still sang in his ears, his pulse thin and wild. With a single breath, he revived the captives in a spider’s web, then clung to a rail for the aftermath. His heart quivered tentatively before catching its beat again.
As he stood there, he noticed a stiff, bent wing in the grass. He’d never tried to revive anything bigger than his pinkie. Somehow, that had seemed too great. Too godly. Cold crept over him.
It would have been easy to go back inside, to live in this oversized crib and blind himself to the truth once more. It would have been easy, and he’d never have been able to face himself again.
Hopping down the stairs, Julian nudged the bird with his crutch. Hardened in its pose, the bird—a sparrow— seemed insubstantial. It could have been made of papier-mâché. A light breeze ruffled the feathers, and Julian dropped down before he could think it through.
He burned all the breath from his lungs, but nothing happened. Still stiff, still dead, the sparrow lay on the grass, unmoving. With a sigh, Julian sat back. Nothing, just nothing. He should have known. Pressed by the sun, he reached for his crutches.
Abruptly, the sky changed angles. Beneath him, the earth shifted. Razored heat cut through him from the inside. He didn’t feel it when he hit the ground. Streaks of green crossed his vision. A fine veil of panic drifted over him. Everything hurt; nothing moved. When he breathed, he gagged on the stench of decay.
The sparrow stirred. Its limbs moved contrary to nature: talons flexing against the joints, and its head wrenched nearly backwards. Its eyelids dragged over milky, sightless orbs. Lurching through the grass, it fell over, then righted itself. Claws spasmed, wings jerked.
Skin itching like pestilence, Julian wanted to move; he tried to crawl away. But he was frozen, eyes fixed open. Light burned, but tears wouldn’t come. There was no blessed darkness for him. He had to see it, when the sparrow remembered how to flap its wings. The sight of maggots dropping from newly animated flesh branded him.
He prayed in formless desperation. All that mattered was ending this. He wanted it to stop, the bird, his own body, everything. Anything. The sparrow opened its beak and screamed. It was a high, ragged note, full of agony. Then the poor beast collapsed in silence.
“Thank you,” Julian rasped. He almost sobbed when the violent grip on his body finally relaxed. Trembling, cold, he closed his eyes and basked in the dark, in taking a breath untainted by death.
Footsteps approached, and Henry leaned over, blocking out the sun. “What are you doing down there?”
Pushing up on his elbows, Julian shook his head a little too hard. Pain swirled through it, and his stomach turned in unison. “Nothing.”
“Well, get up. Mama’s going to have a conniption if she finds out you’re playing with dead birds again.”
“Again?” Julian asked.
But Henry hauled him to his feet and was gone before he got an answer. Still unsettled, Julian didn’t follow. Instead, he pushed the sparrow’s body into the bushes. After all that, it deserved to sink back into the earth in peace.
Julian went to wash up with the brown lye soap Mama kept in the laundry—when he was done, he decided, he’d find out what else they’d been keeping from him.
“Couldn’t you leave him?” Mollie asked. She swept her hair behind her ear, offering her most winsome smile.
Sitting on the foot of Kate’s bed, she’d already changed into her costume and dusted her skin with cornstarch to lighten it. A touch of rouge stained her lips; crushed charcoal darkened th
e lashes beneath her eyes. She was both beautiful and frightening, and she couldn’t wait to get into the planter that would pose as a boat.
The smile, however, was lost on Kate. She hid beneath her quilt, changing the film in her camera. It wasn’t particularly delicate work, but Handsome stood on her back while she did it, making the task more difficult. Mollie would shriek if he flapped his wings, and he would certainly flap his wings if Kate disturbed his balance, so like a surgeon, she made small, precise motions to balance everything.
“I think it should be romantic if we had a raven to circle your grave,” Kate said.
Mollie narrowed her eyes at the bird. As far as she was concerned, he was a great, awful monster. She didn’t care much for the fact that he fascinated Kate nearly as much as she did. Making a face, Mollie spoke, her voice far sweeter than her expression.
“It is very romantic,” she said, rolling her eyes. “But he makes me nervous. I know it makes me a frightfully silly thing, but I won’t be able to give my best performance. You said that film was dear.”
Beneath the cover, Kate yelped when she closed her finger in the camera case. “It is, that’s true . . .”
Slipping to her feet, Mollie backed toward the door. Any moment, Kate would stand up and that nasty bird would go wild. It was worse than a rat; rats had the sense to run away from human beings. “And I do so much want to impress Mr. Griffith with a perfect reel.”
“Wouldn’t that be something?” Kate’s smile was evident in her voice, and she rose like a ghost. Uncovering one arm, she bobbed her shoulder to make Handsome work his way down. “He’d stare. Openly. In wonder! And I’d say, ‘D.W., you’re drawing flies, dear man. You must tell me exactly what you think.’”
Warming up to this fantasy, Mollie leaned her head against the door. “And he’d say, ‘It’s marvelous. It’s wonderful. We’ll want this for Triangle, straightaway.’”
The Elementals Page 6