Called the police, the game warden, would call Billy in the morning, give him something to laugh about down at the Elks. Crazy neighbors bringing their roadkill home, stringing it up in a tree for the night, asking what they should do next.
Sure, he’d say, be right over.
Billy Hawkins owns the farm down the road from us. Ninety acres of pastures and hayfields, broken-down trucks and barns. Used to keep dairy cows, like his father, but gets paid more not to milk these days. No need to elaborate, towns around here changing. Condos and golf courses, pastel mansions in the middle of cornfields, old mills becoming antique shops and restaurants. Billy scoffs at it all—hard not to take it personally—hobby farmer that he’s become, few Herefords for tax purposes, truck of his all nice and clean.
We expect him to arrive with the reasons we shouldn’t be doing this, as if we need permission to give up on the deer. Maybe the meat is tainted, ruined by blood, spoiled through some neglect we don’t know about. Hope he will just smile and shake his head and suggest we bury the damned thing. Kate will laugh with relief. I’ll joke about our own stupidity and go fetch a shovel. That’s what we hope, at least.
Hardly seems worth the effort by morning, deer so slight, awful how she holds that stretch as we cut her down. Billy drives up and grabs a leg, saying, Gimme paw. He laughs, motions us across the yard, tells us to dump her by the shed, Kate taking the wheelbarrow as I tip the animal to the grass.
Careful, whispers Billy, don’t want to wake her up or anything now, do you?
And again that laugh—that big, infectious, china-rattling laugh—Billy pulling a pair of yellow kitchen gloves from his jacket. He opens a knife, blade the length of a finger, and lowers himself next to the deer, taps the drum of the animal’s stomach.
So, he says to us, eaten much venison in your day?
We say no, of course, and squint against the light.
At least not yet we haven’t, says Kate.
Billy touches the ground for balance and twists the animal by the neck until the body follows, man asking me to kneel down and hold her steady, deer on its back, legs spread, hair thin and delicate. Billy tells how it’s best to open these things right away, how skin tends to keep heat, how organs bleed out sometimes. He lifts the tail and explains how you start by cutting around the anus. Want to free the whole circle of it, he says—and that liquid crackle of knife as he works—Billy saying, You can’t nick the colon, can’t nick the bladder, want to pull the whole intestinal tract in one fell swoop from the body.
He stops to tighten his gloves and cleans the blade on the plush of the deer. Shows how to hold the knife for this, finger on top of the blade, blade bright and sharp. Moves to the chest of the animal, his pants wet at the knees, and Billy plucks the thin underside of hair, says there’s a tender spot along the brisket, pinches the skin between his fingers, and starts to tick the point of the knife away from himself. The flesh opens like a zipper, entire suit of the deer in one long draw of blade, Billy like a steam engine working.
Maybe it’s the way he breathes through his nose, sound of steel wool in his nostrils, but he reminds me of those uncles who were never really uncles, Uncle Eddie or Uncle Walter, the sort of men my brother and I would try to borrow as fathers. We’d try to hand the right tools as they fixed a door or snaked a drain, men rationing their affection, withholding their praise, asking if we were behaving for our mother, teasing if we had girlfriends yet, slipping us a few dollars for our help. Some spending money, they’d say. Can’t go around begging your whole life, can you?
Animal would have stayed on its back by now, but I hold her anyway, that musky smell of hooves, man slicing through the deer’s milk sacks, milk running to the grass. Billy pushes the blade between the animal’s legs until he connects, at last, to that first round cut at the tail. Rest goes quickly enough. Lungs, liver, intestines, everything on the grass, heart like a knot of wet rags. Kate’s stepped back from this, cold sweet taste of metal in the air, smudge of blood on Billy’s sleeve, man scraping the cage of ribs as if cleaning the inside of a pumpkin.
He dangles the esophagus and asks if I want to feel. I shake my head no—and he turns to Kate—and she steps forward as if to take a garden hose, as if she’s made some kind of deal, some kind of promise to see this through to the end. Billy peels the gloves off his hands and helps string the animal up in the tree, deer more like a deer again, feet tied together, legs stretched, Billy about to leave.
I’ll call my buddy Andy, he says. Owns a little grocery, can butcher the thing for us, see if we can’t finish her off this afternoon.
Kate begs off whatever’s left of this—the flushing out of the body, the intestines and lungs to clean from the grass, the slaughtering of the animal—and she hands me the phone when Billy calls. You know, he says, lucky if we get twenty pounds of meat off her. Wouldn’t be bad to just stay home, be good boys for a change, make nice to our wives maybe?
Up to you, I tell him. I mean, you’re the one doing us the favor, but weren’t you going to get hold of your friend?
I did, he says—and there’s this catch in his voice—and I can see him take a breath over the phone. All right, he says, toss her in the trunk and swing by the house.
Now this is where I am supposed to go find Kate upstairs, that soft and tender moment between us, where I give the comfort she wants and needs. That wicker creak of quiet, house holding its breath, and I know exactly what to do, but for some reason I’m calling up the stairs that I gotta run—and I’m out the door—and I’m in the yard again, sun so bright it’s painful, afternoon so clear and cool I could drink it.
And don’t think it doesn’t cross my mind to just keep driving past Billy’s house. Don’t think, as I load the deer into the car, that I don’t want to skip this entire thing, skip the small talk with Billy’s wife, the cup of coffee, the can of beer. Don’t think I want any of this, Billy directing me from the Lions to the Elks to the Knights of Columbus until we find his friend, the three of us switching to Andy’s truck, deer in the back with plywood and buckets of road salt and sand. Few miles to the little grocery where Andy starts in on the deer, whine of circular saw cutting the animal’s feet off, taste of burned bone in the room, another beer from the freezer, broken bicycle of carcass to carry to the garbage. Don’t think I need the dark outside like this, either, the cold clean air of alley, the smell of game on my hands, Billy and Andy laughing about something inside, that endless dream of fitting in with men like these, standing easy with them, chores all but done, that look of thirst on our faces, blood on our aprons, just rinsing counters at this point, wiping down knives, and let’s get out of here.
I carry the wrapped cuts of deer in a carton, meat going in back with the plywood, Andy and Billy waiting for me to join them again. Only I’m moving away from the truck, telling them to go on, saying I want to walk home. Middle of the parking lot and they look at me like I’ve just appeared from behind the dumpsters, hungry dog with some scent in the air. C’mon, says Billy, quick stop at the Elks, can pick up your car at least.
But I’m almost to the street by now, trying not to hurry around the first corner, hiding in the shrubs until the truck is gone. Oh, champagne air—oh, dark empty streets—oh, I’m running and laughing and crying and telling Kate this whole story. Can run forever, it feels, past all these sleeping houses, sky wild with stars, crazy person down the middle of the street with blood on his hands, up to his elbows in this mess.
Calvary
Lifted the grocery bag off the hood of the car and got in behind the wheel and unlocked the passenger side for the boy and all the clocks started forward again. The two of them glided out of the parking lot, slow down the hill and avenue, looking for her on either side of the street. First set of lights and he sent the boy into a deli for some coffee and a pack of cigarettes. By the time the kid came out of the store, his father had already turned the car around to the far side of the street. He watched the boy cross the traffic, this gangly eleven-ye
ar-old kid around the front of the car, and they drove back up the hill toward the cemetery, eased in through the open gates, angels on either side of them, stone wall rough and tall and covered with graffiti.
One lazy turn after another and the man steered the old Plymouth through the endless wreckage of pillars and statues, crosses and columns, trees, crypts, the hills crowded with stones. At the crest of the hill the city lay beyond, buildings jumbled and shining, like another cemetery in the distance. The lanes went cinder and narrow and the man idled at a long cul-de-sac of great tall elms, the graves and cobblestones all heaved askew by the roots beneath, the shade like damp blankets over the grass, the man parking under the trees.
Shall we? he asked.
And when the boy didn’t say anything, the man nudged his shoulder. C’mon, let’s walk.
They got out of the car. Glimpses of distance through the stones. Sound of an airplane. And then quiet. The boy followed his father—so quiet in this place—that dry tinsel of grass under his feet. The boy felt whispers brushing close as they went. Sunlight through the trees. Air warm and heavy as bath water. Drifted behind the man, sky almost viscous, the boy watching himself from above, as if all of this had happened before, was happening again, just as he’d dreamed it. The headstones, the dwarf pines, the pots and plants and pictures and ribbons, the tiny graves of children like milk teeth in the grass, the brick chapel he was just on the verge of remembering as it appeared before them.
The man called back how he was thinking about some flowers and the boy looked to his father, man wavery in the light, voice far away and nasal and not quite connected to the person standing there. The boy stared at him, never seen this person before in his life, it seemed, a stranger in dress trousers and boots, shirt pressed, hair slick and shining in the sun, hands on hips, head tipping to one side slightly.
Strange fucking kid, said the man, aren’t you?
The boy shrugged and continued to his father, kept walking past the man as if carried by some slow undertow, the two of them floating up the hill toward the chapel ahead of them, shush of the footsteps as they went, trees so vivid and green they sparkled, each leaf its own little leaf, the hair on the boy’s arms crawling like insects.
She was close. Expected any moment to see her. Chapel sold flowers and candles and the boy’s father picked one of the wreaths from the rack at the top of the steps. Slipped money into the metal strongbox, coins like ice in a glass, and those dress boots hard and crackling and loud on the stone steps.
Stood like this forever, two of them on the steps of that little chapel for the rest of their lives. Calvary Cemetery, a snapshot, and years from this place the boy—no longer a boy—he’d come back and find them there, man smoking a cigarette, boy kicking at the rail with the toe of his shoe, his father pressing the wreath onto the kid at last.
Here you go, he’d say, the man’s voice out of sync with his mouth, the boy taking the flowers, the hoop of Styrofoam, smell of glue, the carnations like lips to the kid’s cheek. His father let out a long breath of exasperation and snapped his fingers and started them into the chapel.
Inside was cool and dim and cellar damp, taste of candle wax, boy inching his way until his eyes adjusted to the dark, flickering candles in red cups ahead of them, stained-glass windows to each side, sunlight through rubies and pharmacy-bottle blues, his father’s heels like a clock ticking down the smooth stone of the floor. Always the click of those heels on the floor, man down the aisle, man dipping his fingers in the font, crossing himself, kissing his fingertips as if to slip a key into his mouth.
And the boy pressed the flowers to his face and edged down the center aisle, the darkened rows of pews, high vaulted ceiling above him, scuff of pigeons inside, his father circling to the side aisle and altar. A few more steps and one of the pews creaked beside the boy, a chill shooting past him, someone in the shadows, the outline of someone in the dark.
Couldn’t seem to take a breath, couldn’t seem to move, the boy trying to turn away, trying to not see anything, his mother sitting there, darkness in the dark. He missed her so much—was awful—another piece falling into place wrong, boy’s mother slowly turning to him, gentle smile of hers, kind of veil over her face, her features hard to see in the shadows. Her mouth—and again that dream of his—his mother’s breath like hair against his face. Hey, pumpkin, she was saying, her voice small, how you been?
Tried to hold himself up, hand on the pew, the straight-backed pew, didn’t dare let go, didn’t dare move, murmurs like water running just beneath the surface of the wood. And the boy watched his mother, watched himself staring at her, footsteps approaching down the aisle, boy turning to the man, and the vision—if you could call it that—vanished.
His father wouldn’t see her sitting there, of course, and he’d nudge the boy forward, pew empty, sunlight framed by the doors, man making some joke about the wreath, about the kid not eating the damned thing already, man laughing up toward the ceiling, sound multiplying loud in the space, boy with that acid burn of soap in his mouth.
Outside the sun was blinding, boy holding the rail down the steps, his father on the cinder path ahead of him. The man lit a cigarette and touched a speck of tobacco off his tongue, gathered himself, looked across at the matching stones of nuns, all of them lined perfect. Nice of them to put all the sisters together, he tried to joke, wouldn’t you say?
Already the boy was away from all of this in his mind, riding with his father out of the cemetery again, driving all the stop-and-go streets of the world, the wide boulevards past car dealers and discount stores, past cream-brick tenements and gas stations, his father at the wheel, the city devolving into an almost endless edge of town. Ice cream in their future. A diner and some supper. A filling station with die-cast metal rocket ships to coax his father into buying for him. This lonesome, sad, spoiled-rotten kid of his. That wounded look as good as money.
His father started counting down the markers—section 33, row 33—and the stone lay a short walk away. A small neighborhood of tombs, back-to-back like summer cottages, statues and crosses, glimpses of the city in the distance. Crest of the hill and the view went long. A flyover of expressway, oil containers, smokestacks and steeples and rooftops, the skyline transparent in the haze, and this kid rubbing beads of Styrofoam from the back of the wreath, the man’s hand going to his shoulder, the boy slipping out from under him.
He followed his father, wishing all the while that he could step out of himself, let the man go with the empty costume of a boy in his hand. The real boy—whoever that was—would huddle himself small and lost alongside the statues and stones, watch his father disappear, skin of a boy dragged across the ground behind the man.
Love Is a Temper
Leaving was simple. He and his father had only to walk to the train station, the two men embracing when the train arrived, Joseph tapping his pockets for his papers, boarding the train, and watching as the old man shrank into the blue of steam and distance, his father’s arm raised to say goodbye, all of it like a fairy tale, like a story told for children.
Leaving was easy, the raw movement of it, and the dark Ukrainian fields opened out full and spread the sky wide with light. Immense hours of plowland and trees and the country hilly and wild. Once upon a time, they traced switchbacks over the Carpathians by night, changed trains in Bucharest, and pushed past more bare trees and graying farms and distance, the incessant skip of wheels and rails and movement, each detail deserving a story of its own—the lines of poplars, the loud metal bridge, the people working in fields stopping to watch the train pass, the children waving, and then the mountains like the moon, always with him when he looked up. Together it all drew sounds from his chest—animal growls and groans—Joseph telling how he pulled the window open and washed his face in the wind, the sounds rising out of his throat as if the land were using him to speak.
And all of this turned blue with distance and time, as blue as the voyage across the ocean, nothing but shades of blue f
or days on days, days and blue as heavy as the drone of the engines and the sea and the stories he’d carry like souvenirs. Like the story of the woman who brought the baby over to America. God, just the word—America—the idea alone held them all like a dream and a promise big enough to hold anyone who could say it. It was everyone’s story: each version a leaving, a rumbling of trains, a ship under way, glimpses of weather, all the great longings that never seemed to rest, and the stories that never went still, like the woman with that baby of hers, the way he’d never know her name, yet her face?
Her face, he would say, her face carried the sea in it—cold, gray, unstable.
In one breath he could describe how the sea moved through moods, and in the next he could tell how, in the steerage below deck, the mother never set her child down, how she kept it nestled in the long folds of her skirt, rocked it, sang softly to it, smiled without showing her teeth, as if it pained her to smile. Joseph would say how he might have been falling in love with her as she slept beside him, her mouth open, her teeth black.
His voice soft, he could tell that the baby was dead, its hands stiff and curled, the woman keeping it close as a doll. She bumped the child and hummed to it and pretended to hear the small noises of an infant, Joseph trying all the while not to watch. He’d leave them below and stand on deck in the clean, clear, cold air outside, a horizon of water and glare. He’d bring her a tin of food that evening, the baby in her lap as she ate, the rocking of the ship awful that night.
And when she motioned for the water, Joseph would sit on the floor at her feet and lean to hand the cup to her, touching the woman’s arm and holding it, keeping his hand on her, pressing as if to break a spell and wake her.
A statue’s stare, her face hard and blank and far beyond him—and the next time she moved she’d break—though Joseph would never explain how she broke, or what this meant, only that she was a statue, that she emptied linens from a trunk, and that she swaddled the baby in nice white blankets. She carried the bundle topside up onto the deck, and Joseph followed a few steps behind, not knowing what else to do, the woman finding the rail at the end of the ship, standing there in the clothlike light of the moon. In some ways, he’d already be wondering if there had ever been a child? Was this woman even real? She seemed almost transparent in the light as she let the bundle fall over the side of the ship.
The Architect of Flowers Page 8