by Lee Thomas
You take her to the boardwalk instead of the car because you don’t want to feel her on you; it’s too much like a jacket, sleeves wrapped and locked around your chest. The shops with food and sunglasses, the people; a movie that never changes. So, your shoes thump a rhythm on the boards. Jody looks at you like a hero. You look at the planks like a convict. People come and go. Their voices fill your ears, and then fade.
Beneath your arm, you feel Jody pause. Looking up, you notice the empty peanut cart, the railing, the stairs. Fleshy sand fans toward the great black pond that seduced her brother. You know she doesn’t like coming here.
You know I don’t like coming here.
But there’s an answer on the sand. You can’t see it, can hardly imagine it. Still, you feel it. Its chain wraps around your heart, pulls tight.
I want to go back to the car.
Before, you would have stopped and changed direction, doing anything for Jody. She was the completion of you as a man. Your jokes were met with her laugh. Your foolishness, her scowl. Her sweet soft body refused you nothing. Once, your dreams were hers, shared and discussed late at night while sweaty stomachs cooled between you. Why did that end? When?
With Bobby?
You look into her frightened eyes. Baby, it’ll be all right.
She trusts you and offers her hand so you can guide her down to the beach. Sand crumbles beneath your boots. Jody stumbles and yelps. A nervous giggle follows as you pull her tight and hold her steady. Her hair brushes your cheek. You smell the baby shampoo she uses on it. For a moment, the salt, the trash and engine fumes are gone and your head is cleansed by the scent of her and the chain tightens around your heart, pulling you toward the waves.
When you stop, it’s because your heart—its slow tic tock—needs winding. So you press your lips to Jody’s and taste the bubble gum gloss frosting them. The taste sparks no desire, no pleasure-memory. It’s just sweet and sticky.
Jody clutches at you, binding herself to your ribs. Over her head, you see the one that called you standing near the battle of wave and sand.
He is another circuit tough with faded jeans too tight and the sleeves of his t-shirt rolled.
A pack of Lucky’s hides beneath the fabric at his shoulder.
This tough is different, though. His threat doesn’t grow from muscle or blade. You tell yourself that it’s the gin or the trapped beast in your head or the incest of the two breeding dementia.
You know Bobby’s face. Around this boy, a billow of smoke as black as the sky curls and dances. Looking closer, you see that he is not resurrected with skin or bone, but rather surf, beach and misty shadow, formed by the wet and the dirt and the air of this place. Night fills the cavities of his eyes and grains of wet sand lay like smooth sheets of brow and cheek. Dry sand weaves his shirt and chutes of seawater form the twin columns of his legs, the cascade an illusion of rippling pale blue cotton. His edges are rough and fray, working outward to become filaments of dark smoke, reaching to the sky. Or perhaps the reverse is true, and Night reached down to sculpt this phantom.
Bobby looks at you. Except for the whirling mist and the fall of his pant legs, he is motionless, staring. Holding Jody closer to your chest, you look on in frightened wonder. Now your heart beats faster, the way you hoped it would with her kiss.
You know what he wants. The knowledge is inside of you like the chain that brought you to this place. He wants you to turn away and leave Jody on the sand with him. The shore ghost wants to share secrets with his sister.
Turn away. Walk back to the avenue where the living go round and round.
You push Jody away, gently and with great care. Her eyes are bright and expectant as if anticipating a compliment or proposal. And you turn away to look at the boardwalk and the wall of light rising behind it from the circuit. Behind you, she speaks your name. She sounds confused and hurt, but you don’t turn back. You can never look back. With your next step, you feel her hand on your shoulder but you don’t stop walking. The hand is gone, and she speaks another name.
Bobby?
So, you walk over the sand, each step uncertain, earth crumbling underfoot. You climb the stairs toward the boardwalk, up and away from the sand. You walk along Ocean, the motorcade little more than a hum in your ears, a blur from the corner of your eye. Night suffuses the headlights, dulls the neon and blacks out the stars. The faces you’ve seen too long are now flat and featureless, masks distorted by erosion.
You’re behind the wheel of your car, driving north on Ocean but you don’t turn left. You keep going, away from the circuit to the great darkness ahead, and you don’t look back.
But now, you are back.
You let the last of the memories slip away. Jody stands closer now, though still not close. From where you stand you see sand running in smooth sheets over her cheeks and draping long, like hair to her shoulders. The grains mound at her chest, and your name is carved in relief, just empty letters with the night showing through. Bits of captured ocean fill her expressionless eyes and weave the material of her bell-bottom pants.
She drowned the night you left. Just like her brother, Jody walked into the ocean to dream face down. Night demanded a sacrifice, payment for your release from this place, and when it appeared, wearing Bobby’s façade, you gave Jody to it and walked away.
You drove for days after that, what little cash you carried fed the gas tank, distance far more important than meat. Then came the jobs, then Susan and the children. Through it all, the numb of that night remained with you like an opiate cloud. You hid culpability behind that mist, kept Jody there for years at a time. When she was able to break through, guilt pecked at your belly, though caused no real damage.
But tonight memory burns away denial’s morphine. Looking at Jody’s image, guilt claws at your belly and sends acid tears to your eyes.
The easiest thing to do is to step forward, offer Night’s sculpture of Jody your hand and let her guide you to peace. She can take you to the water’s edge, lead you out and pull you under. A few moments of fear, perhaps panic, but then the pain and guilt will wash away on the salty tide, fear streaming from you like tears, responsibility forever behind.
The prospect of peace soothes.
Your kids are grown and don’t need you anymore. Susan will be fine, might prefer to spend the remainder of her life without you. There is insurance, and her sister or one of the kids will take her in. If they sell the house, there will be more money to get them through. It would be so easy, you think, and a scalding desperation fills your chest. It’s what you want. What you need. Anything to escape the damned circuit of your life.
Jody reaches out a sandy palm for you. You look at her emotionless face, your chest heaving with sobs. Tears burn lines over cheek and jaw.
“I’m sorry,” you say. You are looking at the specter, but Susan fills your thoughts. You can’t be sure which woman is meant to receive the apology.
You picture Susan then, screaming at you, throwing a glass at the wall in frustration. She breaks into sobs, and clutches at her face, and you are there, arm around her holding as tightly as you can, hoping to draw the misery from her. Even now, with her thousands of miles away, you feel the emotions burn your chest. You want it to stop, for her and for yourself. You just want the pain to stop.
“I’m so sorry,” you whisper, feeling Night’s creation pulling, though you refuse to move. “I can’t make this mistake again.”
But you owe so much.
You wipe at your eyes and turn away. You walk over the sand toward the boardwalk as you did all of those years ago. Night’s grip on you tightens, tries to pull you back, but you fight with each step.
Susan is in your mind, and you are no longer swaddled by the lie that she will be okay.
Every time her vehement pain ceased, she reached for you, clutched at your neck, cried apologies into your collar. She needs your warmth, your understanding and your love. If you owe any debt it is to her.
A tendril of sand whips around your face, mo
mentarily blinding with grit. You close your eyes, feel another stinging lash crack across your brow. You keep walking.
When you reach the stairs, you turn and look back. The image of Jody remains on the beach. Around her, long cords of sand whip the air, leaving dusty clouds in their wake. You blink the grit from your eyes, let the last tears wash it away.
Maybe this escape is a reprieve, perhaps punishment. It certainly can’t be called justice, but it is right. You will follow the course of your life, carrying the miseries and the joys you are due. Jody will be with you now, no longer obscured by numbing denial. Bobby too. When you reach home, you will hold Susan in your arms. Burdens from the past will find their place among the trials of the present. And in the end, you will gratefully carry them all with nothing forgotten and nothing forgiven.
Fine in the Fire
I didn’t answer the phone when my brother, Toby, called. His name appeared on the screen of my cell like a bad biopsy result, and instead of answering, I threw back another slug of beer and returned my attention to the television set. The sitcom wasn’t particularly interesting, nor was the company of my wife, who’d already decided our marriage was unsalvageable, though it would be another month before she let me in on the fact. She sat on the sofa, frowning. I didn’t bother to ask what was wrong. By that point unhappy had become a default setting her face hit whenever we shared space, so I barely acknowledged it. What are you going to do? Shit happens, and when enough shit happens you go Pavlovian. Talking to my wife hurt, so I stopped talking to her. I treated my brother with a similar, perhaps greater, level of avoidance. His phone calls invariably included an ample portion of four-alarm crazy and a request for cash. Since I had the routing information for his bank account I could send him money. Why not cut out the miserable attempts at conversation, and the grief?
When the phone rang again three minutes later, my wife climbed off the sofa and left the room. I closed my eyes and waited for the ringing to stop. If it was important—and it was always important to Toby—he could leave a message. I figured God had created voice mail for just such occasions.
So many months later as the anniversary of that day bears down, I know I should have answered the phone. I get that now. Sometimes when a boy cries wolf, there really are teeth at his neck, but how was I supposed to know? I’d come to think of Toby’s head as a scalding pot, and I’d learned to keep my fingers away from it.
Once upon a time, Toby was the golden boy, the Prince of Barnard, Texas. I wish I could ask what happened to him and wonder on the question with genuine naiveté. But I know what happened. The cause. The effect. The whole of it was as clear as an image beaming through a polished projector lens.
Sundays are for church and fried chicken. I sit at the dinner table with Daddy, and I’m thinking about the morning sermon. The story of Lot’s wife remains vivid and horrible, and I try to imagine what it must feel like to have every speck of my body turned to grains of salt. I see the ceramic saltshaker in the middle of the table. It is in the shape of a white hen with a pink bow, the wife of the peppershaker rooster. And I wonder if I became a pillar of salt, would people—maybe my own parents—shave bits of me off to fill their shakers so I could flavor food?
My father smokes a cigarette before the meal and asks me if I’ve finished all of my weekend homework, and I lie and say, “Yes, sir,” and then Toby, who is fifteen years old, opens the kitchen door and stands on the porch, wiping dust from the seat of his Lee jeans. His shirt is torn at the shoulder. Patches of dirt cover his knees and shins. Mussed hair juts away from his scalp in haphazard clumps. A bruise blossoms on his jaw, and his left eye is already good and swollen. Though his appearance could be attributed to any number of accidents, I believe he has been in a fight.
A yelp of distress flies from my mother’s lips, and she rushes to the door. Slowly, my father rises from his chair and crosses the room to join her.
Frightened by Toby’s face, shocked by the damage, I find myself more upset to think that someone would dare strike him. Besides being taller than most boys his age, Toby is an athlete, a star on the baseball diamond and the football field. Thick muscles cover his arms and legs; he has our daddy’s build. And even without such physical attributes Toby would have made an unlikely target, because people liked him. He didn’t bully or shove or insult any of his classmates the way the other football players did. What kind of fool had the nerve to lay fists on him?
Then the phone rings, and Toby’s eyes open wide, and fear simmers in those eyes. I’ve never seen my brother afraid before, except for the pretend fear he acted out when we were little kids, playing Cops and Robbers. Mama remains with Toby, fussing and tutting and asking him what happened. Daddy leaves the doorway and goes to answer the phone.
As children Cops and Robbers was our favorite game, and Toby always played the hero. The games would begin with me mortally wounded, dying in my brother’s arms and Toby vowing revenge against some “motherless cur”—a phrase he’d picked up from an old movie.
Then after a spluttering death, worthy of a Shakespearean royal, I would resurrect as said cur and we’d spend an hour running around the backyard jabbing our plastic guns at each other and saying, “pow,” and “bang,” and “eat lead.” It was common. Normal. A cliché enacted by kids all over the world.
It made sense that Toby would play the hero. Not only was he two and half years older than me, he also embodied the term. He was just plain good at everything. Give him a baseball bat, or a math equation, or a guitar and he would figure out how to make them work. People called him, “Brilliant,” “Amazing,” and “Genius.” His best friend, Duke Manheim, used to call Toby, “Flat out impossible,” with a tone that revealed the awestruck depths of his admiration. The last few times I visited Toby, he could no longer hold a cigarette between his fingers; they trembled too badly. Instead, he pinched the filter between his teeth and sucked them down in a few desperate puffs.
Daddy answers the phone and at first he smiles. “Hey there, Rick,” he says, and I know it’s Mr. Manheim, Duke’s father and one of Daddy’s best friends. The call does not interest me as much as my brother’s condition, so I return my attention to Toby, who finishes wiping the dirt from himself and insists Mama leave him be as he steps into the house. Instead of remaining in the kitchen, Toby creeps out of the room without a word. No, “Hey, kid,” or “Hey, squirt,” for me.
I look to Mama for an explanation, but the concern and confusion on her face matches the gray swirl of chaos in my head. She wipes her hands on her apron and turns to Daddy. I follow her gaze and am surprised to see the expression on my father’s suddenly red face. I can’t tell if he’s about to scream or vomit. He notices us gawking at him and pulls the phone away from his ear.
“Betty, take Peter on out of here.” His voice is so quiet and dry it whispers like a desert breeze. Mama opens her mouth with a question, but the words die on her tongue. “Just go on now,” he says. “Be sure to get that chicken off the burner. We don’t want it scorched.”
The phone rang again. I switched the device to vibrate and then stood and passed through the kitchen on the way to my workbench in the garage. Its gouged wooden top was bare—no toys or toasters or bikes needed my attention. The rows of tools on the pegboard were little more than decorative these days. I hadn’t had a new project on my bench since my daughter, Jocelyn, had gone off to college.
Above the bench was a small board with a number of keys, each one hung on a hook beneath a neatly printed label. I lifted the set that opened the doors to my parents’ house—Toby’s house now—and slid them in my pocket. Then I leaned on the bench and tried to remember the last thing I’d fixed there. The lamp from Jocelyn’s room? My old ten-speed? I couldn’t be certain.
I’d picked up the tinkering bug from my father, and though a good deal of his talent had been lost in the genetic translation that was me, I managed to fix most of the household items that landed on my bench. My father, however, had been truly gifted i
n this regard. He could repair just about anything, spot the failure in a second flat, and once he identified the problem, he set to fixing it. His days were spent selling heavy equipment at the John Deere facility in Barnard, but on the nights he wasn’t bowling at the Longhorn Lanes or swapping stories at the VFW hall he mended, repaired, and even invented. He was the master of broken things. Everything could be fixed, could be improved.
Mama escorts me to the door of the bedroom I share with my older brother and tells me to wait inside while she goes to talk with my father. Toby lies on the bed, staring at the ceiling.
He doesn’t look at me when I enter.
“You were in a fight?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer. Instead he crosses his arms over his eyes, and I wonder if he’s crying. On the shelves above his bed sit his shining trophies—for bowling and basketball, for baseball and football. Thirteen of them. I know because I’ve counted them a hundred times. My shelves hold books and a single award: a tiny third place trophy for peewee football that has sat without a companion for five years.
“Who’d ya’ fight with?”
“Duke.” Toby croaks the word but there are no signs my brother is crying, and that reassures me.
“Duke is your best pal,” I say, confused.
“No he’s not.” Toby rolls onto his side, facing away from me.
I know the wounds on his jaw and eye are pressed into the pillow and they must ache, but he doesn’t roll back toward me. He doesn’t move. I continue to ask questions, but he won’t reply, and I persist and I pester, because nothing makes sense to me. Folks admire Toby, they celebrate him, and the only people who weren’t his friends were the ones too intimidated to get close, so why had Duke Manheim thrown fists at my brother? At the boy he himself had proclaimed, “Flat out impossible?”
The door opens and Daddy steps inside. He crosses his arms, gazing at me without so much as a glance for my brother.