My Brother's Passion

by D. James Smith

  We painted Glen’s room so when he came back he might want to live there for awhile, maybe drive up and back to Fresno to take classes at the J.C. on the G. I. bill. We did the walls and the ceiling in blue and the wood trim around the windows in white. It looked pretty good, if I say so myself, and I was glad to do it, and glad my dad didn’t seem to think I was a nuisance. In fact, he gave me one whole wall to myself, and I took my time and tried to do it right.

  I thought since everything was blue like the sky we could do some clouds with the white on the ceiling. Glen would maybe like that I said because after all that time out of doors maybe that room would seem kind of small and we wouldn’t want him to want go somewhere else, but dad said that would take more art than we had and maybe Glen would have had enough of the sky and in any case, I wasn’t to worry.

  11

  Mother was tired that Sunday, but we got her to go. Pastor Jenson’s wife was having the potluck and raffle she always had come the end of the winter at First Baptist. They had a pig that they roasted and all the stuff the women brought, and it wasn’t the kind of thing you could miss without people asking why, so we went. First Baptist was a big brick and mortar place that mother said was put up to spite the downtown Catholics. It had two towers that shot up like the rooks on our chess board and a doorway in between that pointed up at its center and the doors must’ve weighed a ton they were so thick, though they cut up at their tops at a sharp angle, real cunning, fitting the doorway exact.

  People parked all around, cars nosed into the curbs so if you were late you had to walk a couple of blocks just to get there. Going in we said hi to everybody, my mom looking worn with little spoons of dark under her eyes as we clunked down the wooden stairs to the basement. There were scads of people down there, everybody moving around putting their stuff down and saying, How are you? and Oh really? and I declare, and such. They had lots of tables and those wicked folding chairs that give your rear a real workout, and up front there was donated stuff for the raffle laid out on a table the size of the Last Supper.

  It was so crowded people were elbowing around, though doing it polite. We found my mother a seat, and my dad went off with some of the guys from the plant, out through the back and up behind the church to see about the pig. I had my notebook of birds I was drawing with me as my mother said I might get bored, but I left it on the table and went off myself to check on the prizes. They had a fishing rod and some tackle, a portable Zenith radio, two stainless steel Thermoses, a case of Coca-Colas in those little-kid bottles, a gift certificate for twenty-five dollars you could use at the five and dime, and a set of kitchen knives sticking out of a wooden block. But my eyes got fastened on a vase made of river-green glass that opened up at its top like a fan. I was fascinated by the little bubbles of light trapped in its surface. There was a card set out front of it that told how it was hand-blown in West Virginia, and I knew it was the thing my mother would want in her room for the ancestors, though she’d never admit to that kind of longing.

  Sooner or later everybody settled down some, and Pastor Jenson went up front and tapped on this beak of a microphone that topped a metal contraption, thin as a one-legged flamingo and wobbly. I was standing off to the side. I looked for my folks and saw my mother sitting there where we’d left her, sitting by herself, looking clean off into space. My mother could go off by herself whenever she wanted. It was a habit she had. Just let her eyes blank out and take a walk in her mind. I was just taking a walk is what she’d say, and she’d smile at me, and I’d feel left out for a moment and a little troubled because I knew there was no way I could go along someplace like that. I could see that the ladies weren’t talking to her and so she’d gone walking, and I started over towards her.

  I was halfway there when people hushed and Pastor Jenson called over the microphone, that hissed and cracked, for the Almighty to come down to that basement and bless us ’cause we were the faithful, and then he asked that the crooked be made straight, and we all said, Amen. Then they carried in the pig, came swinging through the back door with it on a board, four grown men carrying it, plump and shiny and roasted dark as caramel and dripping in the juices it had made itself. I thought that’s what people were sighing about, because this sigh, this sound like a dog’s low growl coming outside your window at night, coming in soft from way out in a field, this sound like that goes through the room, and I turned and saw it was the Jew coming down the stairs and into that room, my brother’s passion poured like pale beer into a long green vase of a dress, laughing softly and looking at him and holding his arm ever so lightly.

  12

  With the praying done, folks wanted to eat, so they went on and started, the room heating up with plenty of noise, some of the men standing to eat from their plates as it was that crowded. And those two went around, the Jew patting guys on the back, telling jokes, I suppose, because the guys laughed, but you knew they were uncomfortable as they’d move off as soon as they could, and he’d have to go on to the next and start with the jokes and the glad handing again. She didn’t say anything, hardly looked around at all, just smiled kind of distracted, keeping her arm on his.

  They didn’t eat. A Jew won’t eat pig, not ever, on account of their part of the Bible. She sipped a little coffee, pinky finger pointing out to show she was class. I got three dollars from my dad and bought tickets so as to be ready for luck if it was coming my way. And you know, I knew I would win that glass vase that day. Luck’s like that. It builds up. And sometimes, you feel it when it’s about to come down on you. Maybe it was that I was always waiting that put me in that mind. Anyway, Mrs. Webley, the librarian, got the fishing stuff, which everybody knew she’d give to her boy, Arthur, who was thirty-seven and lived at home except when he went hunting for two weeks like he did every winter. Janice Figgs squealed like a little kid when she figured out that she’d won the Zenith, as if she needed it, which she didn’t, being rich like she was—her brother owned four liquor stores and was a soft touch for his sister on account she was too ugly for anyone to marry.

  Somebody I didn’t know got the Coca-Colas, and a girl from high school who wore braces and kept smiling as if it hurt—she’d smile and then suck her lips—got the paper with the twenty-five dollars written on it in a big bold hand in indigo ink and signed by Rudy Shepherd who owned Rudy’s Five and Dime and where she could go now for as long as that twenty-five held out. I don’t know who got the kitchen knives. The whole time I was waiting, feeling quiet and sure and excited at the same time, so much so that when Pastor Jenson’s wife, who had a rump like a Shetland pony, and a round yellow hat that looked like a lemon drop, leaned into the mike to read out the last number, pulling down on her dress that kept riding up, I had already stood up before she read out my number, L278. Everybody clapped and dad looked surprised, and my mother perked up, astonished and pleased.

  I brought it back and put it on the table in front of her, and she was saying, “My, my, it’s so pretty,” playing it up because I’d given it to her, but also really taken by its beauty. Uncle Aquilla was sitting two tables over and he nodded at me and my folks. My aunt, sitting next to him, who dyed her hair root beer red and had little pointed teeth like a possum’s, smiled politely at my mother, and all was fine, and it didn’t bother me then that my brother’s passion was there for everybody to see how he had no hold on her, his being gone and all, and I didn’t care at all that Uncle Aquilla’s eyes were flicking over those two with what I thought was curiosity, but that I see, now, was envy, which some say is the real root of evil.

  13

  It was the old guys in front of the tire shop who’d told me Glen loved his country in spite of his race. Let me know, too, he had it bad for that woman. That’s how I knew for sure he’d had knowledge of her before he went over the seas and before he came back and showed his desire for everyone to see. How’s your brother’s passion? is what one of them had said, winking at the others who’d all laughed and enjoyed it, admiring their deftness, all laughing l
ike congratulations and thank-you to one another’s cunning. I guess I laughed, too, to please them, to show I was worldly, and I admit I felt a little shame, yet the truth is that what they’d said gave me some hope that maybe Glen would stick around so as to be near her when he came home, which I hoped would be soon, and it’s part of what made me go by where she lived once I knew where that was.

  MaryAnn Sheeney had the very smallest house you would ever see. Didn’t have more than three rooms if you counted the bathroom. Just a bedroom with an old iron bed and some red and beige drapes sewn up out of paisley sheets and a little lamp with a ruby shade made of glass. There was just a little bathroom and the rest was a living room of sorts with a kitchen along one wall, a gas stove in one corner, a refrigerator the size of a dryer, a little table for eating. It had a wood burning stove against one wall, and in the center of the room was a couch with its back, humped up like a camel, and that’s all. I could see in if I wanted by creeping up close and looking right through those sheets on account they were thin, though I did that only once.

  Usually, I came out of the ditch and lay up near an old oak in the tall grass on my belly. Somebody had recently whitewashed the place and there were geraniums spotting the beds red out back of the porch. You could see under the paint the wood was old. It was a place that had been there a long while, probably before most. Out back and to the left of where I usually watched, there was a little barn, a bit bigger than the house, with double doors and a weather vane, a rusty rooster on top that squealed if there was any wind. She parked her car in there, a Chevy Impala with the front panels grayed with primer.

  There was a dirt lane that ran right up out front and there was grass all around. There was a grove of pecans on one side, the ditch on the other, and beyond that were couple of acres of blackberries, very juicy when they swelled in summer, fat as bumblebees.

  From where I lay, I could only see the back side of the house. It was cool in the grass in the shade of that tree and sometimes I’d drift off and maybe sleep a little. That day the blackberries weren’t out but the grass was lime green and so fresh it must have already been spring. I was stretched out and thinking, chewing a long blade of sourgrass, sucking the juice from it and practicing my spit which was good, but nowhere near what the old guys downtown could do. I thought no one was home because the stereo wasn’t playing. My brother’s passion played stuff I never heard at home or on my station. She liked this dreamy stuff with saxophones and basses wandering around, climbing up and down with minds of their own and a lady singing husky and alone.

  I was watching a blue jay sling itself down over a big calico Tom, strafing it with a sharp scree, scree, scree until that Tom shot across the lot and slipped under the house. I had my notebook, and I thought maybe I should try doing a bird like that, on the wing, not just sitting still like I usually did.

  But the shouting started, and it went straight quick to screaming. It was her screaming, harsh and high and angry, but it ended up fearful and surprised. I shot to my feet when I heard it, got up without thinking, forgetting myself, forgetting I had no business being there and no business knowing about things the way I did. I stood up, ready to run, but my legs wouldn’t go. Stood up in plain sight next to that tree, stood still as that tree when she came out the back door, the screen door flying open and banging, her falling back off the step the way I would if I was horsing around at the municipal pool.

  But there was no water there to catch her, only the earth, and she went down to it hard, hard enough I thought I heard the breath push out of her though that couldn’t be true as I was too far away. She stood up, wobbly as a colt, with that water-light that comes with spring wavering round her, the back of her hand to her mouth and her head down, hair falling forward from the top of her head.

  Then he came out and dropped down the step and swung down on her, fist closed as if hitting a man, punching her head so she dropped with no sound, just folded up and collapsed under the blow to lay there on her side, not moving at all. And he stood over her, and then he seemed to remember to look around. I couldn’t see his eyes, but his head darted back and forth and then pointed off across the ditch toward the blackberries planted in rows, heat waves, squiggly above them.

  My heart was thumping, big jack-rabbit thumps, but I didn’t move and I realized he didn’t see me, he was looking right through me and beyond, and I thought I must look like a stump at that distance or a shoot coming off that tree, and I was glad I was too troubled to move.

  He went down on his knees and slipped his arms through his suspenders and unbuttoned his jeans and his back side showed pale and naked and private as anything could that’s not used to the light, and he pushed up her dress and rolled her over on her belly. And he went at her, the desire in him fierce, struggling and huffing, trying to get free, his head up and watching the sky, I guess, head up like he’s listening hard for some sound that’s up there that’s too rare to hear, like maybe those whistles they have pitched high for animals, some sound I don’t know directly.

  I don’t think he ever heard it either, no matter how much he wanted, ’cause he stopped with a jerk and his whole self went stiff, and then he surprised me and gave me more confusion than I knew what to do with. He started crying to himself in ugly little sobs. Like he was suddenly a baby with his backside no longer a secret, out there ridiculous and bumpy. He was sniffling and wiping his eyes and buttoning himself up in a hurry, fumbling fast as he could, and he didn’t even look at her except once quick when he pulled back her hair to see her face for a second. Then he ran around the front of the house, shirttails flying, stumbling out of sight, and I heard a truck firing up and the tires get hold and it rumbling away, the gears climbing off in the distance.

  And then I knew she and I were connected ’cause I felt the wind rushing out of us both, and the sun, coming all that way through space, pressing its thumbs to us, pushing into our eyes, making everything black and orange, and I realized I’d closed my eyes so I opened them, and I knew she was alive even though I could see she was lying there limp, and I saw, too, plainly, that Uncle Aquilla had left his hat, a P.F. Stanley & Co. cap, blue and yellow the way they all are, and I saw for sure into the future when I’d have no answer when at dinner my dad would stick out his chin and arrow his eyes down on me as usual, pretending his displeasure, saying, Well, how was your day?

  14

  My idea was that I was connected to my brother ’cause he was tied to his passion in some way, sure as if he was sewn tight with threads thinner than hair. So it was that I was tied, too, and that caused my shame. I was ashamed I ran off like I did. Ran straight out through the orchard and across the fields, not even bothering going back down in the ditch. Ran hard as I could with that music of hers playing loud in my ears, that woman crying about her man and his ways that were all trouble, and I knew I was now something like that man who was no good, on account he ran off and left her to make that music, pitiful and blue.

  Also it was a shame I didn’t tell what I knew. I wanted to think she’d brought it on herself, that her trouble was hers. If I told my dad, it would be his, sure enough, and that didn’t seem fair. But I felt marked then. I’d lived up to everything Pastor Jenson said about those who would deny the Lord same as Peter, so I knew I wasn’t even with the world, and I’d have to look out for a chance to right things if I could.

  I don’t know how I knew she wouldn’t talk, but I did. I didn’t go by there for awhile, and it was some while till I saw her again. It was downtown in the drugstore when I spotted her from the end of an aisle. She had big dark glasses on that made her head look like a beautiful insect of some kind, maybe a butterfly, though her face was still bruised and a little yellow on one side and she looked older somehow. She was wearing a pair of cutoffs, hemmed in pink, and a blue blouse, hair braided in a little rope that went round the top of her head.

  But what made me feel bad was I saw that when she walked she was doing it carefully, trying to hide a little limp that she
had. I wondered if that would be forever or if it would heal up in its time. I was thinking about turning the other cheek and wondering what profit there could be in that, and I was thinking about vengeance, and feeling the shame on me hard because I knew I hadn’t done anything and it wasn’t likely I could.

  And she was coming down the aisle slowly and spotted me watching her and she looked over the tops of her glasses to see me clearly. Her eyes looked frightened, though that passed so fast into kindness that it was almost as if I hadn’t seen the fear at all, and she smiled. Soft sunshine making me feel both whole and lost at the same time.

  15

  What’s the matter? my mother would ask. She went on asking that for a week, though I told her nothing, nothing was wrong. One day when she was not working, and my father had gone over to help Uncle Aquilla pour cement for his patio, I was lying on the living room floor reading the comics when she called to me from her room. I went down the hall to the back of the house where my folks had their spot. She was sitting up in bed and motioned me to her. She was petting my head when she asked again what was the matter. And this time I said the truth, or part of it, anyway.

  “I saw Glen’s passion,” I said. That set her to thinking the way that I knew it would. Her eyebrows knitted up, though she was careful to act like nothing unusual.

  Finally, she says, “Where?” So I knew she wasn’t going to pretend he didn’t have one.

  “Her house,” I said, letting it go at that.

  She threw back her covers and got up, her back to me because she was only wearing a nightgown, and went to the closet for her robe. She put it on and came back to me, took my hand and walked me to her parlor where she took one of those matches, long as a pencil, and scratched it against the brick of the fireplace; and then, carefully, she touched one of the candles on the mantelpiece awake. She ran her fingers over the names on one of those tablets, squeezing my hand when she did that.