Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives

by Brad Watson

  “Yes?”

  “Who is this, please?”

  “Who is this?”

  They paused and hung up. Lanny was looking at me. I hung up the phone.

  “We never even taught him to ride his bicycle,” Lanny said. “He can’t even ride a bike. The kids all rode by here a few minutes ago and they all had their own bikes except Carl. He was riding on the back of Frederick Nelson’s.” Our kitchen was in a small separate wing of the house. A window at the sink overlooked the backyard, and our breakfast table sat near a bay window that looked out front. Lanny could see the street out that window. I’d seen the kids ride by, too, when I was on the porch, Carl on Frederick’s old splayed banana seat while Frederick rode the pedals. Carl’s legs hanging listless, bare ankles in old sneakers and toes stubbing pavement with Frederick’s desultory lunges.

  “Even the little girls ride their own bikes,” Lanny said. “He hasn’t even touched the one we got him last Christmas.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “Well, why haven’t you taught him to ride it?”

  “Well, why haven’t you?” I shot back.

  “My father taught me.” Schock. Four large Irish potatoes, halves rocking on the cutting board, crazy beveled edges like fat whittled sweetwood sticks. We seemed to have more than enough for supper.

  “All right, I will,” I said then. “But I don’t know why his friends haven’t taught him, if it’s such a tragedy.”

  “It’s a matter of pride, Ben,” Lanny said, not looking up.

  The phone rang again.

  “How you been?” a woman’s voice said. “I ain’t seen you in a long time.”

  “Who’s this?”

  “Terry?”

  “You have the wrong number,” I said, and hung up. I felt the urge to turn on Lanny and held it back.

  “I’m going outside,” I said. The phone rang as I stepped onto the porch, but I ignored it. The kids were a couple of blocks down the street on their bicycles. I walked out to the curb, cupped my hands, and called out, “Carl!” Down the street a few heads among them turned. The bicycles wobbled to a stop. They talked among themselves, then turned and started my way.

  It was seven o’clock, daylight saving time. Thin, high pink clouds fading overhead. They looked like faint brushstrokes in a painting. The lush greens of the trees and grass deepened, the sharp lines and angles of houses and cars and power poles easing off, softening. The children drew closer, brown-skinned on their rangy bikes. Poker cards were fastened by clothespins to the bikes’ front forks, so that they flapped against the spokes making stuttering noises the children imagined to sound like motorcycles.

  They called their group the Road Hog Club. I knew how they came up with this. What they loved to do was line their bikes up in the street until a car came along. Then they reared up on their back wheels and stood their ground until the driver got out cussing. Then they scattered and scooted, motocrossing through the yards and whooping like Indians.

  They zipped up and skidded to a stop, looking at me and waiting on what I had to tell Carl. They may as well have been reared up, the looks on their faces. The formidable Road Hog Club, defiant. I could hear the phone ringing faintly inside the house. Carl sat loose on the back of Frederick Nelson’s rigged-up banana seat, waiting.

  “C’mere,” I said to him.

  “Aw, I want to ride.”

  “Just c’mere. I want you to do something with me for a few minutes.”

  He dismounted in silence, Frederick slipping forward on the bar to let him off. Carl’s a good-looking kid, with his straight sandy blond hair down on his forehead and his tiny wedge build. He doesn’t have the wiry or pudgy looks the others have. Carrot-headed Bubba Weeks, Wick’s kid, stared at me with a cool gaze I took for insolence.

  “Y’all go on. Carl’s going to be a little while. Get.” I shooed them away with my hand. Carl stood a little behind me with his back to them. The Road Hogs wobbled slowly around and at some silent signal scooted, Bubba Weeks and Frederick Nelson’s sister doing wheelies. They dipped, turning right onto Ashland, like birds swerving.

  “Come on,” I said to Carl. We went around back, phones ringing faintly, then clearly, as we passed windows thrown open for a breeze.

  “What’re we doing?” He stayed a few steps behind me, dragging.

  “We’re going to teach you to ride your own bike. Your mother’s ashamed.”

  He mumbled something, then said, “What’s Mama ashamed about?”

  We turned to the little window above the kitchen sink and saw his mother’s head there.

  “Nothing,” I said. “I was only kidding. We want you to learn to ride your bike.” He mumbled something. “Come on, now, let’s do it.”

  I got the bike from the shed and rolled it through the backyard, past the cherry tree, and out to the alleyway lined and shaded with old woolly oaks and tall upflung sweetgums. Twice a week garbage trucks rumbled through, stirring dust and a faintly sweet stink. Carl followed like a small prisoner. He stood a couple of steps away, hands in pockets. I heard a breeze and looked up, the thick oaks rustling and the star-pointed sweetgum leaves playing against the sky. I heard something and looked at the little window and her head was still there. Shouting something.

  “The phone keeps ringing.”

  I laid the bike down and went up to the window.

  “There have been five calls since you went outside,” she said.

  “Wrong numbers?”

  “Yes. What the hell’s going on?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe you should call the phone company.”

  “What are you doing out there?”

  “I’m teaching Carl to ride his bicycle,” I said. She looked at me and I could tell she was holding back a comment. Behind her, in the kitchen, the phone was ringing. She looked around at it and then at me.

  I went back out to the alleyway and picked up the bike and grabbed it by the handlebars and the seat.

  “Okay,” I said to Carl, “get on.”

  He trudged over, wiped the dust off the seat with his soft grime-edged fingers, wiped his fingers on his shorts. He grabbed the bars and mounted.

  “You set?” I said. He put his feet on the pedals and nodded.

  “Was the phone for me?” he said, looking up.

  “No. You ready?” He nodded. I pushed and got him going a little ways and said, “Okay, go.” He tried to, but his feet slipped off the pedals and the bike fell over with a crash. The alleyway road’s a dirt one, hard-packed sand with a little gravel ridge in the middle and scattered gravel on the edges. Carl got up breathing through his nose and scowling and blinking his eyes. I felt my skin prickle with shame and I ran over to help him pick up the bike.

  “Jesus, Carl, I’m sorry,” I said, almost to myself. “My fault. My bad.” I pushed the hair from his forehead and looked at him. He frowned and pulled his head away. “I’ll do it right this time,” I said. I looked back at the house. Lanny’s head still at the window.

  Carl wouldn’t look at me. He got on the bike again. I grabbed the back of the seat.

  “Ready?” I said.

  He gave a serious nod.

  “Is Mama watching?” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  We took off. I ran beside him, holding on with one hand. He didn’t pedal, but kept his feet ready and his eyes straight ahead. He was on the right-wheel path. I ran on the gravel ridge, having a tough time of it. Then I let go and ran beside him and yelled, “Pedal!” and in a second he did and took off down the alleyway. He was going pretty good. Down where the alleyway ran into the street, he slowed and fell over. He jumped up and hopped around, holding his elbow.

  I called out, “You all right?”

  He stopped hopping and examined his elbow. Then he picked up the bike and walked it back to me.

  “Did Mama see that?”

  “I don’t think so.” I didn’t turn to the window. Carl stared at the house for a minute. A group of kids rode by in
the street down where Carl had fallen over. They were younger than the Road Hogs, ringing chrome bells clamped onto their handlebars. The ringing faded, shring-ring, fainter than their shouting voices, then was sound lost in rustling leaves and air.

  Carl climbed back onto the bike, and I grabbed hold and pushed him going again. He wobbled a little when I let go but didn’t fall down when he turned, and got started back to me by himself. He got the hang of it and rode back and forth for a while, up and down the alleyway. I smoked a couple of cigarettes and watched. Carl whizzed past on the bike, kicking up dust.

  He was having a time. He started trying to do wheelies, catching on so fast because he’d waited so long, hanging around such good riders. He was being cool, paying me no mind. And he was beautiful, with his hair blowing back away from his forehead. The breeze had died and the air was quiet. The phone lines and power lines dipped and rose from pole to pole along their graceful paths through the trees, and in the quiet warmth of the evening I could almost hear them humming. I sensed a vague feeling of dread creeping in, but then Carl zipped up and skidded to a stop, breathing hard and sweating, his eyes wide open.

  “It’s almost suppertime,” I said.

  “Can I stay out just a little bit longer?” He leaned forward over the handlebars, pleading.

  I remember this moment sometimes, by itself. It stands apart, in balance, like Carl balanced over the handlebars of his bike, wanting another few minutes outside. There are moments like that, and when you remember them they grip you inside. But at the time I only hesitated for a second.

  “Go ahead,” I said.

  It was twilight. Lamps snicked silently on in houses. I walked down the alleyway toward the street, where light bloomed pinkish in streetlamps curved from poles like thin-chromed gargoyles brooding over what traffic might wander their way.

  I crossed the street and walked on in the relative dark of the alleyways, into a part of the neighborhood whose houses from the back looked unfamiliar. The shadows had deepened. The trees were towering dark shapes. A bit of breeze ran through them like a shiver.

  I turned and started back, taking my time. Sounds changed subtly with the light. And in the cooling calm of the settling dusk I became aware, like someone waking up from a dream, of a steady ringing.

  Behind one house I stopped in a mimosa’s shadow to watch. Under a single lamp, sliding-glass door open for a breeze, a fat scarlet man and woman in T-shirts and three near-naked pudgy children sat eating supper. Their faces glistened with sweat. Steam rose from their meal. Their phone was ringing. It stopped for a moment, then began again. None of them said anything, glowering, forking food into their mouths with an angry urgency.

  I walked on toward my house through the darkening backyards. In every house the phone was ringing. Toot Nelson stood beside his, yelling at his oldest son and pointing outside. The boy ducked his head and came out the back door, his startled angry face looming suddenly into mine.

  “Yah!” He jumped back. We stared. He turned wide-eyed and hurried on.

  I crossed through a yard and out into the street. Through the screen doors and windows open for fall breezes I could hear the phones ringing as I walked. A television blared in the Hirlihues’ house, blue light filled their empty den. Before I stepped onto our porch I saw the dim figure of a phone-company truck parked way down the street.

  I cupped my hands and hollered, “Carl!” No answer.

  Except for the kitchen, the house was dark, and I stood there for a minute in the den, the phone in the hallway jangling dully on, off, on, like a senseless alarm. In the dark the rooms felt vast, everything in the air tingling and electric, jumping needles. I felt I couldn’t breathe in enough air. I inhaled until I could feel a small tight spot deep in my chest expand like sore muscle. The dread welled up and spread through me. In the kitchen the phone rang, stopped, and began ringing again. Lanny stood at the sink washing tomatoes and ignored it.

  “There’s a phone truck parked down the street,” I said.

  “A man came by and said to let it ring while they fixed it.” She looked up, her face blank.

  “I taught Carl to ride,” I said.

  She stood at the sink with her hair pulled back tight in a ponytail, wearing an old loose sundress and sandals. She dried a tomato and set it beside two others on the porcelain drainboard beside the sink. Behind her on the stove the potato halves rose and tumbled like the blunt noses of tiny white whales.

  “Supper’s almost done,” she said.

  It was dusk outside, the sky a deep dark blue, a thin line of pale pink above the tree line high in the darkening window. The glaring overhead light in the kitchen cast an odd glow on things. It made her skin look weirdly smooth, like a doll’s. I looked at my hands. Skin and veins stretched taut over bone and muscle. The phone rang. It rang again. And then it stopped. We stood waiting for it to start again. She stood at the sink looking down. I went over to her and touched her arm. I felt her stiffen. I put my arm across her shoulders and tried to hug her to me.

  “Don’t,” she said.

  I pulled her closer, but she stiffened.

  “Don’t make a scene,” she said. “Carl’s outside.” I looked but didn’t see anyone outside the window. Then I saw someone sitting in the fork of the cherry tree, just a silhouette in the failing light. A bike lay on its side in the grass. I looked back at Lanny, let her go. She stared at the tomatoes on the drainboard. I looked again at the figure in the tree. It was hunkered down on a branch. A shape not sharp but vague in the faint light, shading darker in almost clocklike moments. With the kitchen light on, through the screen, you couldn’t tell who it was.

  “That’s not Carl,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Carl’s riding,” I said. “Must be some other boy, spying. Maybe it’s Toot’s boy.” I leaned toward the window. “Go on, now,” I called. It sat still. Too small for Toot’s boy.

  She looked at it, closed her eyes, and rested her palms against the sink.

  “Ben,” she said.

  It didn’t move at all.

  “What are we going to do about him?” she said.

  I looked at the figure in the tree.

  “Carl?” I called.

  No answer.

  “I don’t think it’s Carl,” I said.

  Lanny shook her head and turned away. The child in the tree had not moved.

  “Carl?” I called out. “Come on in the house.”

  It sat very still.

  “Carl,” I said louder.

  It was a still, dark statue.

  Out front in the street a clamor clapped up. The members of the Road Hog Club, quick shadows in the deepening dark, rode in a furious circle, slapping their mouths with their hands and whooping like movie Indians.

  I cut the light to see through the bay-window glass. They broke and curved out of sight. I didn’t see Carl. Out back, a soft scrabbling and clatter. When I looked, the tree was empty.

  We stood, not saying anything, looking out at the tree.

  Slowly, sounds came back to our ringing ears. The gurgle of the boiling potatoes in the pot. The quiet hum of the refrigerator motor. The flutter and quiet hiss of the stove eye’s blue flame. Lanny reached over and turned it off. The flame snuffed out with a little popping sound. She turned off the oven and I heard the jets chuff once, then the metal crackling and ticking. I could hardly see her face in the darkness.

  She said, “You don’t even know your own son,” and walked out through the dining room.

  I heard the front screen door open and shut. I heard her lift her voice out in the street.

  “Carl?” she called.

  I was thinking about the time I stole in on Carl asleep and watched him until he seemed some child I didn’t know, some beautiful foundling.

  And the nights I lay awake beside Lanny like someone moving through dark space at high speed.

  “Carl,” she called. “Carl?”

  Moving away, growing fainter, her calling like a
birdsong you know by heart but never knew which bird sang it. I stood very still and listened, as if to memorize her voice, fix it in my memory. But she’d gone too far down the street by then. And there were actual birds, outside the window in the yard, singing in the onset of evening.

  Alamo Plaza

  THE ROAD TO THE COAST WAS A LONG, STEAMY CORRIDOR of leaves. Narrow bridges over brush-choked creeks. Our father drove, the windows down, wind whipping his thick black hair. Our mother’s hair, abundant and auburn and long and wavy, she’d tried to tame beneath a pretty blue scarf. He wore a pair of black Ray-Bans. She wore prescription shades with the swept and pointed ends of the day. He whistled crooner songs and smoked Winstons, and early as it was, no one really talked.

  This was before things changed, before Hurricane Camille, the casinos.

  My older brother, Hal, slept sitting up, his mouth open as if he were singing silently in a dream. My younger brother, Ray, had been left with our grandmother, too young for this trip, too much trouble most of the time. He was two, and the youngest of three, and his sharp, hawkish eyes constantly sought their prey, which was inattention, which he would rip to shreds with tantrums, devour in small bloody satisfying chunks of punishment and mollification. I was so very glad that he was not along.

  By noon we smelled the brine-and-fish stink of the bays. The land flattened into hazy vista, so flat you could see the curve of the earth. Downtown Gulfport steamed an old Floridian vapor from cracked sidewalks. Filigreed railings, shaded storefronts, not a soul out, everyone and everything stalled in the heat, distilling. The beach highway stretched out to the east, white and hot in the sun. Our tires made slapping sounds on the melting tar dividers and the wind in the car windows was warm and salty. We passed old beach mansions with green shutters, hundred-year-old oaks in the yards. A scattering of cheap redbrick motels, slatboard restaurants, bait shops. The beach, to our right, was flat and white and the lank brown surf lapped at the sand.