by Tom Kealey
When Albert cut the engine we could hear some music from the inside, something slow and strange, and beyond that the crickets ticking together out by the lake. He switched off the headlights and we sat and listened to the music. We finished our beers—my second, Albert’s third—and watched for movement in the trailer. I put my fingers up to my neck, to feel my pulse and what my heart was pushing through.
A light came on above us, and we both held our hands up to block the shine. In that light Albert looked as old as I’d ever seen him. He looked as old as Ma. Older.
Somebody came out on the steps, and Albert reached over and opened the glove box, and there in the light I could see one of his pistols. The one missing from the gun cabinet. The long black handle was sticking out from the papers and maps. But he left the pistol there and took out a roll of money. He closed the box and I got out and got his chair.
Merrill came down the steps. She was wearing a black dress and a thin rope necklace, and boots. When I’d gotten Albert out of the jeep and settled into his chair, she took his head in her hands, gentle, like she was trying to find his ears in all that hair of his. We were just outside the light, but I could see that she was a little older than Albert. Her hair was tied back with a band and she had a slight smile, though it seemed to me that there was maybe another face behind the first, one that was sad and not smiling. She bent down and kissed him at the bridge of his nose, and then she just held his head for a while, but she was looking over at me.
“Daniel,” I said, though she hadn’t asked.
“The brother,” she said.
“I told you I would,” said Albert.
She nodded and took her hands from his head, slowly, like maybe she might put them back there again.
“Can I touch you?” she said.
I looked at Albert, and he just shrugged. I felt like there was maybe a joke being put on me.
“Where?” I said.
She smiled. “Right here.”
I shrugged. “All right.”
She stepped over and put one of her boots on my shoe, then she pushed back my hair with the tips of her fingers. I looked away.
“Can I turn you into the light?” she said.
“Not too much,” I said.
“Just a little.”
When she turned me, she pushed my hair back again and lifted my chin up. I had to squint in the brightness.
“You all right?” she said.
“It’s strange,” I said.
“You’re shaking.”
“I’m cold.”
“You don’t feel cold,” she said. “You’re a beautiful child.”
“I’m not a child.”
“No,” she said.
I wanted to get out of that light then, and maybe she sensed this, because she took me out. She let go of me.
“Let’s say we go inside,” she said.
So we went up into the trailer. I leaned Albert and his chair back and pulled him up the steps. I’d done this many places before. I knew the trick of it. He stared up at me.
“You’re spooking,” he said.
“Says you.”
There was a couch inside, two chairs, lampshades. Drapes on the windows. Merrill turned off the spotlight outside, and there was a white candle on a small table, lit, and the red and green lights shining through the glass. I liked the music on the radio. Still slow, but no longer strange. Something familiar, though I could not quite place it. Merrill was in the kitchen, and her steps seemed to follow the music as she walked about. A big map of the country was pinned up on the wall opposite the couch, and I examined it for a moment. Little stars drawn here and there: Fresno and Grand Junction, Boston and Sioux Falls, Portland, both of them. Below, on a shelf, were about a dozen porcelain mice, each of them the same it seemed. Each of them standing with the same hopeful expression—big eyes—but dressed different, in little felt outfits. A hippie and a surgeon, a nurse and a fisherman. One of them held a butterfly net.
Merrill called from the kitchen. “Don’t make fun of my mice, Daniel Atkins.”
“I thought they were rats,” I said.
She looked at me from over the counter. “You can wait outside in the jeep if you want.”
I looked at Albert, and he gave me a look I couldn’t read. He took a swig off a beer.
“I didn’t mean nothing by it,” I said.
“Then have a seat,” she said.
I sat down in a chair next to Albert, and he closed his eyes and listened to the music. He started moving his shoulders, his neck. He seemed to be whispering some words, though there weren’t any voices on the radio. I crossed my arms over my chest. I was shivering something terrible.
“I’ve got a whole box of donuts here,” said Merrill. “I think these are going to be good. You’ll have some donuts?”
“Sure,” said Albert. He opened his eyes then and reached into his pocket. He took out the roll of money—twenties—and handed it to me. He nodded at Merrill.
“Give it to her?” I said.
He nodded.
So I got up and leaned over the counter. I looked at her for a moment. I was scared of her, though I didn’t want to show it. I handed over the money.
“Those are steep donuts,” I said.
Something young came over her face then. Some sort of pleasant tremor it seemed to me. She had the same expression as when she’d tipped me into the light. She reached toward the money but took hold of my wrist. Her grip was tight, and I didn’t know if I could pull free.
“Did you hear that, Albert?” she said.
He was laughing. “I heard him.”
“Steep donuts.”
“You sending him out?” said Albert.
She was laughing now, and she began to move again to the music. “I was never to send Daniel Atkins out,” she said.
And then she put the money away and let go of me. She handed over the donuts.
So, we had some donuts and some beer, and I was feeling all right. Merrill helped my brother out of his chair, helped set him on the couch. She leaned him back till his head was lying on a pillow. Then she slipped his shirt off, turned him over. In the hospitals I’d seen the nurses do this a hundred times. He had his eyes closed, and it seemed that his face held some troubled thought. I could barely make it out in the candlelight. It sent a chill down my shoulders. He reached back, and she took his hand.
“There’s a blanket,” said Merrill. “On the bed in the room. When you get it, bring me the brush on the nightstand.”
“Me?” I said.
“Yes you, Daniel Atkins.”
So I went in there and got the blanket. And I got the brush. On the stand there was a picture of two teenagers. One was spot-on for Merrill, and she and a boy were leaning against a fence. The boy she was with was good-looking, and he held an old-time pocket watch in his open palm. He was looking at that watch like it was the most curious thing. The younger Merrill looked delighted. I picked up the picture and checked the hallway. I studied that watch in the picture. I was wondering what was so curious about it. I wondered if the boy was just performing for the camera. I was getting pretty drunk. A minute, and I set the picture back as best as I could.
In the den I gave Merrill the brush, and she looked at the blanket and said, “Go on.” So I sat back in the chair and pulled the blanket over me. I took the last swig of a beer and put my feet up on the table.
“Where do you live during the week?” said Merrill.
“Me?” I said.
“Yes you. I don’t want to talk to this fool brother of yours.”
“Hey,” said Albert.
“Hey,” said Merrill.
“With my Ma,” I said. “Up in Raleigh.”
“Are you in high school yet?”
“Next year,” I said. “If some things start to go right. I’ve missed some time lately.”
She nodded. “We’ve all got things to take care of. Albert has told me some about you.”
“A little,” said Al
bert.
“What does he say?” I said.
Merrill was sitting next to him, and she poured some clear, scented oil onto her hands. Then she rubbed it into Albert’s back. “You’re a hell of a bowler,” she said. “That’s him talking. What else? Bowling’s a good start. Someone takes something up, they should be good at it. You’re a swimmer, and you work nights at a restaurant. Dishes, right?”
“Boring,” I said.
She rubbed the oil into his shoulders, down his spine. “Well he didn’t tell me that part. Here’s one. You order your clothes on hangers, light to dark.”
I smiled at that. “Which way?”
She considered. “Light on the left.”
“Wrong.”
“I’ve got to keep closer attention,” she said. “Now I’ve got to make up for it. When you were younger you had a duck who you thought was your girlfriend.”
I sat up at that. I looked at my brother. “Albert!” I said.
He opened his eyes and looked up at me. They were both laughing.
“Be careful what you ask,” said Merrill.
I tucked the blanket up to my neck. “She was just my friend.”
And that set them to laughing more. I let them ride that out. I wasn’t going to say another word. I looked over at the mice, and for some reason I started thinking about that picture in Merrill’s room. I listened to the music, and I was buzzing pretty good. I thought I might just close my eyes if I could get warm enough.
“I had a mule when I was a kid,” said Merrill. “An old blind mule. His name was Albert.”
“No it wasn’t,” said Albert.
“Think what you like,” she said. “But I used to take care of him. He’d follow me around in the fields. We were picking apples. And he’d eat the hell out of those apples. I’d have to keep them from him, or else he’d get sick if he ate too many. I had him for years. When I first got him they were like ‘he won’t last a year,’ but he just went on and on.”
“What was his real name?” I said.
“Oh, I don’t know. What was your duck’s name?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Good,” she said. “That’s yours to keep.”
She took up the brush then, and she took up Albert’s hair and began pulling it back. She worked out the tangles. He curled his arm under his cheek.
She brushed his hair straight. She hummed to the radio while she was working, and I watched her. She took a lot of care with it, I thought. I was about ready to close my eyes.
When she was done with the brush, she reached over to a drawer and took out a pair of scissors. She ran her thumb down the blade.
“You sure about this?” she said.
“Yes,” said Albert, a whisper.
I sat up from the chair. “No.”
Albert opened one eye and looked at me. “I’ve been thinking about it. This isn’t spur of the moment.”
“It’ll take you years to grow back,” I said.
“It’s time to let go of things,” he said.
He closed the eye and set his head against the pillow. Merrill watched me for a while, and then she slipped some hair between her fingers and cut off a few strands. She set them across his face.
“Last chance,” she said.
“I told you,” Albert said.
She looked at me and waited. She snipped the scissors a few times in the air, waited for something from either of us. I was drunk. I looked over at Albert, and he didn’t move. I decided I wouldn’t say anything else. He seemed to me at peace there, as much as I’d seen him. Merrill moved to the music again, and she began to cut his hair. “It’s a long, long way to the moon,” she sang, though there weren’t any voices on the radio.
Merrill brought the candle over and pulled a chair up next to me. She had Albert’s hair in her fist, and we sat there for a while and watched him sleep. His face was slack and silent, and it seemed to me that he was without dreams. It put me in mind of my grandfather again, and I could see us—me, Granddad, and Albert—years before, down in the sunflowers in Indiana. There were grasshoppers popping over us. Just a few at first, then more, then a hundred it seemed. Like they’d arrived just behind us. We were picking them off our shirts, or we’d flick them at each other, and they’d leave some spit behind. There wasn’t any shade, and the sun was warm and it dried our clothes. We’d been caught out in the rain, in the back of a stranger’s pickup that morning. We were on our way to St. Louis, to see about a basketball scholarship for Albert, though that hadn’t worked out. We could just reach up and grab as many grasshoppers as we liked. They’d sit on the tips of your fingers if you let them, their legs poking at you. I caught the most, and Granddad looked at my hands and said, “These flowers’ll be gone in a week now.”
Merrill had brought out some spools of thread, and she set those on the table between us. She had a needle between her teeth, and she was digging around in a sewing kit for something.
“Would you hold this for me?” she said, a mumble.
I took Albert’s hair. I held it tight so it wouldn’t slip out of my hand. It was soft and heavy and I brought it down near the candlelight. There were all different colors in there. Black mostly, but auburn and even some gray. Brown hair, like mine, but I’d never seen it before in Albert’s. It seemed like it might be a few people’s hair, all mixed together.
Merrill found what she was looking for, and I handed the hair back. She made a knot of it at the end, held it together that way. I still had some strands stuck to my fist, and I took those and set them on my knee. She threaded the needle in the candlelight.
“What happened to your duck?” she said.
I shrugged. “Christmas dinner.”
She looked over at me. “You’re lying.”
“Maybe.”
“You got another girl now?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“Well, you either do or you don’t.”
“I don’t I guess.”
Merrill got that needle threaded. “You got your eye on one?”
“Maybe.”
“I know parrots that have more words than you,” she said.
“I guess.”
She smiled a little, set a fancy clip on Albert’s hair. She started sewing the knot to the clip. “What’s her name?”
“Amy.”
“That’s a pretty name,” she said.
“I made it up.”
I tried to take deep breaths. I was trying to get warmer. I looked around the room. There wasn’t much to it. Just the furniture, a TV. The mice. I looked up at the map on the wall.
“You been to those places you marked?” I said.
“When I was younger.”
“What were they like?”
She considered that, though she didn’t take her eyes from what she was doing. “They weren’t too good I guess.”
“Did you get those mice there?”
“No.”
“Did you make those little outfits for them?”
“I know better than to answer that,” she said. She pulled the thread tight. “You’re getting ahead with your questions. Time for me to ask one.”
“All right.”
“Go get us some beers first.”
“Was that a statement or a question?”
“That was a statement,” she said. “And yours was a question. So now you’re down two.”
I got up and got the beers. When I settled back I nodded at the hair.
“What are you making?”
“Not your turn,” Merrill said. “What’s your mom like?”
“She’s tall.”
“Tall huh? She look like you?”
“A little.”
“What does she do?”
I shrugged. “Albert’s told you about her.”
“No,” she said. “He hasn’t.”
I thought about Ma. I tried to picture her in my mind. “She takes care of herself. She’s getting better at that. She tries to stay in this world as much
as she can.”
“And you’re close to her?”
“No,” I said. “She’s not someone to get close to. That’s not in her. But I spend a lot of time with her. Weekends she’s at her sister’s. My turn?”
Merrill finished a stitch in the clip, took up the scissors. “Okay.”
“You got other boyfriends besides Albert?”
She nodded. “I do.”
“What are their names?”
“A name is a powerful thing,” she said.
“One of them then.”
She thought about that. She looked up at the map. “Hank.”
“Did you make that up?”
“Yes,” she said. “My turn. Why are you shivering all the time?”
“Cause I’m drinking cold beer.”
“Is that it?”
“I guess.”
“You ever kissed a girl?”
I pulled down the blanket a bit. I didn’t like that question much, but I didn’t want to show it. I thought about it awhile, though there wasn’t much to think on.
“No,” I said.
“Why not?”
“I suppose the opportunity hasn’t come along.”
“I doubt that,” she said. “Do you want to kiss me?”
I thought about that, and there was plenty to think on. “I guess not.”
“Why not?”
I blinked. “Because you’re my brother’s girlfriend.”
“He said it’d be all right.”
I looked over at my brother. “Did he?”
“Yes,” she said. “And it would quit you of your shivers.”
“Is that right?” I said. “You got magic lips?”
“That’s right. Magic lips,” she said. She pulled another stitch tight but didn’t cut it yet. She looked over at me. “I’m going to ask you again, and that’s going to be the last time. You’re not going to get this kind of courtesy from other women. You understand?”
“Maybe I should take some notes.”
“Maybe,” she said. “Would you like to kiss me?”
I thought about that. “All right.”
“Well,” she said. “I don’t think so. You had your chance.”
I settled back in the chair. I pulled the blanket up. I wanted to pull it over my head.
She set the hair aside and got up and leaned over me. “I don’t want you to touch me this time, all right?”