by Cote Smith
He ran his hand across the sky, like a magician preparing his audience for the trick’s final reveal. When he spoke again, he spoke like a shiny knight, not some sorcerer, and all his gloom had disappeared.
“I wonder,” Chris said, “if these wonders interest any of you. I wonder—who amongst you is daring enough to face the most dastardly dangers? Who will look fear in the face and say, Not today, fiend, new worlds await.” His hand dropped and he leaned back on his elbows, his voice crouching into a whisper. “Only the bravest will I lead, only the strongest of hearts may endure what is in store. Ask yourself, is that me? Am I ready to follow Chris to the ends of the earth? Am I ready to give my life, if asked? Weigh these questions heavily, dear friends, and do not reply until your soul is firmly resolved.”
My brother was the first to stand up. “I am,” he said. “I’m ready, Sir Chris.”
“Bravo!” Chris said, abandoning his whisper. “But wait: Are you certain? Think long and hard. After all, you’re not just going someplace new, you’re leaving behind the old. You’re abandoning the familiar for the strange. All your friends, all your valuables. Is that what you want?”
I looked at my brother, his weighing face. I thought of the list of valuables I made weeks ago, the treasured possessions I never wanted my mom to hock. I thought of the ones she’d already taken, the ones I’d crossed off the list and were gone forever.
“I have no more valuables,” my brother said.
“Ah,” Chris said. “I see. But what about your stableboy? Who will look after him, make sure he doesn’t stray from his duties? Or worse yet, that he doesn’t tell the world our secret whereabouts.”
“He won’t,” my brother said. “He’s sworn an oath of his own, haven’t you?”
I didn’t answer. I stared at the water, neon in the light. I wished it really were magical, some sort of potion or elixir, something that would give me the strength to do what I knew was right.
“Hey, stableboy,” my brother said, “your knight is talking to you.” He nudged me in the ribs with his foot. “You won’t betray me again, will you?”
“No,” I said. “I won’t tell.”
Good, my brother said. He said otherwise it would be off with my head. And in case I didn’t know what that meant, he ran his finger across his throat: Svvvt!
“Then it’s settled,” Chris said, and he stood up to shake my brother’s hand. “Now you better get back to your castle, before the queen realizes you’re missing.”
My brother agreed, and I started toward the gate, but Chris called my brother back to him. He said hold on, he forgot to tell my brother something. He waved him close and said something louder than a whisper, but I couldn’t hear it over the pool’s cleaning pump, which had kicked on. My brother nodded to whatever Chris said, and Chris high-fived him and for a moment held on to his hand, swinging it by his side.
eleven
STORMS CAME AND WENT, threatened with rain and hail. Tornadoes dodged north and south of our city, biding their time, and we didn’t see Chris, though every night I looked for him. We camped out in the living room and I lay facing the sliding glass door, waiting for Chris to climb in and finish the story. There were moments when I allowed myself to wonder if he and the Stranger were the same person. Chris snuck in and dragged his loved one out of her house, killed her in front of a camera, for the whole world to watch. This seemed beyond Chris, what he was capable of, but I couldn’t stop myself from imagining them. Too many movies, any adult would say. Now go back to bed. Now shut your eyes.
During the day I busied myself hunting roaches. I did not tell my brother this, but I called myself Orion, only instead of scorpions it was something less scary. And instead of killing them, I used the old coffee can as a temporary holding cell. This time, however, I didn’t show them to my brother. I kept my collection to myself, and released the roaches into the woods alone, waiting until my brother had completed his push-up circuit and was in the shower, rinsing off his sweat.
Outside the sun assaulted my face, and I had to squint all the way to the woods, where I hugged a tree for shade. The roaches danced around the bottom of the can, happy to be out of the heat. I turned the can over and patted the bottom, watched as the roaches dropped to the ground. I blew on them and told them to go, to be free. I left the can in the woods, in case the roaches got homesick.
The apartment door was open when I returned. Inside, two low voices. I recognized one as my brother’s but could not make out the second, other than it was a man. I put the voice in Chris’s mouth, Chris’s body in our kitchen table chair.
When I went into the kitchen, I saw it was our dad. Our dad, who wasn’t allowed in here. Wasn’t allowed to see his boys until our mother lifted her sentence, pardoned him for his parenting crimes. He looked tired, like the zombies had finally knocked down his door and bitten his brain. His face was pale and unshaven. What was once a mustache now bordered on a beard.
“You can’t be here,” I said, without thinking. My brain still saw Chris in the chair, not my dad. He told me to have a seat. He didn’t look comfortable. His face and arms were sweating, and his uniform made him too big for our small chairs. His holster hung off the side, clacked the table when he shifted in his seat.
“I was just talking to your brother,” he said. “Your mother’s eased up a bit. You’re going to spend the weekend with me. But just you.”
I glanced at my brother to see what he made of this. He scratched at a dried flake stuck to the kitchen table. His face was far away.
“Don’t worry, son,” my dad said to my brother, “it’ll all pass. She’ll forgive me. She always does.”
My brother didn’t look up or say anything. Once the flake came off, he brushed it onto the floor. He got up from the table without a word and went into his room.
“He’ll be OK,” my dad said. His voice tilted up at the end, as if to say, “Won’t he?”
I didn’t know. I fiddled with the cereal bowl my brother left out from yesterday’s breakfast.
“I bet your mother still cuts your hair with that bowl,” our dad said. “She always loved doing that. She thought it made you look like something out of history. Like Shakespeare or something.” He laughed, looked down for a while, lost in a memory.
“Ah, screw it,” he finally said. “Grab your brother. Let’s take a trip.”
“To where?” I said. “Do you want to call Mom? Let her know where we’ll be.”
My brother came into the kitchen, head down, and my dad’s brightness flickered away. “Yes,” he said. “I suppose we should.” I handed him the phone, but when he took it, he looked like I was handing him an object as cursed as the Stranger tape. He gave the phone back to me. “On second thought, let’s let this be one of our secrets.”
* * *
We drove around the city, and it was obvious my dad had no idea where he was going. We would stop at a light, and when it turned green he would veer off to the left or the right without any warning to the car behind us. When we hit downtown we rolled down the windows. People waved at my dad and he raised his hand in return, but we ignored the smiles that invited us to stop and chat. We drove on uncaring, an act some looked confused by.
We made a U-turn at the river and drove back through the city, past Limit Street and into a neighborhood with big houses we would never again afford. We took a right by a church I recognized. It wasn’t one we ever attended, but I remembered it for some reason—its low triangle roof, the basketball hoop in the middle of the parking lot. We took a left on another street and that too, the act of turning at that spot, the angle at which we curved from one street to another, felt familiar. Once on this new street, I recognized all sorts of things: fire hydrants, mailboxes, the shapes and slopes of driveways.
“Where are we?” I said.
“God, you’re dumb,” my brother said.
We came to a cul-de-sac, circled around, and stopped across from a house. A warmness in my chest told me I had been here before.
My dad put the cruiser in park. He turned off the radio and stared at the house.
“Is this our house?” I said. My dad didn’t say anything. He continued to stare at the house, running his fingers over his mustache, his baby beard. This was our house. Or it once was. I was sure of it. I recognized the square windows, the one on the left for the hallway bathroom, the one on the right that went to the room my brother and I once shared. But it also wasn’t our house. The car in the driveway wasn’t our van. The basketball goal was somebody else’s, the birthday gift for some lucky kid.
“Why are we here?” my brother said. “Can we go?”
“It’s weird, isn’t it?” my dad said.
I stared at the house, trying to remember if it was always that light brown color.
“I’m bored,” my brother said.
“You’re bored?” my dad said. He wanted to stay a little longer, and so did I. “What if I do this?” He rolled up his window. We didn’t get why we were supposed to be impressed. “Wait for it.” He flipped a switch on a box attached to the center console. A steady static came out of the box’s speaker. This seemed to encourage him, and he started playing with the dials.
“What are you doing?” my brother said.
My dad put his ear to the speaker. “Don’t you hear that?”
“So what. Our TV does the same thing.”
“Patience,” my dad said, fiddling. “Patience perseveres.”
He messed around for a minute more, until, suddenly, a voice broke through the static. A woman talking. Words popping in and out, crackling like fireworks.
“Is that a ghost?” I said.
My dad stopped messing with the box and stared out the window, at our old house. “Not a ghost,” he said. “Now be quiet. We have to be quiet.”
I covered my mouth. When that didn’t work, I closed my eyes. I held my breath until the voice came back. This time clearer, but funny-sounding, like someone was sending words through a fan.
“He surprised me with it,” the voice said. “I was standing there chopping vegetables and he just came up and sat down by my leg. He said, ‘Mom, I got it. Look.’ And of course I thought it was something silly, so I didn’t really look. But he kept on, saying, ‘Look, Mom. Watch my shoe.’ So finally I look down, and there he is, my baby boy, tying and untying his shoe like he’s all grown up. Making the same face as his dad. That stupid face he makes when he’s concentrating hard. Can you believe that?”
There was a silence. We couldn’t hear the ghost on the other side.
“This one’s a talker,” my dad said.
“I know. So fast, right?… No, he wasn’t here to see it. He was so mad when he got off work … No, mad that he missed it … He doesn’t know about that … I know, but he’s got to work, so what can we do?… I know. I pray every night that won’t happen … Well, that’s all I can do.”
The speaker cracked again and fell into static. I closed my eyes, but the voices were gone. My brother and I sat up. Our dad didn’t turn from the window.
“Who was that?” my brother said.
“Just some lady,” my dad said.
“How can we hear them?”
“Sometimes we can hear people if they’re talking on a cordless phone. That’s all it is.” He wasn’t excited like us. He sounded like his football team had just lost a close one.
“Does she live in our house?”
“Who cares,” my brother said.
I stared at the house’s front door, hoping the lady would come out. “Can we go around back?”
My dad looked at me, his cheeks puffed up with pity. “We used to have fun back there, didn’t we?”
“I’ll take him,” my brother said, “if that’s what he wants.”
Our dad turned to the house again, rubbed his chin. “OK,” he said, “but be quick.”
We got out and went around the car, my brother crossing the cul-de-sac without me. I hung back for a second. “Do you want to come too?” I asked my dad.
He put his arm in the window. “No, son. No parent wants a cop approaching their door.”
* * *
I ran across the street and up the front yard. I laughed because it was funny; it was funny that my legs remembered running up this little hill. They knew exactly how many steps to take and when to tell my brain to stop. I ran around the side of our old house and into the backyard. It hadn’t changed at all. Here was the porch, weathered and gray, where my dad used to grill. Here was the spot where grass refused to grow, season after season, the spot my brother and I used as home plate the day our dad bought us our wiffle ball and bat. We used a small bush as first, an old sandbag as second, and a porch pole as third. All these things remained. No one had bothered to change them since we left, or maybe nobody could.
My brother came around back. “It looks small,” he said.
“What does?”
“Everything. It just looks smaller.”
“It looks the same to me.”
“What about the tree?” he said. “The tree is gone.”
“I don’t remember a tree.”
He pointed at a mound at the edge of our property. “It was right there.” He walked to the spot and put his hand to the ground. “See, there’s the stump. Here, feel it.”
I kneeled in the grass and spread my hand on the earth’s bump. It didn’t feel familiar. “I don’t remember any tree,” I said.
“Well, it wasn’t a big tree. More like a baby. Mom used to laugh at Dad because he would try to sit under it for shade. You don’t remember that?”
“I think I remember,” I said. “I mean, I want to.”
My brother shrugged. Behind him there was movement at one of the house’s windows. A hand parted a curtain, a woman’s face. The woman stared down at us, and I couldn’t help but think of my mother, even though this woman’s hair was small and dark. She stepped back from the window, and a second later the porch door creaked open, the same way it always had. The woman stepped outside. She had a cordless phone in her hand and set it on the railing. She didn’t say anything at first. She just watched as my brother circled the backyard, touching each base until he was home.
“That spot just won’t grow,” the woman said. Her voice was the same as the one that came out of our dad’s box, only less staticky. “All the neighbor kids use it as base when they play hide-and-go-seek. You boys from around here?”
“We used to live there,” my brother said, and pointed at the woman. Or, he pointed through the woman and at our old house. “But we don’t anymore.”
“Oh,” the woman said. She twisted around and studied the house, as if she didn’t already know what it looked like, as if she didn’t live here every day. “Oh, OK. I didn’t think I’d seen you before. Would you like to come in or something? Are your parents around?”
“We can’t,” my brother said. “Our dad’s waiting.”
“Oh,” the woman said. “OK. Well.” Her eyebrows arched up, like she wanted to say more, or help in some way. Then her phone rang, startling the woman into a jump.
“That sounds like our phone,” I said.
“Do you have one like it? I love the darn thing. I can take it anywhere! The only thing is that sometimes I pick up other people’s calls.” She laughed. “Makes me feel like a spy or something. Anyway.”
I looked at the phone, at this woman who wasn’t my mother. I looked at the cruiser parked out front, my dad listening in.
“We have to go,” my brother said, and took off as the woman said it was nice meeting you. I followed slowly behind, wondering how my dad could do this.
We got in the car. The static box wasn’t on. My dad put his notepad in my brother’s lap. He told him to hold it, and put the cruiser in drive. Well, how was it? he wanted to know. I sat against the door and was glad I could stare out the window as we drove, happy that I didn’t have to look at my dad. We stopped at a light across from the women’s prison. A police cruiser exited the facility and drove past us, the driver noddin
g in our direction. Our dad nodded back. He asked again how it went. What did we think of the old place?
“It was OK,” my brother said.
I kept my eyes on the prison. One woman was roaming the grounds, no guard in sight. I wanted to roll down the window, tell her to run.
“Look at that,” my dad said. He shook his head. “That’s somebody’s mother, or wife maybe. Can you believe that? Man, if she were my wife—”
I took the notepad, still open to MW, resting in my brother’s lap, and studied the letters. “If she were my wife,” my dad repeated, and again I didn’t listen to the rest. I was too focused on the M and the W. In my mind I took the two letters and I separated them. I pulled them apart, putting enough space between them so that I could fill in the missing pieces.
“Son?” my dad said.
“What,” I said.
“I asked you about the old house.”
I closed the pad and looked out the window. The woman was still standing there, staring in our direction. She raised her hand and waved, turned on her heel, and walked back toward the prison. “It wasn’t what I remembered,” I said.
The light turned green and my dad eased off the brake. “No,” he said. “I imagine it can’t be.”
* * *
My mother came home in a bad mood and yelled at us before I could even think about telling her what I had found out about my dad, how he had been using our phone to spy on her. Her face was tight and makeup-less, her mouth small, like she was ready for a fight. She paced around our small apartment like a cartoon bull or wolf, ready to blow the whole place down. Finally she grabbed the phone out of the kitchen, the new box of wine she’d brought home, and went to her room. Stay out and play, she said through the door. Give me peace.
We went to our room and played with our toys, but through our thin wall we could hear everything our mother said. She called Sandy and was complaining about Rick. She had confronted him about what had happened at the golf course. She told him in no uncertain terms to never touch us again. That wasn’t his place. Not his job. And Rick said, What is my job then? Whose job is it to make sure your little shits don’t screw up their lives? Because it doesn’t look like you’re up to it. Or their asshole father. That’s when my mother had slapped Rick. She didn’t mean to, it wasn’t premeditated or anything, but she had done it. Out of instinct, she said. And to be honest, it felt good. It seemed like a mistake now, not the way to handle things, but at the time nothing felt better.