by John Brandon
“Two people knowing it,” he said. “That makes it a living language.”
He did the sign from the bar again, cupping his temple and then drawing a line to his chin.
“What does that one mean?” Pauline asked.
“That’s an old expression,” he said. “It means nothing is beautiful to the ugly eye. Or something in that ballpark.”
Pauline had been crouching near Herbie, and now she rose and went to her room to change out of her wet clothes. She’d never finished the Goodwill project in her closet. She flicked through the hangers and found an apricot sundress she’d had since high school. She slipped it on and put a brush through her hair. She was perfectly aware that Herbie could be anyone, that whatever he planned to do to Pauline, good or evil, he was going to do. Maybe he’d slaughter her and leave her posing on a high dive. Or maybe he’d get a phone call and leave town and she’d never see him again. Maybe he was going to be the love of her life. That’s how the world gave out prizes and abuse to its women; you had to accept the box before you knew what was in it.
When she came back out, Herbie wasn’t in the living room anymore. Neither were the boots. Pauline held still a moment, and then she could hear something from back in the kitchen—just an alteration in the acoustics at first, and then the distinct clink of cheap blinds banging against a window. It could only be the little window in her back door. When she reached the kitchen it was empty, the door to the balcony swung open, the musty swamp air washing in. She stood where she was and listened. She could hear the soles of the boots scuffing out there on the wood, and then the sound stopped. She couldn’t see Herbie from where she was standing, but something told her that he was peering into Mal’s apartment. She wanted to know what his next move would be. Through the doorway she could see the dense, vine-bound jungle—the gray-brown cypresses with their great trunks and puny limbs, the lusty ferns crowding each other off patches of high ground. She stayed still and quiet for what felt like a long time. If he was going to open Mal’s door she wanted to make sure she could hear it. A plank creaked, and she could feel the tension in her limbs as she held herself motionless. But the silence returned, and stretched out. No other sound came. A new silence, like he wasn’t breathing. Like he’d vanished.
The next thing she heard from the balcony was whistling, faint for a moment and then less so, finding the right inflection. Herbie was whistling something for the birds, a keen, pithy strain that could just as easily have been a warning or a greeting.
PROSPECTUS
Marky Sessions was a slick-fielding second baseman who couldn’t hit a lick. His last season of Little League was winding down, and he missed it already. Judd Farmer, a fat pitcher from Dade City, was overpowering Marky’s team. There’d been whispers of some coaches from the fancy prep school showing up to check Farmer out, but Marky didn’t notice anyone in the stands who fit that description. Same crowd as usual—the players’ siblings, women who owned stores near the diamond, old folks relieved at having a place to go. Nelson Greer was way up in the bleachers, alone like always, huddled in a tan windbreaker. He could somehow eat the same pretzel the entire game. Nelson had been a hotshot financial adviser when he was barely old enough to drink, the toast of Tampa, then he’d gotten busted for some kind of favor-trading that people in that racket did all the time. He’d been a scapegoat. He’d gone to prison for three years, then bought a hopeless villa in the sticks and became a hermit. He only left home for sandwiches and liquor and to watch Little League.
Marky’s team finished off their half of the inning without a hit. He trotted out of the dugout and readied himself at the edge of the infield. He watched his pitcher loop a knuckleball over the batter, watched the ball find its way under the backstop, watched the catcher crawling beneath the bleachers to sniff it out. Marky felt himself losing focus, and did not fight it. He was used to it—this wistful tide that left him feeling rooted into a too-particular spot on earth, a spot where something forgotten but important had occurred, where someone from another century had appealed to the gods or invented a joke. He wished they could go back to the first inning. He wished they could start the whole season over, wished the yolky midday sun would get stuck up in the sky, that the hot breath of summer would never cool.
The ping of the bat snapped him out of it. A pitch had been smoked back at the mound. Marky caught sight of the ball as it glanced off the pitcher’s shin. It was skipping right toward him. He barehanded it, exhaled, and flung it to first for the out.
In the final inning, Marky came up to bat again. The infielders crept in a few steps, making him feel crowded, and a plan occurred to him. He held his bat out over the plate in a check-swing pose and kept it there. He held it as still as he could, and it became clear that he wasn’t going to put it back on his shoulder. The catcher stared up at him quizzically. The umpire spoke but Marky shook him off, provoking Farmer to step off the mound and paw the rosin. Marky held stiff, gazing down fixedly at the glimmering barrel of his bat instead of facing the mound, looking like a mid-swing statue of some anonymous youth sportsman of yore. Farmer let rip a fastball that zipped past Marky’s bat and was called a strike.
“I’m considering this bunting,” the umpire told Marky. “He could roll the ball in and I’d call a strike, if you keep standing like that.”
Marky did not flinch or reset, though his forearms were beginning to tremble. Farmer’s next pitch left his huge hand and chinked off Marky’s wavering, offered bat in the same instant. It took everyone a moment to locate the ball, which had blooped over the drawn-in first baseman and trickled onto the outfield grass. Marky pulled up with a comfortable single and peered at Nelson Greer, hoping for any reaction at all.
***
After the game had been lost, Marky mounted his scooter—a wood-framed chopper with angry bees painted all over it—and whined out of the swampland and away from the diamond. Marky had found the scooter near the railroad tracks and had it overhauled by the trade school mechanics, who’d made it too powerful for its own good. He stayed in third gear all the way to Hurley’s house.
Hurley was in the custom musical instrument trade, among other things, and Marky needed a one-of-a-kind bass drum for a band he wanted to manage. He had known the guys in the band awhile; they were a few years older than him, upperclassmen at the local high school. Their band was called Some Cars Are Trucks; it featured a genius on harmonica but suffered from a dearth of thump and an even more alarming dearth of gimmick. Marky figured the absurd drum would get the band noticed, make them memorable, and from there talent could take over. The vast majority of bands wound up fizzling and breaking up, Marky knew, but he thought he might as well try to jumpstart these guys and if anything happened he’d be in for ten percent. The harmonica player really was amazing, and the band’s songs were sad but not too sad.
He stepped high through some weeds and then scaled the manmade hill Hurley’s house perched atop. He knocked on Hurley’s door and it opened instantly. The man seemed older than Marky remembered—bearded, wearing a tennis outfit, snapping his fingers in thought.
“Marky,” Marky said.
“Oh, I know. I like to see how people say their own names. Are you a Scotch drinker?”
“No, not really,” Marky admitted.
“I know. I’m kidding with you. You’re a teenager, you probably only drink beer.”
“Nothing right now, thanks. I’m kind of on a schedule today.”
Marky got a look at the living room, cluttered with record players and stacked terrariums, then Hurley ushered him down to the basement, which was twice the size of the house and was divided here and there by hung tablecloths. Basements were rare in Florida, and being in this one made Marky a little nervous. It held racquet-stringing equipment, painted steel barrels, and plain tables to which vices clung. Marky was still wearing his cleats, and he stepped gingerly on the concrete floor.
“Can’t light up down here,” Hurley said.
“That’s okay, I
don’t smoke.”
“Don’t drink, don’t smoke. You sure you’re a teenager?”
“Basically,” said Marky. “I’m on deck to be a teenager.”
“Hey, before I forget to tell you, I’m getting a bunch of books in next week. You should come back and take a look. I’m going to price them at a penny a page.”
“Where are they from?”
“They were trying to start a college over in Redleg, but the money fell through.”
“Oh, I heard about that,” Marky said. “That Bible college.”
“A couple of them I’m keeping. There’s one all about how kings used to blind architects so they couldn’t build the same castle for anyone else. Or cathedral or whatever. And there’s one on carnivorous plants. Now that’s a poker face—a hunter that has to have the prey land on him.”
Marky nodded, holding an appreciative look on his face. After a moment he said, “Anyway, that bass drum. We talked about it at the pancake breakfast.”
Hurley bared his teeth, as if for inspection.
“Twelve foot across,” said Marky.
“Now if it’s too big, you won’t be able to hear it.”
“Really?” Marky asked. “Why, too low a register?”
Hurley looked off, skeptical of his own assertion. “Well, no. I guess you’d hear it. You’re going to hear it and also feel it.”
“Ever make one that big?”
“No, I made a pretty big one for some people holding a parade once, but not twelve foot. Made a lot of stuff for those guys. Parades used to be much better than they are now.”
“The ones I’ve seen have been lame,” Marky agreed.
“You missed out on a lot of Golden Ages, and the Golden Age of parades is one of them.”
Marky tried to think of something that was enjoying its Golden Age right now. There had to be something. He had the sensation, in this basement, that he was being filmed.
“I ever tell you about the radio station I used to own?” asked Hurley.
“Yeah,” Marky answered. Maybe Hurley had told him about the radio station and maybe he hadn’t. Marky couldn’t remember. “I don’t mean to be in a rush, but I was hoping to get a price from you and scoot on.”
“Oh, for sure,” Hurley said. “On the run. I know.” He ducked behind a curtain then reappeared with a form, which read:
CUSTOM TANK
CUSTOM RACKET
CUSTOM INSTRUMENT*
If ___________________ cannot be delivered by ___________________, the sum of ___________________ will be refunded in full to ___________________.
X ___________________
X ___________________
“Waterproofing’s extra,” Hurley said. He pulled a calculator from somewhere.
“Let’s just skip that.”
“Moisture can kill a drum. Getting caught out in the rain. Or just the humidity on a porch, even. It can totally dull the sound.”
“Yeah, I think I’ll do without it, though,” said Marky. “These guys rehearse at the community college. They should be fine.”
“You may regret that, little dude. I don’t sell insurance for these things.”
“I don’t buy insurance. I’m not sure I believe in it, actually.”
Hurley took a retreating step, then for effect he took another. “That’s badass,” he said. “Tattoos and gangster rap, those are just products. Refusing insurance is badass shit.”
Marky leaned his scooter in his uncle’s garage, removed his cleats, and went in for a bowl of cereal. It was his uncle’s naptime so he turned the TV on low, to a program about the strange things people ate in Asia. Marky’s uncle collected antique pornography and had stacks of calendars and prints all over the coffee table. These pale, resigned, full-bodied ladies were more nurturing than seductive. Marky could imagine them eating peanut butter right out of the jar with spoons as big as hairbrushes, carrying hefty pens around in their hands all day, no intention of writing. His uncle collected all sorts of things. They lived among chili recipes and old car phones.
Marky knew that the man wasn’t a loved figure up at the warehouse where he worked the evening shift. His uncle carried on a handful of feuds with various coworkers and called in sick the maximum it was allowed. The warehouse, which stored mainly hair products, was going to be bought out—according to the gossip it was all but a done deal—and no one expected Marky’s uncle to survive the changeover. He wasn’t skilled, didn’t have a forklift license or anything. He’d only gotten the job in the first place because one of the shift supervisors had been an old friend of Marky’s uncle’s mother, before she died. Marky’s uncle never stayed at a job more than a year or two, but it was getting harder for him to get hired anywhere—the economy, and the fact that he had a reputation by now.
The topic of Marky’s uncle’s precarious employment wasn’t spoken of in the house, but there was a tension all could feel. The factory could be bought out next week, next month. Marky’s uncle, on principle, wouldn’t accept unemployment checks. He’d wind up in the temporary labor line, most probably, with the convicts and community college washouts, and the thought of that sank Marky’s heart.
A shot was fired and Marky dropped the hosiery calendar he’d been holding into a splay on the rug. His cousin was shooting.
Marky went out the back, toward the little range his cousin had cut near the fill dunes. His cousin was seventeen and even less suited for this world than the uncle. Marky’s cousin was a poet who spent most of his time observing birds and practicing with weapons. He was shooting cans of powdered barbecue sauce with a gun called a Mini-14. The concentrated powder, infused with calcium and ginkgo biloba, had been a science project of Marky’s. Marky didn’t want to startle his cousin, so he sat on a shellacked stump and watched can after can become dust in the breeze.
When his cousin was finished he set the gun down, shook his arms out, and removed a yellow plug from each ear. He came and stood near Marky.
“Those rounds cost a buck apiece,” he said. “I just shot forty dollars.”
“Does it seem like it was worth it?”
“It’s worrisome how much I enjoy shooting things.”
Marky’s cousin interlaced his fingers and brought his hands to his chest, a gesture he’d performed ever since Marky could remember. It often meant he was about to say something that didn’t quite make sense.
“Not enjoying anything for a full day is pretty satisfying too, though. If you don’t fake it, at least.” He paused. He had a look on his face like he was tasting something exotic. “Take that Nelson guy. Nelson Greer. He’s made an art out of not enjoying anything. He seems miserable, but I think there’s a sense in which he’s happier than most. I saw him at the deli yesterday. He was staring at the lunchmeats with this flat, flat expression, but he was intensely in the moment. His case interests me.”
“He was at my game again.”
“Oh, yeah? I should try that. I should try watching sports. I used to watch basketball when I was a kid, but when my team lost I would cry and cry. I’m talking wracking sobs. I could probably handle it a lot better now. The vicarious losing.”
“I’m going to try and meet him,” Marky said. “I think he could help me with some of my ideas.”
“You should bring a gift.”
“Yeah, I should, huh?”
“You don’t want to show up empty-handed.”
“I should bring him some liquor or something. Do you have any to spare inside?”
“I think I can dig something out.”
A plump bird on a low branch started chittering sharply. It seemed to be laying down the law, maybe to Marky and his cousin and maybe to other birds. They watched it until it was finished.
Marky’s cousin looked at him. “I know that bird. He’s here every year. He’s a little insane. I see him pecking at his own feet sometimes. He ate an eraser once.”
“Where’d he get an eraser from?”
“I was out here writing. I actually put it
in the villanelle I was working on—how he kept trying to break it with his beak and then he finally gave up and swallowed it whole.”
Marky had always admired his cousin, but he worried about him more and more. He didn’t act in his own interests. The cousin and the uncle were his only family. His uncle, despite his occupational difficulties, was a good guy; he’d taken Marky in after Marky’s mother had died. His uncle hadn’t had to adopt him, but he had done it anyway. The man wasn’t really suited to being a father in the first place, and he’d agreed to look after another child, another boy who was considered strange, though in a different way than Marky’s cousin was strange. Marky could remember his uncle doing his level best as a parent when Marky was little. He could remember him helping with history homework, driving Marky to Pee Wee practice, making him breakfasts. And Marky’s cousin had never resented his presence. He’d always treated him as an equal, the way he treated everyone as an equal. He’d liked having an audience, if not a playmate. But what Marky knew about the present version of his cousin, this almost-adult version, was that he would never survive in the world on his own. He lived in a bubble in this house Marky’s uncle had inherited, and he wouldn’t fare well if he ever had to leave it.
“I meant to tell you not to worry about all those books in my room,” Marky’s cousin said. “In case you got a peek at them, that’s just academic reading. A poet not acquainted with suicide is like a shark with nothing but molars.”
Marky waited.
“Suicide is for chumps,” his cousin said. “And in my case, there’s the fun of getting to witness whatever happens with your life down the line. Ultimately, I’m going to be very proud of you. You’re a natural’s natural. You’ll swim the black waters, your stroke even and true.”
“I’ll do my best,” said Marky.
Marky’s cousin reached into a pocket of his shorts and pulled out an individually wrapped fig. He chewed it once or twice and swallowed hard. “Hell, I’m proud of you already.”