Sign Languages

by James Hannah

  Richard thought of his own youth and his “country relatives,” as his father disdainfully called them. But this memory had never been cloaked or forgotten. Richard thought of it often, maybe once or twice a year. For him it was an emblem, a definite lesson, the clearest illustration in his life of why he was Richard, this thirty-four-year-old man.

  His mother’s cousins were all great sportsmen; they fished and hunted whatever was in season. And he loved visiting in their houses on holidays because they were all full of energy. One wall, in the oldest cousin’s house, was devoted to guns-shotguns, pistols, deer rifles. There was the foreign and raw smell of bourbon on Christmas afternoon. The men laughed loudly as the women cleared the table. His mother joined in cheerfully; she loved the convoluted familial gossip. But his father sat silently at one end of the wagon-wheel couch coddling a bottle of beer. Richard watched him nod and smile and knew, at fifteen, how foreign all this still must be to his father. It was the South to this man born and raised in Milwaukee.

  So Richard tagged along as they visited barns, hung on fences to watch stallions mounting frightened mares. Sex, he couldn’t help noticing, was all noise and unwillingness.

  They had dozens of calico cats, black-and-tan squirrel dogs. None of the cousins minded horse shit or kennel smells. They wore scarred boots; he and his father borrowed rubber Wellingtons. Slipped them on in a tack room full of saddles and bits, smells of grease and leather.

  After he’d begged and whined for weeks, he and his father joined the cousins early on a mid-November morning to squirrel hunt. Already they smelled of whiskey. His father looked drawn and pale, his hands tight around the barrel of the borrowed shotgun. Tom, who was away at college, had never been interested in these people; had never made such demands on their father.

  The woods were frigid and silent. They all shot squirrels; Richard watched his fall thirty feet into the mouths of the dogs, and he was amazed at their eager violence. A cousin his own age grinned and waded into them, smacking heads with a gloved fist.

  Before noon, one of the cousins sang out, his voice echoing up dry creek beds, and they all converged on a huge snapping turtle the cousin had dragged from its winter home under a fallen oak. It was awfully old, the elderly cousin said. Its high-domed back was obsidian black and spotted with patches of green, live moss. The closed flaps protecting its head and feet were orange. They all admired the turtle until one cousin bent over and put the muzzle of his shotgun to its emerging beak and fired. Then the others stood back and did the same until there were only pieces of shell and flesh.

  Richard and his father neither fired their guns nor looked at one another. Later, on the way home, his father called them savages and Richard decided to abandon them. He turned back to his family and their quiet, solitary lives. He had always felt himself lucky; he figured few people had such clear opportunities. Of course it wasn’t only that one moment in the woods, but it had been a telling event, had become a powerful memory. And, over the years, he didn’t think he had embellished it at all when he occasionally took it out and examined it like a valuable jewel.

  The sagging apartment door banged shut; Chip, the redheaded boy, howled like an animal. Near the pile of scaffolding, the two oldest children kissed passionately; Richard wondered how they were related.

  He wouldn’t deny the allure of their lives. Even after he’d gone inside he thought about them and returned to look out at their house. He felt he was blushing; his forehead was warm to his touch.

  So, in a couple of days, the children returned to the yard to play. They made-believe using the storage shed. And Richard watched them from the couch until one morning he stepped quietly out onto the deck and cautiously sat in a webbed lawn chair.

  Chip looked up from his howling game, his fingers dug deeply into Tom’s drought-wrecked grass, and watched Richard. In a moment they all fell silent. The older two came out from behind the shed, their faces blushed and drenched in sweat. Richard almost turned his head away.

  They formed a tableau. All around them sprinklers clinked and a hot breeze rattled bamboo wind chimes.

  Richard stared at them. It’s all right, he said to himself. Don’t worry. I only want to watch. Everything’s just fine.

  The older ones spoke quietly to the younger, and they sat together in a circle for a few minutes. Then, like a football huddle, they touched hands and shouted, resuming play.

  In a day’s time they had captured Tom’s backyard. Richard watched them work like ants carrying from the garage apartment broken chairs, bicycles with warped wheels, headless dolls, sacks of clothes. The two oldest—the boy stoop-shouldered with pale eyes, the girl with just a hint of breasts, her nipples hard under her tight T-shirt—wrestled and wrote things on sheets of notebook paper. Like sibyls they paid no mind to them afterward, and the scraps, driven by the hot breezes, plastered the base of the house, flew to catch in other people’s hedges. One night, after they’d retired behind their wall to gather around the fire and cook, Richard collected paper until his back ached. Sitting down at the kitchen table, he looked through the damp sheets at the stick figures in sexual positions he’d never imagined. In some there were stick-figure policemen surrounding houses, bullhorns to lips. In all, the houses were repetitions of the green garage apartment down to the low wall, the scaffolding, the split cement mixer. In one, a redheaded child hung from an upper window. In all of them there wasn’t a single scene indoors.

  One morning, with his coffee in his hand, Richard emerged to find the two youngest digging furiously with a spade. They’d already crossed half the yard with a shallow trench, the grass uprooted and turned over.

  “Hey, you two!” Richard placed the cup on the railing and stepped down onto the brown grass. But Kimmy only turned around and grinned, her teeth yellow and snaggled. “You shouldn’t do that,” he continued, but Chip didn’t break his rhythm. Instead, without glancing up, he tossed a shovelful of dirt in Richard’s direction.

  “Now listen here,” Richard said, and stopped ten feet from them, his clenched fist outstretched. Then he dropped his hand and looked over at the dark sagging door of the apartment.

  Who are you? he started to ask. What is all of this?

  Instead he went inside and, from the couch, saw them fill the narrow ditch with water from Tom’s unrolled garden hose and begin sailing pieces of wood down it. Soon all four of them joined in and dug a second canal at right angles to the first.

  All afternoon they romped in the water and dark mud. The older girl’s neck caught the sunlight like gilt, her eyes down-turned to the toy boats. The older boy taunted Chip until they fought in the trench, clawed and bit and screamed.

  Kimmy ignored them and put the dribbling hose into her mouth until her cheeks ballooned. Soon they were all yelling, tearing through the neighbors’ yards, and Richard went around to the side and turned off the water. He noticed that their sailing boats were pieces of painted clapboard siding ripped loose; in some the bent nails were still shiny.

  Some mornings they were out by the shed. Once the two youngest were on the deck drinking Dr Peppers at seven in the morning. Soon he began cleaning up after them. He filled the trench, patted down the friable grass. He scrubbed the crayon markings off the deck planking. He noticed he no longer opened his mouth to shout at them when they ran headlong into the shed and bounced off in one of their violent games. But he felt his face flush frequently, his head a bit dizzy as if he’d had too many cups of coffee.

  But when he demanded of himself a trip away from the house—to the store or a movie matinee—he could hardly wait to return. To sit on the couch in the infinite summer evening or on the deck and watch them howl and fight. The two oldest always touching—hand to elbow to shoulder. The yellow light warm on all their suntanned skins. The apartment door dark and sagging. He’d never seen a light on in a window. He quit reading his book by Henry Kissinger. At night he watched them at their supper fire, faces like masks but also the faces of children. Their motionlessne
ss, rapt attention on the flames, a summation of the day’s abandonment in passionate play.

  On one of the rare days they didn’t appear, but could be heard a block away in loud contests, the phone rang.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Hello?”

  “Just what do you think you’re doing over there?”

  Richard almost hung up. That’s what you do in Houston, in the city.

  “It’s me, Barbie Glass. Remember, Rich? The Welcome Wagon lady. Your neighbors, Barbie and Buddy.”

  Richard nodded and looked across the street. He couldn’t recall which house she’d said was theirs.

  “Yes, of course. Hello, Barbie. How’s Buddy?”

  “He’s the one made me call, Rich. He’s mad at you… mad as a wet hen…”

  Richard heard a thin voice beyond Barbie’s; it was reedy and angry. “Sonofabitch,” it said. “Sonofabitch.”

  “Hush up… shhh.”

  “Barbie?” Richard looked out at the houses. Two houses to the north a man sat on the porch in a wheelchair, but he didn’t look toward Tom’s house. Richard kept his eyes on him; he wore a thin robe over pajamas and spat into a handkerchief concealed in a palm.

  “You’re letting ‘em take over. You’re letting ‘em overrun us, Rich.”

  Richard considered her words and found himself silent. The man in the wheelchair turned his head to the door. There was a voice now behind Barbie’s. Sharp, complaining, angry.

  “They’re ruining our neighborhood. Stealing mail, tearing up property. This and that. And we’re old folks, Richard. And you’re encouraging them. After we’ve tried to keep ‘em in their own yard.”

  “Goddammit,” the high voice shrieked.

  Then he didn’t hear anything; Barbie must have put her hand over the receiver. Richard imagined her small fat palm across his lips.

  “What do you think you’re doing, Buddy wants to know? Why ain’t you with us, Rich? Look at what they’ve done to Tom and Megan’s lovely yard.”

  Richard stared at the man in the wheelchair.

  “Can’t you help us, son? You seemed such a nice boy. Tom’s younger brother, the CPA.”

  “Yes, of course. Of course I can, Barbie. But they’re just kids, you know…”

  “Bad kids, Rich.”

  “I…” And Richard hung up gently. He watched the old man on the porch cough convulsively into his palm, then he went into the kitchen and sat. He felt embarrassed for them all.

  It was easier than he thought it would be. On Tuesday morning he went to McDonald’s and bought a half-dozen sausage-and-egg biscuits and cartons of orange juice. He waited on the deck in the dew-dampened chair until they stormed out of the apartment and over the wall to the shed—its sides dented in places from their roughhousing.

  “Hey, how about some breakfast?” he said in a stage whisper. The four of them seemed to ignore him. So, for a few minutes they continued to play with the collection of broken chairs, warped boards, and old chenille bedspreads and Richard continued to sit on the deck, his face warm as if he’d had whiskey.

  Finally they came running and collected on the deck so close to him he’d stepped back and waved them inside.

  That’s the way it would begin. He’d buy sweet rolls or breakfast muffins. Or he’d fry eggs and bacon. After a couple of days they’d be cavorting on the deck, cracking the glaze of empty bonsai pots, picking at torn strips of webbing from the chaise longue, until he slid open the door and they rushed inside to the kitchen.

  They seldom talked. They ate like wolves he’d seen on PBS. They jerked at their food, chomped down bacon, ham, and toast. Guzzled their orange juice.

  They smelled like cat’s fur—the smell of the sun on things that live out under it. Richard kept his distance, stood with his hips against the edge of the kitchen sink.

  And then he let them play in Tom and Megan’s house and they destroyed very little. All they broke he’d replace before the summer was over. There were dropped glasses, a bowl full of wax fruit—Kimmy took a bite from the Red Delicious apple and, in anger and surprise, pushed the whole bowl off the coffee table.

  “Mista, you gotta dead rat in heah,” Chip said, wrinkling his nose. “Don’t ya smell hit? Somethin’ wrong with ya nose?” He laughed, his teeth gapped and yellow. Richard saw they were his permanent teeth. He nodded, but he no longer smelled anything; he had gotten used to it.

  But they seldom talked to him, and though they were soon into everything, Richard held his tongue. Kimmy and Chip found pots and pans in the kitchen to play with. He sat on the couch and listened to their wild babble; he heard them argue; they came to blows, swinging pots as weapons. Often one screamed and dropped to the floor weeping. But Richard just listened, knowing that if the pain were too great the child would run out the door and into the woods.

  The oldest two played in Tom’s study where there were dozens of old magazines and family photo albums. They typed on the typewriter and giggled. They lay on the carpet—Richard watched their feet stretched out across the doorway. Brown legs in the air, they talked a low foreign language, a dialect all their own. Sometimes, when he came from another room, trying to keep things a bit straight, he’d glance in and they’d be talking head-to-head and then they’d look up at him as if he were a ghost, their faces suddenly ashen and their lips drawn tight. He’d nod at them and smile, but they’d keep staring.

  Some days they didn’t come, weren’t waiting for him on the deck. On those occasions he’d drive an hour into the medium-sized city and window shop and eat at some awful restaurant offering local dishes. Taking a mouthful of food, looking out the window at his brother’s Toyota, he considered what it was he was doing. But not for long, and he answered everything with a shake of his head.

  When they did arrive his breath caught for a moment at the top of his lungs. He sat on the couch in the living room and listened to all their noise—the crash of pans, the complaint of the abused typewriter. Standing at the back door, Chip scanned the yard with Tom’s binoculars. That afternoon—they always left by two at a sharp command from the older boy, drawn to the sun—Richard couldn’t find the binoculars. He wrote it on a piece of paper in the study, a list he had begun keeping. “Things to Do,” it said, though it meant “things to buy, to replace.” On the floor were dozens of sheets of paper black with typing. “Karen… Bobby… Hates… Kisses.” A stew of typos. Odd pieces of themselves left behind. In the kitchen there were different traces. Puddles of flour, water, sugar. Cake pans full of soggy oatmeal. It took him more than two hours to clean up. Afterward he’d watch baseball on television until it was time to lie down and watch them around their fire.

  “Holy Jesus, are you crazy?” The phone clicked dead. Richard looked across the street; behind him, the little ones fought. It wasn’t, he decided, either of their voices. It was a low man’s voice disguised as high.

  The day the rain broke the drought, they stayed until almost five. Rising from the couch, Richard walked down the hall. In the study, with the rain pounding on the air-conditioner, the boy was asleep on the floor.

  The girl was in Tom and Megan’s bedroom. She wore one of Megan’s Sunday dresses, the shoulders hanging down, the whole dress describing her young body. She sat on the bed watching the rain against the windows.

  Richard stood in the doorway. The rain-filtered light darkened the bronze skin of her cheek and the backs of her hands. He thought about the rounder, mature body of Megan.

  In the doorway he listened to the rain with her and, beyond her, to the snore of the boy, the sounds from the kitchen. He knew absolutely what he had known for years. He would never have children. He would never live like the cousins or these children.

  One breast showed plainly through the thin fabric. It was hard, firm as a fist. She was probably sixteen; the rain-streaked glass softened her sharp girl’s features.

  Richard backed from the door, walked quietly past the sleeping boy, and sat on the couch.

 
Two days after the rain the weather turned cooler. Richard had straightened up and fixed himself a cup of thick, bitter espresso. He stood at the sliding door and listened to them in the woods. Later, he dozed on the couch until the sharp knocks on the flimsy storm door woke him.

  “Coming,” he said, and flipped on the yellow porch light. “Yes?” Richard opened the door and looked down on a huge man in greasy coveralls that gapped at every button, strained at the seams.

  “So you’re the bastard, huh?” The words slurred from thick lips. The man seemed as broad as he was tall.

  Richard held the door open. The yellow porch light failed to repel the moths that fluttered and dipped in front of their faces.

  “What do you want?” Richard let the door close a bit, but with a surprisingly swift movement the fat man stopped it and laid a wide hand on Richard’s shirtsleeve.

  “You some kinda molester, that it? Bring the kids inside for treats?” He whined the last word and Richard smelled whiskey and realized several things at once.

  “No, no, that’s not it at all. Listen…”

  But suddenly the fat man, his globular cheeks shaking in rage, his chin sagging like some brown animal’s bloated throat, yanked hard and pulled Richard out the door onto the rough cement porch. Richard heard his shirtsleeve tear on the doorknob, felt his left knee flare in pain as it jammed against the wrought-iron railing.

  The huge short man lumbered around on the tiny porch with Richard in his arms. A bear squeezing a foolish thin man. With a broad paw, the man would swat at Richard’s face, and, working an arm free, Richard tried to protect his head.