Drink for the Thirst to Come

by Lawrence Santoro

  I’d never hunted, never even been to the woods. My father was a hunter. He was going to take me. Always said when I grew this-tall he would. But he went away before. And other than at the butcher shop, I’d never smelled blood. I’d squeezed a few drops from the kid’s poked finger once, tasted it before putting on the Band-Aid, but that was it. Yet in Pop-pop’s hallway, I heard the forest murmur, what I know to be cicadae, wind in the trees, small brooks, the rustle of animals.

  I remember the feel of the wallpaper, like narrow cords on stiff cloth. Like tapestry, Pop-pop said. Close, the smell was of the old, of wheat paste, dried and cracked. Like the inside of a scrapbook, maybe.

  The only light in the hallway was from a lamp Mother kept on a small table with a marble top. The table legs were claws that clutched clear glass balls. Dragon feet, the kid called them. “Yeah,” I told him, “the feet of a dragon Dad killed.”

  He said no, but I think he believed part of it.

  The upstairs phone also sat on the table. A heavy black affair, the thing smelled of Pop-pop’s pipe and kisses. The lamp was lit day and night. A yellow cone of light spread upward across the picture, washed the deer’s face, his wounds and blood and, at its limit, kept the flying dog from tumbling upward into the dark.

  At Mother’s room and mine, the picture disappeared into forest—a world wooded. Beyond those woods? Again, I made so many nearly good stories that they became real to me.

  Rising from Mom’s room, the morning sun lit the edge of the picture, the ladies clutching, weeping. The sunset, from my end of the hall, sometimes glowed the dark trees and washed the women in red.

  On the other side of the hall was the same picture, reversed. There were interruptions, the bathroom door, the stairway to the living room, the side hall leading to the attic steps, Pop-pop’s room. Pop-pop’s room was at the center. His door cut the deer’s head and shoulders from the picture so, no wound, no blood, no wild eyes there. The horse reared, the huntsman’s pike disappeared into the frame, half the flying dog emerged.

  When the war came, Dad went. He died and my kid brother was born. Dad was killed on the day Raymond was born. My guess. That made it kind of perfect anyway. We got the letter in the middle of winter just after Mom came home from the hospital with Raymie and I came home from Aunt Erby and Uncle Mac’s, where I’d been stashed until Mom could cope. Her word. Pop-pop was not to be trusted with the entirety of me, I guess. I was five when the kid showed up. It was Raymie’s fault the wallpaper went away. Here’s the story:

  Picture Mom standing in the hallway early one morning. The kid could walk, but she’s holding him anyway and he’s screaming. Here’s why: the phone rang at 6:30. I was up and in the bathroom but I never answered the phone, not mornings or late at night. Mother’s rule. Raymie ran out of Mom’s room and to the phone. He always did. Then he stood and stared at it like a pointer until someone came and answered it. I guess Raymie caught his foot in one of holes in the carpet and fell. Mom came, picked him up, like always, and held him in the crook of her arm, bouncing him quiet as she answered the phone. Simple. He always stopped crying when she held him. Now he didn’t. He didn’t so much that I came out of the bathroom, toothpaste slobbering out of my mouth, to see what was going on.

  Dull morning light poured out of Mom’s room. Deer, dogs, spear, blood, women, everything blue or green or yellow or any color was soaked in deep red.

  Mom was on the line bouncing him but the kid would not shut up. I didn’t know why. Then I did. Raymie was nose-to-nose with the bleeding deer, its wild wide eye, maybe six inches from his, flying dog above him, sticking spears, arrows, rearing horses. He twisted one way, the other, another; everywhere was blood pain.

  Mom didn’t notice at first. She kept bouncing the kid on her hip and trying to talk. I was laughing my head off—quietly, so not to disturb. Raymie looked at me, saw toothpaste foam on my mouth I guess and upped the screams to where Mom finally realized the kid wasn’t going to shut up.

  “Excuse me a second, okay?” she said. Then, “Raymond. Raymond? Ramie, what? What?” She looked at me. “Is it your brother?” I wiped the paste off my lips and shrugged. I didn’t know. The kid kept it up. “Is it what? What, honey? What?”

  The kid pointed at the wall and screamed.

  “What? The paper? Is it this, the wallpaper?” She looked at me. “You think the wall is scaring him?”

  It seemed stupid.

  “I think. Are you? You afraid of this?” Mom laid her hand on the deer’s face.

  Raymie doubled the volume and buried his eyes in her hair.

  “He is. He’s afraid of the wallpaper! Huh! Listen,” she said to the phone, “have to go.”

  Pop-pop had been born in the house. The wallpaper was there when he was a kid. Never bothered him, so far as he said. Mom had been born in the house. She didn’t say so, but it probably didn’t scare her. I was a baby there and it never made me cry. Then on, Raymond went through the hall, eyes shut. He fell at least once a week, with consequent screaming and flailing, right under the stag’s head, the horse’s hooves.

  Finally, Pop-pop started taking estimates for redoing the hallway. One guy wandered, looking. He wanted to scrape and re-plaster, said that paper was on there darn good; even with the steam she was gonna rip out a lot of that old plaster. “That there’s horse-hair binder, that there’s holding it to them lathe strips under there,” he said. “Gonna be rough, that job, and gonna lose some them lathes, too. Then there’s the wire’s gotta go over them voids and the new plaster.” When all that was done, he could put on some pretty new paper over it. “Something ain’t scary, you know, something, say, with flowers, nice flowers,” he said, smiling down at the kid. “Or them puppy dogs and bunny bears. Something’ll come off easy when the kid’s growed, you know?”

  The kid stared. This was in the living room where there were no horses, stags, and hounds.

  Another guy figured the same, wrote it on a piece of butcher paper with a stubby pencil he kept licking, then sat down alone and did some quiet arithmetic. He finally said the walls would probably have to come down and go back up. Then he could hang some paper. Or not. Her choice. He gave mom a big book with lots of samples. She could choose, choose anything she wanted. Most of them had flowers, stripes, or both. He left the paper with it written in wet pencil lines and numbers.

  Another wanted to just scrape, plaster and paint. Some nice paint, he thought. White would be good, people are doing that now, paint. “Wallpaper? That’s horse and buggy days.”

  The kid whimpered about the horse and buggy stuff.

  Everyone wanted to scrape and plaster first.

  “That costs what?” Pop-pop asked. Three times he asked.

  Each man said. They said different figures, but numbers so high Pop-pop’s eyebrows went up each time. Each time he made blow-face noises.

  Pop-pop died early one Sunday morning. He dropped down in the hall on his way to the bathroom and lay there until Raymie tripped over him. There was screaming.

  Then it was up to Mom. Six months later she painted. Over the wallpaper. She’d had it. She had a guy in, none of the ones from before, a guy she found in the phone book. He started pretty much the same as the others and Mom shut him up! If the damn stuff is on there so good, it can just stay there and he could paint over it.

  The guy didn’t like that and he left. Said it wasn’t worth his time.

  The next guy in the yellow pages was a one-armed vet with a limp. He looked, touched the wall with his one hand, ran it along, felt the texture.

  “Seventy-five bucks,” he said.

  “About right,” Mother said, “seventy-five dollars. About right.”

  “The paint on top of that,” the guy said.

  “Seventy-five and paint.”

  Color?

  “White. Not just white, off-white, an almost white but not quite white white.” Even Mom laughed when she said it. I did. The one-armed guy did too. When he laughed, scars showed on his cheek and
neck. Raymie just stared at the guy.

  The vet did it. He laid thick paint-spattered canvas along the hallway floor.

  “Don’t worry,” Mom said, “I’m getting new!”

  “Still,” he said, and put it down anyway. Ran tape around the woodwork and baseboards.

  He laid down a thick first coat. “Impasto!” he said, producing the word like a magician would. There went the picture, mom’s side down to mine. The brush slapped the nubbly paper, erased the women, the woods, the horses, men, flying dogs, deer, blood. Then down the other side, my end to Mom’s. The whole world from when Pop-pop was a boy disappeared stroke by stroke. All the darkness from Pop-pop’s stories, the shadows that crawled, evenings, from beneath the trees and from under the houses, the castle, the world we couldn’t see, the rasp of crickets, the whiff of chimney smoke and the smoke of dragons, the cold touches in the night, all the fears and holy wonders that came to life in my head, I had brought them out, emptied me of them and put them there to live in the story on the wallpaper, beyond the forest where I couldn’t see them, gone.

  Sitting in the hallway, alone afternoons or evenings, I knew the terrors were real as my dad had been, real but far, far away, unable to touch me.

  Now it all disappeared and I went out of the house and down the block and sat beneath a tree near the mountain and cried. I was old enough to cross streets but I still cried! I never told that before.

  The house smelled of paint and three days later the one-armed vet came back. He sanded and sanded until he was sanding with paper so fine it felt like velvet. He wiped the walls, sweeping in long smooth strokes. White dust filled the air. The air smelled like dry sand, damp oil, and old wheat paste. Then he came back and painted, let dry, sanded smooth again. Then he came back with the not-quite-white paint Mom wanted.

  “Yes, that’s it. Just it!”

  “Old lace,” he said.

  “What? Oh, yes. Lace. Old lace! Yes.”

  This time she laid on smooth, the vet said, and when she dried that wall was smooth as a baby’s bottom. What he said.

  “Old lace,” Mom said again, “white but not quite.”

  Mom’s new carpet sat in a roll at the bottom of the stairs waiting for the vet to finish. The morning light from Mom’s room bounced down the not quite white walls. The back and forth reflection lit, slightly, even the dark side passageway to the attic stairs. At sunset, the walls still looked like blood.

  Through the work, Raymie left dust and paint trails everywhere. Mom cleaned, told him, “Be careful, you’ll get paint everywhere.” He wasn’t, but at least he didn’t cry every time he had to pee. Every day the vet came she told him where Raymie had made a mess, left footprints on the stairs, on the bathroom linoleum, the living room rug. The vet stuck his tongue in the corner of his mouth, patched, cleaned and never seemed to care, just did what he had to.

  Then it was finished. Mom handed him seventy-five dollars in fives, extra for the paint and a little more for him. She got red in the face when she handed it to him. His face got red taking it.

  Two minutes after he’d folded his drop cloth and was putting it into the trunk of his car, the kid ran a sliver into his big toe. He was running barefoot back and forth up and down the hall, shouting hooray, hooray, yea! When he got the splinter he flopped on his face and wouldn’t stop screaming until mom tweezered the sliver out and mercurochromed his toe.

  “You want for me to roll that runner down for you?” the vet asked when he came back for his brushes and buckets.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I think I can.”

  He ran his hand along the rough pine floor. “Should run a sander on these planks.” He flipped a long sharp piece of wood with a fingernail. “Buddy of mine’s got one he don’t use so much and he owes me so it wouldn’t take but an hour. Them splinters, it’ll take the edge off ’em. Maybe two hours. Maybe seal the edges along the baseboard there with a little varnish.” He touched Raymie’s head. “Whole thing,” he looked up and down the hall, my room to Mom’s, “say, twenty bucks. Probably do it tomorrow, day after, depending. Little extra for varnish.”

  “Sure,” Mom said.

  “Raymond. Wear your shoes till then. Okay, Chief?” The guy waved a finger under the kid’s nose. Raymie sniveled and stuck his face in Mom’s leg.

  The kid cried again that night. I awoke hearing screams. Mom was in the hall, holding him.

  “Splinter?”

  Mom shook her head. Raymie kept screaming; she held him. I stood. Finally Raymie looked at me. “Too big,” he said.

  “What is?” Mom said.

  “It’s too big!”

  “What? The hallway?”

  “Too big!”

  “Yeah,” I said. Mom gave me a look. But the hallway did look longer, now the trees and story were gone. Now there was nothing, nothing but walls and ceiling and that long run of splintery wood, just a little lamp to light it. I never thought our house was big, but it was. It was especially when you’re just three feet tall as Raymie was. I remembered.

  “Well, it’s only as big as it ever was, Raymond,” Mom said, still giving me the look. “Just exactly. No bigger.”

  “Hiding,” he screamed, “in the woods. In there. And it is bigger. It wasn’t this big before. They’re hiding!” Then he looked at me and smiled. Cried, terrified and he smiled. His smile gave me gooseflesh. And I hadn’t thought of it but maybe they were in there, the picture, the men, women, horses, dogs, the bleeding stag, the trees, the forest, the world beyond the forest, all the stories I’d built. My stories were still there, behind that nice not quite white paint. Maybe you’d have to be a magician to get it.

  Mom didn’t. She thought it was just the kid being like he was. “Just watch your feet, Raymie, okay?” is what she said.

  The vet came back the next day. Mom didn’t say anything. She didn’t even tell it, laughing like she did when telling a Raymie story. The vet’s buddy’s sander was big. I was amazed the guy could get it up the steps with one arm. Mom offered to help but he just smiled. He hefted, balanced the thing, one handed, like he was, and limped it up the steps. I can’t imagine.

  “You guys get yourselves downstairs,” he said to Raymie and me. “This thing starts up I gotta keep her going or she’ll dig in and cut right through the floor.” He winked at Mom. “No, really, get on down, she kicks up a lotta stuff.”

  We did. The sander growled around the hall for an hour. The vet walked behind the machine, let it have its way carefully, like dancing with it. He wore a wet bandana around his mouth and nose, looked like a holdup man in the westerns. Raymie had never seen a movie, cowboy or otherwise, didn’t know about that stuff. Still, he giggled, looking at the one-armed guy but made cry-faces when the sander growled and ground.

  I sat on the bottom step and breathed in the smells. Mom and the kid sat with me. She talked. I don’t remember about what, but she talked. Every time the vet passed the upper landing, she stopped and watched. Every time, he looked down and his eyes smiled at her. She waved, every time. He nodded.

  “Swifty,” Mom said, sniffing the dust. “That’s Swifty.”

  “What?”

  “Smell that?”

  Yes. Something at the heart of the smell coming from upstairs was not wood, not paint or varnish. It smelled like…

  “Doggie pee,” Mom said.

  Piss. Yes.

  “That’s my Springer spaniel. Swifty. When I was your age, a little older, he used to…” She laughed. “When he was a pup and every time there was thunder and lightning, Swifty would pee himself. He’d run down by your room, the corner at the bathroom door? And he’d tinkle. It got so the wood was soaked black from pee. That’s when Dad put that old runner down. That’s what you smell. You smell him? Swifty.” Her mouth was open a little and she smiled across it.

  Raymie stared at Mom as she told the story. She got into it, remembered this and that about the pup, the dog, the old dog. “He died up there.” She arched her neck toward the buzzing sander. “
Right about where Pop-pop...” Then she started to cry and Raymie was on the edge. He had that look of something not right, something pushing him to cry but he didn’t know what.

  I breathed in the hot wood and piss dust of the long-gone Swifty. That was enough.

  When the sander stopped, the hall floor was smooth as a baby’s bottom. We all stood in that long near-white corridor.

  “I’ll dry mop it now and let it set for a little,” the vet said. “Come back tomorrow, if that’s okay with youse, and lay down a coat of varnish. Do one side then come another day and lay down the other. That way you can walk around up there so long’s you remember to keep to the dry side.”

  “That’s fine,” Mom said. “Yes. Come back tomorrow. I can sweep. You’ve done enough for your twenty bucks, for goodness sake.”

  Mom never talked like that. “Twenty bucks.”

  The vet came back and varnished half the hall; he waited a day, then did the other half. On the Saturday he returned to roll and tack the new carpet. If anything happened between or among those days, I don’t remember.

  Mom paid the twenty bucks, something extra for the varnish, and put a little on top for him. She blushed again. That was that, we thought.

  The new carpet was soft and thick, a pale gray, like pearls rich with body heat. The not-quite white white walls were already familiar. Through nights and dark parts of day, the lamp on the phone table made the corridor glow warm, yellow. I loved how my bare feet sank into the carpet like they did into dry sand. And no holes. The kid shuffled up and down, making sure nothing would grab, make him flop. Nothing did. Nothing did, but sparks cracked when he touched the brass doorknobs or the lamp. He cried about it at first, but soon he enjoyed making small lightning snaps. For days he slid along the hallway, leaning, taking a long lead on the sharp crackle that jumped between his finger and the brass lamp. In the dark, he watched as the spark jumped, yelping a little, laughing at the tiny pain. Of course I did it, too, touched his ear or nose. Of course! And, of course, he cried and growled at me.