The O. Henry Prize Stories 100th Anniversary Edition (2019)

by The O Henry Prize Stories 2019 (retail) (epub)

  Ebo elbowed the screen door open to its usual high-pitched wheeze. At the bottom of the steps, he plugged his feet into rubber slippers and shuffled over to Daddy, who was exactly where Ebo knew he’d be. With his new pair of shoes waiting for him, Ebo now needed socks, something only Daddy owned. Ebo sat down on the bench seat next to Daddy, but Daddy stood, though there was room enough for two. Daddy relaxed against the frame of the Ford and lit another Lucky Strike. Speaking through pinched lips, he said, “You ready to go?”

  Digging a knuckle into his eye, Ebo said, “I bettah be.”

  Daddy pulled on his cigarette and nodded. Two steady streams of smoke issued from his nostrils. He used to work for Maui County in road maintenance, but it had been some time since he’d paved a pothole or disposed of a dead mongoose. It had been even longer since Daddy served with the 442nd in the Second World War, making Daddy the closest person to Ebo who had not only left the island, but returned. In the silence, the two men were careful to avoid each other’s eye, an intimacy they did not know how to share. Any other day and one of them would’ve walked away by now. But the moment for that had passed and Ebo was still there, needing socks.

  “Gotta ask you someting,” said Ebo as he stood to ask Daddy squarely. Daddy pivoted back down onto the bench seat, set his elbows to his knees, and hung his head between his shoulders. Ebo, in turn, leaned against the Ford so that like two reluctant dance partners, they’d traded places.

  “I know what you like ask,” said Daddy. “Some kine advice. I know. Soljah to soljah. But only get one ting fo say…” Daddy looked up and settled his gaze seriously into the middle distance. Ebo hadn’t anticipated this. He gently pushed off from the Ford, stood tall and waited.

  “Duh ting you gotta do,” said Daddy, “is…no die.”

  A brief moment passed with Ebo thinking Daddy sincere. It stretched long enough for Ebo to open his dry mouth and try to match the sentiment. But Daddy threw up his arms in amazement at his own humor, amazed Ebo hadn’t yet agreed. “You see? Das it! Jus no die. Easy.” Daddy spun out laughing so hard he began to cough until he choked. Ebo could only look out at the pavement of the driveway, staring into the sunlight until his eyes began to water. Once recovered, Daddy flicked the butt of his cigarette and it rolled, still burning, into Ebo’s line of sight. “Ay,” muttered Daddy, groaning as he stood, as if standing would be the hardest task of his day. Before disappearing into the house, Daddy called out to Ebo, “Eh, maybe go Paukukalo. One last time. Jus fo Daddy, eh?”

  Ebo slunk into the sun and faithfully toed the butt dead. He pinched its mess between two fingers and dropped it into a gallon bucket filled with sand, figuring the bucket had another week or so to go. Since he was a boy, it had been his job to empty the ashy filth into Tasty Crust’s dumpster when no one was looking and to go to Paukukalo Beach for a clean bucket of sand.

  Mindlessly, Ebo tapped his toe against the heft of the bucket, as if he couldn’t muster the will to kick. But the will existed and manifested itself in sudden movement. Ebo tore down the driveway and hung a right onto Mill Street, jogging a ways until turning to face oncoming cars in a backward shuffle. Everything siphoned to the power of his hitchhiker’s thumb, now asking for someone, anyone, to stop. He didn’t have the time to walk the two miles, but he had his thumb and his suddenly supreme need to go to Paukukalo—not for sand or for Daddy, but for his own sake.

  A truck slowed mercifully and Ebo swung himself into its bed, rode the distance as if it was something to endure and not a necessary means to his end. The truck puttered along the back roads down toward the ocean, which, from Ebo’s position, could not be seen until he was there. Then, the ocean was everywhere, something he couldn’t not see if he tried. Two pats against the truck’s side and the truck rolled to a stop. Ebo alighted, gave another grateful tap to the truck as it drove away, and waited. He waited until he needed breath, so that when he breathed, he did so as deeply as he could.

  Without anyone there, the beach before him was a lonely stretch of beige with an unfurling wave for company. In a trancelike state, Ebo trudged through the sand toward the water. In a tremor of heightened awareness, he understood this place as it might’ve been uninhabited, before the insistent road lined its coast, before anything so much as a human foot dimpled its surface. Like the sea-salted wind in his hair, the dimensions of time could be felt, tasted, moved through. Whatever it was that every person through all of history might’ve felt as they looked upon what he was seeing now, all of this Ebo experienced as a tiny pinprick in his chest.

  He sat down cross-legged. The grainy warmth beneath his legs brought him back into his own skin, his own memory. As they had for so many years, his hands routinely combed the sand for opihi shells, which Momo had loved for the purple swirl of their underside. He would do this while Momo chased waves as they pulled away, the same waves that would, in turn, push back toward her and send her squealing. She was happiest here, Ebo knew. Though she would never learn to swim, the sun and water and sand were enough to animate her, like music does dancing. Now, as he remembered her, an opihi shell appeared in Ebo’s fingers like a tiny sand-swept miracle. He brushed off its back and belly, blew on it for good measure. He studied its purple swirl and the thought came to him that it wasn’t just its color Momo had loved, but the fact that he, Ebo, had searched for her, would not stop searching for her, until he found one.

  * * *

  —

  Momo wasn’t dead, which might’ve been easier. She was nine years gone. She had been taken from life as Ebo knew it, meaning life as Ebo lived it was arranged around what had been and what should have been—two points on an axis that would never curve toward what actually was. Staring into this regret was for Ebo the same thing as having his eyes open at all.

  In the end, it had taken Daddy three full weekends to build Ebo his loft. By that time, Ebo’s mother had decided on a second pigeon, a common blue bar, which she didn’t say, but Ebo knew, was for Momo. What Ebo didn’t say was that he resented this.

  The first week they had their birds, the birds did not readily know their new home and flew back to their previous coop. Through their mother, the breeder had instructed Ebo and Momo to gather twigs and leaves and place their findings in the corner of the loft. A morning or two later, a nest was built. Three days more and Momo’s blue bar sat in her nest, pressing herself into her first egg. Another speckled egg followed. It took a few more weeks for the squabs to hatch themselves through perfect circles carved at the tops of the eggs, another few for their yellow fuzz to be replaced by feathers.

  With their squabs in the loft, Ebo became convinced the birds would no longer stray. He decided to test his bird, the cream barred homer, by taking it into ‘Iao Valley, a mile or so up the mountain. He’d wanted to do this alone, but Momo had followed. Even though she’d had a sinus infection that week, she would not be left behind.

  The basin was dark, dank, teeming with life both seen and unseen. Banyan trees laced their fingers overhead and the fragrance of white ginger was silk on their skin. Ebo carried his wicker basket in hand as his bird stamped its feet for balance. He walked at a steady pace, knowing he couldn’t exactly lose Momo, but he’d wanted her to struggle in some way. And she did—she struggled to keep up when everything in her wanted to take her time. When too much distance stretched between them, Ebo turned angrily to Momo, only to see her head back, mouth open, as if the immense lushness of sight and sound might tip her over. In seeing this, Ebo saw what was beautiful. But because he had wanted it all to be his to see, and not Momo to see it through, he became mean.

  “You! Some stupid, you! Hurry up!” he snapped.

  Between two peaks was a riverbed of boulders rounded smooth by icy water that flowed from the mountains. Ebo’s mother’s mother had washed clothes there, singing her songs from home. It was where families picnicked, babies were baptized, kids passed their summers atop the rocks—every
good and perfect thing.

  The boulder on the other side of the river was large and flat, like a platter tipped to a lean. Because it was the only space exposed to the widest spread of open sky, it was where Ebo determined he would release his bird. But the way to it was through a thick part of the river, heavy with deep waters gone stagnant from stillness. Cresting the glassy surface was a line of rocks, like beading on a necklace laid out. Having told Momo to watch from the edge, Ebo toed his way across, alternating hands with his basket. But she followed him, put her feet wherever his had been.

  On the other side, she couldn’t keep still for her excitement and it angered Ebo further. He lifted the lid to his basket but when the bird didn’t move, he kicked a toe into the wicker. The bird still did not move, as if it didn’t know to look up, so Ebo pulled it from the basket and tossed it upward like a handful of confetti. The bird teetered and lifted, teetered and lifted higher. It made its way up and out of sight, all of it over without ever having been what Ebo imagined the afternoon would be.

  For a boy of nine, his disappointment registered as injustice—what Ebo should have had, he’d been denied. And on that day, it was Momo who had denied him his freedom to be something other than what he felt he was: second in everything. Because of this, Ebo quickly maneuvered his way back over the rocks and disappeared behind a tree. He’d wanted Momo to feel abandoned and scared, just for a little while. She called after him, confused. Even when she cried, Ebo stayed hidden.

  The sun, it seemed, would set on his bitterness. It was darkest first in nature. As the daylight dimmed, Ebo saw his hand become a featureless shadow and knew his game was over. But he revealed himself just as Momo was halfway across the river. When he called to her, she looked for him and slipped. He heard her go under and bob right up, pulling for air. By the time he’d crawled over the rocks to her, water had already aspirated through her nose, flowed past her already swollen sinuses, and settled its bacterial filth wherever it could.

  They were late and Momo was soaking wet, a double offense. Ebo tried to hurry her along. But Momo’s bare feet pinched with pain and she moved slowly, made heavy by her wet clothing. Gone was her wonder of the place.

  By the time they neared home, it was dark. Their mother scoured the street with frantic eyes. When she finally saw them, she started running. Ebo put his arms up, but his mother peeled them down to slap him upside the head.

  “What’s duh mattah wit you? You make me sick!”

  Momo was ushered straight into the bathroom. Ebo flung himself down to the kitchen table, where Daddy was sitting. Daddy said, “Look at me, boy.” Ebo slowly raised his eyes to Daddy, who chose this one moment to look Ebo unflinchingly in the eye. Ebo hung his head low until the tears came and he could take no more shaming. He scurried from the kitchen to his bedroom, pausing at the bathroom door to see his mother pouring hot water over Momo’s bowed head. It would be his last opportunity to see Momo as he knew her, but her hair obscured her face.

  Without dinner and with the trouble he was in, it was difficult for Ebo to sleep. At some distance, he heard the taiko drumming pulsating like a gigantic heart fearful of stopping. In his mind, the drummers were slick with sweat, moving in synchronicity like streamers of light. He could see their spectral dance, arms flailing faster, harder, just short of breaking. In his dream state, Ebo believed he was the drum and the wooden sticks that pelted his body painful, but necessary.

  By morning, he woke up spent. He turned over on the futon to see Momo with her back to him, as she often was. But this morning she was arched in an unnatural way, as if she, too, was in pain. Ebo poked a finger into her, then again. When she didn’t respond, he pulled on her shoulder and lost his grip on her too-hot and slippery skin. He tugged harder, with two hands. When her body finally tipped toward him, it came heavily and without grace. He saw then what he would never unsee. Momo’s face had rearranged itself in the night. Her eyes fluttered with fever to a new spiritual rhythm and where there had been so much life, there was only white.

  * * *

  —

  To excise the beach and his memories, Ebo ran all the way home, as if what he felt he could sweat out of his system. In the backyard, he peeled off his T-shirt and stood beneath the hose for longer than he needed to. The initial thrust of warm hose water soon ran cool over his face. His bird was now on the brick steps of the coop, waiting beneath the shade of the awning. Without the sound of feed clanking against the metal troughs, the bird hadn’t been called through the one-way trapdoor that funneled into the loft.

  Ebo knew he couldn’t kill it, had somehow always known. He turned off the hose and shook the water out of his hair. Determined to put a brick at the opening of the fly pen to keep the bird out, he would teach it the cruel lesson of having no home. Then it would be like the strays nobody wanted, or even liked. Just a rat with wings.

  He shooed the bird into the plumeria trees and went about loosening the brick. The brick had been there for years and was embedded in grooves of hard earth, so it took some effort. When at last it came free, Ebo stood with it in hand only to find his mother behind him, peering into the coop at an unnecessary distance. He set the brick down, unsure of what she wanted.

  “Show me yo bird,” she said.

  Ebo thought that maybe she wanted to kill the bird herself, which made him hesitate protectively. She’d probably wanted it dead all these years. But his mother rarely asked anything of Ebo and he dutifully went about trying to locate it anyway.

  His mother hadn’t so much as glanced at the coop after Momo’s illness, with some part of her needing to blame the bird to keep from blaming Ebo. He understood her reasoning. If the business of pigeons had never happened, that day wouldn’t have happened. There wouldn’t have been the river, the bacteria, the fever, all of which reduced their atmosphere to the thin air of the aftermath. There wouldn’t have been the attempts to explain, to name, to apply medical sense to what had happened.

  Momo had had a cold, yes? Yes. The virus had weakened her immune system and allowed a secondary infection to take hold. OK. The circuitry of her brain could not withstand a fever that high. OK. OK. Words like bacterial meningitis were spoken. Words like hyperpyrexia and apneic attack. And when those words didn’t register, there were apologies for the one thing that everyone understood: that Momo was not dead, but gone.

  Ebo only knew that a stranger had come home to him from the hospital. Like an oversize infant, she went between a playpen in the living room and that sandbox Daddy had built for her in the yard. Ebo would sit with her, listening to her new language come out as guttural moans that would stretch and deepen into a sort of song. When she was given a blue-and-yellow helmet to wear for when she seized, her face was pinched beyond what little recognition Ebo had been holding to.

  In time, doctors spoke of Waimano Home. Though it was located on another island, a world away, they insisted Momo would receive attention specific to her condition. They said Momo wouldn’t know the difference between her home and Waimano, that she would in fact be happier. But the day she was taken away was the day Momo’s song grew to its utmost, growing louder as the distance between her and her mother stretched wider. That distance now spanned two islands, with miles of ocean and nine years of time in between. It was a distance Ebo would travel in just under an hour.

  He launched another rock at his bird in the plumeria tree. He didn’t mean to hit it directly, but to scare it back to the loft. Like the first rock, this one hit the bird’s branch and fell to the brittle leaves below, two thuds that sent the bird higher. With his mother waiting, Ebo grabbed a handful of smaller rocks with which to cover more area, but she called him back to the side of the loft, to where she stood next to the can of feed.

  “Show me how,” she said, knowing the feed was the way to the bird. Ebo ran a hand through his hair, frustrated that his mother had witnessed his not thinking straight. He hurried in and out o
f the coop with those things that fed and watered the birds—a foot-long metal trough and a milk carton gutted at the center. By using his thumb at the spout, Ebo showed his mother how to hose everything off.

  “Gotta be clean,” he said, and she nodded. At the feed can, he removed the lid and filled the scoop with the right amount. “Gotta keep birds little bit hungry. Dat way dey come back.” She nodded again.

  Though the entry was plenty high for her to walk through, Ebo saw his mother dip her head into the loft after him. She made circles with her eyes, pulled in all there was to see. “Long time,” she said. “Look good.” Ebo guided the scoop along the trough’s opening so that the feed fell against the metal in a clatter. It wasn’t long before they heard the clank of the fly pen drop back into place and the bird was pecking at the feed with its feathered tail raised behind it.

  As they watched, Ebo felt the dusty air constrict, making the confines of the coop feel even smaller. He wasn’t used to a second body’s being in there with him. He also wasn’t used to having his mother close like this, in an enclosure, where they might say those things they couldn’t say elsewhere. He knew if there was ever a time to tell his mother exactly what had happened that afternoon with Momo, specifically his part in abandoning her, that time was now.

  “You know I goin see Momo,” he said as a means of bringing up the subject. He’d told both his mother and Daddy that seeing Momo was possible. But he’d kept from them that seeing her was the very reason he’d enlisted. He knew it was an impulsive and outsized decision that warranted, even deserved, criticism. They would have said to get a job, wait for money, then go to her. But he’d tried for a job; ten months he’d tried. He couldn’t wait anymore and yet he couldn’t explain his impatience. Because how could they know what he hadn’t confessed? How could they understand the guilt within him, located somewhere beneath the ribs like a dark hunger he fed with secrecy? This guilt that defied reason, that kept its own time, made its own sense—how could he tell his mother about it here, like this?