Soon the Light Will Be Perfect

by Dave Patterson

  Shane pauses. We are both picturing his dying father hunched over the wheel, no mustache, no eyebrows, no hair on his entire body. The sun comes in through the window.

  Sweat beads on my forehead, but I don’t open my eyes.

  “He goes left onto Main Street,” Shane continues, “right out here beyond the junkyard. Maybe he wants the morning paper. Maybe he wants to see the sun rise above the lake. Who knows? He drives for about—”

  There’s a slap on my window. “No kids!” I hear. My eyes jolt open. Chuckie’s large body looms through the glass—his thick fingers reach through the crack where I’ve opened it. I think about pushing out of the car and running, but I’ll never move his solid frame. I press the silver lock button on my door. Chuckie tries the handle, but the door won’t open. I spring forward and lock the driver’s side door, then slap the lock on the other backseat door.

  “No kids!” Chuckie yells. His voice is both angry and happy; he’s discovered something that will make the other adults proud.

  “We need to get out of here,” I say to Shane.

  His eyes remain closed in his reclined seat, and he looks calmer than I’ve ever seen anyone. Without opening his eyes, he reaches up and locks his door.

  “We’re fine,” he says. “What can they do to us that would be worse than what’s already happened?”

  “We need to go,” I plead.

  “No kids! No kids!” Chuckie continues.

  Shane takes another deep breath. “My father is driving down Main Street,” he continues with an unsettling calmness as Chuckie smacks the windows. “He could barely hold his head up as he drove, but there he is, in the darkness before dawn, dying of cancer and driving this car. You know,” he says, “my mother always thought he should be driving a car more befitting a doctor, but he loved this car. Loved it so much he bought the same exact one for my mother—same color, same year, same make, same model. That drove her crazy. It was just like him to do something like that.”

  Chuckie moves from window to window peering in and yelling. When he gets to Shane’s window he cups his hands against the glass and stops shouting, struck dumb by the sight of a twelve-year-old reclined in a junked car with his eyes closed.

  Shane continues, “The police report says that he lost control of the vehicle and his car struck the telephone pole in front of the ice cream store. But I don’t believe that’s what happened.”

  As Shane speaks, a shadow grows across my window. I look up and one of the men from the clearing glowers at me from behind his white beard.

  “What are you kids doing in there?” he yells.

  “No kids!” Chuckie says.

  Now the car is surrounded by junkyard men, their stained hands pressed against every window. I recognize one of the men from my father’s bowling league.

  “Open the door,” one man says.

  “Don’t,” Shane says, still reclined, eyes still shut. “You need to hear this. They can’t hurt us. We’re beyond their hurt,” he says.

  “I don’t know that I am,” I say.

  “Believe what you want,” he says. “Just like the police believe that my father lost control of the car. But we don’t know what my father meant to do, because he never woke up from the coma. He went to the hospital and died a week later.”

  The man from my father’s bowling league says my name. I look up at his brown eyes. “Open the door,” he says. “I know your father.”

  Chuckie dances behind the men, blissful that he found kids where no kids should be.

  “If you don’t open the door, we’re breaking a window,” a man in a flannel shirt says. He taps the window with a rusted tire iron.

  Shane laughs. “My father wouldn’t have lost control of this car,” he says almost to himself.

  “We’re coming in,” a man’s voice says, but I’m not paying attention. I’m listening to Shane. I lean my head back on the headrest. I close my eyes. There’s a commotion outside the car. The men begin rocking the body of the car back and forth on its shocks.

  “My father sees the sunlight coming over the horizon,” Shane says. “And he thinks to himself, This is how it should end.”

  The men’s voices outside the car turn into one flat drone. I am Shane’s father. I am looking into the rising sunlight for the last time and it is so beautiful it makes me cry. Tears appear on my cheeks. I hear Shane crying in the front seat.

  The men outside the car stop shouting. There’s absolute silence, like the world is holding its breath, before the driver’s seat window explodes with a crash, but my eyes remain closed, sunlight flooding every fold in my mind.

  IX

  The bluebird has returned. My brother and I are eating cereal. Our father is at work.

  “Should we get Mom?” I ask.

  My brother shrugs. “I don’t understand why they give a shit about a bird.” He walks off the porch and digs a black rock out of the dirt. He flips it in the air a couple times before launching the rock toward the bluebird on the maple limb. The rock thuds against the trunk, and the bird flutters to the top of the tree. My brother laughs. When he goes back to eating his cereal on the porch, the bird floats down to the gray bough and starts singing its incessant song. My brother and I stare at the bird as we slurp the milk from our bowls.

  That night when my father gets home, we tell him that the bluebird is back. Out on the back porch he searches for the bird. It’s still there, just as it’s been all day while he was at work. He stares at the bluebird, hands against the railing, leaning forward. I have never seen my father care about an animal before—especially not since the cats. He stays outside until my brother sticks his head out the back door and says, “We’re hungry.”

  * * *

  After dinner, my mother comes out of my parents’ room and sits on the porch with my father as the sun falls in the sky. They talk in low voices. During commercial breaks on the television, I go in the kitchen and watch them. Their heads are craned up at the tree. They seem to be talking about something more serious than the bluebird. My father shakes his head while he speaks to my mother. I inch closer to the screen door so they won’t see me. I hear my father mention faulty guns. “I should have done more. They could pin this all on me,” he says to my mother.

  The bluebird hasn’t stopped singing since we spotted it. The frantic notes coming from the maple tree are unnerving. My father stops talking, and we listen to the chaotic song. I slip back into the living room before they discover me.

  I turn up the television so I don’t have to hear the bluebird’s song.

  That night I have to close my windows to sleep. The bluebird doesn’t stop singing even in the darkness. The sound echoes through the trees in the forest behind our house. I can still hear it through the double-paned glass. I pull my pillow over my ears. Without the breeze coming in through the window, sweat develops on my nose. I get up and go to the bathroom to splash water on my face, and I hear the muffled sound of my father talking behind my parents’ closed door. I don’t hear my mother’s voice, so I assume he’s talking to her as she sleeps again. I go back to my room and try to fall asleep through the bluebird’s agitated notes. When I do fall asleep, the bluebird’s song is all I dream of.

  * * *

  The knocking wakes us up. It’s dark outside. My father, a man who is up before the sun every day, even seems tired as he scratches his stubble in the kitchen.

  “Is it the Second Coming?” I ask—sleeping must be an acceptable action when the Lord returns. My brother laughs at me, though through his drooping eyes, there’s a hesitation, a fear.

  The knocking continues in quick raps against the siding.

  “We need to stop it before it wakes your mother,” my father says. “It’s right outside our bedroom.” He collects a flashlight from the kitchen drawer, clicking it on to make sure the batteries aren’t dead. His face is lit by its soft candescen
ce. He steps onto the back porch—my brother and I follow. My heart beats with the same quick rhythm of the hammering against the siding.

  When my father shines his light on the house, I expect to see a man or a neighborhood kid like that little shit Travis Bouchard pounding our wood board siding with a plastic baseball bat, but instead there’s a small fluttering body flying up and down against the house.

  My father gets closer. “It’s the bluebird,” he says. “Its beak is making that noise.”

  The orange smear on the bird’s chest looks like the cherry on a lit cigarette as the bluebird works its black beak against the house.

  My father runs at the bird, whispering, “Shoo. Shoo.”

  The bluebird whacks the siding a few more times before it flies off into the early-morning darkness. My father shines the light on the house, revealing scores of tiny marks from the bluebird’s beak.

  “Why is it doing that?” I ask.

  The bird’s confused chortle starts up behind us. My father points the flashlight at the maple tree where the bluebird sits perched in the small circle of light.

  * * *

  My father wakes me by whispering my name over and over. I don’t know how long it’s been since we were outside with the bluebird. At my bedroom door, my father waves for me to follow him. On the back porch he says, “The bird started knocking again shortly after we went back to bed. I’ve been out here all night keeping it away,” he says. “I have to go to work now. Stay out here and keep it away from the house.”

  “How long?”

  “Until you can get your brother to take over,” he says.

  “Why didn’t you wake him up?” I ask.

  My father shakes his head. We both know my brother is barreling away from my parents’ command.

  Behind us there’s a knocking sound. My father leaps off the porch and runs at the bird. His arms and legs undulate like he’s drunk, which, to my knowledge, he’s never been. The bluebird offers a few more rapid taps before it flies back to the maple tree.

  “Like that,” my father says.

  I spend the morning staring at the bluebird in the maple tree. When it begins its descent toward the house, I run it off with a whooping sound.

  “What are you doing?” my mother asks. I don’t notice her come out the sliding back door.

  “The bluebird is tormenting the house,” I say. “I’m supposed to keep it away.”

  My mother looks up at the maple bough. “That bird’s not right,” she says. The bluebird drops into a quick dive. Flapping its wings to slow its flight as it approaches the house, it begins knocking its beak against the wood siding. I stand to do my duty, but my mother places a hand on my shoulder, and I sit.

  Tightening her floral bathrobe at the waist, my mother, barefoot, inches slowly toward the bluebird, which continues to rap its black beak against the gray siding of the house. My mother gets so close she could reach out and grab the hollow-boned bird. She studies its persistent knocking against the house, following its pattern of rising to the top of the house, then dropping, all the while smacking its beak against the wood like it’s fighting an enemy who won’t die. Its wings make a rustling noise as they brush the siding in its relentless motion. My mother takes another step toward the bird. At first its desperate tapping continues as if she’s not there, but then the bluebird swoops at my mother. My fingers tighten on the porch railing. My mother dodges the bird, and it drops back into its ceremony of smacking the house with its beak. Soon the bird drops to the ground; its tiny chest heaves up and down, its black eyes fixed on the house, unblinking.

  “It’s exhausted,” my mother says. She kneels next to the bird. “Get me the broom from the kitchen.”

  When I come out of the house with the broom, the bird has started flying against the house again. I walk down the stairs and stand behind my mother. I can see the intricate pattern of the bird’s sky blue wings, the orange blazing on its chest like a barn fire.

  “There’s something wrong with this bird,” my mother says. “It’s not a sign.”

  She reaches for the broom. In one quick motion, she takes it from my hand and brings it down on the bird’s small frame. The bird lands on the lawn with a thud. One wing is pulled behind its back at an impossible angle. The bluebird struggles to its feet and begins flapping again with its one strong wing. Before it can leave the ground, my mother brings the broom down on the bluebird once again. I jump. My mother kneels beside the bird. Its beak opens and closes slightly. It doesn’t try to stand. Raising the broom above her head, my mother delivers the deathblow. Neither of us speaks, as if we expect the bird to take flight.

  My mother leans against the house that is now pocked with hundreds of small gouges. She breathes heavily. She drops the broom next to the lifeless bluebird.

  “I need to lie down,” she whispers. “Get a shovel from the garage and bring the bird out into the woods. Someone needs to feed the feral cats.” She’s trying to make a joke, but neither of us laughs.

  * * *

  That night the sound of my mother sick in the bathroom wakes me.

  I stay in bed, because I know there’s nothing I can do, and my father will just tell me to go back to bed anyway. I start humming the melody to “Amazing Grace” loud enough so I can’t hear my mother being sick. Halfway through the song, I stop and hold my breath to listen. The house is silent. I fall asleep wondering if I had imagined the sound, in the same way my mother says that when my brother and I were babies she heard crying even as we slept soundly at night.

  * * *

  My father wakes me before the sun comes up and tells me to get dressed.

  “Your mother and brother are already outside,” he says.

  After I dress, he ushers me to the car where my brother uses a balled-up sweatshirt for a pillow as he tries to fall back asleep. A blue tint is beginning to color the black starless sky.

  My mother sits in the front seat with her eyes closed; her head rests against the window. I wonder if we’re going to church so she can be prayed over again.

  My father gets in the driver’s seat, and I climb in the backseat behind him. He turns to me and whispers, “Your mother needs to go to the hospital. It’s been a tough night.”

  I want to say that maybe she should quit chemotherapy and just be prayed over every day, but my father starts the car before I can speak. He clicks the radio on, keeping the volume low.

  At the hospital, my mother is taken down a hallway while we sit in the ER waiting room. My father checks his watch and leans back in a chair. Outside, the sun has risen. The only other person in the waiting room is an old man in green sweatpants and Velcro shoes lying on a couch. His eyes are closed, and I can’t tell if he’s alive until he opens his eyes and catches me staring at him. He closes his eyes as if he didn’t see me.

  My father looks at his watch and approaches the receptionist. “Do you know what’s happening with my wife?” he asks.

  “You’ll have to wait until the doctor comes out,” she says. When she sees the pained look on my father’s face, she adds, “I’m sorry.”

  “I need to get to work by nine,” he pleads. “There’s a shipment leaving today.” He utters this last statement quietly, as if to himself. I try not to think about my father’s troubles at work. The war was supposed to end our fears about him losing his job.

  “The doctor should be out soon,” she says.

  My father sits back down. He takes off his glasses and presses his thumb and forefinger against his closed eyelids. There’s morning traffic out on the street. My brother has his head resting against his rolled-up sweatshirt. The man lying on the couch across the room opens his eyes again, staring at me. He doesn’t blink, and I’m frozen in the lock of his brown eyes. Again, his eyelids slowly close.

  An old nurse comes into the room and says our last name. She leads us to a room where my mother is hooked up t
o an IV. She’s sleeping so soundly she almost looks healthy.

  “Morphine,” the nurse says as we stare at her. “She’s sleeping like a baby—a baby on morphine, that is.” She laughs, and my father raises his eyebrows at her, but she walks out of the room, saying, “The doctor will be right in.”

  We huddle around my mother’s bed. She breathes in low, sharp breaths. None of us talk as we stare at her. Her brown hair is beginning to thin from the chemo—strands of it are matted against her forehead. Her lips are parted slightly. A white line of dried saliva circles her mouth.

  A doctor walks into the room, breaking our trance over my sleeping mother. Without speaking, he clicks on the television hanging in the corner of the hospital room and changes the channel.

  “What are you doing?” my father asks. “How is my wife? I need to get to work.”

  Without turning to my father, the doctor says, “They’re re-airing the president’s address to the nation.”

  “But my wife,” my father says.

  The doctor finally looks at my father. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m emotional over this. My brother enlisted.” He motions toward my mother. “She’s doing okay. She just needs a new anti-nausea medication to offset the side effects from the chemo. It’s common.” The doctor looks up to the television. “Do you mind if we leave it on?” He has a distressed look on his face that my father recognizes.

  “That’s fine,” my father says.

  On the television the president stares into the camera. The battle has been joined, he states.