The Brothers K

by David James Duncan

  To my surprise, the worst threat to this stability did not seem to be the cancer. We all knew that our father was a much-loved man, and expected that he would receive visitors. What I didn’t expect was how much I’d come to dread these near-daily invasions by friends, relatives and ballplayers, ballplayers, ballplayers, most of whom could find no way to express their love for Papa but to display their grief in advance—and so demand, however inadvertently, that he console them by displaying in return his great but dying strength. These were often people I loved, and always people I would normally have been glad to meet. It was their right to come, and Papa’s right to show them whatever face he chose. But since his choice was strength, strength, strength, even when I knew he had none, and since it was we, not the visitors, who watched him pay the price for his strength later, it became all I could do not to resent, or even despise, these good people. Which made me ashamed. So I took to avoiding them.

  Papa faced each day in some slight variation on the same old clothes—plaid shirt, brown leather belt, baggy tan trousers. And he approached his daily dressing ritual and trip to the chair with the same one-pointed solemnity with which he’d so recently approached every trip from the bullpen to the mound. The only variable was time: some mornings it took him just minutes to dress; some mornings it took close to an hour. In either case, he made no comment.

  He ate almost nothing, though Mama, Linda and Bet kept an array of foods on a tray beside him all day. There were times when he enjoyed and even requested our company, but his usual preference, when he didn’t have visitors, was to study the box scores, or just to sit quiet, watching the maple leaves wave out the window.

  It took courage for newcomers to look at him. The usual desperation therapies soon caused his hair to fall out. His legs and arms became sticks. His skin grew nearly transparent, his face hollow and ascetic as an ancient elk’s, the eyes huge, dark, and either beautiful or terrifying, depending on who was looking. To me he seemed to grow suddenly ageless more than suddenly aged. The cancer didn’t add years, really. It just subtracted most of his body, making the life in him shine through the increasingly diaphanous skin as a kind of warmth and glow. When he was resting or sleeping in his chair and the light in him would wane, that could be troubling. He looked more an artifact than a person at such times—a disturbingly stylized sculpture of the man he’d been. And the sculptor’s name was obvious. Death is a redundant (and in my opinion, pedestrian) artist, the bare skull and bones its one aesthetic idea—and we all saw its predictable hand at work on our father. But right up till the end, when Papa grew animated by love or family, by baseball or old friends, or even by sorrow, anger, or grief, he remained beautiful to look at. And this beauty (fuck you, death, and fuck your boring artwork) was not just “spiritual.” It was also physical.

  · · · ·

  Except for the Saturday ballgames he’d grown so intolerant of TV that we now kept it in Linda’s room, where she could maintain her addiction to soap operas, and Mama hers to the eleven o’clock news.

  And speaking of addiction: even with the cancer all through him, we’d sometimes walk into the livingroom and find Papa sitting with a Lucky Strike smoldering in his hand. He wasn’t fool enough to try to inhale them, but he still loved to light and hold and study them—and it was a shock, after all that had happened, to find him sitting that way. It was Freddy who finally sucked up the courage to tell him just how it made us feel: she said she’d just as soon walk in and find him chatting with his murderer—after the guy had pumped him full of bullets.

  But Papa just looked at her calmly, sent one of his diaphanous smiles drifting through the smoke, and said, “Love thine enemies, my girl.”

  –IV–

  letter from Wahkiakum to Bet’s Washougal PO box/July/1971

  Dear Bet,

  Thank you for writing, and for being so honest. I’m so glad you’re opening up with me, and it’s going to help, it’s going to help. But listen. It’s horrible, it’s a nightmare, what’s happened to Irwin, and of course I don’t want anyone hurting him, or him hurting Nash. But I don’t want you being hurt either. And what you’re doing, this spying stuff, is hurting you. For godsake don’t kick yourself, you’re not sick at all. I’ve done things as strange, we all do strange things. But it’s a kind of stealing, what you’re doing. Your eyes are ripping off something that belongs to someone else—a mystery called “to have and to hold,” and “in sickness and in health;” a mystery called “one flesh.” And to steal from the mysteries of others like this is a needless betrayal of someone I love very much: namely, Beatrice Chance. That, I think, is why you feel sick. You feel the betrayal.

  I don’t mean to embarrass you, but can I make a guess about certain other feelings? I would guess their bodies are beautiful when you watch—I’m sure they are, actually. So maybe you get off on watching, feel aroused yourself? I just want to say that those are normal feelings, Bet, healthy sexual feelings, there’s nothing sick about them, or about you. So don’t revel in some imaginary darkness, don’t puff it all up into something deeply and majestically wrong. All that’s wrong is that you’re stealing from their mystery to ignite your own. All that’s wrong is that there’s no need to steal. I’m no sort of example, but based on my mistakes I can promise you: just show a little faith (like I didn’t), be a little patient (like I wasn’t), and when the time comes, your very own beautiful mystery will ignite itself.

  But there’s another side to this. Knowing you, your good heart, I know you also must watch them out of concern that Irwin not be hurt. The trouble with that, though, Bet, is that he is hurt. It already happened. He and Linda might recover, or they might not, we just don’t know. But your love and concern can’t help them here. If he’s so numb he can watch Nash beat him bloody with toys, if that’s true, then who knows what might thaw him? All I know is I’d rather have him raped by his wife than by the fucking U.S. government.

  One thing you’re way way wrong about. He is not dead. He’s alive, so is Linda, and it’s her right to try anything she can think of, anything she feels, to bring him back to his senses. For all we know, she’s right. If he can be aroused, maybe he’s not as broken as he looks. More mystery, Bet. And all we can do is let it solve, or not solve, itself. So let their hidden struggle remain hidden. Okay? Give them back some of the dignity the war and asylum have stolen. I know how small that damned house is, how sounds rip right through it, how hard it must be not to see and hear too much. But buy ear-plugs. Play the harmonica. Sleep in the basement. Whatever it takes. Anyone strong enough to save her stupid big brother’s dignity by standing up in front of a whole damned church and shouting “Leave him alone!” is strong enough to give some dignity to another brother and his wife.

  One last thing, Bet. I want you to know that I’m asking these favors for two reasons. One is because I love you, but the other is because I need you. The truth is, it’s very hard being stuck in this place, at this time. Almost impossible. We’re losing our papa together, you and me, and to be unable to even see it happening hurts like hell. For this hurt to be bearable, I need for you to be all right. I need that desperately. If you can get through this in one piece for me, maybe I can do the same for you. Okay? Can we make that our secret pact?

  Write soon, and tell whatever needs telling. It’s great to have you to share with again. Come see me soon too. Don’t feel shamed or shy. I’m just sorry you’ve had to go through all this.

  Love,

  Everett

  –V–

  One day in September, out of the blue, Peter’s scholarly books, manuscripts, lexicons, dictionaries and Indian journal all arrived in a small wooden crate from Bombay, with the following missive taped to the front cover of the journal:

  Peter Chance:

  I find myself thinking of you with surprising regularity, probably, I now realize, because my work will never again be so appreciated by a client. I continue to feel badly that I allowed Natu to give you the same treatment he gave Waites.
I hope he did you no permanent damage, and that your new career, whatever it may be, is a satisfaction.

  You may be interested to learn that I too have undergone a major change, though only of technique, not of vocation. When I discovered that the far too clever Dessinger had long made a habit of lying about the contents of our pilfered luggage, I gave him and Natu both the sack and went solo. Of course I can’t say much about my new work, but I dare hope you’ll be pleased to learn that the growing herds of Western guru-seekers and ashram-hoppers are the vein of ore I now mine, that the nature of the hoax places neither “pirateer” nor “piratee” at any physical risk, that I confine myself to devotees of gurus whom I consider to be shams, and that my first few ventures have been such smashing economic successes that I expect I’ll be able to perpetrate far fewer crimes. Of course there are still difficulties. Where there is industry there is pollution, no? But enough about me.

  As you see, I have enclosed the impedimenta of your previous incarnation as a Pundit. Not to tempt you into relapse, you understand. I merely admired your self-abnegating honesty—and by dint of the same honesty, these things belong to you. I managed, despite considerable curiosity, to give your journal only the fleetest of glances, but to my alarm that glance alit upon a passage from one of the very gurus whose followers I have declined to plunder. (That’s an unexpected difficulty of my new line of work: in becoming expert at spotting the shams, a couple of the non-shams have begun to look remarkably attractive to me! What a disaster to my career that could turn out to be!) At any rate, the passage goes:

  “Sinner” and “saint” are waves of differing size and magnitude on the surface of the same sea. Each is a natural outcome of forces in the universe; each is governed by time and causation. Nobody is utterly lost, and nobody need despair …

  This being the sort of thing that catches your eye, it’s little wonder I liked you. Which brings me to a parting thought: should you ever seek an Exciting Career Change, I suspect we’d work very well together. I can be found now and again (in various guises, but almost invariably sipping a lime rickey) by the pool at the Raj in Bombay, and near the fountain in the courtyard of the Hotel Matali in Benares.

  Cordially,

  “Robert Louis Grayson”

  –VI–

  fragment of a letter from Wahkiakum to Lake Havasu City, Arizona/August/1971

  Papa’s going fast now, Tasha, his visit was so short, and if things go as we fear I’ll never see him again. That this is asked of me, that drinking this down has become part of my “debt to society”—it’s making me crazy, Tasha, probably for life, I better warn you. Yet at the same time something inside me (is it just my craziness?) keeps wanting to thank God. And not derisively. I keep getting these mind-stopping impulses, several times a day lately, to kneel, or no, to fall flat on my face actually, and to thank God, if there is One, with all my heart. Can you believe it? Why, Tasha? Why thankfulness, and why now? Is it just because it’s clear to me now that the economy of the psyche, the inner checks and balances, our inner workings are so tricky, so impossibly fragile, we’re so easily crushed, that I can’t believe any longer that it’s me alone, or even me and you alone, or even me and you and luck alone, that’s keeping me alive? I feel now that we could die or be killed or be driven mad by grief or disaster at any moment. Even the strongest of us. Or be killed on the inside without even being touched. Yet my reaction to this, Tasha, has suddenly ceased to be anger and begun to be gratitude. And I don’t even know why. Slogging my way along these clear-cuts, gashing the goddamned ground open, jamming in little corporate trees six feet apart, hell’s idea of a forest, Papa pulling me down, down, Irwin too, poor ruined thing, and these good men here with me, the gentlest men I’ve met, most of them, slaving here because they refused to hate or kill, Patriotism’s idea of a convict, everything upside down, what else is new, my whole mind groaning nothing to live for, let it die, let it die—

  yet right in the heart of me: gratitude.

  Why?

  Is it just because I’m not dying and am not quite mad and don’t feel quite crushed inside? Why does my whole heart, every beat, round the clock, answer my mind’s constant groaning with: but wait, but wait, but wait …?

  Of course I want to shout “Because of you, Tasha!” Because your letters, your love, our baby. My God how I want the whole mess I’ll one day make of that! Yet knowing me, my weaknesses, my tedious anger, this tedious darkness, I know I could lose my hold even on you and find some way of flaming out here, and going down, if it weren’t for … you.

  Not you, Tasha.

  I mean this other you. I refuse to resort to Uppercase here. But you hear me. And I feel you. I mean you, the who or whatever you are, being or nonbeing, that somehow comes to us and somehow consoles us. I don’t know your name I don’t understand you. I don’t know how to address you. I don’t like people who think they do. But it’s you alone, I begin to feel, who sends me this woman’s love and our baby, and this new hope and stupid gratitude, even as my father goes down and my stupid brother lies broken. So:

  O thing that consoles.

  How clumsily I thank you.

  –VII–

  During the last few weeks, Papa grew so weak that he was finally unable to dress himself. Then one day—distracted by a long-winded guest and an unexpected phone call—he failed for the first time to make it to the bathroom. It was Mama who found him after the visitor left, just sitting in his problem, alone in his chair. And when she’d tried to help him, he spoke to her so harshly that she fled the room in tears, not because of what he’d said, but because she feared his anger might kill him on the spot.

  There was no one home at the time but Irwin, so in desperation Mama got him out of bed, led him by the hand into the livingroom, told him “Papa needs you!” then left the house to walk, quietly sobbing, around the neighborhood. Twenty or so minutes later she returned to see whether anything had changed, but Papa was still just sitting in the armchair, and Irwin was just sitting in a straight-backed chair a few feet away.

  Then she noticed that Papa’s clothes had been changed.

  And the instant she noticed, Papa started beaming.

  He had just two words to say about what had transpired. They were: “He’s hired.” Irwin, as always, had no words at all. But from that day forward he was the only person whose intimate touch Papa would allow. They became inseparable. Even at night: Mama took to sleeping in my old room, and Irwin took Mama’s place in the twin bed at Papa’s side.

  They were an unsettling pair: the huge, physically vital but vacant-eyed son; the skeletal, lake-eyed father. Irwin’s robotic expression never changed no matter what the two of them were doing or how sick Papa got. But in Papa’s opinion this made him the perfect attendant, both emotionally and physically: emotionally because the rest of us were devastated by each new stage of his disintegration; physically because, even as a skeleton, Papa’s frame was sizable, his bones heavy, and from a bathtub or bed it was a backbreaking lift.

  It feels odd, given the overall circumstances, to say that I cherish my memories of those last few weeks. But I certainly do. There were anecdotes I could tell of odd exchanges with visitors, of funny lines (all Papa’s) at Irwin’s expense, and of moments of such poignancy that we’d grow tired of it in mid-moment and begin, with tears still in our eyes, to make dumb jokes. But my favorite memory of all is simply of the way Papa would look at Irwin whenever they undertook a journey to a different room, a meal, a trip to the bathroom, a change of clothing after failure to reach the bathroom, or any of the other oppressive tasks that Papa had taken to calling simply “Further Adventures.” It looked at such times as though all the life left in Papa moved entirely up into his eyes and the useless, riddled body became Irwin’s problem, and his alone. No matter how distasteful the proceedings, Papa’s eyes expressed no self-consciousness, no irritation, no embarrassment or despair; for as long as it took Irwin to tend what needed tending, he relinquished himself so completely th
at he seemed momentarily free of pain, free of the prison his body had become, free to hunch like two elves in his own eye sockets the way Nash would sometimes do, sending Irwin beam after beam of such unstinting affection that I half expected Irwin to thaw and heal and let out the old loon-laugh any second.

  Irwin never did laugh, or smile, or even react. Not even when Papa, safely returned to his armchair, would solemnly thank him. He’d just hunker back down on his straight-backed chair and proceed to gape vacantly at the floor or out the window till Papa summoned him again. But there was still something wonderful about their togetherness. It felt as though two pieces of human wreckage had combined to form a whole human presence, as though they somehow restored to each other what had been stripped away.

  There was just one drawback to their togetherness: it made us all grow so attached to the “Further Adventures” era that when things finally came to their inevitable close, we felt little better prepared than if Papa had been in perfect health.

  –VIII–

  On a rainy afternoon in late October, I’d gone fishing on the Washougal with results for a change. I’d hooked and landed a mint-bright twenty-nine-pound salmon—my first chinook ever, a tremendously strong fish too, it seemed to me. And as I beached and killed it I remember feeling that the river had sensed our need, that it was going to be a great blessing to carry these twenty-nine pounds of strength home and share them with Irwin and Papa.

  Obeying a whim, I drove to the opposite side of the block from our house, parked at the laundromat, grabbed my fish, and snuck into the backyard through the old laurel-hedge spy-hole. Circling round the far side of the tool and pitching sheds, I then ducked down into the basement, thinking I would clean the chinook in the utility sink, lay it out on an old sports section (open, of course, to the box scores), carry it upstairs in garnished glory, and make a grand and healing presentation to Papa and Irwin both.