I was angry with my mother for not having taken care of this problem when she made the appointments. But she never thought about the difficulties Malcolm faced in the world. She ignored them or didn’t see them or chose to deny their possibility because to do otherwise would have meant accepting the fact that Malcolm was strange.
“He can’t do it unless I’m with him,” I said.
“Look, a lot of kids are scared of the dentist,” the nurse said, checking her watch. “But we have prizes! Don’t you want a prize?” She smiled as if she remembered she was supposed to, and I noticed her teeth were yellow, a fact that emboldened me, as if her inability to benefit from her own science indicated an overall weakness. She brought her hand toward Malcolm’s back, and I made a silent decision to let her suffer the consequences. When she touched him, he shrieked as I knew he would, and she jumped back, her face coloring with embarrassment at having caused such a reaction in front of her colleagues. I had won; she would do anything to get Malcolm to calm down. I would get my way without having to say anything about what was wrong with my brother, something I could never explain to anyone’s satisfaction since my mother forbade me to speak about him as damaged in any way.
“Alright,” the nurse said, trying to compose herself and relocate her condescension. “Next time tell your mother not to schedule the appointments together or we’ll have to charge her for the time.”
“But it’s a free clinic,” I said, worried that this would cost money we didn’t have.
“We have a schedule to follow,” she said evasively. “We’re going to have to push someone else back now.”
“But don’t charge us, okay?”
She regarded me for a moment. “You’re responsible. I wish my kids were responsible like that.”
I helped Malcolm into the chair. During the whole time the dentist cleaned and checked his teeth, I stroked his palm and whispered into his ear. Malcolm held his body rigid. His eyes were wide with terror, and he began to hum. So I did what I always did in these situations: “One, two, three, four, five…,” I whispered, counting to twenty, and then I started over again.
By the time we left the office, the sun had lowered to the level of the distant mountain peaks. The air felt exhausted as if it had finally given up its day work and had flung its spent self across the land. The low half-light made everything stand out as if the features of the landscape were cardboard cutouts. The coolness was energizing, and I resisted going home, knowing the letdown I would feel when we arrived to find the parking space in front of our trailer empty. I would have to entertain Malcolm, feed him, bathe him, and put him to bed. I’d have to make sure the stove was off and the doors were locked. I’d have to wait for my mother to come home from work until I felt safe.
“Let’s ride,” I said to Malcolm. “Fast, fast.”
Malcolm wore a wide, weird grin as he pedaled, his bike swinging from side to side like it was performing an unaccompanied square dance. “Make no sound,” I whispered, pulling up next to him. “The enemy has ears like bats.” In my fantasy I was leading the troops against a small village in France where there were reports of Nazi sightings. Having been dropped by parachutes in the dead of night, Malcolm and I nimbly and silently made our way to a run-down jumble of farm buildings whose coordinates matched those on the radio message I had decoded with unparalleled skill. I stopped my bike by the side of the road and picked up two sticks to use as guns for our game. I gave one to Malcolm then pointed my own into the distance and made a firing sound. Malcolm pointed his gun lazily. He didn’t know what a gun was or what it was meant for, but I could always count on his skills as a mimic so I was satisfied when he copied my firing sounds with perfect accuracy. We rode on. Malcolm was unaware of his participation in the scenario I had cribbed from a movie on TV. But the very useful thing about my brother was that even if he did not actually understand the role I cast him in, the blank slate of his nature made him the perfect coconspirator. He never tried to change the rules midstream the way other boys did, stopping everything dead in its tracks to assert their own notion of how things should go. And of course he never said the wrong thing, undermining my plan and forcing me to incorporate dialogue that didn’t fit my version of events. Malcolm was simply there like an action figure I could move around and give language to.
“Quick! They’re escaping! Charge!” I cried, standing up on my bike and peddling as fast as I could. “Draw your gun!” But he had dropped his stick somewhere behind us.
We rode past the old marine checkpoint station. It was abandoned, but a beer can stood on the window ledge of the guard box. I knew that kids came out here to drink and get high and that every so often the police did a sweep. As a result, we might see a filmstrip in health class about the perils of drug addiction, which would show men slumped in alleyways of cities we didn’t recognize and dirty-looking hippies who had clearly lost their minds. Malcolm and I continued over the sand-and rubble-strewn road until we reached Slab City, the decommissioned base where snowbirds in RVs stayed every winter and other people lived year round in renegade homes built out of corrugated metal or trailers, all constructed atop the forsaken concrete foundations of barracks that no longer existed. I loved to imagine World War II marines preparing for North African missions in the desert so near my house. Now the only remnants from that time were the dirt and sand-covered slabs and the feeling of something missing. In the distance stood the Chocolate Mountains, their toothy shapes fired to a dusty pink by the late-afternoon sun.
We rode past the bar and a sign advertising a community talent show, past the trailer that served as the church and one that belonged to the unofficial mayor, who also ran the local shortwave radio broadcast. A sitting area had been set up outside this trailer with a handful of mismatched lawn chairs, a plastic table, and some browning potted palms. Empty plastic water jugs were scattered about, some reconceived as planters or dog food bowls. Slab City’s residents had to bring in their own water and get rid of their own garbage because Slab City wasn’t really a city. It was a place for people who liked to get away with things.
The hard-packed sand around the trailers was scarred with wheel ruts and decapitated plants that had not given up on living. A few people lingered outside their homes, but they did not look up as Malcolm and I rode past. Most residents of Slab City were alone for a reason and they wanted to keep it that way. I pounded on the door of Richard’s Airstream, a tube of aluminum, its surface a patchwork of castoff material that Richard cobbled together whenever the trailer needed repairs. He appeared at the door, stooping to fit his long, narrow body inside the frame. He wore a faded work shirt and blue jeans. His freshly shaven head revealed two thick blue veins that ran behind his ears, paralleling the temples of his round, rimless glasses. His skin was baked brown and hard by the sun. A tattoo of a Chinese dragon snaked up his forearm. Malcolm screeched.
“You yell like that, someone’s liable to come out of their trailer and shoot you,” Richard said, though I knew he enjoyed Malcolm’s enthusiasm. Richard was in the army during Vietnam but he said things like “ancient history” or “worn-out story” whenever I asked about his time there. For a while I was convinced that he worked for the CIA, but Laurel told me she didn’t think Richard was someone a government would trust. He was, however, the only person outside of my family whom Malcolm would allow to touch him, and now Malcolm pulled on his arm.
“Okay, okay,” Richard said. “But I’m not paying this time. Business is bad.”
“No fair,” I said, disappointed. One of the things I looked forward to most about Richard’s arrival each of the past three years was the fact that he allowed us to go scrapping with him in the dirt fields near Slab City, where bullet casings and pieces of shrapnel and the occasional bomb fin turned up from a time when the marines used the place as a training ground. Usually Richard rewarded our finds: a nickel for small scraps, a quarter for something big like an alloy casing. He told us you could still find entire bombs in the farthest
fields that abutted the mountains some forty miles away, land that was still used by the military to stage air raid drills, but he never took us all the way out there. There were times when I could see the mushroom clouds of a bomb explosion from that faraway base, and when I did, my chest welled up with the excitement and fear of danger so close at hand. Even though the war in Vietnam was over, I knew from the constant sound of distant artillery that the idea of war was never fully laid to rest. I understood that there were always people plotting and preparing, that there were always enemies.
“Mi amigo’s not doing much business these days,” Richard said, referring to the Mexican junker who bought his finds then turned around and sold them to a foundry in Tijuana. “The price of aluminum is way down. I don’t get paid, you don’t get paid.”
“Come on,” I complained.
“That’s my deal,” he said. “Take it or leave it.” His voice was always low and soft, making it seem that he was somehow farther away from us than he actually was. I had never seen him angry, even when I pestered him with questions about the war, or when Malcolm had a tantrum. But I was never fully at ease with him either because I felt that the effort it took for him to suppress the caged roar that rumbled beneath his voice was great and that he could not support it indefinitely. There was some dormant power I sensed residing within his stiff, upright posture, a tension behind his always alert gaze. He patrolled his surroundings from left to right without turning his head like a warning beacon. He barely nodded to signal assent as if too much movement would betray him. I tortured myself wondering whether or not he had killed someone in the war, but I knew I should never ask. Like me, I felt he was a bearer of secrets, and this made my time with him exquisitely charged.
Malcolm loved the bumpy ride in Richard’s open-roofed Jeep over the rock dunes. We lurched forward and back, flying over boulders and in and out of the washes that had been carved into the desert floor by ancient rivers. Richard huffed and groaned, his cigarette bobbing between his lips. He made a big show of effort as he worked the vibrating gearshift. The long fingers of his left hand gripped the frayed plastic coating of the steering wheel so hard that his knuckles were white. I imagined the wheel was the neck of a Vietcong soldier and knew that man would be dead by now.
When Richard stopped the Jeep, Malcolm and I scrambled out. “What’s yours is mine!” Richard called after us. He threw a beat-up cowboy hat onto his head, took his metal detector out of the back of the Jeep and began to walk slowly, making wide arcs with the machine. It gave off a soft, steady hum. I was never sure Malcolm understood what we were looking for; he eagerly presented rocks and pull tabs from soda cans to Richard as if each were an important find. Sometimes he just wandered, and I knew he wasn’t looking for anything at all.
I dragged my feet to displace the top layer of soil. Without the incentive of cash, I considered giving up the whole search. But the truth was that I loved studying the ground, directing my gaze over minute bits of earth as they passed below me. My breath steadied to a constant rhythm, and my body relaxed. When I was scrapping with Richard, I didn’t think about Malcolm or what I had done to make him the way he was. I didn’t worry about what Laurel thought when she looked at me or about my overdue library book, or Coach Watson’s disappointment. I thought about dirt. The desert ceased to be the impervious, dry expanse I knew it to be. It became a miniature world with its own tiny valleys and mountains, square inches of variegated detail. It became a place where I could never be sure what something was, where there were possibilities instead of consequences. A door opened in my mind and I was in Egypt, discovering a never-before-seen tomb, treasures fully intact. Room after room unfolded off claustrophobic passages, chambers filled with so much gold and so many winking jewels that my hired man, Malcolm, our Egyptian guide, Richard, and I had to shield our eyes. I found two long sticks to serve as rifles and slipped one into Malcolm’s hand.
“Cover me,” I said. “We might surprise some tomb robbers.”
Twenty yards from the Jeep, Richard’s detector sent up a strong, insistent beep. I backed out of my fantasy and ran alongside Malcolm to where Richard crouched, studying something on the ground. He held up a magazine clip. “This is a good one,” he said. “Haven’t found something out here for months.”
“I thought they didn’t practice here anymore.”
“The military isn’t the only one interested in guns. You got your speed freaks, your gangs…” He turned the clip over, admiring it, then handed it to Malcolm, who cradled it to his chest.
“He thinks it’s something to love,” I said.
“He wouldn’t be the first person to love a gun, that’s for sure.”
“Mom says it’s okay, the stuff he does,” I said carefully. I was never sure if Laurel had told Richard about my dropping Malcolm. “She doesn’t think anything is wrong with the way he is,” I continued, creeping up on a confession I was not sure I was ready to make.
Richard stood up, grunting as his muscles stretched. “Well, your mother…now…It’s like how you never see yourself grow taller. Other people have to tell you what’s what.”
I wanted to ask what was what, but I knew I wasn’t strong enough to weather the consequences of exposing my mistake. If Richard had been at the gas station that day he might have punished me. Or maybe if Richard had been there, he would have caught Malcolm. He might have saved us all.
An hour later, Malcolm and I had found nothing. Richard had found some bullet casings and random pieces of metal. After throwing his finds into the back of the Jeep, he squatted down by the front wheel and lit a cigarette. He took off his hat and cleaned the sweat from the top of his head, judged the moisture on his palm, then wiped his hand on his jeans. Malcolm picked up the metal detector and walked with it, waving it over the ground. It was turned off, but Malcolm made the sound of the motor and then such a perfect replication of the beep of discovery that Richard and I both looked up expectantly.
“He should put that talent to good use,” Richard said, exhaling smoke.
“How?”
He shrugged. “Decoy. He could make a person think something was there that wasn’t. He could throw people off the scent.”
“Is that what they did in the war?” I asked, eager to fit this piece of information into the mystery of Richard. But before he could answer, Malcolm ran back to the Jeep, grinning. Richard reached into his pocket and pulled out a couple of dollar bills. He gave one to each of us.
“You said you weren’t paying,” I said.
“This is for keeping me company.”
MALCOLM AND I SPENT OUR money as soon as we could. On the way home, we turned our bikes into the parking lot of Akbar’s Date Farm. Only a few cars were parked in front of the small food and gift shop at this late hour of the afternoon—tourists collecting their prepackaged dates for the trip home. The palm groves spread out behind the store. The bushy-headed trees were lined up in perfect rows like Las Vegas dancers I’d seen on television ads. Inside the store, I ordered a milkshake from the girl behind the counter. She looked like a drawing in Laurel’s Indian sex book that I used to read when she wasn’t home until it became the foundation layer of one of Malcolm’s pyramids. The girl had dark eyes rimmed with black pencil, and her mouth was full and turned up at the ends. Another girl washed dishes at a sink. Her back was to me, and her hip-hugger pants eased down so that I could see where that mysterious road that separated the cheeks of her butt began. I imagined her as one of those colorful Kama Sutra drawings, her hands held in awkward dancing positions while a man with an improbably large penis and kohl-lined eyes stood behind her, leering as if he meant to kill her in some disturbing fashion. My groin stirred. I inched closer to the counter and rubbed myself against it. The girls said something to each other in Spanish, then burst into laughter. I grew hot and flushed, certain they were talking about me and my hard-on. But when I paid for the shake and asked for an extra cup, the girls didn’t even look at me. I walked away from the counter hold
ing the cups awkwardly in front of my pants, humiliated by the fact that they probably weren’t talking about me at all. In five minutes they wouldn’t even remember I had been there. All year long, I had been overwhelmed by the new possibilities of my body, but as exciting as these were, they also served to highlight my complete insignificance. Girls took no notice of me. It was as though I were a rumbling volcano that even nearby villagers ignored.
Malcolm waited outside at a picnic table, ripping a paper napkin into small bits. I poured some of my shake into the empty cup and covered it with a lid. “Half for you, half for me,” I said, when I handed him the shake and blew the paper off the straw, to his delight. The paper skittered along the tabletop and then fell onto the ground, and he collected it and held it to his face, rubbing it against his skin as if it were soothing. After what happened inside the store, I lost my interest in the drink, but Malcolm was stunned into a frozen pleasure by his. He didn’t take his mouth from the straw the entire time he sucked, not even to breathe. There was no end to his appetite. He ate whenever food was offered to him even if he had just finished a huge meal. Laurel and I learned to tell him when he was done eating and we were expert at distracting him so that he could tear his mind away from the food and land on a new obsession for a while. More than any other of his traits, this hunger upset me, made me feel unaccountably mournful. It filled me with a great nostalgic sadness for lost things, the way a rich person might feel if he had to live as a pauper, always remembering the fancy cars and clothes of a bygone life. Malcolm reached the bottom of his shake with a wet slurp, finally taking his mouth from his straw and inhaling a laugh. He peeled the plastic lid off the cup and licked the underside. He chanted, “Be, be, be, be.”
“No more,” I said.
The shop girls left the building, their fringed bags swinging at their hips, aprons folded in their hands. I watched them get into a black Camaro as I took Malcolm’s cup from him and tossed it into the nearby garbage can. He screeched and raced to retrieve it. Cradling the cup as if it were a hurt bird, he wiped off the dirt. He made a soft noise that sounded like “pop, pop, pop,” and I knew he was talking to the cup. He would bring the cup home and add it to the menagerie of inanimate objects—rocks, sticks, empty envelopes, and the cardboard cores of toilet paper rolls—he collected and sometimes spoke to in murmurs and squeaks.
The God of War Page 4
