“No, but it’s better than sitting around here,” she said. “Not that it’s your company or anything. I think I’d rather—I maybe just want to think about something else for a while. Now that I know he’s dead.”
Gene nodded. He tried to imagine how he’d feel if his girlfriend had been shot, and he couldn’t, largely because he couldn’t even imagine having a girlfriend. Gene tried not to consider what it would be like if Cora were his girlfriend, but he couldn’t help it. He liked that she didn’t mince words, that she called Miller “dead” instead of using any of the “passed on” or “resting in peace” euphemisms.
“How do I find this Handsome guy?” he asked.
“Who?!”
“That guy you said who first told Miller—”
“Danny Hansen. He’s always at the Egyptian Trails after dinner. That’s on Fifth Street, right by Superman.”
“I was just there,” Gene laughed. “Lotta help they were.”
“Danny might not want to talk to you. Nobody wants to talk around here, but if anyone will, it’s Danny Hansen. How long you think you’re gonna be here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, don’t stay at the fucking casino,” she said. “You’re welcome to stay here. I’ll probably go to my parents’ house tonight. I don’t want to stay here anymore.”
Cora’s voice broke and trembled, sounding like she could have added “ever again as long as I live,” but she fought back her tears and went to a kitchen drawer. With her back to Gene, he could hear her sob and sniff, her head down and her frail shoulders trembling. Gene fought the urge to go to her, as he knew he’d be pushed away, and he looked around the kitchen—at the clock, their mugs of tea, a shelf of cookbooks, mostly Indian, Thai, Cajun, and Mexican. After a few minutes, Cora reached into the kitchen drawer and pulled out a key.
“This is to the front door,” she said, wiping her eyes and holding it out for Gene to take.
Cora unceremoniously walked out of the kitchen. Gene didn’t know what else to do so he followed her down the hall to the two-story foyer.
“Make yourself at home.”
She gestured to the study area with its piles of papers, notebooks, and books on a little side table and on what was only messy enough to be Miller’s desk.
“Some of his stuff his missing,” she said suddenly, not moving, as if not moving might make it reappear from its hiding place. “Maybe he took it with him to St. Louis. Anyway, that’s what he was working on if you want to look through it. Maybe you’ll find whatever it is you’re looking for. What are you looking for?”
“I don’t know.”
“Just what happened?”
“I guess so.”
“Miller didn’t talk about you very much,” she said. “I didn’t even know he had a brother until a year ago.”
“We weren’t very close.”
“I got that impression. I knew it was you, though, when I first saw you. You look like him, and he described you perfectly. You’re broader and your jaw is bigger, but you look like him.”
Gene didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing. He thought of Miller’s face again when he turned him over in the hog shed.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“I’m sorry, too,” said Gene. He didn’t know what exactly he was sorry for at that moment—her loss, Miller’s death, the fact that they weren’t close—but he did indeed feel terribly sorry as he stood there in Miller’s study watching Cora’s reddening eyes start to fill up with tears once more.
“Gotta get back,” she said. “Maybe I’ll see you around. Put the key under the flowerpot on the front porch when you leave. Or I guess you could just keep it if you want. It doesn’t really matter.”
Cora left behind a lingering smell of sadness and cucumber shampoo. Gene wondered if the sadness was hers or his now that she was gone. He could certainly see why Miller liked her, and he wanted to see her again soon but then felt guilty for feeling it. He was as bad as a woman—having feelings about having feelings. It made him want to throw up, and he put two more tropical Tums in his mouth and let them dissolve to mush on his tongue.
ELEVEN
THE SITTING ROOM study was filled with framed pictures, and Gene wondered that he hadn’t really noticed them before, but then he’d spent most of his time in there watching his boots or looking at Cora. On almost every surface—the tables, the desk, the bookshelves, and all over the walls, there were pictures of people, some of whom he recognized. Miller’s two kids, a girl and a boy, both with blond hair and round faces, grinned in many of the shots. As they grew older, their faces grew thinner and their hair grew less blond. Gene figured by the time they were in high school they would have brown hair. Miller, too, began life as a tow-headed, almost white-blond urchin with dark brown eyes so dark they were almost black. Miller’s ex-wife made no photographic appearances, at least not in this room.
Gene noticed a couple framed photos of their father. Because he was so absent during the later part of his life, Gene had rarely thought of their father since his death. One old black-and white photo was taken right before the young father was shipped to Vietnam, another not long before he died, when they were in high school. Gene noticed there were no photos of their mother. Through most of their lives, Gene had been closer to their mother and had difficulties getting along with their father. It wasn’t even so much that they fought but more like they had no relationship whatsoever. Miller had been closer to their father than Gene, but in high school their father spent most of his life working at his office as the President of Atlas Van Lines, and no one was particularly close to him then. He got up early, worked until 10:00 p.m., sometimes midnight, came home, and got drunk on scotch before going to bed and getting up the next morning to do it all over again. No wonder he had a heart attack.
Gene always thought it was funny that his father was the president of Atlas. Richard E. Diggs was born on a farm in a nameless town outside of Toulon, Illinois, a little less than an hour northwest of Peoria. He went to college at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, where he met their mother, and then they moved to Evansville, Indiana, where he spent the rest of his life. He never moved anywhere and certainly never traveled the world.
Their parents had an equal share in their miserable marriage. Elizabeth had a way of joking but not joking. He remembered her saying that if Richard didn’t start coming home for dinner he might was well call his own company and have them move his stuff to the office. Or move out. Or some variation of the moving joke. She was convinced he was having an affair at the office, and nobody ever found out whether he was or not, but as far as Gene could tell, he was always working until late at night, alone, the only car left in the parking lot, parked at its place: Reserved for President Richard E. Diggs. His father insisted on going by the name Dick, too. Dick Diggs. Gene still snickered and squirmed with embarrassment every time he thought of the porn-star-worthy Dick Diggs. Their mother always hated the name Diggs and refused to change her name. Not only that, since Gene and Miller were the last two living males on her side of the family, she made sure their last names were Barnes. Apparently they had made an agreement even before the boys were born. If they had been girls, they could be Diggs girls, but boys would be Barnes boys and that was the end of it. Dick had called her Queen Elizabeth but never meant it in a nice way. At home he was the spouse of the queen, but at his office he was king of a multi-national corporation, king of paperwork, king of flowcharts and payroll and fifty-page reports, king of paper clips and pens, king of a fleet of Atlas trucks and three toy Atlas moving trucks on his desk next to a globe lamp held up by a bronze Atlas who mostly left him alone. He was king of his own world, which rested not on his shoulders but in his own exacting mind.
There were a number of framed pictures of Miller, too, all of them within the last two or three years and apparently taken by Cora. Many were loving close-ups or candid photos where Miller was unaware he was being photographed—editing
proofs with a pen in his mouth, digging in the garden, driving down a Southern Illinois highway. There were also several pictures of the two of them, most taken by Cora with an outstretched arm, their two faces crammed into a frame. She beamed a giddy, gummy smile in every picture, and though Miller could at best muster a half-smile, Gene could tell that he had been happy these last few years.
He spent a while looking around Miller’s study, then decided to explore the rest of the house, not so much looking for clues but trying to know his brother. He went up the stairs. The doors were closed on the first two rooms, and he opened them to see that they were filled with kids’ stuff. Apparently the kids stayed with Miller periodically but not often. Judging by their pictures, they’d outgrown these rooms long ago. The last room was Miller’s bedroom. Cora had clearly decorated this room, too, and fairly recently. Most everything was new—a big new bed and matching furniture, all dark cherry. The bed had been made and was covered with a puffy white comforter. This room was also filled with photographs of the two of them. A pile of books teetered on bedside tables at either side of the bed. The right side table also had Cosmo. Next to the bedside table a wicker laundry basket brimmed with clothes. Some small white socks lay on top of dirty jeans next to a pair of pale blue cotton panties. Gene considered the panties for a moment then looked around some more, suddenly noticing that not only was there no TV in the bedroom, but there didn’t seem to be a TV in the whole house.
“Figures,” snorted Gene aloud.
Gene went to the window and looked out onto the backyard. He could see a thriving vegetable garden, the one Miller had been digging in the picture. He wondered what kind of car Miller drove. The little parking pad behind the house was empty. Gene guessed maybe a Toyota Camry.
Passing the dirty laundry basket, the blue panties cloying on top, he crossed the room to a chest of drawers. On the top were little figurines of turtles, the most striking of which was a green glass turtle with a long, swooping neck. These couldn’t be Miller’s—Cora must have brought them over. There was also a turtle-shaped lamp or night light, about the size of a small loaf of bread, which when turned on glowed softly through an amber-colored glass shell. Perhaps Miller and Cora had decided to start collecting turtles together. He next walked over to a large closet which was filled completely with women’s shoes—hundreds of pairs of heels, boots, sandals, flip-flops, and perhaps a dozen different colored pairs of Converse tennis shoes. Gene decided to go back downstairs to the study, and on his way out he couldn’t resist picking up the panties and taking one whiff at the slightly stained, slightly stiffer crotch before dropping them back onto the jeans exactly where they had lain. He felt like a creep all the way down the stairs, but the scent was exhilarating and he held on to the rail to keep his hand from shaking.
Thirsty, Gene poured himself another cup of tea. He didn’t know if he was supposed to reuse the tea bag at the bottom of his red mug, so he did, wanting to be economical. The water was still warm and soothing but not hot, and he could drink it a little faster.
Back in the study, Gene stood at Miller’s desk and rummaged through some of the papers. He took a yellow notepad from a stack of scribbled-on papers and Post-it notes to the brown leather couch and strained to decipher Miller’s strange hieroglyphic handwriting. At the top of the page Miller had scrawled the words “Complete History of Metropolis” in cartoony block letters
Gene looked up at a picture of Miller and Cora at a Cardinals game. Miller wore a powder blue old-school Cardinals jersey and Cora a new white one and another big gummy smile. It was a long way to travel for a baseball game. In their jerseys and bright eyes Miller and Cora looked oddly like a just-married couple. Gene remembered Miller’s first, now only, marriage. He hadn’t gone to the wedding or reception, though he’d been invited, because he and Miller hadn’t really been talking, and also because he hated social situations where he didn’t know anyone. He also hated driving in city traffic. After the wedding Miller had told him over the phone that their mother had been thrilled to have a daughter-in-law and was at the time very taken with Margaret. At the reception she even went around telling people, in her joking way that wasn’t quite a joke, that if she had to choose between Miller as a son or Margaret as a daughter, she would definitely choose Margaret. Within a year Elizabeth couldn’t stand Margaret, complained about her all the time to Gene, and had decided she was mean and crazy but a necessary evil if she wanted to continue a relationship with any grandchildren. Miller rarely confided his feelings to anyone, so her behavior at the wedding reception must have strongly affected him if he actually said anything about it, especially to Gene of all people.
He looked back at the picture—Miller and Cora surrounded by a bunch of strangers now also immortalized within this frame. Gene might as well be one of those strangers. He didn’t even know Miller liked baseball, but Miller was actually smiling too, clearly enjoying the spectacle of the game, the spectacle of the crowd, and his almost-pretty young girlfriend beaming next to him. He understood suddenly that not only had Miller finally been happy these last years, but looked to be happy for the first time in his life. Suddenly Gene could feel the tears building up pressure behind his eyes as strange stifled noises snagged in his throat. It was the first time he had even come close to crying since he was in grade school.
Looking back down at the yellow notebook, Gene read again the heading “Complete History of Metropolis” then below it, in those cryptic curves growing increasingly legible to Gene, with arrow-shaped bullet points:
→ Before Americans, three European flags flew over region
→ Spanish, 16th and 17th Centuries
→ French, most of 18th Century
→ 1757, French & Indian War, French build Fort De L’Ascencion, later rebuilt and renamed Fort Massiac 1760s, after war, Indians burned fort to ground (funeral pyrrhic victory)
→ Brits controlled area after war but didn’t regarrison fort
→ 1778 George Rogers Clark and his “Long Knives” arrived expecting confrontation but found fort abandoned, march through Illinois territory to take Fort Kaskaskia on Mississippi
→ 1794, Pres George Washington rebuilt fort against encroaching Spanish
→ 1839, Metropolis planned one mile downstream from fort
→ 1917, Metropolis RR Bridge connects Metropolis to Kentucky, rest of world
→ 1972, Illinois State Legislature declares Metropolis “Hometown” of Superman
→ 2009, Five Star builds hotel and casino, made to look like a 3-story paddlewheel, brings 2 million visitors to Metropolis every year
→ Five Star flag flies now over region
As he read these notes on the first page, Gene remembered something about John Duff, the Cave-in-Rock counterfeiter being part of the George Rogers Clark’s “Long Knives” militia, and not long after, the mists of history wafted over the yellow page and ensnared his mind and put him under. It was only afternoon but already it had been a long day, and Gene put up almost no resistance to a deep sleep.
TWELVE
SOMEWHERE, FAR BACK IN Gene’s mind, a phone rang, startling him awake, and he immediately sat up and touched his breast pocket to make sure he felt his gun. He had no idea where he was or if the ringing phone was real or a dream. Standing at the couch and slowly orienting himself to the strange room, he listened for more ringing and heard nothing but his own breathing and his own heart thumping in his ears. When he finally remembered where he was, he pulled out his cell phone to check the time: 5:10. His friend Keith had just called but didn’t leave a message, the phone on vibrate and blinking red. Gene couldn’t believe he’d slept for over two hours. The day was over, he had barely learned anything, and he wasn’t sure what to do next.
He focused his eyes on the incomprehensible pile of gibberish scattered over Miller’s desk—post-its with unreadable names, pages filled with numbers where the sevens looked like nines and the ones looked like sevens and most of the letters looked like either unclosed
u’s or stick lawnchairs. The phone rang again—an old-fashioned black phone from the fifties with the receiver on a cradle above the round dial—three times and stopped when Cora’s voice came on the answering machine. Whoever called left no message, but Gene didn’t like the sound of the ring, especially when it rang immediately again. He put on his jacket, grabbed Miller’s house key from the table, and left the house, locking the front door that had once been taken off and putting the key under the flowerpot as Cora had told him. His mind vaguely turned to the casino, where his, Miller’s, and probably this town’s troubles all started. Maybe he should pay it a visit. If nothing else, he hoped the walk would snag the cobwebs from his head.
He was still groggy and disoriented and turned one street too early to find his way back to Fifth Street. His mind meandered like a flooded creek whose waters stream out to find the lowest channels and ditches, branching in a hundred rivulets. Gene realized he had yet to see any neighbors, either on his way to the house with Cora or on his way now. Here it was after five already, when most people come home from work, and the neighborhood seemed desolate. Clearly people lived in the houses, put up satellite dishes, took the trash out to the corner, even busily patched small shacks together with tarpaper and plywood to make one larger home, but apparently no one stayed outside for long. A few shotgun shacks had small metal trailer homes grafted onto the side to make them larger, reminding Gene of the remoras in his childhood picture books attaching themselves to larger sharks or whales. As far as he could tell, the town was full of people who stayed inside day and night watching satellite TV. Maybe people would keep connecting house to house and house to trailer to house, and eventually the whole town would be a network of tarpaper and aluminum connections, and no one would ever have to step outside again.
Gene almost slapped himself for indulging in stupid half-dreams. He didn’t know who “they” was, but if they knew he had been at Miller’s house, they probably knew where he was now, and he’d better snap out of it if he didn’t want to end up like Miller.
Graveyard of the Gods Page 9
