by Roy Kesey
A jolt. The father looks at the clock. Four minutes since the last time he looked. He decides not to look again, and immediately looks again. Watches the clock until the next minute clicks over. Stands carefully, sways, walks, drinks a glass of water. Back to the bedroom. To the window, opens the curtains and looks out. Nothing. Lies down carefully again. Looks, and yes, he’s left the curtains open. Fingernails into his palms until just before blood or just after, doesn’t look, and if she wants a divorce she can fucking have one but no, no, he’s so stupid, she never once mentioned divorce, or maybe mentioned it but never as a threat. The father reaches to smooth his son’s hair but stops, afraid of waking him. He closes his eyes, and there is a black pipe five feet in diameter and sixty feet long suspended from a metal frame built above a two-wheeled cart that four men are pushing across an avenue, four more men at each end of the pipe, guiding, but the pipe is no longer moving, is blocking the entire intersection. Drivers honk and search for a way around and fail. The sun is very bright, the heat sweltering. The workers stare at the ground while another man screams at them, and this other man is wearing a suit, stands next to a black Mercedes with tinted windows and government plates. The near end of the pipe extends over the hood of the Mercedes, hovers inches from the windshield. A bus has drawn up tight behind the car, other cars are tight against both sides of the far end of the pipe, and thus stasis except for the screaming. Typical, says an old woman. The father turns. She must have been beautiful once. He nods, typical, yes, this standoff, this stasis and screaming. He walks to the corner, looks more closely, sees that the pipe isn’t made of metal or PVC, isn’t sure what other materials are possible. The old woman has walked with him, stands again beside him. Bimodal polyethylene resin, she says, or else ethylene-octene copolymer. The father looks at her again. The Mercedes man shouts for the pipe to be pivoted slightly so that he can get through, but any pivoting and the other end of the pipe will sweep across other cars, so there will be no pivoting. The old woman’s blouse goes translucent in the sun, and she is gone and there is no Mercedes and no pipe and the father walks up to his apartment building. The doorman does not look at him when he says hello, does not open the door or respond in any way, simply stares out at the street. On other days there is a doorman who looks exactly like this one but smiles constantly and helps in any way he can, and these two doormen, they are monozygotic twins or a single bipolar individual and the father does not know how to ask. He also does not much care: his top-floor suite is splendid in so many ways and only slightly overpriced. He opens the door himself. Walks to the elevator, presses the button and waits. The elevator doesn’t come. Presses the button again. Watches the flat-screen television mounted there on the wall, an advertisement for a diet pill, a faucet inserted into the lower back of a slender naked woman, the faucet turned on by a beautiful genderless hand, and liquid fat pouring out. He presses the button again. Waits. Waits and waits and walks back to the lobby, through it and out. The doorman is gone, and this is not the father’s apartment building, is not anyone’s apartment building. He looks at his hands, finds them already taped, does not remember taping them but must have. The spire above him is five hundred feet of good granite. He stretches, scans the first pitch. Chalks his hands and fingers, deep breath, reaches for a low jug. Works his slow way up a varnished dihedral. A quick rest in an alcove, and the second pitch, thin hands up a long straight crack. Edges and smears for a time. Stems in a corner, bone-hangs off a slammer and cams his feet, sags and rests again. A breeze brings him the smell of pines, crushed ferns, cool stone. By now he is two hundred feet up, and every part of him feels strong and clean and fast. He makes his way up a bulge, hand-traverses right to another crack. Butterfly jam, high heel-toe in the crack and another beneath; shuffles his hands upward and starts again. Half a dozen of these, and he leans into a layback, brings his feet up, gains a chute and scrambles through scree to the start of the next pitch. Another stemming corner gets him to a hollow flake. A step-through left, another crack, and he stops to rest where it flares. Now the crux, twenty feet of smooth off-width. He grovels, searches for jams, works up to where the crack goes wide enough to chimney. At the top of it, an awkward move out right to clear the roof, then up an arête with nice incut holds. Good edges to a rim, up and over, slows as the rock gets chossy. He slots a hand jam and locks off, laughs, laughs again, has never in his life climbed this well. Another overhang, backstep and hip roll, pushes off, latches a horn and pulls up. He wombs for a moment, catches his breath. Bright blue sky. The last section, exposed but pocketed. He mantels up over the edge, collapses there on the summit. Closes his eyes. Polished stone warm on his back. Silence. He stands, turns, and before him is what’s left of an old building: a single apartment still intact, loose brick fringe around it, wires and pipes protruding. An old man is sitting on the stoop. The father goes to him, kneels down, feels stupid and stands back up. Who the hell are you? says the old man. The father knows he should have questions but can’t think of anything to ask. He looks out over the city, glances back. The old man has four long black hairs growing from a mole on his cheek, a thin gray beard, is wearing a Beijing Ducks jersey and light green pajama bottoms. Is this about Huaihai? asks the old man. About what? says the father. The Huaihai Campaign, says the old man. The father shakes his head, steps past the man into the apartment, sees a photograph of a beautiful woman, her skin at the precise midpoint between light and dark, and on the far wall a poster, fields of sleep or sheep. He comes back out, sits down beside the old man, stares at the massive pit around them—the backhoes and bulldozers at work below, and the thirty-foot wall of aluminum siding beyond to keep passersby from seeing the dig and this nail house at the center. The father asks what will be built. Shopping center, says the old man. Big fancy thing, glass, I don’t know what exactly. They’ve got posters on the outside if you want to go see. I don’t, says the father. Has it been rough? Rough enough, says the old man. Two years almost. First they offered us these shitty little places outside the Fourth Ring. A couple of people took them. Then they showed us bigger ones south of the Fifth Ring, middle of fucking nowhere, and most of my neighbors took them just to be done with it. Then the goons came, started pushing us around. Government goons or developer goons? asks the father. Both, says the old man. Cut off the power, cut off the water. They even started a fire in an empty unit to scare us. Couple of months later there’s nobody left but me. I rigged up a pulley, and one of my old work unit friends brought me food, coal, water—hooked it all to the rope and I pulled it up—but they started hassling him at the bottom, stealing the stuff he brought. How much longer can you hold out? asks the father. Can’t, says the old man, but I don’t have to. Last month one of those internet people found out that I fought in the Huaihai Campaign, that I marched with Chen Yi himself. Internet people? says the father. They ran a bunch of pictures, says the old man, and others started running them too, and yesterday the developers brought me a contract. Got everything I wanted, almost. New apartment off of Fucheng Lu, two bedrooms, elevator and everything, all ready for me to move in. I just climbed back up here today for one last look. The old man nods to himself, and squints. Or maybe the developers just got tired of waiting, he says, and the internet thing was a coincidence. He scratches his chin, shrugs, points at the horizon and the father looks but there doesn’t seem to be anything in particular, just city stretching out away from them. There are worse views in the world, says the old man. The father agrees, starts to retape his hands, asks the old man if he knows the story of the muyu. The old man has no idea. Sure you do, says the father. The novice monk who curses his master? Wakes up the next morning as a fish? The old man shakes his head so the father continues: Not just any fish but a huge fish with a small tree growing out of its back as further punishment, the skin perpetually bleeding there at the base of the trunk, the master himself encountered one day in a boat, the confession and prayer and forgiveness, the novice now free of his fish body and the tree donated to the temp
le where he once studied, the trunk carved into the form of a fish, hung in the courtyard, beaten to remind new novices never to curse their masters. Hm, says the old man. Funny thing is, this wasn’t even really my apartment. I’ve lived here for years, but it was my son who bought it. When he died it became my daughter-in-law’s, and the developers paid her for it so legally they didn’t owe me anything. She had already remarried, so it wasn’t like she was going to take care of me. Not that I blame her. The old days are gone, I understand that, and she’s a perfectly nice girl. I even like her new husband. The father nods, wants to ask about the old man’s dead son and unmentioned wife, about his daughter-in-law, about love and pain and forgiveness but there isn’t time—if he stays any longer, darkness will catch him on the spire. He chalks up, says good-bye, starts the downclimb. Ledges of broken concrete, rubble nubbins. He slows, picks his holds carefully, and there’s a sound, a sliding and roar, and he ducks tight into the face. The stream of loose rock hits just above him and bounds outward. He waits for it to pass, takes a deep breath, listens, hears nothing, looks up just as the sound starts again. Dust rains into his eyes and a stone cracks him on the forehead, his hands come loose and he swipes at the wall, falls and falls, knows that he is dreaming and waits to wake, falls and falls and lands. He can’t move. Feels nothing and knows that he is dead. Wonders why he didn’t wake, why he can still see, but then a cloud, black, lowering, thicker and thicker until there is nothing else. Still he waits. Waits and hears, it has started again, the sliding and roar and a deep hard cough. The father sits up, his son awake and staring at him, his wife silhouetted in the doorway. What is it? she says. What is what? he says. You screamed, she says. It’s gone, he says. What are you talking about? she says. He rubs his face. The thing, he says. I don’t understand, she says. The cuts burn in his palms, and he doesn’t answer. She goes to the window, looks out. The curtains, he thinks, motherfuck, and his anger rises, anger at her for being angry with him over this thing, this nothing, and he waits for her to ask why they are open, why he left them open, the draft and their boy so sick and how could he leave them open? Instead she says nothing. Isn’t angry, he sees. Is only tired, as tired as he is. She draws the curtains, comes to the bed, sits down and takes their son in her arms, holds him, and the boy’s cough is no better and no worse than it was last night or the night before. She holds him until he stops coughing, rocks him until he falls back to sleep. Thank you, whispers the father. She mumbles something back. He waits, says, But there’s no sense in both of us being here, and it’s my turn, so why don’t you go get some rest. There’s no answer—she’s asleep against the headboard, her arms still around their son. The boy coughs once and the father reaches, rubs his back, because rubbing helps, of course it helps. The clock says there are two more hours before the father must rise and dress and drive. There is movement at the doorway, and he looks. Their daughter. She stares at him, waits, and usually he doesn’t let her but now he nods. She comes and climbs in, falls quickly to sleep, and the curtains are ever so slightly parted at the top, a sliver of sky, black, and then not quite.
Stillness
GARRETT’S BACK AT THE CEMETERY for the second time in two months. His mother hadn’t let his little brother Blaine play taps at the original funeral—she was pissed at the VA for not sending the flag in time, said the song wasn’t worth hearing if that’s the way they were going to be—plus their nephew Aaron just got back to the U.S. from someplace in Europe last week, showed up in Fallash for the first time in years and wanted to see the grave. So now here they are, Garrett and Blaine and the nephew, and of course the brothers’ father stretched out down deep.
Last night was a few more beers than Garrett’s had in a while, and the sun’s way hotter and brighter than it needs to be. He hitches his belt, looks at his brother, and Blaine nods. They both look at the nephew, who’s walking around picking up dead oak leaves and talking to himself. He has to be in his mid-twenties but looks just like he did back in high school, not that they’d seen all that much of him even then.
–Hey Aaron, Garrett calls. You ready?
–Sure. Sorry.
The kid drops the leaves and jogs over, comes to stand beside his uncles.
–Let’s do it, says Garrett.
Blaine pulls the mouthpiece out of the bugle, drains the spit, fits the mouthpiece back in. He arcs his shoulders back. He rolls his head around like he’s about to run hurdles, and Garrett turns to give the nephew a look, but the nephew’s staring hard at the gravestone and standing at fucking attention. It’s been twenty years since Garrett’s discharge, but it still annoys him when civilians try to fake it. He wonders again why he’s even here.
To make sure Blaine doesn’t do anything screwy, he reminds himself. And because he’s already filled his deer tag for A-zone, and the B1 season doesn’t start for another week. And because their mother thinks the nephew is lonely when in fact he’s just weird.
Blaine’s ready now. He puts the horn to his mouth and draws in some air, then bends over and starts hacking and coughing and spitting like their father had for months before he kicked it.
–What the hell, says Garrett.
–Sorry, says Blaine. Swallowed a bug.
–What kind? says the nephew.
–What?
–What kind of insect?
–Mosquito, I think, says Blaine. Or maybe a midge.
–Interesting, says the nephew.
Garrett scratches the side of his face and Blaine goes through the whole getting-ready thing again. Finally he starts. Truth be told, Garrett’s never heard him play this well. Every note is drawn pure and long, and every fade is soft and clear and right. It’s odd that no memories come attached to the song—thousands of times he’s heard it, you’d think it would bring some pictures to his head—but there’s nothing, just this slight sadness that grows and grows and is huge by the time Blaine’s done.
