In less than two hours I would find my brother, watching the sky on the roof of our house.
He would be halfdead then.
________________________________
I am not his son. He is not my daddy. I am not his brother. She is a whore.
It doesn’t matter what time it is. It can happen day or night. Once it does, you’re expected to drop what you’re doing and sing along. I dropped what I was doing, all right, but I didn’t sing.
In the long grass, on my stomach, I watched them. There were only three. The lady in the station wagon. The private on the moped. The old gray colonel dressed in fatigues. I watched him good.
He slammed the door of his Continental and stood facing the airstrip with his hand across his heart. I counted the wattles beneath his chin, the notches on his straining belt. He had a face like the kissing end of a manatee and I knew he had some hidden in the glove compartment of his car. Men his age always did.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner y ay-et
wave,
O’er the land of the free,
And the home of the brave?
He couldn’t sing worth prunes. His voice sounded like he stored it in a jar of vinegar. A man that size. It was pathetic.
The anthem ended. All I could hear was the clop clop clop of the needle. Nobody took it off. The static sounded like thunder rolling.
I watched him, still. He got in the car and drove away. Well, that was that. I crawled up out of the long grass and felt the blood settle full in my head. I couldn’t feel the ground beneath me. I couldn’t feel the ground.
I saw the light and I walked to it. It was a guard booth. Mosquitoes hummed around a television and the soldier on duty saluted me seriously. I asked him if he had any.
“No, sir,” he said. “Not on duty, sir.”
I was younger than him and he called me “sir.” I supposed he had to.
‘Why you call it medicine, Daddy?”
He empties the golden contents of my thermos.
“Because it makes a dying man feel the world’s worth living. ”
Well, all right.
A jet tore a hole through the roof of the sky and the hole leaked death and darkness and rain. I could reach up. I could patch it up. I walked in the ditch by the Fort Seltrum Road, feeling I could stop speeding cars with my hands. That was why I walked in the ditch.
“What’s the best medicine to take for your sickness?”
His face goes cockeyed in the glare of the porchlamp.
“I’d say it depends, my poor boy, on what ails you.”
I fell down, rose up, held my head in my hands, felt strapped to both ends of a mile-high seesaw. The world whirled and whirled, folded up and unfurled, and I didn’t move any for a very long while. It was the water in the ditch that kept me there. It was warm and sweet-smelling and it soaked clean through.
“Gonna get you squeaky clean!”
It’s the way her voice squeaks on “squeaky” that makes me laugh.
“Gonna make a brand new little man out of you!”
I stand on the counter by the sink in my skivvies. She strips me and dips me in warm soapy water.
“Gonna get you squeaky clean! ’N you say that? ’N you say ‘squeaky’?”
“Swacky!”
“That’s right.”
Daddy comes in and hoists me by the armpits. I hang stark naked in the light of the kitchen window.
“Here’s your boy, Mama! Mama, here’s your boy!”
She holds me under the water and her hands are soft as butter.
Hold me under forever then. Never let me up.
A dirty white pussycat came sniffing at my collar, the whitest cat I’d ever seen but filthy to the core. Something slithered in her mouth.
“Mama?”
“What.”
Her hair is a shambles. The car that was there before, idling, is gone.
“Who was that inside with you? When I knocked before, who’d that car belong to?”
She makes me a sandwich.
“Ladies from the League of Mercy.”
I ask her why she locked the door.
She pauses and tells me, “They had leprosy.”
A glass snake in her mouth, that was what it was. She dropped it on my chest and I watched it slither away, a long glittering tinsel-black “S” sidewinding into the darkness.
“Who are you, girl? ’S your name Snow White?” ‘She was pure as the driven snow, ” he sings. “But she drifted.”
“Who are you there, girl? Do you have a name at all?”
Her motor said no. “Pert. Pert. Pert. Pert.”
I made a fist of my hand and she threw herself against it.
“You like that, don’t you there?”
“Pert. Pert,” she answered. “Pert.”
“Dirty Lil’, Dirty Lil’, lived on top of a garbage hill! Never washed, never will!” Then he spits. “Dirty Lil’!”
She’d been a housecat, I could tell. But somebody’d dumped her. Now she was nothing but another filthy stray, had by every tom in town, a frayed pink ribbon round her burr-clotted neck. She lived on lizards and trash and bullfrogs. Glass snakes she gave to people.
“Heff!” I said. She shied away. “Get! I gotta go now.”
“One day she, said to he, said she to he, ‘ Will you marry me!’ Said he to she, ‘never be!’ ” He spits again. “Dirty Lee!”
I found myself on Caritas.
“Honey?”
He has stopped singing long enough to drain his beer and we sit at the table in the kitchen. She has just finished talking to someone over the phone.
“Yes,” she had told the person on the other end. “Yes, yes, yes. No.”
Now her hands hide her face like a sheet hides a body. She leans on the table with the weight of her world. The silverware and chipped china shake.
‘What’s wrong, honey?”
His mouth is full and his jaws work quick and he has not let his fork pause in the middle of asking it.
“Honey, what’s wrong? You can tell me.”
Below the table her hand falls upon me. She strokes at first, then pats, then squeezes my knee until the skin goes blue. After a while the china stops rattling. She uncovers her face and looks at her plate. She begins to eat.
“Honey,” he says. “What is it? You gon’ tell us?”
She does not look up.
“It’s my mama. She died.”
Supper that night is deviled eggs and creamed chicken. Even Daddy licks his plate.
Two hookers leaned on a crossing light and whistled at men in passing trucks. Some men ignored them and some tried hard to and one howled and whistled back and stopped to let the hookers in. They had faces like masks, like solid white Easter eggs dipped in different seltzer-dyes, and their smoky eyes ran with sweat and mascara and the weary tears of the never-sleeping. They talked dirty and laughed loud and dressed in brightly colored rainslickers so they looked like edible Christmas ornaments. All the windows in the shops looked broken, and the jagged glass formed geometric patterns, the glittering work of midnight insects. Beside a hardware store a running faucet spilled bilge-brown water out across the street, and when I went to wash my feet beneath it, the water stopped running. Far off a wino sang a song about John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt. I would’ve asked him for some or maybe even stolen it from him, but you never know what a bum might carry. And when they give you blood in a hospital they give you the blood of bums and whores and junkies. And there’s nothing you can do about it—their blood becomes yours.
“Who did this to you?”
Eyes hang life moons in a sky.
“I asked you something, boy. Who did this to you?”
“That’s none of your goddamn business.”
Eyes go from fullmoons to halfmoons to crescents. Then they are suns.
“All right. All right, then. Maybe I won’t patch you up. Maybe I’ll just let you take care of yourself.”
Throwing down the
bottle, then; throwing it down life she had thrown it. Goddamn him. Goddamn him, anyway. He’s a doctor, isn’t he? Isn’t he supposed to?
“Hey, ” I tell him, thinking what to tell him: “Maybe I won’t let you go and patch me up, anyhow. Maybe you won’t lay a single finger on me. Some things for hurting, others for healing. I could lie here, couldn’t I? Lie here still and stain the floor red. A guy can let you save his life when and if he wants you to, but if he’s set his heart on dying, there ain’t nothing that can stand in his way. So you’re just a go-between. You’re just a middle man. You’re just the thing they put beneath the leg of a rickety table. So maybe you oughta stop being so nosy about all the business that isn’t your concern, and I’ll consider letting you save me. But the choice is mine, mister. Mine and not yours.” Saying to him, then, all that can be said about it: “You couldn’t know. You have to help me. It ain’t your choice. You took a oath.”
Eyes then, fullmoons once more, round and soft and endlessly deep, two spots of water on a polished mirror.
“It was your daddy, wasn’t it?”
Thinking: “Goddamn you. Goddamn you, anyway. Goddamn you and the horse you rode in on.”
At the bar, blue-and-white-striped neon sign drawing in drivers like flies to piss, bellies blocking the entrance and bellies talking a good game and bellies hanging like sideways haystacks over green tornfelt pool tables, I saw the little boy walk in. He wore an undershirt and swimming trunks, and his face seemed a mixture of worry and curiosity. He crawled beneath the men’s legs and stepped cautiously around glass patches of broken beer bottles, and when he came to the belly that was owned by his daddy, he tilted his head and spoke something to it. I couldn’t hear what it was the kid said because I was so far away. I also had the itching suspicion that I might have been imagining the whole scene anyway, detail by detail, as it came to pass through the graylit doors of a ramshackle tavern. So what the kid said went unheard, and his daddy had him by the ear and out the tavern door with all the bellies jiggling and shaking in sauced camaraderie. Me, I stood watching, not doing anything.
I am not his son.
“Put it down!”
“I told you to stay in that car!”
“But it was ho-ot!”
“Don’t you talk back to me!”
And then he was up again, by the ear, and with his one free hand the daddy dug about for his car keys in the pocket of his workpants. When he found them he unlocked the tailgate of the yellow station wagon that was his, threw the wailing boy in headfirst, and locked the tailgate behind him, leaving the key bent and inserted so the plastic pushlock would remain in a down position. He grabbed a plank of rotting lumber and wedged it in the station wagon backseat, using it as a sort of partition between the seat and the flatbed so there was no way the boy could get out. His daddy made a sour “I suppose that’ll show you” face at him through the steamed-up station wagon window, spit on the ground, and trudged back into the tavern. I watched the bellies ripple in response to the man’s return.
“Put it down! Please! Oh God, put it down!”
He looks at the gun in his hand. He looks at her and he looks at me. He is crying below it and maybe I should feed him.
“All right. All right. I’ll put her down. All right. All right. I know how to do it. ”
I went to the station wagon window and stood staring at the boy locked inside. He was crying something at me, but the words were muffled by the thick glass window. So I wrote him a message on the steamwet glass; I wrote something to him that I could write.
“Z-Z-Z-Z-Z.”
I am not his brother.
And then his wormwhite finger scribbled from the other side: “O-K.”
So Daddy takes the gun and tosses it in the fishing lake. It is late at night and Mama doesn’t want us to go but we do anyway. He says he’ll take good care of me—“I know how to do it”—and she says she fears for our lives. “If you aren’t back in the space of an hour, I’ll call the police.” By God, she will. And him with that gun in his hand all the way, glinting in the headlights of passing cars, until we pull up at a fishing lake beneath the overpass and walk across the railroad tracks and down the pebble hillside and through the old weed-eaten go-cart lot to some trees that lead to the fishing lake itself which is a good one boy and has some trout in it even if it is smackdab in the middle of the city. And him saying how we’ll shoot us some fish, damned if we won’t—how we’ll wait in the darkness for them to rise for air, and then, when they get a lungful, boy, well nail ‘em, shoot ‘em clean out of the water. And him waving that thing around like it isn’t loaded. And the sad curious way he studies me.
“Son?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Go and catch me a squirrel.”
“A squirrel? What for, Daddy?”
“Never you mind. Just go and do what your daddy tells you.”
I go away and come back because I cannot find a squirrel.
“Son?”
‘Yes, sir?”
“Did you catch me a squirrel?”
“No, sir. They were all to sleep, I suppose.”
He does not look at me.
“Then go and catch me a whitetail dove.”
And I go away and come back because I cannot find a whitetail dove.
“Son?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Did you catch me a dove?”
“No, sir. They were all too fast, I suppose.”
He does not look at me.
“Then go and find me a rabbit, boy. The quickest rabbit in the woods you can find. We have to have something,” he says, “to shoot.”
And I go away and come back because I cannot find a single quick rabbit.
“Son?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Did you catch me a rabbit?”
“No, sir, no. They were all too slow. You wanted one quick, but I caught every one.”
And he looks at me then and pulls the trigger back.
“Well. How fast can you go? How fast can you run?”
And I fall at his feet, tearing the earth.
“Not fast enough, Daddy! Not fast enough!”
So he takes the black metal thing and tosses it in the fishing lake.
“I know how to do it, ” he says, finally.
He gathers me up and he carries me home.
At the corner of Caritas and Pennymont he sat, legs crossed Indian style, head thrown back in drunken song.
John, Ja-cob, Jin-gle-hei-mer Schmidt,
That’s my-name-too!
When-ev-er I come out,
Peo-ple al-ways shout—
John, Ja-cob, Jin-gle-hei-mer Schmidt!
Da da da da da da dal
He wore a red-striped tanktop and his muscleless arms and shoulders drooped and sagged inside of it. His gray slacks were caked in filth and his naked yellow feet dangled in the gutterwater. When he sang his chest collapsed in and out like an accordion draped in flesh, and a high-pitched whistling noise rushed from the toothless hollow of his mouth. He held a bottle of MD 20/20 in his right hand, and a Mickey Mouse watch without a watchband in his left.
“What time is it!” he screamed, cocking a crazy eye and slapping his stomach. “What time is it, children? Oh, yes! Oh, yes!”
I tried to ignore him, but he called to me.
“You there! Come on over! What’s your name? You there!”
I figured maybe I could talk with him and swindle him out of some of his Mad Dog. That would be enough to do me and then I wouldn’t have to go home and risk facing him. I hoped that the wino was a decent drunk too and didn’t have anything lethal or contagious about him. I hoped he was clean some.
I was next to him.
“What’s your name, son?”
He asked it like someone might ask you whether you had a lit bomb behind your back.
“What’s your name, son? Everybody’s got a name, even the poor.”
I started to tell him and he interrupted me.
> “Hush! Hush! Names aren’t important, that’s one thing life’s taught me. Only reason you learn a name is so you can remember to forget it. Yes Jesus sir. I’ll remember you, boy, but the hell if you expect me to remember your name. Even the poor, you know.”
I glanced at his bottle.
“Hey, man. Gimme a swig?”
He grinned and showed me his labrador gums.
“Nothing doin’, partner. First you gotta ask me what my name is.”
The rain commenced to pouring down heavy.
“All right,” I said. “What’s your name?”
He looked at me goofy and cocked his ear.
“What’s that?” he shouted above the rain. “Speak up!
I looked at him.
“What’s your name?” I repeated. “I asked you what your lousy name is!”
Again, he played like he was stonedeaf and stump-mute. The hand wearing the watch flew up to his ear.
“How’s that?” he said. “Reit’rate yourself! This old boy’s got wax in ’em!”
I planted my fist on his shoulder and leaned over and bellowed in his greasywhite ear: “Your name, I asked you! What’s your goddamn name!”
He jumped to his feet, let the Mad Dog break on the ground, and proceeded to perform a drunken sidewalk jig. “Brother!” he cried, slapping my arm—
John, Ja-cob, Jin-gle-hei-mer Schmidt,
That’s my-name-too!
When-ev-er I come out,
Peo-ple al-ways shout—
John, Ja-cob, Jin-gle-hei-mer Schmidt
Da da da da da da da!
I left him there, dancing naked-footed in the broken glass and pouring down rain.
“Later, John Jacob!” he called after me. “Everybody’s got one! Even the poor!”
His nose presses against the glass door. Clouds uncurl around an opened mouth. He is watching her, but she doesn’t know. I am watching him, but he doesn’t know. It is because his eyes are my eyes and his hair my hair that I am watching him who is watching her and how, in turn, we are all watching each other. It is because he is not my brother and she is a whore that I see the things I see and do the things I do. And through the glass front of the grocery store they both watch each other and pretend not to. Through the glass which is as clean and shiny as the inside of a coquina shell I can see her through him, her who is a whore. I can see she has something to tell me.
Life in the Land of the Living Page 8
