From the corner of the station I could see him sitting in his old familiar spot, dressed in his new shirt and pants in his old familiar fashion. A can of Off! sat propped atop a six-pack beside his chair, and I couldn’t see the title of the book in his lap, though I squinted. Wilson himself was busy poring through it, his round reading glasses on the crooked tip of his nose, and all around his head moths and nightflies formed a sort of buzzing halo. A gray stream of hosewater ran below Wilson’s chair and over Wilson’s naked feet, and I could see his tan deckshoes on a nearby vending machine. From somewhere in the background a radio played, and though I noticed Wilson’s lips were moving I didn’t know whether they were moving with what he happened to be reading, or whether he was singing along to the radio station. Knowing Wilson, it was probably something altogether different. He was the kind of fella who thought better three ways than most did one.
I was tempted to stay and shoot the breeze with him, but I didn’t want him to see me looking so punk. He might get worried and try to take me to the hospital or something; he was that type. So I stood behind the edge of the shop and watched him read awhile, waiting for him to maybe doze off a little, but he didn’t show any signs. Now and then he’d rub his eyes slow and hard with his hands all balled up into fists, close his book, and stare off into the distance with a heartbreak look that could drown an orphan in her own tears. I wondered if he was the type of person who didn’t need sleep, or maybe the type of person who needed it but couldn’t get it.
While I was watching him, a woman in a beat-up Chevy pulled in and filled up her tank. She walked over to Wilson smiling and wiping her forehead with a handkerchief. Wilson grinned at her and took her money and said wasn’t it a hot night for the rain and everything. She said yes sir, it sure was, but didn’t he look like he had it beat? She pointed to the six-pack of beer by his side and he laughed and picked one up and handed the sweating bottle to her. She took it and said thank you and now she knew where to come to at three-thirty in the morning when she wanted a cheap tank of gas and a cold bottle of beer. Wilson said maybe the gas wasn’t so cheap and the beer not so cold, but she could come back any time as far as he was concerned. She blushed a little at that and said thank you again and good night, and she drove off in her Chevy which looked like it might not make it around the next street-corner. As soon as the lady’d pulled away, a trucker in a big diesel came in behind her. He was a strapping guy with wild red hair and he swung his rig to the side of the pump, put it in park, slammed the cardoor with a bang, and skipped half-walking half-running on over to Wilson. How-do, Wilson told him, and took his credit card. Just sweet, the trucker said, couldn’t be better. He was on an eighteen-hour run to the capital and back, and if he made it in fifteen, he said, bouncing up and down on his heels like it was cold out, he’d get a two-hundred-dollar bonus. Wilson said that sounded like a tough run, but he wished him all the luck in the world. When he’d finished with the trucker’s credit card, Wilson bent over to offer the man a bottle of beer, but the trucker held up his hand. Union rules, he said, then folded his arms against the side of his head to show Wilson how drinking beer put him to sleep. Wilson laughed and told him all right, all right, he wasn’t the type to put a beer between a trucker and two hundred dollars. The trucker smiled, took back his credit card, said thanks for everything, and pumped Wilson’s hand like a maniac. Then he half-walked half-ran back to his rig and filled her with gas. I wondered why Wilson hadn’t made the trucker pump before he’d paid like he had the lady, but I supposed Wilson was the type to trust everybody for any reason, to let them pump gas and pay for it in whatever order suited them best.
As soon as the trucker had filled his tank and pulled away, Wilson stood and stretched and waved away the bugs and moths around his head and went into his office to turn up the radio. Springsteen was on, and I would’ve turned it up too. While he was in there I proceeded to head off across the station lot as calm as I could so’s to keep from attracting Wilson’s attention, but it was awfully dark at the West Rail. The big neon WR sign had burnt out about a week ago, and as I walked across the lot my foot tread across the rubber tube that rung the bell that told Wilson he had a customer. Sure enough, he saw me, and when he called out my name, what else could I do?
“Hello, you!” Wilson shouted, flailing his arms.
I went over to him.
“Hey there, Wilson. How’s it going? Me, I was just out walking around. Fell down and scraped myself up nasty there a while back. What do you think of this rain? Gee, she’s funny, ain’t she?”
Wilson stood cockeyed, staring at my cuts and bruises.
“You must a fell down pretty good there.”
“Oh, I did! Boy, you should’ve seen me. Fell right down. Was a regular more-on!”
He scratched his jaw and ran his fingers around beneath his collar, sizing me up. At last he shook his head and laughed and flopped back down in his lawn chair, satisfied that whatever fist I fell down on or into was my affair and mine alone.
“Yeah, well. Haw haw haw. I’ve fallen down a few times in my day too. Yes sir!” He bent over and picked up a beer. “You want one of these here—oh now hold it. I forgot. You’re a little too young now, ain’t you? Almost did something I shouldn’t’ve,” he said. “Haw haw haw!” He put the beer back down with the rest of the six-pack, straightened the book on his lap, and cleared his throat. “Oh, this weather shore is something. Can you believe her? I ain’t never seen nothing like her. Hey? You know what?”
“What?”
“You’re just in time.” He stood up and went to his office and came back with two pairs of sunglasses. He gave me one. “Put them on.”
“Why?”
“Now, now. You just do like I tell you and put them on. There’s gonna be an eclipse.” He got up again and went around to the side of the building and came back with another lawn chair. “Take a load off,” he said. I did. When I was comfortable he sat down in his chair and put on his shades. “I look like a real dude,” he grinned. “Don’t I?” I laughed a little and told him he did. He nodded and swallowed and slumped down with his arms stretched out behind him. Half-sitting, half-lying there, he rested in the chair, star-gazing. “I remember my first eclipse,” he said. “I was about your age then. Nineteen something or other, it isn’t important. The week before it came, people couldn’t stop talking about it. Total solar eclipse. It was in the papers and on television. Don’t look directly at it, folks said. It’ll blind you for life. I remember there were barkers on streetcorners selling special solar eclipse sunglasses for, say, ten dollars a shot. Who had that kind of money? Most everyone was asleep when the eclipse came anyway. But my sister and me, I remember, we sat on the roof of our house until four o’clock in the morning, just waiting for the fool thing to show.”
I straightened my sunglasses. “Did it?”
Wilson looked at me.
“Did it what?”
I looked at him.
“Did it show?”
“Oh!” Wilson said. He laughed and picked up a bottle of beer. He looked at it for a while, then put it back down. “Yeah, it showed. Sure it did. You can’t hide an eclipse.”
Wilson was very quiet then. The whole world was. “Wilson?”
“What’s that? What’d you say?”
I sat up in my seat. “I can’t be staying long. What time does the thing show?”
He stared at me, confused. He took off his sunglasses and fiddled with the pagemarker in his book. “What thing? What do you mean, thing?”
I shook my head. “Your eclipse.”
“Oh!” Wilson said, chuckling. “That’s right. Er, well—” He cleared his throat and counted on his fingers. “I’d say about, uh, two hours and a half. That ain’t long, but of course if you’ve got to go.” He bent over to pick up a bottle of beer, then stared at his hand and laughed. “There I go again! Haw haw haw!” He put the beer back down and cleared his throat. “You’re in for a real treat, you are. It’s not every day that
you get to see a meteor shower.”
I stared at him. “Meteor shower?”
“How’s that?”
“You just said meteor shower. I thought there was going to be an eclipse?”
“What’s that, meteor shower? Who said that? I didn’t say anything about no eclipse. Hey!—What happened to your face there, buddy? You’re all beat up!” Wilson sweated heavily through his clothes, and his eyes were ticking nervously. I wanted to tell him that I’d fallen down, but I remembered how I’d told him that already. It wasn’t important, I supposed. Wilson was Wilson. You could take him or leave him. When a man in a station wagon pulled up at the full-service island, Wilson told me to help myself to whatever beer I wanted and hurried off to help the customer. The customer looked Wilson up and down when he arrived to pump gas, and you could tell Wilson had made some kind of an impression. He sure was respectable looking in his white ice-cream suit. The customer didn’t even notice his bare feet and wriggling toes. He just stood there looking him over and grinning from ear to ear. It’s not every day that a sharp guy like Wilson pumps your gas.
The customer paid and left and Wilson came back over and sat down. I got up.
“What’s this? Are you leaving? Hey now—you just got here.”
“I know,” I told him. “But I’ve got to go.”
He ran his fingers back under his collar, looking me over with that helpless way of his. “You don’t have to go. Or do you? Well, well, well. Want a beer?”
He picked one up and held it out to me. I took it and said goodbye. As I was walking away he called out to me.
“Hey! Ain’t you gonna wait and see the comet?”
I told him no, I was gonna go home and sit on my roof and watch it. And sure enough, when I got home, who did I see sitting there on our roof but my brother. I climbed up and said hello.
“Quiet,” he told me. “Comet’s coming.”
“Comet’s coming?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Wilson tell you that?”
“Who’s Wilson?”
He looked me over and noticed the bottle of beer in my hand.
“Give me that.”
“All right.”
“Come on and give it.”
“I said I would.”
Because we were on the slanted part of the roof I had to hobble up an incline to reach where my brother sat. I handed him the beer and he screwed off the top.
“Welcome,” I said.
“For what?” He looked at me sort of wild. “You’re welcome for what?”
“Nothing.”
He turned back around to where he’d been looking, a long line of trees cut black against the night. It was almost pitch dark where my brother was sitting, and I couldn’t tell whether he’d gone inside to clean himself off or not. He also seemed to have forgotten all about the working over he’d given me. He didn’t act in the least bit sorry.
I said his name.
He winced.
“What?”
“You seen Daddy yet?”
“Daddy?”
He repeated the word like he’d never heard it before.
“Daddy?”
I told him yeah. “You been in to see him yet?”
As he sat in the darkness on the crown of the roof he kept his back turned to me, so it was hard to tell exactly what he was doing. I saw his head sort of fall down low to his chest and his whole body started to quiver and chill. His arms rose and fell at his sides like nervy wings, and he brought them to rest twitching against his chest. His teeth made a steady chattering noise, like bones rattling or knuckles cracking or someone knocking at somebody’s door in the middle of the morning or night, and a hysterical song, like the noise of anyone passing away, rose from my brother’s throat. I thought he was laughing at first, as if I’d asked some ridiculous question, but from the way he shook I knew it was more than laughter. From far across the city I heard a siren screaming, and the screaming grew steadily louder as it neared, then less and less severe as it disappeared away. My brother fumbled about for something in the pocket of his pants—his medicine, I thought, or maybe one of the cigarettes from the fresh pack I’d stolen for him. But what he pulled out was neither of these. It was a knife, thin and curved, and it sparkled in whatever light fell across our patched roof. My brother held it tight in his balled-up hand and pounded it hard against the tar, his soft hysterical music growing more and more quiet with the rhythm of his beating.
“Where’d you find that knife?” I asked.
He did not answer me. He fumbled for the bottle of beer he’d put between his legs, and when he found it he took a swig, wiped his mouth, and settled the bottle back on the slanted roof. It toppled over and he caught it and a stream of beer ran down in a line across the tar. There wasn’t much beer left in the bottle, so he hurled it into the backyard and it shattered against a fencepost. I asked the question again.
“Where’d you find that knife there? It’s a nice one.”
He shrugged stupidly and shoved the knife back in his pocket.
“Daddy guv it to me.”
“So you’ve seen him?”
“Yes, I’ve seen him.”
His back kept turned.
“What’s he been doin’?”
“Sleeping.”
“Did you wake him?”
“No.”
“Is he sleeping now?”
He started to shake again.
“I don’t know. No. Wait. I, I don’t think—”
I wanted to get closer to him so I could understand better what he was saying, but I was afraid to get too altogether near him, what with the knife he had and everything. He sounded like he was still gone on his medicine, and I wondered if he’d gotten any more from our daddy. I said his name again.
“Stop it. Stop saying that.”
I was quiet for a little while, then I asked him about the medicine.
“No,” he said. “I didn’t get any. Daddy’d gone and drunk it all.”
He drew the knife back out of his pocket and began to write words he couldn’t read on the bumpy tar roof. As he moved the knife in the dim light I could see long smears of red on the blade. I wanted to ask him how they’d gotten there, but I was afraid to. From the way he’d been talking I knew his head wasn’t very much with him.
“Can I see your knife?”
“See it with your eyes,” he said.
All the while I’d been there he’d only looked at me once, and when he had it was as if he’d been ashamed to. He kept his back to me, and though his sad singing had stopped, every couple seconds his body would bunch up and shiver like a snake uncoiling. He acted like maybe he was sick or worse. I remembered the time our daddy’d said that in the end you can’t be any sicker than dead. “Have you gone in to see him yet?”
It was him talking this time.
“No,” I said. “You want I should climb down and—”
“No!”
He was up now, standing before me, the slanted roof adding to his height and the long knife glittering against the crooked sky. He was more in the light than he’d been before, and I could see how wet with blood he was. I went so far as to reach out and touch him. Sure enough, he was slick with it.
“I killed a man,” he told me.
I didn’t believe it.
“You’re just talking.”
“Like hell I am.”
“Who was it?” I asked him. “Some old drunk?”
He looked at me and smiled. “That’s it exactly.”
The next thing I knew he was scaling down the trellis, the one that hung beside our daddy’s bedroom window. As I followed my brother I peered through the curtains into my daddy’s dim-lit room and saw him lying on his back half-off the bed. He looked about as dead to the world as I’d ever seen him, but at least he was so gone he couldn’t hear us.
“Did you really kill a man?” I said.
My brother and me were in the tool shed now. He was banging around for s
omething or other.
“I told you I did,” he answered, not looking at me. “An old drunk. Like the type that huddles each night on Caritas. He tried to knock me down, tried to hurt me, and I had this old knife Daddy guv me. I didn’t want to kill him, but you know.”
I reached out my hand and touched the wet blood again.
“You just killed a dog or something, didn’t you?”
He looked at me, looked through me.
“Believe what you want,” he said.
I followed him through the backyard and out onto the street. A ball of light fell across the sky, and a whip of wind tousled my brother’s hair.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“I’m going to your mama’s house.”
I told him I’d just been there.
“Liar!” he swore. “You lie like a rug!”
I told him it was the truth, but he said he was sick of all my lying.
“Why don’t you just head back on home?” he told me. “Why don’t you stop all your following me around? If you’ve been to her house once already tonight, why don’t you just butt the hell out of it?”
When I said I would, that I was sick of following him halfdead and bloody all across town in the middle of the night, that I’d go right home and tell Daddy where he was going, and what he’d been doing, he practically begged me not to leave. He needed me, he said, at least for a little while. He hadn’t really killed a man, see. All the blood was from him wounding a part of himself, on account of he was so mad at not having any medicine. He was real weak and needed someone to look after him, and couldn’t I see from all the blood that he wasn’t in no shape to be left alone?
Life in the Land of the Living Page 12
