High as the Horses' Bridles: A Novel

by Scott Cheshire

  We walked to Issy’s school, and we walked into the school yard where the two girls should’ve been waiting for us. But they weren’t. We sat on the monkey bars, and talked, and we joked, doing Star Wars impressions, and before long we forgot about the girls.

  And then they were calling out for Issy.

  “Issy! Issy!”

  We looked all over, but we couldn’t find them.

  “Up here!”

  We looked up and saw them standing on the roof of the school.

  Issy said, “How’d you get up there?”

  “The fence,” one girl said. And she pointed at the fence, and how it extended alongside the school, up past a portico roof. “Climb from the roof,” she said. “You afraid?”

  Issy looked at me, and we read each other’s thoughts: We must do this. Everything depends on us doing this. We ran for the fence and climbed like two chimps escaping from a cage, and found ourselves on the portico. We looked up and they were there, two Spanish-looking girls who knew Issy’s name.

  “Whas you name?” one of them said.

  Me? I looked at Issy. I said, “Me?” And I looked back at them, at the hems of their skirts at their knees, and how did girls walk around in skirts? Climbing fences? In skirts? I was getting lost in thoughts of fences and skirts, and then both girls just started laughing. They said, “You can’t get up here? We could do it!”

  They disappeared from our view.

  We froze. And then we scrambled.

  “Here!” Issy said, “Look, a ladder on the wall.” He was laughing, like how come we didn’t see it? A black metal ladder bolted to the brick. We climbed it, and the upper edge of the building gave way to a view of the flat barren roof: broken soda bottles, cigarettes in piles, five-gallon cans filled with I don’t know what like a janitor forgot they were there, a jellyfish pile of soaking-wet condoms, titillating and repulsive, and the girls. They were sitting on a brick rise that housed a large exhaust fan.

  They were laughing and saying, “What took you so long?”

  We walked over, and how did our hairdos look by now? More ridiculous? Less ridiculous?

  The girls were playing cards.

  “You want to play UNO?” one of them asked us, the same one who had asked my name. We sat down on the ground and joined them.

  I don’t know what I’d expected to happen, or what Issy had expected to happen, or for that matter what the girls had expected to happen. But whatever it may have been, no matter how grossly exaggerated, or poorly informed, no matter what kinds of kissing I’d dreamed could ever happen on a girl’s mouth and cheek, it would have paled. And yet all we did was play cards. I saw their skirts, they were there, right there! The miracle of their knees. We played cards on a roof above the world.

  Later that summer we pondered things other than love. We pondered big things like death, but in the same way we had mulled over love on the roof with those girls, wondering how it might feel. We got up close, and we looked, as close as we could without actually touching. Issy and I did what boys do. We secretly watched horror movies, and pretended to be unafraid. We imagined we were at war, in my backyard, and shot each other dead with rifle-shaped branches. We creatively killed a large insect we found under a stone. We looked at its carcass, amazed that it was here, still here, but also how it wasn’t really here in the world anymore. Death had a hard shell, then, black and metallic. And then, one day—did we go too close?—my friend Issy disappeared.

  Something hit me softly on the back. I turned and saw the small wedge of wood, and saw that Dad was now standing in the doorway. He was wearing pants—no shirt, but the pants were clean and white.

  “What? You think I’d lock you out?” He laughed. “Get in here.”

  “So you’re ready to see me, sir?”

  He laughed again. “I was tired!”

  “I was on the phone.”

  “With the pretty wife?”

  “Not my wife.”

  “Baaah.” He turned back into the house.

  “Hold on.” I followed him inside, glad to see him acting more alive. He looked better. I jogged after him, past the bags, past the bathroom door, past the red light, and back into the dining room. Again we sat at the table. The white cat jumped to his lap.

  He took the last sip from his beer and said, “So, I should be gone pretty soon now.”

  Something caught in my throat, I coughed. “Stop. Don’t talk like that.”

  “Tell me now what’s new. I feel rested.”

  I said, “Well. I’m here. That’s new.”

  “Ha!” He slapped my knee. “Isn’t it?”

  I said, “Are you in any pain? At all? You’re too skinny, Dad.”

  “Every day I’m here is pain, Junior.”

  I looked at his side where the ribs were prominent. “Where?”

  “Everywhere.” He looked around the room.

  So I looked around the room. I said, “You’ve got to take better care of yourself.”

  “I’m fine.” He lifted the cat to his face and kissed the neck, his face in the fur. “I’m done taking care of things,” he said. “Since your mother left, I’m tired.”

  “I know.”

  “What do you know?” he said.

  “That she left. And you’re tired.”

  “You don’t know a thing hiding out there in Hollywood.” He pressed his face against the cat’s back. “Good kitty.”

  I put my hand on his knee and the cat swiped at my arm. It ran and hid beneath the table.

  “Be careful with the cats.” He made kiss noises, rubbing his fingertips below the table where the cat was.

  “You were in the bathroom for a long time.”

  He waved it away. “Not what you think.”

  “What am I thinking?”

  “That your old man is constipated.”

  I laughed.

  “I’m fine. I think in there. It’s comfortable.”

  “You’re napping on the john and it’s comfortable.”

  “You don’t get to come here and tell me what’s what.”

  “You’re right.” He was right. “Does anyone come over anymore? Friends from church?”

  “Bah. Your mother had friends.”

  “So no church. Ever?”

  “My dream last night.” He rubbed at his mouth, smacked his lips. “Clouds opening up over church. This is not a church I’ve been to, but it was church, you know what I mean?”

  I nodded.

  “The clouds open up and there are these two big feet. You follow?”

  “I follow.”

  “Tremendous feet, big as Cadillacs. And His robes are swaying there and He’s facing me. But I can’t see His face. He’s way too tall. His head’s up in Heaven. And He lowers himself just enough.”

  “Okay.”

  “He’s hunkered there above the church.”

  “Okay.”

  “And He takes a king-size shit. Right through the roof.” He looked at me, like what do you think of that? He said, “I’ve had that one before. Different, but the same. I don’t go to church anymore.” He peeled at the label on his bottle, looking not especially interested in our conversation. Then he looked at me like, you and I, we get each other now?

  I laughed. “No, I guess you don’t.”

  “It’s all right here,” he said, touching his chest.

  I nodded again. Nodding seemed safe.

  “There are so many things we got wrong.” He leaned in closer. “You have to read it right.” He lifted himself from his chair.

  “Sit down. Please. I just got here and you’re walking away from me again.”

  “I wanna show you something.”

  “You should sit.”

  He walked over to the book on the far end of the table.

  I said, “You hungry? I can make us something to eat.”

  “Sonny boy, food is for the living.”

  I tried not to sound too worried. “You’re ugly, I promise. But very much alive.”

&
nbsp; “You always were funny.” He looked at me like he’d just remembered something, or maybe like he’d forgotten himself and he found it again. “Made your mother laugh all the time. You were a real stinker.” He pointed at me.

  I noticed his pants were painter’s pants, hooks on the hips for hanging tools. He’d painted houses for a few years, and I’d completely forgotten.

  “I saw your mother this morning.” He flipped the pages of the book, looked up. “You still think I’m crazy.”

  “I think you’ve had a very hard year.”

  “Longer than a year.”

  “Mom’s gone a year.”

  “I’m not talking about your mother.”

  I nodded. “Of course not.”

  “You know, she figured things out before she left.”

  What little daylight there was dimmed along the edges of the window shades.

  I said, “I can get us a pizza.”

  “She’s finally gone home, Josiah. Right where she should be. It’s where she always was going. It’s where she belongs.”

  I kept my mouth shut. “You should eat something.”

  “And I’m going home to see her.”

  Bite your lip.

  What I wanted to say was, Dad, you got it all wrong. Death is not a home. Cancer is not a reward. When it comes knocking on your door, you should run. And if you don’t run because for some reason you don’t know any better, you should be taken up and protected. You should be lifted by your son, and slung over the shoulder if necessary, and hurried away to a hospital. Like it or not.

  He made like he was coming toward me, but then he held fast to the chair.

  “Don’t you see, Junior? I’m on your side!” He pointed his finger again and it shook, a slight palsy. “We’re finally talking here.” Then he poked at the book with his finger. “It’s all right here, but you have to wrestle with it. I’m in the Lord because He is in me, you see? Always has been. You see?”

  I stood and walked toward the book, which looked sort of like a Bible, the fragmentary prosy-poem look of scripture, chapter and verse, but it was different. I didn’t recognize the names of the books. No Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. No Genesis. “What is this?”

  “It’s scripture, what else?” He squeezed my hand and grabbed hold of the chair again quickly. His hair fell and covered his eyes.

  I said, “Please. Let me go and get us some dinner.”

  “No, no, you go ahead. I’m gonna go lay down.”

  “You literally just got up.” Or maybe he was right. He just needed rest. I didn’t want to call someone and make too big a deal. He’d start acting like the Dad I knew, eventually, in the morning maybe. In the meantime, the house needed cleaning, and he needed a shower and shave.

  “I’m tired and I take it when it comes,” he said. “Tomorrow will be better, I promise.”

  I combed back his hair with my hands, so I could see his eyes. Still green.

  He took a set of keys from his pocket. “So you don’t get locked out.” I followed him as he walked to the bathroom. He opened the door and the red light peeked from around like a fire. I tried to peer inside but he deliberately blocked my view.

  “You’re going to lie down?” I said.

  The white cat snuck by and went in. He actually allowed this.

  “Wish me good dreams,” he said.

  I let out a sigh. Relented. “Good dreams.”

  He took up my hand to his mouth and he kissed it. I don’t think he’d ever done this before, kissed my adult hand. There was a pink swelling around his mouth, maybe from holding back a cry. His chin quivered. “I’m fine,” he said. “I promise.” He closed the door and he locked it. Shuffled about inside. There was a trickle, a scraping whine from the plumbing, and then a falling jet of bathwater. I figured he was taking a bath. Good for him. I needed to clear my head. A walk. A long walk, outside, in the open air. I opened the door, and whispered a brief prayer for the first time in years.

  I walked back and forth on the sidewalk out front, around the corner, and all I could think about was Dad. And the cats. How were there so many cats? And what in God’s name was going on here? Dad wasn’t sick, as far as I could tell. But what did I know? Maybe he was. Even though he looked terrible, I didn’t want to believe he was physically sick, and I was nervous and totally undecided on how to proceed. Plus all of a sudden, here in this house, I was thinking of Issy, and I didn’t like to think about Issy. I thought of how that same year, in the fall, his father was sort of back in the picture when Issy disappeared, and his mother was getting herself straight, I think. Such a long time ago. I thought hard about it: a Sunday morning, and Issy went to get his dad a newspaper and a gallon of milk. But he never came back. On the news, the neighbors said they saw him come home, paper bag in his arms, and that he was last seen talking to a man in a pickup truck right in front of his house. Which does seem pretty memorable for Queens, because when did I ever see a pickup? But also an old woman from next door said she never left her porch, and she saw him leave that morning and never saw him again. What was it in the eighties? Kids were disappearing like it was some mini-Rapture. One minute they were here, and then poof. Ten years of grainy milk-carton photos and weeping mothers begging for the return of their kid on the local news.

  Like it usually went, Issy’s dad was a suspect at first, but he was cleared. I seem to remember this ruined what was left of that marriage. I definitely remember Mom sitting me down to tell me about Issy. She said she had some news to share with me, and that I needed to be a “young man” about it. She called me that, a young man. And this made such a powerful impression on me, because I’d been called a young man by the elder brothers in our congregation ever since I started giving sermons and scripture recitals at church. “What a fine young man … A fine example for the other boys…”

  But, until Issy, I was just a boy to Mom.

  He and his mother hadn’t been to church that week, which wasn’t so strange a thing because, like I said, sometimes he went with us, and sometimes his dad dropped him off and he went by himself. Sometimes he wouldn’t go to church at all. But by the time Mom talked to me, the whole congregation was already whispering about his disappearance. It was on the local news, in the papers.

  She said, “Young man, this world is sick and tired and broken, and one day our Heavenly Father will fix it. But until then, bad things happen. What you’re hearing about Issy is one of those things, because no matter where he is, it’s not where he wants to be, which is home and safe with his family. I want you to pray for him, okay?”

  I remembered her makeup, and how much she seemed to have on while she talked to me, how there was a lot more on her face than usual, and how the ceiling fan in our foyer was spinning just above us. I came to know the word “foundation” around this time. Makeup fascinated me, because I figured I was supposed to like it on girls but I really didn’t, the UNO girls on the roof wore no makeup, and wasn’t it sort of like paint? This made me suspicious. I used to wonder what would happen if you kissed a girl who had a lot of makeup on. Would it get on your face and your hands? On your shirt? I thought girls mostly wore makeup to hide problems on their face. Issy’s mom, for instance, wore lots of makeup to cover the pocks and marks. Mom, though, just looked so tired. I looked up at her and I considered the safety of ceiling fans, wondering whether the speed at which they spun was quick enough to take off somebody’s head. I was confused.

  Mom and I talked—I don’t think I said much—and then Dad led me into the garage when she wasn’t looking and asked me where Issy was.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  I thought I was in trouble. “But I wasn’t with him. How could I know?”

  He asked me to concentrate, and said, “I don’t mean know where he is like that.” Dad asked me to think of Issy, only Issy, to try and reach up to God. He asked me to see if Issy was in Heaven.

  He said, “You need to take this seriously.”

  “Commune,” he said. “It’s
in your blood.”

  This only made me more confused. So I was relieved when Mom suddenly took me away by the hand. She glared back at Dad, and led me into the house. I couldn’t know what that glare was about, not really, only it appeared Mom and Dad thought differently about some things. About me. They were different people. I don’t think I really knew this before. From then on I wasn’t surprised when they had opposite opinions, or when my mom got mad at Dad for whatever reason. I think it was then, when Dad told me to commune, and when I did try to do it, later, in my room—I seriously did—that I began to question what had happened onstage that summer. Maybe not in some clear way, but I certainly asked myself how what Dad called communing with God was different than praying to God. I prayed to God and I did ask Him to tell me where Issy was. So many times I asked this. I also recall hearing my own voice asking for an answer and I remember making a small sound. A kind of “Oh.” My voice. I heard my voice, it was me. Dad asked me again, later that week, in a roundabout way, and I said I couldn’t do what he wanted. I didn’t know how, and I asked him to please not be mad at me. His face fell. We never talked about it again.

  I want to say such sad and harrowing news of Issy made me cry, made me weep, but it didn’t. Kids are too self-involved. Or I was, anyway, in the way that young kids can be: life will never end, and my parents will always be here.… But there was something. I didn’t know what, a disturbance in my system of things, a first ripple in the unbothered water. Things did not add up. Where did he go? I asked myself that a lot. I prayed about it, thinking maybe I did have special access to God. But He never answered. One afternoon, I went out back and I cut at the one of the maples with a steak knife. I slashed at the tree. I threw the knife at the dirt at the base of the tree like I was throwing a hatchet. I pulled it from the dirt and I looked at the small hole I had made, and I punched the dirt as hard as I could. There was a small rock there and it cut the back of my hand, and like a bruised piece of fruit I now had a soft spot.

  Weirdly, the church brothers started paying me even more attention. They sat me down in the back room and explained that Issy’s disappearance was solid proof we were in the Final Days, and that he was my closest friend was proof of my gift. Satanic forces were actively working against me. Be careful. I must remain strong. And so it was time I give another sermon, perhaps at another local congregation.