by Gil Brewer
I drew away slightly and Norma’s arms were taut and warm around me. Then I held her close because her breasts were good and her body was warm and more demanding than yielding.
She breathed hard now, with her face hard, and she wasn’t crying at all that you could see, only way inside she wept and screamed with it, with her eyes dry and hot like a flame.
“Yes, damn you,” she said, breathing it out with her eyes hot and dry and wide open.
The open door of the sedan flapped gently in a soft gentle wind which came breathing along over the lake among the trees, with warm Florida smells of humid dampness between the singing shadows that swooped black and blinding and full of harsh and bitter pain. The open door of the sedan swung gently and all the red yelling of the blood cleaved through the shadows. The open door of the sedan swung gently, to and fro. Wild and with unseen tears in the sunny afternoon.
I hadn’t been near Cypress Landing in a good while. It had grown some, changed. The main street glittered with chrome and plate-glass windows, fresh sidewalks, and newly laid road. People on the streets looked more browned by the sun and they wore more white than I recalled. The cars seemed longer and shinier and they traveled faster.
Modernity was settling in and I realized there were a lot of tourists. Even in summer. It hadn’t been that way. We passed the sheriff’s office and I supposed Clyde Burkette still lounged behind the scarred desk in that room of many smells. Clyde had never liked me much, though he did like my brother Frank. The whole town knew how Frank and I hated each other. I wondered if Frank would be at home with Mother now.
Norma and I had quit the bottle. But we still felt the liquor. I certainly did and she’d hit it harder than I had.
She motioned out the window. “Look.”
On the right side of the street a sand-colored building façade of planes, angles, and plate glass supported a sign of heroic dimensions reading: “FRANKLIN GARTH.”
The sign said nothing else.
“He’s gone great guns.”
I nodded. “Yeah.” Nothing else. Just Franklin Garth. He was that well known and the building had cost money. I tried not to think of that.
Leaving the business section, small and tidy, the smoldering lethargy of oldness set in. The streets were relaxed and quiet as they had always been; the houses crouched and heat flaked beneath spreading shade trees and supple palms awaiting God knows what without impatience but maybe with a kind of careless scorn.
Then that changed as we struck the beaches. New developments again. White and green and mauve and pink and tan cement-block cubicles baked in an ash-like wasteland of sand, breasting the Gulf of Mexico. Trees had been uprooted. New palms withering and sparse and crippled, rooted like dead men with one arm raised, fingers clawing at the sky, burned out, hellish and forlorn. The mark of civilization—like fly specks in an erratic line across the sticky side of a postage stamp.
Here and there the richer places, beautifully landscaped, carefully kept, but sided by sand and somehow sad.
“I want to go to my place,” I said. “The barn. Remember the barn?”
Norma had wept afterward at the lake and we hadn’t talked since. I hadn’t wanted to talk because of Leda; she was like an iron clamp on my mind.
“Yes, I remember the barn. It’s a mess, Eric. Needs cleaning. I used to go there sometimes and sit.”
“Oh.”
“Don’t worry. I’m all right now. Nobody else ever went near the place, unless maybe that man—Lenny. He went there sometimes.” She paused. “I saw him looking in the window once. Looking at that statue you made of a modern Venus.”
“How is Lenny?”
“He’s come up in the world some. Nobody knows how. Still lives in the same place, only rebuilt. He drives a car and dresses real sharp.”
“I told you about his collection. You ever see it?”
“You kidding?”
“Sure.”
“My God, I wouldn’t touch him with gloves on.”
She turned off the main highway and pretty soon we reached the barn. It was badly in need of paint and the grass was waist-high.
“I just used to walk down and look around, see that nobody had broken in, sort of,” Norma said.
“Thanks.”
She looked at me, trying not to let me see the pain in her eyes. “Forget it.” She sat there a minute. “You going inside?”
“Not now.”
“Look,” she said. “You take my car. Go on home like you want. I’ll clean the place up.” She looked away.
I didn’t say anything.
“Go ahead,” she said. “You take the car, anyway. My shop’s just up the road. A beach shop. Get more trade that way. I can walk easily. I walked over here lots.”
“Oh.”
“You go ahead.” She got out of the car. “I’ll kind of clean it up inside.”
I looked at her. “You know where the keys are?”
“The same old place,” she said. She patted the purse she took from behind the driver’s seat. “I put ’em here. So nobody could get ’em.”
“All right.”
“You go on, then.”
She turned and stared at the barn. It had a skylight but that was covered over, and the cypress plank sides made it look like a sun-bleached backwoods shack. But I knew it wasn’t too bad inside.
“You didn’t have any luggage, or anything?”
“No. All right. I’ll borrow your car.”
“Yes.”
I left her standing there like that. I turned the car around and headed for the main road. I was going home.
Chapter 10
Here and there, but not very often now, the old, old places could be seen, set well back on the inlands side of the road, or reached only through ageless growths of banyan, cypress, and gum, by sand or clay roads hewed clean by Negro slaves a hundred years ago. And kept clean by Negro men today.
The Garth home was such a place.
Backed by a small, key-dotted bayou, joined to the Gulf by a length of man-made, cement-walled canal in which the hulls of two sailboats rotted, the house hovered hugely above a front lawn a quarter mile in length.
But it was freshly painted. The front gallery no longer leaned and the white columns were new and straight.
There’s money here, thought the viewer. What else?
There were two cars in the long U driveway. I parked Norma’s sedan behind a shiny black Lincoln, got out, and started up the gallery steps. The door opened and there stood my brother Frank.
He looked as if he’d been struck with a board across the face when he saw me. His eyes widened, his face went deep red, then he calmed. It was an abrupt calm, fought down, leashed.
There was no greeting. “I knew it,” he said. “Somehow I knew it.” His voice was as loud as ever and very Southern. Dressed in a milky Palm Beach suit with a brilliant hand-painted tie of orange and purple, he looked even more assured than when I’d seen him in Alabama.
His brightly brown impatient eyes roved quickly over me and dismissed me. And the contempt was in his voice. “I thought you were—”
“How’s Mother?”
He stood with his back to the doorway and said, “We haven’t heard from you, as usual. How— Never mind.” Again the contempt, the restless eyes.
“How in hell could you hear from me? How’s Mother?”
“She’s dying, Eric.” His hands were nervous now. “She’s not at all well.”
“Why didn’t you let me know?” I said. I was seeing my brother now. All right, what are you going to do about it, Garth? You’re looking at him and it’s Frank. How about that? Did you kill him once or a million times?
“Look,” I said. “Why didn’t you write, do something? I had to break out of that place. Is that funny?”
His lips paled slightly. He shook his head. “She’s dying, Eric. Hanging on just like Father. The doc says any time at all.” He cleared his throat, and his eyes danced around, searching, searching. It was al
most as if he were looking for some place to run. “I’m not glad to see you. I couldn’t tell you that then. I want you to know that. Up there in Alabama, it was different.”
“Mutual feeling,” I said with a nod.
“Mother’s been asking for you a lot.”
I didn’t say anything. I knew Frank, and he was plenty disconcerted about something. His eyebrows were hiked with slow amazement.
“Where’s your luggage?” He smiled. Another habit modified, but not broken. Prompted by fear, possibly, he had always laughed to take the edge off scorn.
“Haven’t any. I told you I broke out of there.”
“Wandering rooster come home to roost, with only a shirt on his back. A cheap shirt, too.” He was groping for something. I eyed him, then shoved by him into the cool shadows of the front hall.
His voice was nervous, filled with rabid noise. “The doctor’s with her now. You won’t be able to see her, Eric. He’ll be with her, and he’s left orders. Nothing must disturb her, Eric—”
I kept walking, up the long stairway, down the hall toward the large front bedroom where she would be. Frank was right behind me. I paused, looked at him. There was stark cold fright in his eyes, the most horrible example of naked fear I’d ever seen. “You can’t see her, Eric. She’s sick, dying.”
“All right.”
He pulled at my arm. His touch made me furious and I flung his hand down, started for the large front room.
His voice was tired, resigned. “She’s not in there.”
“How come?”
He shrugged, motioned toward a partly open doorway across the hall. This was what had once been a guest room, one of the guest rooms.
A slim, white-haired man in a gray suit, with a stethoscope around his neck and twirling gold-framed glasses in his hand, stepped into the hall. He blinked at me, then moved lightly up to Frank.
“How is she?” I asked.
The doctor ignored me. “She keeps asking for Eric,” he told Frank. “Talking about him, as always.”
“This is Eric,” Frank said. His voice sounded peculiar. “Dr. Bantram.”
The doctor put on his glasses, nodded as he looked at me. “Then it’s all right now.” He shook his head at me. “There’s nothing I can do. A matter of time and not much of that. The slightest shock—” He snapped his fingers. “Her heart’s like a crippled butterfly wing.” He nodded. “Anyway, maybe she’ll feel better now with you here. No more pretense, eh, Frank?”
“No.” Frank’s voice was hollow.
“What do you mean?” I said.
The doctor nodded at me, patted Frank’s arms, and walked swiftly down the stairs. At the first landing he turned, called back softly. “Going over to the hospital. You can reach me there. I’ll be back around seven this evening.” He went on downstairs.
Frank shoved his hands into his pockets. “You came at an opportune time,” he said.
I stared at him. He slowly dropped his gaze.
For a long moment she was not recognizable to me. The blinds were drawn and she lay in the pale saffron shade of the old four-poster, canopied bed. She lay in the exact center, her nearly shoulderless body and gray head propped by three huge pillows. Suddenly she was terribly old, much older than she should have been. Her thin white face, strong-browed, resigned, was utterly without expression. Only her eyes, agate-like, proved the old hard strength. Her hands were folded over the smooth white counterpane.
“Here’s Eric, Mother,” Frank said.
“I can see, Franklin,” she said. Her voice was kind, smooth, alert, but filled with a nervousness. And death squatted patiently on that bed with an obviousness that was disturbing. “They were all right,” she said. “They told me at first, then they didn’t tell me anymore. You’re alive and well.”
I went over beside the bed table laden with medications and took her hand. “Hello, Mother. Of course, I’m all right.”
Without moving her head, she looked at me from the corners of her eyes. Her cool, thin hand pressed mine lightly, then unfolded like a leaf.
“You weren’t one to write,” she said. “Like your father. But you probably couldn’t write. Were you in a prison camp?” She paused while I groped blindly for an answer. “I wrote you often, had Frank mail the letters. Did you get any of them? Up until the time you disappeared?”
“Disappeared?”
Her face went serious with slight pain. Characteristically, she was holding whatever she felt inside her, not showing it, not letting it out. She was a strong woman.
“I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner,” I said. “What do you mean I disappeared?” In the back of my mind I thought about the letters she had written and knew Frank had never mailed them. I had ceased writing, but it hadn’t made any difference. What did she mean, now?
“Yeah,” Frank said. “Sure, sure. Reckon he was worried just sick. Let you believe all that stuff.” He stood at the foot of the bed, leaning against a post, and nervously bit the end off a slim cigar.
Her eyes blinked his way. Then she folded her hands and stared at them. “You may not even know,” she said. Her hands twitched and her mouth jerked up into a short sharp grimace of pain. “We received a telegram from the government. It said you were missing in action during the line of duty. We thought you were dead, Eric.”
I stood there. I didn’t look at Frank and I didn’t see anything for a red flashing moment. Missing in action. She was out of her mind. Frank was right. I shouldn’t have come into the room. It had jarred her badly.
“Who knew about this telegram?” I said quietly.
“Why, everybody. I told everybody, and they thought it was terrible, Eric. When you walked into the room, just now, I felt like I— Well, I nearly screamed, son.”
“Well, it’s all right now,” Frank said. He spoke rapidly. “He’s back. Was all a mistake. Those things happen. Once I knew a man—”
I looked at him and he ceased. “Did you bring her the telegram?” I asked Frank.
Mother said, “Sure he did, Eric. He’s taken good care of me.” Her eyes shot toward Frank, alert, then back to me. “Now everything’s all right. They tell me I can’t get excited, Eric. If I do, I may die. I have to stay calm.”
I knew I had to break this off. She was becoming plenty excited. Disturbed, too.
“It was all a mistake, yes,” I said. “They made a mistake. I’ve been in a hospital. But I’m all right now.”
“Certainly.” She chuckled. “Have you done any work?”
“None since before the war in Chicago. Just before I went overseas. A bas-relief wall panorama in a hotel in Chicago. Made quite a stir for a while.” I wasn’t thinking about what I said. My mind was on other things.
“Until the city fathers stepped in and tore it down,” she said. “Right? They called it obscene.”
“Yes.”
“You got paid?”
“They had to pay. The contract was filled. The hotel owner liked it. He had no choice. He has it at home now.”
“I read about it, Eric. Wish I could have seen it.”
Frank snorted. “I’ve heard it doesn’t pay much.”
Mother had seen a telegram saying I was missing in action. From the government.
Her voice grew noticeably weaker.
“What about you?” I said. “You look fine.”
“Don’t lie, Eric. I’m dying and you know it. They’ve told you. Feel better now, though. Kind of a shock, you coming home like this, but I feel better. We thought you were dead, for sure. Missing in action usually means that. They put your name on the honor roll in the park, Frank says. Doesn’t mean anything. But it’s there, anyhow.” She chuckled. “Now you can take it off, eh?” She tried to poke me in the ribs but it was a futile gesture which fell short. There wasn’t much strength left in her.
I began to feel a hate for Frank that was incomparable to anything. I watched him light his cigar. Pale azure smoke mingled with the saffron shade. The house was quiet save for the loud sh
rieking of a jay outside the window.
Frank moved to the other side of the bed and sat in an arm chair. He seemed preoccupied with a loose bit of leaf on his cigar.
“I do wish you could have let me know how you were,” she said. “But, of course, that’s your business.” She was speaking with an effort now. Her head moved restlessly from side to side.
“Maybe we’d better talk later. You should rest.”
“I’ve been resting too long already.”
I sat on the edge of the bed. She stared at her folded hands. The jay shrieked. Frank cleared his throat.
“If you had money,” she said, “you could go ahead with your sculpturing now without worry. Right?”
“It would help. It’s a long road to recognition.”
“You remember your father’s business, how it was to be left to you and Frank?”
“Certainly.”
“You know how your father left it? So you and Frank would have it together? It should have been done long ago.”
“Yes.”
“Well, I couldn’t handle it. I was too much like your father. But the business wasn’t to go to you and Frank until I die. Your father left it in terrible shape. I needed someone to help.”
“Frank volunteered,” I said.
“Yes. He not only put it on its feet, but you’ll both be rich. What with everything else, too.”
I waited.
“He made certain conditions and that’s what I’ve wanted to see you about. Only I thought you were dead, Eric!” Tears formed in her eyes and her lips trembled. I could actually see her try to get hold of herself, fighting with herself. Because the doctor had told her she mustn’t excite herself and that’s just what she was doing. She glanced toward Frank. “I’ve been too ill to pay any attention to the business. Frank took it over under a condition.”
I looked at my brother. His head rested back on the chair and he blew smoke into the shadows. He deliberately avoided my eyes. My palms grew damp and I dried them on my trousers. She apparently knew nothing of how Frank was operating. But there was something else here. I could feel it, and I didn’t like it, not even understanding completely what it was.
