Gargoyles

by Bill Gaston

  One significant thing was said when Mrs. Barastall asked May if she would please promise to finish a college degree. May promised, looking embarrassed, as if she had just taken part in something out of a corny movie. At the same time she looked stricken by the knowledge that she had just made a promise she would not easily break. She sucked a tendril of hair — Andy liked her long bronze hair — and stared at something past her feet.

  “Can I shoot baskets now?” Roger Junior whined in a whisper to his father.

  He was told “in a while.”

  “C’mon! You said ten minutes and I —”

  Roger had his son hard by the arm and glared down a warning. The boy wouldn’t look at him and began to struggle against his father’s hold.

  “You said!” Roger Junior looked wildly helpless, and ready to scream and thrash.

  “Roggie!” Sandra pleaded.

  Then a reedy, “Please . . . I’d like . . . to go for a walk.”

  So attuned was everyone to the possibility of Mrs. Barastall’s whispered voice that it instantly stopped the commotion. Roger released his son’s arm.

  “Mother, you’re too weak.” He paused. “Why not . . . why not wait till you gain some strength?”

  His mother gave him a look of disdain. Andy expected a fight now. Mrs. Barastall hated being lied to.

  But she smiled.

  “I’m eighty-two, Roger. And I would like to go for a walk.”

  Her eyes had a glow, and self-surprise in them. They drifted ceiling-ward, as if picturing something.

  “I’ll just go get the wheelchair,” said Sandra, smiling rigidly and getting up.

  “No, dear,” whispered Mrs. Barastall. “I want to go for a walk.”

  Roger and Sandra met eyes. Roger raised his brows and held them. Sandra sent him the tiniest shrug.

  “Maybe we could open a window, Elena?” Sandra asked.

  “Walk,” the old woman said, and shook her head.

  “Maybe after a little nap, Mom,” offered Roger, though he watched only his wife while saying it. Sandra was nodding hopefully.

  “I would just like to go for a walk,” Mrs. Barastall repeated. She looked close to tears now, or a fight had she the strength.

  To his dismay, she looked at Andy. Painful as it was to meet her gaze, it would have been awful to look away. He knew exactly what she was trying to say to them. Horribly, no one else in her family seemed to.

  “But Mom, I . . . don’t think you can walk,” Roger told her softly. He looked ready to cry as well. He clearly did not like saying such words.

  “But I . . .” Mrs. Barastall began. A tear rolled onto her cheek.

  “We can all . . . I mean, we can all help,” Andy said. “One on each arm.”

  Roger and Sandra looked at each other again. Roger released a long sigh through his nose.

  “Would you like your pill first, Elena?” Sandra asked her. “I know it’s a bit early, but ...”

  “No, dear. As I’ve told you, I don’t think I need them any more.” She tried a smile. “I want to . . . enjoy this.”

  “But, Mom,” Roger stepped in even as Sandra was pulling the blankets aside, “you can hardly even turn over as it is. A pill . . .”

  “It’s okay,” Sandra said in instructive singsong, not looking at her husband as she helped Mrs. Barastall sit up, it seems having finally understood what Andy already knew, and what the old woman hadn’t been able to say, which was that she wanted to walk one last time.

  It took a long while and some organized patience to get her into slacks and a sweater. She wouldn’t hear of wearing a bathrobe. Then socks and shoes. Absurdly, running shoes.

  Roger Junior looked about to explode from fidgeting, but the hurt of his father’s hand had scared him into keeping still.

  They lifted her to standing and, at last, taking two- or three-inch steps, each one begun with a grimace and followed by a sigh, with a son at one armpit and a daughter-in-law at the other, Mrs. Barastall passed beyond her bedroom door.

  She stopped, turned and whispered something in Roger’s ear. Roger turned and said to his son, in a voice that broke, “Grammie says she hopes you will bounce a basketball as you walk with us.”

  They moved slowly down the sidewalk, so slowly that if watched from a distance they would have appeared not to be moving at all. Mrs. Barastall’s foot lifted, moved a bit forward, descended carefully, touched down, and tested itself to bear weight. After a pause and several measured breaths, the other foot would begin the process.

  During one such pause, Andy thought he heard her whisper, “To fly on one’s feet.” Then he wondered if instead she’d said, “To die on one’s feet.”

  Mrs. Barastall often stopped altogether. Then she would pick up her head to see where in the neighbourhood she now stood. A particular house or tree would impart something to her and she would smile.

  “Mrs. Gilroy has done well this year,” she said almost a block from the boarding house, having noticed a healthy stand of late-blooming flowers. Then she directed her family’s attention to the bright green window trim of the next house. “Eccentric,” she whispered.

  With her they walked, in a tight pack, a son at one side and a daughter by marriage at the other, then a grandson and granddaughter, and a boarder at the house she owned. It somehow seemed to Andy that she owned the neighbourhood too. That because of her age, and her patience, and the way her eyes knew the hidden details of the place, she owned it in a way that went beyond property and such. Even the way the sun lit her up spoke of this. It was easy to picture her as a girl here, a girl enjoying decades of the same sun on her face, its deep evening light angling in between these same houses.

  Mrs. Barastall paused at an overhanging branch. A single leaf at the very end of the branch had already changed colour, orange with one corner dead brown. She brought her hand up and swatted it. It fell.

  “That one’s me,” she said, and smiled to let them know she was joking.

  They continued to move with her. The pace had bothered everyone at first, but now they were accepting. Even Roger Junior’s basketball bounced in a steady, almost contented rhythm. The old woman’s complete lack of hurry, her perfect patience, made Andy think of the word royal. Watching her, he also thought of the word matriarch, and for the first time felt he understood it.

  Mrs. Barastall turned right then and caught Andy studying her. She smiled, her eyes very alive.

  Andy didn’t know why but, as soon as she resumed walking, he envisioned another culture, a society that revered old people. He pictured a strange parade, in which Mrs. Barastall was carried high up on a bannered platform, on the backs of bare-chested men about the age and uniform size of her son. Strangely, the images came less from any TV show or suchlike that he could remember, but more from the Barastalls themselves, including himself, walking along in this full evening light. He pictured people of all ages lining the path as she passed before them, she the longest-lived of all. They were comforted at seeing her, at seeing, in her, their own potential good life. At the end of the walk there would be rituals, and a feast.

  Mrs. Barastall stopped again, and Andy almost bumped her. She turned around to look at May, who had dropped a pace back to walk beside Andy. Her grandmother caught her eye and then pointed a finger to indicate a house they were approaching.

  “Doris,” she whispered to May. “Doris Honey. She was a white witch. Lovely . . . sense of humour. And very good to me.”

  Mrs. Barastall continued her walk. They followed her almost imperceptible lead. Maybe it was the heavy light, Andy thought, but a power, it looked like, radiated from her. It was clear in her face. Andy wondered if Roger was seeing it too, for her son had stopped talking and now just stared.

  It was pride at having lived fully and long, and it was pride at being able to walk. And, in a deepness that must be the well of her heart, she could feel something new, and surprising: a pride at having lived at all.

  And she was proud to have this family, and to
walk with them in such a neighbourhood. It was only natural that she should be proud. This was as colourful, as rich, as any walk before it had been. It was rich because it carried her whole family, who were her adornments, and who wore all their fear and love on their faces. And because one was an eleven-year-old boy who thought little of this event, wanting only to branch off and play his games — which was only right. It was colourful because here was her daughter-in-law who had never liked her but who respected her well enough now, just in time. And here was her granddaughter who had been drunk and who was no longer a virgin, but who had such a future, and whom today Mrs. Barastall had seen giving Andrew the boarder a sideways look that smacked of inevitability. So young, so ancient, so rich.

  And here was her son, holding her up, a part of her own flesh that would keep carrying her after her body was gone.

  It was no effort whatsoever to pull all of this behind her in a procession and show it off to the world, because it was now so ripe, because it had become her body and because she found pride in all of it.

  Mrs. Barastall was not at all surprised to see the way the sun began to shine, and come out of itself, at that moment. Or that so many friends and neighbours who had been looking from their windows were now out of their houses to line the streets, dozens and dozens of them, waving to her with delight and welcome. So many of them she had not seen in years. Some looked mischievous in seeing her, like they could hardly wait to speak.

  THE GREEN HOUSE

  We were walking by the house the day it got painted. All we knew was the Ditchburns had moved. I was fourteen, my four friends roughly that. We watched the new owners walk in and out pointing at things, proud and nervous. These owners seemed newer and more nervous than most. Some relative or suchlike stood high up a ladder rolling bright green paint under the eaves, a sharp, aggressive green that said nothing of trees or grass but instead some bad chemical. We knew the painter was one of them because he traded shouts in the same language. She was heavy, absurdly kerchiefed, and far too farmlike to fit in with our moms, or this our neighbourhood. Her shouts sounded, as Bobby Kerry put it, “like a dog trying to bark in human.”

  Only later in court did I learn where they were from.

  “Who’d want a house that shitty colour?” This was me talking. Someone said retards, someone said pimps. Out of sight, we exploded in guttural coughs, Chinese screams, spew of anything foreign and stupid that came to mind. It sounded so lunatic I doubt the woman had any inkling such noise was our version of her. But so it began.

  Every neighbourhood has a Green House. Sometimes it’s red, sometimes purple, sometimes mauve with canary yellow around the windows. They’re all the same. Even kids know a Green House when they see one. Neighbours talk behind the backs of Green House owners and avoid them. The clothes they wear show they’re from a Green House as well. They send their kids to school in awful shirts. You imagine they’re well-meaning and friendly, probably overly so. If you ever went to their door and asked for a cup of sugar, they’d bring the cup promptly, two cups, smiling too much.

  Nothing excuses a Green House. And if the neighbours — who were our parents — felt right to groan and sneer at one in front of us, that was enough reason for us kids to show the Green House no mercy at all.

  We started innocently. That spring we hardly noticed them, so busy were we with school and baseball, and a new thing — stunned excitement about girls. But we passed the Green House each day after school. Someone would look up and say, God-look-at-that-fucking-house, and we might shout in tongues again or make up stories. How they were inside right now eating mice and cabbage, or screwing through a hole in the sheet, or sponging their armpits at a handpump they’d installed in their living room. We called them the Gooks.

  Sometimes both the Gooks would be out in their new yard raking and pruning. They looked almost normal, in fact more boring than normal, though oddness was there if you looked for it, which we did. She had the dumbness and square body of a peasant in National Geographic. He was too thin and moved too quickly with his shears. Hair black and full, a bushy moustache, and yet a very wrinkled face. I guessed he’d been sick, though I didn’t say so. His clothes suited neither these suburbs nor an office. I could think of no other word to describe his clothes than “communist.”

  With his shears and fast loamy hands, Mr. Gook was the gardener, while Mrs. Gook, with her apt body, her hoes and baskets, was the labourer. And as the spring climbed to summer their garden became a remarkable thing. Flowers, roses, blooms of all colours grew against each wall of the house and out into the yard. These blooms were not only a childish and gaudy ramble, it all clashed against the chemical green.

  My parents had been calling them “the immigrants,” and now they took to calling their house “that toy box.”

  Walking to the park one evening (to sample some Valium from the Kerry’s medicine chest), we witnessed the Gooks hosting a barbecue party in their front yard. None of us had ever seen a barbecue in a front yard, exposed like that to the street. Passing not twenty feet from what looked like huge sausage sizzling on a brand-new grill, we were so embarrassed at this show of uncool we had to put our heads down. But worse was the party itself. We’d been raised on a version of barbecue where same-looking couples, summer dressed, held drinks and chatted. Sometimes kids were included, maybe a few captive teenagers like us. The host might wear the latest funny apron. The women’s drinks would be light-coloured and tinkle with ice; the men’s darker in the glass, or a bottle of beer. The host would shout, all would gather to eat, and that would be that.

  The Gooks’ party was an assortment of freaks, wonderful eye-food. Men in greasy T-shirts, big straight-haired silent women wearing starched bags. An old man in a wheelchair, smoking a massive curling pipe. Two fat old ladies — we couldn’t believe this bounteous fuel for scorn-out — dressed head to toe in black, sitting away from the rest and not speaking. The few kids our age, one of whom waved to us but got nothing back, seemed of another world as well, their haircuts and clothes reminding us of a corny Ol’ Yeller pack of hicks. The one who waved wore a jean jacket proclaiming Sgt. Pepper on the back, but without the jeans and sneakers required of it his hickness was all the more glaring. All the guests guzzled from great wicker jugs of red wine, or from a bottle of clear booze that looked homemade too. A man my dad’s age was weeping openly and thrashing his arms around. Others tried to calm him but ended up thrashing their arms too. All this in a front yard.

  Hours later, when too much lethargy pushed us from the park, we happened upon a dead squirrel. Dave MacIver toed it onto its back and said, “I know.” We got excited again for a few minutes, though no one moved very quickly. The plan was to put it on the Gooks’ barbecue. We carried it with a forked stick and stood at the Gooks’ gate. All was dark and quiet.

  “But they might think it just fell dead of the roof,” I said, always the thinker.

  Al Cody snuck between two houses and came back with a toy boat, a bulbous red plastic tug with a smiling face comprising the deck and smokestack.

  “Still not enough,” Bobby Kerry said, digging in his pocket. Out came a dollar bill. A sacrifice at our age, but the perfect touch.

  We crept down the walk to the Green House and then quickly back, stifling giggles. A squirrel, a happy-boat, and a dollar bill sat on the grill, waiting for the Gooks in the morning.

  We weren’t bad kids. Except for Dave McIver we were decent students, and athletic to boot. But though it’s true that for a time our actions were fouled by the darker humours of adolescence, I did and still do blame Dave MacIver for much of what happened that Green House summer. He’d failed a grade or two and was older than us. At fifteen MacIver looked like a mature pug. His head was too large, his nose too small. A front tooth stayed chipped for years. It did occur to me that, of us friends, his family most resembled the Gooks — they were the poorest in Deep Cove, his parents had accents, his father shouted and drank, and their small house stayed unpainted for as long as D
ave’s tooth stayed chipped — but I never put two and two together. Why we put up with him and even followed his lead I’m not sure. Likely because he was bigger and tougher, glamour for fourteen-year-old boys being identical to glamour for animals.

  All the same, I didn’t talk to Dave MacIver much after the summer. And when it came to naming names, his jumped off my tongue easily and without any guilt at all.

  The week after our barbecue joke, the Gooks had that haunted look. Bobby Kerry, who’d just seen a movie, said they looked like Italians who got a dead fish in the mail. MacIver didn’t get Bobby’s joke and just butted in and hissed out his latest plan. Yes, we’d all noticed those wine jugs in their carport.

  We began by making leisurely crank calls on weekend nights to see if they were out. It was the usual embarrassingly bad kid stuff: Hello, is your refrigerator running? etc. Al Cody put on a passable German accent and deep voice, pretending to be a government official who wanted to see their papers. When I took my turn I heard a raspy female voice say, “Vot?” and then a babble at someone away from the receiver. Clearly, they hadn’t been understanding one silly word. Only MacIver took a different tack. Tense at the phone, his lips pulled back from his teeth, he’d yell at the top of his voice, “Fuck off faggot freaks.”

  The next Saturday night they didn’t answer so we wandered over. There in the empty carport sat the jugs, five of them, all in a neat squat row. We looked around, hopped the fence, and hustled in. One of the jugs had a thermometer thing, lively with bubbles, stuck in its top. This MacIver plucked and broke casually under his foot. For the first time I had inklings. The look on his face scared me.

  We ignored the fizzing jug and those of us who could manage it took turns pissing into a nearly empty one. We lugged the other three out and over to the park, two of us leading and trailing as lookouts. Bobby Kerry dropped and broke one. I suspected even then that he did it on purpose, for he’d been the most squeamish about this prank, and when we sat to drink the wine he had a candy-ass excuse for heading home.