by Jessie Haas
She said, “Dad’s dying, you know! He isn’t going to get better!”
Clever Carrie! He couldn’t keep smiling in the face of that.
“Don’t you think you owe it to them not to make trouble?” she asked. “Don’t you think you could make the sacrifice of getting home in time for supper? You could spend the time with Dad; he won’t be around forever!”
“Carrie, he might live for years!”
His protesting voice seemed suddenly too loud. Carrie stared at him, her eyes widening with shock. Phillip was shocked, too, but he didn’t know why. Now he was afraid. The quarrel had gone too far, like a car swooping fast around a corner. He felt the nearness of the void. …
“Yes,” Carrie whispered. “He might.”
When she had gone, Phillip lay still under the blankets. The air vibrated around him. He could hear it, and he could see it, tiny particles dancing.
CHAPTER TEN
Phillip awoke aching. His ribs felt compressed and meshed together. He opened his eyes. Thea, on his chest, gave a thin, rusty cry and started purring.
“Oh, God.” He tried to move her, but she resisted, becoming instantly heavier. He groaned. Every breath was painful. “Mee,” said Thea, smugly.
Beyond his door he could hear the house stirring—his father’s cough, the clash of dishes, voices. Carrie.
He rolled over, tumbling Thea off, and pushed his head deep into the pillow, pulled the blankets over his head. Within the dark cave last night’s scene played through again.
“He might live for years!” And Carrie so shocked.
“He might live for years!”
Don’t you want him to? She hadn’t asked last night, but now she did. Phillip writhed and dug his face into the pillow, trying not to answer her.
Of course …
Of course …
“Ow!” Suddenly his forehead stung. He popped his head up. Thea, crouched on the pillow ready for another dig at him, trilled and slipped inside. He lay there, patting her and managing not to think anymore, until he was called to breakfast.
Carrie was silent and pale this morning. Phillip supposed he was, too. Their mother was determined to keep everyone near her. “What are your plans?” she asked Carrie, twice. “If you’re going to be around, I could fit that new dress for you.…” Phillip, who was presumed to have no plans, was detailed to clean the leaves out of the rain gutters. She must have stayed awake all night, dreaming that one up!
“I’ll help you, Phil,” offered Derek. He had a buttery voice—butter without salt. Phillip avoided accepting but constructed some agreeable scenarios involving Derek and ladders.
“Put the leaves in a garbage bag when you’re done,” his mother said, as he went out the door.
She used to have a butternut tree on the lawn, and the leaves and nuts lay there all fall, unless the squirrels raided. Then it was only the nuts that got picked up. The leaves were always about gone in the spring, and what were left the lawn mower chopped up pretty well. Like the leaves at Aunt Mil’s yesterday, black and crumbling …
Plastic lasts for centuries, forever, and forever these leaves would be locked inside in some stinking dump. The immortality of natural things was lost to them: the rotting and gentle crumbling, disappearance into the soil, being fed upon by other creatures of the earth and rising with them, from a blade of grass or a worm to maybe a hawk or a horse, then a lonely corpse, a pile of manure; down again and up again, circling throughout creation.…
He stepped into the garage with the leaf bag, and the kitchen door banged. Glancing back, he saw a section of Carrie’s sweater and Derek’s arm snaking around it. He stood still.
No words at first, just the arm, and Carrie leaning into it. Then she said, “Oh God, everything’s so awful! First Phillip, and now Mom—she never used to be like this! She never fussed about the house! We polished our furniture every five years, when our worst relatives came!”
“She’s under a lot of strain,” said Derek soothingly. “And Phillip, too. Even at his age it must be pretty hard, not to get any attention—”
Phillip stiffened. Could Derek see him? Would he waste a line like that if he couldn’t?
“Oh, poor Phillip! It must be awful, living here—”
You lived here two months ago, Care. Remember?
“It can be pretty tough,” said Derek. “I remember when my father died … I was younger, of course—”
Phillip heard a faint rustling sound. It was the leaf bag, rattling against the edge of a cardboard box. His hand was shaking; his whole body was shaking. Shaking with rage. He had never done that before. As at a great distance he heard Derek’s buttery voice. “… I didn’t dare need anything. I put myself on hold—” and then his mother came to the door, and Carrie and Derek went back inside.
Phillip flung the leaf bag into the corner and sagged against the door frame. His belly trembled. Damn!
Derek’s car was parked right there in the yard, and he stared at it, thinking of the old fencing staple that he had in the pocket of his barn jacket, scratching down that shiny red paint in a perfectly anonymous way.
But he didn’t want to be anonymous. He wanted to slash the tires and smash the windshield and write “Phillip” on the hood—
“Phillip? Oh, there you are! Will you come in and help Derek move the sideboard?”
Phillip closed his eyes and let out a shaky gust of breath and managed not to scream at her. He went inside and moved the sideboard; moved it back; listened to his mother ponder decorating concepts aloud, and listened to Derek second her and praise her, and go her one better, until all her ideas became his. Watched Derek.
Derek wanted to be watched, wanted to see himself stirring in all those eyes. And Phillip couldn’t deny him that.
Eventually lunchtime. Phillip sat in the sunny living room with a glass of cold milk, listening to Derek explain Carrie’s homework to her.
A sigh reminded him that his father was also present. The television murmured in its corner, but his father looked out the window, where the sun shone.
On a fall day like this, the sun shining, they would have been out hauling wood. They’d have a jug of cider and paper cups, and they’d work so hard that in a while they’d take off their jackets, hang them on the back posts of the truck. They wouldn’t talk much. Once, as they lay on the grass resting, his father said, “It’s too nice to say anything.” The whole bright blue afternoon stretched before them. Even if they’d had something to say, there was no hurry.
When was the last time he’d seen his father outdoors, even for five minutes?
Abruptly Phillip stood up. Carrie turned her pale, mournful face toward him. Pity sharpened to suspicion. He swallowed and achieved a neutral tone of voice. “You guys’ll probably be gone before I’m back.…”
“Where are you going?” Carrie asked.
“Out,” he said. “See you at Thanksgiving.”
His mother turned from the counter, where she was making sandwiches. “Phillip? Lunch is almost ready!”
“It’s too nice. I’m going for a bike ride.”
He was down the steps in two leaps, swinging his bike around and hopping on. His eyes brushed past her round, anxious face in the doorway.…
Now! He put his whole power into every thrust, blinded himself with speed. Go!
By the time he’d exhausted himself he was beyond the school driveway, on the empty country road.
Probably just set some kind of record, Johnson!
Down the path through the tall weeds, past the patch of sand …
Someone’s been here!
What had he seen to make him think that? He stopped, looking around the wild, desolate yard. Nothing moved. Nothing was changed. Puzzled, he turned to walk on. Again something caught him. The sand …
Someone had drawn a tiny symbol there where the sand was packed flat. He crouched to look at it. It was some kind of sun symbol—an open center, slightly mounded, with four double scratch marks radiating from
it, one for each point of the compass. A beautiful, enigmatic mark. Phillip stared at it for several seconds while the back of his neck prickled. Someone strange …
Near the symbol he saw the faint print of a kitten’s paw. Suddenly he knew what he was looking at.
This perfect little sun was where a kitten had peed and covered the spot.
He smiled and stood up. Paused.
It was still beautiful, still a sun. He could envision the serious kitten, turning first one way and then the other as it did its feline duty and covered its mess.
Beautiful.
Weird!
The front room was empty. The bike basket was empty. The water dish was empty, and the food dish was empty.
“Hi, little guys,” Phillip called softly. “You around?” He poured some kitten food into the dish, with a loud rattle.
A rustle in the kindling pile; Phillip’s heart beat suddenly hard. Almost anything could have gotten in here.
But it was a kitten, festooned across the sticks and feeling around hopelessly with one back paw. Phillip carefully drew it out of the brush pile. As soon as he had the kitten free of branches, the purr started.
“Hi! Where’s your brother?”
He heard cracking sounds behind him; the other kitten was crouched over the food, crunching enthusiastically.
Phillip hunkered down, watching their faces: beautiful, like some kind of flower. Their light, silky eyebrows sprang out like stamens, the stripes grew back from the center of their faces in mottles and blotches and inky solid lines, perfect M’s on their brows.…
Sneeze! A kitten backed off from the water, having snuffed some up its nose. It sat and scrubbed its wrist vigorously over its face. Bath time.
Phillip stood up. His toes prickled from being bent so long. He flexed them softly inside his sneakers, suddenly feeling restless. For a moment he tried not to feel that. Then he reached under the kindling pile and dragged out his ax.
Better be careful, he told himself in a mental voice that was like his father’s. Cut yourself alone up here, you could bleed to death.
The streetlamps were just beginning to glow when he reached Kris’s house.
Her mother came to the door, drying her hands.
“Hello, Phillip. She’s walking the dog.”
“She has my homework, up in her room.”
“Well, go on up and get it, I guess. Sunday night—I hope you didn’t have too much!”
“Me, too,” said Phillip.
As he passed the living room, Greg, watching football on the couch, glanced up and stiffened, his bored eyes kindling to sudden hostility. Phillip flushed. He was alone; that was the difference. With Kris beside him he was nothing. Now he was an intruder. He went quickly upstairs, his sneakers silent on the carpet.
He’d been in Kris’s room before, but always with her. Now he pushed the door nearly shut and looked frankly, for the first time.
His books were stacked beside hers, on the desk. On the wall above was a huge poster of a lioness about to bring down a small antelope. A perfect moment, full of weight. Phillip could feel the heaviness of the blow about to fall, and in the twist of the lioness’s tail he felt the mass she balanced.
The antelope was beautiful, too, stretched out in its final run. It didn’t stand a chance.
He turned from the poster, touched the comb on the bureau, with a couple of hairs caught in it, glanced at the photo of Aunt Mil—the only other human in the room—and then, shocked at himself, not knowing at all what he expected to see, he opened the closet door.
Familiar shirts, dresses he’d never seen before, a white slip with lace at the hem. He touched it—and almost jumped out of his skin at the sound of steps on the stairs.
When she walked in, he was seated at the desk beneath the lioness, heart banging, staring at a page of a notebook.…
Shit! Her notebook!
Too late. She was behind him in the doorway. He heard the jingle of Diana’s tags, and then she said, “What are you looking for?”
“English assignment,” said Phillip, completely at random.
“Didn’t you get the handout?”
“Handout? Oh, yeah.” Christ, watch it, Johnson! You were in English! He turned, willing the redness out of his face.
She stood in the doorway, one hand on Diana’s collar, stern and still like a Grecian huntress captured in marble. Phillip recalled the unclothed state of Grecian statues and blushed heavily.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hello.” She sounded faintly surprised and much too much like Aunt Mil. Phillip drew a deep and, he hoped, cooling breath. It was a long time since he’d been quite this big a jerk.
“What you been doing?” he asked.
“The usual stuff.”
But usually on Sunday they went for a long walk together, giving Diana the kind of exercise she couldn’t get during the week. Phillip had been too occupied with his own errands to remember this until now.
“What have you been doing?” Kris asked.
Diana crossed the room and laid her head in Phillip’s lap, slowly waving her tail. For a creature of speed she was oddly measured and deliberate in domestic moments. Phillip scratched her head. Her fur was as close and fine as a mouse’s coat. “I had to hang around home,” he said. “My sister …”
He never lied to Kris, and this effort was not successful. He saw how her clear eyes watched him, not quite cynical, not quite angry, but thoughtful and alert, and he felt a profound stirring of unease.
In his room after supper Phillip hastily sketched an outline for the history project. А С effort, he judged. All he needed was to be on the books with this, present and working. С for camouflage …
Now he took out the English assignment.
Write a brief paragraph or two about
something that has recently moved you.
Over the next few weeks we will work
with turning this into poems, exploring
the various poetic forms and how they
affect the subject.
What hadn’t moved him? He was most movable lately, his heart like a poplar leaf before a storm, never still. He imagined a short paragraph which contained everything: the greyhounds, his father, and Mrs. Farley’s cat, Carrie and Derek, and Kris, the gray house, and the kittens—a short paragraph, to be turned into different types of poems.
Aimlessly the pencil scratched the mimeographed page. Underline “short paragraph”; box it; color in the box, first pale gray, then darker and darker until a depressed, shining black rectangle took its place, and the paper was worn almost to nothing. The pencil turned aside. In the margin the little sun sign appeared. Phillip sat looking at it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
In the morning he dropped into the seat beside Kris, took out the assignment sheet, and pointed to the sun symbol in the margin.
“What is it?”
“The mark a kitten made, covering up its pee. I wrote it up for my brief but moving paragraph.”
“Where did you see this?” Kris asked. She didn’t look up at him, but the side of her face was suddenly still and alert. Ambush!
“On a road,” he said. “On a dirt road.”
“Oh.” She continued to look at the sun symbol. “It’s neat. Hopi, or something.”
“I think it’s on some state flag,” Phillip said. He closed his notebook, took out a pencil, and carefully drew the little sun on the cover. He put a banner around it, rippling martially in the breeze.
“My coat of arms.”
It was a perfect day for soccer. A perfect day for running laps, in a slow, efficient, pleasurable rhythm, feeling the blood begin to move and breathing in the crisp fall air.
He waited, relaxed, while the teams were chosen. Greg was a captain, of course, and Phillip was surprised when Greg’s glittery dark eyes rested on him for a second, then moved on. The person he picked was not as good a player. Odd—Greg never did anything to jeopardize his chance of winning.
“Joh
nson!” The other captain picked him quickly, taking advantage of Greg’s mistake. Phillip drifted over to that group and the yellow vests, remembering how Greg had looked up from the couch last night, remembering his own internal alarm.
The other fullback was weaker, but from the moment the whistle blew, all Greg’s drives battered against Phillip’s position. It was down that side that he chose to make his drives, as if there were no Phillip Johnson in the way.
But Phillip was in the way. He was not as good a player as Greg. He had a talent for obstruction and an instinct for where the ball would go next. Time after time they battled it out, eye to eye, shoulder to shoulder, and when Greg’s eyes grew hot with anger and frustration, Phillip composed his own face into bland innocence. He knew it was infuriating.
Thus, when something changed in the last six minutes of the game, he wasn’t really surprised. The three best players brought the ball down, passing it off between them. Stubbornly Phillip followed it, though the threat prickled along his body whenever he turned from Greg. Near the goal he went for the ball. It flew past him, diagonally to the other outside man, and the man in the middle, Greg, ran over him.
It was a hard hit, from behind. Phillip went down, hearing the smack of the ball against the goalie’s shins; went down kicking, and hurt his toes on some part of Greg’s body.
He rolled over and sat up. His elbow was bleeding, and his shoulder was going to ache; but Greg sat near him on the grass, surprised, holding his shin. So Phillip held his toes, though they didn’t really hurt much, and assumed an expression of surprise himself.
“All right, guys?” The coach was coming over, and they stood up.
“Better get those brakes checked, Greggo!” said one of the hotshots, jogging past. He gave a friendly nod to Phillip. “Good game, Johnson!”
Phillip limped back to position. Good game, Johnson. He had slipped into this school almost without being noticed, which was exactly okay, but he was pleased, and he was pleased when the ball was put into play and the drive came down the other side of the field, brought by a player with only scoring on his mind—and the whistle blew.
