by Dale Peck
But he manages to tiptoe in behind him, and his uncle shuts the door. The dust in the storage room is thick and warm in the light slanting through the unshuttered windows and reflecting off jars of pickles and jellies stacked on the sagging mantel. The jars were filled by his uncle’s first wife, Ella Mae, and they have sat there so long their labels are unreadable under a film of grime—Aunt Bessie will not open them, even when her preserves run out and she must buy some from the store. The boy sits on a pile of newspaper, still holding the empty pail in his lap, and his uncle lets his own hand cling to the doorknob a moment, then releases it and walks over to the window and stands framed by the light pushing through the remains of an ancient curtain. The sunlight is strong, slightly red, obscuring his uncle’s face in shadow. It occurs to the boy that it is late in the afternoon. In his lap, the empty bucket still exudes a milky odor. It is almost time to bring the ladies in.
All at once his uncle speaks.
Listen to me, Dale. I know you love your family, and you’re right to. They’re your family. But listen to me. There ain’t nothing for you back there, Dale. No future. You go back there and you’ll end up like … you’ll end up where you started from before you came up here.
For a moment the boy had been sure his uncle had meant to say he would end up like Lloyd. Like his father. It is something his mother has said to him many times.
But I can come back, Uncle Wallace. As soon as I finish high school. Three years and I’ll come back and we’ll run the farm together. It could be my last chance to see them, Uncle Wallace. My last chance to be with them.
But his uncle is shaking his head.
Didn’t you learn anything in your time here?
But Ma said it’s now or never, Uncle Wallace. She said she won’t drive up here again.
Light pushes through the closed dirty windows, as do Lance’s squeals, and the boy knows without looking that Joanie and Edi are holding his arms down while Lois torture-tickles him.
Dale! Lance is laughing and screaming. Dale, help!
When the boy hears his name his mind flashes on the other Dale. He is just a shadow now, something the boy can neither hold nor shake off, and he wonders how long it would take before he became just a shadow to his brothers and sisters if he stayed with his uncle. He realizes he is shaking his own head now. His uncle is still looking at him.
Didn’t I teach you anything, Dale? Anything at all?
Uncle Wallace, please. It’s not fair. You know I want to stay.
But his uncle just shakes his head.
You’re breaking my heart, Dale. You’re breaking my heart.
Suddenly the boy’s uncle is in front of him. He has the look on his face he gets when he is about to say something about the boy’s past but his words, when they come, reveal an equally unreal future. The smell of milk from the pail is strong between them, slightly sweet, slightly rank.
Listen to me, Dale. You’re like the son I never had. You’re like … you’re … It’s yours, Dale. Everything I have will be yours if you stay here. Stay here, Dale. Don’t break an old man’s heart. There ain’t nothing for you back there, just stay. Say you’ll stay and I’ll give it all to you. Ah Dale. You’re the son I always wanted.
And all of a sudden it occurs to the boy. He can stay. He doesn’t have to go back. He does have a choice. But as he looks at his uncle before him and listens to his brothers and sisters outside, he realizes he doesn’t want to make that choice himself. He wants someone else to make it for him. He wants it not to be his fault. Whatever it is, he doesn’t want to be responsible for it.
He didn’t even know me, Uncle Wallace. He didn’t even know I was his own brother.
His uncle looks at the boy for a moment and then he shakes his head.
Goddamn that Lloyd. First he took the farm and lost it and now he’s taking you too. I wish he’d never brought you up.
Uncle Wallace, please.
Come on then. You want to go, come on.
Uncle Wallace, no, I want to stay.
But his uncle is at the door. It slams open and then there is the sound of his boots on the stairs. The boy runs after him, still clutching the empty pail of milk.
Uncle Wallace, no, I’ll stay, I’ll stay.
His uncle has the pillowcase off the bed by the time the boy runs into his room. He grabs the boy’s running shoes from the floor, his shorts and team jersey from the back of a chair. He is reaching for the top drawer of the dresser when the boy remembers what’s in there.
Uncle Wallace, don’t—
His uncle pulls the drawer open so violently it nearly comes out of its slot, and the bottles of the old man’s medicine bounce off each other and off his cross-country medals so loudly that the boy thinks they will break, but they don’t. The shallow drawer hangs from the dresser like the cupped tongue of a cow reaching for a lick of salt or tuft of grass, and one of the bottles slides to the lower edge, Lance’s drawers half covering it like a sheet pulled back to identify a corpse. For a moment neither of them says anything, then:
They’re not mine, the boy says quietly, and his words sound like a lie even to his ears. They’re Dad’s, not mine.
His uncle is still staring at the bottles.
Yeah, but you kept em, didn’t you.
They’re Dad’s, Uncle Wallace.
His uncle drops the pillowcase to the floor.
I guess they are Lloyd’s. And I guess you’re Lloyd’s son after all. He doesn’t look at the boy as he walks out of the room. Go on. Get your stuff and get out of here.
The boy waits until his uncle’s feet have made it all the way to the first floor and the front door has opened and closed behind him. Then he packs. When he gets downstairs the first thing he sees is that Donnie has shown up. A string of a dozen shad lie on the kitchen table.
Well if it isn’t Amos, Donnie says, looking over his shoulder. Practically jumped into the boat, he says to Aunt Bessie then. He is standing at the counter on the other side of Aunt Bessie, and the boy can hear the sound of a knife squelching through fish flesh. Couldn’t hardly keep em out.
Well, thank goodness, Aunt Bessie says. I didn’t know how I was going to feed all those children. Dale! she says then, looking up and smiling brightly, as if the confrontation of ten minutes ago had never occurred. Come see what Donnie brought for you.
The boy thinks she means the fish, but Aunt Bessie is pulling a jacket from the back of a chair. She turns it around, shows it to him. It is gold felt with white leather sleeves, and on the left breast pocket is a dark outline where the letter G had once been stitched to it.
It’s his old letter jacket.
Saw it at the back of the closet the other day, Donnie says, his knife slicing through flesh and bone and clunking solidly against the cutting board. The smell of fish permeates the kitchen. Thought you might as well have it, Amos, since I don’t wear it no more. He whirls suddenly, his hands filled with bloody gore. Here you go, Amos, how bout a little caviar to go with your new—
He stops when he sees the expression on the boy’s face, the stuffed pillowcase slung over his shoulder. He looks at the boy, his hands filled with pinkish-white sacs linked together by spidery bits of tissue. With as much clarity as he has perceived anything else on this day, the boy realizes the sacs in Donnie’s hands are the fish’s ovaries, filled with roe.
Aw, Amos, you got to be kidding me.
Now Aunt Bessie is clutching the jacket to her chest.
Dale, don’t. Don’t. You’ll break his heart.
The boy thinks it should be a struggle to keep his voice level, but it comes out as flat and smooth as the frozen river.
Tell Uncle Wallace I’m sorry.
As he is about to climb into the back of the truck Aunt Bessie runs out the back door and presses the jacket into his hands. Donnie says you should take it anyway. She kisses him on the cheek, then runs back into the house.
When he mounts the back of the truck he sees first the back of his mother’s h
ead in the cab and then, beyond her, through the front and rear windows of the cab, Jimmy leading the old man down from the hay barn. The old man is batting at Jimmy’s hands but lets himself be led like a half-trained puppy.
Duke sits at the head of the truck, his half siblings arrayed on either side of him like a family sitting down to dinner absent table or food: Edi with Gregory in her lap on his right, Lois beside her; Joanie with baton on his left, Lance next to her. The boy sits down next to Lois and she rests her head on his shoulder.
I’m glad you’re coming home Dale, she whispers in his ear. Joanie and Edi didn’t miss you as much as I did. I’m your littlest sister, I missed you the most.
The boy puts his arm around her back and squeezes.
I missed you too.
The door cracks open and the old man climbs into the cab. As the door slams closed Jimmy climbs over the back wall of the truck.
Your father, is the first thing he says to the boy in a year and a half, is a drunk.
Muffled yelling comes from the cab of the truck.
Jimmy takes his place opposite the boy but doesn’t sit down. Instead he leans over the railing and looks out at the pasture, where the cows are making their way toward the barn for the evening milking.
Moo, Jimmy calls to the cows in the fields. Moo-oo.
Lance giggles, stands up and joins his half brother at the railing.
Moo! Moo-moo!
They don’t moo, the boy says then. They low.
Jimmy turns around.
They what?
Low. It’s called lowing. He makes the sound as best he can, and one of the cows rewards him with an answer even as the truck’s engine turns over.
Lance giggles. Me-aw! he says, sounding more like a donkey than a cow. Me-aw!
The truck lurches into reverse, nearly knocking Jimmy over. He catches himself, then sits down heavily.
Stupid cattle.
They’re not cattle, the boy says. They’re cows. Cattle are food.
You still eat them, Jimmy says. After they’re done giving milk you eat them. Your uncle told me.
Uncle Wallace never ate one of his own cows. He has special instructions with the butcher.
Jimmy makes a move as if to get up but Duke stretches out his boot and puts it on Jimmy’s ankle.
I’d think it over, Jimbo. Looks like Dale’s put on twenty pounds of muscle in the last two years and you’re the same momma’s boy you always been.
Jimmy looks at Duke and then he looks at the boy and then he settles back against the side of the truck.
Me-aw! Me-aw, me-aw!
Lance crawls across the truck as it starts up the hill away from the farm. Me-aw! He crawls away from Jimmy until he is next to the boy, and then he lies down with his head on the boy’s lap.
I’m glad you’re coming home, Dale.
The boy tousles Lance’s hair.
Will you go to work at Slaussen’s again? If you do go back to Slaussen’s I like bananas the most, followed by oranges and then grapes and then apples. If you go away again will you take me with you?
The boy looks down at his little brother. For the life of him he can’t imagine what expression must be on his own face. He tries to smile but all he can manage is a nod.
Lance smiles up at him for a moment, and then his face clouds.
Guh, he says. Guh, guh. The boy doesn’t understand until Lance reaches up and traces the outline on his chest.
G, the boy says then. It’s a G, Lance. He pulls the right half of the jacket over the left, covering up the shadow of the letter.
Lance nods thoughtfully. Then all at once a smile splits his face. G! G stands for Gregory, Dale? Is that what it stands for?
The boy looks down at Lance, who stares up at him guilelessly.
Did you get it because you missed him? Why didn’t you get an L? I really missed you and my name starts with L. L for Lance.
L for Lois too, Lois says sleepily.
The boy thinks of the letter ceremony he won’t be attending, the medals he left upstairs on his cousin’s dresser, in his cousin’s bedroom. He places his hand against the worn patch of felt on his chest, and thinks it is like a missing puzzle piece where his heart should go.
Over Lance’s head the boy can see Jimmy staring at him. When he sees the boy looking he looks down at his chest, and the boy turns and looks at Gregory, who has fallen asleep in Edi’s arms.
They were all out of L’s, the boys says, turning back to Lance. He pulls him all the way onto his lap. But I missed you too.
7
No, meow. Like a cat. She thought she was a cat.
Don’t they usually think they’re a king?
I said cat, didn’t I? She thought she was a cat.
In my experience they usually think they’re a king. Or something like that. Delusions of grandeur, ain’t that what they call it?
The boy’s parents’ voices scale the ladder as though a pair of cats themselves. They settle heavily on his chest next to the lighter weight of Gregory’s hand. Downstairs the pipes cough when his mother turns the faucet on, and then, when he hears the water run smooth, the boy presses his thighs together. Friday morning, eight A.M.: he has been awake for two hours—desperate to pee for a good forty-five minutes.
A cat, Ethel. She crawled out on the ledge like a cat. Stark naked of course. Meow, meow, kitty cats don’t wear no clothes, meow. Why it is the crazies have to get naked I’ll never know.
The water stops, a pan settles heavily on the stove.
Well, his mother says, and the boy can hear the self-lighting stove click for several seconds. Like she said. Cats don’t usually wear no clothes. The burner ignites in a quiet whoosh! and a whiff of gas floats up to the loft.
They don’t usually talk back either. Which is more than I can say for some people.
Since Duke left at the beginning of the week, Gregory has been sharing the bed with his older brothers, but this is the first time he didn’t sleep wedged in the crease between Lance and Jimmy. He was there on the edge of the outer mattress when the boy came in from Slaussen’s last night, and when he woke at milking time his brother’s arm had been slung over the boy’s torso, his elbow on the boy’s stomach and the slightly cupped fingers of his left hand on top of the boy’s chest. His mouth had hung open and his breath on the boy’s cheek had been wet and sweet—stale, but sweet too—and the boy had decided to stay in bed a while longer. No cows to milk after all. But he’d waited too long: the old man had stumbled in from the hospital just before seven, waking his mother, and now the boy is stuck in the loft until his mother goes to work and the old man passes out. Unless, of course, he’s willing to risk a confrontation this early. Which he’s not. Instead he tries to concentrate on the tiny weight of Gregory’s fingers, cupped over his heart like a stethoscope. Tries to ignore the heavier pressure in his bladder and ears. Down by his hips his fingers are curled into loose fists as if squeezing an imaginary pair of teats, and he tries to ignore that as well.
Born naked, his mother is saying now, as if that answers the old man’s question. An egg cracks against the side of a pan, sizzling as soon as the albumen strikes the hot metal, then a second joins it. They usually get naked when they think they’re a king too. Emperor’s new clothes, right?
A cat, Ethel. Jesus Christ, how many times do I have to say it? And besides, it was a girl. Girls can’t be kings.
Can’t be cats either.
A third egg cracks into the pan, and the sound of the percolator joins the cacophony. The boy doesn’t understand how his brothers and sisters can sleep through it. Doesn’t understand how he used to, before.
Anyway, the old man’s rasp cuts through all the other sounds. The orderlies can’t get her to come back in. They’re all like, Come on, Jeanie, come back where it’s safe, and this girl Jeanie’s all like Meow, meow, kitty cats like to crawl on ledges, meow. The old man screeches the last meow with particular relish.
I know what a cat sounds like, Lloyd.
Meow!
Lloyd—
Gregory turns in his sleep and the bed creaks beneath him. He turns away from the boy, his face searching for a cool spot on the pillow, then turns back toward him again. In the process his hand slides off the boy’s chest and wedges between his own skinny thighs, his cheek presses against the boy’s bare shoulder. If the boy looks down the tip of his nose he can just make out Gregory’s mouth, puckered open like the rim of a fishbowl between his plump cheeks. At two and a half, Gregory’s face is still baby fat, but his arms and legs are as skinny as an old man’s.
Don’t go waking them kids, Ethel. You’ll be cooking eggs for the next hour.
His mother’s spatula scrapes loudly over the surface of the pan.
Joanie and Edi can cook em breakfast if it comes to that, they’re old enough to take some responsibility around here. His mother snorts. Besides, it’s probably just your son, pretending to be asleep.
The boy can smell it now, her breakfast. Eggs and coffee. He hates the fact that the odor makes his mouth water, his stomach rumble. Hates it almost as much as the fact that when he gets downstairs he knows he’ll find nothing but a pan with a residue of dried egg on it.
What’s that? the old man says now. What’d Dale do?
He didn’t do nothing, his mother says. As per usual. Boy’s as useless as his father.
My boy, the old man says dreamily. My own boy.
His mother’s spatula scratches viciously at the pan.
