by Dale Peck
Or the other way around.
The two boys laugh. If nothing else, they’ll always have this in common.
Ma was nineteen when she had Duke, Jimmy says then. He looks up at the boy. But who cares, right? It’s not our, our … He struggles for a word. Not our responsibility, right? Not our problem. It don’t have nothing to do with us.
The boy looks at his half brother. He had been about to mention his namesake, but suddenly he can’t face the thought of Jimmy saying that that has nothing to do with him either. That it doesn’t affect him, doesn’t matter. Because even though weeks might pass between thoughts of the first Dale Peck, the boy still knows Jimmy’s wrong. He just doesn’t know why.
Yeah, right, he says to Jimmy. It’s just, you know, weird. To think that if things had worked out between Dad and his first wife, you know, we wouldn’t be here.
You wouldn’t, Jimmy says, his attention already drawn back to the pitch on his hands. What isn’t weird in this family?
It’s almost fully dark now. The boy can’t believe Jimmy can see anything on his hand. He is just picking at them for something to do. He picks at his hands and at his shoes and then again at his hands, and neither boy owns a watch, so they don’t know how much time has gone by when the old man emerges from the bar’s back door. A trickle of music announces his exit, and then a faint but cheerful See ya later Lloyd! and then the old man stumbles out into the parking lot. When the door slams closed behind him he stops suddenly, standing up straight and putting his hand to his chest as though he’s been shot, and then he relaxes and shuffles into the Barrens.
Close one, he says, and laughs quietly and pats himself on the shoulder.
The boys hide behind the dumpster until the old man has disappeared into the trees, then set out after him. Darkness and the need for silence slow them, and the boy can hear the old man’s crashing shambling progress grow farther away.
C’mon, hurry, he says to Jimmy. We’re losing him.
Relax, Dale. We’ll just wait and see which way he’s going and then head him off.
A branch snaps under the boy’s foot then. He feels it before he hears it, its springy resistance beneath his bare sole, and then the crack erupts into the dark forest like a little bomb, and when the sound fades the boy realizes the old man has stopped up ahead of them.
The boy peers through the darkness. The trees are all black spirals, like crazy straws sucking up tar, and visible only against the faint haze of emerging stars.
Who’s there?
The boy looks toward the voice. That stooped shadow, wavering slightly? Is that the old man, or just a squat pine shivering in the breeze? The boy can’t tell.
Vernon, the old man calls. That you?
The boy wants to ask who Vernon is but doesn’t risk speaking. But Jimmy seems to understand, and shrugs an I-don’t-know.
Vernon? the old man calls again. Come on, Vernon, don’t be sore. I was only joking back there.
A gust blows a few blades of grass over the boy’s foot like a spider’s delicate stalking, and the boy nearly jumps out of his skin. He suddenly realizes he is terrified and elated at the same time, though he has no idea why. He wants to scream and giggle both, but Jimmy has his finger over his lips.
Sshh.
Hello? the old man calls, and then: Jimmy? Is that you Jimmy? He laughs, Come on out, son, you don’t have to hide from your old man.
Something happens to Jimmy when the old man calls to him. Longing and rage seem to compete in his body. His hands curl into tight fists, but his bottom lip trembles and sticks out as if he is going to cry. For the second time that day the boy thinks of his namesake, the first Dale Peck. Does he too long to hear the word son from a father’s mouth? Does he long to hear it, and kill the man who says it?
Jimmy’s breath is so loud through his nose that the boy thinks the old man must hear him for sure.
Hello? the old man calls one more time, and then a moment later he resumes walking. All righty then, he calls as he stumbles and crashes his way through the underbrush. Come and get me if you want me.
The stooped shadow was a pine after all. The old man was several feet to the left.
It takes a long moment for Jimmy to relax and then they follow the old man for a few minutes more and then Jimmy hisses, Damn!
What?
He’s heading toward Carl’s. He must be on a real bender. We’re gonna be out here all night. Be lucky if we get anything off him at all. He pauses, looking over at the boy. It’s hard to tell with just the stars and low moon for illumination, but the boy thinks Jimmy is looking at him with pity. Ma’s gonna whip you for sure.
Where does the idea come from? The boy can’t say. It is just there, as fully formed as a slide projector image appearing on the blank wall of his mind.
You still carry around that penknife?
What? Yeah, why?
Give it to me, the boy says. And take your arms out of your sleeves.
Wha—
Up ahead the old man’s voice reaches them, faint and warbling.
Oh my darling, oh my darling—
Just do it, the boy says. And hurry it up, unless you want to be out here all night.
Who knows why Jimmy complies? The conviction in the boy’s voice or the constriction of his new shoes, or the way the old man had spoken to him as if he were almost his son? He digs the little knife from his pocket and hands it over, then slips his arms out of the sleeves of his undershirt, the white fabric bunching around his neck and narrow shoulders like a scarf.
Bend down.
Dale—
Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Clementine!
C’mon hurry, he’s getting away.
Jimmy bends and the boy pulls his undershirt up over his brother’s face the way Gregory had done earlier in the day. He uses the long tail to knot it snugly in place, then puckers a little piece of fabric out over Jimmy’s right eye and saws it off with the penknife, then repeats the procedure on the left. Throughout the surgery Jimmy stands slightly stooped, the way he does when his mother cuts his hair in the kitchen, and it’s only when the boy has cut the second eyehole that Jimmy stands up and blinks several times as if he is just waking up. His father was taller than mine, the boy thinks, looking up into his half brother’s covered face.
This is a bad idea, Jimmy says then, but there is lust in his voice too. A bad, bad idea.
The boy does his own shirt quickly. It is hard to knot the shirt over his head with his eyes covered and the knife in one hand, but eventually he does it. The shirt is like a veil. No, like a caul: translucent but not transparent. It actually seems lighter in there than it is outside, as if—yes. As if his face is submerged in milk.
Quickly, jaggedly, he cuts eye holes in the stomach of his shirt. He looks at his half brother through them. Shirtless. Hooded. Knows that he is looking at a mirror of himself. Jimmy’s skinny stomach is moving in and out rapidly, his breath ballooning the shirt over his mouth with every exhale. The boys pant in unison for a moment, as though they have already done it. The knife in the boy’s hand is slippery and wet as if already coated with the old man’s blood.
Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Clementine!
They seem to know not to speak, so instead they scream, their hyas! and whoops! and hi-yees! gradually melding into the Indian battle cry favored by suburban kids all over the nation.
Woo-boo-boo-boo-boo-boo-boo-boo,woo-boo-boo-boo-boo-boo-boo-boo!
They tear through the Barrens, scaly branches lashing at their bare chests with a pain that is luxurious, energizing, liberating. The boy imagines blood streaking down his chest and ribs, painting him like a true redskin. The fallen tree he leaps is the body of his brother brave, murdered by the white man ahead. He will avenge this and a thousand other misdeeds. He will right the wrongs of history.
The boys scream and run and whoop and holler their way toward the old man. They go faster as they get closer, their voices disintegrate into an uninte
lligible garble of high-pitched syllables. The boy is far ahead of Jimmy but he doesn’t think about his form, about the placement of his feet or the rhythm of his breath. He isn’t running a race, he is running from Vinnie Grasso and Bruce St. John and Robert Sampson, he is running after Julia Miller. He doesn’t think about leaving Jimmy behind but rather about closing in on the old man, closing in for the kill. His arms fly out from his sides as though he were trying to beat back a swarm of bees, the knife still tight in his right hand, its exposed blade slicing through the air.
When he comes upon the old man it is as if he has grown three feet taller in his rage. The old man is a little thing that barely comes up to his waist, appearing suddenly out of the ground, arms upraised, mouth open, lips moving in frantic but silent supplication. The boy has time to realize the old man is kneeling just before crashing into him and rolling across a small clearing. In the night’s one act of benevolence, the knife flies from his hand and disappears into the dark white sand.
The boy sits up, blind for a moment, dizzy, then adjusts the shirt over his face. He suddenly realizes the old man is screaming.
Mercy! Have mercy on an old man! Mercy, mercy!
The boy scrambles to his hands and knees. For a moment he thinks he is going to be sick and his head drops, but then the nausea passes and he looks up again. The old man is on all fours staring at him, his mouth quivering but silent. His gaze is so seeing that the boy thinks he must be able to look through the shroud covering his face. Then:
Please, the old man whispers. Please, I beg of you.
He reaches one hand out and open in front of him. It shakes in the air, the fingers spasming and twitching.
I’m just a drunk. A drunk who can’t even make a fist to defend himself. Please. I beg of you. Have mercy.
And then Jimmy crashes through the trees. His foot carries the weight and speed of his sixteen years behind it. It catches the old man in the ribs and stretches him out on the sand. Immediately Jimmy is kicking him in the legs, the ass, the kidneys, his voice still screaming out of his mouth in a garble of hate and rage, and at the sight the boy finds himself running toward the old man on his hands and knees like a dog toward a downed deer. Still on his knees, he plants himself beside the old man and pummels his face. The old man curls himself into a ball, his face buried in his hands, his voice a constant stream of Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop!
And suddenly they do stop, the boy kneeling and panting at the old man’s head, Jimmy standing and panting at the base of the old man’s spine. They have not hit him particularly hard, or long. The old man is still conscious. He remains curled up with his face in his hands, his voice subsiding into a thin wordless mewl.
Down at the other end of him, Jimmy bends slightly, rests his hands on his knees. The boy too is suddenly exhausted. His rage is gone, even the memory of it fading. The old man looks so small on the ground, smaller than Lance or even Gregory, and the boy wants to do nothing so much as lie down beside him and sleep.
Jimmy comes down on one knee heavily, flips open the old man’s jacket, reaches for the wallet in the inner pocket. There is a bottle there as well, and he throws it into the trees before taking the money from the wallet and replacing it in the old man’s pocket, and then he folds the old man’s jacket closed again, as if closing up his chest after surgery. He sits back on his heels. The shirt over his face is stuck there by sweat, taking on the shape of the skull beneath the skin. The money is a thin sheaf of bills in his right hand, and the boy stares at it in incomprehension. Is this what they were after?
He is still staring at the money when it, and Jimmy’s hand, floats upward. Why is it floating? The boy’s mind cannot process even the simplest information: it takes him several seconds to realize Jimmy is pointing at him with the hand that holds the money, several more to realize why: the shirt over his head has come unknotted, exposing the right side of his face. It is at that moment he realizes that the old man is not in fact whimpering wordlessly
My own boy. My own and oldest boy. My one and only boy.
Holding the shirt in place with his left hand, the boy stumbles up and out of the clearing, Jimmy hard on his heels. They run without direction until suddenly they burst out of the Barrens onto a street—Sixth, the boy sees when they reach the first corner. There are no streetlights and only a few houses, so the street is nearly as dark as the forest. The boys tear off their shirts and stuff them into a trashcan in front of one of the houses. For a moment they look at each other’s uncovered faces as Adam and Eve must have looked at each other after eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and then they make their way home.
They have walked all four blocks and are turning the corner onto Second before either speaks. Then Jimmy says,
What’ll we tell Ma? About the shirts?
Tell her we got in a fight. Tell her I ripped yours.
She’ll whip you sure.
She’ll whip me anyway.
But it is later than they thought: their house is dark, and the boys climb up the fallen elm and sneak in through the loft window. Before they do, the boy pulls the ribbon off the elm sapling and stuffs it in his pocket. Upstairs, he and Jimmy pull off their pants and pull on fresh undershirts and climb onto opposite sides of the bed. Lance and Gregory sleep in the center of the bed, Lance already slipping into the crease between the mattresses, Gregory’s arm thrown over him in a proximate transfer of affection. The boy and Jimmy lie down and turn their backs to each other.
The boy doesn’t know what time it is when his mother’s voice awakens him. Eyes still closed, he flinches, warding off a blow that doesn’t come. When she speaks again, he realizes she is downstairs.
If you just wait a moment, officer. I’ll get him.
When he opens his eyes he sees that it is still dark. He looks at the window across the room as he listens to his mother’s heavy tread on the floor below him. The ladder rattles against the side of the loft, then creaks as she puts her foot on the rung. He could push it down before she got up here, but she would just stand it up again. He could probably make it out the window too, but then what? He is in his drawers, the police are downstairs. Even if he didn’t dress, just grabbed Duke’s cutoff pants and bolted out the window, they would beat him to the base of the dead but still condemned elm tree—twice tried, twice convicted and sentenced to death. And so he just lies there, listening to his mother mount the ladder behind him. The back of his head is only a few feet from the ladder and he imagines he feels her breath on the top of his head when her face clears the floor. But it is just her hand. Her finger, which she jabs into the crown of his skull. She hisses,
Get up!
He turns and looks at her. She is in her nightgown, her brown hair thick and curly and wild around her face, the gray strands catching the light from downstairs and glinting as though sparks were being generated by the malevolence of her mood. Nothing tempers the loathing in her face. Her nose is wrinkled, her lips curled back as though assaulted by a noxious odor. Her finger reaches out again and pokes him right between the eyes as though he were a dead mouse on the bed.
Hurry it up. The officers don’t have all night.
By the time he dresses and gets downstairs she has taken her place on the couch. Two police officers stand just inside the closed door, thick and shapeless in their dark uniforms. There is an impatient expression on the face of the taller one, a bored look on the shorter, but there is something else on both their faces as well. A look of distaste, and something else. The policemen stand as close to the room’s exit as possible, their hands in their pockets and their eyes focused determinedly on their shoes.
The policemen aren’t unfamiliar to the boy—they have brought the old man home on more than one occasion—but for some reason he has never been able to remember their names. Even now, approaching them as slowly as possible in the tiny room, he reads their nametags and the names there disappear from his brain as if wiped away with an eraser. Then a sound distracts him, and he look
s over and sees the old man curled in a corner of the room, half concealed by the couch and muttering to himself. He could be cowering or just sleeping. Both are possible. Both have happened before.
I’m sorry to keep you waiting, officers, his mother says then. But I thought the boy should see this. Let it be a lesson to him.
The officers look at his mother and then they look at the boy and then they look at their feet again, and the boy realizes the expression on their faces is shame.
I’m worried, you know, his mother continues. He’s been a thorn in my side since the day he was born. Disobedient. A troublemaker. Getting held back in school.
Once—the boy starts.
You shut up! His mother’s finger, the finger that had just awakened him, shoots straight out from her shoulder at the end of her arm. It flies across the room and pierces his throat, stealing his voice.
You see what I mean? she says, lowering her arm. The boy has to learn his place or he’s going to turn out just like his father. She settles back on the couch. Don’t let me keep you from doing your duty, officers.
The policemen stand by the door a moment longer. The taller one shifts his weight from foot to foot. Then the shorter one shakes his head and says under his breath,
Criminy. Lloyd! he says then, louder. Lloyd, c’mon. Wake up.
The old man waves a hand at the offending noise as though it were a fly tickling his ear, or a cat, or a child.
Lloyd, the shorter policeman says, starting across the room. C’mon now. Time to wake up.
The old man is waving his hand again when the shorter policeman grabs it and turns him roughly onto his back. His face, the boy sees, is puffy and red, his left eye slightly swollen and purple.
Let’s go, Lloyd. We been here long enough as it is.
The boy looks over at his mother then. She is staring at him with a look of deep and abiding satisfaction on her face.
Don’t be looking at me, she says. Look at your father. Look at what’s in store for you.
But the boy isn’t looking at her. He is looking at the pile of orange peels between her slippered feet. It looks as though she ate the whole bag. When his mother sees where he is looking she kicks the peels beneath the couch.
