Mama asked once more if he was interested in his real father. No. Brennan was not going to ask about his father, not now. It was enough that he did not belong to Papa. Brennan was the child of that wrong turn and Mama, the right turns of Albert and Dorothy. He was the stag’s son. When Mama had told him to pack his bag, the first possession he put inside was not underwear or books, but his wooden carving of a stag. Lumped in the dryer were some of his clothes, his and Papa’s wound together, and Brennan had left them there. These knots would not come with him to their new home, a two-bedroom rental in Cloudy Valley. The man who owned it was very old, and only concerned that they not have pets. That was a knot so big in his life that Mr. Jenkins asked Mama three times on the phone to make sure.
Papa and Mama had had knots in money and work and babies and school and dinner, and Brennan was glad to leave those behind along with his tangled clothes. She would not give Papa her whole paycheck for the work she did in the vineyard office and out in the fields, and he did not like that she worked at all. He did not like that twice a week she took an evening class at the junior college, and he would not make his dinner those nights. When Brennan went to the kitchen to heat up hot dogs, Papa wailed as high-pitched and brokenly as an infant (No! No! Your mama is to make dinner!) and forced Brennan to the sofa. They sat there for hours with rumbling bellies until Mama came home, and that baby’s wail cut through the chatter of the television (See this? You see this? What kind of mama leaves her son to go hungry?).
But Brennan was eleven at that time, not three, and he knew how to make hot dogs in the toaster oven. Brennan knew how to make sandwiches. He could have made two bowls of cereal or run outside with five dollars to Pancho, the man who wound through their streets pushing a cart and shouting tamales! Tamales! There had been no reason to be hungry. Brennan worried that Mama would be mad at him, but Mama knew that Papa was the baby in the house. Then she made dinner and Papa refused to eat it, since it was too late for dinner and now time for bed. Mama looked out the window as the bedroom door closed and she said how is this my life?
Papa wanted a baby so that Mama would stop school and stay home, and Mama said no. She screamed it. He did not like that Mama was good at her job and good in her advanced computer and English classes, and once he hid the keys to the car so she would not leave. That was before she had a work truck. Mama stole his bike and rode the miles to school. She had had her baby and raised him to be a big boy who could make his own dinner and take his own bath, do his homework and keep his room tidy. A big boy could take care of himself for two evenings a week while his mama attended her lessons. The baby knot had grown and grown every month, every semester, every year. Mama would not unravel it with a pregnancy. Papa had not liked to mind Brennan as a baby, and Papa had two other children in Los Angeles who were much older. He had never done anything to help their own mama, nor did he visit them when he was in that area. Papa had not even wanted a baby until Mama went to school. When hiding the keys did not work, he hid her birth control pills. He egged on Brennan to say that he wanted a brother or sister. Mama looked out the window again and said I cannot live like this much longer.
Papa did not like that he was a seasonal worker and the company wanted Mama all year round. He wanted to move with the harvests and Mama said fine, but she was not. She did not want to do that, nor was it good for Brennan’s schooling. So Papa was gone for months, picking this here, picking that there, going to Mexico to visit his relatives, deciding to stay and demanding Mama move there, too. Mama laughed incredulously into the phone. Here she had opportunities and there she had nothing. Then Papa moved back, here and there and here and there. He was peripatetic and Brennan should not have used that word at home. Papa shouted, “Well, why don’t you just say ‘moves around a lot’ instead of making a big fancy word out of it to make everybody around you confused?”
Brennan had left the knotted clothes in the dryer in Napa, but other knots had followed him to Cloudy Valley. When they got the letter in October about students having to pass a saliva test for Sombra C before being allowed into school, he heard Papa making fun of him. Your spit needs a test now for school? Did it study? Ask your spit, what is a long, long word for ‘moves around a lot’? Papa was not there, yet Brennan heard his voice so clearly.
President Wu had made an address to the country that it was time they resumed normal activities now that they had Zyllevir. From how Mama described the speech, which she heard at work, it sounded like the man was in a knot of his own. The political left was furious at him for locking up people to die. The political right was furious at him for releasing anyone under forty percent viral load from confinement points with only a bottle of Zyllevir and a stamp. Businesses were furious at him for depressing the economy. Grocery stores were furious at him for forcing them to give out Zyllevir and attract the sick to their establishments. The sick were furious at him for allowing restaurants and rental owners and stores and airlines to discriminate on the basis of stamps they were forced to wear.
Everyone was mad at him for not taking action at this time for Sombra C victims above forty percent. They were to stay in confinement and be treated with Zyllevir. Since they did not have full control of their mental faculties, they could not be released. The right thought those people should be killed. The left thought they needed to be treated on a case-by-case basis of danger assessment. Brennan got a headache just thinking about it. Knots!
Mama was happy when Cloudy Valley sent out a letter announcing the opening of its schools at the end of October, since she worried about Brennan home alone all day long. But he was not unhappy. He had a friend in his radio with music; he had garage sales. Brennan followed every sign on the telephone posts and searched the lawns and driveways for interesting things. He had gotten a nano light for his key ring for twenty-five cents and found two model kits, a car and a torpedo bomber. Inside the box with the torpedo bomber was a birthday card that read: to Billy, love Dad. I miss you. Brennan kept the card propped up on his desk while he built the bomber. The card and the stag oversaw his careful study of the instructions, and they rejoiced with him to see how little of the bomber was put together. The kid had popped the plastic pieces from their tree, glued a bit, and stuffed everything back into the box. Brennan had paid three dollars for a barely-used kit worth twenty. He was proud of his find.
See this here! These are white boy toys. Only a white boy wastes his time building something that cannot be used. You name him white and he is white! Brennan had asked for a model kit long ago and Papa said no since they were stupid. But now Papa was gone and Brennan wanted to try them so badly! They had always looked like such fun. He hung the completed bomber from his ceiling, in the spot that caught the morning light through his window. Papa’s voice in his ear could not sweep his fun away.
The car had only cost a dollar, the family thankful to be rid of a box cluttering up their home. It was a present from a distant relative to their son far too old for model kits, and consequently unopened. It had not been opened! Ever! The store’s tape fastening down the lid was still unbroken. To Brennan, it was Christmas in his hands. The plastic components untouched on the sprue, the instructions crisply folded, he worked and worked to build this car under the eyes of the stag and the birthday card.
When it was finished, he smoothed down his hair and showed it to the pretty girl in his clothing magazine. It was junk mail for the previous occupants of the house and Mama had told him to throw it in the trash. He kept it under his mattress, taking it out over and over to look at the girl on page fifty-eight. In his fantasy, she did not laugh at him for building a toy car. She knew that the boy’s hands that built a toy car transformed into the man’s hands that built a real one. There was a crinkle in the page from being under his mattress, one that ran through her little purple skirt and her ankle kicked up behind her in joy. She was happy and that Brennan liked. Not the pouty girl on page fifty-seven, or the one trying to look sexy on page forty-nine. Maybe there would be a happy girl
at Cloudy Valley High, one who saw his toy car not for what it was but what it would become.
High school students were to show up for testing at the district office, which opened at half past seven. The elementary schools had had their own day, the junior high as well, and now it was their turn. Brennan woke early that morning, Mama already gone to work. It was a very long commute, but her job paid fifty thousand dollars a year and provided excellent health care. She wanted to live far from Napa, so that she did not run into Papa at the store, so that he could not insinuate himself back into their lives. No! She was done with babies who were fifty-two years old!
After breakfast, Brennan walked to the district office since it was only a block away from their rental house. Half past six and a girl sat beside the closed doors. He had expected to be the first. Joining her there, both offered polite smiles and looked away. At seven, a woman drove into the parking lot and offered a polite smile of her own as she unlocked the doors, went inside, and locked them.
They opened again, briefly, and she passed a clipboard to the girl. “Just sign your name and pass it down the line as it forms for the test.”
Next his bowel movements will need a test. Study, Brennan! Go and study on the toilet for your test!
Papa saw the shapes that Brennan did not. His fingernails could be a cheese grater if one could not be found; squashed or desiccated bunches of grapes unfit for wine were perfect for Brennan’s lunch sack. People did not eat chardonnay grapes but this was foolish, to look at grapes and not see the shape of food. Brennan wondered right this minute outside the district office what shapes he was not seeing in this strange new town. The girl passed him the clipboard, stretching over the space he had left between them. He lifted the pencil attached by a string and wrote Brennan Ciervo Ortega beneath the careful print of Rosalie Grace Mattazollo. Maybe she wrote her whole name because that was important; she saw a shape that he did not. If it was not necessary, it was her fault, not his. Point a finger and shuffle away.
He wished this knot were not with him still. Why would he get in trouble for writing his whole name? Why dump it on the girl? Why did he need to shift the blame this badly, so that I’m sorry, I misunderstood ranked lower than it’s not my fault? That was a knot of Papa’s. He did that.
Brennan did not want to bring knots to a happy girl, the one waiting for him somewhere. That stopped now, and in his head, he apologized to her. It was just nervousness at a new high school, a new home, new people. There were some boys on his block, high school boys like him, but they were tall and thick and loud and forward whereas Brennan was short and narrow and quiet and shy. He worried about what he might not hear, so he did not speak to them. He worried about everything, even his upcoming English class. He liked math, how he liked math! Last year in freshman algebra, he’d loved the neat, logical lines of numerical and alphabetical script. Algebra did not sit on the sofa pretending that it could not feed itself. Algebra did not shout I want a baby in place of I am your baby. Brennan liked algebra so much better than English, the constant and loathed refrain, “What does this poem mean? What does this story mean? What is the hidden message here?”
The variables hid numbers but they could not be argued. They were not up for discussion. If x equaled four, x equaled four. You could not come at the problem from a different perspective and say x equaled three. X was x and x was four. He had once found a geometry book on campus and paged through it before handing it in. What he saw there, he liked even more. Congruent. Not congruent. Sharp, clear angles. Brennan had a harder time with people, knowing why it was they did the things they did.
When they had passed into Cloudy Valley for the first time, Brennan asked the one question he had of Mama about fathers. “Why did Papa hate me?”
Mama was quiet at the red light and spoke at the green. “He did not hate you. He was afraid of you. Afraid of what you might become.”
“What did he think I would become?” Brennan asked. Once out of Napa, Papa became the past tense.
“He thought that one day you would look at him through the eyes of a boss. Like he is stupid, of no worth because he did not have schooling. His father pulled him out of school after fourth grade to work. But Papa was a smart man.”
When Brennan did not reply, Mama said, “He is a smart man for his circumstances. The world gave him a position and he does what he can within it. The world is giving you a better position. But that does not make you smart or him stupid. Once you passed fourth grade, once you started in fifth learning things that he did not, once I started in school not long after that, our family fell apart.”
That made sense, that Papa made Brennan feel small since Papa himself felt small. Papa wanted Mama to feel small, too. “You were his stag from the dark when you lifted that baseball bat.”
“Such surprise! And the roar of a lioness from my throat! He must have thought I was a zombie gone mad about to bite him.”
Outside the district office, Brennan decided that he was not going to bring his knots to the girl who wrote her whole name. He had to practice so that when he met his happy girl, she would not know his faults. What a joke! He didn’t know what to say to boys, let alone girls. But he had to have an answer to this. Over the knot of their names that presented itself on the clipboard, he asked hesitantly, “Are we supposed to write our whole names?”
The girl looked at the paper. She was small like Brennan was small, even smaller, her hair long and dark blonde, and she had a wispy prettiness about her. He turned his head quickly to pick up on her voice. “I don’t know. Some people have the same names at Cloudy Valley High, like the two Ashley Smiths. It helps to know which one.” Biting her lip in consideration, she said, “There aren’t two Rosalie Mattazollos though. Maybe I should erase the Grace?”
Brennan did not think it likely that there would be a second Brennan Ciervo Ortega at Cloudy Valley High. He erased his middle name, and then his last one since it left a strange gap without the middle there. After rewriting it, he gave the clipboard back. Then Rosalie did the same to hers and passed the clipboard to him once more, since people were coming to sit behind Brennan.
“I’m new here,” Brennan blurted to Rosalie. Why did he say that?
“Welcome to Cloudy Valley,” Rosalie said. “What grade are you in?”
“A sophomore. And you?”
“A senior.”
He would never have guessed this tiny girl was a senior! Her kindness was encouraging, but he didn’t know what else to say and the other students were being very loud. Since she was a senior, he would not have classes with her. Too bad. It was nice to see someone familiar in foreign surroundings. He sat there and thought about what a boy cleverer than he would say to keep the conversation going. Television? Better to be quiet than risk embarrassing himself.
The doors opened at half past seven, and the woman came out to announce she wanted to take people in groups of ten. There were only eight waiting for tests, so all of them followed her down the hallway, which was lined with paper arrows. At the last arrow, she gestured to a room filled with chairs and red curtains. A clipboard was on every chair with a form, and a pen was attached. Brennan filled out his name, address, birth date, grade, schools, mother’s name, and he left blank the space for father’s name. They would not understand that he was the stag’s son. Then he read a march of questions.
Do you know anyone with Sombra C? List family, friends, neighbors, et cetera.
Did you travel this summer? If so, where?
How are you feeling? Circle one. Good. Fair. Poor. (If poor, explain.)
Are you currently sexually active? If yes, do you use protection?
Do you engage in water sports (i.e. swimming, water polo, et cetera)?
Do you have a problem with random testing over the school year?
Brennan filled out his answers. Yes, there had been a man infected at Mama’s work in Napa a month and a half ago. He was taken to a confinement point and every piece of equipment he could have possibly tou
ched was sterilized. No one else at work caught it from him. This had not been very interesting to Brennan, a man getting sick.
Had Brennan traveled this summer? Did Napa to Cloudy Valley count? He left it blank. Circling good for health, no for sexually active, water sports, and random testing, he read the paragraph on the bottom of the page. Should you become infected with the Sombra C virus and refuse Zyllevir for any reason, this will result in your automatic expulsion from the Cloudy Valley School District. A report will be issued to Emergency Health. NO RELIGIOUS EXEMPTIONS.
On the other side of the page was the same questionnaire in Spanish. Then the clipboard was gone from his hands into those of a wide man in a white lab coat, who directed him behind a curtain and said to sit on one of the two chairs. Between them was a little table cluttered with boxes and pens, and a bright red trashcan with a cover marked MEDICAL WASTE.
The man sat in the other chair, which squeaked under his weight, and he skimmed the form. “Did you travel?”
“Could you repeat that, please?” Brennan turned his head. Background noise always made it worse, and they were in a very busy room.
“Did you travel?”
“I moved here from Napa late this summer.”
Circling yes for travel, the man wrote Napa after it. “Tell me about this worker you know. His name?”
“I don’t know. My mother said it was one of the pickers on a crew, a new one who drove in from Modesto. It was early in the morning and he fell down with a fever. The bin of pinot grapes he helped to fill was burned instead of sent to the winery, and they didn’t let anyone pick that block for the next three days.” The sugars had been astronomical by then. “He was taken to a confinement point. That is all my mother said.”
“Are you a religious boy? Do you believe in God?”
“Yes.”
“If you were infected, would you have a problem taking Zyllevir to retard the growth of the virus in your system?”
The Zombies: Volumes One to Six Box Set Page 7
