The Weight of Glass

by Stuart Heatherington

  Deep, penetrating laughs struck away at the darker layers of me as I hit the surf. Majestic waves rocked the surface of the ocean. I dove into them, surfacing for air as I stretched out the distance between myself and land. At the point I could no longer stand I laid back and closed my eyes; let pulling currents stir at the restless spirit of the boy forgotten inside me.

  “If I said I didn’t miss you, I’d be lying.” Part of me meant it, and the resounding clarity of that brought with it surprise.

  Back inside, I toweled off at the kitchen, facing the foyer. Picture frames hung everywhere: brown and red ones mixed with a few too many black to count, the occasional silver, even some without frames made it with the help of tack and tape. A collage of young and old faces filled their eccentric borders, and left me speechless.

  I drifted over them without thinking. Some appeared new, ones left behind by longtime vacationing families, a few of which I recognized. But something drew my eye to a larger black and white. Older than the others, the age of the small boy in it could be no more than five or six. His handsome smile basked familiar with love, a love so deep it still navigated the rivers of my heart. Around his shoulders sat the weight of a father’s arm. Looking at it wasn’t fair. I desperately wanted to remember that time, but I couldn’t; the picture remained a secret from me. I knew it had been taken here. Shot somewhere on the beach maybe.

  My fingers touched the glass. The shear action of it reconnected with the past. I let it stay too long. Long enough to understand I still missed Dad.

  I pushed up all the windows in the house. Let a steady breeze stir through the rooms. Something familiar surfaced in the smell of the place. More than that, it seemed to envelope the senses, to sweep away the fog out over the reefs of my brain, where the coffee had not quite cleared the air. Finishing with the beds, I laid out towels and wash cloths, while making a mental note of things to jot down on the grocery list.

  Later on, I rummaged through the kitchen taking inventory. When I pushed a stack of drawers closed, the top one emitted a soft, scratching sound, which reverberated against my fingers. Like a buzzer it found a rhythm, a signal of curiosity in the brain. I pulled it back open and squatted to look inside. Far to the back and buckled over against the underside of the countertop were a group of pictures. One bent entirely in half, probably from the six-year-old phone book I’d tossed. Most were crimped at their corners, another nearly torn in two.

  I felt like an archeologist, exhuming the bones of the past. Jesus, where did you guys come from? They were old photos, black and whites with ribbon edges, shot from an old camera that required looking down through its pop-up top. The green light came on almost instantly as I fumbled with pictures of my siblings running across the beach. And just like that I began to cry. One captured me unfurling a kite, while everyone else played in the water. String fed the sky out of my upraised hand. A wash of ocean swelled around our feet, swallowing our tiny footprints in the distance.

  I flipped to the next. The air in my chest froze up. All the joy sucked away in a single flash of disgust, colored in by my memory. Each of our faces shared a common trait except for the frail looking boy removed off to the side. I attacked the image of our stepbrother with a burning hatred. Even as my fingers tore him out of the picture, I cursed his name. Felt the poison on my lips and the terrible race in my heart. If it were possible to wish someone out of existence I would have gladly exhausted the option on Marcus Tucker. Even dead, he wasn’t dead enough.

  The last photo stuck off the bottom of the one before it. Pulling them apart crimped the edge and distorted the shape of the thing. But what I could see right away were my two sisters, Amy and Darla, running across the sand skipping hand in hand. I forgot how beautiful they were as children. Now that one of them was dead.

  You had no fucking right Marcus. But time does that though, takes away things, puts them in a drawer for you to find, or in some cases an urn. Yet the photo captured a moment of innocence. And as I straightened the picture further that innocence shattered under the weight of what was hidden in the left-hand corner. Blurred and misshapen, I still recognized the vague contrast of the man’s jaw line. The Good Shepherd was too hard to forget as an adult. My throat dried out staring at him, a sandbox of ancient memories. He was the black in the darkness, the thing that lived in the shadows under the floor of the stairs for me. Further out in front, and not in focus, were his legs and the vague shape of a book. Tucked inside the pages, an index finger revealed a single ring with the shape of a cross. The one my stepfather wore.

  You don’t scare me anymore, you fuck. But lies feed off lies, don’t they? I knew what it felt like to have my brain put a plastic bag over my heart and suffocate in fear. Nothing moving in your chest, the valves caught all wrong, pulse like a knot waiting to be untied. And then the room turned on its side. The photos fell across the floor in slow motion, lost among my feet in a collection of silence. I lunged for the first chair, but my legs wobbled and found the floor instead.

  I balled up the photo in my fist. “Fuck you.” And slung it toward the wall and missed and watched as it skittered across the floor into the kitchen and under the stove. “You’re dead you son-of-a-bitch!”

  Looking up, my nails had turned ghost white, as if the bones in my fingers pressed up through them where I gripped the table.

  “You and your goddamn son too.” And I wondered if that was what fear should feel like, if it resembled a dirty swab that wiped out all common sense. I was sure it did. Chimayo taught me that some months ago. My dead sister echoed it in the desert. But it went deeper than that. There were levels of fear I knew as a boy. They left their imprint on me like a watermark, stretched around the heart.

  *****

  Summer of 1967. The year hell forged a place out of the foundation of fear. And Warren Tucker’s son stood at the door checking names. According to him, we were all bound for that train. Do not stop at go, do not collect $200. For Marcus Tucker, his way of life started well before the wedding of my mother to the Good Shepherd. Back then he was just a misguided boy, not the psychopath he would become.

  “Lee, are you busy? Do you have a minute?”

  “Not really. Can you get Amy or whatever?” I mumbled through the roll of tape in my mouth. “I’m finishing off the last of these boxes, Mom.”

  “That’s wonderful. But I have a surprise for you. Maybe you could stop for just a moment.”

  I wiped the sweat off my face, not even looking up. “I really don’t have time. You said I had to pack Paul’s things, too. Remember?”

  “That can wait. You haven’t really gotten a chance to meet Marcus yet, other than the formal introduction at church.”

  I gave her a sidelong glance. It’s not like we won’t have time for that, I thought, and said nothing.

  “We felt like today would be a good opportunity to have him over. He’s anxious to get to know you,” she said. “Particularly since he’s going to be a part of our family in a few more days.”

  “Where is he?” I cut a piece of tape off in my teeth and threaded it along the flaps of the box holding my books.

  Mother shifted sideways and waved her arm from the door. I watched as Marcus leaned over and peered in. His eyes splintered wide behind his glasses. He looked like an emaciated version of his Father; same staunch jaw line, the hooded flare of his nostrils, a frame of bones that barely seemed to carry his weight.

  Mother gripped his awkward collarbones. “Lee, I’d like for you to say hello.”

  “We’ve already met.” With the tape secure, I picked up the box and carried it to the nearby wall, where a pile had started to take shape.

  “Then do it again, please.”

  Marcus offered a smile, extending his arm. “I told you, we’d meet again.”

  “Well, I hate to say you were right.” I shook his hand hard, felt the brittleness of it and squeezed it a little tighter. His smile took the rest of the day off with that.

  “I have a great idea.
” Mother leaned over to my ear. “Why don’t you teach Marcus how to play chess?”

  I studied the oddness of his face, the shock of red hair that looked decidedly out-of-place on his head and decided I’d rather catch a cold.

  “I don’t play chess, Ms. Macon.”

  I tugged at Mom’s sleeve. “Did you hear that? He doesn’t play chess.”

  “Oh, that’s nothing. Lee can explain everything to you. The rules are very easy and—”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be rude.” Marcus looked from Mother back to me. “But I don’t play chess at all. Games are a temptation I can do without.”

  “Temptation?” I asked.

  “I find that it’s the idle work of the devil.”

  My left eyebrow took a hike on my forehead. “You’re weird. You know that?”

  Mom gawked in disbelief. “Lee, stop that!”

  “Stop what?”

  “Staring,” she said. “Do you know where your brother and sister’s are?”

  “You mean the other idle workers of the devil?”

  “Watch your mouth.” She ruffled her hand through my hair and I caught her by the wrist to push her away. But my eyes never left Marcus.

  “I want you to take him, and the both of you go and find your brother and sisters and get reacquainted.”

  Outside, I began looking for ways to escape as I combed my hair back into place with my fingers. I could outrun him. But what good would that do me. He seemed to realize what I was debating and gave me a look of contempt.

  “I know what you’re thinking?”

  “What’s that, weirdo?”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  I watched his oddly shaped face turn down. “Sure. Anything you want.”

  “I know you’d like to run away.”

  I glanced behind me. “What did you say?”

  “You heard me.”

  I stopped dead in my tracks. “You must get that a lot.”

  “No, I can just tell.” His rail-thin shoulders passed off a matter-of-fact attitude. “All the other kids do.”

  But it came out all wrong from what I expected. He wasn’t sorry about it, as if he didn’t need any friends or much less wanted any. I was wrong. Marcus was a bona fide, first class weirdo. If anybody wanted to run away from him, they had a darn good reason when he opened his mouth. “Well, you might try and act a little less strange.” I pointed out.

  “I’m one with Christ. That’s all that matters. I have Him to walk with me.”

  I tapped his chest with my finger. “You see, that right there, that’s exactly what I’m talking about.” I turned across the front yard, which would lead to the side of the house and waited for him to catch up.

  “Particular side I should stay on?” I moved around the brick lined path.

  He jogged to keep up. “I don’t understand.”

  “Jesus?”

  “Oh, he prefers the right side. So if you stick to the left you should do fine.” He tried to close the distance.

  “You know he doesn’t actually walk-walk with you, right?”

  Marcus led on with a blunt look of contempt. “I know what you’re doing again?”

  I looked back but didn’t say anything.

  “Go ahead. Make fun of me. When the tribulation comes and the blood of the lamb descends, your name shall not be remembered for the kingdom of heaven. Your place will be in hell.”

  I dug my heels into the ground and turned around, wanting to put my fist through his face. “What did you say?”

  “My father’s a humble servant to the throne of God.”

  Your daddy’s a lot more than that, I thought and I laughed at him. “What you’re saying is they talk?”

  “Daily. Praise the Lord,” he barked, and his hand jumped into the air.

  I flinched, fist balling up from the threat of movement.

  “The power of prayer does that. Shout unto the Lord his glory!”

  I rolled my eyes and turned around. “It’s a wonder God’s not deaf.”

  Marcus stepped over into the field, his long spider legs searching for a landing. “I hear his secretary with him. They’re constantly thanking God all the time.”

  “Thanking him?”

  “Shouting his name on high. What else would they be doing?”

  “I don’t know.” I shook my head. “You’re the preacher’s son.”

  “They speak in tongues sometimes.”

  “What’s that?” I called back.

  His glasses slipped down his nose and he pushed them up. “Sounds like another language.”

  “What kind?”

  “The kind where there’s a lot of moaning. But then the Lord speaks in mysterious ways.”

  “God doesn’t moan.”

  “God can moan if he wants.” A vein popped out on his forehead. “What do you know anyway? You’re going to hell.”

  My teeth locked up in my head. I reached out and gripped him by the throat, sweeping him off his feet into the field. “I know enough to know that you’re a weirdo.” His body jerked stiff in the grass. One arm shot up to my elbow, but I pinned it down.

  “Get off me.” Anger simmered at the edge of his face, clouding his glasses in a fog.

  “Watch what you say to me, or the only hell you’ll know is the one I beat out of you.” I swung my legs off him, conversation finished.

  Down below us was a small field butted up next to a stable. My sisters and brother were on the fence, petting two of the mares from Mr. Jacoby’s farm. Each the same color, rich, oiled chestnut, with saddle-brown mane and tail. Their long handsome faces puckered and rifled across Darla’s shirt pockets in search of the sugar cubes.

  “What was that all about?” Amy asked as I came up to the fence.

  “Did you know he was coming today?” I grabbed the railing and shook it, not wanting to look behind me. “He’s about strange.”

  “To you?”

  I hooked my arm at the fence post and swung around. Marcus waded in from a distance, only stopping to clean his glasses. “I don’t know what his problem is.”

  “Looky, looky, Lee, the horses!” Darla cooed, giving each horse a sugar cube. At six, she was the youngest of my siblings. “They’re tickling me. Get back. Keep your tongue to yourself.” She held up her hand. “Oooh, horse slobbers all over my fingers.”

  I pointed at the mare closest to her. “Darla, you feed them sugar every day. Their teeth are going to rot out of their heads.”

  Darla’s neck gave to the side so her head looked like it’d been screwed on wrong. “No, unh uh. They like it. And I can’t feed them ever again after next week. Mommy says.”

  “It’s okay, Lee. I don’t let her feed them much.” Amy tugged gently on the hair under the horse’s chin. The mare whinnied, shaking its head up and down.

  “Only a couple cubes, Lee,” Paul said. “Mr. Jacoby said it was okay as long as we didn’t over do it.”

  “Just so you asked,” I said. But I didn’t know why I cared. Darla was right, after next week it didn’t matter.

  Amy giggled. “I didn’t remember him being so goofy looking.”

  I rotated my head to see Marcus churning his legs through the grass in high steps.

  Darla snickered. “Who’s that, Lee?”

  “Don’t you remember? You met him at church.”

  “That’s Mr. Tucker’s son?” Paul appeared encouraged, hand stroking the ear of the second mare. It nipped at the seam in his jeans.

  “What’s his name again?”

  I crossed my legs and tilted my head toward the sky. “Marcus.”

  “He’s kind of strange looking isn’t he?”

  “Does he seem nice?” Amy hopped down from the fence. Brown hair fell across her small angelic nose and high cheekbones. I could still remember when Dad taught her to dance on his shoes, the clack of his heels snapping down to the floor, as her hair twirled around them.

  I closed my eyes. “If you like weirdoes.”

  �
�What are you doing?” Marcus stopped short of us. “Are you talking about me?”

  “Hey! Up here.” Paul scootched his legs up until he stood on the top rail, then jumped off, landing right in front of Marcus. His shoes pan caked the ground with a clawless thud. “Bet you can’t do that.”

  I nudged Amy’s arm. Here it comes. The land around us, for Paul, was not the beauty of nature, but some field of battle for which strange obstacle courses were laid out in his mind. What he saw in Marcus was the culmination of a possible gem in his bejeweled cap of two victories. Both over Darla.