by Ben Marcus
This is the only true story of his life. Thirty-one years later Theodore von Grift, the former phenomenon, is an average man weighing 140 pounds and composed of enough water to fill a ten-gallon barrel, enough fat for seven cakes of soap, enough carbon for nine thousand lead pencils, enough phosphorus to make twenty-two hundred match heads, sufficient magnesium for one dose of salts, enough iron to make one medium-sized nail, sufficient lime to whitewash a chicken coop, and enough sulfur to rid one dog of fleas. An average man who is an average combination of nutrients and poisons. What more is there to know?
Ask the boy.
But Theodore has seen into his own head; he doesn’t want to see any more. The bullet was removed over three decades ago, and the only pain he felt for years, before the boy at number sixty-three began to haunt him, was the occasional late-afternoon stab of hunger. Typical pain. Eight hours a day he has devoted himself to balancing the debit and credit columns. He eats lunch at Estes Grill with three or four colleagues, always ordering the same chowder and the same beer. He leaves work at six, buys the evening paper, and walks to the trolley station alone.
The porch steps of number sixty-three are empty in the evening, the house as unconcerned as a drunk sleeping on the street. His own home, number fifty-five, is always tidy on the outside and bustling inside, his ten-year-old son flying paper airplanes in the living room, his eight-year-old daughter screaming at her mother because she doesn’t like onions, her mother knows she doesn’t like onions yet still she puts chopped onions in the meat loaf.
You shouldn’t speak to your mother that way.
Always the same routine, which is just how Theodore von Grift wants it, with occasional delicacies to relieve the tedium and distinguish him from the lower classes. Soft-boiled eggs, steak tartare … He is a naturalized American now. His wife knows the few facts of her husband’s life and is content with the mystery of his youth, perhaps even intrigued by it, like the nuns had been. Easily satisfied, she fills her days with household chores and as a hobby raises African violets. Nothing makes her prouder than a blue ribbon in the annual garden competition. His son wants to be a fighter pilot; his daughter wants to grow her hair to her ankles.
What more is there to know? Or tell? Theodore’s story begins and ends in a single paragraph in the November 7, 1896, issue of Scientific American. He has served his purpose and wants to be left alone. And whatever happens, whatever other injuries he sustains, he will never submit to an X-ray again. He hadn’t anticipated the consequences or even understood at the time what an X-ray meant. X stood for unknown character. Because of the X-ray—he’d had thirty-two X-rays taken before the doctors had finished with him—the bullet had been located and removed, and he no longer explodes in violent rages. But in recent months, ever since the impertinent boy assumed his place on the front steps of sixty-three Penrose, Theodore has rarely enjoyed a full night’s rest. In the early-morning hours he is awakened by the same panic that he feels when he walks past the boy.
The dream recurs, with minor variations: he is herded with a group of people, about two dozen in all, into a large examination room. A doctor directs the group to chairs arranged opposite the long, tubular lens of an X-ray machine. The doctor turns the machine on, aims the lens, and after a few seconds—just long enough for him to reach the exit—hot light washes over the rows of patients.
What unnerves Theodore in the dream is the doctor’s hasty retreat. Why must he leave the room when he turns on the machine? Theodore will puzzle over this, his confusion will escalate under the heat of the X-ray, and he will have to grip the seat of his chair in order to keep himself steady. Panic wakes him and keeps him awake for an hour or more, and the light that fills his mind during this time is not the familiar light of pain but of unspeakable fear.
In 1927, Theodore’s forty-ninth year, most scientists believe that light is only beneficial: light cures rickets in young children, protects against scurvy, regulates the absorption and metabolism of calcium, prevents pellagra in man and black tongue in animals. Light is necessary to life, and the X-ray, thirty-two years after its discovery, is essential to medical diagnosis. Decades will pass before opinions change and the dangers of light, even life-sustaining sunlight, are identified. So why does Theodore feel that he has been poisoned? Theodore has thirty-two X-rays inside his head. All it takes is a single able interpreter to see what the light exposes: the first eighteen years of his life, eighteen years of secrets.
It is the middle of December, ten days before Christmas, when Theodore finally decides to confront the boy at number sixty-three. He passes a restless night; awakened at 3:00 A.M. by his dream, he lies awake until dawn imagining various retaliations against the boy. His visions disgust and delight him. Since the bullet had been removed, he has steadily gained self-control and rarely even engages in an argument. He knows he could never harm an innocent child. But it is this very innocence that gives the boy his power, Theodore believes. The child sees what the light exposes. Theodore must be reasonable; instead of confronting the boy he will befriend him. He will convince the boy that he, Theodore von Grift, is hiding nothing. Children are gullible. In the name of self-defense Theodore will take advantage of the boy’s trusting nature.
After a breakfast of toast—the crust slightly burnt, just the way he likes it—rich black coffee, and a soft-boiled egg in a silver-plated eggcup, he props his hat at a thirty-degree tilt from left to right, winds his pocket watch, and sets off: a thoroughly average man on an average day. His breath frosts in the winter air. He feels both uneasy and capable—his enemy is only a child, after all. But wouldn’t it be easier if the child were an adult, Theodore’s equal? He’s not sure how he will open the conversation, decides too late that he should have brought some candy to use as bait.
The boy is there, sitting on the second step of number sixty-three, pulling at a loose thread hanging from the cuff of his plaid jacket. He turns up his face at the tap of Theodore’s footsteps on the sidewalk, and his eyes settle into that offensive stare.
Hello there, Theodore intends to begin. But the conversation needs direction. Hello there, young man, fine day today. No, this won’t do at all—it is too stiff, too mature. And how are you this morning? Too intimate for a child. Hello there. Tell me, shouldn’t someone be looking after you? Too accusatory. Try this: Hello there, early riser.
“Hello there, early riser.”
“Hello.”
Just then Theodore sees a woman cross behind the front window, and he hurries on, all too aware of the hint of impropriety in his address to the boy. There is more than neighborly cheer in his intentions. But what, exactly, does he intend? He still isn’t certain, though he imagines that the boy’s mother would not approve. As he rounds the corner, he grinds his fist into his open hand, furious at his stupidity. The child is not alone in the world—he’d forgotten this. If he’s going to make a companion of the boy he’ll have to contend with the mother. Or befriend the mother first. Now here’s an idea: seduce the mother, and the boy will follow. Theodore has no interest in other women, though. His wife fits perfectly into his life, and he knows better than to take a risk that might lead to ruin. All he really needs to do is to convince the mother that he wants to help.
Help me.
To help himself—like a glutton at the dinner table, pleasure-seeker that he is, or so she might conclude and warn her boy away from him. That won’t do. It’s best to avoid the mother and go straight to the child. He shouldn’t have hurried away so quickly this morning. The mother probably hadn’t even noticed him.
By the time he arrives at his office building, he has decided to be honest with the boy, the most difficult approach, since his honesty is rooted in an intricate deception. He is not who he is. If the boy sees this, then surely he will see Theodore’s true motives.
Stop looking at me. This is what he wants to tell the boy. But how to work his way toward the command? It is a difficult task, far more difficult than subtracting expenditures from income, s
o Theodore can fulfill his duties at the office even while his mind wanders and he contemplates various approaches to the dangerous little gorgon at number sixty-three.
By this point in the year Sacco and Vanzetti are dead, Trotsky has been expelled from the Communist party, the German economic system has collapsed, and Lindbergh has landed the Spirit of St. Louis in Paris. These are the subjects of lunchtime conversation, but today Theodore skips lunch, for he wants to be alone. He walks with shoulders hunched along Patapsco Street wishing he were entirely invisible. Because of the X-rays inside him his bones show through his transparent skin. No one notices except the boy. Theodore feels him watching from every downtown window.
He pauses in front of a toy shop, locks himself in place, and faces the display as though it were the child. We’ll see who falters first. He is looking at a Christmas scene: wooden elves at work, Santa bulging like a ripe red bud from a chimney, reindeer on the roof, cotton snow on the ground, a wooden locomotive stalled on wooden tracks, its tiny conductor standing inside, gazing at the world. Christmas in Toyland, and Theodore’s thoughts grind to a halt, as though he himself has changed from flesh to wood, transformed into a toy himself. He has been struck by an idea, a masterful idea, and he feels safer than he’s felt in years. He sees his answer here in the conductor’s eyes, painted beads no bigger than pinheads. How long has it been since he understood an image so completely, in its full meaning and potential?
He leaves work half an hour early that evening. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the streets were covered with cotton snow and reindeer were pulling the jalopies? There is no snow in Baltimore. Still, that doesn’t mean a man can’t celebrate tradition. In front of number sixty-three Theodore tucks the package inside his coat and clumps loudly up the warped porch steps. The woman has opened the door before he’s had a chance to knock. Theodore is not afraid. He removes his hat and asks to see her little boy. He notices that she looks too elderly to be the mother of such a young child. Perhaps she is his grandmother. With gray hair in a bun pulled so tight that it seems to stretch the wrinkles of her forehead into broad dents, she squints at Theodore, arms folded, and clears her throat as if to speak. Then she changes her mind and disappears, leaving the door open. Theodore steps into the front hallway. The house is rank with the smells of cooking fat, kerosene, stale wine. In a moment the woman returns, pushing the boy ahead of her. Perhaps she thinks that Theodore is a benefactor; she wouldn’t be far from the truth.
Now Theodore may study the boy up close. The child has a plump, round face that looks so young Theodore is almost surprised to see teeth when the boy smiles. He must be five years old, at least, but there is something oddly infantile about him, and with his aged guardian behind, the pair seems laughably anachronistic. She stands with her arms folded, waiting.
“Hello there, early riser.”
Theodore and the boy grin at each other like distrustful competitors. For the first time Theodore can meet the assault with impervious good humor. It is time to make his offering. He removes the package from inside his coat and hands it to the boy, who gingerly peels off the wrapping, not taking his eyes from Theodore until he has dropped the paper to the floor.
At first Theodore imagines that it is himself being unwrapped, the boy peeling away the lies of his life with cruel, deliberate slowness. But it turns out just as he had hoped: the boy’s attention shifts completely, he forgets about Theodore, forgets all that he knows about the man and gives himself over to childish delight. Already he is rolling the locomotive across the chipped ceramic tiles of the floor, bringing the wooden train to life with his voice: “Chuchu, chug-chug.” He’s a child again, thoroughly a child, with all his interest devoted to a toy.
In returning the boy to his childhood, Theodore has freed himself. The mother needs an explanation, and then Theodore will dance up the street and enjoy his easily won freedom.
“I wanted …” Unexpectedly, he falters. But the woman nods, still unsmiling yet with a reassuring expression. She may not understand the reason for the gift, but she doesn’t object.
Before he turns to leave Theodore squats, rests his elbows on his knees, and asks the boy his name. The child is too absorbed in play to notice, so Theodore asks again.
“The man wants to know your name.” The woman blocks the train with her foot, and the boy stops just long enough to reply. “Tim,” he snaps impatiently. Chuchu. Chug-chug.
Tim. It’s a fine name, pristine and to the point. Tim. Theodore looks admiringly at the child bending over his new toy. The straw-haired boy called Tim. Theodore almost wishes the child belonged to him. His hand hovers an inch above the boy’s head, palm open. Then he remembers where he is. He hastily bids good-bye with a slight nod, positions his hat, and leaves.
He descends the steps two at a time and hurries along the sidewalk with such high-stepping vigor that he looks like he might break into a skip. By the time he has reached number fifty-five, his pleasure has turned to glee. He’s solved his problem, safely enclosed himself. Patting his coat collar to straighten it, he unlatches the picket gate and marches up the walk, thinking of young Tim, savoring the image of the boy bent over his wooden train. What is more satisfying than the sight of a delighted child? Theodore’s only regret is that his own emotions are not equally instinctive, that he’s had to forsake childish spontaneity along with his past. But he reminds himself that he’s forty-nine years old, a fair representative of a type of man, precise, dependable, with distinguished tastes. He’s completely filled himself in, and now, with the last threat averted, his mind is at ease. He has never felt more confident.
TWO BROTHERS
BRIAN EVENSON
I. DADDY NORTON
Daddy Norton had fallen and broken his leg. He lay on the floor of the entry hall, the rug bunched under his back, a crubbed jab of bone tearing his trousers at the knee.
“I have seen all in vision,” he said, grunting against the pain. “God has foreseen how we must proceed.”
He forbad Aurel and Theron to depart the house, for God had called them to witness and testify the miracles He would render in that place. Mama he forbad to summon an ambulance on threat of everlasting fire, for his life was God’s affair alone.
He remained untouched on the floor into the evening and well through the night, allowing Mama near dawn to touch his face with a damp cloth and to slit back his trouser leg with a butcher knife. Aurel and Theron slept fitfully, leaning against the front door, touching shoulders. The leg swelled and grew thick with what to Aurel appeared flies but which were, before Daddy Norton’s pure spiritual eye, celestial messengers cleansing the wound with God’s holy love. Dawn broke and the sun reared suddenly up the side of the house to flood the marbled glass at the peak of the door, creeping across the floor until it struck the broken leg. Daddy Norton beheld unfurled in the light the face of God, and spoke with God of his plight, and felt himself assured.
When the light fell beyond the leg and Daddy Norton lay silent and panting, Theron called for his breakfast. Mama had stood to go after it when Daddy Norton raised his hand and denied him, for He that trusteth in the Lord is nourished by his word alone.
“Bring us rather the Holy Word, Mama,” Daddy Norton said. “Bring us the true book of God’s aweful comfort. We shall feast therein.”
Theron declared loudly that he loved God’s Holy Word as good as any of God’s anointed, but that he wanted some breakfast. Daddy Norton feigned not to hear, neglecting Theron until Mama returned armed with the Holy Word. She spread it before him, beside his face, tilting the book so her husband could read from it prone.
Daddy Norton tightened his eyes.
“Jesus have mercy,” he said. “I can’t find the pages.”
Mama brought the book closer, kept bringing it closer until the pages were pressed against Daddy Norton’s face. “Closer!” he called, “Closer!”, until his head rolled to one side and he stopped altogether.
“Make me some breakfast, Mama,” said Theron.
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br /> “You heard what Daddy Norton said,” said Mama.
“I’m starved, Mama,” said Theron.
She took up the Holy Word and began to read, though without the lilt and fall of voice which Daddy Norton had learned to afflict on the words. Aurel did not feel the nourishment in Mama’s voice, sounding as it did as mere words rattling forth without the spirit squiring them. He made to listen but after a few words paid heed only to Daddy Norton’s leg. He crawled closer to the leg and looked at it, watching God’s holy love seethe.
“Goddamn if I don’t make my own breakfast,” Theron said, standing.
“Theron,” said Mama. “Be Mama’s good boy and sit.”
Theron ventured a step. Mama heaved her bulk up and stood filling the hallway, the Holy Word raised over her head.
“Damned if I won’t brain you,” she said.
“Now, Mama,” said Theron. “It’s your Theron you’re talking to. You don’t want to hurt your sweet child.”
In his dreams Daddy Norton gave utterance to some language devoid of distinction, spilling out a continual and incomprehensible word. He lifted his head, his eyes furzing about the sockets, his tongue thrust hard between his teeth. He tried to pull himself up, the bone thrusting up through the flesh and blood welling forth anew.
“Listen to what he’s saying, Theron,” said Mama. “It is for you.”
Theron looked at Daddy Norton, carefully sat down.
Daddy Norton continued to speak liquids, his mouth flecked with blood. Aurel and Theron stayed against the outer door, silent, watching the light slide across the floor and vanish up over the house. Aurel’s mouth was dry enough he couldn’t swallow. He kept clearing his throat and trying to swallow for hours, until the sun streamed in the window at the other end of the hall and began its descent.
“Tell Daddy to ask God when lunch is served, Mama,” said Theron.
