by Paul Flower
“Why’d you do that?” Elvis struggled to his feet and rushed at Jesse, his hands balled into fists. “Why?” He was screaming. The wind was growing stronger, moaning through the trees.
Jesse pushed his brother away. “What’d I do? I just helped you stand up. You’re the one who tripped,” Jesse said, arms outstretched, palms up.
Elvis stood, arms hanging, mouth open.
The rain came, knifing through the trees with the wind. The hair on the back of Jesse’s neck bristled.
“I saw everything,” Elvis tightened his fists and clamped his eyes shut. “I saw...”
Jesse crossed to his brother and grabbed him by the shirt with one hand. He slammed Elvis against a tree.
“You didn’t see a thing, you understand me?” Jesse screamed and twisted Elvis’ shirt, holding him fast against the tree. Elvis wriggled, trying to get away and shield his face from the rain.
“Yes I did. I saw. I saw. I saw,” he said, voice rising to a howl. He tried to open his eyes against the rain. “I was standing behind the tree. I watched everything. You and...”
Jesse relaxed his grip enough to let Elvis think he could jerk free, then slammed him back against the rough bark. Elvis’ mouth opened but no sound came. Jesse pushed his nose to within an inch of his brother’s runny nose.
“Look at me,” Jesse growled. “Look at me.” The crackle of thunder and the flash of lightning were simultaneous. “Look at ME.”
Elvis was shaking, twitching, trying to wriggle, his eyes shut. Jesse’s heart was an engine, roaring with the storm. The feeling he’d had as the man had died—the powerful rumbling deep inside him—was back. He was man enough to do this, to take care of it. He’d do it and no one would ever know. “LOOK AT ME, YOU ADDLE-BRAINED MORON.”
One eye cracked open. Jesse stared into the sliver of blue-gray and spoke in a voice that was low, mean and slithery. “You saw nothing today—not a thing. You understand me? Your daddy left home and he ain’t never coming back because he was a lazy, good-for-nothing man, and that’s it.”
The lightning and thunder ripped in a wild, stuttering dance across the heavens. Elvis froze, his eyes and mouth now wide in a silent scream.
“You...” Elvis croaked out the word and stopped.
“Me?” Jesse grinned and twisted the soaked ball of the shirt a little tighter. It was time for the knock-out punch. “Me nothing. You don’t remember a thing about me and if you ever try to remember, if you ever think you saw something that I told you you didn’t see...”
Jesse paused again. Elvis’ eyes had become cloudy. This was too tough a concept for him. Jesse cleared his throat and thought for a second. “Let’s put it this way. You ever tell anybody anything bad about Dad then I can send you to the same place, to the place where he is.”
Elvis looked like he’d been punched and Jesse smiled again. “Yeah. Now you get it, don’t you, brother?” There was another wicked clap of thunder. Jesse let him go. Elvis slumped to the floor of the pine grove.
“Now you get it,” Jesse repeated, kicking him once for good measure.
****
“Refill?”
Jesse jumped. The waitress was topping off his coffee. “Sure, yeah, whatever,” he mumbled, dropping his hands below the table. He thought for a moment, then he sat up. “I mean, thanks.”
She poured and then started toward the kitchen, glancing back as she did. She bumped into the busboy. They exchanged glances. The busboy returned to clearing a table, giving Jesse a guarded glance. Jesse flipped the kid the finger. The kid’s gaze dropped and he went back to work in earnest.
That the anger rose in him so easily, so matter-of-factly, disturbed him. But, he told himself, this was who he was. This cold-hearted, vicious other Jesse was true. He was real. Fighting him was no longer reasonable.
Jesse wiped a film of sweat from his forehead. The urge to wash his hands, to feel the cleansing rush of the scalding water on his skin, quivered in his stomach and groin. This washing compulsion had intensified over the past several months. The peeling, raw skin forced him to lie to his staff and patients about “skin trouble.” Even in the most routine office visit, he had to cover his skin, both as a protection against HIV and to keep anyone from seeing the awful condition of his hands.
His plan was rash and wild and simple and stupid, and he knew it. Stage one had been building a vacation home here. Stage two had been re-establishing control over Elvis by controlling the people near him. These people had been easy to choose; Mom had told him all about Lavern’s and Elvis’ stupid buddy, Donnel.
To make it all come together, all he needed were a couple of local hired hands, redneck hoods he’d had to snoop around a few back-alley bars for. This town was full of such creeps.
Jesse imagined his mom sitting in her shadowy room in the nursing home up north. He hadn’t gone there in years. But he envisioned her listening to him describe the plan, saw the smile on her face that told him she was pleased with it. “You can really stop worrying,” he’d tell her, reaching out and patting her frail hand, sucking her into the conversation. “I’m making everything fine for you, for us, forever.” There’d be a fragile smile warming her gray face. She’d be proud of him, happy that he’d done his duty. “I don’t want you to ever, ever have to worry again. Not about Elvis. Not about any of this,” he’d continue, getting her drunk with the words, with his blinding devotion, before slowly turning the thing around, pulling out the scalpel. “I mean, heck, I always have been good at cleaning up all the shit you spewed into the world.” A dirty word, shit, her smile disappearing, the face going cold and hard as he spit it at her. “I mean, that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? It’s all about you,” he hissed, the verbal scalpel shining now, in a shaft of sunlight. “It’s about you and getting everything tidied up so nobody smells you. Nobody smells the evil sick shit of you.” The face, her mean, pruned face, would disappear then, back into the shadows, snapping back to avoid the blade, although he’d keep coming, thrusting it at her. “But it won’t work, will it, Mom? It never did and never will, will it?”
“Of course it will. It did. And you watch your tone with me,” she’d hiss, her head, all of her, now out of the light, back in the shadowy void of the barren airless room.
He’d laugh then, a dry and heartless cackle. “Sure, I’ll watch my tone. You horrible, wretched, sick bitch,” he’d say, leaning toward her in the shadows, her wooden chair creaking as the gray face—eyes wide with horror—the long and dirty hair, the smell of her, rocked away from him. “I’ll do whatever you want, won’t I, Mom? Isn’t that the way you’ve always wanted it? Me, fixing shit—” again, the bad word; she hated her boys to use such words “—for you, just like you fixed shit for me and Elvis. Isn’t it? Isn’t it?” He could see her in the murky light, rising, stumbling out of the chair, the pale upper arms and stringy neck scare-crowed out of the dirty blue nightgown.
“You stop that,” she’d wail. “You stop that kind of talk. You stop.” He wouldn’t stop. For once in his life, he’d rise, walk to her, stand over her and finish his diatribe as she huddled, fetal-like in the corner. “You got rid of your husband because you wanted this great life. And once he was gone, oh boy, did you live. You lived your life like a hermit, a dirty ugly nothing witch in that big haunted old house, spending all your time tending to stupid Elvis and watching television. You didn’t get a better life out of it. Not at all. And now, well look at you now. You’re just lying on the beach enjoying the sun, aren’t you? These are your golden years. And they’ve really worked out for you.”
“I… you listen here,” she’d say, attempting to uncoil, the head turning, maybe that gnarled finger of hers wagging at him in the gloom. “You got no business talking that… why I… I got no golden… but… we had a life…”
“After he was gone, you worked as a clerk in a store, a stupid nothing clerk.”
“I had no chance,” her voice would rise, growing shrill, almost visible now in Jesse’s mind, almost luminous. “I had no chance. I had no time. That stupid brother… ”
“You had no chance,” he’d say with a snort of indignation, “because you had nothing after he was gone. You had no chance because you’re so simple and weak. You had no chance because you were too busy drinking, too busy drinking and doing nothing, nothing really for Elvis, feeling sorry for yourself and doing nothing. And thinking thinking thinking about what you did to us. About what you made us do, me do.”
“You stop. You stop right now young man.”
“No. You know what? I won’t. I won’t stop. I won’t because you know what the truth is. The truth is, you murdered MY LIFE, and for what? For what? You ended up no better off than before. And I ended up like this. I’m a mess, Mom. A mess, because of you. Because you’re a sorry, sick, nothing human being.”
“That’s not true. That’s not…”
“What’s not true? How sick you are? Or how about the drinking? The lazy nothing self-pity? Or the fact that you are just as sorry and stupid and worthless as you thought he was?”
“As who?” Her face, he could see it then, he could feel the rage coming off of it in waves.
Jesse broke from the fantasy. Mopping his face with a napkin, he allowed himself a small smile. About two years ago, he’d had someone get in touch with Mom’s doctor here in town. Through the intermediary, the local doc had gotten a substantial amount of tax-free income from Jesse, “a silent benefactor in Chicago.” In exchange, the doctor had done a complete work-up on Mom, then insisted she was seriously ill, which was pretty close to true. He’d had her admitted to an assisted living facility in Traverse City—a good four-hour drive away. The staff had been told Mrs. Icabone “tended to exhibit bizarre behavior due to a history of depression and side effects from medication;” she was allowed to contact only her son, the doctor. Her mail was closely monitored, too. Nothing left the place that wasn’t addressed to Jesse Tieter, M.D.
The coup dé grace had been having his mother declared dead. It had been a risky but brilliant move. Again, all it had taken was a lump sum payment to the facility’s director. No one, not a single family member or friend, had ever bothered to see if she really was dead. No one had asked for the body. No one had made funeral arrangements. They’d all been so scared of her they’d been relieved she was gone.
As far as Jesse could tell, Elvis, who’d grown up despising his mother, had never questioned her admittance to the hospital or the veil of silence. He never even tried to make contact. Notified of the death, he hadn’t even requested the body for burial.
Since then, Mom’s health really had deteriorated. Between the booze and the stupid Kools, she had pretty much destroyed herself.
Jesse swallowed hard and stood, still fighting the tremor in his hands. Unconsciously rubbing the back of his hand against a pant leg, he scanned the truck stop for the waitress, then reached for the wind breaker he’d discarded on the seat next to him. He patted his back pocket and fumbled for his wallet. There was no sign of the waitress or the check.
“Well, sorry, honey,” Jesse said to himself as he shoved his wallet back in place and started for the door. “Guess that order’s on you. I got things to do.”
A few strides from the table, he stopped, thought for a moment, then smiled. He walked back, bent over and picked up the dead fly then flicked it on his place mat. “There,” he said with a leer. “At least I left a tip.”
He turned toward the door, hesitated at a sign that pointed the way to the restrooms. Jesse closed his eyes and breathed deeply. After several seconds he walked into the parking lot and to the safety, and misery, of his car.
Chapter Four
He had grown up in his hometown, living the lie as his mother had concocted it, believing his father had deserted the family. Despite the buzzing in his head that told him something wasn’t right, something wasn’t true, he’d believed he was an only child.
For his mother, it was one heckuva surprise that Elvis took the lie as gospel. Her plan had worked; her stupid, simple plan. It had been almost too easy. To start with, she’d just gotten rid of any evidence of his brother, burning with the trash whatever Jesse hadn’t taken to Iowa. Then she had worked her magic—that’s how she saw it, as “working her magic.” In late-night talks, and occasional lock-downs in his room—“quiet times” when “he wasn’t thinking straight” and needed to “get right”—she slowly worked on Elvis’ brain. At night in bed, alone with her thoughts, she’d pictured herself as a doctor, operating, cutting out of his simple brain what he knew about the past, leaving for Elvis just what he needed to remember today. After a month or two, in a move she figured was brilliant, she stopped talking about the other two members of the family. It was like they’d never ever walked the earth. She acted like her stupid husband had gone away and the other boy had never been born. For the boy Elvis, it became a matter of will—his. He could decide to keep them alive in his memory or kill them. Like she’d hoped, he took the easy way out.
As a teenager, school was Elvis’ escape. So was free time with his girlfriend and best buddy. To his classmates, he was a laid-back, quiet guy with a weird sense of humor who’d climb the water tower on a dare or skinny dip in Lake Michigan in February, but would never ever speak up in a crowd, especially not in front of an adult. He’d quiver if a teacher so much as raised her voice at him. Not too bright and not too stupid, they called him; he was a simple boy who seemed to have something to prove but didn’t have a clue of how to prove it or even what it was. He hated being the center of attention but seemed to crave it. He was weird. In a lovable, goofy kind of way.
He and his girlfriend married the summer after their senior year. She was a determined gal. Wanted a family and a nice house. So she answered an ad in the local paper and landed a job as a clerk at city hall. Already working part-time at the biggest factory in town, Bonner Wire, he was inspired and pressured by his bride’s ambition, so he enrolled at a junior college 20 miles away. He hated it—being in classrooms again made him want to puke, he told her; he quit college after a week and went to work full-time at Bonner a month later.
Now, at mid-life, Elvis seemed at peace. You could chalk it up to years of self-control and suppressed emotion. Or you could say he actually had found his place in the world. In truth, he had cut life down to the basics. He made no waves. He hoarded no grudges. He ate balogna when it was served, even if he wanted grilled cheese. He aspired to nothing, even though he knew this attitude irritated his wife to no end. His wife had always wanted a house filled with shiny brass, thick rugs, marble and sunlight. But that was beyond his reach. Why, they’d saved and scrimped just to buy their small ranch: kitchen, living room, a hallway to two bedrooms, and a bathroom; it was your basic tract house some contractor had built with a couple of hammers and a cookie cutter. The house contained no children, another disappointment that ached in her heart. He felt helpless to solve it, although, deep down, Elvis Icabone wished he could.
Elvis rationalized the failures he saw in his life by focusing on his small successes. He had worked his tail off for Bonner Wire, just to put a roof over their heads. A couple of years back, he’d worked his way up to the loopers. These were noisy, dangerous machines that fed copper wire onto spools at high speed, coiling it as they went. The job was tough, demanding and you really had to focus to prevent jam-ups. Jam-ups on the loopers meant the line shut down. A good looper man, especially one who showed he was committed to the company, was hard to find. Now he owned a house and took his wife out to the Phoenix Inn for a chicken dinner once every couple of weeks—not bad, he figured. Not bad at all.
The talk about him in town was a quiet whisper that never died. Almost everyone knew that his dad had deserted Elvis and his mom. There was gossip about a brother or sister leaving. But no one talked about it in front of Elvis. And most people
who shared it knew that a part of their story, the good part, the really really important part, was missing.
They said you could feel the missing part in Elvis.
Lavern, his lover and friend and spouse, knew about the missing thing, although she didn’t know what it was, exactly—this made the knowing all that much harder. She wanted desperately to fill the hole it left in him.
Today, for him, the thing was humming sadness, grief, meanness, madness and fear, all of it wrapped in confusion. And it was nothing at all. Elvis knew, yet didn’t know, that he’d been taught to avoid it, to not see it—to forget it. His mother had told him to never ever think about it, so Elvis didn’t fully remember that she’d ever mentioned it.
He always had seen Lavern as his savior. Lavern had helped him to think sunny thoughts. Dear, sweet Lavern.
Lately, it wasn’t working, the sunny thinking wasn’t. It seemed like Lavern’s sweetness had soured. And as it had, Elvis’ carefully constructed internal wall, the wall that held back the past, had begun to crumble. Lately, when she was in bed and he was alone with his beer and old collection of record albums, Elvis Icabone had felt the past darting around him, hovering, buzzing, annoying him, begging him to pay attention.
Late one night just weeks before, as he slouched in the bean bag listening to John Lennon, Elvis had done something he shouldn’t have done. Curious, like a puppy, he’d tip-toed to the edge of the blackness inside him, and he’d tasted something awful—a smell, an odor that was sweet but a little too sweet—rolling off of it. Before he understood what had happened, he was drowning in the past. Flickering, ugly snips of light and sounds, BWAAM, voices and that smell, overpowering and awful and his mom’s finger wagging at him and at someone else, someone mean and someone bleeding and a bird, soft and fragile, broken on the ground and a great empty nothing-something hurt. BWAAM.
He’d shut it out.
Since then, he’d felt close, too close, to something about him that he didn’t want to know, something best left alone.
