Songs in Ordinary Time

by Mary McGarry Morris

  The car’s riddled muffler roared down the street.

  “Goodbye, Mommy,” Norm called down in a sweet falsetto from his bed. “I love you!”

  Alice and Benjy ran into his room and jumped on top of him. He tried to push them off, but they had him pinned under the blanket. They laughed and wrestled one another, arms and legs ensnared with sheets as they concocted an escape plan for their father from the “booby hatch,” as Norm called it. In the deep of the night, with blackened faces, they would cross mountains and swamps. They would scale walls. They would sling him across Norm’s back and haul him out, beating off guards, nurses, and doctors. They would restore their father to power. “The king will reign again!” Norm promised.

  “But what if Daddy doesn’t want to come with us?” Alice asked.

  “We’ll promise him wine, whiskey, and beer!” Benjy shouted.

  “And haircut money.” Alice laughed. “All he has to do is get rid of Duvall for us!”

  “Death to the peddler!” Norm cried, shaking his fist, and Alice shrieked as the bed collapsed and they fell onto the floor.

  “Oh our papa,” Norm began to sing as he lay on his back, waving his arms in the air. “To us he is intoxicating. To us he is so fine. Our mother says he’s just a drunk. And we say we don’t mind.”

  Alice and Norm couldn’t stop laughing.

  “But if Omar comes back, then everything’ll be all right and Mom’ll be happy again,” Benjy said, and they both looked at him.

  “Why do you always say such weird things?” Norm moved away from him.

  “I don’t always say weird things,” he said, getting up.

  “Yes, you do,” Norm said as he and Alice lifted the springs back onto the warped bed rails. “Like all that shit about Negroes with white hair and Duvall’s car. I mean what’s that all about? How come you have to defend him? And what’s this, going down to see Uncle Renie’s cat? Jesus, Benjy, why do you have to act so creepy?”

  The telephone rang and Alice ran to answer it. It was their mother calling for Benjy.

  “Do you know what I’m looking at right now?” his mother asked him.

  Benjy shook his head. He closed his eyes.

  “Do you?” she demanded.

  “No.”

  “A note from Mr. Tuck. It says you haven’t been taking your swimming lessons. And to top it all off, you didn’t even take the first one, did you?”

  “No.”

  “Benjy, I’m only going to say this once, so you better hear it right the first time. I’m going to call Mr. Tuck and find out, so don’t try and lie to me, because if you don’t go to that pool today and take your lesson, when I get home you’re not going to know what hit you. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” he gasped, nodding.

  “By Jesus, you’d better!” She slammed down her phone.

  “What’s wrong?” Alice asked when he hung up.

  “What?” Norm asked, and Benjy shrugged. “You didn’t go to swimming, did you?” Norm said, and Benjy shook his head. “Jesus, Benjy!” Norm cried with a backhand to his shoulder. “Will you stop being such a creep, always scared of everything? Jesus Christ, you’re gonna be in eighth grade, and what? You’re still not gonna know how to swim? C’mon, don’t be such a faggot all the time. You drive me nuts!”

  “Shut up!” Benjy yelled.

  “You make me sick.”

  “Shut up!”

  “I just wanna puke sometimes!”

  “I said shut up!” Benjy tried to push him away, but Norm grabbed his arm.

  “Leave him alone!” Alice shouted, trying to get between them. She shoved Norm back and stood in front of him.

  “The fucking little faggot, you better get him away from me!”

  Benjy was halfway out the front door when Norm shouted, “That’s it, go ahead, run! Go find Duvall and maybe everything’ll be all right again!”

  Masses of cold white clouds teetered in the sky. Benjy made his way through the field with careful steps as the dog trotted alongside. The world felt cramped and still, and in its deadness there was nothing he loved, not a person, not a thing. Even the dog seemed heavy and menacing. Because of Mr. Briscoe he couldn’t hang around the store anymore, and now Mr. Tuck was writing his mother notes, and Norm thought he was a fag. Every day just got worse and worse, and now he was convinced that something terrible had happened to Omar.

  As they neared the woods the dog began to run. At the treeline it sat down and watched Benjy’s hesitant approach. Its tail thrashed from side to side. Benjy stepped into the woods. The answer was in here. He knew it was. Something terrible had happened in here. There had been the strip of yellow-and-red cloth, the money clip, and now Omar was missing.

  Branches snapped and battered his face. Mosquitoes hummed in his ears. He ran now to keep up with the galloping dog. The dog’s fur glistened in the sunlight, then disappeared as its blackness passed into the thicketed shadows. He paused as the dog bounded down the rise and through the clearing below. A crow cawed and in the distance pigs squealed. The dog came running back and sat waiting, its panting black lips split in a wet grin.

  He came slowly into the clearing. Even if he found Omar’s body he would never tell her. Instead he would say, “He called when you were out.” Or “I saw him down on Cottage Street.” With hope he would keep her alive. He would bring her things, flowers, perfume, a gold pin, a book of poems, and with each, he would say, “Omar left this for you. He said it reminded him of you.”

  “What else did he say?” she would ask.

  “That he loves you,” he would answer tenderly, touching her cheek, the way Omar would, or his father would, the way a man should, especially the man who would love and care for his mother. All at once now, it came to him that it would not be Norm, but himself, who for the rest of his life would be making everything go right for her.

  Suddenly, the dog sprang ahead and he followed it into the muck, toward the distant rooftops where dogs yipped, and cows mooed, and a red tractor rumbled down a bumpy road. Here the woods grew not with a forest’s chance symmetry, but with an urgency and demand, thickened and enriched by denial, the ravenous wildness of encroaching trees that are continually sawed back, vines that are slashed and suckers lopped off, the dense cane hacked and beaten until it had all tangled and entwined to form this brambled green cave, skyless, and vastly, vastly still.

  The dog snuffled through the undergrowth. The dog growled.

  “C’mon, boy. C’mere,” he whispered, wincing with every crackling step. For a moment, until his vision adjusted to the muzzy dimness, all he could discern were the dog’s eyes shining back at him. Now the dog fell on its side and rolled against a long, dark log. With a laugh of relief he stepped closer, then cried out. It was not a log, no longer a man but a form, a mass of putrefaction, all the more inhuman because it was so human and so foul. A green vine grew across its chest. The red-and-yellow-diamond shirt was torn. A trouser leg was ripped. One dark arm had holes in the dusty distended flesh. And protruding from its chest that so strained against the shirt that it gapped at each button was the snakeskin hilt of a knife. This was the young man he had seen struggling that day in the woods with Omar. This was Earlie.

  The dog stood then and nudged the body with his head, playfully, as if to amuse Benjy by prodding the corruption to life. “Stop it,” he hissed. Staring down at this face, unable to look away, he felt himself caught by the same expression of surprise he had glimpsed through the willow leaves that day, the day that Omar came, which for this swollen mass, this creature, this man, this boy in the old man’s worn photograph had been the very last. And so, from then to now, had only taken a moment. There had been the struggle, the chase, the fatal blow, and now they met again, but for Earlie there had been nothing in between.

  Again the dog nudged the body. An arm moved and in that quick stirring, the air seethed with a corrosion so foul it sent him staggering back, breaking his way through the thick entanglement. With the dog panting
at his heels, he ran all the way to the street. A high wind swept through the treetops, but the smell stayed with him, in his clothes, his hair, his pores. The man they called Earlie was dead. But hadn’t he known that, known he’d been in here all along, known he’d find not only Earlie but the mystery of Omar Duvall? Of course he had, of course he had, his heart pounded with his running feet. It was over for them all. The worst had happened. Not theft or treachery, but murder. We have come to this, she would moan from her dark bed. Murder. Murder. Murderer! Without him there was no more hope, and now, even if he did return, it would never again be Omar Duvall sitting at their table or caressing their mother, but Death.

  When he came into the house the phone was ringing. His mother sounded relieved and angry to hear his voice. She had been calling for an hour. What was he doing there now? Why wasn’t he on his way up to the pool?

  “I think it’s going to rain,” he said.

  “I don’t care if it snows, you get up there!” she said.

  Mr. Tuck took the basket with his clothes and gave him the numbered disk to pin on his trunks. A crowd of kids pushed and jostled each other through the showers. Benjy waited until they were gone, then sped through, shivering and gasping as the icy jets of chlorinated water blasted down on him. He stepped into the warmer chlorine footbath and then he went upstairs. At least he felt cleaner now. That stink was gone. He was relieved to see so few people here today. To the east the cloudy sky was quickly darkening. The wind had stopped. The lifeguards kept glancing at the clock. Benjy hunched over the rail, praying for the rain to start before the lessons did. Now with only the smell of chlorine in his nose he did not have to think of Earlie. He kept his eyes wide open, knowing if he closed them even once he would see that dark bloated face. He had just spotted six of his classmates diving into the deep end. With only a few strong strokes they swam to the ladder, then climbed out for the next dive. Jack Flaherty was on the board now, hairy legs and chest, the long muscles flexing down his back as he jackknifed into the water.

  One twenty-five. A cool wind snapped the flag. Two little girls in white bathing caps stood near Benjy under the flag that said LESSONS. The sky roiled to a menacing gray. The instructor was headed toward them, swinging her whistle by its red-and-white gimp chain. He jumped up and started to walk to the other end. Please, dear God, he prayed for the one lightning bolt that would close down the pool. The heavy air tingled with particles of energy before the faint rumble of thunder. The lifeguards were already scrambling down from their posts when the first lightning split the sky. The two little girls screamed and clutched one another. Mr. Tuck’s voice boomed over the loudspeaker. “The pool will be closing. I repeat, the…”

  “C’mon, Benjy,” called Jack Flaherty, looping an arm through Benjy’s.

  “One last duck,” Kenny Brown said, laughing, holding his other arm as they dragged him to the edge, pushing him, watching him fall through the twelve feet of bubbling blue silence. Arms out at his sides, he sank to the bottom. It wasn’t the drowning, the dying, that was so terrible; it was having to do it in front of kids he knew. Earlie had died alone. He held his breath. His ears roared with pressure. He would sleep, deep in this watery place. He closed his eyes. It would be all right. It wouldn’t hurt. He didn’t want to hurt. After a while Earlie must have welcomed sleep to stop the pain of that steel shaft so embedded in flesh and bone that every twitch or breath must have burned like red-hot metal in his draining chest with Omar staring down at him. Omar must have seen the stricken eyes, pleading release, aid, comfort, in that moment before he ran away.

  An explosion of thunder shook the pool and sent a shudder through his body that suddenly kicked and clawed at the water. A silver pole broke through the surface and sudden whirlpools surged around him, with blurred inquisitive faces emerging from the foam. He was rising straight up, straight up. As his head broke through the surface, the air seemed to slap his face with their voices. “Benjy! Benjy! Are you all right, Benjy?”

  Up on the deck Kenny Brown sobbed and rubbed his eyes. It was pouring rain as Benjy clung to the ladder, gasping. There were lifeguards behind him in the pool as well as lifeguards reaching to him from above. They kept grabbing his arms and legs, trying to get him out of the water.

  “No! No!” he grunted, struggling. He batted them away. He had not been drowning. He would climb out on his own.

  Blue Mooney knew Alice Fermoyle’s route by heart. At three-forty she would be in front of the church. From there it would take her five minutes to reach the park and twelve more to get to the A+X. In the last few days he had twice offered her a ride but she’d refused. Yesterday he’d even driven alongside, assuring her he was on his way up to the drive-in, anyway.

  “No thanks. I like to walk,” she’d said. But at least she’d looked at him and spoken pleasantly. It was a start. Today he planned to come walking around the corner just as she got to the gas station. Perry, the kid who was pumping gas, said he could wait in the office, but he had to leave his car down the street where Mrs. Bonifante wouldn’t see it. He was sitting with his feet propped on the greasy desk when Perry came in from the pumps, wiping his hands on a stained towel. He leaned over the desk to see why Blue was staring out the window. “Somebody owe you some money or something?” Perry asked.

  “That’s a curious nature you got there, kid,” he said, squinting with his first glimpse of her hurrying along Main Street.

  “Yah, well, I can tell, Blue. You look mad.”

  “Is that right?” he murmured, getting up to stand by the dusty window. He patted his wave flat and hiked his sleeves higher on his biceps. She was almost running. He checked his watch, ten minutes late. Girls like her always made him feel this way, nervous and unsure of himself. They were the kind of girl that needed to be cut down to size. But there was something different about Alice. She was pretty, but in a quiet way. That was it, he thought. It was the quiet, the softness of her.

  Perry was counting the money from his last sale. He put it into the register. “When’s your leave up?” Perry asked.

  “Not for a while,” he said.

  “You been home—what, since April, right? Ain’t that a pretty long leave?”

  Mooney looked at him. “Commandos get long leaves before special assignments.”

  “What’s the special assignment?” Perry asked.

  He shook his head with a rueful snort. “Be serious, will you? You really think I’m gonna give some hick-town grease monkey that kind of high-clearance, top-secret, national-security information?”

  “Yah, well, maybe I was just testing you.” Perry grinned. “Maybe I’m a double agent. Maybe these are all Commies coming in here for gas.”

  “Hey!” he said, grabbing Perry’s arm. “Don’t even kid, okay? I mean this is a fine line we’re walking here, if you know what I mean.”

  “Sorry! I didn’t know you were gonna take it so personal. I’m sorry, all right?” Perry squealed.

  He let him go. “Hey, it’s the training, that’s all, so let’s just forget it,” he said, rubbing his temples. He had to be careful. The simplest things seemed to be getting out of hand lately. It was this constant panic, this festering sense of his own fraudulence. Of all people, Blue Mooney, who loved freedom and hated fakery more than anyone, was now trapped in a lie he could not make right.

  “What kinda training?” Perry asked. “In your head? You mean brainwashing?”

  “Just forget it. Forget I said anything. Hey, so how do you like it here?” he said to change the subject. “Bonifante still a bitch?”

  Eunice was okay, Perry said. But the pay was lousy. Some guy said the tire company was hiring, so he was thinking of trying there.

  “J. C. Colter?” he asked, and Perry said yes. Mooney cracked his knuckles. He was desperate for money, but he couldn’t very well go looking for steady work when everybody thought he was home on leave. He glanced out the window. She was only two blocks away. The service bell rang as a red Thunderbird convertible with its
radio blasting pulled up to the high-test pump. Perry ran outside.

  He looked at the register. He didn’t have to move from the window, just reach over and hit the right key. Apron in hand, Alice crossed East Center Street, then stepped onto the curb and raced along. The register drawer popped out. Loaded with cash. Easy money, and the way Eunice Bonifante ran this place she wouldn’t even know the difference. Alice was crossing Terrill Street. Her ponytail flipped up and down as she neared the station. His fingers closed over the bills. Perry was propping up the Thunderbird’s hood when the driver called to him. Perry ran around to look at the map she’d been studying. Twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five dollars. Sweat trickled down the small of Mooney’s back. Alice started past the station. Just then the corner light turned green and a pickup truck suddenly swung out of the traffic into the station. He couldn’t believe what was happening. The truck was veering in Alice’s direction. In a moment, a second more, she would be directly in its deadly path. There wasn’t even enough time to get to the door. All he could do was bang on the plate glass with his fists. Perry and the women in the convertible looked at him. “Look out! Oh Jesus, please don’t! Please don’t!” he was bellowing as the truck turned, just barely missing her. It pulled up to the other side of the pump. He was shaking. His fingers were locked over the crumpled bills. Opening his hand, he let the money fall into the cash drawer. Images kept popping in his head with flashbulb intensity: the truck, her bouncing ponytail, Perry studying the map. She was safe. He closed the register, certain it had been a test, a sign that she was part of some mysterious transaction he did not yet understand. She was already a block away.

  He hurried outside, chasing after her, careful not to call her name or say a word or make any sound loud enough to startle her, because she was running fast and he was so close now that even the sound of his boots on the pavement might terrify her, so he ran on the grass strip between the sidewalk and the street, calling softly, “Alice! Alice! Alice!” until she finally looked back.