I was the one who answered the knock, opening the front door just a crack before I saw Ms. Banks, Faith and Mrs. Bernoffski, with a big clay dish, on the other side. The two older ladies started shrieking when they got a look at my face, which had bloomed into a hellish palette of grayish yellow and blackish purple. After they finished with the face, they started talking all over each other, telling me they’d been worried, they hadn’t known where I was, they’d been scared to death. Faith didn’t say a word. She tried to leave almost right away, but Mrs. Bernoffski hustled her inside and insisted she stay for dinner. “Da casserole is big enough for everyone, it is delicious, and besides, I hate to see good food go to vaste.”
Faith gave me a quick look as she brushed on by. “I see you managed to get yourself beaten up,” she said flatly, like it was no big surprise, like it had only been a matter of time, like she was disappointed she hadn’t done it herself. She headed straight for the living room and started talking to Fang, who was sitting on the couch looking all staggered by the home invasion.
I hung out in the kitchen. Mrs. Bernoffski popped the food in the oven, located a can of Ajax under the sink and tried cleaning up, while Ms. Banks reminded me that she was the one who was supposed to be keeping an eye on me while my parents were out of town. When I hadn’t shown up at school for a few days, she’d been worried, leaving messages at my place, asking my friends if they’d seen me, etc., etc. She’d finally swung by my house after school to see if I was there. It happened to be the day Mrs. Bernoffski was bringing me dinner, something I’d forgotten about but she hadn’t. When she arrived, casserole in hand, she’d found the lovely librarian pacing the sidewalk in front of my place. I guess one of them had finally said the word missing and they’d spun themselves into a bit of a panic. They climbed into Ms. Banks’s van, nabbed Faith, who told them I might be at either Astelle’s or Fang’s.
I guess they stopped somewhere and looked up the Jordans’ number. Ms. Banks told me Astelle was already tucked into rehab, but on the phone Mrs. Jordan had been quick to mention finding an empty pill bottle with my name on it beside a passed-out girl a few nights earlier—Ms. Banks raised her eyebrows here—and the resultant trip to Emergency for a quick round of stomach pumping. Mrs. Jordan had also asked Ms. Banks to pass along the message that, if and when I turned up, I was to stay the hell away from her daughter.
Still, Ms. Banks was pretty gentle with the lecture. I mean, even if she hadn’t seen the paper, she couldn’t have missed the buzz about Fang at Jefferson. I’m sure she knew why I was there.
We all crammed into the kitchen to eat. Mrs. Bernoffski said a little Polish prayer to start the meal, and I guess that’s what got me thinking about Ted. How he’d told me I was on the wrong side of God, how he’d hammered me with my sins, how he’d proclaimed me unworthy. But, that night, in that kitchen, there were people—people who cared about me, people who might have even loved me—squashed around Fang’s table, eating some tasty homebrewed chicken and rice concoction. And I thought just that, wasn’t that enough to prove Ted wrong?
“What’s so funny?” It was Faith, across the table, staring straight at me, all annoyed and confused. The angry edge to her voice had the rest of our dinner companions stopping to take a good look at me too.
“What?” Even as I said it, I could feel the smile on my lips, and I realized I’d probably been grinning into my plate for the last few minutes. “Nothing is funny,” I said, still grinning.
She glared at me, so long and so hard everyone else dropped their heads and got busy eating.
“Listen, I’m just happy. That you’re all here. There’s nothing wrong with being happy, is there, Faith?” I said, throwing one of her own lines into the glare.
Forks and knives clicked around the table, but there was nothing from her.
So I leaned halfway across the table and I didn’t care that there were three other people in the kitchen, I told Faith I was sorry. I told her I was sorry, really, really sorry about Astelle. I told her I’d made a huge mistake. I’d been a complete jerk. Mostly I told her I was sorry I’d hurt her, because a person like her, a great and gorgeous person like her, did not deserve to be hurt. Ever.
I wasn’t sure about Faith, but Mrs. Bernoffski seemed moved by the heartfelt apology. She pulled a tissue out of her sleeve and blew her nose a couple of times, while Fang did his best impression of invisible, and between bites Ms. Banks threw quick glances up the table.
“You drive me crazy,” was all Faith had to say.
“Better than boring you to death,” I said, pulling back onto my side of the table.
“Not much better,” she said, refusing to smile, “not much.”
The only ray of hope Faith gave me, the only clue she left that maybe, possibly, she’d been thinking kind thoughts about me, was the newspaper clipping I found on the kitchen table after she was gone. It was from the Examiner and concerned the Highway 6 frog massacre. According to wetlands experts quoted in the paper, the whole thing had resulted from the pond being too shallow and the water too warm. Thin-skinned and sensitive to that sort of shit, the frogs had crossed the highway in search of cooler digs. Sweet, neat handwriting filled the right margin. “No big Magnolia mystery after all. Just another homegrown calamity claiming a thousand small green lives. Faith.”
Maybe she’d left the clipping for Fang. Maybe she’d left it for me. Maybe she’d left it for both of us. Whoever it was meant for, I was the one who folded it in half and stuck it in my pocket, so I could feel Faith and the frogs’ true story riding close to my skin.
ON HER WAY OUT the door that night, Mrs. Bernoffski stopped and asked me to come by her place the next day, because she needed someone to cut “da grazz.” I must have looked, I don’t know, stunned or something, because she’d been quick to tell me not to worry, she’d pay me for the work. So there I was the following afternoon, nervous as hell, watching the widow swing her garage door open. I was imagining chunks of Mr. Bernoffski clinging to the John Deere and the blades dark with dried blood and matted hair, which was all really stupid seeing how the old guy hadn’t even been run over. But inside the garage the tractor gleamed, all shiny green surfaces and slick black tires. Not so much as a stray piece of grass decorated the cutting blade, and the garage smelled not of death but of soap and Armor All. A pail, still-damp cloths draped over its edge, sat off to one side of the tractor. I could almost see the widow cleaning it behind closed doors, her big, meaty hands moving with as much care over the hard metal surfaces as they would over the planes of a corpse.
I knew she’d done it out of respect for Mr. Bernoffski, a man I’d never really known except in the moment of his death. And I wanted to say something, something about how strong he’d been and how much he’d loved her, but when she pressed the John Deere key into my hand and wrapped her fingers around mine, she held my eyes for as long as she could, and I knew there was nothing this boy could tell her that she didn’t already know.
She gave my fingers a squeeze. The rough edge of the key cut into my palm. “Be careful. At the back,” was all she managed before disappearing into the house.
I admit I was pretty happy the widow was hiding out inside when I discovered just why Mr. Bernoffski had been so possessive of his mower. It only took a couple minutes for me to figure out that if I spread my legs just so, my balls rested solidly on the vibrating seat, which made for a pretty sweet ride. I had a hard-on for most of the front yard and all of the back, and the only thing that really got me down was thinking about the old dude riding around in a similar state, which just seemed twisted and sick.
The tractor was parked safely inside and I was halfway down the front walk when Mrs. Bernoffski emerged from the house, a sturdy black purse wedged under one arm.
“Hey, where you be go? I pay you. I pay you.”
“Oh, that’s okay,” I said, trying to slip away, but she waved me over, insisting I take the money she pulled from a small, beat-up change purse and worked into my hand.
“Five dollar,” she said, and I almost laughed. “And”—looking very serious, she raised a finger—“one shot of vodka.” Seeing how she was obviously as unfamiliar with the concept of minimum wage as she was with that of the legal drinking age, I decided to forgo the college fund in favor of more booze. I tried to invert the equation, suggesting one dollar and five shots of vodka would be more appreciated. But she was having none of it. “I don’t send you home drunk to your mommy. Last time, we have to talk. Now, we know each other, yes? So, one shot of vodka.”
The only other outing I made that week that’s worth mentioning was my trip to the hospital. To see Laura Cramp. Fang and I had been keeping a low-key watch on the Examiner, and let’s just say the Cramps’ announcement in the Births and Deaths section of the paper caught my attention. They’d had a son, James Michael Cramp, at 4:42 P.M., Tuesday, April 29, but they’d only had him for a minute.
If I’d been nervous going to cut my neighbor’s grass, I can’t even begin to explain how I was feeling pushing open the door to Laura’s room. Still, it seemed like I didn’t really have a choice in the matter. I’d seen the announcement in the paper. I’d known what it meant and what I had to do.
Laura was sitting up in bed with a sheet pulled over her knees. She was staring blankly at a little TV suspended from the ceiling, but she looked up when I slipped into the room.
“Oh, hi, Luke,” she said, giving me a smile that didn’t come anywhere close to reaching her eyes. Still, I was relieved she was alone, and when I went and stood beside the bed, I tried to ignore the missing bump, the deflated stomach.
“Looks like the war’s over,” she said flatly, motioning to the TV. She picked up a remote and turned up the volume, and together we listened to the President—standing on some mighty ship, in the middle of some huge ocean—announcing the end of major combat in Iraq. I mostly stared at the big MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner flapping in the background while George W. thanked the soldiers for serving our country and our cause.
After the big “may God continue to bless America” finale, Laura pressed a button and the screen went black. Then there was just this big silence in the room, and Laura wasn’t saying anything, so finally I grabbed onto the bar running along the side of the bed and, white-knuckled, told her I’d seen the announcement about the baby in the paper. She just nodded and her lips pressed into a hard white line. And she sounded sort of lifeless and disbelieving all at the same time when she said they’d had no idea the baby was at risk. If they’d known, they would have gone to Children’s Hospital in Detroit for the delivery. The ultrasounds had all been normal. An autopsy was being done to determine the cause of death.
“They always said there is no disease, no sickness, too hard for God. But, but”—her voice was suddenly high and thin—“he was in my arms, I was holding my baby in my arms, and he took just one breath, just one …”
Even before she started to cry, I had to look away, down at my feet, at the wall, anywhere but at her. With all the death I’d been handed over the last seven months, you’d think I would have been prepared, that I would have been tougher, but I’d never come anywhere close to the raw grief I saw on Laura Cramp’s face that day.
She pulled a Kleenex from a box beside her bed and blew her nose, wiped her eyes. I kept clinging to the bar on the bed, holding on, trying to work up the nerve to tell her what I knew.
“The Pastor says it’s God’s will, that my baby will be waiting for me in heaven. But I want him now. I want him now.” Suddenly she reached out and grabbed hold of my arm. “And you’re just a boy, right? Just someone else’s son. Just a good boy. Right, Luke? Right?” She was clinging to my arm and searching my face as if she might find an answer there, and it took a lot to keep my head up and my eyes on her.
I didn’t know what to tell her. I couldn’t say I was thick with good and bad and love and hate and truth and lies. I couldn’t say I am music. I am noise. I am every great and sorry thing in between. That stuff wasn’t going to help her. So I leaned in close, as close as I dared, and I opened my mouth and said what I’d come there to say. “I felt your baby.”
“What?” she whispered. “What did you say?”
“I felt your baby.”
Slowly, she turned her face toward me. Steepled hands hid her mouth and nose. All I could see were her eyes, stretched wide above trembling white fingers. All I could hear was her breath, trapped behind cupped palms.
I had to pretend I wasn’t afraid. I had to use all my strength to tell her what she needed to hear, to say the one thing I knew she’d understand.
“He felt like God,” I whispered. “He felt like God.”
THIRTY-THREE
My mom swiveled round and aimed a careful smile into the back seat. “So, Luke, do you want to go home? Or out to the cemetery? Your choice.”
I pressed a button. The rear window slid open. Riding a blast of cool air, the chatter of birds filled the car. I stared at the hearse, idling in front of the church, and thought back to the last time my mom had asked me that same question. That day, Stan had been in the back of the long black beast and I’d been a small-town freak. That day, I’d chosen to flee the scene.
I looked at my mom, still peering at me from the front seat. “We could go to the cemetery,” I said. “Avoid creating traffic chaos.”
“What?” My mother’s eyebrows, light and fine, drew together.
“Remember Stan’s funeral? How we tried to bail and Dad ended up directing traffic?”
“Oh, right.” She laughed, shook her head. “That was awful. Crazy.”
My father found me in the rearview mirror so I could see his eyes roll playfully. He leaned forward and turned a knob. The radio came to life, cushioning the space between us with soft, bluesy jazz.
At home, things hadn’t been quite so easy. I’d moved out of Fang’s on the weekend and had been hanging at my place Sunday afternoon when my parents were due back. After Paris, I thought they’d be all champagne smiles and caviar kisses, but they weren’t. Apparently my father had told my mom about my list in the plane on the way home, and I guess the news had practically knocked her into the Atlantic. She’d still been sort of staggering as she made her way up the front stairs and into the house, and once my father told me why, once I knew she was in the loop, I hit the two of them with a brief synopsis of my week alone.
I didn’t think they needed to hear about my evening at the Cramps’, so I skipped the fun with the fundamentalists. And I skipped the whole Astelle/Faith/One Drum drama too. And I definitely didn’t mention the trip to Gandy’s Rock. What I told them was that I hadn’t been at school all week because I’d had a feeling Fang was going to kill himself because he and a handful of other homosexual men got arrested in McCreary Park—oh yeah, including your boss, Dad—and Fang’s name had been on the front page of the paper, and since then he’d barely stepped out of his house and I’d been over at his place keeping him company.
Even with all the shit I’d skipped, it was enough. Afterwards, my parents just sort of banged upstairs, suitcases smacking every step, and collapsed on their bed. Still, the next day, right after my mom quit her job at the bank, she did go over to see Fang. And my list had migrated from my room to the middle of our dining room table without any help from me. But that’s as far as we’d gotten. My parents had been back for a good five, six days, and we were still tiptoeing around each other, like we were carrying wobbly towers of cards or something, whispering to each other without ever moving our lips. Are you okay? Yeah, I’m okay. Are you okay? Yes. No. Maybe.
Oh yeah, before I forget. A few nights back, I found this appointment card for a marriage counseling session lying on the front hall table. That had been sort of unsettling, but it was another thing we weren’t discussing, another thing coiled up in the Hunter household, biding its time. One thing we were talking about was my parents’ jobs, or lack thereof. Like I mentioned, my mother quit the bank the day after she got back from France. I knew I wa
s probably part of the reason, but she told me that even before Paris she’d volunteered to work on one of the EPA boats scheduled to investigate Erie’s ever-expanding dead zone this summer, a dead zone that seemed to be taking its toll on the lake and my mother in equal doses.
As for my dad, well, Kalbro had announced they were moving a big chunk of their production to China, which I think he might have warned us about at one point or another. With the news now made public, most of the town, including Kalbro’s supply chain manager, was trembling with the bad vibes. I wasn’t shaking, wasn’t really bothered at all by the impending fallout. Maybe I was just being naive, but I figured we were going to be okay, me, my mom, my dad—although I had my doubts about Erie.
I glanced out the back window as the funeral procession moved into downtown. There was no end to the line of cars behind us, and up front there were hundreds more vehicles trailing the hearse. It felt like the whole town was following Dwayne Slater, Dwight’s older brother, on his last ride out to the Stokum cemetery. Pre-Iraq, Dwayne had been all proud smiles and so big on Wet Ones. Unfortunately, his homecoming had been a lot less smiley, if not less patriotic, seeing how he’d returned to town in a flag-draped box, shot in the head while patrolling in Baghdad, like twenty or thirty other guys since the war had been declared all but over.
For a million reasons, it felt weird to be at his funeral. First off, the brother of honor had beaten the shit out of me not so long ago. Secondly, after tangoing with Ted, I’d been sort of nervous setting foot inside a church. But my mother had insisted I go, because Mr. Slater worked at Kalbro, because Dwight and I were friends (our fight was another one of the details I’d spared my parents), but mostly to show respect for a boy who’d died serving his country.
The funeral was held at Sunnyside United. With its soaring steeples, stained glass windows and chiming bells, it was a way more mainstream affair than the little white clapboard number that had spirited Stan away. And the service was okay. The front row had been studded with white-gloved soldiers, the whole church filled with hymns and personal tributes to the dead man— who, if you believed the guys behind the mike, had been a hell of a lot nicer than his younger brother. The word hero was mentioned more than once.
Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet Page 29
