by Patrick Lane
He remembered Eddy telling him about a story he’d read a long time ago in Life magazine. It was about an old man who’d gone to sea somewhere near Florida and caught a big fish that he let the sharks eat. Eddy couldn’t get over why someone would do that, as if he resented anyone making a choice he’d never make himself.
Tom was different. He could get lost in stories of other places and other lives. It was like sitting in the Empress Theatre when he was a kid. He’d be there with the other Saturday-afternoon children, all of them in their rags and patches watching cartoons as they waited for the feature. He remembered the first movie that scared him. Lou Costello, with his chubby, boylike hands, was being told by Bud Abbott to go to a door at the end of a hall and open it. Tom had wanted to shout out of the dark where he sat with Eddy: Don’t trust him! Don’t open the door! The monster was behind it, standing there with a ponderous, murderous stupidity, the dullness of its face a threat greater than malice. He was like the gorilla Tom had read about in Ripley’s Believe It or Not, a huge ape that had torn apart a baby it got hold of, the keeper saying it had only wanted the baby to stop crying so. Tom learned from the movies that there was no saving anyone, only the watching and then seeing in the dim light the girls with their brooms and buckets cleaning up after the show was over, walking between the rows of seats, scraping popcorn off the sticky puddles of spilled pop, everyone else gone home, sure that if the movie wasn’t their life, what was?
Tom lay back and thought about everything that had happened the night before. He knew most others found his family strange, but what did that matter? Or Mother’s withdrawal from the world, Father’s violent ways, the valley gossip swirling? They all had their pride, each in their way, held together by an unspoken bond that separated them from the rest of the town and valley. It was the Stark pride that made others look up to them, yet they resented the family too, thinking Eddy and he acted superior in some unknown way, but what Tom knew to be isolation and loneliness, others saw as arrogance and contempt.
People gravitated toward the ones they thought were powerful. Tom had seen it happen. He’d watched men and women creep close to Billy or Eddy in the hope that something, anything might happen. It’s why they’d come to the party, why they’d go to the dog fights on Saturday. Some people would drive a hundred miles in the hope of watching a bridge collapse into a swollen river. They’d be the first at a house fire, the first to stand over carnage on the road. They liked to get close to destruction, and it didn’t take much.
He heard Mother now, moving in her room. She was tired all the time, it seemed, but said she couldn’t sleep. He wondered if she would tell them that the madness of the card game and Eddy shooting the pistol was all part of one of her prophecies. She’d told them both when they were small that there were times to come that would rival any known before. She said that her two sons were destined, but she never said for what. Both he and Eddy had believed her in their bones. They were the Stark boys and therefore somehow promised, but to what they didn’t know. She’d talk then of strange times, her golden glass of whiskey weaving words out of the air, bits of the Bible spilling from her tongue, but she never explained what the old days meant or what the days to come would be.
He’d been a boy, no more than six years old, when Mother whispered to him: And of thy sons that shall issue from thee, which thou shalt beget, shall they take away. They’d been sitting in the kitchen at the table shelling peas into a bowl when Mother said those words. It had terrified him to think that he and Eddy could somehow be stolen like the boys in the stories she read to them at night, the stories she told. He’d imagined someone coming in the night and grabbing them from their beds. He’d cried out to her: But who? Who will take us away?
Never you mind, Tom Stark. You just wait. Little kids vanish all the time. One day they’re there and then they’re not. You listen. There was a family lived on a farm a few miles from where I grew up back on the prairie. It was a hard-scrabble quarter-section. That land around Nokomis was rocks and brush, spare grass and not much more. The father didn’t have much when he came with his family from the States and looked like he had less when he left. He had a baby girl and a boy a year or two older. His wife had died birthing the girl and a year later he married a woman he’d hired to keep his house. They had a baby the second summer she was there. The next January it got cold, forty-five below, and for a week those two kids never showed up at school. I remember they rode an old sway-backed horse to get there. I used to see them crossing the fields on old Apple Jack to the West Line road where our one-room school was, the reins pulled under their blanket to keep their hands from freezing. It used to get so cold out there a horse’s breathing would turn to crystals in the air. You could hear it fall on the snow from ten feet away, a sound just like those peas you’re shelling plinking in that bowl. My father always said that horse was wrong music, but I never understood what he meant. It doesn’t matter, but blizzard or cold, they always came to school, until one day they didn’t.
What happened?
I’d see old Apple Jack out by their farm, but I never saw that horse on the West Line road again. I did find the blanket though.
Where?
Out on the ice of a frozen dugout a mile from their farm.
Mother was silent then, and Tom had huddled closer to Eddy as he looked up at her. She was peering down at him, her eyes slit so thin he’d thought they would cut him if she got too close. He wanted her story to be over, but he couldn’t stop himself asking for just a little more. How come the blanket was there?
Never you mind, she’d said again, and then she looked at him slyly. Well, half that blanket was sticking up out of the ice and the other half was under. It looked like something left behind, not lost. I pulled it out of the ice and took it back to their farm. By the time I got there it was hard as a chunk of wood. The woman came to the door with her baby in a shawl sling under her arm. She told me the blanket wasn’t theirs, but I knew different. She never answered me when I asked her where the kids were. She just closed the door without a word. A few weeks later they were gone south to Fort Yates in North Dakota where the man was from. It was still winter, the ponds and dugouts frozen. My mother told me they put this country behind them and wished she’d done the same.
Tom remembered whimpering. What happened to those kids?
Wouldn’t you like to know, Mother had said, smiling into Tom’s fearful face. She laughed at his fright and said: You just remember there’s no such thing as ice so thick on a dugout that it can’t get broken when a woman wants it to.
Eddy had grinned at her spooky voice and told Tom not to pay her any mind. She likes to scare you, he said.
She was many mothers. Sometimes in the day she’d walk from room to room as if each doorway was different from the last, but finding them the same, she would move on from living room to kitchen, hall to bedroom, sometimes stopping to shift a piece of furniture, a chair, an end table, the loveseat or couch, from one wall to another as if by such arranging she could change what her life was to some other, better one. But what life was it that she wished for and how to get it?
She never went upstairs. The hall landing above with its hidden closet underneath the attic must have held too many nightmares for her to bear. It did for him. Or perhaps she didn’t care, the bedroom off the landing Eddy’s room, and Tom’s above, both lairs where he and his brother hunkered down. She stopped going into their rooms when they changed from boys to men.
The older he and his brother got, the more life they piled up behind them, and the less it seemed there was to come. Tom had always known he wasn’t like Eddy and had felt proud the day Father chose him to be the executioner. It didn’t matter to Eddy. He said Tom was better with a rifle than he was. Father had taken him outside one morning in early spring and placed the rifle in his hands. Tom had been ten years old. You’re the family executioner now, Father had said, and laughed.
He told the neighbours along the road that his son Tom was fo
r hire if they needed any killing done. Tom would take his rifle to this farm or that and shoot a badly lamed horse, help some farmer string up a pig for butchering, drown rats in tilted barrels, shoot lambs in the fall, wait out a fox or coyote in a chicken yard, a marauding bobcat or weasel. Eddy, who had watched Tom’s quiet returns from farm or ranch, told him not to worry, that death was a welcome thing, but after Father died, Tom never killed again.
Sally-Ann stood at the sink, her spindly arms up to the elbows in soapy water, her bare feet slippery on the wet floor. She was drug-sick, her body shivering. Marilyn stood beside her with a wet tea towel in her hands, spreading the soapy effluvium around and stacking the dishes on the counters and lower shelves of the cupboards above her, the doors long since torn off by Father in one of his furies at the secret places where he thought danger lurked, poisons hidden, blasting caps and bullets in the sugar bowl, a butcher knife missing from a drawer.
Marilyn seemed almost to dance. She picked up a plate, scraped egg yolk from the rim with her fingernail, and tilted it up to fall on those she’d piled before it on the shelf, her arms not long enough to reach higher than the stack, the shelves above mostly empty but for a few oddments of crockery that no one had used for years, gravy boats, chipped mixing bowls, and leftover pieces of kitchen machinery. She took a mug with moose heads on it and turned it to her eye. Mother spoke up and said she’d have helped dry if it hadn’t been for her sore chest and the nights without a decent sleep, drinking steady to ease what she called her restless legs.
I barely slept all day, Mother said, whining. I got these pains in my belly again. And you know how nervous I get when there’re too many people around. You know that, Eddy. There’s too much noise and me with a bad heart on top of a heart that’s been broken so many times it’s a wonder it still beats. Her voice choked. It always did when she’d had too much whiskey.
And then the tears.
Tom waited for them, the misery, the complaints, and finally the blubbering about her sorry life. Sally-Ann’s arms rose out of the sink water and she went over and put them wet around Mother. Sweat was gathered at Sally-Ann’s forehead, her hair stuck to her scalp, her red blouse torn at the shoulder. There, there, Mother Stark, she said. It’s okay, it’s okay. Please don’t cry. Please.
Tom asked why women always say things twice in comfort, and only once in anger, but no one paid attention. Eddy put another Export cigarette in his mouth, took up the book of matches, lit the cigarette, and placed the match-book down beside the green cardboard pack to his right, just so, in an exact order on the table, the same each time. Smoke eased up the side of his face and drifted through his hair. The only sound in the room was the rattle of dishes and the turning of the cards.
As Marilyn moved by the counter her small buttocks rolled inside her grey skirt. Tom saw smooth creatures shifting there beneath the cloth the way animals moved, without shame or shamming, alive in their muscle and skin and bone. Marilyn wasn’t looking anywhere but at the dishes in front of her, plates and glasses piled up with whatever else had been left over from the party and the breakfast Tom had made so many hours before. Marilyn looked like she’d lived in the house for years.
Oh, Marilyn, he whispered. What kind of woman are you?
Someone’s calling, Eddy said suddenly from his solitude, and a second later the phone rang from the corner table in the living room. Tom didn’t flinch at Eddy predicting the call, though he saw Marilyn go still and Sally-Ann put her hand up to her mouth. Then Marilyn laughed, her throat arching up, seeming delighted at this new world she was in. They waited to see if Eddy would answer as ring followed ring, Tom and Mother both knowing that the call would be for him. The ringing was enough to make Mother anxious, certain that whoever was on the line would somehow take Eddy away. She turned and went down the hall to her room. Tom knew her heart was a small fist gripping his brother and losing a little more each day.
The phone stopped.
That Joe is sorry grief, Marilyn said out of nowhere as she laid another dish on the teetering pile. He’s not one to forget, Tom.
No one said anything. Your mother’s strange, Marilyn added, a wet dish towel dangling from her hand. I’ve never known anyone like her before.
No one knows what Mother knows, Tom said.
Sally-Ann sat down on a chair and drew her hands up to her chest, crossed there as if to ward off a blow.
The phone rang again. It sounded to Tom like the word briinnnng, as if asking for something to be taken to its voice. Eddy shook his head, but Tom went to answer it anyway. He picked up the phone, listened, and called out: It’s Harry.
His brother at the kitchen table, playing his endless game of Patience, didn’t move.
Harry was breathless, whispering.
Where’re you? Tom asked him.
I’m at the pay phone at the gas station near Priest Valley Road.
Tom looked into the kitchen, but Eddy just shook his head again.
You tell him to come out here. I’ll be parked in the old gravel pit up by Garofalo’s place, Harry said. I have to talk to him about something he needs to know. And, Oh yeah, he said, I need a favour. Crystal’s out here with me.
I’ll tell him, Tom said. He hung up the phone and went back into the kitchen. Eddy didn’t look up, a cigarette burning between his fingers.
He says it’s important, said Tom.
Eddy set his cards down on the table beside his Export pack and stuck his cigarette in the sand of the ashtray. Tom bent over, his arm around his brother’s shoulder, Eddy’s breath a dark sweetness like burned sugar. What’s going on, Eddy?
Where did Harry say he was?
At the old gravel pit. Crystal’s with him. I think he wants you to take her off his hands.
Right, Eddy said.
Tom could see Harry and Crystal parked there among the piles of stone and rubble as Harry waited for Eddy to come. Something was going to go down, Harry’s message carrying the promise of some kind of scheme. Nothing was ever simple. He looked at Eddy. His brother was worn to a stub and there was little Tom could do about it.
Eddy picked up the cards from where they lay between a blackened crust of toast and a tarnished kitchen knife, one of a set Father brought home from collecting a debt he was owed by a man who had a cherry orchard in the high desert country near Omak down in Washington. Only Father would take a family’s eating tools to cover money he was owed, Mother had said as she counted the knives and forks, irritated for a moment that there were no serving spoons. Father said he walked into the man’s house with his shotgun and picked up the cedar chest that held their Joan of Arc silverware. Father liked telling how he told the family they could eat with scoops of cherry bark when they got hungry.
Tom knew that most everyone in the valley had believed Elmer Stark would break a man’s arm because of a sack of rotten spuds, a box of bruised peaches. They just had to point out Jack Perrault, the mechanic down at Eston Motors. Jack had a crushed hand after Father had struck him with a wrench in a rage over a bad truck tire. Or Marge Perslock. He’d forced her into his truck and driven her into the hills to spite her husband who’d cheated him on a load of logs. Father put the fear in her. She never told her husband, but Father knew. He told Tom and Eddy about it when they were small so they might learn from it. He said when he saw Marge and her husband together all he had to do was grin at her. He said he liked to see her quail. He told Tom and Eddy sometimes the better is your knowing and your enemy not.
Suddenly, Eddy swept the cards left in front of him into the deck, the clack clack of the full pack in his hands now, tapping the table, sharp in the room. He stood up then. His fly was undone, and Tom told him so. Eddy went over to Sally-Ann, who zipped it up for him, her face glistening, the skin on her hands puckered from the dishwater. She glanced sullenly around the room to show them she was the one who was with Eddy now. Then she shrugged her shoulders, her body small. Eddy, she said, can you help me?
Go get your stuff, said Eddy. H
e ran his hand through her shock of brown hair. You’re going home, he said. Sally-Ann begged for just a little chip of heroin, but he told her to wait. After she collected the rest of her things from up in Eddy’s room, Eddy took her arm and led her into the bathroom, closing the door. When they came out, she was smoothed over, floating light on the bit of heroin he’d allowed her. Her purse hung from her wrist, a soiled sweater pulled through the straps, one arm dragging on the floor. I don’t know why I have to go home, she mumbled. What’ll I do?
You’ll figure it out, Eddy said. He leaned over the table, tucked cigarettes and matches into his jacket, slapped his hip pocket, his wallet there, hooked to a belt loop with a stainless steel chain, and then his front pocket where the car keys scraped against his buck knife. Satisfied, he went and took the leather bomber jacket from where it was hanging by the door, and put it on. Scarred and worn, the jacket was the one Father always wore when he went down to the Royal Canadian Legion for the meat draw. Tom moved a step away. If he stood too close when Eddy was wearing the jacket, he could smell Father, the same sweat, tobacco, gunpowder, and liquor soaked into the leather.
Tom?
Yeah.
You take your truck over to the gravel pit. I’ll meet you there. You take Crystal wherever she wants to go. I’m taking Sally-Ann home.
Tom turned to Marilyn and asked her if she’d be there when he returned. She nodded, her back to him, a wisp of hair falling across her cheek. It was Vera brought me out here, she said. It’ll have to be you takes me home.
Tom got his denim jacket and followed Eddy and Sally-Ann out of the house. Eddy started the car, each tick, creak, and whistle of the motor a language to him. He revved the engine, the grumble of the Hollywood mufflers loud in the night. Then the car reared up the incline and out the driveway to the right, heading east the back way through the ranchlands and orchards.
