by Bill Beverly
He let Marsha have her time, and when she left his side and went to go sit at the window, where she cried with a little chuffing sound, he approached Perry’s bedside.
“Have they given up on him?”
Marsha took a breath. “There isn’t much to give up, Antoine. All that wiring on him, it’s keeping him alive. When they take it off, then he dies. It’s that simple.”
“When they gonna do it?”
“Now,” Marsha said. “I shouldn’t have. You don’t have to stay.”
East looked down the pupils of Perry’s eyes as if he was looking into a hole in the street, as if there were depths to the man, and in the depths there would be what the fish knew, what the fish saw: the end. The being swept up, the laying down. Sharply, as if she were here right now, he saw the Jackson girl in the street, her eyes: the seeing of the last thing and the fixing on it. He shuddered. Perry was a color part his wind-scorched red and part the opalescent white of paint, the white of the winter sky. East backed away. He stood again by the doorway, and when the two nurses returned, they had to push in past him, so much had he forgotten where he was.
“Mrs. Slaughter?” the younger of the two nurses said. The black one. The older nurse waited quietly, deferentially, much like a nun. “Are you ready?”
Again Marsha took her moment. “Yes,” she said quietly.
“The doctor can be here in a few minutes.”
Marsha stood and came to East in the doorway. Her body, the opposite of Perry’s, female, small, her tiny birdlike bones visible in her wrists, the hands darkened with age. Her brown hair and dark eyes going gray.
“You don’t have to stay, Antoine,” she said. “I’ll be all right.”
Words in his throat curled under themselves. He shook his head.
It took less time than East would have guessed. The needles came out of Perry’s body, and the breathing tube with its scarlet cloak of mucus scraped back up out of the mouth with only a little urging. Marsha had reviewed her signatures on the paper without very much looking, and she touched Perry and moved back to the window without very much looking at him either.
“It’s what he wanted,” the older nurse said by way of consolation, and Marsha laughed once, a hollow pop.
Out the window was the highway. Winter cars rushed past in their coats of grime.
“Push this button if you need anyone,” the nurse said.
It was as if Marsha had fallen into a trance, and East, after a minute, moved again toward the bedside. Was this it? Suddenly he was eager to know. He bent over Perry, watched though he had been unable to watch Ty, unable to stay where his brother and the ones before him lay and suffered.
Perry’s breathing was soft and tinkly, glasslike, like a stone rattling in a bottle as it rolled. It tumbled and slowed, tumbled and slowed. It isn’t taking long, East thought. There isn’t much more. Once Perry’s breath nearly ended on the upstroke. Then he let the air out—another roll, another tumble. East put his hand near Perry’s hand, and he leaned and looked again down the barrel of Perry’s eyes. The last thing anyone saw. He supposed he was willing to be it. He put the fingers of his hand atop Perry’s knuckles, and Perry let out a half cough, out of his chest, which was high and white and furred with hairs like bare winter trees on a mountain. The stone in the bottle rolled again. The eyes swam in their clouds, their baths of white. Then the bottle bumped up on something, rolled no farther, and the mountain knew it too, what the fish knew, that last thing of things.
21.
Then again it was windy and warm. Like summer warmth after the snow, like California warmth: another wave of southern air, men walking in shirtsleeves, cars with their windows open and music spilling. East kept the range closed. He was alone. No one pulled into the lot, now muddy, the tracks shimmering with melting snow under the blue sky. Melting water sounding everywhere. No one stopped. He supposed it was Marsha the regulars were greeting now, now that Perry was dead. A man’s sickness you discussed with other men. When a man died, you spoke to his wife at last. But no cars at the house either. He did not cross the road. He was not sure how to approach the house or if, now that Perry was gone, she would receive him.
He worked at the building and the yard in the warmth that might not return, he knew. He worked like it was his own. He aired the building, cleaned the storeroom where the many jugs and trays of balls gave out their waxy smell. He put the stepladder up—sixteen feet, it frightened him to climb it—and cleaned the lights, replacing two old tubes that spat and flickered. These were the lights that would kill you—that’s what Fin said once, dull your eyes, take the color out of paint. He dropped the old tubes into the bin and watched them break into curls of glass, puffs of white powder rising from them.
In the afternoon he put on a pair of hip boots Perry had left and wheeled a Dumpster around the range. In shadows lay thick slush like the kids drank with syrup, and it still lay heavy in the lee of the berm with its shading fence. But where the sun hit the ground, he could find the litter in the mud: chips bags, candy wrappers, sandwich papers, sweat towels, plastic flasks, cigarette packs, bloody socks, popper vials, zipper pulls, beer cans, stray gloves. Some of it windblown, most of it dropped. Each time he cleaned the range, he learned things he hadn’t known: what they brought and dropped was what the range didn’t sell. Cherry cigars, green tubs of chew. Wrappers from Chicken Lively—what was that? Glass pipes, someone getting high—he had ideas who. He pinched the pieces with the picker and raised them high for a look. The boots were enormous on his feet, and he tightened the laces until they bit rings around his ankles.
The streak of yellow-orange across the south. A rent in the clouds, or maybe their end.
He filled two bags with trash before dark. The bags weren’t right. Some awkward, shifty plastic, thin and bulgy, not tough like the regular bags. Maybe they were for something else, not trash. But Perry wasn’t here to ask about it. East lugged them out one at a time, opening the gate and scuffling down the shrubby bank to the bigger Dumpster. Then he stood outside eating a bagel dry and looking at the daylight dwindling down the road to his left. A thin, worried-looking dog came padding down the edge of the road from the east as if it were following the fading light. It looked at East and lowered its mutt head. East tossed the rest of the bagel, and it gave it a sniff, then picked it up and took it along. Silent thing, intent.
He left the boots outside the door. Inside, he put the roll of weak black plastic bags away in the storeroom and took his good gloves off.
He vacuumed the sofas and the two raggedy rugs. Swept out the corners.
The next day, just as warm. He allowed himself to sit for a few minutes at a booth in the doughnut shop. Ate his sandwich. A napkin holder of rust-speckled chrome. The morning light played over the salty lot like a single, insistent note.
He found the paint that Perry had used to paint the door and its frame white and, while the sun was bright, painted them again. He painted until the paint ran out; then he soaked the brush in thinner and cleaned the windows with a blade.
It wasn’t clear what he was going to do next. It was clear to East that he was waiting for something, some sign, some sudden clearing that would allow him to glimpse his desire. Clear that he deserved to wait. Not clear that he deserved such a sign.
But the day was fresh, and the air moved through, dusty, hopeful. At dusk he sat outside again, watching the house, Perry’s house. Marsha hadn’t come or gone. Two days now without customers, without cold. He regarded the driveway curiously, the hump of the yard above the roadside ditch.
He tried not to feel left out.
After a little while, the dog passed by again. East saw it coming. Careful, stepping quietly along the roadside, skirting stones. It knew what it was doing.
He had saved a part of his lunch this time, egg and cheese with the bread. He called to the dog, not a word but a sort of yelp. The dog stopped, eyed him uneasily. He threw it a chunk of greasy bread, and after the dog wolfed this, it stood squar
ely, assessing him now. It came for the handful of food he held out. He did not touch the dog. He could see the worn path something had rubbed around the dog’s neck, part scar, part dry riverbed. Like a landmark in the fur. He watched the dog eat, eyeing him shrewdly, and then move away.
He took a shovel from the locker atop the landing, and he dug his guns out of the piled dirt where they’d waited for him.
—
Long before midnight he was asleep, curled on his pallet, the single pillow. He slept the long and grateful sleep of men who work—a breathing sleep, a dreaming sleep of childhood, or flying, or pathways leading somewhere. He burped and shifted, and steadily inside him, like the ocean’s tide, one great muscle drew air and pushed it out, drew it again.
It was late December, a Tuesday. It had been a busy day.
—
The back door was open, as if someone were minding the range, as if the building were still airing. East slept. Beneath his box he did not feel the air. And he had been in the air all day, this southern air, which did not feel or smell so different from the air that he’d grown up in.
Only the noise, the sustained clattering, woke him. Like something being dragged, being broken. His eyes opened, and he lay paralyzed, as happened sometimes in dreams. The need to move. He could not move. It’s the middle of the night. Like a child’s excuse.
The sounds echoed up. Now he smelled the air. The nighttime wind and smell of melt, the milky smell of rock being ground. He reached up under the sink. The tough plastic creased there, formed a crevice, and into it he’d pressed the two guns he’d dug up. He dislodged one and fit his hand around it, and silently he stood.
The open back door looked out across the range toward the shushed lights of town. Nobody there. Just the man-size furrows of the field.
He crept to the stairs. The noise persisted: was it Marsha? A clank and a sigh, a clank and a sigh. Like a giant lugging his tool kit, shifting it with every step. In his hand the gun was strange and cold. He took the corner, paused, and stepped down.
The blow came from beside, below. It smashed the gun out of his hand, sent it spinning over the ragged sofa. Again it came and smashed him off the step. He plunged down the half flight of stairs, hit the concrete, and rolled. He tried to come up—the pavement is not your friend—but the blow struck a third time. Some sort of club, it bit into him. It smashed him down again, and now he heard the feet scrambling around, and he gave up getting away, just covered himself, his head shoved down by a kick. He locked it between his knees, rolled, took the ringing blows on his left side. They rained on him like whip strokes.
Not the head, not the stomach, not the back, he pleaded silently. Not the neck or the shoulder, the elbow or the arm. Not the places he was being hit: he yearned to save them, as if the blows were making him miss every part of his body. He yearned to protect it. He cracked under two more strikes, rolled away, hid his face again, under his arm, the way a bird hides under a shivering wing. Whimpering. Dreading the blow that would break his head, that would send him to join the others.
The feet backed off then. He’d thought there were two pairs, but now he eyed the shoes circling, switching direction. The dark staff resting. Just one. The shoes rested, poised and small, as if picking out a target. Dark high-tops. He braced again and closed his eyes.
The voice came soft and exquisitely amused. “Damn, boy,” it said. “You hold a gun like a girl.”
Then he did not need to look.
“You ran from me, man. You ran.”
East opened his mouth, but his throat was stopped.
“I knew you’d run,” Ty said. “I didn’t think you’d shoot me. Didn’t think of that.”
He opened his eyes, but they flooded. The concrete floor blurred, faultlessly clean. He was a fool. Left Ty for dead. But left him for dead was just something you told yourself. Dead had to be for real.
There was blood smudging his face; his arm was smacked open, raw. Painfully he moved it. “Ty,” he coughed. “You gonna kill me?”
He dared to look up. Above the sofa he saw something swinging—a nylon tote, hung on its strap from a rafter. Something in there shifted, causing the racket.
A decoy.
“Found you,” Ty said.
He closed his eyes.
“What are you doing here?”
“Found you,” Ty said simply. “Stand up.”
East was ready to die on the clean, hard floor. Like people did. Standing didn’t mean anything now.
Ty bent over him. He pulled at East’s shoulder, gave up. “I’ll whip you till you get up, then,” he said, almost helpfully. A foot helped nudge East onto all fours. His arm burned, and he sheltered it from Ty.
“Take a seat,” Ty said. He pointed with the club. It was just a stick, the broomstick East had used, he saw now. Unscrewed.
“You gonna kill me?”
“I should,” Ty said.
East eyed where the gun had ended up. Somewhere way past the other sofa. But Ty would be ready for that.
He sat.
Strange, long journey across the world. The world would have its way; you could not stop it. And his brother was the world.
Ty acknowledged it too. “Funny, seeing you again. Seeing where we left off.”
In the dark, East nodded.
Lightly Ty spun the broomstick. “You ask what I’m doing here? Did you try to find out about me?”
“Find out what?”
“Find out what,” Ty snorted. “Did I live? Did I live or die, nigger?”
“Where I’m gonna find that out?” East mumbled.
“Well, first, you got to care,” snapped Ty. “Care enough to try. Internet, man. But you don’t do that—I forget. Or call somebody. Call home. Let me tell you. They were gonna make me a state orphan. Give me to a farm lady. They asked me my name every day for a week. Then I walked out.”
“Out of what?”
“Hospital.”
“And then what did you do?”
“What you think?” Ty said. “I went home.”
“How long you look for me?”
“For you?” Ty said. “Since yesterday.”
East made a face.
“Didn’t look. I waited till you popped up. I knew you’d be out here somewhere, man. Every cow you looked at, you fell in love.”
“Did Walter snitch me?”
“Naw. Walter loves you, man. He thinks you the real thing.”
“Then how?”
“You called Abraham Lincoln,” said Ty. “That got back to me. ’Cause I’m on the inside now. Not scraping along begging for jobs. Fin changed his mind. I don’t even see a gun most days. So I looked in the records, found out the number. Pay phone over there, right?” He cocked a finger over his shoulder, toward the town. “Flew out this afternoon, came into town, walked to your pay phone. I asked one person two questions, and I knew where to find you.”
“You flew out here?” said East. “By yourself?”
“East. Don’t insult me,” Ty said. “Remember Bishop Street swimming pool? You had to keep your face out of the water?”
East remembered the old, grimy, city pool. Splashing, a war of noise. Kids drowned all the time. Neither of them had ever had a teacher. The teenage lifeguards were no better—they were just the ones who’d made it that far.
“You’d dogpaddle down to the deep end with your friends. I was, like, four or five, and I’d track your ass down? Splashing and gasping because I couldn’t swim. But I found you.”
“I remember.”
“Well, nigger,” Ty said quietly, “now I can swim.”
East looked up at his brother. The light flick of his hands as the broomstick lashed this way and that, its alloy screw-tip flashing. Heels dug into the upholstery.
Almost impatiently, he said, “You gonna kill me?”
“No,” Ty said. “I’m not.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t.”
The hanging bag
had stopped swinging, now just twisted slowly. East reached down to mop his blood, wipe it elsewhere on his shirt. Tried not to drip it on the sofa. Well, finally, he thought. Family reunion.
—
“I’m hungry,” Ty said.
In the dim light, Ty looked the same. Skinnier, though. If that was possible.
“How—” East began, then stopped, abashed. He didn’t believe. A ghost. A ghost didn’t fly across the country to trade vengeance in for a whupping.
“How are you alive?” he finished.
“You ask? How I didn’t die?” Ty spun the stick and stopped it straight up, like a clock. “Thank you. I woke up in an ambulance. Coughing up pink shit. All that day I chilled out on a ventilator. You know what that is? It’s a machine that makes you keep breathing. Another four days with a tube going into my side. That bitch hurt. Hurt worse than the popgun did. That is how I didn’t die.”
“How you just walk out?” East breathed. “They didn’t cuff you, suspect you? Didn’t ask you about it?” He found the words. “The judge?”
Ty squinted. “Why would they?”
“I know they had police on that.”
“Maybe,” Ty said. “But we kept a low profile. Did it right. To them I’m just a victim, some cold, black-on-black shit. They much more likely looking for you.”
East hung his head. “So when you gonna kill me?”
“Was up to me, you’d already be getting cold,” said his brother. “But I’m here on business. And I’m hungry. So let’s eat.”
—
Early morning. So there was just one place to go. East walked Ty out to buy a box of doughnuts before the light. Ty waited down the street.
Even before six, the place was warm, confusing, alive. East stole a glance back from the counter. But he saw nothing but the windows reflecting movies of the inside.
He could run. He was faster than Ty afoot, or used to be. He knew the yards and fields here. He knew where Perry kept a key to the old truck.
But there was nothing in it, running. He could open a gap between now and his old life. But only a gap.
The doughnuts waited in their bins, blessed and bright. The counter clerk today was a thin boy, hair brushed straight up. He folded the box together, and East picked out twelve and paid.
