by Brad Watson
The mother came back into the den and stopped short when she saw that the boys were still sitting on the sofa where they’d been sitting when she got home. She folded her arms and looked at them for a few seconds before saying, I know something is up. What have you done? What’s wrong?
Nothing’s wrong, I promise, the oldest brother said. The other two brothers kept their mouths shut, as they’d agreed to do, and after looking at them suspiciously for another long minute, the mother turned and walked slowly into the kitchen, as if thinking. She was most likely thinking that one or another of the boys had had some kind of accident. That maybe they had broken a window she hadn’t noticed yet, or destroyed the mechanisms inside an appliance, or gotten caught stealing something or destroying something somewhere else and were therefore waiting either to tell her about it or to be visited by the injured party, coming to inform her that because of what her boys had done that day she must pay them a certain sum of money, in order to repair or replace what was missing or destroyed.
And then she looked out the window and saw Dr. Hornegay walking up their driveway into the carport carrying a bunch of flowers and a bottle of something inside a paper sack, and wearing a suit and tie.
Oh, God, she said to herself, and then louder she said to the boys, What did you do to Dr. Hornegay?
When she heard nothing she looked over at the sofa. The boys were still sitting there and staring at her as if they were not only mute but deaf, or like dogs being spoken to and unsure what the tone of the person’s words meant, that clap-mouthed momentary attentive interim between daydreaming and the next distraction. Or like children in the convenience store who, having just slipped candy bars into their pockets, were looking at the clerk with expressions that were the most balanced and perfect combination of innocence and guilt.
The mother was fairly mystified. Between the looks on her boys’ faces and the appearance of Dr. Hornegay in her carport, now at her carport side door, the den door, and ringing the bell, and dressed in a suit and tie and carrying a bunch of flowers and a bottle of something inside a paper sack, she felt a strange unintelligible flutter of panic.
What have you done? she said to the boys, who did not hear this because she said it in a voice just barely above a whisper.
When she opened the door, Dr. Hornegay stepped back from it with the flowers and bottle in his hand and made a deep bow. Good evening, my dear, Dr. Hornegay said. You look lovely as ever. It’s been far too long since we’ve had the pleasure of your company.
Their mother did not open the screen door but said through it, Hello, Dr. Hornegay, what can I do for you?
For me? Dr. Hornegay said, and laughed to himself, looking off toward the street and heaving a sigh, as if he were suddenly a little pleasantly saddened by something, maybe the thought of how he’d never gotten rich like the doctors their mother worked for down at the pediatric clinic, or how his wife had gotten so sad that she gained a hundred and fifty pounds and moved into their basement and now couldn’t get out, or how he himself couldn’t go anywhere now since the police had taken away his driver’s license after he’d run into a telephone pole on the way home from the Traveler’s Club out on the highway. Or maybe it was something way back, whatever it was he had done that had banished him to the charity hospital in the first place.
Madame, you need do nothing for me, Dr. Hornegay finally said after his long and melancholy pause. The question is, what can I do for you?
For me? their mother said. I’m sorry, Dr. Hornegay, but there’s nothing wrong with me.
No? Dr. Hornegay said, looking surprised and most perplexed, but in a playful way. Well, your fine boys there, and he gestured with the hand that held the bottle in the paper sack toward the brothers still sitting on the sofa in the den behind her, those precocious, compassionate young men of yours, said that you were afflicted with a grievous sadness, and I, madame, am the doctor, here to cheer you up.
Their mother then turned a look on the brothers, still sitting very still on the sofa, that they had never seen before. The look was so thrillingly unfamiliar and so deliciously terrifying that it was all they could do not to yelp and cower or leap off of the sofa and run out into the yard. But they were in effect paralyzed by the look and remained very still, and only their expressions changed from attentive curiosity and expectation to attentive and paralyzed, panicked delight.
May I be so bold, Dr. Hornegay said then, and he opened the screen door with the little finger of the hand holding the bottle in the paper sack and held the flowers toward their mother with the other hand. Their mother took the flowers and said thank you in a voice that was neither here nor there in terms of being grateful and pleased or puzzled and annoyed, and then she said, What’s in the sack?
Only some of the finest bourbon made in the great southern state of Kain-tuck, Dr. Hornegay said, and with a flourish he removed from the sack by its neck a bottle of Old Crow whiskey.
Oh, my, it’s been a long time since I’ve had a drink of anything like that, their mother said.
The boys knew this was true, that the only person drinking anything like that around their house for the last few months before their father left for his job as a long-haul traveling salesman was their father himself and sometimes, during the daytime when she was supposed to be washing or ironing or vacuuming the house and watching them, the good-looking young maid who would soon enough cause so much trouble for herself and everyone else. They knew that the only thing to drink around the house nowadays was their mother’s jug of kosher Manischewitz, which she rarely sampled and which she kept not because she was Jewish (she was raised a Methodist) but because it was the only wine around their town that wasn’t wino wine like Boone’s Farm or that other one that you often saw actual winos clutching as they staggered down the street or lay in the gutter behind Woolworths downtown until the police found them and hauled them down to the pokey to sleep it off and then work it off sweeping the very gutters they had been passed out in the day before.
Too long, madame, too long, Dr. Hornegay said, gently slipping past their mother into the den and giving the boys a nod and a wink where they sat on the sofa. He made his way to the little dining table just outside the kitchen where they ate almost all of their meals. The bigger, nicer table where they ate their special meals like Thanksgiving and Christmas was in the formal dining room, which also had a fancy sofa and two fancy stuffed chairs and a hi-fi, but which was almost never used or even entered, in order to keep it clean and neat for the next special occasion. All the houses on their street, a cul-de-sac that had until then been a little dirt road down to a small lake in the woods on the northern edge of town, had been built by the same builder at around the same time, and they all had the same setup, with the den being the room that people hung around in, and the living room in which almost no one ever actually lived. It was one of the small, curious things about the world into which the boys had been born.
I’ll have a drink with you, their mother was saying to Dr. Hornegay, who had helped himself to a couple of small glasses from the cupboard and some ice from the freezer atop the refrigerator and set the glasses of ice and the bottle of Old Crow down on the little dining table. She said, I’ll have a drink, but then I have to cook supper.
Oh, pish posh, Dr. Hornegay said with a courtly gesture of one hand. I’d be willing to wager that these boys would love to have a simple repast, something we could order over the telephone—my treat, he said. Turning to the boys sitting on the sofa, he said, Boys, tell me if I’m wrong, but I’d be willing to wager that you wouldn’t turn down a sack of Mrs. Benson’s hot tamales, am I correct?
You sure are, you bet, the boys said, piping up but sticking to their spots on the sofa as if glued there by their pants.
The mother said she would think about it while she had her drink with Dr. Hornegay, and in the meantime she allowed the boys to watch television. The oldest boy got up and turned on the set and they began watching a different episode of the same western
they had been watching the day their mother had become upset. At first they partly watched the western and partly watched their mother and Dr. Hornegay having a drink and talking. Then Dr. Hornegay offered their mother one of his Camel cigarettes, and they both began to smoke along with their drinking and talking, and Dr. Hornegay was offering to call in an order to Mrs. Benson for the hot tamales but pouring himself and their mother more drinks first, and the boys became more distracted by the western. Dr. Hornegay and their mother were becoming louder and were laughing a lot and the smoke from their cigarettes was creating a beautiful haze of gently swirling blue smoke in the hanging lamp above the little dining table, but all of this had moved into that part of the boys’ brains that resembled the waking equivalent of a dream, there but not there, attached to but somewhat removed from their primary consciousness. This is something that often happened to them, in school or church or while watching something unfathomable on television, such as the evening news. But now it was the eminently fathomable western program they were watching, whereas the little get-together of their mother and Dr. Hornegay, although engineered by themselves, had become unfathomable, and thereby had been relegated to the nonverbal part of their brains.
Outside the big sliding glass door beside the dining table where their mother and Dr. Hornegay sat drinking and smoking and talking and laughing, the darkly silver gloaming began to creep again into the sky, and the greens of the grass and the unkempt shrubbery on the hill behind the house also darkened softly.
In the den, in the failing light outside the penumbra of the hanging lamp where their mother and Dr. Hornegay sat, the animated light from the television set trembled, flickered, and leapt about the room.
Ooo, damn, the oldest brother whispered to the others, all three of them with their eyes on the western program. How does he jump off the top of a house like that and land on the horse and not rack his balls?
I don’t see how, the youngest brother said.
You don’t even have balls yet, the oldest brother said.
I do, too.
I see how he could do it, the middle brother said.
Bull, the oldest brother said.
I do. It’s all in how you land. You have to land with your legs squeezed up, and back on your butt a little bit.
Slightly, the oldest brother said. You’re so full of crap.
I’ll show you, the middle brother said.
Stay in the yard, don’t wander off up the street, their mother called as they filed out the carport door.
The oldest brother helped the middle brother extract their old rocky horse, which was actually a springy horse, from the storage room built just off the carport and set it up in the grass just below the lowest overhang of the roof there, then the oldest brother helped the middle brother up onto the eave by cupping his palms together and boosting the middle brother’s foot, and the middle brother was half tossed, half self-hoisted up onto the roof and he turned and squatted and looked down at the faces of his older brother and younger brother where they stood on either side of the springy horse, looking up at him in the softly failing light.
He knew, all of a sudden, what a fool he was, how badly hurt he was going to be if he made the leap onto the back of the springy horse from where he now squatted on the roof. His first idea upon knowing this was to leap and pretend to miss the horse, and maybe he would only twist his ankle. Then his second idea was to suggest that the youngest brother try it first, since he didn’t have balls yet, not really anyway, and the oldest brother and the middle brother could also check the youngest brother’s landing when he arrived at the plastic saddle of the springy horse, and control it all.
And then he thought he would cry, because he was flooded once again, for the first time in a long time, with the shameful memory of something he had done to the youngest brother one time when they were being watched by Rosie, back when she was their maid and the oldest brother was in school but the middle and youngest brother were still both too young to be in school. It was a warm afternoon and they were all three out in the yard, the two brothers in shorts with no shoes or shirts, and Rosie, who sat on the low retaining wall between their yard and the next while the youngest brother and the middle brother played in the grass nearby. Rosie, who wore a maid’s uniform that was not unlike their mother’s nurse’s uniform except it was blue instead of white, was reading the newspaper where she sat on the retaining wall a few feet away. Looking down into the thick St. Augustine grass, the middle brother spied something gleaming and picked it up. It was a toy razor blade, double-edged. He knew it was a toy razor blade because it was so easy to bend back and forth.
Look, he announced, I found a toy razor blade.
Rosie, biting at a fingernail, glanced over at him and wrinkled her brow. She was trying to finish something she was reading in the newspaper and didn’t really want to be disturbed in order to deal with some foolishness on his part.
Put that thing down, she said, before you hurt yourself.
I can’t hurt myself, the middle brother said. It’s a toy.
It’s not a toy, Rosie said, it’s a razor blade, young’un, you put it down.
It is not a real razor blade, the middle brother said, I’ll prove it.
He walked over to the youngest brother, who had been niggling with his finger at a worm or roly-poly in the grass, not hearing any of this, and he ran the edge of the razor blade down the length of the youngest brother’s sun-browned, naked back, following the bumpy line of the youngest brother’s spine.
A bright red line of blood jumped from his brother’s back and began to bead and run down in crooked trails. The middle brother dropped the razor blade and stepped back, and he screamed just as Rosie dropped her newspaper and began to shout, and a moment later the youngest brother, turning in a circle like a dog after his tail and trying to see what had happened to his back that was making everyone scream and shout, began to scream and cry, and the middle brother fell down into the grass, bawling and striking the ground with his fists, blubbering out, I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it, I thought it was a toy.
Remembering this now as he squatted on the roof, looking down into the youngest brother’s irritating but inarguably innocent face, the middle brother felt the same terrible wave of shame he’d felt just after slicing open the youngest brother’s back three whole years before, and he felt a heartbreaking longing, also, for the presence of Rosie, who had been such a comforting maid, because she had never been afflicted with sadness, and had always been cheerful except when she was mad, and she was never mad for longer than it took her to get the madness out, and then she was always and ever her regular self again, and it had always brightened his spirits to see how she could be such a normal person, even though she was colored, even though a maid, even though he knew quite well she must miss her own children while she spent her whole long day there taking care of them, him and his brothers, who didn’t appreciate her at all. And now, just today, they had called her a nigger. He might as well have said it, too. The only thing he could do, now, was to jump.
He landed perfectly, which didn’t make any difference because two of the springs suspending the horse in its frame snapped and the belly of the horse hit the ground, and his mouth banged into the horse’s flowing plastic mane, and then he bounced off the horse to one side and his mouth, though immediately flowing with blood, didn’t hurt much because very possibly, he thought for the moment he had before the pain occluded all thought, he had broken every bone in his butt and his back. After a moment, he lay in the cool grass in what was now once again the gloaming, and began to scream.
The youngest brother began to scream, too, out of his own terror. He ran in a tight circle for a moment, screaming, and then he ran around back of the house and up the steps and ran smack into the sliding glass door, on the other side of which their mother and Dr. Hornegay looked up from the dining table in surprise.
Good God, Dr. Hornegay said, standing up. Their mother had already dashed over to
the sliding glass door, frightened but angry, with the incredulity of one who has suffered too often, too long, the reckless, mindless behavior of boys. She muttered, What in the world, What in the world, over and over to herself. She knelt beside the youngest brother, who, stunned from running into the sliding glass door, lay on his back on the patio with his eyes wide open. But when the mother leaned over him and said, Are you okay? he began to scream again and point frantically in the direction of his brothers around the side of the house.
When the mother and Dr. Hornegay came around there, the mother holding the youngest brother in her arms, the oldest brother said, He jumped off the roof onto the rocky horse. I told him not to.
The oldest brother stood off to one side in order to detach himself from any semblance of blame.
The mother screamed, then, and set the youngest brother down hard enough in her haste to set him crying, too, and she began to shout to Dr. Hornegay, Help, help! Has he broken his back? Oh, my God!
Don’t move, son, Dr. Hornegay said, just lie still there, now. Can you feel this?
After a moment, having managed to stop screaming, himself, the middle brother began to come back into the world, into the shooting, searing pain in his butt and his back, the throbbing pain in his mouth, into the frightening vision of Dr. Hornegay’s horrible nose just inches from his own face, into the hot, overwhelming odor of the whiskey and cigarettes on Dr. Hornegay’s breath, and finally into the strange and tickly sensation of Dr. Hornegay’s fingers wiggling and pinching at one of his toes. He nodded his head.
Then Dr. Hornegay was feeling at his neck and along the bones of his spine, and saying, He’s going to be all right, I believe, and he could hear the sounds of his mother weeping and saying, Oh, when will it stop? And then, kind of like in the distance, a car pulling into the drive, headlights glancing against the whole odd scene, and then there was their father standing above him, seeming impossibly tall, and saying, I got a message over in Vicksburg, said it was something from Rosie? He looked from the middle brother, to the busted rocky horse, to the mother, and to Dr. Hornegay, standing upright now a little wobbly and attempting to straighten his jacket and tie. The father said, What in the goddamn hell is going on?
