“Yeah.” I was uncomfortable in the school, jumped with every sound, but Merle just leaned back against the wall, traced his finger where someone had carved “B.G. loves J.M.” in the door facing, and it seemed so amazing to me that there had been that moment when some junior high student took a pocket knife or nail file and formed those letters, probably jumping with every sound for fear of being caught, and yet it was so important, urgently so, that those initials be put there.
“What did you think of me when we were in school here?” he asked. “You know, like before we met in the cemetery that day, what did you think?”
“I don’t know.” I turned and peeked into the drafty old auditorium, those faded moss green velvet drapes still hanging there.
“Were you scared of me?” He was still leaning, rolling his head from side to side against the white plaster wall that had had to be washed down or painted every semester because of the pencil marks and names that ended up there. E. A. Poe had smooth cinderblock walls that were hard to write on.
“I guess,” I said. “Maybe a little.”
“Why?” He was wearing an emerald green shirt, with a tiny hole where it looked like there had been a logo that he or someone before him had ripped away. His eyes looked just as green as the shirt.
“I don’t know,” I said. His quizzing was making me uncomfortable; usually we just talked about school, or still easier, we just talked about how much we really liked each other.
“Well, at least you stopped hiding under your house when I walked by.” He smiled and stepped closer, opening the door to the auditorium and propping it with a brick. The thick musty air escaped like from a tomb. “Do you remember that? And your dad came out there on the porch?”
“Yeah, I remember. I was afraid you were going to get my cat.”
“And stuff a firecracker up him?” He shook his head, squeaked the toe of his sneaker along the old scuffed-up floor. “The bottom line is that you were scared of me because I was a Hucks.” He pulled on my arm, gently twisted. “Right?”
“Yes.” I looked at the wavy glass of the office door and further out the front window where the principal used to stand and watch us come up the big stone steps. The trees were thick and green; a breeze was blowing, and shadows swept like brooms across the dusty yellow ground. Merle cupped his hands and lit a cigarette, then lifted his eyebrows, motioned for me to enter the auditorium, and then he followed, hand on my elbow as if ushering me to my seat. The old hard wooden seats looked like a sea of initials, carved, Magic-Markered, chalked; now after all those years, these attempts of immortality would be ripped away and discarded.
“Now, what did happen to Cathy and John?” Merle asked, as if reading my mind, and pointed up to the high ceiling, where in spray-painted letters the names stood as if reigning over the room. “And better, how did they get up there?” He ran up the little side steps of the stage and stepped into the slat of sunlight that fell through the large windows. He stood there and turned around, his Levi’s worn soft and pale blue, shirt tail hanging long in the back. It was cool in the old building, the heat rising way above us. “And now, I’d like to introduce Lily and the Holidays singing ‘I’m Gonna Make You Love Me.’” He laughed loud, voice echoing in the empty room.
“Why did I ever let Misty talk me into that?” I asked, cringing at the thought of my standing up there and screeching out the background sounds.
“I thought it was good,” he said. “Really.” He walked and sat on the edge of the stage. “So this is what it looks like,” he said. “This is what you saw from the stage.”
“Where were you sitting?” I asked, and watched him push off with one hand and land with a thud. He kept walking up row by row, stopping and turning, examining the back of the chairs along the way. I followed about three feet behind him, still glancing out the windows for fear of someone finding us there.
“Here.” He sat in the seat and ran his finger up and down the wooden handle of the arm, his own initials penciled there.
Backstage was a jumble of old ropes and boxes and in the midst of them all was a sleeping bag and bed pillow, a little Sterno stove and a paper bag with various cans. “Somebody’s been living here,” I whispered, ready to bolt from the dark damp building and out into the fresh air and sunlight.
“You sound like Goldilocks,” he whispered, and tried to kiss me, but I pulled away, expecting someone to stumble in any second.
“Really, let’s leave. Let’s go to the pond.”
“These are my things,” he finally said. “I promise.” He held up his hand. “I’ve stayed here a few nights.” It gave me a chill to think of sleeping in this place.
“But why?” I felt behind me and eased down in the straight-back chair there. Merle had called me every single night at nine on the dot, and I had pictured him in the motel room, with two double beds and a bath and a table where you could eat, maybe even an extra little room like my parents and I had when we visited Boston. “And how did you call me?”
“That motel room is about the size of a closet and my mother is just so—” He paused. “She just goes over the same thing again and again, Dexter and what happened, my oldest brother and what happened, and then she looks at me like she’s waiting for me to pull out a gun and shoot her or something.” He stopped, breathed deeply. “I call you from Syke’s Grocery,” he said. “Pay phone. I spent one night over at the Landell’s.” I imagined him there, Maralee Landell’s arm around his shoulder just as it had been that day in Mrs. Poole’s kitchen when he talked about his mother being sick. He moved some boxes around and then sat down on the sleeping bag, stretched his legs out, bare ankles already tan.
“Does your mother know where you stay?” I asked, moving slowly from the chair onto the floor beside him, my arm pressing his.
“Look. It’s not the same as you or Misty spending the night out, you know?” He laughed and began pulling cans from the bag, then absentmindedly placed them all back. “Do you know what my old man asked me?” The look on his face was the one I had been afraid of all those years, the one he gave the teachers or principal or Todd Bridger or anyone else who threatened him. I shook my head, leaned away as he jerked his arm away from mine and patted his chest. “The son of a bitch asked me if I killed Dexter.” He patted his chest harder, voice louder. “Me, his son. Did I kill my brother?” He pulled the cans out again and then balled up the paper bag, threw it over some boxes, where it landed with a rustle. “I said, ‘Who the hell are you, Adam? And she’s Eve.’” He laughed sarcastically, leaned to the side and put his head against one of the boxes. “My mother doesn’t ever say a word, not a solitary word other than to tell the stories over and over like a broken record. He says jump and she says how high, and Maybelline needs to be outside with other children instead of clinging to her skirts. I said, ‘I’m taking Maybelline to the carnival,’ and that’s when Mama finally said something. Right. The mute stands up and says, ‘I’m sorry, but Maybelline can’t go with you.’ That’s all; she says ‘can’t’ like it rhymes with paint, CAINT or Cain. She said, ‘It’s happened, a brother killing a brother, and I’ve heard you fighting late at night. I’ve heard it.’ And all the while Maybelline is standing there hugging that damned doll that Mrs. Poole dug up from some old give-away pile, and looking at me like I’m a monster, like I had killed Dexter.”
He slumped onto the sleeping bag, hands locked behind his head, veins in his wrist bulging with the tension and tightness of his hands. I put my hand on his leg, but he jumped when I touched him. “I told my old man, I said, ‘Well, it’s easier this way, ain’t, isn’t it? Run me off so you don’t have to be responsible.’ And he got right in my face and told me that he’d heard me tell Dexter that he wasn’t fit to live.” His voice dropped off, very quiet as he drew in a deep breath, eyes closed. “And I did say that to Dexter. On Christmas Day, I told him that. My old man said, ‘Maybe now you and that little blond whore can do as you please.’” He shook his head. “When Perry was standing th
ere crying over Dexter, he asked her what did she care, there were plenty of guys who’d have her.”
I thought of Perry then, that night, how read)- she was to try and overlook what had happened to her just to hold on to Dexter and all the worthless hopes he was handing to her, how desperate she must have felt both then and the night of the fire when she saw that he was gone, her pipe dream of a future screeching to a halt. She had been absent much of the spring, and the days she was in school, she left class early, either sitting in the glassed room where the guidance counselor had his desk, or standing out on the curb until someone picked her up.
“It’s the classic case of abuse,” my mother had said not long before when Angela appeared at our door just to say hello, just to tell us how wonderful things were now that Greg had a job he liked and didn’t feel so down on himself. She had a bruise on her thigh that showed briefly as she crossed her leg, tucked her skirt under. “I think it’s a form of self-punishment,” my mother continued. Psychology books from the local community college were stacked under her bedside table. “She could feel guilty just for being born.”
“I told Perry on Christmas Day,” Merle was saying. “I told her that Dexter was no good.” I reached my hand to his face and that time he didn’t jump, just pulled me close and then closer, pulled me on top of him like a blanket and then held on, his breath damp on my face, arms squeezing my back. “You know,” he whispered, “I really think I could have killed Dexter. I hated him so much. Sometimes I hate all of them just because they’re who they are and because they’ll be that way forever.”
“You couldn’t have killed Dexter.” There was a rip in the dusty old drapes and I could see through it into the empty auditorium; my cheek was pressed against his chest, my own breath falling in rhythm with his heartbeat.
“But Dexter could’ve killed somebody,” he said. “And so what keeps me from being that way? Why should I believe I’m so different.”
“Because you are,” I whispered, and then just lay there, silent like the building.
When we left, the sun was no longer streaming through the auditorium windows, and the room looked dingy and shabby. We walked along quietly; I was torn between feeling frightened by all that Merle had said, the glimpse I’d been given inside his life, and the feelings I had had while lying there on top of him on the old sleeping bag. I had felt then that I could stay just like that, that the warmth I felt at that moment and the belief that what I was feeling was right, was enough to make me want to move there with him, to share the raggedy sleeping bag and to cook canned food on the little snap-together grill. I could hear some unknown voice issuing my ultimatum: Either you leave Merle alone OR you give up everything you have and move behind the auditorium of Samuel T. Saxon School, come and go like a thief. That day my decision was final, solid. On that afternoon I was prepared to do anything he wanted me to do; I was prepared for him to ask me anything as we walked along. But instead we walked silently, a new sensation between us with every look exchanged. When we got within view of the the pond, we walked faster, both eager to talk and break the awkward silence. The pond wasn’t very big and like the rest of the area was in a sad slow decline; there was trash dumped on the side nearest the highway, but the wild ducks were still there.
The day my father had taken me, there were several gulls, whining and begging, swooping aggressively for the food; we had sat there, tossing bread piece by piece into the water, the gulls circling and crying in that high-pitched scream. My father threw a piece to one of the ducks, a white one whose blue eyes looked wild as it strained to bend its neck to eat. It moved slowly to one side as if it were blind in one eye or had no balance. The gulls and mallards were swooping and dipping, grabbing up the pieces before the white duck could get its long clumsy neck bent in the right position. My father told me to stay there on the bank as he inched closer to the pond, holding his hand toward that one duck. His shoes sank in the muck as he leaned forward and threw some bread right in front of it, but the gulls still stole every piece. He tried placing some on a log so it wouldn’t have to crane its neck. Then suddenly the duck turned, beak open, and clamped down on one of the gulls; there were shrill screams and feathers spewing as the duck shook its stiff neck from side to side. Before I could get my legs moving, I heard myself screaming for it to stop, and then I backed up the hill, feet slipping as I grabbed the tall grass and pulled myself up, all the while begging my father to make them stop, the screams so shrill I felt I needed to cover my ears, and though I didn’t want to see, I felt compelled to look. My father stood there holding a brick, his hand raised and moving forward as if to let go, and then again, and again, unable to let go, as the other birds fled from the scene, screams diminishing as the gull’s neck went limp, as froth and feathers fell to the muddy bank, the duck’s pale blue eyes still looking wild with hunger as it continued to shake its enemy, not yet aware that the enemy was dead.
“Sorry you saw that,” my father said, then and many times after. “And I’m sorry I couldn’t stop it all.” He put his arm around me, put his other palm out to block my vision when I was tempted to look back.
“It was a bird,” my mother said later, when neither my father nor I could eat the dinner she had just served. Later she repeated this to him when I was supposed to be asleep. “Fred,” she said firmly. “Two birds. You saw two birds have a fight.”
“But right now, somewhere, there is a person turning on another in that same crazy way,” he said. “It was so frightening, Cleva. What could ever possess that kind of reaction?”
“I don’t know, Fred,” she said. “But I’m sure you’ll put a whole lot of thought into it.”
“Kate?” Merle’s voice snapped me from my thoughts. Only a few mallards gathered for the bread, the male’s head shimmering a brilliant emerald green. “What are you thinking about?”
“Your brother.” I shrugged. “What happened to him.” We sat there tossing the bread, his arm draped over my shoulder. When the bag was empty, I dumped the crumbs on the bank, and we walked back the same way we’d come; both of us carried our shoes, the old cracked sidewalks warm beneath our feet. He talked about everything except Dexter as we walked along. He talked about how he thought he could get his same job at the warehouse again, how the Landells had invited him to stay with them if he ever wanted. “You know, they don’t have any children,” he said, and bent to pick up a flat smooth rock. “There are lots of things I can do,” he continued, his words designed to convince himself as well as me.
“We’re home,” I said when we got to Samuel T. Saxon and the huge elm tree where the kids used to stand during lunch to be out of the sun. I looked behind me where the old wing of classrooms had been—the girls’ bathroom where Misty and Lily had practiced their songs and where Perry had sat in the huge window—but it was only a pile of red brick and silver pipes.
“Looks like somebody had a war and forgot to tell us.” He picked up part of a brick and hurled it over to a big pile of concrete and rusty cables. The few upstairs windows left in the main building were broken, neat jagged-edged holes where stones had sailed.
“Yeah.” It was an incredible thought that as suddenly as anger and hunger could make an animal kill, as suddenly as an engine could fail or brakes go bad, a bomb could be dropped and leave nothing but a big mushroom cloud and a crater filled with rubble. I imagined a person stepping outside and catching a leaflet in the wind, a leaflet that said, Your city will be obliterated unless your government surrenders, and that night at dinner that person might have said, “How can I do anything about it? Who am I to tell the government what to do?”; and maybe he didn’t believe it, or maybe he did, maybe he awoke in a cold sweat as he looked from his window and waited helplessly for obliteration to come. Maybe he lived in Japan, and maybe he sat with his child on his lap, wife there beside him, and waited, told them that he wanted to make it stop but he couldn’t; he had no power. Everywhere, people were hidden and helpless and begging for it all to stop. Dearest, Darl
ing Kitty.
“Kitty,” he called in a singsong way, swinging my hand back and forth, telling me that if I didn’t talk to him he would do the old famous cat call that had made me hide in bushes and under houses. “So, do you want to come into my home?” he asked, pulled my hand away from my cheek and held it as we walked across the dusty schoolyard. “You don’t have to. I mean, I don’t expect anything, you know, if that’s what’s got you so quiet.” I focused on his features, the green eyes and pale hair, smooth skin and firm jaw, and in doing so was able to put everything else out of my mind. In the distance the sky was bright blue, shimmering in the afternoon light. I knew that I was going to follow him inside without even turning to see if a familiar car was passing or if someone we knew was walking past or spying from some window. I knew I was going to lie there with him on that sleeping bag and I was going to look through the slit in the drapes to that empty room, the windows there, beyond which the trees were lush and green. I was going to pretend that there was no day other than this one, no world beyond those trees; there was no future, no guarantee that I would turn sixteen, this was it.
Twenty-four
Much of my time that summer was spent swimming at the local pool with Misty, or sitting on my front porch with Merle after he was through at the warehouse. Several nights Merle and I walked to the movies, both of us paying more attention to each other, our legs pressed tightly together, my head on his shoulder as we sank down in the cracked vinyl seats and enjoyed the cool darkness. Several times my father offered his car to Merle so we could drive to the movies; each time my mother stood there with an eyebrow raised and breathed a sigh of relief when Merle shook his head. His family had moved to a trailer park not far from Willow Pond but his father said that as soon as Merle’s mother could find work in Clemmonsville they were moving; they’d probably move in August. Merle still talked about staying, finding a place to live, maybe with the Landells, but as the days passed there were more and more doubts about his situation. “The worst that happens is I have to go with them,” he told me one night as we sat on my steps. Across the street Sally Jean’s yard was manicured to perfection. “It’s not like we’d never see each other; it’s just thirty miles from here.”
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