A Song for Carmine (4 page)
In the kitchen, shiny new appliance after appliance that would never be used lined the backs of my countertops with names like Frigidaire, Novell, Bosch. I never ate at home, never used the kitchen or the refrigerator, barely the bathroom or bedroom. I didn’t want to taint any of it. I wanted to keep it all somehow separate from me, clean and protected and beyond the reaches of human stains. I never actually lived in my own life.
But it all meant nothing to me. Simultaneously, I prayed for fire and more things, arson and more money. I dreamed of partner status. Glory. Another wedge between me and my past. I got further and further from the back of Pa’s hand, the shiny metal of those railroad tracks, the orange Georgia soil.
* * *
“Carmine, you awake?” Ma’s voice is quieter than I remember. I see the shadow of her form peeking in my doorway.
For days I’ve been avoiding both of them, coming out at night, waiting until I could tell them when I’d be leaving and what I’d be doing next.
I’ve got a handful of ideas. A few Icarus contacts. Thoughts of heading out west or east and starting fresh. Maybe even cutting loose of it all and buying a fishing boat somewhere like Mexico. Taking care of a sick old man I never really liked ain’t in my plans.
“Carmine, I know none of this is easy for you and we ain’t on the best of terms, but I need your help. I’m so tired, and your old man needs you.” She stands there for a few minutes and then I hear her feet sliding across the wood floor, then the squeak of her sitting down at the end of my bed.
“I’m not the person I was, Ma. I’m not, and to me, Pa is the same old son of a bitch he always was. I got nothing for him. I came for you.”
She clears her throat, and I can see the profile of her face when she turns toward the window. A small ray of light reaches in from the streetlight and casts her face in it. I notice how her shoulders bend in toward her chest, how she’s caving in, how the skin on her neck sags.
“Carmine, you got to leave the past where it is.”
“Why would I do that, Ma? If you leave the past alone, it’s bound to sneak up on you. You should know that.” I get up from the bed and go sit in the corner chair. I need distance to think.
“Boy, if that were true, we’d all be in bigger trouble than this. I’m tired. I’m going back to bed.” She stands up and looks at me for a long time before walking out of the room.
She’s wrong and I know it. You’ve got to stay one step ahead in the game. Otherwise, you lose.
The next afternoon, I’m
sitting at the tavern again, staring at the white blinking light of the Coors Light sign. I swallow a whole draft beer in two drinks and order another one. I scan the room for women. Tug on the belt loop of my jeans. Tap my foot.
When I walked out the front door earlier, Ma was in the front yard watering the plants. She watched me, waited for me to speak. When I got to the gate and opened it, she turned off the water and called my name.
“You didn’t come back here because you needed a place to stay; I know it ain’t like that. I need help getting your pa in and out of bed, in and out of the car for doctors’ appointments. I’ve been handling it alone for a long time, and that’s why we called, see? He ain’t got long, Carmine, he ain’t got long.”
I stared at her for a long time, followed the short lines that darted out on both sides of her eyes, looked at the creases around her mouth, the gray that sliced through her golden hair. The sun felt hot on my face, and I squinted.
“Listen, Ma, I don’t owe that man anything, or you for that matter.” I closed the gate behind me and walked quickly down the sidewalk without looking back. No one was going to tell me what I needed to do, what I needed to be, especially not her and not for him. Things were gonna happen, be what they’d be, regardless of what I did. That’s how it always was, how it’d always be.
* * *
I sip on the draft beer and remember the funeral services Pa used to preside over. Sometimes he had me come to the church to help set up chairs or hand out programs. I remember the dead faces peeking out of coffins, the gray skin with color painted on, the smell of the funeral flowers filling the room.
I’d see him standing at the front of the sanctuary, watching me, his hands on his hips. His voice filled the whole room, bouncing off the walls, hitting me in my chest, making people rise from their seats and chant some kind of song.
“Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by your name; you are Mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow you. When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned.”
I’d watch Pa’s lips move as he spoke, wonder what these words meant. If he was both the Savior and the flames scorching me, who would save me?
I see a young blonde sitting in the corner of the room. I’ve finished a fifth beer, my belly is full, I feel preyful and alive, I know there’s not anything I can’t do. Pa’s cough, Ma’s caving chest have been pushed to a closed corner of my mind. I have money, I have good looks, I have power, Pa is almost dead, what could stop me?
I walk up to the table, ask to sit down; she tells me she’s waiting for a friend. She’s in her mid-twenties, pale hair and eyes. I feel like I can melt her skin just by looking at it. I imagine my hands on her breasts, her sweet breath on my neck, the protruding bones of her lower back as I lower her onto me. A collector, that’s what I am. A cultivator, a curator, I love beautiful things I can own. It makes sense now.
I sit. “Can I keep you company while you wait? I’d love to buy you a drink to make the time pass easier.” I smile, slide into the booth next to her, wave the waitress over and start my performance.
I tell her that I’m in town from Dallas and that I’ve just made partner at my firm and that my pa is dying and that I’m taking it real hard. I see the pity form in her eyes; her edges soften. I lean my head down a little to show that I hurt; I try not to laugh out loud.
Her tenderness is almost insulting. Her hair and eyes so soft, she hasn’t seen enough of the world to protect herself from the likes of me. I can’t help it. It’s what I do. Do lions feel bad for hunting?
She leans closer to me, demure. She is not completely without a price; she’s doing what she does too. I feed her drinks and pretend the rest of the world doesn’t exist. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the bartender looking at me. I nod.
I convince her that I could use a friend and that her friend won’t mind waiting awhile for her. I take her hand, ask her to take a walk with me. I feel the familiar scent of Eton air as we walk up and down the deserted streets of downtown and talk about her life as a new RN. She has family here in Eton and doesn’t come up much, she says. I listen, grab her hand, make a fist with my other hand. I feel impatient.
“It’s such a beautiful night, Carmine, isn’t it?” She holds my hand tighter and looks off into the distance. A few blocks away an old church bell chimes; it sounds familiar. I remember walking these streets as a teenager, see the trees I used to sit under and smoke. Across the street there’s the old movie theater where I kissed my first girls, held small clammy hands. I can’t hear or see the old train, but I know it’s close. Why does everything stay so still like this?
I pull her close under a streetlight, lean her against the brick wall of Smith’s drugstore, bring my lips close to hers and hover, tell her that I just need to be close to someone and that she seems like such a nice person and that I bet she makes a good nurse.
“It’s like we were supposed to meet, like it’s fate,” she says as she hugs me back.
I nod, slip my hand under her coat, pretend that I’m back in Dallas and I’ve got a life to go back to, that this right here can be something more than what it’s always been.
Twenty minutes later I am fucking her in the backseat of her car. I push inside of her hard, feel her writhe and moan beneath me; she wants me. I make it count. The Corolla rocks with us and sings. I spread her legs and start talking in her ear, push my weight on her, rest on top of her for a few moments. The plastic molding of the backseat rubs my head, and I feel so tired all of a sudden, so out of it, as though the last fourteen years of my life are sitting on my shoulders.
“Can you feel that?” I ask her. “Does it hurt?” I feel such a conflict within—I equally want to hold her, equally want to hurt her, damage her, make someone see what it’s like here within.
“Slow down, please,” she says. I can feel her squirm beneath me, try to catch her breath. She’s the gazelle and I’m the bitter wild.
“Don’t you like it like that?” I move in deeper and pause, put my arms around her, beneath her.
“I don’t know…” Her voice sounds childish and weak, another girl behind the bleachers. Why do they always act like they didn’t come here of their own free will?
I put my face in her hair, breathe her in. She smells bitter to me, so untrustworthy, almost rank. I lean up and push her knees forward.
I think I hear her crying softly below me, but she pulls me closer, buries her head into my neck. Outside, a few cars pass and a plane flies overhead. I am out of my body again and somewhere else. The next half hour passes like a cloud of smoke, slowly, time swallowing itself.
“When can I see you again?” she asks as I step out of the car and straighten my clothes, smell the tips of my fingers and clear my throat. I offer to walk her back to the bar so she can meet her friend, but I just want to be done with it.
“I don’t know,” I say as she steps out onto the sidewalk. I light a cigarette and get a good look at her. The small pink cardigan she wears, the pearl earrings, the jeans and sensible shoes. Something about her reminds me of Ma—maybe the light olive tone of her skin or the way her hips protrude out of her jeans. I shudder.
“I have never done anything like this, but I feel like we have a real connection here, don’t you?” She smoothes her hair and looks at me.
Yes, I tell her, we do, and then I agree when she says it’s special and that we have real potential and that when something like this comes along you’ve got to do something about it.
She keeps on talking, but I can’t make out any of her words anymore. We’ve known each other two hours now, and I can’t remember her name, can’t quite place her, feel like everything is moving in slow motion or maybe not at all.
We walk the same two blocks back to the bar, and when we get there, I open the door for her, wait as she steps in, and then start walking the opposite direction.
“Wait,” she says, and I wave my hand. “I’ve got to be going,” I tell her, “but you be good.”
* * *
It is after midnight when I walk back into the house. I feel hollow. I haven’t eaten much in days, a handful of cocktail peanuts, a candy bar from the vending machine at the bus station. I am running on fumes.
I can smell the girl’s skin on me, sweet and green like fresh peas. She was too easy; done it again. Is this all that I really am?
My head spins from the beer, and the house is so quiet. I stumble to my bedroom, sit on the bed, and put my head in my hands; feel myself begin to sweat. I pick up my phone; no missed calls, there is no one coming for me and there is nowhere for me to be.
I lay my head back on my pillow, think about Pa laying in his bed just a few feet away. I can smell the yellow stench of a body decaying—is it his or mine?
I remember those funerals, the one dead person in the room, the taste of suffering, those lines of scripture floating in the air.
“Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me.” Pa read me this piece of scripture after I fell off the jungle gym at the park near our house and broke my arm. I remember the piercing pain traveled up and down my body as he spoke. I fought back tears and watched the pupils of his eyes expand and retract as he sat and watched me suffer.
Three days later he took me to the hospital for a cast and told me that I now knew salvation and what it means to pay for my sins, to suffer for them.
You
pay
the
price
now,
Pa,
don’t
you?
How
does
it
feel?
The next morning I
am pounding the keys of an old typewriter I found in the closet. At the top of the page, Huemanity Creative, the name of my company, is all I have for my business plan so far.
I can hear the clink of Pa’s spoon in the next room and it is distracting; sometimes he can’t swallow and Ma feeds him like an infant. I hear her speak to him in small fuzzy words.
I can’t place any of it, this new reality. I can’t grab hold of it. It slips from my hands. I don’t know what it means. I have to keep myself from running in there and telling him that we know he’s going to attack again at any minute. But I don’t.
Outside my bedroom window I see the tiny wings of a mockingbird flying around the empty feeder, searching. I throw my pen at the glass pane.
I pull on a pair of old sweats, find my tennis shoes sitting under my bed, and slide them on. I’ve got to get away from the sounds and the smells.
My feet hit the sidewalk outside of the house hard and firm, and I begin to jog methodically, one bent leg in front of the other, first slowly, then I find a delicate pace and rhythm.
I haven’t gone running since high school when I was on the track team. I can remember the feel of the orange gravel of the track beneath my feet, see the blurry faces of people in the bleachers as I passed them, hear the whistle of the coach. I never pursued it again, never wanted to attend meets, I just wanted to run. I stopped when I turned sixteen and got a job at the local pizza joint.
In Dallas, the mornings were too heavy from the night before to think about running; it was enough to put on my costume and rehearse my lines.
I run around the block, make one big square, hear the wind chimes on people’s porches, a lawn mower in the distance, watch pinwheels turn in lawns, and shield my eyes from the sun.
I try to make a mental list of clients in my head. Who would I hustle? Who could I get to join me? I can’t keep my mind on the task, but I begin to feel euphoric under my feet. My chest burns; I heave and try to catch my breath. I am moving, I am young again, I can start over.
I keep running, don’t look up and notice my surroundings, watch the tips of my toes and notice how Eton fades into the background.
I stop running when my feet hit Douglas Street and I realize where I am. I stand across the street from the railroad tracks. They are no longer used, rusty and red from the weather, swollen; they’ll never go away. Across the street, the houses dilapidated and lean. The winters here are harsh; people have migrated to places with more work. Seems like everything can be summed up like that. A small fact, a blip in history, a simple explanation for a lifetime of pain.
Where the warehouse once sat, there’s a big empty lot, a soft shell of foundation that once held the big aluminum building. Someone has drug a few lawn chairs into the center. One of them is turned over; it’s become some kind of meeting place.
I lean down and put my hands on my knees and try to catch my breath; my chest burns. I don’t remember feeling so awake; there is blood in my veins. I can feel my toes, the pounding in the back of my head. I have never been so aware of my own boundaries.
My eyes search the scene for the light pole near the tracks, silver and dull. I expect to see our bikes leaning up against it, the old beer bottle rolling down the hill. Then the black boy’s smooth head laying on the gravel ground inside the warehouse.
I’ve done my best not to think of that night for the last nearly twenty years, to overlook it, to pretend it wasn’t me at all, or that it didn’t actually matter. Sometimes I play it out differently—I run across the street, shout at the teenagers, pull the boy up, figure out how to make it right for everyone, and I save him. He lives. But then I realize, and I’ve always realized, that I’m as bad as the thing I saw done, the things I’ve done with my own hands, and there ain’t nothing I can do about those either. All us St. Clairs are the same.
I can feel the sweat run down my back, study the old building and the tracks and the clouds above. I sit on the edge of the curb and try to push my thoughts back to the client list. I’ve got to build a ladder to the top again because there’s nothing down here at the bottom but this. Guilt, broken bones, a merciless God, struggle.
I kick a few rocks with my feet and run through a list of names in my mind: Jennifer, Rick, Alex, Hector—they all worked at Icarus and have to be doing something. I try to think of the other clients we serviced; there were just a handful: Tropical Convenience Stores, Kitchens R Us, The Dance Factory. There wasn’t enough to keep even one of us in business. The Carmichael account brought in 90 percent of the money and kept us all alive.
My mind wanders again, and I think of myself that night. There’s a tall magnolia tree a block away, and I can smell its fragrance, remember smelling it that night, wet with dew.
“Say something, why don’t you say something?” I yell at him, kick his limp leg, watch his body laying on its side.
“Stop being stupid and get up,” I yell at him, watch the blood roll down his forehead onto the ground. Hear the voices of the kids somewhere in the distance, somewhere far down the train tracks. Wonder why no one was there to save us.
I was at the kitchen table eating a bowl of Cheerios when Pa read the newspaper article to Ma as she chopped up onions and carrots and poured them into the Crock-Pot with the roast. I can smell the gravy forming in the pot, hear the water rolling down the sink drain. My muscles hurt from straining, the tension of holding it in the last few days.
“His mother went looking for him around midnight that night, found him on the ground inside that old warehouse. Police think some teenagers—probably white ones—killed him with a broken bottle or rock or something, but they don’t know who.”
“Them nigger boys ought to know better than to be out at night like that,” Ma says without turning around. “It just ain’t safe for them around here.”
Pa turns his newspaper over and folds it in half. I watch him from across the table, study his face, see myself in the lens of his glasses; my reflection is pale and transparent. I am an illusion of light. Pa made it seem so righteous to be wrong.
* * *
I am nearly home when I take a sharp left and jog to the Baptist church Pa preached at. It stands barren and raw, the old clapboard siding missing pieces, the paint chipping, the aluminum gutters falling and barely hanging on; it is just as I remember. On the marquee, the message says Jesus Saves. I follow the lines of the black magnetic letters; the S in Saves has slipped, hangs almost sideways. I smile. Pa never would have let that happen, I think. He said God was in the details.
I stand in front of the small building. On the other side of it, the sun is beginning to set; it’s a pale orange now, hovers just above the building, giving it an ominous glow. I walk up the stairs to the church and try to open the door, but it is locked. I stand at the top of the stairs and look around. I don’t understand how so little could have changed in the past fourteen years. Across the street an old abandoned gas station sits, leaning and oblong. It has sat like this for years, the old gas pumps dangling from their holsters, the square metal boxes scavenged and disassembled for their scrap parts. The red paint of the building hangs on, then is stripped to white in spots; there are potholes in the parking lot.
Next door to the church there are a few houses, white metal siding, flowerpots hanging at each corner; they all look alike. In the distance, I can smell someone’s dinner cooking, spaghetti; farther away, a barbeque grill burns. In Dallas, it seemed like there were so few details, nothing but a rush of people and energy, things out of reach. Fast cars, a few blazing taillights, brick buildings, waiters with long white aprons, a patch of grass or an ornate tree next to my building, car horns, and mannequins dressed with expensive clothing.
I sit on the stairs of the church until I see the light come on in the building and hear the click of the lock slide open. My legs burn from the run; I can feel my muscles stretch under my skin. I crave an anesthetic. Life comes on you so fast when you’re sober; you feel everything.
When I step inside the building, I can smell the coffee brewing. That was always Ma’s job, to take care of all the preparations, refreshments, making sure the floors were Pine-Soled, the programs crisp and fresh from the printers.
I walk up to the front of the church, run my hands along the pews as I approach the altar. I stare at the cross and try to see it as something more than two pieces of wood crossing each other, more than man’s feelings of guilt about himself. I slow down when I see a vision of Pa at the pulpit. I stop, look, see his face there, wanting and challenging me. I keep moving toward him.
“Service doesn’t start for another hour, son.” I turn around and see a short, bald black man enter the room. The little bit of hair above his ears is white and fuzzy, his suit a dark navy blue; the tips of his shoes shine. Pa always wore black, running the lint brush up and down his clothes every time he stepped out of the house, his shoes a beaten brown leather; he always had a full head of thick hair.
“Hello, yes, I know. My father used to be the preacher here. This place was a second home to me. It hasn’t changed much, has it?” Pa hadn’t been there in at least ten years, I know. He stopped when his bones started hurting too much and the congregation dwindled to just a few people, those that refused to believe Pa was anything but what he’d said he was.
“No, things haven’t changed much here, although we’re a congregation of 130 now.” He walks toward me, and I can see him more clearly now. He’s not that old, just a little past fifty; his gait is proud, and he smiles at me.
He asks about Pa and about our family, and when I tell him he nods, although I can’t tell if he knows of us or not.
I look at the cross again and the empty pulpit. I can feel something in my bones, like the weather is changing. My stomach turns; I feel hot behind my eyes.
“Are all sins measured the same? How long do we have to pay a price for something we did or didn’t do?” I yell across the room at him and wait for him to turn around. My voice is high and loud. He shifts the Bible from one hand to the other. The light bounces off the shine of his head. He turns around and looks at me for a long time before he says anything.
“There is God, and then there is everything else. All you need to do is ask for forgiveness for whatever it is and offer the same to others.”
“If all we have to do is ask for God’s forgiveness every time we do something wrong, what’s the point of living right at all then?” I am angry all of a sudden. I rock back and forth in my shoes and wait for him to answer. I look at him long and hard, dare him, beg him to come closer.
“Aren’t you going to minister to me, minister?” I walk and stand right in front of him. My fists clench and I eye him hard.
“Listen, services will be starting soon, and I invite you to worship with us. If you’d like to make an appointment with me, I’d be glad to sit with you and answer some of your questions.” He doesn’t blink, but his eyes are soft and kind and wet at the edges. His hand rests on the pinewood of the pew. He is not afraid and I can’t understand why.
I walk out the front door of the church, push the door hard so that it makes a sucking, final sound.
I walk down the stairs slowly, and my legs feel so weak beneath me; I am famished. I have never felt so hungry in my life. My mouth waters and I search for the smells from earlier, pick up my pace, and walk past the white houses. The smells have faded, but I look inside the windows of the houses at TVs blaring, recliners with people in them, hear kids playing in their backyards, see a couple on their porch holding hands. Life here seems so simple, yet so complicated.