B000FCJYE6 EBOK (40 page)

Kate and Davey were covered with snot and snow and we were all soaking wet and Kate had the hiccups. “You two,” Dale said, picking up first Davey, then Kate, and putting them in kitchen chairs, “Stay put. You move, I’ll kill you. You set there till your brother says get up. Gimme that child,” he said to me, taking Sarah and stuffing her into her high chair. She fell asleep with her head on its table. “You,” he said, turning to me. “Come with me.” And he started down the stairs.

I followed him into the darkest part of the basement, where we weren’t usually allowed to go. He turned on the light, exposing a plywood worktable piled high with army gear. He reeked of alcohol, something stronger than beer. He was tapping each item, taking inventory of the table’s contents: water bottle, bowie knife, flak jacket, rope. A row of just-cleaned guns gleamed, their ammo belts laid alongside.

First, he put on the mud-brown helmet. Then the cargo pants and the flak jacket, and then he leaned down and stuck the bowie knife into his sock. “Here we go,” he said to me, strapping two belts of ammo around his waist. “It’s time to engage the contingency plan. Events necessitate a shift in strategic maneuver.” He clipped his water bottle to his pants and stepped into a pair of combat boots, leaning down to lace them up with violent jerks. He stuffed a revolver into his belt, grabbed the coil of rope, and picked up a rifle. He paced past me, around the central heater and water pipes, to the dark center of the basement where the drain dripped with melted snow. He picked up a chair. The low table was cleaned off, only the empty ashtray left.

“Set up the sentries,” he said, stepping onto the chair and throwing the rope over a pipe. “One at the back door, one at the top of the stairs. Give them both a gun and take one for yourself. They’re loaded, so don’t shoot each other, for Chrissakes. Use only in the event of an emergency. You’ll know what to do,” he said, tying a slipknot in the rope. “You’re a smart kid, you’ll make a fine soldier. This is your first mission. Go on and put them in position.”

I went and got the guns. This is my first mission, I thought. I am Lieutenant Esau Elton Schiller and I have a duty to do. It is not mine to say right or wrong. I answer to my superiors. I wrapped an ammo belt around my waist and headed up the stairs with my arms full of guns. My duty is toward my country, I thought. The people who serve it are held in highest regard. I am entrusted with the rights and privileges of my fine rank, and held to its responsibilities. Rounding the corner, I found Kate and Davey huddled together on one chair. When they saw the guns, Kate’s face went white.

“You have to be sentries,” I said.

After a minute, Davey said, “What’re sentries?”

“You have to stand guard at your post. One at the back door, one at the top of the stairs. Kate, you’re at the door. Davey, you get the stairs. Take the baby into the living room.”

Davey picked her up and staggered off with her. A second later, he returned. Kate said, “Who are we shooting?”

“I don’t know yet,” I said. “It’s not ours to judge.” The clock ticked in the frontal area of my skull. Toward the back, the drain dripped. In my inner ear was the sound of rope rubbing against rope, and a chair scooting loudly on concrete.

“What are we guarding against?” Davey asked, and approached me slowly, eying the guns.

“Intrusion,” I said. “Surprise attack.”

He nodded and gingerly lifted the smallest gun from the top of the pile. Holding it like you would a pair of scissors, by the handle, facing the ground, he backed toward the stairwell and pressed himself to the kitchen wall.

Kate jumped off the chair, came forward, and put out her arms. She sank under the weight of the gun. She sat down on the floor with her back to the door. I said, “Point it at the stove.” She set the gun on the linoleum and carefully turned it so it faced the stove.

I was left with only one gun, the biggest of the three. I held it the way my father had shown me when I was six: across my midsection, right hand wrapped over the hilt, left hand wrapped under the barrel, for maximum safety and speed. “All right,” I said. “Stay still. Stay there till I come up. Davey, take your hand off the trigger. Just hold it by the handle. Okay. I’m going down.”

Holding the gun tense and just away from my body, I marched down the stairs.

Dale was standing on the chair with his neck in the rope’s loop. Peering out at me from under his helmet, he said, “We’re good to go?”

I nodded.

“Ten-four,” he said, and pushed his shoulders back. “Get me a gun.”

I went around to the table and came back with a snub-nosed revolver.

“Perfect,” he said, looking at it, pleased. “You are a smart son of a bitch, you know that? You’ve done well.” He looked down at me and smiled.

“Thank you, sir,” I said.

He saluted me. I saluted him in return.

“Soldier, turn around to face the stairs,” he said. I did, and closed my eyes.

I decided I would not turn around.

No, I thought. A soldier does not shirk his duty in the field. A soldier has a responsibility to account for all members of his platoon, and to report the dead.

The reverb of the shot was ringing off the concrete walls and spiraling into my ears like a screw. The sound of the shot itself had lodged at the top of my spine. The wooden chair had cracked against the floor.

I decided it would not be necessary to turn around.

“Sir,” I said. I counted to one hundred, then said, “Sir,” again.

One dead.

I marched forward and came to the bottom of the stairs. “Attention!” I called. “Lay down your weapons! That is an order!”

“Is it safe?” Davey called down. His small body was outlined against the kitchen light and he held his gun straight at me. Right hand on the trigger, left hand over the barrel. The most accurate hold, a marksman’s hold.

“Pretty much,” I called up. He clicked the safety on the gun and laid it down. “Stay put, Kate!” he commanded, and thumped out of sight. I came up the stairs.

Kate wouldn’t let go of her gun. Davey tried to take it from her but she yelled at him. He tried coming up from behind her, but she bit his ear. Finally he looked up at me.

I shrugged and slumped down in a chair at the kitchen table. “Let her have it if she wants it,” I said. “She’s probably scared.”

“I’m not scared,” she said calmly, the gun on her lap. “I just want to hold it.”

“Put on the safety,” I said, “and you can hold it.”

“Okay,” she said. “Where’s the safety?”

Davey showed her the safety. She clicked it and settled back against the door.

We sat there awhile. I wiped my forehead with the cuff of my pajama sleeve. It was hot.

“Is my dad dead?” Davey asked.

I nodded. “One man down.”

Davey sank down next to Kate. She lay her head on his shoulder, patted his knee, and put her hand back on the gun. Then Davey gently lifted her head, stood up, crossed the kitchen, and opened the cupboard beneath the sink. He crawled in. Kate, looking torn, laid down the gun and followed him in. They sat quietly, their four bare feet sticking out.

Through the window it was still deep dark. I looked at the clock. It was only one in the morning. There were hours and hours till day.

I stood up and went over to the phone by the fridge. I dialed Frank’s number, which I had memorized in the event of an emergency such as this. Behind me, Davey started to cry with maybe sadness or tiredness or relief.

L
et me begin again.

Far north, in the center of winter, I am leaning in the bedroom doorway. The flowers, dead in a vase on a table in the corner of the room. The music box, lid ajar but not singing. A pack of old matches, one dead match. The clothes by the side of the bed, still holding their shape: the sock wearing an invisible foot. The jeans wearing a woman’s hips, curved, as if she lay on her side on the floor. The sweater’s arm flung up in a gesture, as if in sleep.

The sound of my hands, dry and whispering to each other, keeps some sort of time.

A man is sleeping. Facedown, his shoulders a separate shade of white from the sheets, a shade separated by shadow, lines like a charcoal drawing.

Here in the deep north a man is sleeping. From the doorway, I watch the way moonlight slides down the curve of his lower back, giving it a gleam, seashell smooth, that sunlight would never allow. He sleeps. I can feel the heat of his body from here.

I go down the hall, the floor cold against my feet. I press my fingertips to their doors as I go by: Peter, curled in a knot at the foot of his bed; David, snoring, one socked foot dangling out from under the covers; Sophie, belly down in her crib. I hold still, willing my heart to hush so I can hear their breath. Under Esau’s door, a fan of light on the floor: I pause, and hear a shuffle of papers, muttering. He does his best work at night.

I hurry down the stairs to the kitchen, shifting from foot to foot, waiting for water to boil. I watch the winter moon on the white row of roofs, and the way the moonlight avoids the darker hollows of the bare black trees.

We have an easy life. We have our family, and coffee and the children and the paper. We have quilts. Downstairs, the grandfather clock tells four.

Soon it will be five. At five, it is almost day. I can make coffee and wait for the paper. And wait for him to come down, bleary-eyed, smiling, kissing me, Morning, good morning, I’ll say.

You cannot live with the past cluttering up the house. You cannot waste your love. You must love what is left, and has the will to live.

The past ends, in my mind, the night that Davey’s father died. After that, we became what we are. People need their broken places, their secrets and stories. Once you have these things, you can go on. Then they either kill you or they don’t.

That night, Mom and Donna and Frank all showed up at once, and when we told them what had happened, there was crying and yelling and it was loud and confusing. Frank went downstairs and came back up. Then Donna bent over and let out a wail like an animal and he grabbed her by the shoulders and led her into the front room. I heard her say, “How am I supposed to do laundry now? How can I go down there?” and start crying again.

Davey and I sat silently in the cupboard with the cleaning supplies.

Davey shifted and sighed. “Now both our dads are dead,” he said flatly.

I scratched my nose. It was true.

“Should we get out of the cupboard now?” I said finally.

He considered this.

“In the morning we could make a snow grave,” he said, somewhat cheered.

“Okay,” I said. “We could get Esau to bury us.”

They came and dragged us out of the snow graves the next morning, though. We spent the next day floating through the house like small phantoms, trying not to disturb Donna, who sat rocking, rocking in her chair, holding baby Sarah on her lap, staring straight ahead and silently crying. My mother murmured on the phone. We had cereal for dinner, and Davey fell asleep with his head on the table. Frank carried him upstairs and put him in bed. I crawled in next to him.

“Shove over,” I whispered, and grabbed a pillow. He looked at me, blinking.

He sighed. “He’s in heaven, probably,” he said.

“Yeah.”

He nodded and rolled over with his back to me. I threw my arm over his side so he’d know I was there for sure.

Down the hall, his mother cried, and the floor creaked under her feet.

I woke early the next morning. Over Davey’s shoulder, I watched the sun rise, all red and orange.

Let me try again and then I swear I will begin.

Memory is a story. It is a story from a long time ago. It is a movie one recalls having seen. It is seen in frames and images, out of sequence, disorderly, without reason or plot.

And now this. The shocking tumble of children who are somehow my own. Esau, his papers, his orderly walk to the library and back. The strangely elegant dream of his days. My mother and Frank, their shoveled front steps, the fragile invention of their life. The calendar, the clock, the graveyard, the pastor, the grocer, the town to which we are chained. The man whose heavy sleep gives this all a center, who has mass and holds down the bed.

I am always afraid that he will step just slightly to the side. That the crucial joint will slip and the floors fall askew, leaving me skidding, sliding backward, arms reaching out for the toppling walls.

But he won’t. He can’t. He was there. We put up the storm windows and brace the house for cold.

Our house is very clean and everything matches. He is untidy and easy in his bulk, and throws his coat on the sofa, and swings the children in the air. He holds my waist when he kisses me hello, I hang up the coat, trailing behind him, picking up the pieces of paper and mail he drops as he goes, the scarves, the hat and gloves, the tangle of words he tosses over his shoulder like a pinch of salt, scattering all over the floor. I pick these things up and put them in their place.

This is how I love him. I love him. He knows this as well as he knows the beat of his own heart, without question or notice or need. This is how he loves me. This is as it should be.

I sip my tea and start up the creaking stairs, my limbs cracking with cold. He shifts in bed, turns onto his back. A thin wind spins helixes of sharp snow from the eaves.

Soft as a sigh in sleep, the center of winter implodes.

Sometimes, when I crawl into bed with him, I confuse my breath for his breath. He flings his arm over my side, as he’s always done, since we were small.

“Dave,” I whisper.

He smiles. “Hmm.”

Now I will begin.

My name is Kate.