Don't Cry: Stories (20 page)

over it. “I heard him talking to you,” he said to someone. “What was he saying?”

“Crazy stuff,” replied a woman. “I was real quiet, hoping he’d go away, but he just kept on talking.”

“Why did he do that?” asked the big man. “I don’t usually do nobody like that, but he—”

“No, you were right,” said the woman. “If you hadn’t done some' thing, the next person he grabbed might’ve been a little girl!”

“Yeah!” The big man’s voice sounded relieved. Then he spoke to his wife, loudly enough for Jennifer to hear him several seats away. “Why didn’t you say anything?” he asked.

Because he like my brother. I could feel it when he touch me. My brother grab a teacher’s butt in the sixth grade; he do it for attention, it’s not even about the butt. I can’t talk about it here, Chris, with all these people listening; I can feel them, and this is too private. But my brother coulda turned out like this man here. Kids beat on him when he was like six, he had to be in the hospital, and for a long time after, he talked in this whisper voice that you can hardly hear, like he’s talking to himself and to the world in general, talking like a radio with the dial just flipping around, giving out stories that don’t make sense, but all about kicking and punching and killing people. He gets older and anything anybody says to him, he’s like, “Ima punch him! An then do a double backflip and kick him in the nuts! An then in the butt! An then—” It so annoying, and he still doing it when he gets older, only then he talks ’bout how somebody does this or that, he’s gonna pull out a gun and shoot him. He talks like he a killah but he a baby, and everybody knows it. My brother now, he works as a security guard in a art

museum, where he sits all day and reads his books and plays his games. But he coulda got hurt real bad—and looked at one way, he talk so stupid, he almost deserves it. But look the other way, Chris. You do that, you see he lives in Imagination, not the world; shit don’t mean for him what it do for us. You see that and you wanna protect him even if he is a damn fool, and also I don’t want you into any trouble over me; our baby is in me, and it is our day. I love you; that’s why I don’t say nothin, Chris— .

She put her hand on his arm and felt him withdraw from her without moving. Her heart sank. She looked out the window; they were moving past people’s yards. Two white kids, just babies, were standing in wet yards with their mouths open, looking at the train, one with his fat little legs bare, only wearing shoes and a hoodie. Her heart hurt. Please come back, she said with her hand. I love you. Don’t let this take away our beautiful night.

Disgraceful all around, thought Perkins. That they would treat a vet like that, that a vet would act like that. He looked out the window at small homes set in overgrown backyards: broken pieces of machinery sitting in patches of weeds, a swing set, a tied-up dog barking at the train, barbed wire snarled around chain link. A long time ago, he would’ve gone home and told his wife about the guy being put off the train; they would’ve talked about it. Now he probably wouldn’t even mention it to her. They used to talk about everything. Now silence and routine were where he felt her most. He looked out on marshy land, all rumpled mud and pools of brown water with long grasses and rushes standing up. His reflection in the glass floated over it, a silent, impassive face with heavy jowls and a thin, downward mouth. And there, with his face, also floated the face of Heinrich Schmidt, PFC.

He didn’t touch that lady s breast; he touched her shoulder. Maybe the train rocked or something, made his hand move down, but he was just trying to talk to her. The conductor knew that—he told him so—but they’d had to take him off the train anyway It wasn’t good, but it wasn’t that bad. The police said there would be another train, sometime. But there was no lake to look at here. Where you sat down here, there were just train tracks and an old train that didn’t work anymore. He would sit for a while and look at them and then he would call his foster mother. He would tell her there’d been a problem he’d had to solve, a fight to be broken up, and he couldn’t get back on the train. His foster mother had strong hands; she could break up fights, using the belt when she had to. She served food; she rubbed oil into his skin; she washed his back with a warm cloth. She led a horse out of the stable, not her horse, the horse of some women down the road, the one that sometimes his sister, Cora, would ride. She was so scared to get up on it at first, but then she sat on it with her hands up in the air, not even holding on, and they took her picture.

They said Cora died of kidney failure and something that began with a p. They had the letter when he got back to the base. He read the letter and then he sat still a long time. Before he left for Iraq, she’d had her toes cut off, and she said she was going to get better. When she took him to the airport, she walked with a fancy cane that had some kind of silver bird head on it. He couldn’t picture her dead. He could picture Paulie, but not Cora. When he came home, he still thought he might see her at the airport, standing there looking at him like he an idiot, but still there, with her new cane. He thought he might see her up in Syracuse, riding her horse. Even though he knew he wouldn’t. He thought he might see her on her horse.

Riding her horse across a meadow with flowers in it, riding in a race and winning a prize, everybody cheering, not believing she’d really won, cheering. Then they’d have a barbecue like they used to have, when the second foster father was there, basting the meat with sauce and Jim helping out. The cats walking around, music turned up loud so they could hear it out the window, his foster singing him a dirty song to the tune of "Turkey in the Straw.” It was mostly a funny song, so it wasn’t dirty, and his foster always told him not to hurt anything, so it wasn’t bad. Or his other foster father did—he wasn’t sure. He’d tell his foster about lying on the ground and feeling it shiver in terror, watching the grass and the trees shiver. He might tell him about seeing a little boy trying to crawl away and getting shot. Because his foster father had known Jesus. But he did not know the face of God.

Or did he? Softly, Jim sang, Way down South where the trains run fast j A baboon stuck his finger up a monkeys ass. j The baboon said, Well fuck my soul / Get your fucking finger out of my asshole. A family came down the stairs* little girls running ahead of their mother. They wouldn’t think his sister would win the prize, but she would; she would race on her horse ahead of everybody, her family cheering for her. Not just her foster family, but her real family, Jim’s real family. Like the Iraqis had cheered when they first came into the town. Before they had shot.

Joseph and his friend Kevin were driving to New Paltz for a hike. Kevin was driving with one hand, elbow out; Joseph had his whole arm out, hand on roof They had finished their M.F.A.’s in creative writing weeks earlier and they felt great. Kevin had just published an essay in a big-deal magazine that paid. Joseph’s mother had been really sick, but now she was getting well. It was a bright spring day; the car windows were down and the breeze smelled good. They were drinking sodas from cans and arguing about literary junk.

"It’s like what John Ruskin wrote about architecture,” Kevin was saying, “a style that allows for flaws may not be the most beautiful, but it’s the most engaging because it reveals a human handprint.”

“I hate that,” said Joseph, “the whole ‘human’ thing. It’s a euphemism for mediocre, and anyway, it’s meaningless. Only humans build buildings; only humans write books. Those things are human by definition.”

“You’re mimicking Braver,” said Kevin; he meant Professor Janice Braver.

“How? Janice never said that; I said it,” said Joseph.

“She said it. Maybe in private conversation with me, but she said it.”

“Since when were you having private conversations with her?

You didn’t like her. Anyway, horrible things are human—rape and murder are human.”

"Don’t change the subject,” said Kevin. He took a sharp, slow curve that made the car feel unwieldy and boatlike. “To say art is human doesn’t mean it’s morally good; it means it engages you. It’s not static, with everything in place; it’s everything, including flaws and clumsiness.”

“ ‘It’s everything,’ ” mimicked Joseph. “That’s vague and grandiose.”

“Bellow and Roth write about everything.”

"That’s not why they’re great. They’re great because—'?;^

Kevin swerved into the park so sharply that the soda popped out of Joseph’s can and splashed his face. Joseph yelped “Shit!” then wiped his chin with his shirt and said, “I said they’re great because—”

But Kevin was already out of the car and rummaging in the back for water and lotion. Joseph got out, saying, “Bellow and Roth are great because^* Two girls in shorts and hiking boots came walking down the trail, cool and laughing, as if they’d just come out of a movie theater. “They’re great because they’re deep,” said Joseph, looking at the smaller of the girls.

Kevin straightened and the girls both turned to look at him; even at a distance, Joseph could see them spark up. Kevin was tall and athletic; he had broad shoulders and a wide mouth. Aware of them but not looking at them, he flexed his chest as he shoul' dered a light pack. “They write about particular things deeply.” said Joseph, and threw soda in Kevin’s face. Kevin shook the bright drops off him and swiped at Joseph; Joseph swiped back. The taller girl looked back and smiled. Smiling, Kevin lunged forward, throwing air punches; Joseph danced back, feinting. The girls got in their car, talking to each other.

The boys quit playing. They rinsed away the sticky soda with bottled water and rubbed on bug lotion; Kevin put his foot up on the hood of the car to better rub his long half-naked leg. The girls pulled out of the lot, one of them smiling from the window as they went. Kevin put his leg down and gazed after them. Now he looks, thought Joseph. A family pulled up in an SUY radio blaring, two little boys in the back, one of them twirling something bright and multicolored.

They started up the trail.

Kevin and Joseph had grown up in Westchester. They became friends in junior high because both were bookish boys obsessed by horror comics in which bad things happen to girls until the hero comes. Then Kevin grew nearly two feet and began to play basketball; in high school, he made the team. Smiling girls crowded around the new hero, while Joseph looked on with dangling hands.

Then Kevin’s family moved to Manhattan. The boys drifted apart, but not right away; the move happened just weeks after Joseph’s parents divorced, and it was somehow because of this that Joseph doggedly visited Kevin in Manhattan whenever he could. He liked being in a home with two parents. Kevin’s mom, Sheila, was not pretty, but her eyes were warm, and her soft, pouchy cheeks were somehow warm, too. Sometimes they wrestled in front of her, and once they pretended to have a real fight; Joseph put pieces of white candy in his mouth, and when Kevin socked him, he roared and spat the candy out like teeth. Sheila pretended to be horrified, then burst out laughing. Afterward, they took the subway to Chinatown, where they went to a cheap place and ate an enormous meal, trying everything on the menu, until they couldn’t eat any more. A waiter with tattooed hands sold them illegal beers and then they walked all the way back to the West Side.

On the mountain, Joseph still remembered walking in Chinatown, the neon signs speaking bright-colored Chinese on each side of them, the dead fish and vegetables heaped in alleys and spilling out onto the pavement. As high school went on, they saw each other less often. After graduating, they so lost touch that neither realized they’d gotten into the same writing program until they both showed up at the orientation party. Even in the same program, until today, they had not spent much time together, at least not alone. Still, Joseph looked at Kevin’s back and remembered the wrestling, the laughter, the tattooed hands, the beers—

“So who do you think will be the next to publish something big?" asked Kevin, he having been the first.

"Adam,” said Joseph. “His thesis was so strong, and he’s a hard charger.”

“Nah,” said Kevin. “I mean he’s good, but he has a long way to go. I think it’ll be Tom.” He paused, lunging slightly as the path steepened. “Or Marisa. I think it could easily be Marisa, with those last stories of hers.”

Marisa: the name was still a small, smartly struck bell. Joseph had been with her fo* three weeks and then she’d dumped him. He didn’t think her recent work was that good, but he was afraid of what it would sound like if he said so. Instead, he said, “What about Andy? He’s gotten good.”

“Are you kidding?” said Kevin. “He’s weak. And he got weaker listening to Braver.”

Joseph sighed. “I don’t think you understood what she was saying some of the time.”

“I didn’t understand what she was saying? About how important it is to describe how characters look?”

How to tell Kevin that sometimes he was so busy being smart, he couldn’t understand anything? Once in class, Janice said to him, “If you closed your mouth and opened your mind, you might actually learn something.” Kevin replied, “Maybe I would, if there was anything to learn here.” The room was quiet. Janice’s face stiffened, then relaxed. “Wow,” she said. “You’re a real pisser, aren’t you?” People laughed. Kevin flushed. Joseph suppressed a smile.

“Why do you even care?” he said. “The semester’s over ”

“I care about writing whether the semester's over or not.” Kevins .voice was mild, but feeling came off his slightly hunched back. “And what’s important in writing is what’s happening between the characters, what they are doing, not what they look like or what things look like.”

How Marisa looked: narrow-framed and supple, giving the appearance of coiled quickness, like a pretty weasel; small Kps, short unpolished nails, blue eyes, poised, expectant posture. On the street one night, a homeless guy sitting on the sidewalk had yelled as they passed. “Hey chickie! Little chicklet! Come sit on me; you’d fit me like a glove!” She’d said, “He sounds so wistful,” her voice hitting wistful as if it were two words, one pitched high, the other low.