Drink for the Thirst to Come (12 page)

The next guy in the yellow pages was a one-armed vet with a limp. He looked, touched the wall with his one hand, ran it along, felt the texture.

“Seventy-five bucks,” he said.

“About right,” Mother said, “seventy-five dollars. About right.”

“The paint on top of that,” the guy said.

“Seventy-five and paint.”

Color?

“White. Not just white, off-white, an almost white but not quite white white.” Even Mom laughed when she said it. I did. The one-armed guy did too. When he laughed, scars showed on his cheek and neck. Raymie just stared at the guy.

The vet did it. He laid thick paint-spattered canvas along the hallway floor.

“Don’t worry,” Mom said, “I’m getting new!”

“Still,” he said, and put it down anyway. Ran tape around the woodwork and baseboards.

He laid down a thick first coat. “Impasto!” he said, producing the word like a magician would. There went the picture, mom’s side down to mine. The brush slapped the nubbly paper, erased the women, the woods, the horses, men, flying dogs, deer, blood. Then down the other side, my end to Mom’s. The whole world from when Pop-pop was a boy disappeared stroke by stroke. All the darkness from Pop-pop’s stories, the shadows that crawled, evenings, from beneath the trees and from under the houses, the castle, the world we couldn’t see, the rasp of crickets, the whiff of chimney smoke and the smoke of dragons, the cold touches in the night, all the fears and holy wonders that came to life in my head, I had brought them out, emptied me of them and put them there to live in the story on the wallpaper, beyond the forest where I couldn’t see them, gone.

Sitting in the hallway, alone afternoons or evenings, I knew the terrors were real as my dad had been, real but far, far away, unable to touch me.

Now it all disappeared and I went out of the house and down the block and sat beneath a tree near the mountain and cried. I was old enough to cross streets but I still cried! I never told that before.

The house smelled of paint and three days later the one-armed vet came back. He sanded and sanded until he was sanding with paper so fine it felt like velvet. He wiped the walls, sweeping in long smooth strokes. White dust filled the air. The air smelled like dry sand, damp oil, and old wheat paste. Then he came back and painted, let dry, sanded smooth again. Then he came back with the not-quite-white paint Mom wanted.

“Yes, that’s it. Just it!”

“Old lace,” he said.

“What? Oh, yes. Lace. Old lace! Yes.”

This time she laid on smooth, the vet said, and when she dried that wall was smooth as a baby’s bottom. What he said.

“Old lace,” Mom said again, “white but not quite.”

Mom’s new carpet sat in a roll at the bottom of the stairs waiting for the vet to finish. The morning light from Mom’s room bounced down the not quite white walls. The back and forth reflection lit, slightly, even the dark side passageway to the attic stairs. At sunset, the walls still looked like blood.

Through the work, Raymie left dust and paint trails everywhere. Mom cleaned, told him, “Be careful, you’ll get paint everywhere.” He wasn’t, but at least he didn’t cry every time he had to pee. Every day the vet came she told him where Raymie had made a mess, left footprints on the stairs, on the bathroom linoleum, the living room rug. The vet stuck his tongue in the corner of his mouth, patched, cleaned and never seemed to care, just did what he had to.

Then it was finished. Mom handed him seventy-five dollars in fives, extra for the paint and a little more for him. She got red in the face when she handed it to him. His face got red taking it.

Two minutes after he’d folded his drop cloth and was putting it into the trunk of his car, the kid ran a sliver into his big toe. He was running barefoot back and forth up and down the hall, shouting
hooray, hooray, yea!
When he got the splinter he flopped on his face and wouldn’t stop screaming until mom tweezered the sliver out and mercurochromed his toe.

“You want for me to roll that runner down for you?” the vet asked when he came back for his brushes and buckets.

“Oh, I don’t know. I think I can.”

He ran his hand along the rough pine floor. “Should run a sander on these planks.” He flipped a long sharp piece of wood with a fingernail. “Buddy of mine’s got one he don’t use so much and he owes me so it wouldn’t take but an hour. Them splinters, it’ll take the edge off ’em. Maybe two hours. Maybe seal the edges along the baseboard there with a little varnish.” He touched Raymie’s head. “Whole thing,” he looked up and down the hall, my room to Mom’s, “say, twenty bucks. Probably do it tomorrow, day after, depending. Little extra for varnish.”

“Sure,” Mom said.

“Raymond. Wear your shoes till then. Okay, Chief?” The guy waved a finger under the kid’s nose. Raymie sniveled and stuck his face in Mom’s leg.

The kid cried again that night. I awoke hearing screams. Mom was in the hall, holding him.

“Splinter?”

Mom shook her head. Raymie kept screaming; she held him. I stood. Finally Raymie looked at me. “Too big,” he said.

“What is?” Mom said.

“It’s too big!”

“What? The hallway?”

“Too big!”

“Yeah,” I said. Mom gave me a look. But the hallway did look longer, now the trees and story were gone. Now there was nothing, nothing but walls and ceiling and that long run of splintery wood, just a little lamp to light it. I never thought our house was big, but it was. It was especially when you’re just three feet tall as Raymie was. I remembered.

“Well, it’s only as big as it ever was, Raymond,” Mom said, still giving me the look. “Just exactly. No bigger.”

“Hiding,” he screamed, “in the woods. In there. And it is bigger. It wasn’t this big before. They’re hiding!” Then he looked at me and smiled. Cried, terrified and he smiled. His smile gave me gooseflesh. And I hadn’t thought of it but maybe they were in there, the picture, the men, women, horses, dogs, the bleeding stag, the trees, the forest, the world beyond the forest, all the stories I’d built. My stories were still there, behind that nice not quite white paint. Maybe you’d have to be a magician to get it.

Mom didn’t. She thought it was just the kid being like he was. “Just watch your feet, Raymie, okay?” is what she said.

The vet came back the next day. Mom didn’t say anything. She didn’t even tell it, laughing like she did when telling a Raymie story. The vet’s buddy’s sander was big. I was amazed the guy could get it up the steps with one arm. Mom offered to help but he just smiled. He hefted, balanced the thing, one handed, like he was, and limped it up the steps. I can’t imagine.

“You guys get yourselves downstairs,” he said to Raymie and me. “This thing starts up I gotta keep her going or she’ll dig in and cut right through the floor.” He winked at Mom. “No, really, get on down, she kicks up a lotta stuff.”

We did. The sander growled around the hall for an hour. The vet walked behind the machine, let it have its way carefully, like dancing with it. He wore a wet bandana around his mouth and nose, looked like a holdup man in the westerns. Raymie had never seen a movie, cowboy or otherwise, didn’t know about that stuff. Still, he giggled, looking at the one-armed guy but made cry-faces when the sander growled and ground.

I sat on the bottom step and breathed in the smells. Mom and the kid sat with me. She talked. I don’t remember about what, but she talked. Every time the vet passed the upper landing, she stopped and watched. Every time, he looked down and his eyes smiled at her. She waved, every time. He nodded.

“Swifty,” Mom said, sniffing the dust. “That’s Swifty.”

“What?”

“Smell that?”

Yes. Something at the heart of the smell coming from upstairs was not wood, not paint or varnish. It smelled like…

“Doggie pee,” Mom said.

Piss. Yes.

“That’s my Springer spaniel. Swifty. When I was your age, a little older, he used to…” She laughed. “When he was a pup and every time there was thunder and lightning, Swifty would pee himself. He’d run down by your room, the corner at the bathroom door? And he’d tinkle. It got so the wood was soaked black from pee. That’s when Dad put that old runner down. That’s what you smell. You smell him? Swifty.” Her mouth was open a little and she smiled across it.

Raymie stared at Mom as she told the story. She got into it, remembered this and that about the pup, the dog, the old dog. “He died up there.” She arched her neck toward the buzzing sander. “Right about where Pop-pop...” Then she started to cry and Raymie was on the edge. He had that look of something not right, something pushing him to cry but he didn’t know what.

I breathed in the hot wood and piss dust of the long-gone Swifty. That was enough.

When the sander stopped, the hall floor was smooth as a baby’s bottom. We all stood in that long near-white corridor.

“I’ll dry mop it now and let it set for a little,” the vet said. “Come back tomorrow, if that’s okay with youse, and lay down a coat of varnish. Do one side then come another day and lay down the other. That way you can walk around up there so long’s you remember to keep to the dry side.”

“That’s fine,” Mom said. “Yes. Come back tomorrow. I can sweep. You’ve done enough for your twenty bucks, for goodness sake.”

Mom never talked like that. “Twenty bucks.”

The vet came back and varnished half the hall; he waited a day, then did the other half. On the Saturday he returned to roll and tack the new carpet. If anything happened between or among those days, I don’t remember.

Mom paid the twenty bucks, something extra for the varnish, and put a little on top for him. She blushed again. That was that, we thought.

The new carpet was soft and thick, a pale gray, like pearls rich with body heat. The not-quite white white walls were already familiar. Through nights and dark parts of day, the lamp on the phone table made the corridor glow warm, yellow. I loved how my bare feet sank into the carpet like they did into dry sand. And no holes. The kid shuffled up and down, making sure nothing would grab, make him flop. Nothing did. Nothing did, but sparks cracked when he touched the brass doorknobs or the lamp. He cried about it at first, but soon he enjoyed making small lightning snaps. For days he slid along the hallway, leaning, taking a long lead on the sharp crackle that jumped between his finger and the brass lamp. In the dark, he watched as the spark jumped, yelping a little, laughing at the tiny pain. Of course I did it, too, touched his ear or nose. Of course! And, of course, he cried and growled at me.

During the time the vet worked there, the place had filled with amazing stenches, paint, turpentine, old wheat paste and horse hair, pulverized wood dust, Swifty’s pee, the varnish. These and other things, things without names, smells damp and dry, steeped the house. This was summer and, while Mother kept the windows open so to catch the breezes, the air hung dead outside, so the smells of the veteran’s work lingered and settled.

The first storm changed that. I missed its approach but awoke when a white flash and simultaneous thunder kicked the world to life just outside my window. It was that close, close enough so that when the sound awakened me, the lightning still lingered at the black edges of my room. Air, finally cool, breezed across me, sucked the heat of my body through summer sweats and carried it away. For minutes I was afraid to move, afraid another smash would blast the porch roof outside my window to flinders and me with it.

Finally, something about the rain, wind, and the stillness of our home made me tingle. Lightning and thunder were coming regularly, but none with the immediacy of that first shock. I got up.

Raymie was in the hall. The lamp threw a dull yellow cone up the wall. The kid stood between it and me. His cheek and body were pressed against the not quite white wall, as though he were floating on it, peering beneath. I assumed he was…

Truth is, I had no idea what he was or was not. I’d never seen him at anything like this. A tide of white lightning washed the hallway. The light froze his shadow on the wall for a flickering moment then it was gone. Raymond didn’t move then he did. His fingertips walked his right hand a few inches nearer his head. His left hand slipped higher, higher, then stopped. He shifted his weight, tottered, shuffled closer to me, turned toward me... then he sang. No tune, no radio melody, nothing from memory, a kid’s floating hum trying to find itself. The thunder rumbled below it.

Then the lamp winked and was gone. The storm hung fire and there was nothing, no light for seconds. Then distant lightning from Mom’s end, dimly, then once or twice brilliantly, quietly lit us. Each time, the kid had moved closer, flash by flash, each time, he was in a different position and nearer. His small voice and songless song grew louder, his bare feet hushing the carpet, my way. Distant thunders but no lightning, nothing but my brother’s voice and the closer, closer shuffle of his small bare feet.

I wanted to fill the place with daylight, jump, yell. I didn’t. I knew there was a danger, waking sleepwalkers. I didn’t know what, but knew there was, so I backed toward my room, keeping darkness between us.

I didn’t remember closing my door, but suddenly my back was against it. The wind, likely, the wind that now blew through the hall must have eased it shut. Now I noticed the wind; it flowed over my feet and toward the crack beneath my door. Cool storm air from the side hallway, from downstairs, from Pop-pop’s empty room, from our mother’s room, sighed along the hallway and brought my brother toward me.

“Raym,” I whispered. “Raymie,” I said louder. “Raymond!” I shouted, but the shout was like one those thin screams made in a dream that’s nearly over. The lightning came bright and silent and Raymond’s face was inches from my chest, his eyes were wide and wild, his mouth open, every tooth he owned showing in a silent cry lost in the thunder. The lightning held the hallway flickering in a semblance of movement as shadows came into being then collapsed one on top of the other.

And that was that.

I screamed us all awake. Mom came from her room with candle. Raymie cried. I tried it, but the bathroom light didn’t work.