His Illegal Self (16 page)

37

No one loved him. He removed his shorts and underpants and folded them carefully. Then he squatted above the pit and looked down across the dammed-up valley full of mist and white-veiled trees. He was gooseflesh, head to toe. The birds were pretty quiet, but he could hear a tap-tap echoing far below.

He did not know how he could ever get back to Kenoza Lake.

When he had wiped himself he poured an ice-cream tub of lime and a second scoop of sawdust into the pit and closed the heavy-hinged lid.

A magpie gargled as he turned to go. Trevor’s alarm clock rang as the boy came back beneath the roof.

Trevor? He watched the open mouth and broken foreign teeth. Do you want to wake up?

Trevor showed a bloody crocodile eye, groaned, rolled and revealed his beaten back—black and purple like an old lady’s dress. The clock engine unwound. Trevor began to snore.

He would make her buy him a plane ticket. That’s what he was thinking when he squatted beside the bed of cauliflowers and drove his arm beneath the mulch. With his cheek pressed flat against the soil, his fingers found his buried blue banana bag.

The sun was striking the trees above the mist, waking up some birds who brought down a loud shower of bark or seeds on the tin roof. By the time he smelled the papaya salve, it was too late.

You cunning little bugger, said Trevor, and kicked at the mulch with his big toe and exposed his secret to the light. He had money in that bag and other stuff as well.

Trevor put his hands on his hips and pushed his nose toward him. What you got?

My dad, the boy said, surprising himself. He lay back on the mulch and drove his arm deep in the bag. He could feel the Uno cards, the poker pack, his ticket to Shea Stadium, a business card, a coin, three bills, a stone, and the folded page from
Life
magazine. He never showed this to anyone but he had to show it to Trevor now.

It’s sort of beat up, he said.

Trevor studied the page of
Life.
He could not read. What’s the matter with her? he said as he refolded it.

Does she hit you?

I know she’s not my mother, the boy said, tears welling up. I know, OK!

You shouldn’t eavesdrop, Trevor said.

You’re not fair, the boy said. You shouldn’t talk about me. You don’t know me hardly. He snatched back his father’s picture and pushed it down into his shorts, burning with the pleasure of destruction.

Here’s a story for you, Trevor said. There was a boy like you had a teacup handle. It was like a little bone, a bit of chicken bone, a wishing bone, the leftovers of a saint put in a wooden box. Reliquary, he said.

The boy did not care for Trevor’s stories anymore.

The boy with the teacup handle, said Trevor, told us his older brother had the matching cup and this was how they would know each other, because the brother would produce the cup and they would join and be made whole.

The boy was hardly listening. He was thinking how to purchase a ticket by himself.

I knew this fellow real well, said Trevor. He went around saying that his brother was ten years older and he was driving from Brisbane to Adelaide with the cup. Are you listening?

Trevor wanted the boy to look at him, but the boy sat with his cheek against his knees staring off into the bush. I’m going to Harvard, he said at last. You can’t imagine me. He was crying so hard he could hardly see. He tried to lie down on the dirt but the dirt just bit him back. He stumbled up the path, howling, and took the pallet and dragged it bumping along the path. In his mind he could see the teacup handle, the dried-out bones, the wooden box and the poor smelly orphan boy, dead of death most likely.

You come on home now, Dial said.

She was standing behind him, by the cabbages, an army coat around her shoulders, a hammer in her hand.

Against the current of his anger, the boy ran to her and pushed his face into her stomach and she wrapped the coat around him hard.

Carry me, he said. His face was wet and snotty and he buried himself in her smoke-dust hair as she carted him along the saddle where the oil drums stood, then down the jolting yellow hill. She crushed him so tight it nearly broke him. When he slipped down her body she hoisted him back up. He wrapped his legs around her waist but she did not finally give up his weight until her army coat dropped off her shoulders and fell to the dirt and lay there like a big old dog.

This was by the rusted Volvo, where the turkey lived. The boy had worse things than that to be afraid of now.

She kissed him on his dirty forehead and tried to look him in his eyes but he did not want her seeing what he thought. He grabbed the hammer from her hand and ran at the car, smashing its headlights. This took much longer than you might expect, but she did not try to stop him and when the lights were pretty much destroyed he bashed at the part of the car body that was wedged onto the road. It would not budge.

She watched him with her arms folded, her eyes sort of soft and vague.

He said, We can go get your wood. The wood you hit him with, he said, waiting to see what she would say. He picked up a pebble and threw it at the car. We could put the wood under the car and make it fall.

Sure, she said.

I hate the car, he pressed on. I hate that bird. I’m going to kill it.

To his surprise, she did not tell him he should not kill.

You wait, she said.

What did that mean?

You’ll see.

He imagined this meant she was going to show him photographs although when he considered this later he saw she gave him no reason to think anything at all. Grandma Selkirk had many old photographs she kept in shoeboxes, brown and dusty yellow. When the wind was bitter off the lake they would go through the pictures together by the smoky fire. There was an uncle who was crazy about Packards. There was an aunt who lost all her money drinking wine in Paris. This was his true history, in the box. Trevor could have no idea.

What will I see, Dial?

You wait, she said. You’ll see.

They set off down the washed-out hill, around the deep gutters made by storms and even deeper holes probably done by the orphan in a rage. There were crowbar marks like stab wounds in the clay.

You wait, she said, trying to make him laugh, but her hand was wet so he knew she was afraid and he was too. As they turned up the cutting into their driveway, the sun got swallowed by the clouds and there was a dull sad cast to everything. Shut your eyes, she said, they were only halfway up the track. His breath caught in his chest as she steered him by the shoulders along the thin clay path between the huts.

Now lift your foot, she said. One more step.

He smelled the sawdust before he opened his eyes and saw the fresh-milled wood nailed onto the walls, the yellow moisture barrier now a secret hidden like a letter in a book.

We’ll make it very beautiful, she said, it’s the only thing we can do. We’ll make a lovely home. Those crooked nails are there to keep the boards flat while they dry. After that we’ll cover the space between with other bits of wood.

Battens, he said. He could not live here.

Yes, they call them battens. Then we’ll paint with linseed oil. Do you know what that smells like.

No.

Have you been in an artist’s studio?

You are not my mother, are you?

They were standing facing each other in the middle of the hut, with the kitchen sort of behind them and the big open door in front, and there was sawdust everywhere around their feet. Dial squatted down, to be his height.

I knew you when you were just born, she said. I bathed you, she said. You were all slippery with soap. I was so scared I’d drop you.

Were you the babysitter, Dial?

She was crying but he did not care. You were only little, she said. You had an expensive knitted jacket your grandma gave you and I burned it with the iron.

The tears frightened him, the strange red twist they gave her face.

That’s why you talk funny, he said.

He had meant to be mean, and she walked out on the deck and he heard her blow her nose.

She is my grandma, right.

Yes.

Grandpa is my grandpa.

Yes, of course.

So why did you steal me, he said and saw how he made her wince.

I did
not
steal you. I was taking you to see your mama.

He felt a huge angry power to hurt her, like he could do anything and not be stopped. You stole me, he said. You brought me where no one could find me.

She reached her hand for him, and although he would not let her touch him, he allowed himself to be persuaded to the cushions. She sat beside him. Her eyes were red and deep beside her great big nose. He thought the nose was ugly and he could hurt her any way he liked.

I didn’t steal you, she said.

You lied!

He waited for her to reach out her arms and catch him, but she just hugged herself as if her stomach hurt. Her lips were cracked and parted and her brows pushed down.

My mommy’s dead, he said.

He watched her shrivel.

Your mommy wanted to see you, but that was against the law.

You nearly got me run over by a car.

Your mommy did that, yes.

You nearly got me killed.

Your mother was underground. Do you know what that means?

SDS, he said. I know. You know I know.

She hesitated as if she was going to say that he was wrong.

Do you remember in Philly, the Greyhound station.

Why?

There were lots of sirens in the street.

No.

I came to take you to your mother but your mother died. I couldn’t tell you. It was terrible.

His throat was burning. His mother died. How did she die. He dared not ask. You should have taken me back.

Honey, I would have gone to jail.

He shrugged. He could hardly see.

You don’t care if I go to jail?

You shouldn’t have stolen me. You should have taken me to my dad.

I did.

No you didn’t, he shouted. You shouldn’t lie.

Listen to me, you little idiot. Who do you think hosed you down when you pooped your pants. Who did that to you? That was your lovely daddy. I forgave him everything till then. Don’t turn on me. My life is totally destroyed by this. I’m a teacher. I’m not meant to be here.

Then go away, he said.

You go away, she said. I’m sick of you.

You want me to go away?

Yes, she said. Go, go now.

And so he did. He headed down the path between the huts, his legs falling forward, just sort of spilling down the hill. He could not go to Trevor’s anymore, so he ran the other way along the valley floor and he was still running when he came past the hall.

There were three cars there. The stupid mumbo jumbos were on the platform and they all came to stare at him as he headed down the road, bawling like a mad bad baby in the dust.

38

He listened for the sound of the Peugeot coming to get him back, the wheeze, the whir, the cough. He would have heard it above the pounding blood, the air tearing at his chest. When he arrived at the ford, he stopped and waited more. Had the mumbo jumbos called to him just then he would have gone to them. Their voices would have echoed along the creek like saws or hammers, but nothing came along the water except a brilliant breathless nameless bird—blue back, orange chest, flying about two inches above the ford. His grandma would have known it—she knew the names of everything, water strider, Atlas moth. She could show you a dead bee through a magnifying glass. His grandma loved him, stroked his head, was always there, still swimming across the lake, her heart just broke in pieces as Jed Schitcher said.

Past the ford, the road got steep and mean as murderers but he was not going back. Soon enough he was up on the plateau where dirt tracks ran off among the gray spiky grass between the big fire-blackened trees.

When he was hosed down on the lawn in Seattle, the water hit him hard as stones. She was not his mother. She just watched. Her face was way too big. The color of her skin was darker, her smell was dusty, like apricot beneath the jasmine.

He must have walked an hour, he figured, and still it seemed he got no farther. When he heard a car coming from the direction of the redneck town, he was pleased at first but then he climbed up the dry clay bank and squatted in the broken bush. One minute the road was empty, then it was full of brilliant blue—a new auto towing a trailer and a curling tail of pinkish dust.

When the car came around the bend, he lay down on the scratchy dirt, pebbles on his cheek and stomach. The car stopped and waited, hissing quietly to itself, just out of sight, below the cutting. Then it set off crawling, bumping onto a bandit track on the far side of the road. When the engine quit, the quiet was big and still as water on a lake so he clearly heard the magpies and the brown and black and yellow birds the size of wrens.

A door opened, then slammed shut. He could now see the driver—about the distance to first base, not a mumbo jumbo but a redneck with glasses thick as soda bottles and hair oiled flat on his tiny shrunk old head. His neck was thin and did not fill his collar and he poked his nose forward, sort of sniffing. Then he peed real loud, like a creature on a farm.

The rednecks in Sullivan County had plaid shirts and baseball caps with
DIESEL
something written on the front. This one was not like that. He walked around some. Then he was kneeling on the ground. The boy’s hair pulled at his scalp. But then he heard the sound of a saw.

The man worked for about an hour. Once he sat and smoked a cigarette. Once he had a drink of something.

Once he said, Mary.

There were nasty small black ants crawling along the boy’s arms. He would have killed them except there was no point. The sun went behind the clouds leaving everything dull dead green, burned black, tarnished silver. The boy stood very carefully and began to make his way through the low worn-out scrub, planning to get behind the ridge, then come back on the road a ways ahead.

Coo-ee! The cry burst out in the silence, a dreadful sound.

The man had his hands up to his glasses, pretending to have binoculars.

Hello young man, he called.

The boy walked quickly, covered with a prickly coat of fright.

You come down here, the man said.

He could hear the man coughing and clambering up the bank to get him. He ran then, until he got down behind the ridge. Trees with dinosaur feathers—wattles—he cut around to the left, trying to be quiet among all the crackling sticks. For a long time he could hear the breathing, but around the bottom of the ridge it got quiet and even the high ocean of gloomy trees was still.

He had been certain of where he was headed but the road was not in its expected place. If he had been born in Australia he would have known to retrace his steps before he died, but he was from New York and there was a long dry rocky gully ahead of him, and at the end of that was a view of cane fields and some high electric pylons.

He was positive he had seen those pylons and that sugarcane before, and then it came to him what he must do.