If Jack's in Love (19 page)

“This boy doesn't need any corrupting. I oughta whip him good when I get him home,” he joshed.

Tillie laughed and rested her hand on his shoulder. “I'll bet you're good at giving whippings.”

Pop grinned. He looked at me, proud of himself. He could get a rich gal anytime he wanted, and he was glad I was there to see it.

And I was thinking, Sure, like any other stable boy.

THE NEXT NOTE from Myra arrived in the morning.

This letter, in which for the first time a girl (and not just any girl) had professed herself mine, I slid under my pillow. For two days I walked about in a stupor, my heart swollen with emotion.

I went to Gladstein's to show it off, but something peculiar was happening when I arrived.

He had customers.

I had never seen customers in his store, at least not since I started to visit. It never occurred to me that his establishment, like any other, might enjoy, occasionally, a visit from clientele. Now some dowdy couple was peering at wedding rings and petulantly bickering over what they liked and disliked while Gladstein diplomatically chimed in when compelled. Nearby hovered a sinister character, a tall man in a dark suit and sunglasses. He was flicking ashes into a saucer Gladstein had provided.

Gladstein gave me a backhanded wave, more dismissal than greeting, and I walked home.

However, I found the compulsion to show the letter off overpowering.

At home I found Stan listening to James Brown, clapping in rhythm and strutting about the room like a turkey. I perched on the bottom bunk and watched. Ostentatiously I unfolded the letter and perused it, figuring he would probably snatch it from me when he passed. And he did.

Then he stopped his strutting. He pulled the needle off the record. His lips were full, slightly malformed. He reminded me of a scornful Renaissance bust I'd seen on a school trip to the National Gallery in Washington.

“So she thinks I'm crazy,” he said.

“Well so what, everybody does.”

I figured that much would be obvious.

“Fucking Joyners, man. The little twit sits around talking to Gaylord about me. And look at this, you're all right but I'm not. Those motherfuckers.”

“Well, what do you expect? You act so crazy they get the wrong idea about you. Heck Stan, you
want
people to think you're crazy.”

“When did you start taking up for the Joyners?”

“I'm just trying to explain why people see you the way they do.”

“Everybody likes you for that, right? That's the deal you got, you're gonna sell out me and Pop so you can run around with your skinny little Joyner snot.”

“I ain't selling out anyone.”

“Don't deny it, you piece of shit.”

Before I knew it he had me collared on the bed and his knee was on my chest.

He thrust his face in mine and pulled my eyes to his, full of hate.

“You fucking traitor. What were you doing squealing on Pop last night?”

“I wasn't squealing on Pop, I was squealing on myself.”

“Fuck that shit, you told Mom he started you smoking and now she's not speaking to him. Look, you say anything about me smoking grass I'll fucking kill you, I swear to God I will.”

“I ain't gonna say anything, let me go.”

He released my collar and took his knee away.

“Punk snitch,” he said.

“She's my girlfriend, I can't help it.”

“She's Joyner's sister. Which means she's the enemy. If you wanna slobber over the brat go ahead, but don't come crying to me when she tells you to get lost. Fucking punk, you and me are through.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don't recognize you as a brother from now on. You're just the kid who lives here.”

I sat up straight. I could still feel where he had grabbed my neck.

Stan left the room.

I found Pop in the kitchen, smoking a cigarette.

I guess I'd been too wrapped up in Myra and her letters to notice, but whatever good feelings my pop and brother once had for me had distinctly diminished. Pop hadn't spoken much since Neuman's, and now, in the kitchen, he barely acknowledged me. If Mom was mad because of what I'd told her, and if she was showing him she was mad on top of that—what was there to say? I was a Witcher and I had told tales. She sure wasn't helping any.

“Did Stan come through here?”

“He went out the front.”

Exactly what I expected to do when I found him I don't know. I wanted to justify myself, apologize, make up. I didn't want to leave things the way they were.

I checked the south end of Lewis Street. No one was on the road aside from Rusty, who peered from the distance, vaguely wagging his tail. I wandered to the drainage pipe, past the Coghills', into the woods behind Dickie Pudding's house, and then all the way to Myra Street. I doubled back, detoured into the woods, came to the brackish creek where Stan and Anya liked to tryst. I hopped across and hiked up the incline, and when I came to the edge of the woods I peered into the Taylors' back yard. There was someone behind the slats in the fence surrounding the pool. I heard splashing sounds.

I sat on the ground, and soon I saw the whiteness of a bathing suit emerge from the pool and move to a chair.

That would be Tillie.

I sat for quite a while, batting away flies and thinking about what it meant to be a Witcher. The worst thing was, I had broken a code that Stan and Pop dogmatically adhered to. But I'd done it only half aware. I had no idea why I had brought up smoking cigarettes. Snitching had not been my intention. I was just mad, and it was the first thing to come out of my mouth. I didn't figure it would be a big deal. Mom suspected all along I'd been smoking, she could smell it on my breath. Not only that, she had been present a few times when Pop gave me sips out of his beer. So I think her being mad at him for letting me smoke was just an excuse. She was mad period, that's all.

Tillie climbed out of the chair and splashed in the pool and returned to the chair. A small animal was dead in the woods and from time to time its stench would waft along the breeze.

It was too bug-infested to keep sitting there, and I was tempted to go speak with Tillie. I suspected Stan might be inside the house, with Anya. These days he was always with Anya.

Around the front an engine started. That would be Anya's GTO. The thing always sounded like it was on its way to the drag strip. I heard it shift into reverse and back out of the driveway.

I got up, depressed.

Stan was in that car, and now he was gone. And I was surrounded by flies.

I returned home, hoping to get back into Pop's good graces. He was on the sofa, watching the day's first soaps. I sat beside him and asked a question or two and he answered in monosyllables. Whenever something funny happened on the TV I laughed out loud and looked to share it with him. But he wouldn't look back.

During a commercial I said, “Are you mad?”

He lifted his head, peered, and lowered it. “Leave me alone, I'm watching TV.”

I went on down to my room and waited for Stan. Around six Dickie Pudding rang the bell and asked if I wanted to pitch ball. But I was too keyed up. I didn't want to leave off monitoring the house for Stan's arrival.

I stayed awake 'til after midnight. Mom and Pop were in the front room, watching their shows and not speaking.

I had become hypersensitive to stimuli. Every time a car passed on the road I peeked out the window.

I kept falling asleep and waking up. I did that several times. Each time I could tell from the silence that Stan hadn't returned. I grabbed the clock from the dresser and held its face to the glow from the window. It was three a.m. No hallway light shone at the door. My parents had gone to bed. They didn't seem to care anymore how late my brother stayed out.

When dawn broke he still hadn't come home. Birds were singing, the room was growing light. And then I heard the rumble of Anya's GTO out front. Doors slammed, and the engine rumbled off into the distance.

Stan came in the house....

I was anxious about whether I should speak or not. I prepared a greeting—“Jesus Christ, it's almost six, where have you been?” But he didn't come to the room and after a while the rehearsal grew stale. I waited and he kept not coming. Finally I couldn't stand it. I got up and looked in the hallway. There was a light on in the bathroom and I put my ear next to the door. Water was running in there, not only the shower water but water from the sink. The toilet kept flushing over and over. It sounded like he was tearing something up, fabric or clothes or something. I knocked on the door and whispered his name. There was a pause. I figured he'd heard the knock and I waited anxiously for him to open up. Instead the toilet flushed . . . and then I heard another tearing sound. And then he grunted a little, as if he were lowering himself to the floor. Now it sounded like he was scrubbing the tub.

Christ, I thought, he's cleaning the bathroom.

I turned in the half-light of the hallway and saw a clown portrait on the wall staring back at me. Mom had brought it home from the Ben Franklin recently and hung it there. I don't know why she wanted that thing, clowns always gave me the creeps. And then I realized something. The thing looked like Stan, all sinister, weird and drug-addled.

I tiptoed back to bed.

My brother is on drugs, I thought. There's no reaching him...my own brother.

WHEN I WOKE UP I went to the creek, not the creek next to Anya's but a more communal creek in the woods north of our house. I took a pack of cigarettes and smoked a couple and waited for other kids to arrive and no one did. It's a curious thing, but whenever I was at the creek, kids who as a rule preferred to scorn me sometimes spent a pleasant hour hanging out. We were like enemy pickets fraternizing during truce. Class conflict requires so much vigilance, I guess, that even the hardest veterans need an occasional break.

The world was hot that day, too bright, too hot, too harsh, and I could tell already that turning thirteen would offer no advantages. In fact, something told me things were only going to get tougher. There is a hum, an undertone just behind the noise of the world. I have never liked silence. Besides, there is no such thing as silence. If there were silence I would cherish it and hold it to my ear like a seashell....But maybe I wasn't thinking along those lines when I was at the creek, probably I'm projecting backwards. But I did have intimations. I had been living in a cocoon and the cocoon was tearing and I was being thrust out against my will...and where would I go?

I went home and lay on the bed with my pillow propped behind me.

Stan woke in the afternoon. He didn't answer when I spoke. I wasn't his brother anymore.

He threw on jeans and a T-shirt and left the house. The fan in the dining room window sucked air through the passageways. The bedroom door was open. I was alone, and whenever the oscillating fan atop the dresser turned it blew its breezy air upon me.

 

 

THE NEXT MORNING Reedy's patrol car cruised up. I heard the rumble of the engine. Stan was gone. Mom was at work. Pop was watching television.

The bell rang and I ran to the living room. I stood beside Pop as he answered the door.

Reedy regarded us gravely. He removed his hat, asked if he could come in. Pop stepped aside.

The cop was glancing all around, peeking in the corners.

He asked if Stan was home.

“I believe he went out,” Pop said.

“Got a bit of a problem at the Joyners',” Reedy said. “Seems Gaylord has disappeared.”

“Disappeared.”

“Left the house two evenings ago, hasn't been seen since. Said he was going to Dogwood Downs, meeting Bruce Pendleton. They were supposed to go to a movie but Gaylord didn't show up. The movie started at eight, they were supposed to meet at seven-thirty. And then he didn't come home that night and now no one knows where he is. People say it's not like him to run off and they're worried something bad might have happened.”

Pop's face darkened. Why would Reedy be coming to us? I was scrambling in my mind, trying to remember two evenings before.

“We were at Neuman's that night.”

“You were at Neuman's Ice Cream Parlor?” Reedy quickly grasped at the information. He almost seemed relieved. “Your brother was with you?”

“Yes sir,” I said.

“No, that was three nights ago,” Pop said, “Tuesday night.”

“Oh yeah, that was Tuesday.”

“What about Wednesday evening? You were all here?”

“Why are you asking?”

“We're trying to find people who might have seen Gaylord. I'm going to all the houses around here, Mr. Witcher, I'm not singling you out.”