The Brothers K (15 page)

I started sneaking back toward it, and noticed as I went that my stealth was astounding: my tiptoeing hardly bent the grass blades. When I reached the water’s edge I hunched down to see if the pool would be deep enough to hide me. And even though I gasped and drew back, even as the sweet chills ran through me, I felt I’d known all along what I would see:

just under the surface the water opened up. The top of the pool was like an entrance to a cavern. A few inches down it blossomed out into a wide, shimmering underwater world. And though the water was deep and everything beneath it seemed to be in miniature, it didn’t take long to recognize just what world it was. The little green ridges, the shiny spots between them—it was the kingdom itself. Or a smaller, finer version of it. Bending closer, I found the minuscule version of our earth-drab train, complete with its own line of tiny, cowlike people filing aboard. Next I located the miniature of the very pool I was squatting beside. And then the second wave of chills hit: hunched by the pool-in-the-pool was a minuscule boy. A boy who must somehow correspond to, or perhaps even
be
, me. Half terrified, half delighted, I leaned down for a closer look—and the tiny boy’s face rose
up
. I hesitated, and scowled. The boy in the pool looked up, and smiled. He was like me, he was
exactly
like me. Yet he wasn’t me at all. There was none of my confusion in him, none of my nervousness, nothing the least bit sad or dull or hesitant. His features were mine exactly, with a single, all-encompassing difference: they had that indescribable quality—the
kingdom
quality. He belonged to the world or worlds around him as surely as the greenness belonged to the grass, and the longer we watched each other, the more I felt like a huge, sloppy, cartoon caricature of the being who the boy in the pool really was. Everything about him was matchless, perfect. And the instant the word
perfect
popped into my head, I realized, despite his size and resemblance to me, who he could only be. The boy in the pool was Christ. Not Jesus exactly, or not just Jesus, but a Christ.
My
Christ.

And he was looking right at me.

To my amazement, I spoke first. “I
wondered
where you were hiding!” I said. Then laughed. I couldn’t help it. It was so good to see him in there, yet so funny to find him so much like me, and so
tiny
. “Nice kingdom you got here,” I added, laughing again. “But it didn’t feel quite right without you. Or should I say, without me?”

This time he laughed too, and though there were no bubbles or sound I could feel his delight rise up through the water: which made me laugh even harder: which made him do the same. But that very instant someone shouted, “No! No no! What are you doing there?
Don’t!”

That damned conductor! And he was huffing right toward us. “What now?” I asked the boy.

He sent one tiny finger upward.
You’re Number One?
I thought, inanely. Then I realized he wanted us to touch. “No! Don’t! No!” the conductor bellowed as he ran. But slowly, carefully, I began lowering my enormous
finger down toward the minuscule finger of the boy. “Stop! You
must stop!”
the conductor roared, and his pounding stride began to sound so close that I plunged my arm in faster, making ripples that obscured the boy’s face. Yet I found his finger, and when we touched I had the sensation that he was laughing once more. His finger was strong—immovably strong—and so tiny it felt almost like a pinprick; but through that minuscule point I began to feel something like a pleasing electric shock pour into me, spreading, building, surging up my arm and through my body till the entire pool spun and boiled, drenching me, blinding me, while an overpowering suction steadily drew me down. It
doesn’t hurt!
I thought.
This isn’t hurting at all
But the conductor kept screaming
“No! Noooooo!”
and his voice seemed so truly frightened that, even though I’d neither liked nor trusted him, I felt there must be something wrong. Then he shouted, “Your
family!”

And I hesitated.

“You didn’t tell them! Papa! Winnie! Your mother! You didn’t even say goodbye! And there’s
no returning! No coming back!”

Hearing this, I resisted. I didn’t cry out or struggle: I only resisted the downward pull for a heartbeat or two. But when those heartbeats ended I was lying on dry grass, spluttering like a drowning man—though only the fingers of my right hand lay in water. Then I saw that the water was shallow. It was just an empty, sandy-bottomed puddle.
Wake up, Kade
, the conductor was saying, his voice and touch surprisingly gentle now.
It’s a dream, buddy
, he was saying.
It’s just a dream
… But as I opened my eyes to Irwin, squeezing my shoulder and speaking the conductor’s words, I realized that my lashes, and a tiny indentation in my pillow, were quite wet. Tears? Sweat? Pool water? I honestly didn’t know. Having seen my pool turn so quickly to puddle, then pillow, I fully believed (for a few seconds anyhow) that Irwin’s words meant he too knew that it was us—he and I, our junky house and room, our mill-town lives and thoughts and family—who were the dream, and that the kingdom, and the boy, were perfectly real.

“A
ny questions?” asks Brother Beal, looking even more church-scrunched and bleached out than usual. And my heart goes out to him, because it’s so clear that there can never be questions, because his words ask no questions: his sentences, his sermons, are just so many rows of miserable tourists shambling dead away from the kingdom and back into their appropriate boxcars. “Any comments then?” he asks. And I want to shout:
Yes! Why don’t you hit a ball a mile and dance like you did last
summer? You’re alive when you dance! We love your dancing, Brother! And I’ll bet the tiny Beal in your pool does too!

But I say nothing.

“All right then,” Beal murmurs, wearing a perfect replica of the kingdom tourists’ half-happy half-miserable smiles. “Would anyone care to offer a closing prayer?”

Then Vera Klinger—who I’d completely forgotten here beside me—starts waving her hand and craning her body like she’ll die if she’s not chosen.

As usual, Beal pretends not to see her. But as usual, no one else volunteers. Finally Beal looks at her. And they both look desperate. But as usual, Beal’s desperation climbs back in its boxcar, while Vera’s doesn’t budge.

Brother Beal sighs, and gives her a grim nod. Sixty-some heads bow—and sixty-some bodies stiffen in their chairs, knowing all too well what’s coming. Vera closes her eyes tight, and draws a breath so deep it sounds more like a sob. The torture begins:

“Nyearest Nyeesus!”
she calls out, her voice, her whole body quivering.
“Nank nyou!, nank nyou!, for yall nyour nyimmy nyimmy nmlessings, nand for nthis nay of Nhristian Nyellowshipt!”

At the words
nyimmy nyimmy
Micah uncorks a snicker—and there are
lots
of answering snorts today. Maybe there always are. Maybe I just hear them today because I’m stuck next to her. My stomach clenches. Most of me wants to snort with the others, but part of me, remembering the pool in the kingdom, makes me gouge my knuckles in my eye sockets and fight to hear her prayer,
“Mlease, nLord!”
Vera cries, as if she’s pleading with an ax murderer.
“Mlease fornivvus our snins and nrespassenth! Nwee are nso nunworthy, nso nvery nvery nunworthy!”

Noses blow violently; half-stifled giggles circle the room like pigeons trapped in a barn. Beal keeps his head bowed, but clears his throat and steps threateningly around his podium.
“Nopen our narts, nwee veseech nThee!”
Vera prays.

“Narts! Narts!”
Micah moans, and the pigeons flap even more wildly.

Irwin says he heard there’s an operation that can fix lips like Vera’s, but that her parents feel the thing’s a special cross God gave her to bear. Everett says it’s the parents who deserve the cross: somebody should nail their upper lips to one, he says. Peter says her name means “Truth,” and that she has nice eyes, and might be pretty when her mouth gets fixed. Whatever she might be, however she feels, she’s on some kind of rampage now:

“Nyelp us to nlove nyou nmore and nmore!”
she prays as Micah laughs outright,
“and nmore and nmore!”
she pleads as girls grab Kleenex,
“and snill nyet nmore!”
she begs as boys fizz up and overflow like jostled bottles of pop.
“Nenter our narts!”
she cries, her voice breaking, her body trembling so violently it makes my chair tremble too.
“Nenter nthem now! Nright now! Nwee are nso nlost, nso nvery nlost, nwithout nThee!”
And even as it occurs to me that this must be
real
prayer—even as I see that what is being laughed at is the sound of someone actually ramming a heartfelt message past all the crossed signals and mazes of our bodies, brains and embarrassments clear on in to her God—when I open my fists and peek at Vera I see a face so exposed, so twisted with love, grief and longing, that if she was my sister I would take off my coat, and I’d wrap her up and hold her, and I would beg her never, ever to do this naked, passionate, impossible thing again.

“O
n Yeesus!”
she gasps.
“Nyearest nLord! How snorely nwee need nthy mresence!”

“Snorely!”
someone croaks.

“Amen,”
growls old Sister Harg.

“Gugh!ugh!ugh!”
goes Micah.

“Thank
you, Vera!” Beal bellows, hoping to put an end to it.

“Nmake us nworthy, Nlord!”
she cries, hearing nothing but her prayer. “O
mlease! Nmake us nworthy!”

“Amen!”
shouts Sister Harg.

“Gugh!ugh!ugh!”

Vera’s prayer goes on forever.

Like any kid with half a brain Hugh wanted to go to college, and he got full atheletic scholarship offers from Washington and Oregon State College, the Univercity of Oregon and Idaho, and I think maybe Montana and California too. But life was not so simple as where I’m sitting for a talented young ballplayer of not quite eighteen years of age by the name of Smoke! There was college on the one hand, sure, but on the other hand four big things came butting in to royally confuse the issue.

First off Marion got cheated out of her War Widow money by the
U.S. Goverment inspite of her husband getting murdered while escaping from Germans protecting that very Goverment! This continues to kill me to this day! There sits Uncle Sam on his fat duff, saying that because Marion was English and not a natural member of our country they weren’t going to give her one red cent, and all along he’s using a language known as
English
to cheat her in! Sure, Marion had refused to become a U.S. citizen, and sure, she may have imported elsewhere if her kid hadn’t loved it so much here. But Everett Senior was no less dead due to that! And what about young Hugh’s share of the dough? So as the result of the nerve of some people and their fat desk jobs in Washington DC, Marion Becker Chance was left in the Poor House, causing Hugh great concern.

“I DON’T WANT THEIR STINKING MONEY!” he reports Marion yelling at the time. “I’LL JUST GET A JOB!” he reports her yelling. But her only jobs in Pullman so far had been babysitting professor’s wives’s kids for ten cents an hour which the stupid professor’s wives would then get to gabbing and forget to even pay, plus being Chairwoman of a bunch of local Atheist and Pacifist Groups who in spite of how they just drank coffee and wrote boring pamphlets to each other had got Marion pretty well blackballed there in Pullman as far as real jobs were concerned. “GO TO COLLEGE ANYWAY!” she screamed at Hugh. But Hugh Chance was not the sort of young man to sit around happily eating goldfish in raccoon coats or play ball and read Shakespeare while his own mom starved to death. “I WILL MAKE IT!” she kept screaming. But “HOW?” Hugh screamed right back. “AS A FORK-THROWER IN THE CIRCUS? AS AN ATHEIST TEA-PARTY HOSTESS? AS A TEN CENTS PER HOUR BABYSITTER?” As a result of this line of questioning Marion got so insulted that she has never quite forgiven Hugh to this day. Anyhow, her freshly widowed state and resulting money troubles was the first of the big things.

The second big thing was when Laura’s mom Beryl died of the bad heart Hugh had noticed evidence of so clearly the night she ditted out and kept calling him Wilver. This left Laura, Marv and Truman orphaned on their own, which though sad to Laura was fine by Marv and True since it put the kibosh on the big plan to pack them off to an Adventist college. They had both quit high school, hit the streets, and started looking for work when some sort of church social workers found them, sent them back to school, and stuck them in Adventist Foster Homes they hated so much at first that it was a surprising
shock to all concerned when they gradually grew to love them. What happened was that Truman got fostered right next door to the body shop where he learned the excellent body work he still does to this day. And Marvin struck it even luckier, getting stuck out on a big wheat ranch where he not only learned about farming but discovered that the place contained a daughter known as Mary Jane as well, a big strapping girl with a laugh like all outdoors who thought Marvo was a total joke from Cleveland at first, but later on flipflopped and married the guy!

Meanwhile Laura was having no such fun. She was too old for Foster Homes, knew no one to live with in Walla Walla, wanted to go to college wherever Hugh went to if she could only get excepted, but was a whole year behind him thanks to Hugh once skipping a grade, plus her report cards weren’t such hot stuff either. As the oldest kid she had also inherited the unpayed rent and funeral bills and was too proud to take and chuck them in the trash where they belonged. So while living in a dive of a boardinghouse trying to finish high school Laura worked swing shift at a skuzzball factory making fake meat out of soybeans there in Walla Walla to pay for the dive of a boarding house, meanwhile smiling at Hugh on their dates all the while, saying stuff like “I’m doing fine, Hun!” Fortunately Hugh saw this as just one more load of the same type of crap Marion kept feeding him when she’d scream, “I WILL MAKE IT!” These were two lying damsels in distress if ever there was one, was Hugh’s thinking. So Laura’s tough situation was the second big thing.