The Brothers K (94 page)

“Mind your tongue!” Mama snapped.

“We haven’t even
started
makin’ him mad!” Bet retorted.

“Linda has a right to her opinion.”

“Didn’t she hear what Papa told us? We don’t need in. Irwin needs
out!”

“But I want to see him!” Linda cried. “I’m his
wife!
I want to see
Irwin!
And thanks to you,
your
attitude, they won’t let me!”

For the fourth or fifth time that afternoon, she burst into tears. So for the fourth or fifth time, so did Nash. That did it for me. I handed the baby, spark plug and all, to Mama, climbed into the Nomad, shut the door behind me, squeezed into the bathroom, and shut that door too. I then downed four aspirins and stuffed cotton in my ears, but heard Papa clear as a bell anyway, murmuring, “I feel ashamed. I feel stupid and ashamed that I can’t think of some workable plan.”

“Signs!” hollered Uncle Marv.

“Will you shuttup!” Mama told him.

“It’s okay,” Nancy Beal cooed, probably at Linda.

“Nice catch!” cried Randy Beal, probably to Freddy.

“What do you think you’re doing?” barked Ethel Harg, probably at Randy for playing catch.

“We share your shame,” said Elder Joon, probably to Papa.

Nash and Linda kept crying. The dog and the broken ’Nam vets kept whining. On the other side of the RV, Uncle Truman belched.

“I’m too pissed to pray!” I hissed, probably at God. “Just
do
something!”

Then I remembered Joon’s story, back by Mount Shasta. “No comment,” said God. Back by Shasta, it seemed funny.

I stepped out to the road-map dinnertable, sat down, covered my ears with my hands, and began staring at the traffic on Van Buren Boulevard. Time and a lot of cars passed. Marv and Mama kept arguing. The aspirins didn’t help my headache, but they began to eat at my stomach, which sort of distracted me from my head. I noticed a little Nash Rambler sitting at the traffic light a couple hundred yards up Van Buren. It was exactly like Irwin’s—the car baby Nash was named for. The driver was pale, blond crewcut, sunglasses—no resemblance at all. But I could still picture Irwin in it, looking as if he owned the world. That little car, and Linda … He’d wanted so little. I felt too angry to cry, but I began to quietly curse. As the little Nash came toward me I noticed it even had Washington plates. It wasn’t until the driver turned into the asylum parking lot, putted slowly up into the parking space right next to my window, placed his palms together, and bowed at me that I realized the car
was
Irwin’s. Without hesitation or thought, I placed my palms together and bowed back—an exotic reaction for a hopelessly American American like me. The driver broke out in a grin, and took off his sunglasses. He had two very black eyes.

I didn’t care. It was still Peter.

“Thank you,” I murmured. Probably to God.

T
he general reaction to Peter’s sudden arrival was what you might call biblical: even the non-Adventists seemed to consider it the semimiraculous return of some sort of Prodigal Son. Linda, who’d never met him, was all eyelashes and blushes. Freddy was in bliss. Mama was in prayer. Truman loved his short hair, Marv his shiners, Elder Joon his Oriental bow of greeting. The one exception to the overall mood was Papa. After a
brief greeting hug he moved back out of the hubbub, lit his zillionth cigarette, and began to watch Peter very closely and, it seemed to me, morosely. He didn’t ask a single question. Not even about the black eyes.

Peter’s own reaction to the enthusiastic welcome was just embarrassment at first: he kept saying, “Never mind me” and “Yes, Dolores told me the situation” and “I don’t deserve this” and “I’ve been an idiot” and “I’ll tell you that later.” But when the questions and exclamations just kept coming—“Why the short hair?” “My God you’re skinny!” “What happened to India?” “Thank God you’re here!” “Who did what to your face?”—he finally grew almost angry.

“Forget me!” he said sharply. “It’s a long story. We’re here to help Irwin, right? So let’s get back to it. Would somebody fill me in on your rescue plan?”

For the first time since we’d arrived, I thought I saw Papa smile. It faded fast when Uncle Marv blurted, “We were about to start making signs,” Mama snapped, “Like heck we were!” and the argument was off and running. But Papa didn’t wait for it to resolve. He just stomped out his cigarette, stepped into the center of the circle, grabbed Peter by the arm, nodded toward the Dodge, and in the two of them climbed.

“What are you doing?” Marv asked.

Papa started the car, backed it out, pulled up beside us. “Kincaid. Bet. Mary Jane. Elder Joon,” he said. “Get in.”

The request was so unexpected, and the selection process so incomprehensible, that we obeyed without thinking.

“We’ll be back,” Papa said as he whisked us away.

H
is first question, as we started down Van Buren, was to Elder Joon. “Kim,” he said irritably. “You know this country. Where the hell’s a mountain? We need
out
of this used-up air.”

“How big a mountain?” Joon asked.

“The biggest we can get to fast.”

“Mount Baldy has snow in winter. It has a trout pond. The road goes to the top.”

“Perfect. Which way?”

“Take a right on Euclid. Just follow it north. It isn’t far.”

Papa nodded, then lit another cigarette. “I asked you four along,” he said a puff or two later, “because this is a thinking expedition and you’re all smart. I’d have asked Freddy, but she’s got a crush on Kim that might put a crimp in her thinking. I’d have asked Laura, but she’s so scared I
think she’d rather just pray. I’d have asked Nancy Beal and Ethel Harg, they’re bright ladies. But they need a rest. So I asked you.”

He turned to Peter. “The tuth,” he said, “if you haven’t guessed it, is that we
have
no plan. Or no plan that isn’t idiotic. We don’t know
what
the hell we’re doing here, Peter. And if that doesn’t change soon, we’re finished. We can’t keep these good folks together for no reason. We’ve got to make some kind of move, fast.”

He said nothing for a quarter mile or so. Neither did the rest of us.

“What I have to say now might worry some of you. But it’s time I came out with it. I don’t know what’s wrong with me—maybe it’s just fear, like with Laura—but I haven’t had a good clear idea in my head ever since I got here. If it’s up to me to get Irwin out, I’m afraid the fight’s over. I’ll never leave him. After what I’ve seen, I could never live with that. But I can’t save him either. So I want you all to know that I step back. That I’m not in charge. I’ll answer questions if you’ve got them. I’ll ask you to stop if I hear you wandering. I’d like Peter to lead us, or at least keep us organized. But whatever it is that needs to happen, I can’t find it in me. So I leave the finding up to you.”

Given my own feelings, I expected silence after this announcement; maybe some awe, or sadness; a little trepidation. What happened instead was that Elder Joon burst out: “Wait! Stop! Papa! Joon is so stupid!”

Mary Jane and Bet started to giggle. The Elder calling Papa “Papa”—I guess that’s what got them. But Joon didn’t care:

“Your other son, Everett! Don’t you remember? He had an idea during his sermon, and started to boss us all around with it, but then had a deep feeling and let the idea drop. Nevertheless it was a good idea, don’t you think?”

“No one but me even goes to church,” Bet told him.

“Forgive me!” Joon cried—an interesting reaction, coming from an Elder. Then he scowled and said, “A shrink. This means a psychologist?”

“Or psychiatrist,” said Peter.

“Well, just before Everett prayed, for his brother, to the God he cannot believe in—most unusual, most interesting, this prayer. But before he spoke it, Everett suggested that Adventist shrinks and doctors should try to gain permission to examine Irwin. Being professionals, he thought perhaps permission would be granted. Yet being Christians, he felt they would understand Irwin’s mind. Joon does not know where such an exam would lead. But might it not lead to something?”

When the Elder saw the way we were looking at him he started clapping
his hands like a little kid. “He did it again, didn’t he! Elder Everett did it again!”

“Stop at a store when you see one, Papa,” Peter said, issuing his first order. “I need pen and paper. Then I’ve got about a hundred questions to ask you.”

I
t was probably more like five hundred. By the time we reached Mount Baldy his questions had fascinated, then dumbfounded, then irritated and exhausted us. At first he’d drilled us about sensible-seeming things: Did we have Irwin’s Vietnam letters? His sanity trial testimony? How much did we know about his attack on Captain Dudek? Could we get records of his treatment at the asylum? Could we get his mail? What did we know about Major Keys—his personality, his clout, his superiors, his rules and regs?

But as the cross-examination went on, his questions seemed to grow decreasingly purposeful: How many buddies did Elder Joon still have around Loma Linda University? How many could he round up on short notice? Could Bet cry on cue? Could Mary Jane? What did Joon know about the Elders on the board of the Southern California Adventist Conference? Had he met them? Did he like any of them? Did any of us know how to operate a TV camera? Did Joon know where could we rent or borrow one? Could Sister Harg perform, “you know, act—like an actress”? Could Uncle Marv? Could Mama? Could every member of our group convincingly pretend to believe a useful lie?

He’d filled most of a spiral notebook with our answers and guesses when Aunt Mary Jane spotted the U-Catch trout pond that Elder Joon had predicted. “Pull in there, Hugh,” she groused. “Pete’s got some questions for the trout.”

We laughed. But Papa really did stop. And he and I had a beer and watched Elder Joon, Bet and Mary Jane catch our Camas contingent a fresh trout dinner. But Peter just strolled off to the furthest picnic table from the pond, and went right on scribbling furiously in a second, smaller notebook—

so when we finally climbed back in the Dodge, I naturally asked what was in it.

Pete just shrugged, and said, “A rough prospectus.”

Papa’s face fell. “You’re doing
school
work? Here? Now?”

Peter laughed. “It needs fine-tuning from all of you, and lots of help from al-Khizr. It’ll take at least two days of coaching, and two more to play it out. But here. Listen. Tell me what you think.”

With that, he opened his little notebook and began to lay out a rescue plan. It was astoundingly meticulous, given the amount of time he’d had to concoct it. It had an alternative B, an alternative C, and emergency ploys and backup schemes. It had weaknesses too, and took unavoidable risks. It was going fo require a symphonic effort by all of us, some deft conducting by Peter, a couple of daring impromptu solos by Elder Joon and an RV-load of luck. But when Peter finally closed his notebook and said, with surprising shyness, “Well?,” Elder Joon laughed—and threw his arms, not around Peter, but around Papa. “Where do these sons of yours keep coming from?” he cried.

Papa blushed at the hug, and coughed a little. But he was smiling at Peter. “You’ve gotten sneaky as an old spitballer,” he said. “What happened?”

Peter shrugged. “I met these characters in India, Grayson and Dessinger, who were spitballers of sorts. I guess they rubbed off a little.”

“A scheme this schemey ought to have a name,” Mary Jane said.

“How about Operation Squeeze Play?’ Bet suggested.

“Perfect,” Papa said.

P
eter was in the Nomad, talking strategy with Elder Joon. He’d been describing Operation Squeeze all morning to groups of three and four of us, and had spent a quarter hour talking fine points alone with me. But Joon’s role the next day was going to be so central to our hopes that the two of them had been talking for over an hour.

The rest of us were sitting on the strip of lawn between the street and the cyclone fence, just staring at the asylum and waiting for tomorrow. The sun was getting hot, but things weren’t as smoggy as the day before. There were four or five quiet conversations going, and for quite a while I’d been basking in all of them, and staring up at the sky, when I noticed Papa telling Sister Harg about the customized greeting cards that Bet and Freddy used to make. My family knew these card stories backwards and forwards, but something about the old pitcher telling them to the old Sabbath School teacher made me want to eavesdrop anyway. Then I noticed the other conversations were all dying off too. By the time Papa reached the punchline of Bet’s famous Christmas card, “Joy to the Wordl! The Savior Resigns!,” he got a roar of laughter from everybody
but the person he was telling the story to. “You find that funny, do you?” Harg growled. But she was wearing the grimace she used for a smile.

“I got a one-of-a-kind card from Miss Winifred once,” Mary Jane remarked.

Freddy flopped down on the grass and covered her head with her arms.

“She was seven or eight at the time, and couldn’t have had too many big worries. Because the thing that troubled her most, she decided one day, was how unfair it is that some holidays get tons of attention, while others get none at all. It was one of those problems that was gonna take a lot of solving. But Freddy got a start on it—one March, or April, or whenever the heck it is—by sending Marv and me our first-ever Palm Sunday card.”

“Oh God!” Marvin groaned, remembering the card at once.

“It was a picture of Our Lord,” Mary Jane said, “in what must have been Hawaii. Wearing a pair of gold swimming trunks” (she started wheezing and whacking the ground) “and a grin so big it wrapped clear around His face …”

“Whoa Jesus!” groaned Marv.

“He was just lying beneath this palm tree—’cause that’s what Sunday it was, you know …” (Now she started pounding on Marvin.) “With a big pile of coconuts, in case He got hungry. And the carefullest little red crayon holes in his hands and feet …”

“Oh God!”

“And the caption! The caption!” (Mary Jane lost it completely now, and had to sort of squeak the rest into Marvin’s shoulder.) “The caption said, ‘After Everything He Did for Us, Jesus Gets a Well-Deserved Tan.’”