A Choir of Ill Children (6 page)

Sometimes I wake up crying, with my brothers leaning over my bed, staring and weeping with me.

L
ILY THE REPRESSED SCHOOLTEACHER HAS REAL
initiative, and she finds me at the mill. No one has ever found me here, or needed to find me here, so I’m a little shocked to see her coming up the stairs with the girl in tow.

“Thomas, we need your help,” Lily says, sitting in the chair at the front of my desk. It may be the very first time anybody has ever sat there.

We are in the convergence corridor now. I can feel it quite strongly, this gathering of energy. The girl from the flat rock, the warnings from Drabs, the talk of Gloria leaving Harry for Verbal, my mother’s unfolding dreams, the ghost of my father, and the coming of the carnival.

Whoever said the kid was seven years old saw her at a distance. She’s at least thirteen or fourteen and looks rather ridiculous holding an all-day sucker. I can see how the mistake has been made though. She’s wearing a younger girl’s school outfit: bobby socks, tiny plastic black shoes that belong on a doll, and her hair is in pigtails for Christ’s sake. She’s confused and wide-eyed, gawking all around the room and down below at the rest of the mill. When her gaze settles on me it’s like she’s stabbing me in the belly. Sometimes you know when someone wants something from you. I’m waiting for her to lick the lollipop but she doesn’t. Her knuckles are white around the stick as she angles the sucker like a sword. She cocks her head cutely and I wonder what the hell is going on.

“What can I do?” I ask.

Lily has decided to live the stereotype. She wears glasses with thick black frames, her hair always kept up in a tightly knotted bun. She has a penchant for oversize clothing, large blouses and sweaters, lengthy skirts, a lack of form. She does this to hide the true nature of her beautiful body from herself and from the licentious men of Kingdom Come.

Lily used to fuck me down into the floorboards beneath the bed with her massive tits mashed into my mouth until I turned a light shade of blue, her cunt alive and starving. She is dichotomy itself, and neither role is any more or less real, although I definitely like the one who fucks a lot better.

Her staunch persona is in effect. One of Lily’s hands flutters about as if she were brandishing a ruler or a piece of chalk at a map, pointing out the Gobi Desert, the Pyramid of Cheops, the corner where the woman in the red dress led Dillinger to his death.

She says, “Do you know of our situation here?”

“Not really,” I tell her.

“The circumstances surrounding this little girl. I call her Eve simply because we must call her something.”

“Yes.”

“Well, Sheriff Burke hasn’t been able to find her parents yet or where she comes from or how it is she’s gotten here. If she’s been kidnapped and brought across state lines this could be the responsibility of the FBI, but we really don’t know where to turn in order to help Eve.”

I look at the girl and she appears completely oblivious to us now. “Has she spoken at all?”

“No, not a word.”

“Is it something physical or has she been traumatized?”

“Dr. Jenkins isn’t sure. There’s no immediate signs of abuse. She appears perfectly healthy in every other regard. There’s always a chance she’ll snap out of it, whatever ‘it’ might actually be. I’m horrified to think what that poor girl might have been through.”

It makes me uncomfortable talking about the girl as if she weren’t there, as she glances at me. Everything about her makes me uneasy—those clothes, the swell of her pubescent breast, that damn all-day sucker with its concentric colors winding me into its syrupy abyss. Eve wanders onto the platform outside the door and waves down at the workers the way I do, and they wave back.

Lily’s stern manner is beginning to turn me on the way it used to. “What can I do?”

“I’d like to hire a private investigator.”

“All right.”

“It might prove costly. A PI could be on this case for weeks or even months, and wind up with little or nothing to show for his efforts.”

“That’s fine. Is she staying with you?”

“Yes, there’s enough room in my house and truthfully, I enjoy the company. We’re making do, and she seems to have already grown quite at ease.” Her gaze is downcast, with a nice flush already creeping up her neck. I imagine those big red knockers bobbing all around while I take her from behind. She knows what I’m thinking and her hands flit to her glasses, to keep them on, to yank them off. She says, “Do you want to make the arrangements or shall I?”

“I will. I’ll get an agency to start working on this immediately.”

“Thank you, Thomas.”

“Of course, Lily.”

I call Paul the foreman up to the office and tell him that perhaps Eve would like a tour of the mill. He knows better than to frown. He takes Eve by the hand, quickly becoming entranced by the circling colors of that all-day sucker. Paul gets a bit woozy and I have to grip his shoulder to snap him out of it. He leads her downstairs among the awful machinery and curious people who call her the flat rock girl in whispers.

We defeat the dead air of ages as Lily and I move, in spasms, up onto the desk naked and glistening. We tear gouts from the wooden floor and walls, with nails and teeth, leaving marks for the rest of history to see.

S
ARAH IS NOT ACCUSTOMED TO BEING WOOED AND
she likes the attention. In the deep night, when Fred has finally fallen into his fitful sleep and cocaine nightmares, she comes to our bedroom. She is apprehensive, which only makes sense. Jonah is charming in his own way, and the timbre of his voice coming from all three throats of my brothers is enthralling. She enjoys his poetry and selfless attentions, even if she doesn’t know which body is actually his.

“And in the aggression of our loss we find, another draped flattery at your feet, as roses and accolades and murmurs all day are cast once again, into the saltless seas of our impertinent memories.”

Sarah does not join them in bed. There’s room for her now that Dodi has taken to sleeping with me or alone in one of the empty bedrooms on the third floor. Sarah sits on the floor, her head eased back against the edge of the mattress, sighing after each of Jonah’s stanzas. Despite their physical disfigurement, the voice from those three throats is quite splendid.

I usually enjoy listening, but tonight I’m not in the mood.

I wander the house, feeling the breeze as I step across each open window in every hall. Downstairs the mantel appears strange, and it takes me a moment to realize that the framed photo of my parents is missing.

There’s a noise at the end of the corridor. I follow the sound. To my surprise, I see that Fred is lying awake. Usually he stays up for three paranoia-wracked days in a row, then crashes hard, but he must be snorting so much now that it’s bounced him back to life. I’m shirtless and he stares at what might be my sister in my side. The feminine features at my ribs having shifted slightly into a grimace.

He talks to the face. “She’s leaving me.”

“Yes, I think so,” I tell him.

“We’ve been together for almost two years, and now she’s dropping me, like that, all the way out here in the fucking boonies.”

“Maybe it’s best this way.”

“Fuck no it’s not best like this! How can you even say that? Listen, we had plans, we were going places. She was going to write screenplays and I’d get the financing and produce and direct them. That’s the way it was. But this? . . . the hell is this? She’s cutting loose and leaving me for that goddamn obscene creature!”

“Only one-third of it. My brother Jonah.”

“I don’t care what you call it! Haven’t you seen the way it moves and what it does? Jesus, it isn’t human!”

He hops up out of bed, nothing but tendon, muscle, bone, and a few dug-in ticks because he’s always too high to burn them off. No fat, no extra pieces or persons. He’s bursting with a manic tension, each vein raised. He rushes to the bureau and begins ferreting about, tossing aside clothes and empty vials, sections of scripts. He spills talcum powder and baby laxative, and a white mushroom cloud explodes into the air, leaving traces on the ceiling.

Fred is shaking his head like a swimmer with water in his ear, but he can’t get out the sound, the infection. I feel a great pity for him even though he’s such an asshole. He scowls at my ribs. “You think I’m not man enough to keep my woman? You think I won’t fight for her?”

“There’s no need to. You’ve got to accept the fact that she’s leaving you. The war is over. You’ve lost.”

“Like hell I have.”

Like hell, he has. Fred has now become expendable. He has no reason or purpose to remain with us and probably never really did. Stepping foot in this house was like getting caught in quicksand, and the more he struggled the deeper set he got until he couldn’t get away again. Sarah, though, will stay behind. To what end, I don’t know, but that’s for her to decide.

Fred sold off most of his belongings days ago for more drugs. The video camera and the DAT recorder are long gone, and so are all of the worthwhile effects from the house—the television, stereo, all the petty cash, my watch and other jewelry. None of it is important to me except the framed photo of my parents that he lifted tonight.

I search the room while he continues to strew items everywhere. We’re both digging and rutting around. He looks over and says, “What are you doing? Hey you, what’s your name again? Listen, that’s mine! Take your hands off that. That’s mine. Hey—”

The photo is halfway free of the frame and the glass is cracked. I turn to go and Fred pulls out one of our kitchen knives from under the mattress. He’s even more disconnected than I thought. He looks down at the face and asks, “What was that? What’d you say to me, you bitch?”

I try to listen, but there’s nothing.

He’s fast but awkward. The knife slashes down but he misses me by six inches. I don’t even need to step aside. He tries again, stabbing for my ribs, for my sister’s pouting face, and I jerk left, catching his wrist and bending it backward, farther and farther until he drops the blade. I keep going until the popping and cracking of small bones grows loud enough to drown out Jonah’s recital.

I slap a hand over his mouth. Fred is screeching beneath the palm I use to cover his slippery lips. I keep the pressure up, twisting, feeling the hairline fracture working up his ulna inch by inch.

His agonized, horrified eyes keep gazing toward the face as I hiss into his ear, “Listen, I’ve been recutting your coke with an even better crystal than you’re used to. You were stepping on yours too much. If you’re going to do something then do it right. You’re leaving tonight, Fred, and you’re going without Sarah.”

He bucks like a dying fish and I slip my hand aside so I can hear him. “No! My arm! Hey, no, you—”

“My brother loves her and she’s starting to fall for him, I think. Get over the fact that it’s a little weird.”

“A little! Ow! Oh God . . . help, listen . . .”

It will finish badly when she dries out, I suppose, and probably end with madness, but almost everything does. I tell him, “Be pleased. It provides reassurance, a new hope for all. Take heart in that.”

I let go of him. Even though his arm is broken, the relief of my turning him loose overwhelms him and Fred groans and pants on his knees. I stuff a thousand bucks in his pocket, drag him down the hall, and shove him through the front door out across the porch. He bounces down the steps onto the lawn, moaning in tune with the cadence of Jonah’s poetry and all the loons and katydids.

Maggie, huddled in the willows, maintains her vigil.

T
HUNDER HANGS HEAVILY IN THE FURIOUS CLOUDS TO
the east as the storm approaches. The river is already in a frenzy, half a foot higher than normal. The jut of cruel chins is outlined by lightning, and the sky is the color of a three-day-old bruise. Electrical surges burn out and explode bulbs all over the house, sending shards of glass soaring. Even the dog kicker must be staying in. No size twelve tracks are found in the mud, no dirty prints have been left on fur. Dogs are accepting treats from their owners again, showing a little tail-wagging. But they continue to howl, and you know there’s a reason.

When the rains finally come, the world is given a new perspective. Not whitewashed or cleansed, but slickly covered over and gleaming. Water pulses beneath windowpanes. It crawls across trees and houses, swallowing and drinking us in. You watch it arching over steeples and cliffs and the cabbage palms, buffeting, constantly beating and vying for your attention.

Trucks going by tear up the brutal din with separate gentler sounds: splashes, splurges, crunches, and whines. Anything is better than the pitter-patter and constant thrum of wind coming for you. Broadhead skinks skitter down walls, leaping into the water. The lightning is frantic and raging, that sudden charge making your hair bristle and skin tighten. Your ears pop. Fires erupt in the woods but the downpour immediately snuffs them out. You almost want to see the wild burning because it’s something that can exist, momentarily, in conflict with the storm.

The parking lot of Leadbetter’s is abruptly littered with corpses. Three drunks in two nights are found drowned in sixteen-inch puddles to one side of the curb where the grade dips. Two-hundred-and-thirty-pound men with forty-inch beer guts are discovered drifting with their key chains in hand, slowly circling a stopped drain. You pass out during a storm like this and you’re dead.

Shanty houses in the bog town are consumed in avalanches of mud and slide into the swamp. Ramshackle hovels at the edge of Potts County simply fall to pieces and families are forced to move into their trucks and chicken coops.

Dodi, who used to enjoy dancing in the rain, running around the yard and begging me to join her on the swing, comes to loathe the gurgling, sluicing water thudding at the roof. She can’t sleep and lies awake crimped at the foot of the bed. She wants company and I move with her into a different room, watching her nervously curl and uncurl.