A Place at the Table (8 page)

“I could run over and see if they have any peaches at the Seven-Eleven,” I volunteer.

“A boy with initiative will become a man with leadership skills!” says Mrs. Lovehart, touching my forearm with her manicured hand. “Very impressive.”

She winks at me, a wink I’ve seen her give before on television.

“Thank you, Bobby, but I think we’ll be fine,” says Mama, her lips tight. “Now please, ladies, have more crab dip and lemonade, and then these boys are going to say their good-byes so we can get down to business before we enjoy our lunch.”

A moment later and we are dismissed.

•  •  •

Hunter takes off down the driveway, probably on his way to Dixon’s. I make my way into the woods behind our house. The air is softer here. Walking beneath tree limbs, bright with green leaves, I am able to distract myself, a little, by listening to the noises of the birds and the tree frogs. I breathe slowly, trying to slow down my heart. I inhale and smell the dirt. Know that it smells loamy, which is one of the words we learned in
Wordly Wise
and which I immediately matched with this soft place of greens and browns. I make my way down to the creek, sit on a rock beside the running water. I dip my hand in. The water is cold and a little dirty. I think of my mama’s dimming eyes, the crumpled picture she threw on the kitchen table, my secret brought to light. I’d rather be dead than for Mama to have seen that picture.

Maybe I
could
die.

Maybe I could just take off my shoes and walk down the middle
of the creek, balancing myself on the rocks until I step on a slippery one. Fall face forward and drown in six inches of water. It could happen. It
did
happen last year, to a kid from Decatur High. He was on a camping trip with his family, and he left the campsite early in the morning, probably just to hike around, and ended up falling and drowning in shallow water.

I imagine a boy’s body lying face-first in the water. I try to picture my own body, found by Mama and Daddy. I try to imagine the grief they would feel. But all I can see is Hunter, Hunter drowned.

Hunter dead.

(Decatur, Georgia, 1975)

A
t night I dream of killing my brother. I dream I choke the life out of him, my thumbs wrapped around his neck. I dream I hold one of Daddy’s rifles, only a few feet away from Hunter’s heart, while he teases me, tells me I am too much of a fag to pull the trigger, until I feel my pointer finger bend at the joint and I see the look of surprise on his face just before his expression shifts from shock to pain. I dream I straddle him, a brick in one hand, bringing it down upon his head until what once was stubborn and hard becomes soft and broken.

•  •  •

During the day I ignore him. Try to pretend he doesn’t exist. Summer stretches long and hot. After I finish whatever chores Mama asks me to do, I go to the woods behind the house. The woods are my only place of peace. I stand beneath a white oak and scratch a
line on my arm with the point of the pocketknife Daddy gave me on my fourteenth birthday, along with his twice-rehearsed speech (first given to Troy, then to Hunter) about how every man ought to carry a good, sharp knife. The clean sting of the blade distracts me temporarily from the tangled knots that twist in my stomach, knots of shame and fear, guilt and rage. Blood springs to the surface of the cut and I lean against the textured bark of the tree, exhaling.

It is so green in these woods, the light from the sun cutting through the trees’ leaves, casting speckled shadows all around. The birds call to each other from branch to branch. Overhead I spot a bright blue bird. I lose myself for a moment watching its quick, nervous movements.

One thing I know: Mama has not told Daddy about the underwear Hunter hid in my drawer, because Daddy continues to act jolly around me as always. But Mama herself treats me with more and more distance, like I’m an injured cat found under the front porch, history unknown, possibly diseased. An animal she feels obligated to feed, though is afraid to pick up.

A bee buzzes near my ear, and without thinking I capture it, cupping it in my hand. I open my hand quickly, and the bee shoots out without stinging me. Ears alert, I listen. Just a little ways off I hear a low hum, a steady buzz. Energy. I walk toward the hum. It grows louder. Another bee flies by, and I know what I have found even before I see the hive in a hollowed-out space in the trunk of the tree. I am looking at the buzzing hive, but I am seeing Hunter, years before, on the ground at the church picnic, red faced and choking. I am seeing the firefly jar Daddy made for me when I was a kid, nothing more than a Bell canning jar with ventilation holes punched into its metal lid. There was a net, too, with a long pole. I would capture the fireflies and deposit them in the jar, transforming it into a handmade night-light, a temporary wonder.

I head toward the house with purpose.

•  •  •

There’s a chance the net and jar have been lost or given away, but if they are still around they are in one of two places, the basement or the garage. I check the garage first, since I can get to it without anyone else even knowing I’m home. Daddy keeps the garage, which is his domain, shipshape. Our bikes hang in descending order of size on hooks from the ceiling. The space where Daddy parks his car is empty and spotless, swept clean. Mama’s wood-paneled wagon is parked in a precisely determined spot, the front fender aligned with a Ping-Pong ball suspended on fishing wire from a hook in the ceiling. Daddy constructed the Ping-Pong ball plumb line for her so she would know exactly where to stop. If she pulls up any farther, it’s hard to get around the car, any farther back and she can’t shut the garage door. Stored against the side of the garage is a lawn mower, with a cover on it. Hanging from nails on the wall are several different sizes of saws. Near those are shelving units, the highest two shelves storing cans of WD-40, a couple of toolboxes, a handsaw, and a drill. The only thing on the next shelf down is a box of mousetraps, left over from an infestation that occurred in the kitchen last spring.

The remaining shelves are empty, no firefly jar or net stored on them. Maybe they’re in the basement. Entering the house through the back door, I am relieved to see that no one is in the kitchen. I hear the sound of a hair dryer coming from Mama and Daddy’s room. Hunter isn’t in the den watching television, and the door to our room is closed, meaning he must be in there. Probably flexing in front of the mirror above his dresser. That or jacking off, which I have heard him do in the middle of the night, when he thinks I am asleep.

I open the door leading to the basement, flicking on the light as I go down the stairs. It’s not a scary basement, not a dungeon. Daddy painted the concrete floor barn red and finished it with a glaze that keeps the paint from chipping. It’s chilly down here and
as well organized as the garage, only there’s a lot more stuff. Lots of boxes. There is my Little People Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant and my Little People castle. I used to love making the Little People fall through its trapdoor. There are a bunch of cardboard boxes with my name marked on them in black marker. I open one. It contains all of the G.I. Joe figures Daddy and Troy gave me, plus a stuffed dog—Ruff Ruff—that was a Christmas gift from Meemaw. I don’t want to say how old I was when I finally stopped sleeping with Ruff Ruff. Even now, at fourteen, I feel guilty leaving Ruff Ruff in the box with the G.I. Joe men. It’s stupid, I know, but I worry his feelings are hurt that he’s stored with toys I care nothing about. Still, I close the box with him in it and open another. Inside are books, dozens of Golden Books, an illustrated Children’s Bible,
Where the Wild Things Are, Goodnight Moon, The Runaway Bunny.
I put the lid back on. In another box is an old baby blanket of mine, yellow with alphabet blocks stitched onto it. Aunt Betsy gave it to Mama when Mama was pregnant with me, before anyone knew whether I’d be a boy or a girl, because yellow could go either way.

Seeing that blanket takes me back. I remember how the other side was made of satin and how cool it felt to the touch. It’s dumb, I know, but I want to feel it against my cheek again. I lift it from the box, and there, underneath, is the firefly jar, along with a Fisher-Price doctor’s kit and an old, old bottle of blowing bubbles.

Here it is, not even dusty.

I continue looking for the net, but I can’t find it anywhere. I decide this is okay. It might actually be easier to catch the bees in my hands. Except for the worry of getting stung. I already cupped one without getting hurt, but that was just dumb luck. If I’m going to catch a bunch of them without a net, I need protection. I think of the rubber gloves Mama wears when she washes dishes by hand, so she won’t mess up her nails. She keeps a whole box of them underneath the sink in the kitchen.

I put the firefly jar down on the floor and return everything else to its original box, its original space. I pick up the jar and walk back upstairs, turning off the light before I close the door at the top of the stairwell. I can still hear the sound of Mama’s hair dryer coming from the bedroom. I walk into the kitchen. Draped over the faucet is a pair of rubber gloves, drying from their last use.

I snatch the gloves, but then pause, putting them back. Mama might notice if they’re missing. I look under the sink and find a box of them. I pull a pair out. As I stand I hear someone enter the kitchen. Startled, I turn around, holding the rubber gloves in my hand.

It’s Hunter. He looks me up and down. “Planning to stick your hand up your ass?” he asks.

I ignore him. The only other choice is to fight, to become a ball of bodies whirling around, blood and hair flinging from the fury. Mama would hear the commotion, and she would come and break us up, and this I will not allow. Never again will I let Mama get between us, now that I know whose side she is on.

I carry the gloves and jar out of the kitchen, glancing back at Hunter to see if he’s still watching me. He’s at the refrigerator, pulling out bologna and mayonnaise, fixing himself a sandwich, I guess, though it’s five o’clock in the afternoon, only an hour before dinner. Hunter’s appetite is the butt of many Banks family jokes. Mama swears he has a tapeworm.

I know there’s something nasty inside of him.

•  •  •

This is what I tell myself: that if I trip over a branch on my way out to the woods, or I cannot find the hive again, or I get stung—even once—while trying to steal the bees, I will know that God does not want me to do this. But I complete my bee-gathering mission easily and without any fuss. I return to the hive, put on the gloves, pull out
one, then another, and finally a third, and deposit each into the jar. An arsenal for the war I’ve been fighting with my brother for years.

•  •  •

I have been lying in bed for over an hour, needing to know for certain that Hunter is asleep. He’s been snoring lightly for the last half hour. Before I rise, I say a silent prayer:
God, if this is wrong, let the bees have died in their jar. Let one of them sting me when I try to release it. Do something to show me that this is not your way.

I lean over and retrieve the flashlight hidden under my bunk. I tiptoe to the bedroom door, making sure it is soundly closed. I walk to the closet, pull the blanket off the jar, and shine the flashlight on it. The bees rest still and motionless on its bottom. My chest tightens at the realization that they are dead, at the realization that God has intervened, that he does not want me to do this.

But when I pick the jar up they start buzzing again, angry, very much alive.

I walk to the foot of our beds and, balancing the jar in one hand, climb up the railing of our bunks. The wooden railing creaks from the pressure of my weight. Really, we outgrew these bunks years ago. We outgrew sharing a room, too, but Mama insisted on turning Troy’s room into her sewing room after he moved out. Hunter groans and shifts but doesn’t wake up. My feet on the railing, I stand above his sleeping form. With my free hand, I untuck the sheet and the blanket from the foot of the bed. Slowly, slowly, I unscrew the jar until the lid is loose, ready to come off as soon as I lift it. I slide my hand, holding the jar, beneath the sheet.

“Hunter,” I command. “Wake up.”

He stirs but does not say anything. With my free hand I grab his foot, shake it hard. “Hunter.”

“Huh?” His body jerks and he opens his eyes, but he still doesn’t seem to see me.

“Don’t move.”

He turns over angrily and puts the pillow on top of his head. I slap at his leg through the blanket. He better not think he can ignore me tonight.

“I’m holding a jar full of bees. If you take the pillow off your head you can hear them buzzing. The jar is in my hand, under the sheet, and the lid is loose on top. I can release them right now. If you move I’ll release them, and maybe they’ll sting you, and maybe they won’t. And if they do, maybe I’ll run and get Daddy, or maybe I’ll wait until it’s too late.”

“What the fuck?” He takes the pillow off his head.

“Shut up. I want you to shut up and listen to me. Maybe you’ll get stung tonight or maybe you won’t. But know this: The woods behind our house are filled with bees and I know how to catch them. And I will. I’m a regular bee charmer. I will catch them again and again. I will bring a jar full of bees into our room every night and I will release them in your bed while you are sleeping and you will be stung and you will die. Do you hear me?”

He sits up suddenly, jerking the covers off his body. The motion knocks the jar out of my hand. I hear it break on the hardwood floor below. The bees fly straight up, buzzing loudly, by the side of his top bunk.

Hunter squeezes himself into the corner of the wall, like a kid in a horror film. I remain standing on the bunk bed railing, still taller than him.

“I want you to leave me alone,” I say.

“Just open the window, okay?” Hunter asks. “Get them out of here.”

I climb down the railing, then walk to the head of his bed, where he is crouched in the corner. The bees buzz around me, but I am not afraid.