Marvel and a Wonder (19 page)

_________________

The grandfather lay prostrate on the cement floor of the chicken coop, the birds upset by his presence at this late hour and making their discomfort known, cackling, scratching, fluttering about, though even in his debility he did not once take the flung feathers to be those of angels or any other supernatural power. The two Percocet the boy had brought him were now working to great effect. What ached were his bones, all of them, and the back of his head—which was lying on his balled-up shirt, the firmness of the concrete floor pressing up hard against the base of his skull. The boy was somewhere inside the house again. The grandfather glanced around to be sure he was alone before he tried to turn on his side, letting out a low moan. He placed the first two fingers of his right hand up against the wound on his shoulder. It seemed the bullet had passed clean through the bone and gristle. What he could feel when he felt anything was a dull soreness, as if he had fallen from some great height and landed on his back. When he heard his grandson charging out the back of the house, the broken hinge causing the screen door to slam with its ugly rattle, he tried to steel himself, closing his eyes, breathing slowly and deeply, so as not to frighten the boy again.

“Gramps?” the grandson murmured anxiously, crossing the gravel back lot, then kneeling beside him. “You doing okay?”

The grandfather nodded. The boy checked the wound once more, switching out a bloody dish towel for a clean one. “Dr. Milborne’s on his way over,” the boy said. “He told me he’d be here before you got thoughtful.”

“Huh?”

“I dunno. I asked him what I should do and he just said he’d be here before you got thoughtful.”

The grandfather blinked, then turned his head, watching a black-and-white-speckled Silver Sussex, a hen, its red combs angrily engorged, red eyes aglow. As he started to drift off, he began to consider the animal was his own vanity mocking him with its cawing; then he thought perhaps it was his overwhelming sense of defeat; and then finally, as his eyelids went to fluttering, he realized it was the simple, contemptible voice of outrage.

* * *

By the time the sun broke, they were one hour south and east of Louisville, on the outer edges of Lexington. They had gotten lost once, then talked to a fellow at a gas station and decided to turn around. There was supposed to be a road sign somewhere marking their exit but they could not find it. They drove on, around the circumference of the small Southern city, the older brother still behind the wheel, his pallid, sweating face growing more and more tense, brown eyebrows pointing down over his glaring red eyes.

“Fuck. This is astounding. This is why these people lost the Civil War. It’s in the way they think. Look at it. I mean, they have the psychological predisposition of tragedy. There are no proper fucking road signs anywhere. Why would you need road signs if you already knew you were going to be lost before you got anywhere?”

The younger brother did not respond. He had said very little in the last few hours, his face growing increasingly severe. “This is how they pinch you,” he finally had the courage to blurt out.

The older brother’s eyes twitched, the corner of his lip too. “You don’t ever mention that word again while I’m in your vicinity, do you understand? Do you? I’ve beaten the shit out of guys for less.”

“What?”

“Do you have any understanding about the power of the mind? What you’re able to summon in high-stress situations? Example: a hundred-pound woman who lifts her car off the body of her child. Example: an infantryman who saves an entire platoon through a sudden surge of strength.”

“That’s the same example.”

“Example: Mind control. Hypnotism. Telepathy. Certain individuals who are able to communicate with each other through the power of their thoughts, and through these same thoughts they are able to ascertain their own future. I once met a Muslim, inside, who did everybody’s fortunes, even the warden’s.”

“Bullshit.”

“What do you know? All you’ve seen are the same four walls you’ve looked at since you were a little shit. I’ve been to the coast, man. I’ve looked out at the ocean and seen the face of God. The Devil. What I learned is it’s the same face, whether you want to believe that or not.”

“Whatever.”

“Your problem, little brother, is that your whole personality is based on fear of success. You thrive on failure.”

“How do I thrive on failure?”

“Example: you’re a grown man who works at a pet store. Example: you live at your mother’s. Example: you screw teenage girls.”

“So? None of that stuff is bad.”

“It’s all bad, brother. I’d be surprised if there wasn’t something more pathological with you. Like a blood virus. Like the failure’s infected your brain. The sense of being defeated, I mean. I tell you: I am glad to find I don’t share it.”

“I just don’t want to keep driving around. We got out-of-state plates and all. And you haven’t gone under the speed limit since we left town.”

“Only criminals do the speed limit. That is a well-known and timeworn fact.”

“Ha.”

And then, as if they had been summoned directly by the younger brother’s worst fears, a pair of cherry-colored lights flashed in the rearview mirror dangling on the side of the truck; a police cruiser galloped to chase speed directly behind them.

“This is a perfect example of the power of pessimism,” the older brother hissed, pounding the steering wheel. “I want you to remember this moment for as long as you live. Because it is completely possible to telepathically control your own destiny. Most people only use it in the negative. Like you. So I want you to remember this. Because this, this is why you are who you are,” he growled.

“What do we do?”

The older brother engaged the right blinker and began to pull over, the gravel kicking up against the underside of the silver trailer. The pickup ached to a halt.

“I want you to imagine you are already a ghost. Because if you speak, you say anything, even once, I will fucking kill you first.”

Gilby slid down in the seat, averting his eyes from the police officer’s approach.

“I think you need to behold the power of the enlightened mind,” the older brother whispered. Reaching down into his boot, he slowly retrieved a short-handled knife.

The state trooper, a bulky guy with a blond mustache, wearing the familiar mirrored glasses and tan uniform, slowly walked toward the cab, pausing beside the trailer, turning to glance inside, whistling a few bars of some old-time melody. And then he was at the driver’s-side window, leaning in with his weight on husky forearms, a charming smile pleating his face.

“Morning, gentlemen.”

“Morning.”

“Come down from Indiana?”

“We did,” the older brother answered, almost too quickly.

“Whereabouts?”

“Indianapolis. Its local environs.”

“I was just up there last weekend with the wife.”

“You don’t say.”

“Visiting her family.”

“Hm.”

“Reason I stopped you all this morning—you’re supposed to have brake lights on that trailer.”

“Why, Gilby, did you hear? The good man here says that we’ve seemed to have forgotten to connect the taillights.”

Gilby just nodded, afraid to turn his head, certain his brother was going to stab the poor trooper in his neck if he so much as breathed too loudly. There was something wrong, something deeply wrong with him. Ever since California. It was like he was a villain out of some old black-and-white horror film. Vincent Price. Or the other one. Karloff. Whoever played Frankenstein.

“We’ll be sure to make the appropriate connections at the next rest stop, officer.”

“Don’t give it another thought. I’ll do it for you right now.”

“You needn’t put yourself through the trouble.”

“Don’t be silly. Only doing my job. You mind watching for traffic though?”

The older brother slowly nodded once, slipped the silver weapon into his palm, and leaned over to open the door.

Do not stab him. Do not stab him. Please, Lord. Do not stab him.

The trooper, porcine, was soon on his hands and knees, crawling beneath the rear of the truck, his fat-wrinkled neck pink with sweat, huffing a little as he worked. Cars flashed past every few minutes, their shadows darkening the police officer’s face. Gilby decided he, too, would climb out of the truck, for as he watched from the rearview mirror, it was becoming clear that Edward was now making a number of final calculations, trying to decide how to best murder the patrolman.

The trooper was on his back, the fleshy gap of his neck plainly visible, ghost-white, pocked with stubble and some sort of shaving rash, as he whistled to himself, connecting the two sets of wires beneath the rear bumper of the pickup. The older brother was crouching beside the cop, sweating profusely, lost in an argument with himself, chewing his lips. His right hand was clenched at his side, holding the short-handled knife, turning white. A few tears ran from the corner of the older brother’s eyes, the pupils darting back and forth, as if he was at the height of some serious prayer. Gilby stood there, hovering beside him, trying to silently arouse his attention, but the older brother was gone, lost in his mind now, the knife twisting at his side, neck muscles straining, nose having begun to run.

“Just one more,” the cop muttered, starting on his whistling again.

Gilby began to shake his head violently back and forth,
No, no, no, no,
but either his older brother could not or did not want to see. He observed a single nerve, some vein that had begun to throb at the side of his brother’s forehead, turn bright blue, the eyes still tearing up, the teeth busy picking at his own skin.

“No,” Gilby finally whispered, but with his soft, helpless tone of voice, he was easily ignored. “Edward . . . don’t.”

For a split second, the older brother glanced up at him, his face seized by terror, strained by something otherworldly, something possibly demonic, the tears running down his cheeks, the knife now flashing out in the open, bright silver, then dull again, as it wavered in the morning sunlight.

“Almost there,” the trooper chirped, his fat neck bulging beneath his formless chin.

The older brother, having settled whatever awful dispute had consumed his thoughts, began to raise the short, curved knife. Gilby, panicked, seeing the vicious intent in his older brother’s eyes, trembled there momentarily before finally gathering the spit and words to blurt out, “It’s not our horse . . .”

The trooper, with a smudge of grease on his wide, white cheek, squinted, pulling his face into the sunlight. “How’s that?”

“The horse. It’s not ours.”

The blank, outraged glare of the older brother’s face, contorted, tortured by confusion, turned on him then, the knife still twisting at his side.

“It’s our grandfather’s,” Gilby murmured, itching at his nose. “We’re selling it for him. In Lexington.”

“Well, that’s awful nice of you. Too bad he couldn’t come along. That’s one town that loves horses.”

“Yeah. It’s too bad,” Gilby said with a half smile.

The older one was still silent, the knife shaking in his hand, the anxious, alarmed eyes now undecided.

“All done,” the trooper announced, clapping the big paws of his hands together.

“We hardly know how to thank you,” the older brother muttered, his eyes wet with dirty teardrops.

“Don’t mention it. Glad to be of service. It’s usually pretty quiet this time of the morning. And if I can find a reason to get out of that squad car, I’ll take it. My cholesterol ain’t what it should be.”

“We will thank you in our prayers,” the older brother whispered, knife resting in his hand, quivering at his side.

“No need to do that.”

The trooper found his hat—which was kind of like the one Tom Mix used to wear—on the gravel beside him, fitted it over his balding head, and wiped his hands on his pants. He marched back toward his own vehicle, humming the same melody again.

When they got back inside the cab, Gilby cowered up against the passenger-side door, waiting for the hideous rage, the unthinking, instinctive horror to lash out upon him; it was like entering some wild den. But his older brother was strangely calm. He sat there behind the steering wheel, hands at ten and two, his face composed, his movements no longer sinister, the police cruiser honking once as it pulled back onto the highway, both Gilby and his older brother slowly raising their right hands to wave, the police car then disappearing over the sunlit horizon of the southern Kentucky hills. The younger brother waited, his chest pounding, waiting for the terrible eruption, the blood-swelled snarl of fist and tooth and fingernail. But it did not come. The older brother only sat there, shivering as if he was cold, his shoulders shaking a little, right hand reaching up to brush away the tears which had slowly reappeared.

“I’m afraid,” he whispered. “I am. Something ain’t right with me.”

“What is it?” Gilby asked.

“I think I’m turning into a wolf or some such thing.”

“You do?”

“Something’s in my blood. Something’s wrong with me. Nothing makes me happy but seeing things in pain.”

“It was being locked up that did it to you.”

“No. It wasn’t that.”

“You done too many drugs.”

“No. It’s not that either. It’s me. It was in me all along and now I’m finally seeing it. It’s part of my nature. Who I am. I wasn’t made for no nine-to-five. I’m what people used to be. Before windows and refrigerators. I belong in the woods. I’ve had dreams about running naked. Running up on animals and killing them. Deer. And rabbits. It ain’t the drugs. It’s how I am. It’s how I’m supposed to be.”

Gilby thought about reaching out a hand across the gray divide of the bench seat, but seeing his older brother caught up in something tragic, immortal, torn between forces he neither had the sense nor knowledge to understand, he simply waited, waited for the older one to regain his composure, the eyes going dry, the hands becoming steady again, the sound of the engine starting then idling, followed by the left-turn signal, the wheels making their revolutions against the gravel once again.