Sign Languages (16 page)

Or Berthier could worry about the Karankawas somewhere along here who ate flesh. Soaking it for two days in tidal pools. “They like their salt,” they had once joked. The weapons heavy, the helmets like ovens around their brains. The past an endless series of mistakes and deaths: shipwreck—“push on goddamn you men”—illness, wrong turns—“lazy bastards.” The names of saints pouring out of his foul mouth like some priest gone mad. Along this flat, wooded plain no heights to name but dozens of creeks colored by the clay in their banks. Once running blood red, yellow. But now, at best, damp patches of sand quickly shrinking under the long hours of sun.

Pierre Eugene Berthier left them in the creek. Call it St. Berthier, he thought. The creek of St. Jude. He smiled as he walked farther into the post oaks and onto what, in 150 years, would become the Mecham survey and, in 150 years more, lot 51 of Amarilla Creek, “Homes from the low 90s.”

There were no garden hoses underfoot, no edge of a porch to sit on. Down below, the two men chewed miserable pieces of tobacco leaf as thin as paper and looked at their hands. No faded Coke cans to pry from the yellow clay, not a single shiny piece of broken glass to snag their eyes.

Berthier sat and then stood again. It was not from a dream, he thought. So somewhere, at sometime, it had happened. He was thirty-seven so there was not all that much to recall. The singing of birds brought it back—the image of a rooster crowing. But there was no sound to it. The bird was red but mottled by the shade of a tree. It stretched its neck, flung wide its wings, and raised its beak skyward.

Must be the product of little food and diminishing portions of water, he thought. But he had recalled it the morning they had decided. He saw it right now as he considered moving them farther from the creek. “The hell with St. Jude's course.” He'd move them overland and due east. Sitting, then rising again, he walked down to the men and thanked God for their salvation from the name-spewing madman. He recognized in his heart the rooster's mark on him—whatever, whenever it had been. Always an anxious man, Berthier was less daring than determined. And despite the newly surging pain in his stomach, he felt he must read such a thing with optimism.

In a few minutes he would help them out of the creek and together they would continue listening for savages and the sound of running water, a sound easily hidden by the noises of birds, men, the soughing of the wind in these dwarf trees.

They would cross lot 51, where the contractor would build a solid two-story house, go bankrupt, and sell it for practically nothing to Evan Fredericks and his wife, Alice Wolff.

No one, back then, walked across lots 50 or 52. No cannibal Indians, Spaniards, Frenchmen. But whatever the rooster meant, it came only once more, when Berthier was eighty-seven, sitting in the sunlight of a doorway near Chartres, the cathedral spire directly before his eyes across a field full of late summer wildflowers. But it came and went with hardly a flicker, the smallest cloud across the sun, a brief shadow somewhere in the flowers. Berthier pursed his lips and took a long drink of water from the clay jug never out of reach. He always smelled ripe from the urine he had to pass so often. It frequently trickled in his pants before he could loosen the buttons. Everyone considered him a thoroughly disgusting and worthless old man.

April 1987

Evan Fredericks had not thought about the rain all day. Instead he had tried to concentrate on his work but had really only fidgeted. At lunch he had stayed inside and reorganized some files, straightened his desk drawers. He knew that eventually he would solve the problems they had passed on to him. He had always been able, with time, to get down to work. But it seemed to take longer and longer and he was just over thirty-seven.

Though rain had been forecast for several days, when he stepped outside the gusting rain surprised him, as did the thought he had just had—almost thirty years to retirement. Jesus, he thought. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered, as he forgot to unfurl the umbrella but instead rushed down the steps and around the corner to the parking lot. There the full force of the wind hit, whipping his suit tight against him, the raindrops infrequent but large and with the sting of nettles.

Inside the car Evan caught his breath, let the energy of the coming storm distract him from the problems left spread across his desk on endless computer sheets. A design flaw by some young engineer, he thought, as he started the engine and turned on the wipers. The building emerged sharply from the watery blur. He watched other employees scatter across the lot. Wind-sculpted women's dresses revealed panty lines, pubic bulges.

He turned the radio to his usual station to catch the last of the news, but there was only a steady buzz interrupted by the crackle of lightning. It's off the air, he realized, as he pulled into the slow traffic.

Which slowed even more though the city was only medium-sized; one of the reasons they had taken this job, given the choices, was the city's “driveability” as Alice called it. That and the promotion and leap in salary which provided the security for a down payment. He thought of the house, of Alice there now. Ahead of him, the traffic lights went black and the massive storm stopped brewing overhead and stalled, unleashing rain in solid wind-blown waves.

Evan brushed the windshield with the back of his hand, reached and turned the radio to a country-western station for news bulletins, but the announcer seemed unconcerned though the lightning punctuated a song about whores drinking sangria.

From a nearby car, the traffic now only inching forward toward the dead lights, Evan Fredericks would only be a blur through the downpour. Brushing the window free of fog or daring to roll it down, one would see only the silhouette of a thin man in a damp suit, the green light from the dash not softening the sharp chin and nose but rather somehow compressing them, making him look childlike and a bit ill. A boy, dressed in his father's suit behind the huge wheel, pretending in the driveway. Green from having smoked a piece of cigarette from the ashtray. Moving the wheel a little, hoping to be found out soon. “Evan, what on earth are you doing? We've been looking all over. Your father… what's that smell? Evan Fredericks…”

Taken from the car, right out of the rain. Angry, loving, sympathetic mother. Straight to his room. A slap on the bottom. A hot bath. The comfort of old quilts from dead aunts.

The man in the car was now at the light. The wipers, on high, slapped the chrome edging of the windshield. Evan pulled across the intersection slowly.

At some time he had convinced himself of everything. At some time he had begun acting the role of Evan Fredericks. But this was not what he told himself now, across the intersection, his eyes on the blur of taillights ahead, his left foot poised just over the brake pedal.

But sometimes he felt all the symptoms. Like earlier today when he doubted his ability for a full eight hours, moving from desk to coffeepot, to files, to phone. But not dialing anyone in the building, or Alice at home. Home and Alice, the two things he would not doubt, could not imagine such doubt as that would take. Though really he did. When he counted back ten years to before their marriage or considered the tumors once inside her like spongy fruit.

Or sitting on the floor in front of the sink, his head even with the plumbing, the water pattering from the plastic pipes. I should be able to do this. I can if I only try harder, if I keep calm. Look what you solved yesterday at work. And the gutters look fine. This, the front door lock next, flashing over the garage.

At night, for years, he waited for something to pull him together. I just have to take my time, he told himself. And not get anxious. Evan Fredericks playing the man in bed next to a woman; the man handy around the house. Playing this man in the car. Waiting to be caught, admonished. Eager to confess and make amends in exchange for love and everything else.

What he dreads would be a list including everything imaginable. He is tricked by events, fooled by something he can not describe, though he knows it is not just himself, but something outside somewhere. It all goes too far back. Only keep the bitterness away. Finally, it is all too unclear, too vague. Like this day of wandering thoughts, the problem clearly before him on printouts, the storm generating outside, and his mind on “heartache,” which is as close as he ever came to naming the smallest part of it. “Nostalgia,” he had only once called it. But he knew even back then, in the car, the cigarette butt dangling like George Raft's, that the very instant of make-believe threatened him. As if he might not become Evan again, though he was unsure of the severity of the loss.

The man in the car rubbed his eyes. Already it had taken him longer to reach the loop than it usually took him to get home. He wanted to see Alice. Tall, stoop-shouldered, standing in the opened garage with a towel for his wet hair in her hands.

The rain had started along Amarilla Creek at noon. It had just begun to drum on Alice's Honda when she pulled into the garage.

Now she drank a cup of coffee and watched it obscure the backyard and sweep heavily across the porch. The post oaks, always poised to litter the yard given the slightest breeze, had tangled the porch with branches, the green leaves dark waving blotches through the sheet of water pouring down the sliding-glass door.

Alice wiped a swath clear and pressed her forehead to the cool glass. But she couldn't see the creek beyond the chain-link fence.

She wished she had fixed herbal tea. Something to calm her anxiety. A flash of lightning caused her to flinch; she jerked her vulnerable face from the glass and spilled some coffee on her stockings. “Shit,” she said, and when the thunder rolled past overhead she wished she had counted “one thousand one, one thousand two,” as she had earlier. But she was certain the storm was not moving much now. It was almost directly overhead and immobile. She set the cup down and bent to wipe her toes with a paper napkin. She had never enjoyed storms. Her father had been a cattle rancher, and storms had more likely meant drowned calves than green grass.

Alice Wolff had lied about this afternoon to her classes at Clarion Community College. There they were, ready to begin the final few weeks on their research papers, and she had faltered. Standing in front of them she stared at their faces, most of them adults, and she had let them down. Let herself down. Let Clarion down. Dr. Blocker, the department head.

Alice had sent them to the library with a hurried explanation. The younger ones had brightened up; the adults had looked concerned. “Are you all right, Mrs. Wolff?” Mrs. Vincent, too huge to sit in the small desk any way except sidesaddle, had asked. Alice pitied her but was also appalled at the size of her thighs, the flesh always trembling, quaking as if it were registering the faintest earth tremors.

“It's my husband,” Alice had said. “Nothing major. Nothing bad. Just unexpected.”

But not unexpected. She had always hated the job. This one only a year old. But all the others, too. By March it was like prison. In the fall, she could bear it until Thanksgiving. When Evan comes home I'll be fine, she told herself.

The next burst of wind seemed to change the pressure in the room. Her eardrums and skin felt it, registered something outside. Alice sat on the couch in the den and watched the silent TV screen. A man cooked in a wok. He was selling woks. Below the edge of his table, the weather warnings ran in a line of gold letters. Flash floods possible. Severe thunderstorms. High winds. The entire viewing area. Stay tuned.

Alice took most of her comfort from Evan. She always had. Before she knew she could not have children. Even earlier, when she first realized he was somehow crippled inside. She had learned not to think much about it all because she depended on him.

She had always relied on others. She had never found out exactly what she wanted to be. Her brothers, all older, had gone to college or into the Air Force or Navy. One was a pilot for TWA, one a computer programmer, the youngest a forest ranger in Oregon. But Alice, always the sister and baby, had never, it seemed to her, had much of a chance. Her mother had been that way, too. For a few minutes Alice remembered her before her death three years ago. Not senility but somehow worse. Unable to do anything alone. Frightened of people at the door, neighbors across the street.

Alice saw herself when she remembered her mother, though she had thought for the longest time—all through college—that her mother was the example driving her on. I can't be that way. What way? she asked herself as the man chopped vegetables more deftly than seemed humanly possible.

She had become a teacher by default. Found herself finished with college and with a graduate degree in English. Someone mentioned teaching. The man she had lived with thought she could teach while she became something else if that's what she wanted. But she had never intended to do anything at all it seemed. And she could organize a class well. She had always been efficient. The brothers had gardened and built fences and despised their father's harsh command and never come home again after high school. She had taken over the ledgers and loved the cattle dotting the hillside and the sunsets beyond the serrated tops of pines. She still missed the house. Her brothers had left her to sell it and divide the money she mailed to them.

Alice had always wanted strength of will. She had been surrounded by determined women at college. But there was her mother as an example. Always quiet and courteous, listening and nodding, she directed Alice's whole existence. Alice knew this about herself. And she believed no one she knew, no people in books, so thoroughly understood themselves. It was her triumph over everything else. Certainly Evan had no such understanding. Or Dr. Blocker at Clarion. Her mother or brothers. The fiery women at college.

She accepted herself. Home, alone, she was anxious. Once, given a new course to teach, she was sick to death. But she had planned it perfectly. Dr. Blocker came to evaluate her and nodded and nodded at what she said to the technical writing students. On the form he checked all the boxes marked excellent.