The Brothers K (17 page)

“Nothin’ much,” he mutters again.

I look at the mill: the night lights have all come on—whole constellations of them—spotlights and floodlights and huge square-bulbed power lights, suspended and shining from walls and wires, lighting the fog from here to the middle of the Columbia; the mill’s got its own railway system, with full-sized boxcars rolling in and out of buildings; it’s got its own fleet of tugs, dragging football-field-sized log rafts, one after the other, in off the river; it’s got wings as big as whole office buildings, with snarls of exposed vents and flumes and overhead or underground pipes feeding them a steady river’s worth of water, some of the pipes and flumes big enough to drive semis through; I can count fourteen lighthouse-sized smokestacks just from where we’re sitting, with steam pouring so thick out of nine of them that they look like the source of every cloud on earth; I can feel the fog vibrating from the machinery in the building behind the giant clock. I look back at Papa. “Sure doesn’t
look
like nothin’ much.”

He rubs his temples. “Look,” he says irritably. “This mill is a bunch of machines making paper out of trees. Me and Roy and a thousand other yo-yos work the machines. That’s all it is, Kincaid. You seen one mill, you seen ’em all.”

“But I’ve never seen even one! Not on the inside.”

“Then you’re lucky,” he says. As if that’s that.

But why should it be? It’s not as if him sitting there sucking down cigarettes till they stain his fingers orange is more important than talking to me. No longer trying to keep the defiance out of my voice, I ask, “How
exactly
do they make paper out of trees?”

Sliding another cigarette up out of his shirt, Papa mutters, “Where’s that Roy?”

“How do they make paper out of trees?” I repeat. “I want to know.”

“It’s complicated,” he says.

“I’m smart,” I tell him.

“If you were smart,” he growls, “you’d know that how mills make paper out of trees isn’t worth talkin’ about.”

“What if I own a mill someday?”

“If you were smart,” he says, “you’d know you won’t be owning any mills.”

“If I was smart,” I snap right back, “maybe I could figure out a way to get my own
dad
to talk to me now and then.”

He turns on me. His eyes are slits. “You’re runnin’ off at the mouth and thinkin’ it’s clever,” he says. “And I’ve had enough.”

“You’d call
any
talking runnin’ off at the mouth!” I tell him.

“One more word,”
he says, his mouth a slit now too. “You want to know about the mill, look out the goddamned window.”

I look out the goddamned window. It’s too goddamned foggy and dark to see. “If the place where you spend every day of your life isn’t worth talkin’ about,” I ask, “what is?”

“You’re
the smart one,” he says, and the words are literally muffled by his mouthful of smoke. “You tell me,” he says, inhaling it.

I try to think of something great—something truly
fascinating
—just to show him. And to my surprise, I do. “There’s a harelip at church!”

This seems to get his attention, but it’s not exactly how I meant to begin. “She, uh, she’s just my age. And she looks normal, and seems nice enough for a hare—er, she
is
nice. Except when she goes to talk, the lip makes everything sound like it starts with n. Like baseball would be
nasenall
, or Jesus
Nyeesus.”

He smokes his Lucky.

“The thing is, there’s an operation that’d fix her right up, but her parents won’t let her have it. They claim the lip’s a cross, see. Like Christ’s cross. And some people think the parents are nuts, and some think they’re right. So what I wondered was, what do you think?”

“Take a vote,” he sighs.

I feel myself getting mad. It makes me talk even faster. “Her name’s Vera, and she’s a good person, you’d like her I’ll bet. Except there’s one thing about her, besides the lip I mean, which isn’t exactly normal, and I don’t know if you’d like this thing or not.”

Smoke runs like water up his nostrils. He stares straight ahead at nothing. I can tell he doesn’t give a shit what the thing about Vera even is. Which makes me all the more determined to describe it.

“She likes to pray, see. And I don’t mean like Irwin or even Mama like
it. I mean she makes up these prayers—great big long suckers—and says ’em right in front of everybody. It’s not like showing off. It’s like they just
pour
out of her, like she’d die or something if she held them in. Except every time Vera opens her mouth every kid in the place starts snickerin’ and snortin’, and the grownups get mad, and nobody listens, and the whole place goes nuts. Yet every week, when Brother Beal asks for the closing prayer, Vera, knowing what’ll happen,
still
raises her hand,
wanting
to say it!”

Papa doesn’t react.

“Seems weird, doesn’t it? But brave too. Don’t you think?”

No answer.

“She said one today, and they laughed so bad Beal started hollering
‘Thank you, Vera,’
just hoping to end the noise. But it was like she couldn’t hear, like the noise never mattered, because she really
was
praying, see, not just pretending, so no one counted to her, except maybe—you know.
God
, or something.”

Papa’s face is so empty I shut my eyes to keep from having to see it. I want to shut my mouth too, but I feel a little like Vera must have felt; this thing has me in its grip; I’ve
got
to speak. “We talked about it, driving home—about Vera’s parents calling the lip her cross and all. And Mama said we shouldn’t take sides. She said, ‘Judge not lest ye be judged.’ Then Irwin said that when we see somebody with a cross we should help them carry it, like the guy did for Jesus in the Bible. But then Everett hauled off and said, ‘Great, Winnie! Carry Vera’s cross! Yeah! Except what does
that
mean? Does it mean beat up the sixty twerps who laugh at her? Does it mean we wink and flirt with her as if the lip isn’t ugly as sin and her parents aren’t batty as hell for leaving it that way? Does it mean we should mangle our own lips
nand nall snart snalking nike niss?
Or is it just a piece of pious crap you’re belchin’ up to keep from having to do anything
real
to help her?’

“And man oh man! Mama got so mad I thought she was going to get us in a wreck … But then Peter broke in in that calm way of his that grabs your attention even better than Mama or Everett getting mad. There were some crucial things Vera’s parents were forgetting about crosses, was what Peter said. One was that Jesus was nailed to His by
enemies
, not by Mary and Joseph. And another, he said, was that it killed Him. Christ’s cross killed Him. We’ve got to remember what crosses are, Peter said. They’re not just decorations on steeples. They’re murder weapons, he said, the same as guns, or gas chambers, or electric chairs.
Only much, much slower. So Vera’s parents, he said, were one of two things. They were either fools without the slightest idea what Christianity or crosses are. Or they were unbelievably evil.

“And not even Mama could argue with that. But then Everett spoke up again, saying that if any of us
really
wanted to help Vera, we would march straight up to her parents next Sabbath, and tell them exactly what Pete had just told us. And you should’ve seen Irwin! He got all excited and started nodding his head like he not only agreed but planned on doing it. But when Mama saw him in the rearview mirror, she said,
‘Don’t you dare!’
But I wouldn’t be surprised if he
does
dare, Papa! I really think Winnie might! So what do
you
think? I mean,
should
he? Do you think Irwin should tell them?”

“Tell who what?” he murmurs, rubbing his eyes—

and suddenly something in me hurts more than I can stand. “Weren’t you
listening?
Didn’t you
hear?”

He takes a drag so long and deep it can’t leave his lungs by the time he needs to breathe again, so he inhales the same smoke twice. “I don’t know what all goes on at your church,” he says. “That’s your mother’s department.”

I want to control myself, I want to calm down, but I also want to slug Papa so hard I knock the smoke right out of his head. Because it’s a
lie
. It’s a bald-faced, idiotic lie for him to sit there with his wrecked thumb and dead eyes telling me that Vera and her lip and his own sons and crosses are all “Mama’s department.” “Quit fidgeting,” he tells me. And I can barely keep from blurting that he’d fidget too if his father was a liar. “What’s
with
you today?” he grumbles. “You’re squirmin’ like a two-year-old.”

I can’t breathe, I can’t see, I can’t sit still.

“Get those muddy boots down off that glove box!” he snaps.

And out it comes: “Then
you
quit smoking!” I shout. “And quit
lying!
And quit sitting there like a goddamned
corpse
out of some damned—”

I see the fury come into his eyes, but I don’t see the fist that smashes the left side of my face. My head snaps hard into the seat and bounces so quickly back to where it had been that for a moment I think,
Nothing happened
. Then my skull feels like it’s caving in. My mouth fills with blood. I cover my head and fall sideways. “Kade!” Papa cries, grabbing my shoulder. I shove his hand away, and crawl over against the door. “Oh, Jesus! Kade! I’m
sorry!”

I feel a stabbing in my eye, and a roar like the mill’s in my ear. I feel
Papa’s hands on me, hear wild apologies tangled in the roaring. The blood keeps welling, keeps pooling in my mouth, so I pull myself up to spit it all over his fucking car. But when I glance at him first, to be sure he’s looking, I see he’s white-faced, staring at his left hand—and the hand is trembling harder than I’ve ever seen anything human tremble. I swallow the blood, and turn back to the window.

“Oh
God
I’m sorry!” Papa moans through the roaring. “Kade, I’m
sorry!
But what
is
it with you? What do you
expect
from me?”

I don’t answer, don’t move or make a sound, except to swallow more blood.

“You know, millwork isn’t
baseball,”
he says, and his voice too is trembling. “You—Everett—Peter—do any of you understand that? It’s not a game, not an art, it’s not even a goddamned skill. It’s just a dead thing I do for money so we can eat. I’m a millworker, Kade. And millworkers are the people who can’t be who they wanted. Do you understand that?”

I don’t answer. Let
him
see how it feels to pour your heart out to a statue.

“Listen!” he begs, sounding broken. “Please! I
never
should have hit you! I never will again. I’m terribly sorry, and want to show it. So tell me
please
, right now if you possibly can, what it is you want from me. Tell me what you and your brothers think I should be doing different, and if it’s in my power, if it’s possible at all, I
swear
I’ll try to do it.”

For a moment I say nothing, fearing I’ll sob, or choke on blood, if I speak. But then words well right up with the blood, I’m helpless to stop them: “I
know
you hate the mill,” I tell him, and tears come the instant I speak. “I
know
you love baseball, and aren’t doing what you want. But at least Vera
fights
. She says her dopey prayers no matter what!” I lean against the door, gasping for air and strength to finish. “All I want is for
you
to fight, Papa. To fight to stay alive inside! No matter
what.”

For a moment it seems he’s turned to stone again. Then I hear him moving toward me, till he’s just inches away. I don’t look or turn, but I feel it now—not just his hand or voice but his entire body, right up against mine. And it’s quaking like a cold wet dog’s. Or like Vera’s when she prayed.
He’s just like me!
I think, amazed despite the pain.
He’s just a grownup boy, stuck in a body, stuck in a life. And his life isn’t working. It’s not working at all. And he’s got no father, his mother can’t understand, he’s got no one to help him fix it
.

Feeling this, knowing it, I turn and try to hold my father, as he’s so often held me. He makes a small rasping sound when my arms slide
round him, then wraps me up, very gently, and holds me back. He says nothing more, but I feel his broken breath, his broken love, his fear and heartbeat.

We’re still sitting this way, and still trembling, when Roy’s faded red plaid jacket appears in the window.

Unable to function as plants, we must serve as manure
.

—Edward Conze

O
n Sunday morning, the day after he punched me, Papa donned his old Schenectady White Sox training sweats and a pair of six-dollar running shoes, hopped in the Fortyford, drove up the hill to the McLoughlin High School track, and did sixteen quarter-mile laps as fast as he could run, walk, or stagger them. When he got back home he was blotchy-faced, gray-skinned, and smelled so close to dead that Peter involuntarily retched as he walked past. I about retched too, when the first thing he did upon limping into the kitchen was grab his Lucky Strikes down off the top of the refrigerator. Instead of lighting one, though, he grabbed the carton in a stranglehold, hissed,
“You
did this to me!,” ripped open every pack, shredded and pulped every last cigarette, then swept up the
whole mess and flushed it down the toilet. From that day forward he ran four miles every day after work, and didn’t smoke another cigarette.

On Sabbath morning a week after he hit me, Papa drove down to an abandoned commercial dairy beside the new Reynolds aluminum plant on Vancouver Lake and spent the day salvaging beat-up studs and cedar siding from one of five barns that were about to be razed and burned. The dairy—Jazzy Jersey Farms it was called; everybody in Camas used to drink their milk—had gone out of business shortly after the aluminum plant came on-line, for the most basic reason imaginable: the cows had all died. The bovine mass death was front-page news for several days running, and for a week or two a lot of people seemed to want to shut the plant down. But when Reynolds Metals bought the dairy for about three times its worth and started grazing beef cattle in its supposedly lethal pastures, the public outcry died as quickly as had the dairy cows. The only person who stayed worked up about it was Everett, who happened to meet a girl at church who swore on three Bibles that her dad worked at Reynolds Metals, and that his job was to patrol the pastures in a tractor every morning before daylight, and to drag away and bury any beef cattle that had dropped dead in the night. Everett called
The Vancouver Guardian
and
The Oregonian
with the story, but nobody would believe him, so he borrowed a friend’s flash camera, got up at three o’clock one morning, and started off on his bike for the Reynolds plant in hopes of documenting the cover-up himself. Unfortunately a state cop stopped him two miles from our house, asked what he was doing bicycling in the dark without a head- or taillight, and when Everett told the truth, three Bibles and all, it inspired the cop to escort him all the way back home, wake our whole neighborhood with a siren blast, and tell Mama and Papa that their son was going to end up behind bars if he didn’t quit telling smart-aleck lies to officers of the law.