William H. Hallahan - (7 page)

The loud voice of the surf helped muffle the sound of the
hoofbeats. He walked into the fog along the beach toward Barnegat
Lighthouse. To see if he was being followed, he turned once and
looked at the beach house. It was an old Victorian frame structure, a
noted veteran of the beach that had survived storms and floods for
almost a century. The fog easily swallowed it.

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: He'd never be able to outrun the rider.
Sometimes he believed he was actually mental. But his mother told him
second sight wasn't madness. He wished she were here to talk to.

He began to trot to get away from the sound.

He'd always hated it, hated being different, hated not having the
normal human blessing of not knowing the future. And he resented the
attitude of his relatives, especially the older ones who avoided him
for fear he would tell them something terrible about their futures.
They made him feel like a freak.

But it was true. He sometimes looked at people and knew things
about them, sometimes from their pasts, sometimes from their futures.
His second sight seemed not to distinguish between "was"
and "will be." Time seemed all one.

Ahead of him, hidden in the fog, he could hear the
cree cree
cree
of the shorebirds running and feeding along the surfs edge.
Like the future, they were just beyond his vision, sending him
signals and clues. He tried to think about Annie O'Casey.

This summer Jackie Sharkey had arrived with a totebag bulging with
Playboy
magazines. When they all went to bed at night, the
boys would lock the attic door and stare at the nudes by flashlight.
Jackie called them anatomy lessons with a suggestive giggle. Then
they would all try to outdo each other with filthy remarks. Brendan
invented a slobbery sigh that made the others giggle until their cots
shook.

Brendan's favorite was Miss February. He was very conscious of how
much her face resembled Annie's. It shamed him a little but he gazed
at Miss February nonetheless.

He decided to turn back in the fog. He knew he couldn't outrun the
rider. He wanted to protest; it wasn't fair.

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All the talk at breakfast was about the Sixth Annual World's Worst
Sideshow. Crazy Day, the cousins called it. This year there were the
Flying Fumblers (A Terrible Tumbling Act), America's Tallest Midget,
The Only 87-Pound Circus Fat Lady in Captivity, Jo Jo the Boy-faced
Dog, The Clown Clones, Magic by Brian the Incompetent and much more.

In. the kitchen everyone was trying to make the waffles. Someone
was wiping up some spilled batter. Someone else poured orange juice
into paper cups. Cousin Jackie was passing out the butter, and by his
side Annie O'Casey filled the syrup jars from a large bottle.
Brenda's prissy cousin, Brian, sat at the end of the long kitchen
table, forking large pieces of waffle into his mouth. Syrup ran down
his chin.

When Annie saw Brendan she smiled at him. "Did you get it
yet?" she called.

"No," Brendan answered. Someone pushed a paper plate
into his hands.

"Where'd you go?" Jackie demanded.

"For a walk. I was thinking about the play."

The play was for Annie O'Casey's Puppet Theater. Hers was the only
talented act in the whole show and she had asked Brendan to write the
script. It would be about a fallen angel who wants to go back to
heaven. But God will not hear the fallen angel's prayers. To make the
situation worse, the devil prevents the angel from leaving. The plot
was based on one of Brendan's dreams. It had been astonishingly
vivid. He could actually picture the angel: red-haired, with a half
smile sometimes and a dimple in his chin. The only problem was,
Brendan had no last act. Did the angel get back to heaven or not?
Brendan didn't know.

After breakfast Brendan sat on the porch steps with Annie. She was
sewing the angel's gown. Unthinkingly, Brendan stared at her so
fixedly she became self-conscious. Miss February.

"Boo," she said softly. Brendan drew back. The devil she
held up was ferocious-looking--blood-red eyes in lighter-red skin and
a red goatee.

Annie pulled out the gown for the angel and waited to see his
reaction to the material, a remnant of silk she had been saving for
two years. When he reached out his hand to touch it, she drew back.

"Your hands are dirty, Brendan."

"I like dirt," he said. "It's very democratic."

"You read that somewhere."

"James Joyce didn't like to wash and look how famous he is."

"Who's James Joyce?"

"See how famous he is?" They both laughed. Then Brendan
said, "He was an Irish writer and someone asked him one day if
he was going to wash himself. And he said, 'All of Ireland is washed
by the Gulf Stream.'"

She giggled. He could say things that weren't funny in such a
funny way it made her laugh. And he told funny stories that made her
stomach hurt with the laughter.

He could also tell fabulous ghost stories he invented himself. He
could hold groups of people in the palm of his hand. Wednesday night
they'd had a big bonfire on the beach, and they got Brendan to tell
them a ghost story by the firelight. It was all about this phantom
looking for its head, which was being carried by this man in a
bowling-ball bag. Brendan changed his voice for each character and
made sound effects for the dragging of the ghost's lame foot, and he
imitated its mad giggle, and he knew just when to make dramatic
pauses and when to whisper so everyone would lean close and when to
shout and clap his hands.

All the cousins pretended to be too sophisticated to take the
story seriously but none of them left the beach while he was telling
it, and one cousin actually got so frightened she wet her panties and
slept all night on a narrow cot hugging her older sister. Even the
adults applauded when Brendan finished his story and patted him on
his back, and Annie felt secretly proud of him.

She envied him that imagination. Her puppet scripts were pale
beside his tales.

But there was also another side to Brendan. He could be telling a
funny story--everyone loved his funny stories, they were always about
himself and the silly things that happened to him--when he would
suddenly stop and scowl. Then he would smile and finish up with a
joke as though nothing had happened.

Annie pushed him with her finger. "Hello. Brendan. Are you in
there?"

He turned his face to her uncomprehendingly for a moment, then
smiled that gentle smile of his.

"What do you see when you stare away like that, Brendan?
Where were you?"

He grinned self-consciously at her. "Oh, nowhere."

"Tell me."

"I was thinking about a horse, that's all." His smile
closed that subject. His eyes, one gray, one blue, watched her sewing
fingers.

"Have you decided what you're going to be, Brendan?"

"Oil--a lawyer, I guess. Did you ever go to a courtroom?"

"No."

"I go all the time. I've seen murder trials, rape trials,
damage suits, felony cases, lots of things. I even know a gambler who
has a rap sheet as thick as a telephone book."

"What's a rap sheet?" Annie asked.

"Arrest record."

When he tried again to touch the gown she was sewing, she drew
back again. "Your hands are still dirty."

He stood up, "I can cure that I'll prune them." And he
ran into the surf. He listened underwater to the muffled thunder of
the breakers. And beyond that the other sound.
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After supper Brendan still had not written the end of the script.
He and Jackie and their prissy cousin Brian walked down to the store
to get ice cream cones. That is, Brian wanted an ice cream cone.
Jackie shot pool with Brendan.

Brendan was a good pool player. He often went to a place in
downtown Brooklyn that had three or four top-rated pool shooters who
won tournaments all over New York, and Brendan learned a great deal
from them.

The poolroom proprietor was a pain in the ass; sometimes he let
Jackie play and sometimes he wouldn't. "State law, kid. You're
too young." But he let Brendan shoot. And Tuesday night Brendan
had beaten two men at pool, making one run of thirty-six balls, and
that was probably the reason that the proprietor let them both play,
Brian sat on a stool, hogging a triple ice cream cone.

"Tonight," Jackie said, "I'm going to shoot the
lights out."

Much to the delight of Brian, Jackie was losing to Brendan when in
came a loudmouth in crummy jeans, dirty T-shirt and a super-big can
of Coors beer. All of the six pool tables were in use and the guy
stood there watching Jackie shoot. He had carbuncular acne and small
eyes and body odor.

"Hey, kid," he said at last "Haul ass."

"We're not finished," Brendan said.

"You are now." And the man took the cue from Brendan's
hand.

"No good!" Jackie shouted. "It's my turn!"

"Screw, kid, before I break something."

"No dice!" Jackie shouted. He gripped the cue stick like
a cudgel and dared the man to come closer. Brendan stepped in front
of Jackie and pushed him gently.

"Let's go, Jackie."

"Bullshit! I stay!" He tried to step past Brendan and
swing the cue stick. Brendan blocked him and firmly moved him to the
back door. Jackie was so angry he almost jumped up and down.

"Why'd you stop me! I can handle assholes like that I've
thrown better men than him out of my uncle's saloon. Any night Any
night! Why'd you stop me!"

"You hit him with that cue stick and you'll kill him. You
have an Irish temper, Jackie."

"He's an animal!" Jackie punched his palm with his fist.

"Didn't you feel sorry for him?" Brendan asked.

"Sorry! Why--for the love of God?"

Brendan shrugged. "Because that's the best he can do. Push a
fifteen-year-old kid out of a poolroom. That's the high-water mark
for him. Rotten teeth. Smell like a goat. Red sores all over his
face. And one pair of jeans to his name. Life screwed him."

"Jesus. You know, Brendan, you could go around feeling sorry
for rattlesnakes. How about feeling sorry for me? I was making a hot
run on that table. Eleven balls I had."

"You don't need anyone to feel sorry for you, Jackie. You're
going to be king of the hill."

"What's that mean?"

"You're going to be a famous actor."

"Here comes the bullshit again."

"It's no lie, Jackie. You're going to go all the way."

Jackie put his arm on Brendan's shoulder. "Brendan--you
should keep that future stuff to yourself. Some of the people in the
family are calling you a weirdo. They say a banshee howled when you
were born."

"I know." Brendan shrugged at him. Acceptance, his
mother said.

Jackie punched his arm. "Hey, Brendan? Do you see me making
out with Annie O'Casey?"

They were walking down the beach toward the house. Jackie seemed
to have forgotten about the poolroom incident. The Irish temper a
grass fire of great heat, quickly burned out.

Jackie turned to Brian. "You finished with that ice cream
cone, Lump-lump? You're wearing most of it all over your face. Come
on, I'll spot you a hundred yards and I'll race you back to the
house. Deal?"

The sunset over the bay was a rich red, like the puppet devil's
face. From the sea, darkness was reaching out to smother the whole
island. And Brendan felt desperately alone. He wished for his mother,
wanted badly to have her advice. He walked alone with his hands over
his ears.
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All up and down the beach, people were having the last bonfires of
the season. And everyone looked strangely red and merry.

He pulled his hat farmer down over his eyes. It was Uncle Matty's
yellow fishing hat and the brim could be brought down to hide his
eyes. He'd worn it all day so that others wouldn't see the doubt and
fear in his eyes.

Acceptance, his mother had counseled him. Acceptance. He was
trying. He felt like a leper. Maybe they would make him wear a
leper's warning bell as he read about in a story once. Acceptance,
Brendan, acceptance.

He sensed it before he saw it. It came sweeping with incredible
speed from the deep darkness of the east, shooting right at him a
foot above the water, over the breaking waves and curving in the air
above him. It was a huge bird. He saw it only indistinctly, catching
it in silhouette from the bonfires or by reflected light as it
circled above his head.

It shrieked at him as though he were an interloper of some sort.

A woman cried out and crouched. "What is it?"

"It's a hawk," a man said.

"What's it doing? What's it want?"

Brendan raised an arm to brush at it and felt razor-sharp talons
on his forearm. His hat was snatched off, leaving another cut on his
scalp. The bird's wing struck Brendan on the back of the head and
almost stunned him. It circled him once more, staring at his bared
head, rose higher and flew in larger circles, still emitting its
shrieks.

A group from one of the bonfires came running.

"What the hell is it?"

"A bird."

"You okay, kid?"

"It's a hawk! It's enormous. All black. See it?"

"What the hell's it doing here?"

"Must be from the Brigantine Bird Preserve."

One of the men picked up Brendan's hat. "The yellow must have
attracted him. Maybe he thought you were a bird on the wing."
And he laughed. They all laughed.

The hawk settled on a rooftop and watched Brendan a few moments
more. Then it spread its wings, sailed off the roof and with three or
four powerful pumps of its wings flew back into the darkness from
which it had come.

Brendan lay awake for hours, listening with growing dread. A
three-quarter moon rose out of the sea above the balcony railing and
was shining right at him while the night breeze surged through the
attic. He lay with his hands behind his head, listening, knowing he
could not stop it.