Greenville (20 page)

Anyway
, the old man’s rasp cuts through all the other sounds. The orderlies can’t get her to come back in. They’re all like, Come on, Jeanie, come back where it’s safe, and this girl Jeanie’s all like Meow, meow, kitty cats
like
to crawl on ledges,
meow
. The old man screeches the last meow with particular relish.

I know what a cat sounds like, Lloyd.

Meow!

Lloyd—

Gregory turns in his sleep and the bed creaks beneath him. He turns away from the boy, his face searching for a cool spot on the pillow, then turns back toward him again. In the process his hand slides off the boy’s chest and wedges between his own skinny thighs, his cheek presses against the boy’s bare shoulder. If the boy looks down the tip of his nose he can just make out Gregory’s mouth, puckered open like the rim of a fishbowl between his plump cheeks. At two and a half, Gregory’s face is still baby fat, but his arms and legs are as skinny as an old man’s.

Don’t go waking them kids, Ethel. You’ll be cooking eggs for the next hour.

His mother’s spatula scrapes loudly over the surface of the pan.

Joanie and Edi can cook em breakfast if it comes to that, they’re old enough to take some responsibility around here. His
mother snorts. Besides, it’s probably just
your son
, pretending to be asleep.

The boy can smell it now, her breakfast. Eggs and coffee. He hates the fact that the odor makes his mouth water, his stomach rumble. Hates it almost as much as the fact that when he gets downstairs he knows he’ll find nothing but a pan with a residue of dried egg on it.

What’s that? the old man says now. What’d Dale do?

He didn’t do nothing, his mother says. As per usual. Boy’s as useless as his father.

My boy, the old man says dreamily. My own boy.

His mother’s spatula scratches viciously at the pan.

Useless as tits on a bull.

My only boy.

That’s it Lloyd, his mother says, talk yourself to sleep.

I’ll go to sleep when I’m good and ready, the old man says, louder. I’m trying to tell a story here.

And I’m trying to enjoy a few minutes of peace and quiet before I have to head off to the loony bin, so hurry it up already.

The old man doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then:

What were you saying about Dale?

I didn’t say nothing about Dale, finish your story.

Whatever’s on the table jumps and rattles under the old man’s fist.

He’s not going to no military school, I’ll tell you that much. My son is
not
going to military school.

Nobody said nothing about military school, Lloyd, finish your goddamned story already.

Boy belongs with his family.

Lloyd
.

All right, all right. Where was I? Right. So I says to them, I says, Is that any way to call a cat? And they says back to me, Mr. Peck, Mrs. Bonnaducio is very obviously
not
a cat. And so I says, Yeah, but
she
don’t know that. And they’re all like, Mr. Peck, don’t you work in the kitchen? And I was like, Yes sir, I do work in the kitchen. I been working in the kitchen for fifteen years and I was a farmer before that, which is why I happen to know that if you want a cat to come you have to give it a saucer of
milk
. The old man chuckles. Yes sir, I said. If you want a cat to come, you have to give it a saucer of—

Finally! his mother’s voice cuts through the old man’s. I thought these eggs were never gonna cook. A plate settles on the table, and the boy hears her spatula scrape the contents of her pan onto it. A chair slides across the floor.

Pass me the salt, will you, Lloyd.

The salt shaker comes down heavily on the table. For a moment the only sound is his mother’s fork clinking rapidly against her plate. Then the old man’s voice:

She jumped.

The boy’s mother’s fork continues moving rhythmically over her plate.

Okay she didn’t jump. She fell.

Pass me the milk, Lloyd, the boy’s mother says, but only after taking several more bites.

The old man’s chair scrapes across the floor. The refrigerator opens, and when the milk bottle clunks on the table the boy has a sudden vision of them in his head, the milk bottle and the salt shaker, two clear glass containers filled with white and standing
beside his mother’s white plate like a father and son at the racetrack, and then, when the old man speaks again, he has retreated to his bed. His voice comes from directly beneath the boy.

Okay she didn’t fall but she nearly did. She would have, if I hadn’t set out that saucer of milk.

Just happened to have a bottle with you? his mother calls across the house. That it, Lloyd? You just happened to be bringing a bottle of milk home to your
family
?

The boy hears the bed creak beneath the old man’s weight.

Well she wasn’t a real cat, Ethel. Why should I waste real milk? He speaks quietly, but both the boy and his mother hear him.

I know what kind of bottles you had on you, Lloyd. His mother’s plate lands in the sink so loudly the boy thinks she must have tossed it. And don’t think I won’t find em. I swear, sometimes I think I should be the patient at that hospital. I must be crazy, to stay married to a no-good drunk like you.

The bed creaks again.

That’s it, Lloyd. Go to bed now, now that I’m leaving. That’s it, stick your head under the pillow. Run and hide, Lloyd, just like you tried to hide
your son
. One of these days, Lloyd. One of these days you’re gonna drive
me
out on that ledge, and no
saucer of milk
is gonna get me back in. You hear that Lloyd? No saucer of milk is gonna fool
me
.

The boy waits until his mother leaves and the old man’s muffled snores fill the house before he gets out of bed. He tucks the sheet around Gregory even though it’s hot and stuffy in the loft, and then he fixes the hanging sheet between the boys’ bed and the girls’. Now that Duke’s gone and Jimmy’s taken his place on the far side of the bed, it’s continually
bunched up in the center of the rope, Edi’s head visible at one end, her feet at the other, like a magician’s assistant about to be sawed in half.

The old man managed to take off his shoes, the boy sees as he descends the ladder. He lies on his bed spread-eagled, his soiled kitchen whites only slightly lighter than his dark socks and only slightly darker than the pillow over his face. The quilts hang on their ropes on either side of the bed like the curtain at a puppet theater, and the boy draws them around the old man’s crooked limbs before heading first to the bathroom and then to the kitchen, where the coffeepot’s still on the table, still warm, an oaken cutting board beneath it as a trivet. A pair of flies mate on the lip of the open bottle of milk—the salt shaker’s right next to it, just as he’d imagined—and the chairs around the maple table have almost as many names as the family that sits in them: a one-armed Windsor at the far end, an armless at the near, in between a mixture of rickety ladderbacks with unraveling rush seats, uncomfortable straight-backed school chairs, and one kitchen stool, ostensibly Gregory’s, though all the children like to sit in its high seat and use their feet to open and close the hinged steps via which the stool is converted to a stepladder—a convenience the low-ceilinged house has no use for at all.

The boy adds some water to the coffeepot and puts it back on the stove, then sits on Gregory’s stool, holding a bowl of corn flakes in his hands and eating it while the coffee comes back to a boil. He’s halfway through his second cup when he hears tiptoeing in the loft above him. A giggle trickles out from behind pressed-together fingers. The boy keeps his head cocked as though looking down into his cup but peers up through his bangs at the loft.
Lance and Gregory and Lois are lying on the floor in a row, only their eyes visible between the edge of the loft floor and the lowest rung of the guard rail. He stares at the guard rail a moment, a pale pine two-by-four, nearly white save for one whorled knot that glows out of it like the eye of a peacock feather. Since he’s come back from the farm he’s noticed things like that, the fact that the cutting board is made of oak, the kitchen table of maple, the guard rail pine. The names of all those chairs. It bothers him a little bit, the fact that his uncle’s and his parents’ houses are built from the same materials. But things seemed to fit together naturally Upstate, whereas here they are merely cobbled together, fastened roughly with half-hammered bent-over nails and waiting to break beneath your weight.

Gregory giggles, and Lois sshhes him loudly. The boy sips the last of his coffee, pretending to ignore the steady stream of giggles and whispers above him, then stands and takes his cup to the sink. Up above him his siblings press their faces to the floor like ostriches, the sleep-tangled tops of all three heads plainly visible. His mother’s plate is in the sink, a white disk eclipsing the black cast iron skillet in which she’d cooked her eggs, and the boy stares at them a moment, then suddenly grabs the wet rag and whirls. His shot catches Gregory on the top of his head, and his scream ignites Lois and Lance. Within a minute they’re running screaming around the loft, and then he’s up there with him, Gregory under one arm, Lois and Lance curled around his ankles like a pair of ball-and-chains, all three of them screaming and laughing at the top of their lungs.

Got me a sack-a feed here, the boy says out loud. Guess I’d better go feed the cows.

No, no! Lois screams. He’s not food, he’s a boy!

The boy drags his feet one after the other toward the edge of the loft. Them cows is pretty hungry, I bet. Liable to eat up a whole sack of feed.

No, I’m a boy! Gregory screams.

Yes sir, I’m gonna pour this sack-a feed into the trough, feed me some cows.

A boy! Gregory screams, I’m a boy, a boy!

The boy holds Gregory by his ankles over the edge of the loft and shakes him like he is dumping out a sack of food. Gregory’s arms flop over his head and then his undershirt rolls down as well, so that only his hands are visible beneath the hem, like a two-handled umbrella.

Daddy, help! Gregory screams through his laughter. Wake up, Daddy, Dale’s feeding me to the cows! Wake up! Help!

Jesus Christ, Dale, give it a rest already.

The boy looks over to see Jimmy propped on one elbow in bed.

It’s nine o’clock in the fucking morning, some of us are trying to sleep.

In his hands, Gregory is still twitching, even though the boy has stopped shaking him.

Jimmy, help! Dale’s feeding me to the cows, help!

Don’t you have to go to work? Jimmy says, then turns over and pulls the pillow over his face.

When the boy looks back at Gregory he realizes his little brother is wearing the pair of Lance’s drawers he took Upstate with him last year. Lance, all of whose clothes do time with one or two or three older brothers before coming to him, made a big
show of reclaiming the drawers and then presenting them to Gregory, the first thing he’s handed down, the first thing Gregory has received. The youngest Peck has worn them every chance he’s gotten since then, even though they’re too big for his tiny waist and thin, thin legs. His ankles are no bigger than a cow’s teats, the boy thinks as he lifts him back over the top railing—a warped pine one-by-six riddled with knots and furzed here and there with strips of bark.

When the boy sets Gregory upright his brother continues to hold his shirt over his face like a lampshade. The boy can see the top of Gregory’s head over the inverted hem, but Gregory stares right into the white field in front of his eyes.

Play! Gregory says in a baby voice. No work! Yes play!

No, Jimmy’s right, the boy says. I gotta get ready to go.

Play! Lance says. He and Lois are still clinging to the boy’s ankles, and they shake him as though he were a coconut tree. Play!

Play! Lois echoes.

The boy tries to step free of them but they refuse to let go.

C’mon, guys, I gotta take a bath.

No bath, play! Lance says. Bath bad, play good!

In front of the boy, something is happening to Gregory’s undershirt: it seems to be spiraling down a drain like bath water. The boy realizes Gregory is chewing on his shirt.

Gregory, what are you doing?

Behind the shirt, Gregory makes a sucking noise.

I’m a baby cow, Dale, he says, his voice muffled by a mouthful of white cotton. He giggles. I’m sucking on my mother’s tit.

All at once the boy grabs the shirt and rips it off Gregory’s head and throws it to the floor.

Enough with the goddamned
milk
already. The word is
calf
, Gregory, and boy calves end up in the veal pens. And you’d better not let Dad hear you using language like that or you’ll be sucking on more than an undershirt.

Gregory stares at his brother with a stunned look on his face, not sure if they’re still playing. His naked arms are still standing straight up from his shoulders.

The boy rips his ankles from Lance’s grip, Lois’s.

Let go, I gotta take a bath. You guys can entertain each other for once.

His three siblings stare after him mutely as he heads out of the loft. He is halfway down the ladder when he sees Joanie lying on her stomach on her bed, looking at him.

You okay, Dale?

He pauses on the ladder, his head just above floor level. A miniature mountain range of dust swirls underneath the bed closest to him, his and his brothers’. Jimmy’s shoes are there as well—a brand-new pair, bought just before the boy’s return—and a single white sock.

Yeah, I’m fine. I gotta go to work, I’ll see you later.

The boy runs a few inches of cold water in the bath, telling himself it’s too hot to build a fire in the stove in the basement. But it’s too cold to sit in the water for more than a couple of minutes and he scrubs himself quickly and then tries to rub some warmth back into his limbs with a towel. By the time he’s finished he’s wet all over again, with sweat, and Joanie is in the kitchen pouring bowls of cereal for Lance and Lois and Gregory. Jimmy and Edi are still asleep upstairs, the old man snoring in his quilted-off bedroom.