Rules for Becoming a Legend (7 page)

Her plan seemed to work with Jimmy. A little pale-skinned mouse of a boy who was more interesting than adorable. She was relieved and angry all at once that it had worked. Aside from size, the kid was all Todd. It was as though, through some biological impossibility, she had cuckolded herself.

Then, when Todd wanted another child, she agreed. When Suzie had been born, it brought them together in a way that patterned her skin in goose bumps—corny, but true—and so there was a hope that with more children, they could reclaim that space of being two people in love. And, if it didn't work out that way, it seemed Jimmy only got her slightness, and that wasn't so much to give.

Hot August, a chore to conceive Dex. A favor to the big, hulking man above her, inside her, everywhere. Everything close. Logic rebounding too quickly. She wanted it too, right? Then halfway through a mild May, Dex came. Huge like his father, he needed a C-section when he twisted in the womb and the umbilical cord wrapped. Left a scar on her belly. Braille she often read. And there was a problem she noticed from first sight. He'd taken in the womb when Genny wasn't looking. Here he was, dark like her father, eyes like her mother, and her own straight hair so black it was almost blue. “That hair comes from Japanese royalty,” her mother used to tell her.

There was more. Dex had taken the way she smacked her lips while she drifted to sleep, as if it were tasty. He took her love of sly humor, her way of holding her fork as if it were a tree branch she was hanging from, and the little cough she always seemed to have in the morning. Also, she started to realize that while Jimmy hadn't seemed like her at first, she was coming out in him as he got older. He had her way of shaking his hair out of his eyes when it was too long in the front, her little curl in the upper lip that called his bluff when he was trying not to laugh, her love of
staring out the window while it rained, and her crooked, double-jointed fingers.

She had been divided again. A part of her split into two boys, running full on into a life filled with sadness. They were like two arms she had no control over but still caused her pain when they flailed and bumped and bruised.

It's a terrible deal with life
, she thought.

Heart cracked, she applied local anesthesia—delving into the practical. It just didn't hurt as much, if you kept yourself busy. She picked up extra shifts at the hospital, became obsessed with the small flower garden at the front of her house, dreamed of how her life would be if she had married differently, or never married at all. And then sometimes she just got dripping drunk off economy-sized bottles of cheap white wine. Ignoring her boys, her vulnerability, she confused the wine's fuzziness with the soft love she missed feeling from her time before, her time with Suzie.

•   •   •

Maybe it was here, with the death of Suzie on the heels of a basketball flameout of epic proportions, old Finn Kirkus off wandering the streets, that people first started talking about the Kirkus Curse. Or maybe that came later. It was a long, leaky life. Many more chances for tragedy to seep in.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

JIMMY KIRKUS, SIXTEEN YEARS OLD—EIGHT HOURS AFTER THE WALL.

H
is pops is already halfway across the hospital parking lot to the road by the time Jimmy's ready to go. Apparently the old man doesn't want to drive. Jimmy sees the Van Eyck delivery truck parked crooked, cow skull grinning out the window, and is almost relieved. These days he always prefers to walk. Jimmy looks back once more to the hospital, and then is off in pursuit.

The night is lit. Columbia City had its first and probably last snow of the season yesterday. A big deal. Snow's all dirty and used up now, but still bright enough to make everything glow in a soft, blue-white way. The town is sleeping and Jimmy and his pops share this world with nobody. This is frightening for the kid and he tries to scrunch deeper into his coat. The cold air tickles the inside of his nose with its freshness. He sneezes and it threatens to implode his head. He cries out and it sounds like a much younger self. His pops, though? Big man just keeps moving. Doesn't even stop to ask if he's OK.

He follows him on Exchange and after a quarter mile, turns on Alameda. Everything is frozen, at rest. They come up to Tapiola Park and Jimmy watches his breath rise. There's an outdoor court, place he'd sneak off to with Dex to shoot some midnight hoops way back in the day when they still had curfews. Pretty good place to play if you don't mind the steep little hills on every side. Be careful or you'll twist your ankle on a long rebound, swear to
God. Mostly Mexicans play there during the day. Guys who can't shoot but will outhustle you. Some of them playing in collar shirts and jeans. Beat you eleven to seven on a bunch of put-back points. No style, but sweat in spades.

Don't think back now, he tells himself, and is just able to snuff out a mental vision of headlights drifting right.

Besides, there's no time. Not when pops is full steam ahead. Jimmy's sense of dread is rising but it seems out of place with the stillness around him. Anything could happen with his pops at the helm, and none of the possibilities seem good. Maybe he'll send him off to military school, or a center for troubled teens, or some multiday hike in the woods where he'd bond with kleptos and arsonists; or maybe his pops is just going to keep walking forever and Jimmy won't know when to leave off, when to stop. He keeps on past Sudsy's Laundromat, Dairy Queen, and the baseball diamond where coach Steiner tried to get him to join the team and become the pitcher if basketball wasn't in the cards.

They turn on to Old Youngs River Highway and Jimmy knows where they're headed—to the high school. A memory jumps up, raises its hand, has the answer:
Today's the day they agreed he would start school again
. Jimmy shakes his head; it's not possible.

The river is just a few feet away. It's whispering threats all the time. That's the problem with river towns. A real heavy rain and who's to say it won't just swell up and swallow everything? Flood. It happened in 1938. A week after the Tall Firs won the National Title for the University of Oregon and came back to Columbia City for a parade. Rain so thick people got lost crossing the street. The parade was postponed as the rivers—Youngs on one side, Columbia on the other—drank their gluttonous fill and waded in their girth over the roadways and buildings on the lower ground. Water sluiced down from the hills, eager to be swallowed. Sections of houses sank as their foundations trickled away beneath them.
Entire docks washed out and the Brick House was turned into an aquarium. A single crab was found hanging in the basketball nets when the waters receded. Jimmy's seen the pictures. A town dirty and bedraggled. Straight wrecked and years out from being fully fixed again—but victorious with their native sons, the Tall Firs, National Champions. Every person in those old photos has a gleam in their eye, a question to the universe.
This your best shot?

By the time Jimmy gets to the parking lot of Columbia City High, he's huffing, out of breath. He pulls back his hood and the cold air feels good on his wound. He sits down next to his father and stares at his hands. They come in and out of focus. He wonders where he'd be without them—possibly better off?

His father reaches out and pokes Jimmy softly on his cut head, right in the bandage covering the bruise crossed with stitching. It brings the urge to vomit alongside pain. He yelps. Remembers the gushy way it felt inside his head. Worse after each hit against the wall. Like he was turning himself into mashed potatoes.
Twenty-one stitches
, he thinks,
that's all it was, a lucky number
.

“You're dead,” his pops says and it's hard to hear Freight Train's voice tremble like this. Man's supposed to be tough. “This sort of shit could kill you.”

“Sorry, Pops. It's just . . .” Speech is hard to come by. Words rotten at the edges.

“What were you proving? What were you thinking? Gone crazy or something? That's what people are going to think—you're bonkers. They're gonna call Kirkus Curse on this one. Twenty-one stitches, Jimmy? That's my new least-favorite number.”

“Was just seeing something and—”

“There's no way. Just no way.” The man is crying now. Big, outsized tears pattering down in his lap. “There's just no fucking way, Jimmy.”

Jimmy tries to put a hand on his father's shoulder, but it's hard to aim and he takes it away after hovering uselessly in the air.

His pops stands up, louder now. “There's no fucking way.” Words bounce off the outside wall of the Brick House, run full out across the parking lot.

Jimmy stands and big Mr. Kirkus wraps up his son tightly in his arms and Jimmy feels his flabby belly against him, the soft girth the man has put on in this last year, and the two sob together. It finally feels a little more right than it did the day before, the week before, the months. Seems closer to how it's supposed to be—kid crying, dad hugging. A dam broken, they shudder, the cold creeping in minute after minute to crawl up in their bones and crystallize in their blood. Tired and strained sobs. Thick and wet ones. All manner of sadness finally given voice.

Out of the snowy darkness, they hear voices. Jimmy and his pops step apart from each other, embarrassed. Like a kid and his pops got something to be ashamed of by hugging. They wipe their eyes with just their fingertips, as if there's something caught there, blinking like they can't see clearly.

“So Jimmy went nuts-o,” somebody says.

This shocks our kid stone still.

“That's not exactly.” It's Mr. Berg answering, but he's cut off.

“Running into a fucking wall? I'd call that crazy.” Jimmy recognizes this as David, Mr. Berg's son. “Any day of the week, I'd call that crazy. Man, even in Afghanistan they'd call that crazy and they have fools blowing themself up over there.”

“There's more to it.”

Jimmy can see them now. Nuts how close they are. “No, no, no, I get it,” David's saying, walking in the lead, head down. “Jimmy's an egg. Fragile. Got to be careful, or you'll crack the shell. I
get
it. I'm just saying: makes black lipstick seem like horseshit, huh?” Then David looks up and sees them. Jimmy feels David's eyes on
his cut. He and this kid, they go way back, and Jimmy can't think of a worse candidate to see him like this. There's a scar just above his eye he got from David Berg. Dude looks like a Goth punk, but throws a rock like he's on the mound for the Yankees.

Mr. Berg, just behind, stops too. “Hi again, Todd. Morning, Jimmy.”

“James,” his pops says. “Morning, David.”

David shrugs, plugs in some earphones, and walks past. Mr. Berg grimaces, and then nods his head once and walks to the gym door, unlocks it, and his son darts in. “David?” they hear him calling as the door creaks shut. “David, come back here.”

Jimmy looks to his pops and sees he's studying him. Something in his eyes telling his son,
Look, this is just how it's going to be
. No sympathy. “Well, have a good day at school anyway,” he says.

Jimmy looks at the school, then back at his pops. He's confused. Not thinking straight. His pops springing this on him? Bashed-up head, not even a backpack or school supplies. “Pops,” Jimmy says. Yeah, they said today would be the day he'd start classes back up, but surely . . .

“Have a good day at school, Jim,” his pops says louder, shortening his name like Jimmy's just another guy he works with.

Jimmy breathes for a moment. All his teeth feel loose. He's got to think about the words before he says them, otherwise they might not make it out. He remembers a time when they were all eating cherries, him, Dex, his mom, and his pops. Bought from a Mexican at a shed near the highway. They had been on a trip to a lake. Camping. All four in a row on the hot shoulder of the road, sitting in the gravel, watching the cars go by. Must have been the summer after kindergarten. Eating cherries and spitting the seeds. Fun to see who could spit the farthest. His mother getting drool all down her chin and his pops being like, “elegant as always,” and then the both of them laughing. Jimmy had noticed that his mom said pit and his pops said stone for the hard seed in
the middle of the cherries. Stone like rock or pit like hole. Pit from a story about a troll who lived inside of one. Stone like the things he and Dex used to throw to see who could knock a GI Joe off an overturned bucket first. Jimmy remembers how he wanted to ask his parents about this—stone or pit—but didn't because he wasn't sure how to express it. Nervous that he would do it poorly, or they would think him weird, and all of the dusty joy would blow away when his mom got silent and his pops made little comments out the side of his mouth like, “Real sense of joy in this family.” So he hadn't said anything. Same as now. How to tell his pops that there isn't any way school's the right move today. This must be the old man's way of teaching him a lesson. Dumb. Head bashed up wasn't lesson enough for his pops, now make him do this? Asshole. The fluorescent lights, the tardy bell ringing, kids screaming, fucking around, asking him questions. All kind of questions. But old man thinks this will do him good. Old man doesn't know jack.

“Yeah, fine, OK,” Jimmy says.

Todd nods once, presses a crumpled twenty into Jimmy's hand. “Lunch,” he says, gruffly, and goes.

He watches his father, big Freight Train, limp off across the snowy parking lot just populating with early morning students getting tutoring sessions or extra practice. Muddy trucks pulling in with Confederate flags pinned to their ceilings. Beat-to-shit Civics or Corollas blasting Kanye West. Jesus walks. All of them cursing school for still being open on this icy day. Town hugged by water like Columbia City—rivers on two sides, marshes all around, and the ocean's shoulder visible always—hardly ever gets cold enough for ice or snow. Now, here it is, snow all around and
still
they got school?

They watch Todd Kirkus limp by. He's the man they've heard of, the guy whose black-and-white photographs still dominate the trophy case and whose name tags along with basketball records, like an annoying kid brother. The early arrivers turn their heads
back toward our kid, squint their eyes.
Could that be Jimmy Soft? I thought he fled to Mexico.

Class will start soon, but Jimmy isn't going. He hurts. Feels sick. He hates himself for the extra attention he'll have now. As if coming back weren't going to cause talk enough, last night he had to go and make it worse. He isn't even wearing his school clothes. A scrub in his crusty old sweats and sweatshirt. There's blood from the night before on his shoes. Pops could have at least let him go home to change. This is impossible, what his pops wants him to do.

Jimmy turns away from the school, walks to the track, and goes into the woods beyond the javelin pit. These are the paths he and Dex used to know so well from sneaking around town to each and every court, looking for a game. They were like street urchins of the woods, punks running the alleyways carved by deer and drunks, making their way to the courts and begging to be let into a game. Back then ball seemed like something important and meaningful. Hell, seemed downright holy.

Jimmy picks up the pace. He doesn't know where he's going, but he can't go to school and he can't go home. He fades into the bushes. He hopes he sees no one and more importantly, no one sees him.

•   •   •

Even though Jimmy's left the school, he's still there, name on everyone's lips. It's too soon for details, but people still talk.

“Marcy at the hospital told me Jimmy Kirkus came in last night with blunt-force trauma to the head,” Mr. Jackson says, holding court in the teacher's lounge. “Twenty-one stitches. Get this, came in with James Berg. Then, then, when I was coming in through the gym this morning, I saw Berg scrubbing down the wall. Put two and two together.” He punches his fist into the palm of his other hand. “Bam. Jimmy Kirkus ran himself into the wall.” Mr. Jackson pauses a moment to give enough space to the off-color thing he's about to say. “Just like he's a fucking kamikaze pilot.”

The other teachers are blank-faced, not getting it, or pretending not to. Twenty years ago being half-Japanese would be a just-under-the-surface topic of intrigue, and in some circles, scandal. Sometimes, it would openly boil out in racist comments. These days though, at least 10 percent of the student body is Mexican, and Jimmy isn't the lightning rod his mother was. And so this joke of Mr. Jackson's is so obvious, so on the nose, so blatantly offensive, that everyone is uncomfortable. Maybe in a bar, or at someone's Christmas party, this line could be delivered with a ducked head, embarrassed laugh, and sail on by. Not now.

Mr. Jackson forces out his own laugh. “Cause the kid's half-Japanese? You know. Kamikaze pilots?”

The other teachers did know, they did get it, and if Principal McCarthy wasn't standing behind Jackson in the doorway, listening to him basically fill out his own temporary leave of absence slip, some might have given him a pity laugh. A few dart their eyes to signal to Mr. Jackson that his boss is behind him, but the man doesn't get it and so jumps when McCarthy speaks.