The Brothers K (63 page)

Well, you know how locoweed makes me. I must have really thanked the shit out of him, judging by the way he started to laugh. But Dubash was such a nice guy, and you know how I feel about crosses, and this one hung up there so calm and bright that for the first time in weeks I felt like I knew what planet I was on and like I halfway belonged on it. So after thanking him shitless I finished my letter and thanked Freddy too, for making me look on the bright side. And the very next morning, Kade, Dubash’s point man got his throat cut and died soundless, his whole recon patrol walked straight into an ambush, and a stream of 51-caliber NVA bullets sawed my friend George Dubash almost in half.

It’s night again as I write this. The whole sky is spread over me, moonless and starry as hell. But you know how locoweed makes me. I’ve looked all over for the Southern Cross, and it’s either vanished or hasn’t risen or I’m looking straight at it but am too stupid to know. Which makes me feel as if George Dubash died for nothing. Yet I swear by the stars I can’t even fucking find that I’ll
never
ask another man to point the Cross out to me, in case asking might put the Southern curse on him too. So what to tell Freddy, Kade? See why it’s tough? The truth is I’m in a place without a bright side or a one best thing. I’m in a place where, honest to God, you feel you can kill your friends just by asking the names of stars.

B
eatrice, as I said, was with Mama at church. Her reason for going was that Mama was the one family member who claimed she could help protect Bet from Satan, she being the one family member who still believed in him. It struck me as odd that to facilitate this protection Mama would take Bet each week to hear the very man who betrayed Irwin, bellowing out tales of Satan’s most horrific and inescapable powers. But churches always have been the leading cause of the need for churches. And direct confrontation has been Mama’s style as a therapist all her life. Uncle Marv tells a story about her trying, at age nine or so, to cure her little brother Truman of his terror of water by shouting “Just
relax!”
as she flung him off a dock into Lake Erie. And lately we’d all marveled at her attempts to cure Linda of her Vietnam fears by inviting her each evening to watch Walter Cronkite give the body counts on the CBS news.

So Bet was at church, seeking protection. And whatever their true source, and whatever the cure, her night terrors were no joke. She spent hours, most nights, wandering sleeplessly round the house, and when I’d
stay up late to study she’d often notice my light, give a tentative knock, then drift in, plop down on Irwin’s old bed, and start looking through all the motley stuffed animals and athletic awards he left jumbled together on one shelf when he took off for college. Her movements would seem serene as she’d do this, and her face would be calm enough. But her eyes were pure pupil—no iris at all. And even as I’d try to smile and look my most relaxed, I’d be bracing myself against the moment she spoke.

“I used to think,” she began, on one of the worst nights, “that if Jesus came to earth with all his niceness and innocence, but almost none of his brains, so that he was too dumb to save more than one or two people, but every bit as much fun to look at and play with and be with, he would be somebody almost exactly like Irwin.”

I smiled cautiously. “That’s a funny idea,” I said.

She smiled back, and for a moment I thought maybe she was all right. Then she said, “Our nice, dumb, innocent brother Jesus—doing recon in ’Nam. Funny idea.” And the smile twisted away.

This time I made no reply.

“I’m afraid,” Bet said.

“I believe you,” I answered.

Then she began, in the flat, dull monotone she’s cultivated since her visits to the school counselor began, to name the things she is afraid of. To name them is good, the counselor said. To share her fears is good. So we listen. But the monotone never lasts long, and Bet’s midnight fears are such disjointed, unanswerable, terrible things that I can never think of a consoling reply, so instead of dispersing they begin to collect in the air between us, gathering in grotesqueness, gathering in intensity, till my own little childhood room feels as alien and threatening to me as the Mekong Delta must feel to Irwin …

“Late last night I looked at Papa,” she told me. “Just looked at his face, in the light of the TV, while he was resting, with his eyes closed. And a lump came out. Just under his eye, just under the skin. It came out, then started moving down his cheek, so that I hoped it was a tear, I hoped he was crying. But then it opened. It opened, and looked right at me. A horrid, bloodshot little eye, Kincaid! And after it looked at me it sank back into his cheek, and Papa opened his own eyes. But he didn’t look at me. Not even a glance. He just got up and walked straight out of the room.”

I said nothing. I believed nothing. Yet I couldn’t help but picture it. And already my room began not to be mine.

“Peter believes in reincarnation,” she said. “Freddy too. I don’t. But
sometimes in my dreams I’m a Nazi. And I
hate
Nazis, Kincaid,
hate
them,
hate
them. But in my dreams I have this uniform, all gray and black and perfect, with two little silver swastikas, right here at the throat. And I love my swastikas. I love them so much it makes me sick, it makes me sweat. But it also makes me feel like doing every single thing that Nazis do, just to get to keep them.”

Just share with her
, the counselor told us.
It’s good to share …

“I never joined Cub Scouts,” I said, embarrassed, as soon as I spoke, by the triviality of my comparison. “It seemed boring and silly to me. But when I was nine or ten I started borrowing Irwin’s old Cub Scout shirt so often that he finally just gave it to me. And I remember why I liked it, I remember the feeling perfectly. It was the Bobcat pin, Bet. And the Wolf, Lion and Bear badges, the gold and silver arrows. I still remember exactly where each of them fit against my body. And they weren’t even mine. So I don’t know. Insignia. Arrows and swastikas. There’s just something in people that loves such things. It doesn’t mean we’re Nazis.”

It turned out all right, my little speech. It didn’t sound so foolish. But I could see, long before I’d finished, that Bet had moved off into a far deeper terror. “You
like
it, you
like
it, you
like
it,” she began whispering, and her eyes were pure liquid black. “That’s what he’d tell her. That’s what Linda’s father would say, over and over, every time he raped her.”

Now the air turned utterly alien. Now my room ceased to be mine, I knew that Bet was mistaken, or else lying. Linda had told me what had happened to her, and bad as it was, it had happened only once. But why was Bet saying these things?

“Do you know how he woke her?” she asked softly, almost tenderly. “With a Number 2 pencil, just like we use at school. She’d feel a tickle, and open her eyes. And there he’d be, holding the point in her ear.
One sound
, he’d say,
and I’ll jam it clear in
. Then he’d climb on top of her.
You like it, you like it …
She was just my age when it started. And when he’d finish he’d never say a word, he’d just get up and leave. He’d even leave the pencil lying there. And do you know where he went? In to bed with her mother! In to sleep by his wife, like a regular happy couple. And her mother
knew!
Linda swears she knew!”

And I, with my Cub Scout shirt, had wanted to make it all better.

“They slept like babies,” Bet told me. “Linda knew they did, because she’d sneak in to watch them afterward, because she couldn’t sleep herself. Want to hear why? Do you want to know why Linda could never sleep?”

I forced myself to nod.
Good. It’s good to share …

“Because she’d have a dream—the same one over and over, like my little silver swastikas—where she would sleepwalk. She’d get up out of bed, walk to the drawer where her mother kept the big sewing scissors, take them down to her father’s shop in the basement, break them in two with a hammer and chisel. And then she’d walk back upstairs to her parents’ room, where they’d be sleeping soundly. All tired out, the dears. Then she’d lean, ever so slowly, down over them. And she’d slide half the scissors into her mother’s left ear. And half into her father’s right …” (I watched Bet’s hands, the careful pantomime. She was an artist. Her hands made it real.) “And when they felt the tickle, and woke, she’d look at them so sadly, and say to them, still in her sleep,
I’m sorry, but they’re broken. Mother’s scissors are broken. And I have to fix them. Now
. Then she’d laugh, or shriek, and
jam
the halves back together! And her shriek would really wake her, it would wake her in real life. And every time she woke she was sure she’d see her parents there beneath her, and feel the scissor halves wriggling in her hands.”

I shut my eyes and saw Linda naked, saw swastikas and Scout shirts, saw eyeballs in cheeks, scissors in ears, NVA bullets cutting George Dubash in half. There’s just something in us that loves such things. It doesn’t mean we’re Nazis …

“Have you noticed?” Beatrice asked. “Have you seen the way Ma—Linda, the way she
still
looks at scissors?”

I didn’t nod, didn’t know, couldn’t move.

“And do you see the
real
reason why she couldn’t sleep?” Bet said, smiling now. “It’s so pathetic, so pathetic! It’s because she
loved
them! They were her parents, she had no one else. The Bible says she
had
to love them. So she’d lay awake all night to keep from killing them. Then all day at school she
would
sleepwalk, and fall asleep at her desk, and flunk everything in sight, and the kids would tease her, even her teachers would laugh.
Stupid! Hey, stupid! Pick up your pencil! Pay attention! Wake up, stupid!
So that was the life, the hell, that was what Pa—
Irwin
. That was what Irwin saved her from.”

I felt I should stop her, say something, console someone, kill someone. But before words could form she was whispering, “
Satan …”

Breathing as if she too had begun to drown in the inimical air, staring past me, through me, she said, “I know you don’t think so, I know that, I know. And I hate the name, the idea, hate everything about it. But Linda’s mother, Kincaid. Picture her listening.
You like it, you like it!
Is that a mother, or something lying in slime on the bottom of hell? And her father! Daddy. He would smile, she says, while he held the pencil in
place. So feel him there, the point against your eardrum. Smiling.” Bet was gasping now, and sobbing. “That’s not
human
, Kincaid! It’s not! That’s something so evil and strong it can enter anybody, any time or place it wants, and make even good people do the most horrible things! And it never stops. It
never
stops! And God never tries to stop it. And now even Irwin might die or do some horrid, inhuman thing. So why, Kincaid?
Why?
When Irwin believes, when he really believes, how can it happen? How? Why doesn’t God ever try to stop it?”

She collapsed against me then, and I put an arm around her and tried, in a stiff, nervous, sexless way, to keep her from breaking apart. But what good was that? What good am I? I made soothing sounds, tried to hold and pat her less awkwardly, tried to earn my Bobcat pin. But Bet cried herself dry, she cried till she retched. And I never did think of a single consoling thing to say—

because I believe it
is
human. I believe it’s just people who do all the horrible, incomprehensible things to other people. And I didn’t see how sharing this belief would ease my sister’s pain or terror in the least.

A
t one in the afternoon I went downstairs to make lunch, noticed that Papa’s tools weren’t moving, peeked over his shoulder to find out why, and spotted an oily but legible page of last summer’s box scores lying beneath the scattered carb parts.

So. He had taken refuge. Fine. For him. But Freddy and Suncracker were still out back with the busted fly rod. And they’d been at it so long that the dog’s tongue was gigantic and his grin had gone insane. Freddy’s “See, Papa? We’re fishing anyhow!” smile still looked genuine enough. But when she wore it this tenaciously it began to seem like nothing more than her version of the Face. So, little as I wanted to, I invaded Papa’s refuge.

“Why are you here?” I asked, quite a bit louder than necessary.

He turned, and did his patented impersonation of a man-shaped piece of plywood.

“She’s been waiting for hours. And you’re reading four-month-old box scores.”

He looked out at her, but still said nothing.

“She’d rather go with you and I’ve got homework to do. But if you can’t borrow my car and take her fishing, just tell me right now and I’ll take her myself.”

Sentences remained beyond him, but he finally managed to start squeezing out syllables. “Damn,” he went. “I, hell. The thing, Kade, is, I.
Your mother and me. Laura. With me leavin’ Monday we’ve just got to … I can’t just up and.
Damn.”

Assuming he was finished, which was assuming a lot, I said, “Whatever it is, Papa, whatever you’re saying, Freddy’s been waiting, and smiling, an awful long time.”

“Kincaid,” he said. “You know a, you have to take … Much as I love her, your sister is not the only … Dammit, yes! You’re right. Go. But wait. Hell. Here. I’ll go tell Freddy.”

As
soon as I arrive in America with Grushenka we will set to work on the land, in solitude, somewhere very remote, with wild bears. There must be some remote parts even there. I am told there are still Indians there, somewhere, on the edge of the horizon.

—Dmitri to Alyosha Karamazov

N
ear the southwest coast of Vancouver Island, on the flood-scoured banks of the Little Nessakoola River, sits a forty-house, one-church, one-tavern town called Shyashyakook. It’s not terribly isolated—only fifty miles west of the city of Victoria, three miles inland from the Strait of Juan de Fuca shipping lanes, a quarter mile south of a well-traveled highway. But when Everett arrived in the spring of 1970, Shyashyakook’s salmon cannery and sawmill had been bankrupt for a decade, the forty-houses had turned so rain-grayed and ramshackle that even the Beautiful British Columbia Provincial Tour Guide could find no more glowing adjective for the town than “historic,” and Everett himself thought “prehistoric”
was the better word. “When they say this place is in B.C.,” he wrote to Natasha, “they mean the time period, not the province.”