The Brothers K (86 page)

“Y
ulie! Wake up! C’mon, hurry! It’s Everett! I know it’s early, but I’ve gotta—Oh. Hiya, Corey. Where’s your big mama?”

“Where do you think?” snapped Corey MacVee, sticking only her miffed face out the door of their digs behind the Muskrat. “It’s five-thirty. She worked till two. And don’t call her big, you idiot.”

“Okay.
Huge
, then. Go wake her up!”

Corey tried not to laugh, but something in Everett’s mood overwhelmed her. “She’ll kill me,” she objected.

“No choice,” he said.

“Why not?”

“’Cause I love you guys. And I’m here to tell you goodbye.”

Corey’s face fell. “You’re not!”

“Car’s packed,” he said, pointing. And it was.

“You can’t!”

“No choice,” he repeated, touching her chin with his finger.

Two minutes later Yulie stood in the doorway in an immense red bedspread and, as far as Everett could tell, nothing else. Her face was swollen with sleep. Her eyes were slits. She hadn’t lost any weight lately. She looked more chief than ever. “This better be good,” she rasped, scowling at the dawn.

“Listen!” Everett cried. “This is
way
better’n good! ’Cause remember the Bear, Yulie? The one you said we’re fleas on? The no-hocus-pocus-no-skookumchuck-no-bullshit thing you told me to stick the winter out watching for?”

With extreme caution, Yulie nodded.

“Well, I just
met
the big bastard!” he roared. “But here! How it happened. This is so great! The car in front of me hits an otter, see, a mother no less. Shit. So I stop to mercy-kill her, I’m talking to her, it’s dumb, my words, she’s not impressed but I’m tryin’, see, when a log truck comes and damned near kills me! But in the lights, my God, this thing from hell is crawling, her heart on the road, oh fuck, I think, they’ve had it with humans, they’ve sent the fiend-thing!” He stopped to cackle. Corey and Yulie just gaped. “But it’s a crawdad. She was takin’ it to her whelps, see?
So I pick it up and save it. Back in the river. Splash. Except I can’t help the otter except to kill her, and can’t help her whelps. And something about this knocks me in too. Sploosh. But not in the river, Yulie, not
that
drop of spit. This was the bottomless well! This was down the Bear’s gullet, clear through the earth and out the other side! And Spirit World? Inner World? Underworld? Disney World? Blah blah blah, man! ’Cause this was,
damn!
, so oceanic who knows
what
the heck it was! But after the Bear—let’s still call it the Bear, you and me, ’cause they’re beautiful, bears are, and words!
hah!
, huh? So after the Bear craps me out and I’m staggerin’ around like some two-legged shit-covered thimbleberry seed, what I all of a sudden for no reason know is
exactly
what to do about my brother!” He laughed again, triumphantly. “Can you believe it?”

Yulie and Corey still just gaped.

“But hey!” he cried. “You’re the chief! You tell
me
what I figured, Yulie! I mean otter crushed, whelps starvin’, then
gulp!
Whoa, Trigger!
Down I go!
Aiieeeee! How fucking obvious can you
get?”

Seeing that he was finished, at least for the moment, mother and daughter MacVee turned to each other. “Tlingit?” Corey asked.

“Pidgin Kwakiutl maybe,” said Yulie.

“Crawdadman talk-talk any English?” Corey asked, with gestures.

But Everett was just a quivering mass of totemic insights. “That’s it, Corey! I
am
Crawdadman!” He slammed his chest with his fist. “The thing
did
possess me! And if I want to keep my crushed brother from becoming the dead otter and Linda and Nash from becoming her abandoned whelps, I’ve got to try—I know it’s nuts, but I’ve at least got to
try
—to tell the other otters, who of course will be wanting to shell my ass and eat it, to get off their flaccid butts and—”

“Hey!” Yulie cut in. “You call this
English?
If you’re leaving us, Crawdadhead, if you really gotta plan to help your brother, then come in, calm down, have a cuppa coffee, and tell us your damn plan.”

E
verett went in. He had the coffee. He told them his damn plan. And when he’d finished, Yulie’s eyes were shining even as she scowled and said, “You know it might not work.”

Everett laughed. “Do I ever! But it’s the one thing on earth I can see to try.”

Yulie grabbed him by the shirt then—just the way she had the time she’d called him a white nothing. But this time, as she held him there at arm’s length, it was her hardness and toughness that vanished. And the hint of wryness that never quite left the corners of her mouth or eyes
suddenly
did
leave. Immense warmth welled up in its place. Everett felt his eyes brimming before she even began to speak. “I always liked you,” she said finally. “But I never trusted you. And if you’d left last winter, like I swore to Corey you would, I’d have shrugged. It wouldn’t have hurt a bit. But leavin’
this
way, damn you, Everett …”

She never finished the sentence. She just hugged him hard, long and close. And he was surprised, though only for an instant, to find that being mashed in the arms of this eighth-of-a-ton woman was a little like sinking, all over again, down into the fathomless black pool.

“I’ll write,” he managed to say.

O
n May 29, 1971, two men were limping down a road in the Deccan Plateau of India. A red sun was sinking in the smoky sky behind them. A full orange moon was rising in the smoky sky before them. The fields by the road were barren, the huts uninhabited, the landscape a moonscape thanks to ten years of drought. Both men were exhausted, their bare feet bruised and bleeding. Both were silent, their lips cracked from thirst. They were also stark naked—and as white as the supposed name of the train that brought them to this pass.

Cresting a little hillock, peering in under the moonrise, they saw the faintly lit huts of the village called Dadagaon huddled beneath a blue cloud of cooking smoke. They knew already that the village had no electricity or running water, no police, hotels or taxis, no telephone or even telegraph with which to wire for help or money. Their only hope was to place themselves at the mercy of people whose lives—except for the occasional passing car or train—hadn’t changed in three thousand years. And though this prospect filled one of the Americans with terror, the other looked down at the huts, then straight ahead at the moon, and whispered,
“Thank you! Thank you!”

They made their way down to Dadagaon and picked out a hut like any other: dung-floored, mud-walled, about the size of a UPS truck. They stepped up to the open door, and waited to be discovered. A small child saw them, and let out a terrified scream. There was a stir inside. And when T Bar Waites suddenly found himself standing, double love-handles and all, before the stunned, rail-thin mother of a drought-stricken family whose annual income couldn’t have purchased one of his missing boots, he lost his voice, dropped his gaze, covered his privates, and stared
down at the ground. But Peter—drawing on all the strength inside him, and all the misdirected love he’d ever felt for things Indian, things simple, and things true—just joined his palms together, gave her a slight bow and a still slighter smile, and said, without panic or shame or pleading,
“Ma. Prem se bhiksha dijiye.”
^*

And so began a new life.

It’s a question of being so pitiful that God takes pity on us, looks down and says, “He’s done for. Let’s give him a few good words.”

—Walker Percy

B
rother Beal rose up from his chair, a tall, striking, athletic figure of a man. But as he stepped toward the microphoned podium, his Lord, or some such invisible Prankster, seemed to grab a hidden valve in his backside and start letting all his air out. By the time Beal reached the mike his arms had shrunk to half their previous length and hung bent before his chest like a kangaroo rat’s, his head had sunk down between his shoulders like a stone thrown into mud, and a crevasse of piety so deep it looked like a tomahawk wound was fixed between his eyebrows. In a voice that carried the way flat beer tastes, he begged the congregation to please rise, and to turn, if they possibly could, to Number 108 in their hymnals. The organ plunged into the introduction like a man in hip boots trying to
work his way upstream against a stiff current. Laura Chance found Number 108, held half of her hymnal out to her daughter—and Bet glanced at it, snorted, and let it drop: the hymn was “Shall We Gather at the River”—Irwin’s favorite.

Mama had phoned Brother Beal a few days before and requested it, partly to give herself courage for what she planned to do once the hymn was sung, but also to surprise Bet—she hoped pleasantly. And now Bet slouched, sneering.

Mama considered a reprimand, but only reflexively. Bet had been morose or fey or hysterical ever since Irwin left a year ago for boot camp. But since Papa’s phone call from the Mira Loma asylum just two nights ago—since she had snuck onto the extension just in time to hear him say to Mama that Babcock’s letter of retraction hadn’t helped, that he’d tried everything, that he’d lost hope and felt like he was losing his mind, that the drugs were relentless, that there’d been more electroshock, that Keys had blamed Papa for making it necessary and had banned further visits, that it couldn’t have been worse if the Vietcong had Irwin, that the last time he saw him he looked (and here Papa burst into a wracked, hacking cough) as though he was being tortured, and slowly, surely killed—Bet had been worse than fey. She’d been spiteful, impossible, vicious … But here. Here were the words. And for Irwin’s sake, Mama felt she must mean every one of them:

She noticed for the first time that the hymn began not as a statement, but as a question. Shall we? Or shall we not?

The right answer. But the world was so full of wrong ones. (“The Mekong is huge. It took him forever to disappear …” “Christ’s love gets you killed here …” “Herod is alive and well …” “I killed Zaccheus …”)

But her thoughts were everywhere.

Yes. She must gather herself fast. Because her moment was coming—the moment she’d lain awake all night planning for, praying about, dreading: the little silence, right after the hymn, when the congregation settled back in their pews, the guest preacher (could it possibly be that odd little Oriental man?) shuffled his sermon notes, and the ushers moved into place with the offering plates. Because today, when Brother Beal said
Let us kneel
, every man, woman and child in the place would gradually see that Laura Chance had remained standing. All night she lay picturing it—the murmurings, the mystification
(Look! Poor Laura’s flipped!)
. Never in her life had she spoken up during a church service. But today, once everyone had noticed her standing, she would speak the words she’d rehearsed a hundred times: I
would like to ask, as a very special favor, that every person here today offer a prayer for my family, and most especially for my son Irwin, who, he …

How did I—Then what?

Because this is a very difficult time for us. Him. And it would mean so much. So please. We need your prayers. Especially Irwin. We all do …

Amen? Thank you? Whichever seemed best.

Yes. Only then could she kneel. All night long she felt that God was asking this of her. And all night long she’d answered,
Yes, Lord! I will
. She’d even mentioned it to Bet on the way to church, hoping to surprise her, maybe bring her out of her sulk. Bet’s response had been to stare at her, then snort, and roll her eyes.

But where had the verses gone? Could it be ending already? She gripped the hymnal harder, tried to steel herself.

But her body. What was wrong with it? She felt her tongue dry and thicken, felt cold sweat sliding, almost slithering, down her ribs, felt her skin go clammy and her mind go blank as the joyless voices roared,

With terrible speed the congregation took their seats; Bet too—and Mama felt the sideways leer, sideways spite,
never should have told her
. Then there was only Sister Harg, still fumbling with her aluminum walker, and Mama insanely hoping she’d get entangled in it somehow, just to stave off the—

Now

Only Laura Chance standing. Standing, yes, Lord, but also panting like an animal in labor as the first few faces turned. She saw Beal moving like a man underwater,
the beautiful the beautiful the
, laying aside his hymnal, swimming over to the mike, then lowering it, sinking with it, down into the river, down to his knees, where she too longed to go. She heard the words
Let us kneel
, saw the congregation move as one body:
down
,

and her jaw fell open as though it had been broken, she gasped once, loudly, and the wave of nausea and humiliation broke so hard against her that she collapsed back into the pew, nearly bounced down onto her knees, and sank deep, with the rest of the congregation, deep into the river …