All Things Cease to Appear (8 page)

He muttered his thanks to the housekeeper and climbed into the van, his hand curled around the warm glass. Everybody piled in and they got back on the road and a few minutes later they were on the interstate. He felt strangely light, weightless, a little dizzy. Almost like he’d left a piece of himself in that room, some clue to who he was, the real person inside that nobody else knew, not even him.

Later that night, he took out the snow globe and held it in his hands. He shook it once. Taking it had been wrong, but he didn’t care. He was glad he had. It was his souvenir now. Again he shook it, watching the flakes swirl, and wondered if the boy would even realize it was gone.

4

THEIR UNCLE KEPT
a used 1967 Cadillac hearse in his barn that he’d take out now and again for what he called State Occasions. It still had the white curtains in the windows and he kept a good shine on it. Sometimes he’d go out and sit in it and Vida would leave him be. Death is closer than you think, he told Cole. You can wake up one day not even knowing it’s your last. By sundown it’s all over.

His other prized possession was an old Harley-Davidson with hornet-green fenders. He’d tinker around with it sometimes, but he never took it out. How come you never ride it? Cole asked him one afternoon.

Rainer looked over at the bike longingly. Someday I’ll tell you a story, he said, and wandered off, scratching his head.

Cole decided it was a sad story that had to do with a woman. He had found a dusty old Polaroid in his uncle’s desk of this woman who looked like Pocahontas, sitting on the bike with her arms crossed, smirking at whoever was taking the picture. Cole had a feeling that his uncle had missed out on some things. But there were a lot of people like that. This thing or that had happened, or they’d done something stupid. And suddenly their lives weren’t what they’d thought. Cole wondered what had happened to this woman, and if his uncle even knew.

At school, people kept their distance, as if the bad thing that had happened to his family was a smell on his clothes, like skunk spray. But there was this one kid, Eugene. Free period, they’d go down the street to Windowbox for burgers. Or they’d walk around the corner to St. Anthony’s to see Patrice. She was always hanging around the doors without her coat, shivering. She’d wander over to the fence at the last minute, after the nun blew her whistle. They’d only have a second, her eyes roaming over his face as if she was looking for something. Their hands touching on the fence, her fingertips like raindrops. She had stopped wearing baggy knee socks. Now they hugged her scrawny calves, and her hair was coiled up on the back of her head like a doughnut. Blue powder dusted her eyelids like sky dust, if that even existed. They had something between them, something quiet, true.

Eugene’s grandmother lived above Hack’s Grocery. His father was in prison for running drugs off the trains. He never spoke of his mother, but one time a picture of her fell out of his pocket when he took out some change and Cole picked it up off the sidewalk. She’s dead, Eugene told him. It was something they shared, dead mothers. His grandma worked at the plastics factory. She was a sorter and had the biggest hands he’d ever seen on a woman, like scooped-out tortoise shells. She would rest them on her lap and weave her fingers together. Eugene was serious about school. They did homework together at the library. People would always look at Eugene on account he was black and stood out. The library was in an old house, and when it was cold out they’d light a fire, and the fireplace was so big you could walk into it, with an old black kettle hanging there like the kind witches use. The books sat on their shelves like spectators and smelled of all the dirty hands that had turned their pages. The regulars sat in the green leather chairs, geezers with sharp red faces, or ladies who looked like teachers, sourpusses, Eugene called them, snapping their pages, pursing their lips. Old people were always ready to condemn you for something. Even his own grandfather used to beat him with a rolled-up newspaper when he hadn’t even done anything. There was this one guy who sat up in the stacks at his own personal table, with papers all over the place. He’d made an impressive chain out of gum wrappers, the length of his arm. Once, he offered Cole a piece of Wrigley’s Spearmint. A day or so later, Cole remembered the stick of gum in his pocket, now warm, and took it out and split it with Eugene, thinking fondly of the man up in the stacks as he chewed it.

In Chosen, there was a man who walked backwards. He was nearly seven feet tall, stooped over a little, with legs like an ostrich’s. He made it look easy, his neck twisted over his shoulder so he could see where he was going. Nobody had a clue why he did it. One day they followed him home, zigzagging across the street like spies. The man lived with his mother in a trailer park behind the Chinese restaurant that was rumored to cook dogs and cats. People said they drove around in a van at night, picking up strays. When you walked past the kitchen door you could hear the steaming pots and hissing woks and the cooks arguing in Chinese with cigarettes hanging out of their mouths or sometimes shooting dice. Cole didn’t know how the man who walked backwards could even fit inside the trailer. He’d heard his mother was a gypsy, that you could go to her if you wanted your fortune told. They saw her poke her head out to see if anyone was watching, then she slammed the door and dropped the little shade.

He and Eugene left the trailer park walking backwards. It felt kind of good. You saw things differently. When they got back to Eugene’s, his grandmother was sitting out on the stoop in a lawn chair. What you boys doing walking like that? she said. For some reason it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard and they couldn’t stop laughing. The old woman shook her head. Lord, you a pair. I just don’t know what to do wit you.

His uncle dug up a bike for him, a rusty blue Raleigh, and set it up with a crate on the back tire and had him do errands when he needed something, lightbulbs at the hardware store, a carton of smokes, and Cole didn’t like how people always looked at him in town, like he had the words Dead Parents stamped on his forehead. He found he could get away with things. He could lift a candy bar in plain sight, and even if somebody noticed they never said anything.

On Sundays, Rainer made them go to church. They slicked down their hair with Brylcreem and buttoned up their shirts and polished their shoes, and he’d hand out ties. They walked there, passing the front porches on Division Street, inviting the sympathetic admiration of the neighbors. Impromptu fatherhood had elevated their uncle’s status in the neighborhood, and he walked with the sweep and grace of a dignitary.

In church, Rainer would sit in the last pew with his long legs stretched out in the aisle and his arms crossed over his chest, rolling a toothpick around in his mouth. Usually he’d do the crossword puzzle. A look of enlightenment would cross his face and then he’d fill in a word. After church he bought them doughnuts and the other customers would nod and smile too much, like they felt sorry for them and were trying hard not to show it.

Everybody knew the Hales. You’d see it register on their faces. Even his teachers. They knew the dirt farm he’d been raised on. They knew his parents were freaks who’d killed themselves. They knew his brother Wade got in fights, and that Eddy was a lowlife hood who’d end up fixing cars. They didn’t like Rainer and his ratty ponytail and his Mexican girlfriend and his halfway house and his crooked window-washing outfit. And even when Cole knew the answers and raised his hand they never called on him.

But his uncle thought he was a genius.

One Sunday, late in the afternoon, this salesman came to the door, hawking encyclopedias. They were in the middle of supper, but Rainer let the man in. You won’t be needing no sales pitch in this house, he told him. I got a real intelligent boy on my hands.

Is that so?

Rainer came around behind Cole’s chair and put his hands on his shoulders. The weight of his uncle’s hands reassured him that he was all right, that he would grow up and become a man just like anybody else. In that same moment he knew that he loved his uncle better than his own father and that he hated his father for hurting his mother and taking her with him.

I always say you can’t go no place in this world without an education. Just look at me if you don’t believe it.

How’s that? the salesman asked.

I guess I got sidetracked.

What by?

A little something called Vietnam.

The salesman nodded and took his money. Well, you won’t find no better source than them books.

They figured out how to make shelves out of cement blocks and wood planks and stacked the books while Rainer stood there with his hands on his hips. Not half bad, boys, not half bad. His eyes twinkled with happiness and pride, and Cole was proud, too. From then on, every night before bed, his uncle asked him to read something out loud. Cole would pick one of the volumes at random and close his eyes as the pages flipped back and forth, then stick a finger down to mark a spot, any spot, it didn’t matter. He read about ancient civilizations, aerodynamics, medieval castles, India, taxidermy. You can never know too much in this life, Rainer said. Don’t be ignorant like your uncle.

—

SOMETIMES,
they missed her so bad they had to go home. They ran through the woods like wolves, jumped over logs, spun out of thickets. With the moon on their backs they ran.

They stood at the top of the ridge.

Wade said, It’s still ours.

Always will be, Eddy said.

They ran down through wet grass, knocking crickets to the ground. They climbed onto the porch, noisy in their muddy boots. They peered through the black windows. You could see the empty living room where they used to watch TV, and the couch where their father slept away half the day. They found the spare key where their mother kept it, in the spigot of the water pump, and went in like thieves and dug around in the old cupboards. Up in the very back of one, Eddy discovered a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and saltines and baker’s chocolate, and they handed the whiskey to Cole and he swallowed some, and Wade said it was about time he got drunk, and Cole wanted to. They all three of them drank the whiskey and ate the crackers and the bitter chocolate, and pretty soon the world looked soft and warm instead of cold and sharp, and it was a good feeling and he liked it. They ran into the field and howled at the moon, riling up the coyotes, whose cries rose up over the trees like fire, and then they appeared on the ridge with their tails up like the tips of bayonets and went on yelping, too scared to come down. Wade did his monster walk and the whole pack ran away. They found a horse blanket in the barn and lay in the cold darkness under the stars and slept all rolled together, as they’d done as small children, until the sun came bright and sudden, like a fist.

—

THE HOUSE WAS
cursed. That’s what people said. No one wanted it. The bank owned it now. They’d already sold off the land on the other side of the ridge and somebody was putting up houses. You could see the frames going up, one next to another around a horseshoe, and bulldozers slumped in the field like strange clumsy animals. During the day you could hear the hammers and the radio and the laughter of the men, who always pissed in the woods. They had taken away their mother’s car on a flatbed. The car was in the junkyard, waiting with all the other ruined cars to be crushed for scrap. After hours, they’d go to see it, knowing it was never getting out of there in one piece. Eddy had a thing for this girl, Willis, who sometimes came along. They would climb up on the old cars and Eddy would play his horn. Some of the cars looked pretty good and Cole liked to pretend to drive them. One time Eddy got one started and showed him how to drive it. He steered around in the field with the tires squealing and the girl laughing in the back seat and fireflies all over the place. Willis had the prettiest laugh he’d ever heard and she always smelled nice. When they found a car that worked, he’d play chauffeur and Eddy would act like a big-deal trumpet player, sitting with his woman in the back. If they started kissing, Cole got out and wandered around. He’d climb up the hill near the wires. From up there you could see the little houses in town and the big houses here and there on the outskirts. You could see their old farm with its empty barns. And you could see the long silver trains, the moonlight gleaming on the rails, and you could hear their sad songs all through the night.

A couple weeks later, a big brown dumpster appeared at the farm, up on the lawn. A man in coveralls was down there, throwing stuff out. At night the boys went through it all, the artifacts that defined the Hales. They opened his mother’s old canning jars and ate the fat, sweet peaches and oily red peppers, the juice dripping down their wrists. They found their father’s fishing gear and wading boots, Wade’s football trophies, Cole’s old crayon drawings from kindergarten, Eddy’s boutonniere from the prom, and there were birthday cards and Halloween masks and marbles everywhere. It was all stuff that had no meaning to anyone else, but to him and his brothers it was evidence that their family had existed, that they’d lived a happy life here once, that they’d raised cows whose sweet milk was put in bottles and hand-delivered all over the county. All because of them, people had milk in the morning and ate corn in summertime with lots of butter and salt and pepper on it. If that wasn’t something to be proud of, he didn’t know what was.

Winter ended finally and you’d see colors here and there and people came out of their houses, yanking at their gardens, hammering nails into fences. You’d see horses kicking out their hind legs like they were figuring out how to use them again. Cole was busy with school. He’d fold his tests up in his pocket and present them later to his uncle, ironing out the creases in the paper with the heel of his hand, his grade, usually an A, chicken-scratched in red pen as if based on some tentative conclusion and bestowed with regret. Still, he got along all right, but the farm, the house, was always in his mind, the idea of his mother wandering past the windows, fluid as water.