Brewster (22 page)

I
WAS ALONE
when I heard he’d died, and I hung up the phone and walked back in the room and sat down on my bed. It was just after ten in the morning, March 16
^th
, 1971. It was my father who told me. They’d come to the house, he said. He’d named me as his next of kin.

I don’t think I thought about much—or maybe everything, which comes out to the same thing. I’d had a letter, maybe two weeks before. He’d been on the boat for a while by then. He was with the 458
^th
, he said.

I caught the bus for Boston out of Port Authority. If I didn’t go now I never would. It was hot, he’d said. The food sucked. He didn’t think about the eighteen months. He and Karen had talked about it before he left, he said. They could do it if they didn’t think about it. If they thought about it they’d go crazy. I’d told him to take care of himself. To duck.

Six hours to Boston.

He wished he’d brought some things, he’d written. Funny how you missed some shit when you didn’t have it. Otherwise it wasn’t bad.

If there was one thing he knew how to do it was duck, he said.

He’d been fishing off the boat with a hand line and hooks he’d found in one of the villages, he wrote. He’d cut a kind of spinner from the top of a can. “They got some fucked-up fish in the Mekong,” he said.

W
ELLESLEY
wasn’t in the city, so I took a cab. It wasn’t far.

Bright sun. Warm for March. I knew the name of the dorm from her letters. She wasn’t there. I should try the library, somebody said, pointed.

There were strips of snow still under the trees, melting in from the edges. I was still a long way off when she saw me. She was coming over a wide field half in shadow, the pines behind her, and when she saw me she stopped and just stood there awkwardly like a child, the book bag hanging down from her arm, then fell to her knees and buried her face in her hands.

It was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen.

I
CALLED HIM
from Main Street after the funeral. “I couldn’t go, Frank,” I said.

“I know,” he said.

“I could see it,” I said.

The line was quiet for a while. “Why didn’t you tell me it was you?” he said.

“How long’ve you known?” I said.

“Seems like everybody knew except me.”

“Maybe I didn’t know what you’d say,” I said.

“Guess not.”

For a second I thought he’d hung up.

“Where are you?” he said.

W
E MET
at the end of Garden Street and just stood there looking out over the town past the steeple and the car lots to that ugly little patch shaved out of the woods—a pair of wooden saints tipping back and forth in the gusts that came in cold from the woods, then sickly warm, like breath. He was still wearing the suit, tight across the chest, thick neck crammed into the collar. And he asked me again and I said because I knew what he’d say, that’s why, and he nodded, then looked out and said, like it was written in the air somewhere, that it didn’t matter, that none of it mattered, that we’d all have to answer for the things we’d done in the fullness of time.

With the leaves down, the town looked see-through, like a scalp through thinning hair. You could see the East Branch running behind the five-and-dime, the pasture walls stitching up the hills. And I told him he could go fuck himself in the fullness of time but he didn’t swing at me like I thought he would, just stood there with that pierogi-fed face, then turned half around from the wind without moving his feet like Ray used to and lit a cigarette. Somebody was walking down Main Street, stepping around the ice like he was making his way through an invisible crowd, and I remember making a bet with myself that if he hadn’t said anything by the time they reached the movie theater, I’d say something—I didn’t know what. Something.

But whoever it was turned into the hardware store and Frank didn’t move for what seemed like a long time, then took the cigarette out of his mouth, picked something off his tongue with his thumb and ring finger, and left. I was sorry for it. We’d been friends.

I
T TOOK ME FOUR DAYS
to sell off everything in my dorm room: the cheap stereo, the hot plate, my records, everything. Cash only. The next day I took the local to Port Authority where I bought a bus ticket to L.A.

I left that night, April 21
^st
. The last thing I remember of New York was watching the hookers working the traffic stalled on the ramp to the Lincoln Tunnel, leaning in through the driver’s-side windows.

People talk on buses. I didn’t. I went straight through, sleeping in the depots on benches during rest stops. I didn’t think I’d seen anything at all—later I remembered pieces of things like something blown back by the wind. A time before dawn somewhere in Arkansas or Oklahoma. The trees had gotten shorter overnight and the sky had spread out and I sat there looking at it for a long time. Other things. The way the shadows of the clouds rushed across the valleys. The Indian woman in the red sari I saw squatting behind a shed in the desert who I thought was begging until I realized she was eating her lunch.

It’s a big country. We went through the middle like something pulled by gravity, stepping down the interstates, Harrisburg to Memphis, Memphis to Amarillo. I couldn’t draw a full breath the first day. It got easier. I spent hours just watching all that space going by—clouds, a chimney of rain coming down on a mesa fifty miles away. In Flagstaff it was freezing cold and I got a lot of change and put it in a phone, then hung up and listened to it coming back like a slot machine. I didn’t call them until I’d been in Bakersfield a week, and they told me how worried they’d been but when I said I wanted to be on my own, they let me. I don’t know if it was hard for them. Maybe.

B
Y THE FOURTH NIGHT
on a bus you can’t think even if you want to. You just go, listening to the gears shifting on the grades in your sleep, watching the mountains and the fence posts lose their shadows then grow them back after lunch, watching the hawks scoring circles around the sun.

Coming into California I was down to eighty dollars. I’d split it into four parts, twenty in each front pocket of my jeans, twenty in each sock. We left Needles at ten, Barstow at two in the morning. It wasn’t until well after dawn with the Central Valley crops going by like spokes on a wheel that somebody stood up to get something from the racks and began to yell.

They’d probably gotten on the bus in Barstow, the highway patrol said. Happened all the time: Two guys get on late at night, wait till you’re asleep, then pass a few bags to the back and shove them out the window. Their friends pick up what they’ve tossed, then get them at the next stop.

A cop named Gonzales saved me from just disappearing. He didn’t have to.

“Where you comin’ from?” he said. We were sitting by his metal desk.

“New York,” I said.

He whistled. “Address?”

I didn’t say anything.

“You’re eighteen—just make something up,” he said.

Somebody said something to him in Spanish. “
Lo que diga, hombre
,” he said.

He had a shed out back of his house, he said. Just till I got on my feet.

I nodded because I couldn’t do anything else.

“Hey,” he said. “You’re gonna be OK. We get ’em all the time out here. I know. It’s not easy bein’ a runaway.”

He was wrong. It’s not so hard.

I
THOUGHT ABOUT THEM
now and then over the years, heard some things. That Karen was married, living in Europe. That Kennedy had gone to Nam and come back again. That he was driving a cab in the city. He wrote me once. He seemed happy.

Ray had been fishing off the back of the boat, I heard, had taken his helmet off because of the heat. They’d returned fire, shooting blindly into the green. Putnam Lake had a new war memorial to go with the others.

I
THOUGHT ABOUT HIM
over the years. Wondered, sometimes, if it could have all played differently. If we’d lost, maybe, before we started.

It didn’t surprise me when I heard they’d had themselves named as Gene’s guardians, had brought him into their home, made him their son. It made sense. They’d put him in Aaron’s room. Everything was there, after all: the toys, the desk, the punching bag dinosaur my mother had patched and reinflated. Like they’d been waiting for him.

I can see him walking up those stairs, bringing both feet together before stepping to the next. Holding my mother’s hand. He’s three and a half years old, young enough to have a running start before he hits the age my brother was. He stands there in the doorway staring at the colors, the pillows, the sunlight streaming in on the rug—and looks up at my mother, who’s finally crying.

T
HEY MOVED
to San Diego soon after the adoption—a place near the beach. At first it was strange to see them walk out into that dry yard with the bougainvillea going up the wall, to see my father reading in the same leather chair with a eucalyptus tree over his shoulder. Basil Street. I was on my feet by then. I’d drive down from the Central Valley, mess around with Gene, the two of us climbing over this yellow cube thing they had by the fence. He remembered me a little. And his brother. Carrying him on his shoulders. And throwing sticks under a bridge. Not much. A girl.

They had a blue kiddie pool on the grass, and in winter I’d carry big pots of hot water from the laundry room to warm it up. In the summers we’d eat outside around the wrought-iron table and when it was time to go my mother would give me a little kiss, my father would touch my back. They were glad to hear I was fine. Now and then I’d catch my mother looking at me like she was thinking about her life, like she was about to say something, but she never did. I didn’t expect it. Sometimes it’s better not to go back—just settle accounts as they are, call it even.

I
REMEMBER
one time. An evening in June.

Gene was in his early twenties, pounding nails when the surf wasn’t up. A good guy, easy to like. He was still living at home then and I’d watch him with my parents, joking with them. The year before, he’d built them a deck. “So, Ma, you gonna come to the North Shore with me?” he’d say, rattling the plates down on the table for dinner. He’d wink at me. “I’m thinkin’ for that right break at Waimea, that ten-six gun would be perfect for you.”

“Dad reading?” I’d ask.

“You know Dad,” he’d say.

And I’d wonder what Ray would think of it all. If he could see us there.

W
HEN HE WAS SIXTEEN
I told him. Figured he should know who killed his father. He already knew. I told him the bare bones, left it at that. What was he like? he said. His brother. I thought about it for a while. I loved him, I said.

I
T WAS ALMOST DUSK
when I turned off the freeway and I drove down Leucadia and up to the cliffs and rolled down the window and watched the sun flatten, pull into itself, go out. A big break was kicking mist into the air, softening the light. You could taste the salt, the kelp.

I recognized him by his walk. He separated off from the others, his board under his arm, the wet suit pulled down to his waist, and I watched him push his wet hair back but it wasn’t Ray. He saw me when he was some distance away and stopped, the grin spreading over his face and for a second I could see him trying to stand up on his rashy little legs, pulling himself up on the cabinet, his brother saying “Hey, little guy, you want a beer stein?” The wind blowing against the house. Brewster.

He walked flat-footed over the gravel to the car but I couldn’t do the elaborate handshake thing and he laughed and said, “Alright, bro, don’t hurt yourself—you hungry?”

He’d cut down the back way, he said, meet me at the house.

And I watched him walk away. Not like his brother. Different.

“Where’d you go, man?” I whispered to myself.

I could still see him, the black hair falling in his face, the way he moved, throwing himself at the world—losing ground but still dangerous, like St. Sebastian with a switchblade. We’d lost—him, me, Karen. Maybe we’d been meant to lose. Maybe, I thought, but he’d never believe it. He’d be sprawled out next to me, taking up space, and he’d smile that too-late smile and call the world’s bluff. So what if we’d lost? Fuck it. We’d run it anyway. We’d run it like it mattered.