Life in the Land of the Living Read online

  That was when I ran home and told my brother and he decided that we shouldn’t tell our daddy. Instead, we would be there for him; that is, my brother would be there for him—it was before he had decided to let me go.

  My brother didn’t know either what it was our daddy owed.

  Coming on six-forty-five, Bohannon hadn’t arrived. We sat on the steps of the LB&T listening to country music playing inside. Every now and then my daddy’s voice rose above the clamor of the poker players, either in a drunken cackle or a born-luckless groan, as if he’d just been told a good dirty joke or else been dealt another lame hand. Come seven we were sure Bohannon wouldn’t show. He was nowhere in sight, and we sat there watching heat lightning gather its children in the sky. I was just about ready to suggest we go when we heard it: the cry from our daddy, the noise of tumbling boxes, the sound of chairs being drawn to the corners of the room. We looked around. Bohannon’s truck wasn’t anywhere; maybe he had walked. But how had he gotten into the baitstore?

  “The backdoor,” my brother whispered. He took me by the shoulders. “Listen,” he said. I could hear them inside. “You stay here and pound on the door until they open it. If you pound long enough, well, I’m reasonably sure they’ll open it for you, then you can come on in and help Daddy. But not until they open it, you hear?”

  I nodded and began to pound. My hands grew raw to the sound of my daddy getting whupped. Two or three minutes passed and the noises grew louder, the bumps against the walls and floor more ferocious, but no one would let me in. Through it I could hear my daddy’s voice, then my brother’s, then Bohannon’s. All the while the men in the store shouted “Get ’im!” and “Good ’un!” and “Sumbitch!” Their feet scraped against the floor like hooves of animals. When I heard Bohannon’s voice quit and the backdoor slam and the slapping sound of running feet, I knew the fight had ended.

  I crawled to the back of the LB&T, hopped the kneehigh picket fence that separated the frontlot from the back, and stepped through a curtain of vines to the porch of the backdoor. It was flung open, and yellow light poured through. All I could see was my daddy, facedown in a puddle of vomit, and every now and then he added a little to it. My brother sat on top of him like a lifeguard pumping a drowning man. He held him tight around the stomach and made sure every ounce came out.

  “Come on, now.” My brother’s face was bleeding. He pulled tighter at my daddy. “Come on.”

  The men stood in a semiserious semicircle around the two of them, a little too ashamed or amused to watch, but far too curious not to. Some smoked cigars and others stood with their hands folded across their bellies, discussing it quietly amongst themselves like you might discuss the obvious outcome of a prizefight. Lester himself sat fatassed on his jukebox and blew a ring of cigar smoke as thick around the middle as a glazed doughnut.

  “Ever see so much puke in your life,” he said, “or what?”

  My brother looked at him and spit on the floor. Then he hugged my daddy hard around the midsection and every last bit came out. It swept across the floor in a sour wave and the smell wafted up to the aluminum rafters. The men in the store grimaced and headed for the Coke machine—sixbits for a settled stomach. I kept my eyes on Daddy. He commenced to spitting and lipsmacking and clutching the air with his hands, like he’d just been awakened from a lifelong dream. His eyes blinked furiously.

  My brother took a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and rolled off of Daddy. He cleaned Daddy’s chin and face and neck. There was blood and plenty of it beneath the vomit, and my brother wiped all that away too. When he was done I walked over to him and looked at his undershirt. Where once was just my blood now was mine and my daddy’s and some of my brother’s. There was also a good bit of vomit, but I didn’t look at that.

  A fisherman entered the scene with a cold glass of water in his hand. He brushed it against his chest and forehead and looked at my daddy.

  “You know your son went and saved your life?”

  Daddy looked at the man, then he looked at my brother. He brought his fist as hard as he could across my brother’s face.

  “He’s no son of mine! He’s no goddamn son of mine!”

  My brother did not wait to start bleeding, nor did he bother to look at who hit him. He ran.

  I was up after him.

  The last thing I remember seeing of my daddy was him flat on his back staring at the ceiling, at the overhead lamp which swung in the air like a tethered bird. Lester had just handed him a cup of something, and he had just taken it. “Good medicine,” he said, tasting. “Good, good medicine.”

  My brother fled to the old marina across the road from the LB&T. It had gone out of business years ago and it looked like the carcass of a gutted fish.

  One red light lit the boatyard. It hung on a wire from a tall metal beam and swung in the wind like a copper pendulum. The light cast shadows the color of blood across the frame of the deserted hangar, and the water from the harbor made a clicking noise against the empty docks.

  All the boats were gone, all of them—the runabouts and motorcrafts and polished overnighters, the royal yachts and cabin cruisers and pinshaped hydroplanes. Once, for the space of three days, our daddy owned a pram. Then he sold it.

  In the sky stormheads gathered and heat lightning rose and spread and collapsed. A sixthsensed humming filled the air full and the wind seemed to whistle with newborn force. In the harbor the blackcloth of the water wrinkled now and again with white flowers of foam, and old rusted boatyard pulleys clanged against posts like terrible bells.

  I didn’t know when the storm would come. It might wait until morning, cut loose with the next heard drum of thunder, or might not come at all. There was no way to be sure.

  I’d followed my brother out the backdoor of the LB&T, had followed him running through six lanes of traffic, and it’d been a virtual dead heat till we reached the row of barricades blocking the entrance to the marina. That was when I remembered what it was I had forgotten—that my brother did not run, he flew. And when he saw the barricades assembled there before him, he did not fly, he exploded.

  I tried to keep up with him but realized it was impossible. For every footfall of mine I heard, two more of his fell fully unheard. He took the barricades like bushleague hurdles and hurried past them into the docks. In all the humidity my breath came in clouds, and I stared at the night—it had hid him in its pocket.

  Already it was dark, dark and falling darker, and I could not see to see. When I entered the hangar which rose above the docks, the brewing storm hung in the hollow like a hymn. The hangar was a remnant of an old abandoned airfield, and the marina had been designed so that in the event of a hurricane boats could be hauled up high on pulleys and left to rest within the shelter of the structure. For this reason the docks stretched halfway beneath the hangar and halfway out into the harbor.

  The structure itself was big as a cathedral. Stepping footfirst into it was like stepping footfirst into the body of a man. The walls were made of a white peeling metal that looked like skin, and the ceiling was supported by a series of crossbeams curved in the shape of a collapsed ribcage. On either side of the hangar, docks jutted out from long narrow spaces that glowed like wet wounds.

  When I came to the last of the glowing spaces I heard my brother’s voice. It rose in a low melodic moan and seemed to blend perfect pitch with the wind. I ducked my head beneath a beam and saw him sitting at the far end of a dock. His jacket, shoes, and undershirt lay folded beside him, and his face was buried in the carriage of his knees. His hair tossed in the wind and his body shone with darkness. He had his hands wrapped about himself, as was his habit, and his shoulders rose and fell in an attitude of sadness.

  He looked at me.

  “I’m your brother, ain’t I?”

  He stood and touched his clothes with his toes.

  “Listen,” he said. “I’m your brother, ain’t I?”

  I nodded.

  He smiled and swayed and pointed across the wate
r.

  “Meet me over there.”

  He dove in.

  I watched him for a while. Then I got his things. I would meet him on the other side of the harbor, on the shore by the road. I did not know if he would make it.

  ______________

  I waited. I had his clothes folded in my arms. Ten minutes had gone by. I figured in the time it took to walk to where it was he said he’d be, he could’ve crossed the harbor twice and back. So if he wasn’t there by then, he must’ve drowned, and if he wasn’t drowned by then, he should’ve been there. And he wasn’t there.

  I didn’t pray because I didn’t know how—at least not yet. That was the same night Number One taught me. He knew all kinds of prayers—the Hail Mary and the Our Father and the Act of Contrition. He also knew over one hundred bad words, some in different languages. They were easier to remember.

  The time I found the two of them together Bohannon had used a bad word, one even Number One didn’t know. It had shocked my mother. She tugged the bedcovers up around her neck. “Don’t talk like that,” she said.

  I stood there staring. Beneath the blankets, I supposed, both of them were naked. I had come home from school early. It was George Washington’s birthday. That made it halfday.

  “Hello, honey,” my mama said.

  I could tell she was trying not to cry.

  “Hello.”

  Bohannon had his face buried beneath the pillows. Maybe he was trying not to cry too.

  My mother kept looking from him to me and back again. Usually when I came home from school on a halfday, she’d have lunch waiting for me. This time she didn’t.

  “Have you eaten, sugar?”

  “No’m.”

  “Promise you won’t tell Daddy about this.”

  “I promise.”

  She looked at Bohannon and her lip began to tremble. When he took the pillow from off of his head, she let out a little cry and punched him in the shoulder.

  “Hey!”

  I didn’t know his name was Bohannon then. To me he was just the milkman, a man who’d been around as long as the garbagemen, my daddy, the neighbors, or anybody. He used to give my brother and me free pint cartons of Borden’s chocolate milk. He liked to give my mother two sticks of oleo for the price of one.

  “Get up, goddamn it!” my mother shouted. She practically kicked Bohannon out of bed—No, she did kick Bohannon out of bed. He landed on his rump and let out a grunt. “Get up and put your goddamn pants on!”

  Bohannon looked at my mother sideways and shook his head. Then he stood up, rubbing himself.

  “That’s one tough mother,” he told me.

  I stared at him, and my mother screamed.

  “You shut your mouth! Shut it this instant! How dare you talk that way about me with my youngest boy around ! Don’t you have any sense? Don’t you have even the least amount of human pride?”

  Bohannon surveyed himself.

  “Not at the moment,” he said.

  He began to trudge around the room, looking for his trousers. He couldn’t find them anywhere.

  “They’re over there on the vanity!” my mother cried. She buried her face in her hands and I went and stood beside her, though I shouldn’t have. She looked up at him. “Oh, you! Oh, you!”

  He knocked a couple of things over.

  “Where’d you say they—”

  “On the goddamn vanity!” she hollered. “For the love of decency, get out!”

  Bohannon waved his hands and waggled his jaw and zipped up his trousers. He had found them.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m getting. I’m getting.”

  By the time Bohannon had dressed completely, my mother stood beside me. She’d somehow managed to slip into a nightgown and apply fresh lipstick and rouge to her face. She was a hard person to figure out.

  Bohannon made to leave and she cleared her throat. He stopped where he was. She walked over to him, not looking at his face, and took him by the arm and led him over to me. She smiled, weakly.

  “Before you leave,” my mother said, “I would like for the two of you to meet each other.” Then she added: “Proper.”

  “For the love of Christ,” Bohannon said.

  She stared at him like she might chew his head off. He quieted.

  “Son,” she said, turning to me, “this man is Dewey Bohannon. He is the milkman.” Then she turned to Bohannon. He was smiling. “Dewey,” she told him, “this is my son.” She looked at the both of us like she wanted us to make nice.

  Bohannon wiped his nose.

  “Hey, little cowboy.”

  He stuck out his hand.

  “Hey,” I answered.

  I did not take it.

  When he left through the frontdoor and climbed in his milktruck and drove with a shot down the street and away, I took my aluminum baseball bat and broke every unbroken window in the house. I saw Mama take a piece of the glass and look at it and put it in her pocket. That had happened one year ago.

  One week after it happened, our mother, my daddy’s wife, moved out. But I still saw her all the time.

  She got a job working the cash register at the Winn Dixie on Clairview. She’d give me free gum and crap whenever she worked the candy counter, and now and then she’d stop me on the way through and tell me to look after my daddy. She seemed happier than she’d ever been.

  One day I walked through the express lane where she was working with a whole package of Little Debbies tucked beneath my T-shirt. She winked at me and smiled and made like I better hurry the hell up so she wouldn’t lose her job. So I did. When she smiled I noticed something I’d never noticed before: my mother had the most beautiful teeth.

  Fifteen minutes had passed and my brother still hadn’t shown. The storm had blown over, as most summer storms do, but the water in the harbor tossed and collided just as violently as before. I considered calling the Coast Guard, but didn’t know exactly how to go about it. Then I considered diving in after him, but figured why sacrifice two lives for the sake of stupidity? After a whole half hour had passed, I dug a cross in the sand with the knob of my toe and stood up and started home. Halfway down the shore I came upon him.

  He was kneeling behind an oleander heaving to beat my daddy, and his face was still bleeding. That was my family all over—blood and puke and puke and blood. I tapped him on the shoulder and he cast a backward glance in my direction. His face was covered with sand and stray green threads of bile. He looked like he’d seen the face of death itself.

  “You all right?” I asked.

  He coughed up another bucketful.

  “Hey,” I repeated, “you all right? You gonna be all right?”

  He tried to answer and got tangled up in his own heavings. I thought I could make out a “What?” somewhere in the middle of his misery, so I asked the question again.

  “I said you gonna be all right?”

  He grabbed whiteknuckled on to the branch of an oleander and did not turn around as he shouted. “I just swallered half the goddamn ocean! I’m bleeding,” he hollered, “like a stuck puh-pig! No, no! I’m not goddamn all right!”

  I watched his shoulders arch up. He was all right.

  It was coming on eight, well past suppertime. We had no money, no fishing poles, no desire to return home to an empty pantry. I had the feeling we were going to be out until morning.

  “Where are we sleeping tonight?”

  “Wherever we want to.”

  My brother started to skip in place. He looked like a boxer.

  “Can we sleep on the railroad tracks?”

  “We can if we want.”

  We crossed the intersection at Pennymont and Gambril. There were less cars. We passed a Texaco station, the Bullseye Bar and Grill, the South Pennymont Nursery, and a Salvation Army dumpster. It drooled clothes and shoes.

  “Can I look?” I asked.

  “Shore,” my brother said. “Help yourself.”

  I ran to the dumpster, used a weatherbeaten love-seat as a st
epping stool, and snagged myself a nice pair of corduroys. They were red flares. I wrapped them around my neck and ran back to show them to my brother. An old man in a passing car called me a son of a bitch.

  “Do you think he’ll call the police?”

  “Yes,” my brother said.

  He took the red cords from around my neck and inspected them. He held them up to the light of a streetlamp and brought them to measure against the length of my leg.

  “These are too short.”

  I looked at them.

  “Even for nigger pants?”

  “Even for nigger pants.”

  Without asking my permission, he let the cords drop into a puddle of ditchwater. They soaked it up quickly and stained black. As I walked away I wondered who would find them in the morning; I wondered whose they’d been.

  A train of thunder moved across the sky. My brother craned his neck, then he brought his head down and shook it.

  “Listen to that,” he said. “Will you just listen?”

  He lit a cigarette. I could tell he was getting hungry on account of all he was smoking. He’d gone through the better part of a halfempty pack in the last halfmile.

  “You’re going to get cancer,” I told him.

  He wagged his head sadly. “Boy, do I know it.”

  With that, my brother swung around in front of me and held me in place by the shoulders. He looked into my eyes and grinned, and his cigarette shook on his chapped lip. “Watch,” he whispered. He tossed the cigarette down and produced another magically from behind my right ear. He lit it and held it burning in the darkness. When the cigarette had got itself going good, the back of my brother’s throat clicked and the round hole of his mouth spouted funhouse music. He placed the fresh cigarette in between his lips. “Lungbuster,” he proclaimed. In the space of twenty seconds he dragged the cigarette down to its nub. He coughed for round about a minute. “I suppose I shouldn’t do things like that,” he said.