Brotherly Love (33 page)

The veterinarian nods, a small nod, and tries to step
backwards again, and bumps again into Leonard Crawley.

"I can have this one right here?" Michael
says.

"All you want," he says.

"And you don’t mind I take this."

The veterinarian shakes his head. "No sir."

Michael hands the bag to Leonard, who returns it to
the veterinarian. "Now," Michael says, "was there
something you was going to ask me?"

"Just about taking care of your horse," the
veterinarian says.

"If you wanted me to take care of him for you."

Michael nods. "I would appreciate that very
much."

"No problem," he says. "I’ll do it
right now."

"In a minute,"
Michael says. "First, what do you say let’s kiss him
good-bye."

* * *

P
eter walks back to the
limo to wait.

Jimmy Measles tries to go with him, but Michael stops
him with a look.

Peter climbs into the front seat of the car and
closes his eyes. Ten minutes later a door opens and Michael gets in
next to him. still carrying the syringe. The limo barely moves under
his weight. Leonard and Jimmy Measles climb into the back.

There is a smell that comes in with them, part Jimmy
Measles. part Leonard.

Leonard says, "Michael, man, that was fucking
sick." A compliment from the heart.

There is no answer and the
men sit in silence another ten minutes, Michael wanting to see for
himself that someone takes care of the horse.

* * *

T
he tractor is an old John
Deere diesel, and the man driving could be a jockey, except he has no
quickness at all. Michael watches him, thinking he is maybe a jockey
who got kicked in the head.

He backs the tractor to a spot a few feet in front of
the stall, and turns it off. The engine shakes and black smoke coughs
out of the exhaust pipe. He climbs down awkwardly, stumbling as his
feet hit the ground. He takes off his cap and scratches his head, as
if he cannot remember what he is there to do. He looks at the horse
then, and seems to remember.

He unwraps the chain from the winch in back and loops
the end around the animal’s neck and then, using the winch, drags
Helen’s Dream out of the stall, digging a wide, shallow track in
the dirt. When the animal has cleared the stall, the man takes the
chain off the neck and ties it to the hind feet.

He climbs back on the tractor and forces it into
gear. He looks back once as he starts, and then, satisfied, hits the
throttle and pulls his load off in the direction of the large green
barn at the far end of the stables.

The men in the limousine watch the horse go, its huge
head bouncing on bumps in the ground. They watch until the tractor
turns a wide corner at the end of the line of stalls and disappears,
and the horse follows it out of sight.

Peter opens the door and steps out of the car. In the
back, Jimmy Measles opens his door too.

Leonard stops him, pinning his throat to the seat.
Michael turns in his seat, showing him the needle.

"I can’t breathe," he says.

"Never mind you can breathe," Michael says.
"You think about what you just seen."

Jimmy Measles nods as much as Leonard’s hand will
let him.

"I’m not fucking with you now," Michael
says. "I will put this motherfucker into your neck, you
understand what I’m saying? I give you the same dose they gave the
horse, the same place, and then I’m done with you the same way I’m
done with him.

One way or the other, it’s settled, and I don’t
have you around anymore to remind me."

He looks at Leonard. "Leave him go," he
says.

Jimmy Measles’s neck is white in the places where
Leonard held him, and then the places begin to glow. He reaches into
his pocket for his atomizer. Leonard leans across his lap and pushes
the door to the limo open.

As soon as Jimmy has his feet on the ground, Leonard
shuts the door, and a few seconds later, spitting dirt, the limo
makes a U-turn and heads out the gate.

Peter sits in the Buick and watches Jimmy Measles
coming toward him, walking now in the smooth path the horse left in
the ground, between the tire marks of the John Deere tractor.

He is holding his neck and sweating, but he isn’t
hurt. He stops for a moment, sticks the atomizer in his mouth and
pumps half a dozen times, and then, after he has put the thing back
in his pocket, he looks up and catches Peter watching him.

Peter closes his eyes, not
to see him smile.

* * *

I
got to see my wife,"
Jimmy says.

"You don’t mind my saying so, it wouldn’t
hurt, you know, you brushed your teeth and changed clothes first."

They are crossing lanes on Race Track Circle, headed
back into the city. "You smell like they scared you inside out,"
Peter says.

He sees Jimmy wrap his
fingers around the door handle; he is thinking of jumping from the
car. Peter knows there are people who will jump from a car as a
gesture, and he knows Jimmy Measles is one of them. "Which way
is it?" he says.

* * *

G
race’s sister lives in
a 200-acre development of new two-story homes in Cherry Hill. The
houses have small yards with newly planted grass and frail,
dead-looking trees held in place with wires attached to stakes in the
ground.

There are signs on the street warning thieves that
the neighborhood participates in Community Watch, and signs warning
drivers of deaf children. Jimmy Measles reads the street signs out
loud, and the names—Valley Hollow, Meadowview, Pineview—take on
an eerie quality coming out of his mouth.

The street they want is called Charity Lane. They see
Prayer Circle and Hope Street, so they are in the right area. "What
do these places go for, anyway?" Peter says. "A couple of
hundred'?"

Jimmy Measles stares at the street signs, looking
grim and serious. It is the only time Peter can remember when he’s
wanted to hear him talk, and he won’t.

"People pay a couple of hundred to get out of
the city," Peter says, "they get a tree they got to hold up
with ropes. What’s the point?"
 
Jimmy
Measles spots the house across the street. "There," he
says. There is a Volvo station wagon parked in the driveway, and a
tiny bicycle with training wheels wedged behind it against the back
tire.

"Two kids, right?" Peter says. "The
big one puts the little one’s bicycle underneath the car, and the
mother runs over it and the little one gets blamed."

The car stops. Jimmy sits still, looking across the
street. He shakes his head. "There’s only one kid," he
says.

"He does that to his own stuff?"

Jimmy Measles’s voice is a monotone. "They got
him going to a child psychologist .... "

Without another word, he gets out of the car and
crosses the street. He knocks on the door, and a long time later it
opens, Grace herself. Peter sees her from the car, sees her robe take
the shape of her hip and thigh as she leans forward to hold open the
door.

They speak and then Jimmy walks in; the door closes.
Peter settles into his seat to wait, and, to get Jimmy’s wife off
his mind, he thinks of Michael making the kid veterinarian at the
track kiss a dead horse on the mouth.

It is getting out of hand.

* * *

J
immy Measles is inside
the house half an hour.

When he comes out his head is tucked into his
shoulders, as if he were walking into a cold wind, and his hands are
rolled into fists. As if they might be cold too. He crosses the lawn
and the street without looking up.

Peter follows him all the way to the car door, trying
to see how it has gone, and then, as the door opens, he notices
Grace. She is standing in the front window watching the yard, like
somebody’s mother. She moves away as the door opens and Jimmy ducks
into the car, back into the room behind the glass, and then the
curtains close and she is gone.

Jimmy sticks the atomizer into his mouth and pumps.
Peter backs out of Charity Lane, taking one last look at the bicycle
behind the Volvo’s tire. He wouldn’t mind being here to see
Grace’s sister back over it.

He picks his way back to Route 70, turning into half
a dozen cul-de-sacs and dead ends before he finds it. Jimmy stares
out the window without offering directions, and sucks at his
atomizer.

"Tell me something, Pa1ly," he says when
they are finally on the way back to the city, "how long’s
Michael been fucking my wife?"

"Michael isn’t fucking your wife," he
says.

"All right, how long was he fucking my wife‘?"

Peter looks away, Jimmy Measles stares at him across
the seat.

"The first thing you got to ask yourself,"
Peter says, "why would she tell you something like that?"

"The first thing I ask myself, how long was it
going on?"

"He’s fucking her, but she isn’t fucking him
.... "

"That morning they shot him walking across the
street, he was coming from the house."

"And you were coming from Atlantic City, where
you got blown twice. So he gets blown, you get blown, and then he
gets shot in the whang. How much justice you think there is in this
world?"

They are back on the bridge before Jimmy Measles says
anything else. "I think of all that fucking food I had Otto fix
him and bring to the hospital."

Peter drives the car.

"All those nights we went to the fights,"
Jimmy Measles says, "you know Michael was with her then?"

Peter doesn’t answer.

There is a small park on the other side of the bridge
with a large, modern sculpture in the middle of it, welcoming
tourists to Philadelphia. To natives, it looks like something the
city council might have built itself.

"Let me out."

Peter pulls the car to the curb and waits. Jimmy sits
with his hands folded over his atomizer.

Peter sees him building to something reckless now,
probably to make up for whatever he did in front of his wife.

"Listen," Peter says, "the truth is, I
thought maybe you knew it too. Maybe you and Grace had one of those
understandings."

He turns off the car and waits, wishing he’d never
taken him to see her.

"I treated you both like friends," Jimmy
says.

Peter takes his time. "The only way Michael
knows something isn’t his, Jimmy," he says, "he don’t
want it anymore."

Jimmy sits with one foot inside the car, one foot
out. He seems to be looking into the tops of the trees in the park,
or perhaps at the sculpture, deciding what to do. Peter doesn’t
hurry him.

"I ought to send him a fucking bill," he
says finally. "All the food I sent him at the hospital, all the
drinks I gave him at my place. I ought to send him a bill for all the
fucking carrots I bought for his horse .... "

He gets out then without shutting the door, and sets
out across the park.

Peter waits a few minutes,
until he sees him on the sidewalk on the other side, walking up Vine
Street toward center city. Then he starts the car and drives himself
home and goes to bed thinking of the horse, of the unnatural stretch
of its hind legs as it followed the chain and the tractor in the
direction of the barn.

* * *

T
here is a call that
afternoon from the Italians, the ones who
own
the streets.

Peter puts the phone against his ear and listens.

"We hear a story today," the man says,
"comes from the Cherry Hill police, something which occurred at
the track."

Peter waits.

"A veterinarian, one Dr. Walter Craddock,
D.V.M., has filed a complaint against your brother."

"My cousin," Peter says. "He’s my
cousin."

"Right, your cousin. He forced a track
veterinarian to kiss a deceased horse."

The line is quiet; Peter hears his own breath against
the receiver.

"What does that tell you about your business?"
the man says.

"How much time you got before this thing you
have falls apart, somebody takes it away from you?"

Peter doesn’t answer.

"You there?" the man says.

"Yeah."

"You want some help, saving what you got, maybe
we can work something out," he says. "One way or the other,
though, Michael ain’t long for where he is."

And then he hangs up.

* * *

A
n hour later, the phone
rings again. Peter hears the wheeze before he hears the voice.

"You seen Michael?"

The sound of the atomizer.