Carter Clay (42 page)

“Maybe God can forgive people because we seem so
small
,” she says. “Maybe I could forgive the person who hit us if he were really, really far away. Like a star in the sky. If all I see is this tiny twinkle—”

In a choking rush, Carter interrupts, “As far as the war goes, though—well, you got to defend yourself and your buddies when the enemy's shooting at you. And there's your duty, too. Honor. And duty. Plus, don't forget, Jesus
did
say he come as a sword.”

Jersey nods. “But he didn't really mean—I think he meant more, like, he was going to change things. Anyway, I don't believe he said
everything
they say he did, do you?”

At that moment, Carter senses that the single frown line stitched above Jersey's right eyebrow as she waits for his response—that tiny line is the needlework of her intelligence and her earnestness, and he appreciates it. He nods, then says a guarded, “That part in Revelations where the ones with the mark on their foreheads are damned, I asked Pastor Bitner about that, 'cause, you know”—Carter points to his scar—“and he told me not to worry. And you know that place where Jesus's mom and brothers come for him, and he says they aren't his family? I never liked that. I always wondered if that was true.”

“Yeah”—Jersey takes up the book and, again, flips through the pages—“but there, I figure he's just trying to say you shouldn't let
certain people have greater claims on you just because they're your blood relatives.”

Carter folds the can label in half. Irons the fold between index finger and thumb. “So, I guess, according to Jesus, you and I can be close as you and your dad, then?”

“Well”—as if the room has suddenly become too bright, Jersey looks out from under a raised hand as she replies—“it's an ideal, of course.”

Tsk, tsk, tsk.
Both Jersey and Carter glance toward the window, where Katherine now makes one of the noises she uses to draw curious birds into the open.
Tsk, tsk.

Oh, Lord
, Carter prays,
give Jersey a sign, Lord.
He closes his eyes.
Please, Lord, give her a sign to help her believe in you. Anything. Make her walk, Lord, please. Change water to blood, a stick to a snake—

“Ah!” cries Katherine, and then a creak sounds from Jersey's rattan chair, and Carter smiles and opens his eyes. But there is no river of blood rushing across the floor. There is no burning bush, no miraculous cloud—only the girl, still seated, and now staring at him somewhat suspiciously. “So, Mr. Clay,” she asks, “when am I going to get my wheelchair back?”

To hide his disappointment at his prayer's failure, Carter goes to stand beside Katherine at the window.

“See, Car-er.” Katherine points happily to a rufous-sided towhee that flings leaves here and there in its search for bugs.

Of course, the miracle stories have always reminded Carter too much of Superman comics. Even when Carter was a kid, it occurred to him that while Superman fought and defeated one bad guy, there were still all kinds of other bad guys doing bad deeds in other places. And with Jesus—you had to wonder why Jesus didn't just heal everybody all at once, once and for all.

“Mr. Clay?” says Jersey, and Katherine, “Robin Hoods!”—her response to a pair of cardinals that shoot through the rough undergrowth at the side of the clearing.

“You want to keep an open mind, Jersey—about walking,” Carter says.

“I want my chair, is what I want!” Forget the pleasantries of a minute ago. Now the girl howls. “I've got a pressure sore. You've got to get me my chair and take me to a doctor.”

Carter stares at Jersey—her thin little face, the long hair straggly from not being washed. She reminds him of a newborn chick. A poor little newborn chick whose head is too big for it to hold, and he cries, “Oh, Lord,” and he goes down on his knees right where he stands, in the middle of the room, but then he cannot tell whether he is truly with God or making a show of himself, and he opens his eyes when Katherine says a sharp: “Wai-t!” Katherine's expression of concentration—the lift of her chin—makes her appear unfamiliar to Carter. For a moment, she looks a little like the woman on the jacket of
Rethinking the Evolution of Birds.
“Car-er,” she cries, and then, “some-ing's burning!”

The potatoes. He forgot to add water.

When Carter returns from putting the burnt pot to sizzle on the grass outside the back door, he gives Jersey a look meant to suggest—though he knows this is goofy—that Jersey burned the food. “That was supper,” he says.

Jersey sighs. “I'm not hungry, anyway, but I'll make you two peanut butter sandwiches, if you bring me the stuff.”

“With honey,” says Katherine.

Carter hesitates. He suspects that Jersey means to shame him, to suggest that he has taken away her appetite; still, he goes to the kitchen for the peanut butter and honey and bread and brings it back to the table.

“Just for Katherine,” he says. “I ain't hungry neither.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, I'm sure! You ain't the only one who can be not hungry,” he says. Then takes the Bible from the table and carries it out to the front steps.

A dictionary is what he needs. This noon, while he drove through Fort Powden, he had the idea of stopping at Cheryl Lynn's house. He thought he might ask if Cheryl Lynn had a dictionary, so he could look up
Finis
and that
biblio
word, but when he turned down Cheryl Lynn's street, he saw that a little man stood on the steps to her porch, talking through the screen door.
Black trousers, white shirt, Bible in hand. Jehovah's Witness, Carter thought, and not wanting to interrupt any possible conversion of his sister or her children, he drove on by.

Had he stopped, Carter would have discovered that the fellow on Cheryl Lynn's porch was, in fact, Finis Pruitt—whose delight in that day's persona did give him an air of kooky religiosity.

Had he stopped, Carter would have found that it was James who spoke to Finis. Cheryl Lynn was in the kitchen, talking on the telephone, trying to reassure M.B. Milhause—just then calling from Arizona—that Carter and Katherine would probably give M.B. a ring any day. Yes, yes, they had stopped at her place for chili before starting on their camping trip. They were probably just having so much fun they'd forgotten to call! But sure, sure, Cheryl Lynn would have them get in touch with M.B. the moment they came back from the woods!

“Anatomical Evidence for Evolution: Conservativism: Mammalian Ear Bones” reads the chapter heading of
The Human Evolution Coloring Book
Jersey holds open on the couch. Katherine sits in the rattan chair while, lying on her left side—her good side—head propped up by hand and crooked elbow, Jersey explains, as best she can, how the gill structures of the jawless hagfish of the Devonian era evolved over time into the human jaw and the tiny bones that make hearing possible.

So they are occupied when Carter Clay arrives home from his latest job-hunt. “I decided to fast,” he announces. He hangs his key ring on a nail by the door, then gives it a flick, and watches it spin on the nail. “The idea come to me after me and Jersey skipped supper last night. Why not see if I can go without breakfast, too? And then I skipped lunch, and I asked myself, why not go whole hog? The whole forty days?” He steps over to the couch to look down at the coloring book, then continues, “Maybe we need an extra boost to bring Jesus closer to us, you know? Maybe this'll help with your walking, Jersey.”

In much the way she would say to a large and frightening dog, “Nice puppy!” Jersey does her best to smile and nod and say, “Forty days!” Just before Carter Clay's return, however, she wrote the following page in her journal:

She broke off her writing at the sound of the van pulling into the drive.

Now, Carter Clay watching, she taps the coloring book's illustrations with her finger, and says to Katherine, “In us, the gills are only present when we're embryos, see? Then, as the fetus develops, the first arch—see this?—it becomes, over here, in the newborn's ear, the malleus, the incus, and the tympanic ring?”

Katherine bends forward to look at the illustration more closely. “I'll un-er-stan this someday,
righ
?” she says. “I use to, righ?”

Jersey reaches out to pat her mother's hand. “Yup, and we'll go over it as many times as you like.”

Carter Clay takes up the Bible from the picnic table and he says, “Pastor Bitner always told us, the way to shut up an evolution guy is to ask which came first, the chicken or the egg? You want to explain
that
to your mom, Jersey?”

Jersey smooths her hand back and forth across the slick cover of the coloring book that was a present from her parents. “My dad
always told me only people who didn't understand evolution asked that question. Anyway, we're studying now.”

With a thump, Carter Clay drops the Bible on top of the picnic table. The cabin vibrates as he crosses the room and snatches the ring of keys from the nail. “Oh, shit,” he mutters. He hangs up the ring again. “I'm going to Neffs. Don't wait up for me.”

After the back door slams, Katherine hurries to the kitchen. Through the window, there, she watches Carter Clay pass by the chicken coop at the rear of the property, then move off into the thicket of trees. Almost immediately he is erased by a great swag of foliage.

“Oh!” Katherine cries, and then, “There he is!” Still, his big frame grows smaller and smaller. The denim jacket loses color and finally disappears altogether.

“But he di-n't make din-ner!” Katherine protests. She returns to the main room, eyes wide with indignation.

Jersey nods, but her attention is elsewhere: on the van keys, which hang on the nail by the door.

“I'm
hung-ry”
Katherine says and, like a bored adolescent, drops down on the couch. “I wish I ha' some pie.”

Nothing too big, nothing likely to set off alarms—that is how Jersey thinks of the smile she conjures before she responds, “Well, there's no reason we can't have pie. Mr. Clay left you the keys and the van. We'll just drive into town. They have great pie in town.”

Katherine frowns and casts a sideways glance down the couch to her daughter. “Where?”

“Great pie,” Jersey repeats dully, but then her glance falls on the cover of coloring book, and the name of its author. Adrienne Zihlman. “At Zihlman's,” Jersey says. “Strawberry. Chocolate. Lemon meringue. Open twenty-four hours a day. Every day.” When Katherine wrinkles up her nose, as if she means to reject the idea, Jersey almost gives in to tears, but she holds on, she regroups, and then manages to ask, “What's your favorite land of pie, Mom?”

“Rhu-bar.”

“Zihlman's has excellent rhubarb pie.”

“But Car-
er
shou' have coo-k din-
ner
!” Slowly, petulantly, Katherine unfolds herself from the couch and ambles across the room. Takes the keys from the nail. Inspects them as if learning their nature. “Okay. I be back,” she says, and lifts a hand in farewell.

“But, Mom, you need me to show you how to get there.”

Katherine bounces the keys in her hands. “Jus'
tell
me.”

“It's—tricky. Zihlman's—they're sort of set back off the main road. I don't think you'd find it alone. Come on, Mom. You carry me out to the van and I'll give directions. I'd like some pie, too, you know. I'm hungry, too.” She hesitates, then cannot resist adding, “I'm your daughter, you know.”

Katherine nods wearily. “I know. I know.”

At the Boulders Campground, the children walk back and forth on the logs of the fireless campfire ring while, over by the tents, their parents sit on lawn chairs and drink beer. The children make a happy group. Two boys, two girls, their feet and ankles powdered a fine gray by the ash of the campfire ring. One of the girls has a pretty white cockatiel on her shoulder, and after a time, she and the others approach the office steps where Carter sits whistling. What's Carter doing there, the children want to know? What's that song?

Waiting for Neff Morgan to return, Carter says to the first question; and to the second, “A Whiter Shade of Pale.”

“This is Mr. Clown,” the children say of the orange-cheeked bird. One of them—a dusty little boy—leans familiarly into Carter.

Why couldn't Jersey like him like that?

“You got to make him think your finger's a branch,” says the little boy, “if you want him to climb on,” and the girl who seems to be the bird's master shows Carter how to take the bird on his index finger by lightly pressing the finger against the bird's breast.

Yea! say the children, and they chatter at Carter as if he is just perfectly normal and fine.

“How come it don't fly off?” Carter asks, but then Neff Morgan is driving into the campground, and Carter gives the bird
back to the girl so that he can help unload the big packages of toilet paper and paper towels from the rear of the Boulders station wagon.

“Listen, Carter”—Neff looks a little twitchy, itchy—“I ran into Hammerholt, man, and he said some guy was asking about you at Kirby's. Some little religious guy?”

“What do you mean, religious?”

“I don't know. Ted thought the guy was maybe a Jehovah's Witness.” As he sets one of the thirty-six-packs of toilet paper on the cabin porch, Neff calls a greeting to the circle of adults by the tents, then lowers his voice again. “I had the impression you weren't all that eager for visitors, so I told Ted I hadn't seen you. Was that the right thing to do?”

Neff waits eagerly for Carter's response to this question. Neffs own life is small. Made small by himself. Kept on a high and dusty shelf for safekeeping.

Which does not mean that Neff has no interest in the idea of more, bigger, wilder. Neff loves to hear the particulars of the lives of the campers who come through. For details of the lives of celebrities, he drives over to Marpool to buy the tabloids he would be embarrassed to buy in Fort Powden. Hence, when Carter only nods, yes, thanks, and does not explain who might be looking for him, Neff is disappointed. Still, he does not hesitate to offer complete privacy to his old friend when Carter asks if he might use the telephone in Neffs office. And, a few minutes later, when Carter comes into the kitchen to see if he can borrow Neffs station wagon for a quick run to Fort Powden, Neff says an immediate yes.

“I been having trouble with my van. I don't know that I can trust it all the way to town.”

“No problem. But how's your—wife? And your new daughter? How's she doing with your parallel bars and all?”

“Jersey?” With a jerk of his head, Carter looks down the hall, as if he has just heard someone come in. A device like that—it hurts Neff even more than Carter's unwillingness to explain whether or not he is, indeed, laying low.

“—well, Jersey's stubborn, Neff. I made her those parallel bar things I told you about but she won't use them.”

“So, you want her chair back?”

Carter shakes his head. “No. I put the matter in the hands of the Lord, Neff. But, hey, how about the key to your wagon?”

Although it has been almost ten years since he last visited Brent's Rooms, Carter has been there often enough in dreams that there is no question in his mind of where to turn to find his father's room.

You still got that old Colt?
That is all he will say.
Can I borrow that old Colt of yours?

Is he afraid of his father still?

A little, but Duncan Clay—with a shiny red pimple of a nose, and false teeth that give his skinny skull a graveyard look—Duncan is far worse for wear than Carter imagined he would be.

Stooped, wattled, Duncan lifts a thumb to signal Carter inside. The little room smells stale, but it sits up in the trees and holds the soft green light of the end of the day, and, for a moment, Carter confuses that lovely glow with the reunion with his father, and reaches for his hand—

“So, what'd you call for?” Duncan steps away. His gaze fixed on a silent but active television set, he backs into a vinyl chair, puts his feet up on a hassock fan. “Better not be money 'cause I ain't got a nickel to lend.”

Carter nods. He did not remember the room's being so small, but perhaps it is just more crowded—TV trays laden with bottles of pills and boxes of dried soup, jars of instant coffee and jelly and peanut butter. “I wondered if you still had that old Colt from the war?”

“I suppose it's the drugs.” Duncan Clay stares at his son's shaved head. “That's what the hairdo's about, too, ain't it? You one of them neo-Nazis?”

Because Carter cannot bear the thought of having to repeat his story twice, he tries to be clear from the start. “There's a guy in Florida. He was a vet—that's what he told me. But that was a lie, I guess.” He stares at a lamp shade that glows just beyond his father's shoulder. It features a rough but golden sea, a red sailing
ship pitching on blue-green waters.
Why didn't you use my gun?
That was what his father shouted at his mother. Cheryl Lynn told Carter. She had been at the hospital, sitting with Betty, who was just then recovering from carbon monoxide poisoning. Cheryl Lynn had heard Duncan's shouts.
You wouldn't be whining around if you ever thought to use something that'd get the job done!