Fragile Beasts (18 page)

“I’ll have to ask my father.”

“Your father will not object.”

“But I don’t understand. Hundreds of boys would give anything to work for you. Why me?”

“I’m very particular about the kind of people I surround myself with. You’re the right kind of person.”

“But you hardly know me. How do you know I’m the right kind?”

He walked over to me and patted my cheek.

“Because when you took her the note, you also took her a flower.”

At that moment his manservant returned to the room and held the door open for him. Manuel’s entire demeanor changed. His face became deadly calm and serious. He squared his shoulders and held his head high with a slight upward tilt to his chin.

An absolute silence descended over the room, one that didn’t come from a lack of sound but from an abundance of respect.

He walked out and I stood there indefinitely, paralyzed with shock and joy. Long after he’d gone, the room continued to glitter.

To say that Manuel Obrador changed my life would be a vast understatement, like saying air is good. I would only spend four years with him before his death and if someone had told me during any of that time that because of him I’d end up spending my adult life living in America far away from my family and my country taking care of a woman I loved but could never be romantically involved with and protecting descendants of the bull that killed him, I would have run screaming in the opposite direction. Yet I don’t regret anything.

I was able to be friends with Manuel in a way that the other members of
the cuadrilla could not because I was much younger. He was free to take me under his wing and treat me like the little brother he never had. The others were grown men. When they weren’t working, he could care for and socialize with them, but like a prince among his soldiers, there was always a natural, necessary distance between them.

During our time together, I got to know him very well and came to love him deeply. Every night in my prayers I would ask God to protect him but also to bring him peace. I knew his outer calm and focus in the ring was in direct contrast to his inner turmoil away from the ring. I often thought if he hadn’t found toreo, he would have destroyed himself with his violent longings. The art tamed his mind and body, but when he was away from it, his heart was like a wild thing released from a trap.

Until he met Candy Jack.

She rarely talks about Manuel with me and never talks about him with other people. It would be too simple and melodramatic to say she stopped living the day he died. What is the definition of “living” in the figurative sense? Is it being able to get out of bed in the morning, dress yourself, and go to your job? Is it the ability to laugh at a joke? To appreciate a sunset? To enjoy your time on earth without being consumed by bitterness and apathy? If it’s the last one, then every day I see people who are dead and not because they suffered a great tragedy.

She didn’t stop living or feeling or caring after she lost Manuel. She stopped participating. For forty-seven years, she’s been watching the world from inside a velvet-lined glass case. She’s not hollow, broken, numb, or hardened; she’s simply unreachable.

The other night when the younger boy asked her about Manuel, my heart almost stopped beating. I waited, listening behind the kitchen door, knowing her ability to respond would be as crucial to her future as a baby’s first steps. I was as excited as any proud parent when I heard her answer him.

As for me, I’ve never had a future. The painful weight of my past has allowed me to only live in the present. My burden is one that can never be lifted or lightened. It’s not guilt that I live with but the horror of possibility.

By telling Manuel that his Candy was in the stands that night, I may have provided a fatal distraction. If I had used better judgment, my greatest friend might have lived.

W
e’ve been here at Miss Jack’s house for a month now and I still wake up every morning not knowing where I am. I look around the big room at the old-fashioned furniture until I see my few possessions, looking pathetic and puny, sitting on the shelves of a huge antique cabinet decorated with brass curlicues where some duchess probably used to keep her silver tea sets. Then I remember what happened to us: how Mom and Aunt Jen showed up in our front yard a day earlier than expected and told us we were going to go live with Miss Jack, just like that, with no explanation; how Klint told her a hag and a slut weren’t going to tell him how to live his life; how Mom swung at him and he stepped backward and Aunt Jen got between the two of them to break it up while Mr. B came around the corner of the house, took one look at the commotion, gave me a sideways glance out of his golden eyes, and left again; how I retreated inside myself searching for some calm and couldn’t find any.

This morning’s no different from any other one. I open my eyes and look around the huge room at all the polished wood and gold lamps and the six-foot-tall windows with the heavy drapes pushed back so I can see the hills in the distance. The wallpaper is navy with a gold pinstripe, and the rug next to the bed is the same blue but patterned with white and dark red braiding.

After I’m done scanning the room, I always expect a butler to come through the door with a breakfast tray, saying, “Good morning, Mr. President.”

When that doesn’t happen, I take a second look around and this time I notice my Eiffel Tower sitting on a long, low dresser and I marvel at how small it looks here. In my old room, I was daily impressed with its size. It was so tall, I couldn’t even fit it on my desk; it had to sit on the floor. Now it seems insignificant.

In my old room, I had my nature crap spread out on a shelf where I could see it, but now I keep it in a box in a drawer. I had it displayed on a shelf in the duchess’s cabinet, but one day I came into my room while the head housekeeper was here and she was throwing it all away.

I shouted at her, and she whirled around with her fists raised and her eyes flashing. Her name is Marge Henry, but she told me I can call her Hen when Miss Jack’s not around. Miss Jack calls her Marjorie.

Hen is a big, bustling, breathless, pink woman with tight brassy red ringlets who wears a gray maid’s uniform with a starched white collar every day and is constantly sneaking outside to have a cigarette break. The first time we met she told me gruffly that she’d stay out of my business if I stayed out of hers, then the next time I ran into her she asked me nicely how I was doing and basically told me her life story. By the time she was done dusting the paintings in the upstairs hallway, I knew everything about her, including her love for cinnamon, the fact that she used to be a size 6 (I nodded, pretending I understood the significance), and that her nickname used to be Little Red Hen because of her size and hair color.

She also told me her dad owned The Mine Shaft, a tough biker bar outside Centresburg with a reputation for knife fights and raccoons the size of Labrador retrievers living off the trash in their Dumpster.

She apologized for her reaction to my intrusion and said it was habit from growing up in her dad’s bar. She laughed and said it was a good thing that there hadn’t been a gun handy or she probably would’ve shot off my kneecaps. Then she apologized for trying to throw away my stuff but told me I should hide it because it looked like trash and it would drive her crazy each time she’d see it.

I asked her how a woman with a passion for neatness and cleanliness could have grown up in a dirty bar with sticky scuffed linoleum floors and smoke-blackened windows surrounded by greasy-haired bikers who rarely bathed. She said, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

I even keep my sketches in a tidy pile now.

I get out of bed and walk over to the painting hanging across from the windows and take down the T-shirt I cover it with every night.

Just my luck that with all the interesting art in Miss Jack’s house, I get a room with a painting of a boat and one of a plane, and an eerily realistic portrait of a grim, thin-lipped old guy in a black business suit with flat black eyes
that glimmer like headlights hitting fresh asphalt in the rain. They follow me everywhere and stare holes through me while I’m in bed. If I had to title the painting, I’d call it
Satan’s Banker
.

I tell him “hey” like I do every morning after I pull off the T-shirt. I don’t know if politeness counts when dealing with the forces of hell, but I figure it can’t hurt.

Life here isn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but it also isn’t as good. A part of me was hoping that living in a mansion with a rich old lady would mean enjoying all the perks of wealth I’ve fantasized about. I thought we might have an indoor swimming pool and a hot tub, and one of those home theater rooms with a TV screen as big as the wall and cushioned stadium seating. I thought there might be a special bell I could ring at any time day or night and a maid or butler would appear to do my bidding. Maybe I’d be given my own bank account with limitless funds and I could buy whatever I wanted.

I also hoped that, considering Miss Jack’s reputation for avoiding people, she’d avoid us, too.

It hasn’t worked out that way. We’re not suffering. Miss Jack provides us with all the basics. She even took over paying for our cell phones, and she got a computer for each of our rooms because Shelby told her we need them for school. But she hasn’t showered us with any extravagances and as for leaving us alone, she asks more questions and has more rules than our own parents did.

We have to eat dinner with her every night and we’re required to make conversation. This has been rough on Klint, who I’ve seen go for an entire day back home without saying anything more than “Where’s the remote?” and “I’m taking the truck.”

Even though Miss Jack has servants, we have to clean up after ourselves. If we eat bowls of cereal for breakfast, we have to wash the bowls. We’re constantly reminded to put our dirty clothes in the hamper. We have a curfew and a bedtime, and we’re not allowed to sleep too late on weekends. Our TV viewing is restricted, and wearing ball caps in the house is forbidden.

The rules don’t bother me as much as the feeling I get from her that she wants to better us. She’s made comments about getting us new clothes, and she’s always correcting our speech. I want to tell her that I know how to speak properly but if I talked that way in the world I live in, I’d be bruised and friendless. She used to be poor. She was a coal miner’s kid. She should know
better than anyone that the life she left behind was a different country complete with its own language and its own form of justice.

I’ve been getting through the weeks okay. At school I can almost pretend that everything’s fine and normal. The phony people have forgotten all about me and Klint, and the people who genuinely cared have decided we’re okay now and they go out of their way to act like nothing ever happened.

The weekends are harder to endure. I’m stranded out here. Miss Jack only has one car, a big silver Mercedes sedan, and no one drives it but Luis. Klint says he doesn’t care that she won’t let him drive it. He says he wouldn’t be caught dead tooling around in an old lady car. (Although I know he’d love to get a look at its engine.)

Luis has been forced to drive us back and forth to school—since there’s no bus that comes out here—and Klint has had to hitch rides from friends to get home from his job at Hamilton’s Dairy.

It’s obvious Luis isn’t happy with the situation. I feel bad about asking him to drive me anywhere besides school, but I also haven’t felt like inviting any of my friends here yet. The situation is too new and still pretty weird, plus Klint gets pissed at me whenever I suggest we have anyone over. Even though everyone knows we’re living here, Klint needs to pretend nobody knows about it because he doesn’t want anyone thinking we’ve got it made or that we’re charity cases.

My brother has become completely worthless. I would’ve thought going through the same tragedy together would have made us closer but instead he’s been ignoring me. The past two weekends Bill came and picked him up and he went and stayed with him. I know he spent part of the time working out in the Y’s weight room and using the batting cages at Community Field, but the rest of the time he spent sitting on Bill’s porch like Dad’s ghost. I could have gone, too, but staring at my old backyard is the last thing I want to do. It’s funny how a place that causes me so much pain can bring my brother so much comfort.

When Klint is around, he lies on his bed tossing a ball up and down staring at the ceiling or at Dad’s mangled chrome antler grill sitting on his dresser, or he goes to the one room in the house with a TV and watches World Series highlight DVDs or reruns of
Full House
. (He likes the show because the Olsen twins remind him of Krystal when she was little and cute, but he’d never admit this and he’d kill me if I ever told anyone he watches it.)

If Dad hadn’t died, Klint would probably still be traveling around playing in some national showcase tournaments until the final ones wrapped up in November, but he told Coach Hill he was taking the fall season off. I would’ve loved to have been there to see Coach try and digest that information without his head exploding. There was nothing he could do. Off-season play is strictly out of his control. He’s only got a couple players who are even worth encouraging in that direction: Klint; his best friend, Tyler Mann, a crackerjack first baseman who’s got loads of natural talent but no discipline (Tyler isn’t even sure he’d like to play pro ball—for as long as I’ve known him, if anyone asks him what he wants to be when he grows up he says a stunt man or a bear); and Brent Richmond, who’s got some talent, some discipline, but enough ambition and push from his dad to make the other two qualities unimportant. Our dad wanted Klint to be a pro while Brent’s dad expects him to be a pro. Tyler’s dad just wants him to survive to adulthood.