Glass Boys (15 page)

“What crowd?”

“All the people.”

“There's lots of good people, there. I knowed most of them all my life.”

“And I don't know most of them at all.”

“That's 'cause you never gave no one a chance.”

“I haven't, have I?”

“Not really. You're the one coming into their world, Willie.

You just needs to find some inroads.”

“I don't want inroads.” Her voice was flat, quiet.

“You don't got to be like that, Wilda.”

She shook her head, and Lewis knew he wouldn't win. Understood now that Wilda was just looking for excuses. They often had such discussions when he was trying to prod her into action, into joining. He thought she was lonesome, even though she repeatedly explained that lonely and alone were two sepa–rate things.

“C'mon, Wilda. Give it a go. For the boys.”

“No, Lewis.” She crossed her arms over her chest, hid her fingers. “I'm tired.”

Lewis looked out across the fields, towards the thin strip of water on the horizon. Saw fog sneaking in, trails of it gliding over the bright harvest moon that hung low. He looked down at his two sons, blueberry-stained lips pinched, breath held, hopeful hands clasped. No chance of a turnaround, and he scooped up Toby, took Melvin's wrist, and started walking. Spoke over his shoulder, “You been tired since we met, Willie. I'm ready, I really am, any time you wants to wake up.”

A LIGHTBULB DANGLED from a wire, burned in the center of the barn, but Eli relied on his lantern to inspect the tractor. He leaned in close, held the lantern to the shiny metal and the large wheels, searching for a nick or a scratch or a cut in the rubber. But he could find nothing, and some tiny part inside of him was disappointed over the absolute lack of damage.

Rustling behind him. He turned, lantern lowered to his thigh, and saw Angie, his younger daughter, standing in the door frame, her feet stuffed into a pair of his old boots. Even in the dimness of the barn, he could see the sides of her skinny body through the sheer fabric of her nightdress, and he laid down the lantern, took a sweater hanging on a nail, and tugged it on over her head. Groaned slightly as he bent on a sore knee to roll up the sleeves.

“Too cold to be out like that,” he mumbled. Her hair was wet, and he could smell soap. “What's that woman thinking?” Reaching behind him, he grabbed a length of old rope. “Arms out,” he said, and knotted it around her waist in a makeshift belt.

“I just come to watch you.”

When she leaned against him, he felt her shiver, and he tugged off his own plaid coat, placed it over her shoulder, lifted the collar. “There now.”

She laughed, “That's heavy. I can't lift my arms.”

“Don't want you catching cold, maid,” he said, and gave her freckled cheek a tiny pinch. This child never grated on him like the other girl, who was pushy and pouty. He had often let the soft one ride to the dump with him, had let her hang around as he hammered together a bench or fixed the hinges on a door.

He'd even accepted a hug from her slender arms after he'd tied a tire swing to the branch of a tree. Eli knew who he was, and knew it was ridiculous to even conjure the notion, but in all his years, this was the closest he'd ever come to adoring something. So small and sweet and perfect.

“Daddy, I wants to see the tractor,” she said.

“You seen it today.”

“I never hardly, then. I wants to see it now.”

“What do you want that for?”

“I wants to be a farmer when I gets growed. Didn't you know?”

“What?”

“A farmer. Like you is.”

He stood up, stepped away from her, stared down at the tiny elf girl drowning in layers of wool and plaid. She stared back, and her face was bright and open. No wetness in her eyes, no fear of him. Something else there instead, and Eli's heart fluttered, felt as though it were filling and draining at the same time.

“A farmer, you says.”

Big smile and nods.

He looked behind him, at his tools, and his barrels of vegetables, dirt still clinging to the skin. He glanced at the dark corners where he had severed throats, wrung necks, culled litters. He inhaled, smelled the sour stench of hens, uneaten scratch clawed into the mud, rotting. “That you won't then.”

Pinprick, face falling. “But, I, me—”

“Don't let me catch you in here. Or out in those fields.”

“But, DeeDee, she do.”

Slight snarl. “That don't matter.”

The child never asked why, never whined. Slipped out of the coat, handed it back. “Here,” she said. “Don't want you catching the colds neither.” Then she toddled away, dragging her feet in the boots.

“Angie!”

She stopped. “Yes, Daddy?”

“I. Well, I wants to tell you something, now,” he said, and pinched his nose, swiped thumb and forefinger on the leg of his trousers. “I wants to say something, and I wants you to tuck it away for later.”

“Promise, Daddy.”

He went to her, bent again on his aching knee, plucked splinters of wood from the nubby sweater. Cupping her chubby cheeks his bear paws, he said, “Some people don't need dirt to grow something good.” He coughed to loosen the words, caught in the thick tangle of netting around his heart. “Some people is bound for better things.”

17

WILDA WAS SEATED at the kitchen table, flipping pages in the news paper, when several words lifted off the page, made her stomach drop, mouth go dry. Leaning in closer, she scanned the page more carefully, found what her heart had already seen. The obituary section. Shallow breaths through parted lips, she blinked rapidly as her gaze sped over the entry. Mrs. Jessie Burry. Suffered from heart disease. Predeceased by her parents, Mary and James Smith, her husband, Edward, and infant son, John. Survived by her sister-in-law, Anita Andrews (Wayne), and her daughter Wilda. And that was it. A scant summary, laid out in neat black font. Wilda closed the newspaper, folded it, pushed it to the other side of the table. Those were the bare bones of her mother's life. The bare bones of her dead mother's life.

She felt light-headed, poured a glass of juice and sipped, waited for some sugar to seep into her veins. Teeter Beach was such a small village, why had her mother's obituary been published province-wide? Staring at the newspaper, she was certain her aunt, a decent woman, had wanted word of the death to reach Wilda. To know the blood tie had been severed, the mind tie might follow. But, sitting there, Wilda could not grasp the possibility that the woman was really gone, even though she sensed the knowledge was hovering around her, pricking her, wanting to find its way in.

Laying her face down on the cold tabletop, she closed her eyes, hoping her dizziness might fade. She shook slightly when she thought about her mother. This was something she had never told Lewis, and never would. There was no way to mouth these words. So snarled throughout Wilda's flesh, handfuls of rusty hooks, pulling them out would completely ruin her.

Wilda was only seven years old when her mother dragged her into an empty barn. Made her look at the sticky puddle in the middle of the pig pen. “That's your doing,” she had cried. “Your doing. He loved you. And this is how you look after him?”

Her mother had said, no, no, no, for God's sakes, not in his state, but little Wilda still nagged her father to kill the pig. She sang out the words, roast and gravy, chops and hocks, roast and gravy, chops and hocks, until her father hoisted himself up off the worn stump beside the wood pile, stumbled into the barn. Her mother yelling out to Wilda, “Watch he don't hurt himself.” And her father laughed, said, “Oh, she's re– re– re– pons-ble, maid. She got 'old of me heart.”

She remembered when he struck the pig between the pink ears with a mallet, tying the tiny ankles with rope. Once air borne, the pig was swinging slowly to and fro, and it gently bumped Wilda's father as he approached, almost knocked him over. He found a knife, stuck into a support post, and he wriggled it free, slurred, “Close down yer, close down yer h'eyes, Cookie.” Gripping a wee hock with one hand, he pressed the blade into the neck with the other. Slicing back and forth, blade moving with rapid, sloppy strikes, and after a moment's hesitation, blood squirting, splattering on the muddy floor. He leaned in, several more slashes, head nearly severed. Her father swayed, rich color pouring over his hands, onto his shirt sleeves. And then he stopped, dropped the blade, held out his arm, and turned his face towards Wilda. Expression of drunken confusion. He stared down at his hand, his wrist. But all Wilda could see was that the sharp blade had cut clear through the plaid fabric of his sleeve.

Wilda watched that day. Watched as her father reached for the pig, clutched its jaw, fingers slipping, then lunged for the ankles, up high, grasping the end of rope that trailed down between the pig's pinched legs. Blood spurting, spurting from the flank, and Wilda could not understand how her pig had been cut all the way up there, in the very place where her father was holding. “Help me, Willie,” he said. “God, help me.” His voice sounded like it was coming from behind her, above her.

His face had turned gray, and at that moment, he let go of the rope, and collapsed.

She did nothing. Nothing. Besides skip outside into the warm sunshine, find her twin dolls in the overgrown grass. She was giggling, playing house, and at the same time her father slowly died in the barn.

Wilda jumped up, glanced at the boys, their backs to her, like two small strangers plastered together on the chesterfield, watching cartoons, giggling. “I don't feel... I've got to—,” she mumbled. “I've got to go out for a spell. Some air.” To calm myself. They hadn't heard her whispers. But no matter. She wouldn't be gone long. Just enough to sooth the agitation in her legs, her racing pulse. She lifted the keys from the hook, and slipped out the door.

WINTER MONTHS WERE slow on the farm, and Garrett Glass spent most of his days working at Clarey's Paints and Carpets. Mr. Clarey gave him two dollars and seventy-five cents an hour, and after Garrett had worked there for nearly five months, he also gave him a key. Made of brass, red braided string knotted through the hole, Garrett kept it inside the buttoned pocket of his only dress shirt. He took his new responsibilities very seriously, opening the store not a minute before nine, and locking it at five on the nose every evening. He was meticulous with the money, keeping note of every can of paint sold, every brush, and felt a rush of pride each time the cash register shot out, bumped gently into that area beneath his hips. Garrett had big dreams, hoped someday to stop working the farm altogether, and to keep his fingernails clean while managing Mr. Clarey's shop.

Though Mr. Clarey might not approve, several nights Garrett had slept there. But only if the snow was particularly heavy, and he couldn't tolerate the long trudge home to the farm. He would flick off the fluorescent lights, and once the gray light had faded he would hide down between the enormous rolls of carpet and linoleum, cover up with his winter coat, drift off while imagining he owned everything that surrounded him. That he was a young man of real substance. An attractive man that the young ones might admire. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, his bones would begin to ache, and he would unroll a few feet of carpet, fold them over, sleep on the soft charcoal sponge that covered the underside. He would lay his face directly against it, rub his fingers over the smooth rubbery surface. There was pleasure in the fact that no person had ever touched his feet to this product. It was pure and completely clean.

The night before, the clouds had been heavy and the wind was making the building gripe, so Garrett locked the door and switched out the lights. He ate the rest of his bologna sandwich in silence, drank handfuls of water from the sink in the bathroom near the back. Removed his good shirt, hung it on Mr. Clarey's vinyl chair in the office. He lay down in his secret place, and soon drifted. Only to be awoken by drunks stumbling home from the lodge, a man even stopping in the entry way of the shop to piss. Then a woman squatting, her girlfriends hooting with laughter. Garrett felt his heart bang in his chest, angry at the shamelessness, even in the light of the street lamp, faces clear through the window, liquid spattering door and step. He recognized them, but would never say their names. An hour or more later, after he had calmed down, he was startled again by the knob rattling, and he peered out from beneath the roll, saw a man and woman tucked into the small space, her dark coat and open palms pressed against the glass in the door. They were kissing for minutes and minutes, her head knocking against the door, and then, when they stopped, continued to linger, Garrett could hear her giggling, the sound creeping in around the wooden frame, reverberating in the empty store. The man grabbed her bare hand, tugged her up the street to God knows where to do God knows what. And Garrett lay there, wide awake, hands pinched between his bony thighs, lower half throbbing uncomfortably, and he wondered,
What kind
of love is that?
Nothing like Garrett had ever experienced. Or would ever want to. Animals. No better than pigs barred up in a dirty pen.

In the morning, Garrett was stiff and sore and his eyes were swollen from lack of sleep. After he had dressed, washed his face, and put his shirt back on, he cracked open the front door. Several inches of snow had fallen, and Garrett took the shovel and the bucket of salt, cleared the steps, stained snow, layer of ice beneath it. His stomach turned, and he wanted to sluice hot water over it, but that would only freeze, make it treacherous. So, he turned his nighttime visitors into unusual dreams, bad dreams, nothing more, and closed the front door.

The store was empty until nearly noon, when Mrs. Pyke came in with her blond-haired son. Charming cowlick on his forehead, freckles spattered across his turned-up nose. With a terse nod from Mrs. Pyke, Garrett offered the youngster a lollipop. The boy accepted, and Garrett watched him peel off the waxy wrapper, lick and lick. “His room needs something,” Mrs. Pyke said. “Got to be easy to clean.” Though Garrett continued to be shy, his tongue shone the slightest shade of silver whenever he had to recommend flooring for a child's room. Especially when it was a young boy. Garrett could talk a tightfisted mother into upgrading from indoor/outdoor to luxurious shag. Didn't she want the best for her son? Could she imagine his poor knees, playing for hours with cars and blocks on such a rough and inexpensive surface? “If you only splurge in one room, Mrs. Pyke,” he said with a genuine smile, “have it be your boy's.”