Glass Boys (30 page)

“Come 'round here,” he said, and patted the chair next to his.

“Come have a look, my son.”

Garrett stepped around the wooden desk, and sat down on the chair. Seats nearly touching.

“You want a drink?” Mr. Clarey hauled open the lowest drawer to his right, plucked out a bottle.

“No. No sir.”

“Suit yourself, my son.”

And Garrett watched as he opened the bottle, splashed an ounce or two into the glass. Mr. Clarey had clean, shiny fingernails, and hairy fingers that made Garrett nervous. Garrett imagined Mr. Clarey could touch anything with those stubby, pale digits, and no one would ever feel upset. Think there was something wrong. Innocent doctor's fingers. “Really, Mr. Clarey. I got to be on my way.”

“Hold your horse, boy. I wants to talk to you.”

“You do?” Garrett's blood began to flow faster.

Mr. Clarey sat back in his chair, screwed joints creaking when pushed off onto the two back legs. He rubbed his bulbous belly. One leg bent and up, trousers climbing, and Garrett stared straight ahead, would not allow the bare skin on Mr. Clarey's leg to come into view. “Glass, you knows I got a boy, right?”

“A boy?”

“Yes. My boy, Wayne.”

“Oh, yes. Wayne.”

“My son. And I knows, after these years, you heard me complaining about his lifestyle. Having babies with any woman he could poke it into,” a nudge here, “working just enough to pay for his booze. He don't want nothing respectable.”

“Okay, Mr. Clarey. Okay.”

Mr. Clarey snapped back to four legs, put his arm around Garrett, and drew him closer. “Have a look at this paper,” he said.

Garrett saw a jumble of numbers and rows, and smelled Mr. Clarey's breath and some spicy cologne. He was close enough to count the deep pores on his gullet, to fear what lived behind those whiskers crawling out of his nose.

“We've had a stellar year,” Mr. Clarey announced, and he leaned over, gently slapped Garrett's thigh. “Best ever. And I got some wonderful news. I wants you, Gary. I wants you.”

Shallow breaths, dizziness, and the numbers blurred. Garrett looked down, trembled as he saw Mr. Clarey's hand, five, ten, fifteen fat white fingers. Touching him.
I wants you.
He could feel the dirty adoration through the thin wool of his dress pants, and as he watched those fingers lay there until they aged a year or more, teasing, teasing, then slid down the side of his thigh, returned to their rightful space.
I wants you.

“We're moving up. Bigger space. More selection. People is loving their floor coverings, and putting out good dollars to make their homes nice. We's on a roll, my son.” Chuckle. “No pun intended. And you're the best there is. You know that? You could sell ice to the Eskimos, as they says. I wants you to be my right-hand man. Do you hear me, Gary? Do you hear me, my boy?”

But Garrett didn't hear a word of it. He stood, knocked over his chair.

“No,” he breathed. “No, Mr. Clarey. I won't do nothing no more.”

“What?”

“You got to find someone else. 'Cause I won't be your boy.”

Mr. Clarey shook his head. “I'm real surprised you feels that way. I thought we had a good thing going.”

“We never had nothing going. Nothing at all.” Garrett reached into his pocket, felt the carpet cutter. Gripped it, slid his fingers up to release the blade. He'd do it if he had to.

“So, you're done?”

“I'm done.”

“Done, done?”

“Yes, Mr. Clarey.”

“Well, well, well.” Still shaking his head, arms folded across his chest. “I owes you. Eight days. You can come back for that.”

“I won't then.”

“Well, we got to settle something. I don't want to be owing someone. That's not the way I does business.”

Garrett looked around. Saw a leftover roll in the corner. “I'll take that. White shag.” And I'll keep the carpet cutter in my pocket. Click out, click in.

“Go on, then. If that's what you wants. But I tell you, you got me run right over. I thought we was a team, Glass. You and me. Putting down carpet in every house in Knife's Point.”

Garrett plucked up the roll and ran out the back door. He darted down the alleyway and into the street. A group moved past him, dipping in and out of stores, nodding and smiling. Acting strangely normal. Garrett didn't understand the world. Didn't understand the people living in it. But he knew enough not to strip naked, even though, more than anything, he wanted the bright sunlight to clean his skin.

“DAD?”

“Yes, my son.”

Toby leaned against the doorway of his father's room. A square space filled with papers and books and hooks and feathers and rods and reels. As the years went on, Toby found his father spent more and more time tucked away inside that room, hunched over a tying vice, fashioning miniscule flies that were never used.

Toby's palms were sweaty, tongue dry. He was about to open his mouth, and betray his brother.

“I needs to talk to you.”

His father didn't turn to face Toby. Instead, he reached up and angled the neck on the silver lamp.

“Now?”

“Um, I guess so.”

“Shoot. I'm all ears.”

“Well. I. Well.”

Toby heard a gentle chuckle, saw his father's shoulders lifting and falling. “Is this girl problems, Toby? You'd be barking up the wrong tree if it is. Maybe Mrs. Verge can give you some advice.

She's a wonderful lady, really wonderful. You know that?”

“No, no. Not girls.”

His father swiveled around, looked at him over the top of his glasses. “What is it, then? You in trouble?”

Toby reached behind him, pinched his own back, and spat it out. “Mellie. It's Mellie. I needs to talk to you 'bout Mellie.”

Instant redness in his father's pale cheeks, accelerator pushed, words rushing out. “I got nothing to say about your brother. He got to pull himself together, 'cause believe you me, believe you me, Toby, as soon as that boy hits eighteen, he's gone. Earlier, if I can't take it no more.”

“I don't think he's right, Dad.”

“Damn right he's not right. Hasn't got a word in his head to say to me. Gawking at me all the time like I done him over. When I haven't done nothing but work to put food on his plate and clothes on his back.”

“He talks to me. Talks to me a lot.”

“I don't want to hear none of it.”

Toby bit his lip, stood up straight. “I think he's fooled up, Dad. In the head. Fooled up. He keeps saying awful queer stuff. Sometimes in the middle of the night.”

“Waking you up?”

“Um. Yeah.”

“You keep your door locked, my son. He got his own room for years now, and he got no business bugging you when you needs your sleep.”

“I don't mind.”

“Well, you should. You needs to focus on finishing school. Getting a decent job. Making yourself into something.”

Toby felt the air in his lungs grow heavier. “I'll be alright, Dad.”

“I'll tell you something, Tobe. Just to let you know what we're dealing with here. You remember when all those homes got broken into?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, that was your brother. Your very own brother.”

“What?”

“Yes. Your brother. No doubt in my mind, though I didn't catch the bugger. He's lucky he gave it up.”

“I don't think—”

“Well, I don't got to think. I knowed. Got no idea what was going through his mind, what he was after. Boggles the brain, it do. And I would've hauled him in, too. Treated him no different than any other beggar. There's no honor there, my son. Not one ounce.”

“Mellie wouldn't—”

“And let me tell you something else, Toby. I've been around a lot, and I seen what's coming into this place as fast as some crowds can carry it. And that old crap'll mess with your mind. Confuse the shit right out of you. Christ, two nights back, I had one rabble-rouser out doing a jig on Widow Murray's lawn, going on about leprechauns and clovers, and then not four hours later I had another young feller up crowing on his roof. Thinking he was a bloody rooster. Could've at least waited until the sun was coming up, don't you think?”

Toby smirked slightly, nodded.

“I can promise you this, Toad. If your brother ever cleans himself up, settles back down, he'll be as good as new. As long as he's got his nose in the gutter, he's going to talk garbage. There idn't a single thing wrong with him that he hasn't brought on himself. And there idn't a single thing we can do to fix him.”

“You sure?”

“I seen enough to know.”

Toby sighed, allowed the faintest breeze of relief to touch him. “Don't tell Mellie I was on about him, alright?”

“Don't you worry none. You go on, now. Find your friend, what's-his-name, and tell him to get his face out of that book.”

“Ween?”

“See if he wants a job.”

“Alright.”

“Beds got more weeds, now, than vegetables. Mrs. Verge, Peggy, went to all kinds of trouble to plant it, and we needs to look after it. Show her we cares. You and your friend work a few hours, and I'll pay you both.”

“Really? How much?”

“Oh, enough to make you both happy, I reckon.” He swiveled around, picked up a few strands of hair from a scrap of buck tail, started twisting black thread, attaching it to his fly. “Now get on,” he said over his shoulder, “before the day is already over.”

LEWIS TOOK A deep breath, leaned his rib bones against the table. Pressed for a moment until it hurt. Then he slumped back in his chair, looked down at the fly he was making. Too much head cement, and the eyelet was coated. Useless, now. He could never attach a line unless he scraped it out, and he couldn't be bothered with that. Loosening the vice, he plucked the fly from the jaws, threw it into the plastic garbage pail near his feet.

Lewis made a fist, stood up from his chair. He hated this feeling lodged in his craw for so many years. Now thriving there. He could cough and cough, and not dislodge it. So many times he had talked up one side of Melvin and down the other, and not a word moved through the boy. And though Lewis could barely admit it, it was true. Some part of him had given up trying to find Melvin. No longer sought him out. His son, filling the air around Lewis, but rarely present. Lewis had taken his place on the edge of the woods. Always waiting, blind and wobbly, not understanding a shred.

MRS. FAGAN HEARD a rumble, pulled the curtain aside in time to see Garrett's brown Chevette easing down the gravel drive. The car stopped, and she watched him climb out, reach into the backseat, struggle with something. Bending over, yanking, his grip slipped, and her son fell backwards on the crushed stone. Not a curse from his lips, he was up again, brushing away the dust from his trousers, grabbing, finally hauling out a roll of carpet he must have crammed into the small space.

She went to the door, called through the screen. “You need a hand, my son?”

“No, I got it.”

“You buy that?”

He carried it in the crook of bent elbows. “Nope. He give it to me.”

Mrs. Fagan extended her arm, opened the door and allowed him to pass. “Why, that was nice of Mr. Clarey. You must be a hard worker.”

“I is.”

“I knows, my son. I knows.”

She watched Garrett balance the carpet, making his way through the kitchen, into the hallway, up the stairs. He paused, halfway, called down to her. “You want this in your room? I can keep the blue one.”

“Oh, my Lord, no,” she replied. “You deserves it. Put it down on your own floor.”

“You sure? It don't get no nicer.”

“I'm sure.”

He clamored up the rest of the stairs, closed his bedroom door.

Mrs. Fagan sighed. Somehow, this house, rickety and full of whispers, had become a home for herself and her son. Even though he was fully grown, he lived with her still. In the room he had occupied since he was a boy. When her older daughter was grown, Mrs. Fagan had rooted her out, and she would do the same with the younger girl, as soon as possible. But Garrett would stay. Garrett was a good boy, strange, yes, different, yes, but he was a decent son. Maybe she hadn't loved him enough, or protected him from Eli. Maybe he had been damaged somehow, when lost under the ice pans for those long minutes. But what sort of son offers up a reward he has earned to his useless old mother?

She went to her son's room, opened the door, and there he was, on his knees, spreading out a scrap of beautiful carpet. “Looks nice,” she said. “Might be hard to keep clean.”

“I'll be careful, he said. “I won't make a stain.”

“No, you won't,” she replied. “I'm sure you won't.” Garrett Wesley Glass was a good boy. A good man. No one could tell her any differently.

27

FOUR TIMES THE phone had rung that afternoon. Four times he had answered it. No one there, only a faint guttural sound on the other end. He screamed into the receiver, screamed that he would come through the wires and beat the living shit out of whatever was on the other end. “Do you hear me, you fucker? Do you hear me?” But there was no response, and the strained croaking gradually petered out, replaced by trickling water. Receiver clenched in his fist, he busted holes in the wallpaper, and then, with one swift yank, Melvin tore the entire phone from the kitchen wall, slammed it onto the floor.

He popped down the back steps, ran to the swelling stream. Something was coming, he had known it. And he was right. Someone or something was trying to send him a message, trying to tell him what to do. Messages everywhere. Letters in the crooks of the branches, I's, L's, K's. Though he pulled them out, lined them up inside his mind, he couldn't decipher them. Ilk. Lik. Ikl. The letters wouldn't make words, wouldn't reveal their meaning. He tried to light a joint, but the twist of paper slipped from his trembling hands, lost among the trampled grass, icy muck. He wished for a bottle of beer, a mouthful of rum, anything to numb this hyperawareness. Spaces were opening up inside his head, pockets full of shadows, seams ripping. What will it take to fill me up?