Lisey’s Story (34 page)

“Scott,” she says at last, “writing's your
job.
”

“You think you understand that,” he says, “but you don't understand the
gone
part. I hope you stay lucky that way, little Lisey. And I'm not going to sit here under this tree and give you the history of the Landons, because I only know a little. I went back three generations, got scared of all the blood I was finding on the walls, and quit. I saw enough blood—some of it my own—when I was a kid. Took my Daddy's word for the rest. When I was a kid, Daddy said that the Landons—and the Landreaus before them—split into two types: gomers and bad-gunky. Bad-gunky was better, because you could let it out by cutting. You
had
to cut, if you didn't want to spend your life in the bughouse or the jail-house. He said it was the only way.”

“Are you talking about self-mutilation, Scott?”

He shrugs, as if unsure. She is unsure, as well. She has seen him naked, after all. He has a few scars, but only a few.

“Blood-bools?” she asks.

This time he's more positive. “Blood-bools, yeah.”

“That night when you stuck your hand through the greenhouse glass, were you letting out the bad-gunky?”

“I suppose. Sure. In a way.” He stubs his cigarette in the grass. He takes a long time, and doesn't look at her while he does it. “It's complicated. You have to remember how terrible I felt that night, a lot of things had been piling up—”

“I should never have—”

“No,” he says, “let me finish. I can only say this once.”

She stills.

“I was drunk, I was feeling terrible, and I hadn't let it out—
it
—in a long time. I hadn't had to. Mostly because of you, Lisey.”

Lisey has a sister who went through an alarming bout of self-mutilation in her early twenties. Amanda's past all that now—thank God—but she bears the scars, mostly high on her inner arms and thighs. “Scott, if you've been cutting yourself, shouldn't you have scars—”

It's as if he hasn't heard her. “Then last spring, long after I thought he'd shut up for good, I be good-goddam if he didn't start up talking to me again. ‘It runs in you, Scoot,' I'd hear him say. ‘It runs in your blood just like a sweetmother. Don't it?'”

“Who, Scott? Who started talking to you?” Knowing it's either Paul or his father, and probably not Paul.

“Daddy. He says, ‘Scooter, if you want to be righteous, you better let that bad-gunky out. Get after it, now, don't smuckin wait.' So I did. Little . . . little . . .” He makes small cutting gestures—one on his cheek, one on his arm—to illustrate. “Then that night, when you were mad . . .” He shrugs. “I got after the rest. Over and done with. Over and out. And we 'us fine. We 'us
fine.
Tell you one thing, I'd bleed myself dry like a hog on a chain before I'd hurt you. Before I'd
ever
hurt you.” His face draws down in an expression of contempt she has never seen before. “I ain't never yet been like
him.
My Daddy.” And then, almost spitting it: “Fuckin Mister
Sparky.
”

She doesn't speak. She doesn't dare. Isn't sure she could, anyway. For the first time in months she wonders how he could cut his hand so badly and have so little scarring. Surely it isn't possible. She thinks:
His hand wasn't just cut; his hand was mangled.

Scott, meanwhile, has lit another Herbert Tareyton with hands that are shaking just the smallest bit. “I'll tell you a story,” he says. “Just one story, and let it stand for all the stories of a certain man's childhood. Because stories are what I do.” He looks at the rising cigarette smoke. “I net them from the pool. I've told you about the pool, right?”

“Yes, Scott. Where we all go down to drink.”

“Yep. And cast our nets. Sometimes the really brave fisherfolk—the Austens, the Dostoevskys, the Faulkners—even launch boats and go out to where the big ones swim, but that pool is tricky. It's bigger than it looks, it's deeper than any man can tell, and it changes its aspect, especially after dark.”

She says nothing to this. His hand slips around her neck. At some point it steals inside her unzipped parka to cup her breast. Not out of lust, she's quite sure; for comfort.

“All right,” he says. “Story-time. Close your eyes, little Lisey.”

She closes them. For a moment all is dark as well as silent under the yum-yum tree, but she isn't afraid; there's the smell of him and the bulk of him beside her; there's the feel of his hand, currently resting on the rod of her collarbone. He could choke her easily with that hand, but she doesn't need him to tell her he'd never hurt her, at least not physically; this is just a thing Lisey knows. He will cause her pain, yes, but mostly with his mouth. His everlasting
mouth.

“All right,” says the man she will marry in less than a month. “This story might have four parts. Part One is called ‘Scooter on the Bench.'

“Once upon a time there was a boy, a skinny little frightened boy named Scott, only when his Daddy got in the bad-gunky and cutting himself wasn't enough to let it out, his Daddy called him Scooter. And one day—one bad, mad day—the little boy stood up on a high place, looking down at a polished wooden plain far below, and watching as his brother's blood

runs slowly along the crack between two boards.

—
Jump
, his father tells him. Not for the first time, either.—
Jump, you little bastard, you sweetmother chickenkike, jump right now!

—
Daddy, I'm afraid! It's too high!

—
It's not and I don't give a shit if you're afraid or not, you smucking jump or I'll make you sorry and your buddy sorrier, now paratroops over the side!

Daddy pauses a moment, looking around, eyeballs shifting the way they do when he gets in the bad-gunky, almost
ticking
from side to side, then he looks back at the three-year-old who stands trembling on the long bench in the front hall of the big old dilapidated farmhouse with its million puffing drafts. Stands there with his back pressed against the stenciled leaves on the pink wall of this farmhouse far out in the country where people mind their own business.

—
You can say Geronimo if you want to, Scoot. They say sometimes that helps. If you scream it real loud when you jump out of the plane.

So Scott does, he will take any help he can get, he screams GEROMINO!—which isn't quite right and doesn't help anyway because he still can't jump off the bench to the polished wooden floor-plain so far below.

—
Ahhhh, sweet-smockin chicken-kikin
Christ.

Daddy yanks Paul forward. Paul is six now, six going on seven, he is tall and his hair is a darkish blond, long in front and on the sides, he needs a haircut, needs to go see Mr. Baumer at the barbershop in Martensburg, Mr. Baumer with the elk's head on his wall and the faded decal in his window that shows a Merican flag and says
I SERVED
, but it will be awhile before they go near Martensburg and Scott knows it. They don't go to town when Daddy is in the bad-gunky and Daddy won't even go to work for awhile because this is his vacation from U.S. Gyppum.

Paul has blue eyes and Scott loves him more than anyone, more than he loves himself. This morning Paul's arms are covered with blood, crisscrossed with cuts, and now Daddy goes to his pocketknife again, the hateful pocketknife that has drunk so much of their blood, and raises it
up to catch the morning sun. Daddy came downstairs yelling for them, yelling—
Bool! Bool! Get in here, you two!
If the bool's on Paul he cuts Scott and if the bool's on Scott he cuts Paul. Even in the bad-gunky Daddy understands love.

—
You gonna jump you coward or am I gonna have to cut him again?

—
Don't, Daddy!
Scott shrieks.—
Please don't cut 'im no more, I'll jump!

—
Then do so!
Daddy's top lip rolls back to show his teeth. His eyes roll in their sockets, they roll roll roll like he's looking for folks in the corners, and maybe he is,
prolly
he is, because sometimes they hear him talking to folks who ain't there. Sometimes Scott and his brother call them the Bad-Gunky Folks and sometimes the Bloody Bool People.

—
You do it, Scooter! You do it, you ole Scoot! Yell Geronimo and then para-troops over the side! No cowardy kikes in this family! Right now!

—
GEROMINO!
he yells, and although his feet tremble and his legs jerk, he still can't make himself jump. Cowardy legs, cowardy kike legs. Daddy doesn't give him another chance. Daddy cuts deep into Paul's arm and the blood falls down in a sheet. Some goes on Paul's shorts and some goes on his sneaks and most goes on the floor. Paul grimaces but doesn't cry out. His eyes beg Scott to make it stop, but his mouth stays shut. His mouth will not beg.

At U.S. Gypsum (which the boys call U.S. Gyppum because it's what their Daddy calls it) the men call Andrew Landon Sparky or sometimes Mister Sparks. Now his face looms over Paul's shoulder and his fluff of whitening hair stands up as if all the lectricity he works with has gotten inside of him and his crooked teeth show in a Halloween grin and his eyes are empty because Daddy is gone, he's a
goner
, there's nothing in his shoes but the bad-gunky, he's no longer a man or a daddy but just a blood-bool with eyes.

—
Stay up there this time and I'll cut off his ear
, says the thing with their Daddy's lectric hair, the thing standing up in their Daddy's shoes.—
Stay up there next time and I'll cut his mothersmuckin throat, I don't give a shit. Up to you, Scooter Scooter you ole Scoot. You say you love him but you don't love him enough to stop me cutting him, do you? When all you have to do is jump off a sweetmother three-foot bench! What do you think of that, Paul? What have you got to say to your chickenkike little brother now?

But Paul says nothing, only looks at his brother, dark blue eyes locked on hazel ones, and this hell will go on for another twenty-five hundred days; seven endless years.
Do what you can and let the rest go
is what Paul's eyes say to Scott and it breaks his heart and when he jumps from the bench at last (to what part of him is firmly convinced will be his death) it isn't because of their father's threats but because his brother's eyes have given him permission to stay right where he is if in the end he's just too scared to do it.

To stay on the bench even if it gets Paul Landon killed.

He lands and falls on his knees in the blood on the boards and begins crying, shocked to find he is still alive, and then his father's arm is around him, his father's strong arm is lifting him up, now in love rather than in anger. His father's lips are first on his cheek and then pressed firmly against the corner of his mouth.

—
See, Scooter old Scooter you old Scoot? I knew you could do it.

Then Daddy is saying it's over, the blood-bool is over and Scott can take care of his brother. His father tells him he's brave, one brave little sumbitch, his father says he loves him and in that moment of victory Scott doesn't even mind the blood on the floor, he loves his father too, he loves his crazy blood-bool Daddy for letting it be over this time even though he knows, even at three he knows that next time will come.

Scott stops, looks around, spies the wine. He doesn't bother with the glass but drinks straight from the bottle. “It really wasn't much of a jump,” he says, and shrugs. “Looked like a lot to a three-year-old, though.”

“Scott, my God,” Lisey says. “How often was he like that?”

“Often enough. A lot of the times I've blocked out. That time on the bench, though, that one's stone clear. And like I said, it can stand for the rest.”

“Was it . . . was he drunk?”

“No. He almost never drank. Are you ready for Part Two of the story, Lisey?”

“If it's like Part One, I'm not sure I am.”

“Don't worry. Part Two is ‘Paul and the Good Bool.' No, I take that back, it's ‘Paul and the
Best
Bool,' and it was only a few days after the old man made me jump off the bench. He got called in to work, and as soon as his truck was out of sight, Paul told me to be good while he went down to Mulie's.” He stops, laughs, and shakes his head as people do when they realize they're being silly. “
Mueller's.
That's what it really was. I told you about going back to Martensburg when the bank auctioned off the home place, right? Just before I met you?”

“No, Scott.”

He looks puzzled—for a moment almost frighteningly vague. “No?”

“No.” This isn't the time to tell him he's told her next to nothing about his childhood—

Next
to nothing? Nothing at all. Until today, under the yum-yum tree.

“Well,” he says (a little doubtfully), “I got a letter from Daddy's bank—First Rural of Pennsylvania . . . you know, like there was a
Second
Rural out there somewhere . . . and they said it was out of court after all these years and I was set for a piece of the proceeds. So I said what the smuck and went back. First time in seven years. I graduated Martensburg Township High when I was sixteen. Took a lot of tests, got a papal dispensation. Surely I told you
that.
”

“No, Scott.”

He laughs uneasily. “Well, I did. Go, you Ravens, peck em and deck em.” He makes a cawing sound, laughs more uneasily still, then takes a big glug of wine. It's almost gone. “The home place ended up going for seventy grand, something like that, of which I got thirty-two hundred, big smogging deal, huh? But anyway, I took a ride around our part of Martensburg before the auction and the store was still there, a mile down the road from the home place, and if you'd told me when I was a kid it was only a mile I would have said you were full of shit up to your tick-tock. It was empty, all boarded up,
FOR SALE
sign in front but so faded you could hardly read it. The sign on the roof was
actually in better shape, and that one said
MUELLER'S GENERAL STORE
. Only we always called it Mulie's, see, because that 'us what Daddy called it. Like he called U.S. Steel U.S. Beg Borrow and Steal . . . and he'd call The Burg Pittsburgh Shitty . . . and . . . oh dammit, Lisey, am I crying?”