The Brothers K (59 page)

At this point Mama suffered a spasm of normalcy. “Of course they will,” she told him. “You and your father and I will just sit down with them, like we’re sitting here with you, and we’ll all have us a talk about how we can best deal with—”

“Mama,” Irwin interrupted. “Two years ago Linda’s dad beat her up and raped her …”

And now the naked body had muscle and genitals—genitals, and an erection from which we were still recoiling when Irwin said, “And her
mom’s a drunk. If not worse. Linda just spent all the money we had, finding her, because we needed a notarized permission slip to get married. She stays in a county home in Florida when she’s not wandering the streets. And she’s as crazy as the dad, at least. So. We won’t be sitting down to talk.”

We were all drunk now, not just Linda’s lost mommy. “The dad’s the main worry,” said the magic mouth. “He hurt her bad. He’s hurt lots of people. He’s in jail for it.”
Drunk as skunks
. “He’s the real reason, well … he’s the
serious
reason we’ve been living together. And the thing is, another real doozy is, he gets out while I’m gone.”
Blitzed. Zoned. Smashed
. “And she’s got nobody … Nobody but me … And the baby … When it comes … And each of you guys, I hope.”
How did we get into this?
“Because I love her a lot …”
Ah. So that’s how
. “But my Country calls, so to speak … And I have to—”

“Wait!” Mama burst out. Another spasm of sanity. “Wait just one minute here. Isn’t there some special kind of—is ‘deferment’ the word?—that the Army gives in cases like—”

Irwin’s laugh was nearly a shriek. “I can see it now, Mama! Front-page headlines! PENTAGON SAYS: JUST GET YOUNG GIRL PREGNANT AND THERE’S NO VIETNAM FOR YOU!”

Freddy managed a titter. Bet and Papa and I just stared. Then Irwin, in seconds, went from laughter to a gasp to a silent stream of tears. And even though Mama was still blushing, she was somehow able to reach out, take his hand, and with no sign of paralysis say, “You’ve got a life of work cut out for you, you and your Linda. But the important thing is you love her, and she loves you. And I’m sure that, in time, we’ll grow to love her too.”

“Oh, Mama!” Irwin cried. “I’m so glad you said that! Because here’s the other thing. Here’s the biggest thing …”

We all stiffened, and my parents grabbed both arms of their chairs; we were jet passengers now, coming down into the fog for an announced crash landing.

“Linda’s got nowhere to go. With me gone, she’s got
nowhere …”
He left us a pause—the kind you’d just about
have
to call “pregnant”—then finished: “… unless she can come here.”

I don’t know how she could speak, let alone move, but before I could even focus Mama had jumped to her feet, wrapped Irwin’s head in her arms, and with tears in her eyes was crooning, “Irwin, Irwin, Irwin. Of
course
your Linda can stay here!” And I have never heard her, let’s face it, not so lovely voice sound more soothing than when she began gabbling
on about how the girls could move up into Everett and Peter’s old room, how we’d fetch the Beautyrest down for Linda (“Everett and his
back!”)
, and the twins’ baby things were still in the attic, weren’t they? and wasn’t that bassinet still up in the garage rafters? “And I’ll move my sewing things into our bedroom when you’re on road trips, Hugh, so the sewing room can be the nursery. Then I’ll just pop the sewing stuff back in our—”

“Move anything,” Papa said fiercely. “Move anything of mine anywhere you want,” he said. “Except my son.”

Mama’s lip began to quiver. Freddy started to cry. Irwin turned to face him.

“Not you,” Papa said. “Not in Vietnam.”

Irwin smiled. “It’s the quickest way through.”

“Through what? Your
life?
This goddamned vale of
tears?”

“Hugh!” Mama gasped.

“Through this trouble,” Irwin said earnestly. “Through this giant screw-up. I’ve messed up big-time, Papa. And the Army, like it or not, is the fastest way back to Linda, and the baby, and all of you.”

“Go to jail,” Papa said.

“Hugh!”

“Stay out of it, Laura! Irwin, I’m serious.”

“But why, Papa?”

“You’ll
survive
jail.”

“Hugh!” Mama burst out.

“You shuttup!”
he roared.

“Please don’t fight!” Irwin’s smile was huge, strained, pleading. “I won’t die, Papa! Not with all of you praying for me!”

“This war is no fantasy,” Papa said. “No Babcock hell or heaven. It’s real, Irwin. And boys like you die in it every day while their families are praying otherwise.”

“Don’t say it, Mama!” Irwin pleaded, seeing the red rage in her eyes. “Papa!” he said. “I’ve thought hard about this. I know I don’t always think, but listen. You get three, four, even five years in jail for refusing induction, you come out with nothing, and you make ex-con wages for life. But just two years in the Army, maybe just twelve months of that in ’Nam, and I get paid the whole time, get help with college when I get out, get a GI loan for a house just like you did. And there’s a good pension for Linda and the baby if … in case something terrible happens.”

Papa looked at Irwin, and said nothing, for a very long time. Then he
turned to Mama. “I won’t divorce you,” he said—and the room began to spin. “It’d just be a lot of silliness at this late date.” I closed my eyes: the dark in there was spinning too. “But if you ever set foot in another Babcock church service for any reason but to spit in his face, I’ll never speak to you again, Laura. I swear to God.”

“I’ll worship where I choose!” Mama managed to say. But her voice was broken, her face white.

“Please!” Irwin begged. “This is
my
fault!”

“Let’s keep it simple,” Papa said. “This is Babcock’s fault.”

“What about Everett?” Mama gasped. “What about
drugs?
I heard that little slip!”

“Laura, I swear to God!”

“And what’s so bad about a son who’s willing to fight for his country? What’s so wrong about Irwin wanting to—”

“What’s wrong is he’s a
Christian!”
Papa roared. “He’s the son who let the other kids break his toys! The one who’s never hurt a fly! The one who turns the other cheek. Goddammit, Laura! How could
you
of all people forget that?”

“Please!” Irwin stood up, grabbed his forehead, let go of it, sat back down. “I got us into this, Papa. And with all of your help, and God’s, I can get us out.”

“Babcock got you into this!”

“And
Everett!”
Mama shouted.

“Stop!”
Irwin slammed the table so hard the plates leapt in the air. My parents stopped.

“There’s still something I haven’t told you.”

Again they grabbed their chair arms. Again we stared in awe at his mouth. “Linda,” it said softly. “My Linda. Her and, well, everything we pretty much own are sitting out in the car. Right here. Right now. Waiting to hear what we all decide.”

My parents looked at each other then—just a glance, it was over in a flash—but I could swear that I saw in it a complete suspension of hostility, and maybe even some form of delight, before they turned back to Irwin with the same grave scowls.

“Why didn’t you say so?” Papa said.

“For God’s sake, Irwin,” Mama chided. “Bring the poor girl home!”

You have no more permission to fight for me. You have killed the innocent and left my enemies standing. No more … no more …

—dying words of King Duryodhana,
Mahabharata

T
hree days after Linda moved in with us, two days after her marriage to many an Adventist girl’s idea of the Dream Male, and just a day after that Dream left her for basic training, another mind-boggling scene took place in our house. This one was a kind of “Psalm Wars, Part Two.” And, as usual, the sequel stank.

It began late at night. Mama was watching the eleven o’clock news. I was typing a paper in the kitchen. (The twins had moved upstairs, and the noise of my old Royal manual kept them awake if I worked in my room.) Papa was still on the road, so when somebody knocked hard on the front door, I joined Mama as she unlocked it.

And in burst Everett, with hair, clothes and energy flying all over the place as he announced, with repellent bravado, that he’d been at a sit-in
all week and that he’d got home just three hours ago to hear the bad news from Stoner Steve (I’d been phoning his house every night for four days). “But never fear, Kade!” he cried—as if Mama wasn’t there. “’Cause we’re gonna be okay, Winnie and me! I’m arranging a little tryout for us with the Dodgers. The B.C. Dodgers, that is!” Meaning, I guess, that he thought they would go to British Columbia together to dodge the draft.

Thanks to the way he was acting, I felt no sorrow at all as I said, “You’re too late.”

Everett popped like a party balloon, except the sound went:
“What?”

“Irwin’s already in boot.”

“No! No no
no!
Stoner said
Friday
. He wrote it down twice!”

I said, “Reality never was Stoner’s strong suit.” But I regretted it a little as Everett turned pale and fell silent. He looked like he might even start to cry—

till Mama stepped up and pertly informed him that he was a coward and a communist-lover and that Irwin, by choosing to serve his family, his country and his God, had become a hero to us all. Nothing perks up an ideologue like the sight of the ideological enemy. In fact, they both looked grimly pleased as they squared off like a couple of gunfighters. “Don’t even start!” I said. “People are asleep. And it’s too late anyway. Irwin’s already gone.”

But they didn’t hear me. They
wanted
their idiot showdown. And, as so often happens, it was innocent bystanders who ended up taking most of the bullets.

Everett drew first. It would serve Mama right, he shouted, if Irwin got blown to shit in some fucking jungle …

Then Linda walked, white-faced, into the room. Her nightie—a weird wedding gift from the closet-romantic in Mama—was awfully small, her eyes and breasts awfully large. “Who are
you?”
Everett blurted.

Linda managed to move her lips a little. Then she burst into tears.

Mama’s turn. It would serve Everett right, she said, if he was arrested at one of his damned antigovernment drug-and-sex orgies and locked up for life. And if he so much as opened his mouth in her house again, she would call the police and have him arrested this very night.

Everett opened his mouth as far as it would go and said, “Ahhhhh.” What a moron. I was no expert, but I’d begun to think he was on speed.

Mama headed for the phone: she was definitely on patriotism.

But meanwhile Freddy, on nothing but sleepiness, had staggered into the kitchen and ended up by the phone—and when she saw Mama coming
she grabbed the cord and serenely ripped the phone jack clean out of the wall.

Everett laughed, and thanked her, though I don’t think she was even awake. Then Mama slapped her in the face not once, but twice. Which made me
mad
. And then Everett, right in front of Linda, called Mama a “stupid fucking bitch.” Which made me even madder. Grabbing Mama in a bear hug, I pulled her away from Freddy but yelled at Everett, “Say that again and I’ll hurt you!” He laughed at me. Meanwhile Mama, in a frenzy, was trying to break my hold. But I’d been wrestling with Irwin for two decades. “Stop struggling,” I said. And when she didn’t, I just lifted her in the air and squeezed a little.
“Hoooof!”
she went, and the wind and fight went out of her. While poor Linda gawked at us. Good God.

Hard as the slaps had been, Freddy woke rather slowly. But once she felt how much it hurt she started to cry. Then Everett did it again. “You’re
pathetic!”
he shouted at Mama. “You fascist fucking bitch!”

That did it. Carrying Mama over to Everett, I set her down in front of him like bait in front of a fish, let them stare at each other till they were both about to scream something awful, then jumped out and punched Everett hard, right in the mouth.

It was no Micah Barnes love tap. I floored him. I also stopped Linda’s and Freddy’s tears, froze Mama, and temporarily worked wonders for my own state of mind. “Sorry,” I said, when I finally got him back on his feet. “But I learned that trick from you. Asshole Therapy, you used to call it. I still love you, Everett. Barely. But I hope to hell it was a complete cure.”

He was still glassy-eyed, and probably couldn’t understand me. But glancing from Mama’s face to Linda’s and Freddy’s, I saw glimmerings of sanity, if not amusement, and felt a glimmering of hope …

Then Bet burst into the room. “I
hate
you!” she screamed at Everett. “Get out of here!
You’re
the bitch!
You
are! I hate you! Get out!”

The fierce new bond between Mama and Bet had been evident to the rest of us for a while now, but this bordered on the berserk. There was something wrong with her, something I didn’t understand at all. “Get out of our house!” she shrieked.
“Never
come back!
You’re
the bitch!
You
are!”

Linda started crying again. Everett seemed to move from semiconsciousness straight into shock. “Cool it!” I told Bet. “I already decked him.”

But she was gone. Her eyes were pure pupil—no iris at all—and her face was a thing in a nightmare.
“Get out!”
she shrieked. “I
hate
you! Bitch! Fascist bitch!” And soon as I moved to try and calm her, Mama
snuck away over to Everett, doubled her little fist, and sucker-punched him with everything she had.

His reaction was eerie: he just fell down, got up again, and went on gaping at Bet, who was now shrieking, “Good, Mama! Good!
He’s
the bitch!”

“I’m so tired of you two,” I told Mama as I threw another bear hug on her.

“This is
my
fault!” Linda began sobbing.

“This is
his
fault!” Mama shouted. “It’s—
Hoooof!”
I jerked her wind out.