The Night Watchman (21 page)

At just before two we pulled into the gravel clearing next to Ernie’s house, beside his rusted Chevrolet Impala. Rosie, Ernie’s wire-haired mutt, raced towards us from out of the scrub beyond our orange trees, lunging and biting at my front tyres.

When Jorge pushed out on his door and opened his arms to Rosie, she twirled around in tight, ecstatic circles, then jumped up on him, yelping. A moment later, Ernie stepped out of his house with his hands tucked into the front pockets of his faded jeans. He was wearing his leather vest and a white T-shirt. A green feather stuck up at the back of his cowboy hat. It was a Native American touch that seemed just right on him, maybe because it seemed a reminder that he and I were from far away – another world entirely, in fact. His shaggy brown hair fell across his shoulders. He was barefoot, and he’d already put on his surgical gloves.

Gazing at me as though hiding a smile, he reminded me, as he often did, of Albrecht Dürer’s self-portrait – the one we’d seen with Aunt Olivia in the Prado, in Madrid, and which he’d bought as a poster. I know for a fact that Ernie realized something important about who he wanted to be that day, while communing with the long-dead German artist, because he later told me what it was:
I can inhabit my own country.

Before I was aware of even opening my car door, I was walking towards my little brother. Seeing him emptied me of everything except the need to hold him in my arms. He took off his hat and smiled his sideways smile for me. We embraced, and I breathed in on the warm oatmeal scent of him. I rubbed my cheek hard against his so that the sandpaper of his stubble could remind me that he’d become a man. He rubbed me back, which always made me feel as if we were brothers in a myth or dream, children of the forest getting to know each other again through their skin.

Having Ernie safe and whole, and all grown up, with an independent life amidst his flowers and trees, was so wide and deep – with emotions too complex for me to ever try to name – that it contained all I had ever accomplished in my life, and all I could ever hope to accomplish, too. We hugged for longer than most people would consider appropriate because that was how long it took for us to be ready to separate.

When we finally let go, Jorge ran forward and crashed into his uncle’s belly. Ernie gasped, since that’s what the boy wanted, then kissed the top of his head.

‘Francisco’s hungry!’ Jorge declared, holding up his giraffe. ‘He wants tuna!’

‘Sorry, I made eggplant stew and a big salad. But everything is fresh, fresh, fresh – picked this morning from the garden!’

Ernie was hoping that his enthusiasm might make up for the wrong menu. But over the past few months, Jorge had discovered the joy – and power – of being inflexible. ‘Francisco wants tuna!’ he whined, and he began to stamp around like he does when he’s overtired, so I grabbed him up with a growl and folded him over my shoulder, which got him giggling; he was still a sponge for love, thank goodness.

Rosie barked irately because we were having fun without her.

‘Olá, Tio,’
Nati told Ernie, coming around the car to him.

‘Olá, Nathaniel,’
my brother replied.

Nati leaned in for a kiss while trying to maintain his distance. With my brother, he often looked as though he didn’t know where to put his hands and feet.

‘You got any photos of the Ponderosa?’ I asked Ernie. ‘Nati wants a look. And if you have any shots of the old folks, you can show him those, too.’ I was hoping Nati might give me points for remembering his request right away, but he avoided my glance to show me he hadn’t yet forgiven me for whatever I’d done wrong.

‘I might be able to scare up one or two photos of where we lived,’ Ernie told his nephew, playing up his Colorado twang for comic effect, ‘but I don’t have any of your grandparents.’

After I put Jorge down, he turned in a wobbly circle, getting the most out of his dizziness, in order to keep my attention. I grabbed a hold of him and scissor-gripped him between my legs, which was what he wanted. While Rosie licked at his hands, the boy looked up at me and whispered, ‘Dad, the flowers!’

‘Go get ’em!’ I whispered back, pushing him off.

The basket in which we’d collected the pomegranate flowers was in the back seat. Jorge crawled in and came back out so excitedly that he spilled half of them on the ground. Rosie started nosing them around, her black nostrils flaring and huffing. Jorge, Ernie and I kneeled down and picked them up.

‘Thanks, Sweet Pea,’ Ernie said as he took the flowers from his little nephew. ‘You get my Most Valuable Player award today!’

The kids and I carried our bags into the house while Ernie put the basket of flowers on his work table, an old oaken door we’d rescued from a dumpster in Évora a few years back. Rosie remained outside, scratching at the screen door, staring in with the loneliest face she could come up with, but a few seconds later – not having any gift for melodrama – she gave up and ran off.

The Villa Ernesto had no divisions – no rooms, cabinets, or closets. No place where an intruder could hide. And no mirrors.

The July sunshine had turned the yellow curtains to gold, and the earthen scent of the fields swept into the house through the open windows. The boys and I removed our shoes. Jorge slid across the wooden floor over to the rosebushes surrounding Ernie’s bed. He sniffed at a clump of red blossoms. Turning to us, he said in an announcer’s voice,
‘Mais perto do que pode pensar!’ A lot closer than you might think!
It was a billboard advertisement for the Corte Inglés department store that he must have spotted on the way out of Lisbon.

Ernie said, ‘Try the flame-coloured ones, Sweet Pea.’

Jorge sniffed hard at the showiest of the blossoms and twirled his head as if he were about to faint from its perfume, then collapsed back on the bed. Whenever my brother was nearby, he turned into a circus performer, ever eager to earn his uncle’s spotlight.

Ernie had hung our framed photograph of Patsy Cline above his headboard. I read the dedication to myself:
To Bill’s kids, Kisses, Patsy.
She was wearing a plaid shirt and white cowboy hat, seducing the camera with that sassy, rodeo-queen look she’d perfected. Touching my fingertip to the heart she’d drawn above the
i
in
Kisses,
I remembered how Dad told us that he’d charmed Mom
off her feet
at Joe’s Steaks in Washington DC. Mom had been a freshman at Marymount College. She’d won a scholarship sponsored by the church back in Portugal.

If Dad hadn’t delighted her with his gossip about Patsy’s latest tour, and kissed her with such wild-hearted passion at the door to her dormitory, Ernie and I would’ve never been born. And Mom would still be alive. Which is proof, you might say, of an astonishing thing: that everything that has happened to you in your life has meant that a thousand other things never would.

Mom told me that before they were married Dad had been
maravilhoso –
wonderful. Once, she and I made a list in Portuguese of words she’d have used to describe him when they’d first met:
elegante, espirituoso, charmante, maluco . . .
He’d crooned songs to her by Cole Porter. And he was the first man whose hands seemed sure enough to lead her around a dance floor, too. It was only after they were married that he started to brutalize her. She never understood why he changed. My theory was that he never had; he just faked being wonderful wonderfully well.

My brother studied Patsy’s photo while looking over my shoulder.

‘Patsy drew a heart,’ I told him, pointing. ‘I hadn’t remembered.’

‘Our one brush with fame,’ he replied, ‘and it came before we were born!’

‘I don’t get it,’ Nati said.

I handed him the picture. ‘Dad was one of Patsy’s roadies,’ I told him. ‘She signed this picture for him in 1962. He and Mom only married in 1966, and I came along four years later. He asked her to sign it for his future kids – for me and Ernie.’

‘Wow, Grandpa sounds kinda cool!’

I was certain Nati said
Grandpa
to defy me, so I said in a tone of warning, ‘If he sounds cool, then there’s something badly wrong with your hearing.’

‘Whatever,’ Nati said dismissively. ‘Who’s Patsy Cline anyway?’ He handed the photo back to his uncle.

‘In my opinion, the best country singer of all time,’ Ernie told him. ‘But she died in a plane crash in 1963.’

‘And that was the end of Dad’s music career,’ I announced happily.

‘Why was that?’ Nati asked.

‘He had a reputation by then. No one would hire him after Patsy died.’

‘A reputation for what?’

‘For fucking up all the time.’

Nati eyed me because I’d only said the word
fuck
in front of him a handful of times. I slung my bag onto the middle futon. Sensing my emotions were about to go haywire, I started to add up the pluses and minuses of taking a Valium.

Ernie jarred me out of my calculations by clapping his hands. ‘That’s enough talk! Everybody to the dining table.’

On my way over, I stopped at Ernie’s desk to study his latest painting. A slender yellow figure with emaciated arms was climbing up a black, ominous, pyramid-shaped mountain made of burnt twigs and seeds. The sun – a soft circle of fire-coloured leonotis blossoms – was melting over its peak in waves of violet and blue. At the corner of the landscape, in a lush, cup-shaped valley that was both protective and imprisoning, were two tiny men and an elderly woman. With their heads raised and mouths agape, they seemed astonished by the view – and hemmed in by the perilous wall of darkness they faced. They stood with their hands touching, like paper cut-outs – wanting to help one another, but intimidated.

I knew I was the blue man with an orange head; Ernie always made me with wild delphiniums and California poppies. He’d told me once that they were the flowers that appeared to him whenever he thought of me.

The climbing woman’s slight build and angular awkwardness implied that she’d never make it to the summit.

‘This is the first time you’ve put Mom in one of your paintings,’ I called to Ernie, who was carrying a tall vase of pink gladioli to his dining table.

‘Did you know it was her right away?’ he asked, smiling gratefully.

‘Of course,’ I assured him.

My brother called the kids to the table. In his black ceramic salad bowl were home-grown greens crowned by yellow and orange nasturtiums. There was a big bottle of Coke for Nati and Jorge, and a carafe of carrot juice for Ernie and me.

Our place settings – from Thailand – were made of shimmering pink silk, and our glasses – Mexican – were thick and blue, with greenish air bubbles caught in the glass. It often seemed to me that Ernie was like a man recently cured of blindness – always seeking to surround himself with colour.

Jorge and I took our usual places but Nati said he’d wait until the food was served. He stood by the window overlooking his uncle’s rose garden.

‘Sure thing,’ Ernie told him. Putting on Aunt Olivia’s Christmas-tree potholder gloves, he clanged open the door to the oven and lifted out a white ceramic casserole of stewed eggplant. At the table, he eased it down on top of a tile trivet and stood back to check on its position. Finding that it wasn’t in the right place, he slid it closer to the salad bowl. That didn’t work either, so he moved it nearer the edge.

Life for Ernie often came down to a chess match against himself. Rushing him only caused him to lose, so I told him it wasn’t a problem when he apologized for taking so much time to get everything ready. Nati gazed out the window. I imagined he was picturing himself walking on the main road to Évora and catching a bus home.

After my brother’s seventh move, Jorge asked me what his uncle was doing. I’d explained before about Ernie’s compulsive behaviours, but the little boy had forgotten. ‘He needs to get things lined up just right.’

Finally, when Ernie had everything in the right position, he sat next to Jorge, and Nati dropped down next to me on the other side of the table. My brother asked me to say grace. I used it as an opportunity to broker a truce with Nati. ‘We thank the soil of the Alentejo and the plants themselves for the gifts they’ve given us today,’ I began. ‘We are grateful to Ernie for his gardening and cooking, and to Jorge and Nati for giving up a Saturday in front of the television and on the Internet. And we solemnly apologize for any wrongs we’ve committed since we were last together.’

Solemnly
was Aunt Olivia’s word.
Solenemente.
I could still hear the abundant roundness of that word as she pronounced it. She had made it part of many an incantation meant to turn two lost boys into something like men.

‘Amen,’ Ernie said, smiling at me for having thanked our aunt in code.

I was hoping for an all-is-forgiven expression on my eldest’s face, but he turned away from me as though I were intruding into his thoughts. Nati’s taut silence during the rest of the meal was like a neon sign flashing
I’m Miserable And It’s All My Dad’s Fault!
When it came time for dessert, Ernie’s famous chocolate and cinnamon brownies, the sulking young man patted his belly, said he was stuffed, and found refuge on the screened-in porch with
Moby Dick.

Jorge grew sleepy halfway through his third brownie, leaned his head down on the table and closed his eyes. ‘Time for your nap,’ Ernie told him, taking the rest of the brownie from his limp fingers and handing it to me. He cradled Jorge in his arms and hoisted him up, then showed me a concerned look. ‘Is it okay?’ he whispered.

‘Jesus, Ernie, you know you don’t have to ask,’ I told him in a frustrated voice.

He carried Jorge to his futon and tucked him in with quick and precise hand movements. I realized I admired my brother more than anyone I knew, and watching the delight in his eyes as he slipped a pillow underneath my son’s head salvaged my day. It was as if I’d managed to give both him and Jorge the gift they’d most needed. I’d already made Ana promise that if I died before the kids were adults, she’d make sure that Ernie was a constant presence in Jorge’s life. From my brother, my son would learn to surround himself with simple and beautiful things – and maybe even stop running from silence. And my brother wouldn’t be broken by my death if he knew the boy was counting on him.