Wingshooters (15 page)

“Oh hello, Helen, Michelle,” he said, his breath visible in the cold winter air. “I’m sorry, I’m getting slow on the uptake in my old age.”

My grandmother smiled. I knew how much she liked Mr. Gordon; she always said that he was a gentleman. “That hardly describes you, Darius. You’re one of the sharpest men I know.”

“Well, not so sharp that I didn’t let myself run out of coffee. And it’s hard for me to get started in the morning without it.”

“Where’s your Lucy?” my grandmother asked.

“Oh, at home in her dog bed. She didn’t appreciate the thought of coming out in this cold weather. She’s not much for the outdoors at all, actually, which is strange for an English setter. She doesn’t run headlong into the world the way your Brett does.”

At this, he looked at me, and I felt a double rush of pleasure—because he spoke to me, and because he praised my dog. Then he turned back to my grandmother. “Did you have a nice Thanksgiving?”

My grandmother hesitated. How could she answer that? My father’s absence had defined the whole day, and all the food and beer and talking, all the football and television, couldn’t cover the silence of the telephone, the emptiness of the mailbox, the extra seat at the dining room table. As soon as the meal was over I had gone out with Brett and walked until I couldn’t feel my feet.

“Yes,” she said. “Pete and Bertha came over, and between us we ate the whole turkey. Michelle here helped mash the potatoes.” She paused, and I knew she was keeping herself from looking at me, trying as hard as she could to sound normal. “And how about you?”

“Spent it with Del and his wife,” Mr. Gordon replied. “It was nice enough, but holidays are for children. A bunch of adults sitting around and staring at each other gets tiresome after a while.” He looked at me again, warmly. “You’re lucky to have a grandchild, Helen. Especially lucky that she’s staying with you. Del and Karen, I think they got too caught up in his career to think about having a family.”

They were silent for a moment, as the subject of his son’s job lay between them. And that made me stop feeling sad about the holiday and start thinking about the clinic, which of course made me think about the Garretts.

Mr. Gordon’s mind must have turned in this direction too, for now he raised his eyes again and carefully asked, “Have you heard about what’s been happening at the school?”

This was not a real question, I knew. Of course she had heard. What he was really asking was, what do you think of it?

My grandmother wouldn’t meet his eyes now; she looked down at the cart. “Yes,” she said. “I’ve heard all about it.”

Mr. Gordon paused, and when he spoke, his voice was gentle. “They’re crucifying that man, and he did nothing wrong. In fact, he did exactly what he was
supposed
to do.”

My grandmother shivered slightly, and I wasn’t sure it was from the weather. Her warmth toward Mr. Gordon was gone; she had retreated back into herself. “I think people are upset about them not minding their own business.”

“And the wife, she followed the letter of the law. There was nothing she
could
do but make a report.”

My grandmother said nothing to this, so Mr. Gordon continued, a little more strongly now. “And it’s not just the showing up at school anymore. The wife told my son that a strange car’s been driving by their house, a gray Buick. A couple of nights ago someone fired a shot over their roof.” He leaned uncomfortably close now, his wrinkled hand gripping the cart. “
Earl
drives a gray Buick,” he said, and his cheeks had turned red. “He’s gone too far, Helen. He’s losing control. You’ve got to get Charlie to stop him.”

My grandmother stepped back and flinched as if he’d reached out to strike her. “They had no business coming here, Darius. They had no right. They’ve brought on all this trouble themselves.” But even as she said this, I heard the uncertainty in her voice, as if she were speaking someone else’s words and not her own. And in her face I saw a fissure, an opening, and I wasn’t sure what it meant.

Mr. Gordon pulled himself up straight again, but he kept his clear eyes on her face. “It’s not just about them anymore. It’s about Earl, and that little boy. Who’s getting worked up about what’s happening to
him
?” His face had turned even redder, but he didn’t seem to feel the cold. “My son looked at the X-rays, Helen, and he agreed with the nurse. And you put that together with what the teacher saw, and there’s no way they couldn’t call social services.”

And now my grandmother shook her head and her lips began to quiver. “But it’s Earl, Darius. It’s
Earl
.” She paused, started to speak, stopped, and started up again. “He’s sat at my dining room table and eaten my cooking. He’s sat next to Charlie at the coffee shop. He’s gone hunting with Charlie and Jim and the others for more years than I can count.” She gripped the handle of the shopping cart as if holding on for her life. “And I remember him as a
boy
, Darius, when we were all young, working with his daddy at the gun shop. I remember the day he came home from the war, the day he married Alice.” She looked up at Mr. Gordon’s face, and her eyes flashed with anger and pain. “How can you ask me to believe this about him? How can it be true?”

Mr. Gordon didn’t answer her; he just lowered his head. My grandmother, the floodgates opened now, continued. “But Kevin’s arm, and those scars on his back … couldn’t there be another explanation?” She looked down at her gloves and sighed, and in the long moment before she spoke again, I was aware of the traffic going by, the shouted greetings of a teenage boy, the creak and bell of the automatic door sliding open as someone came out of the store.

“I just don’t think I can make Charlie see it,” she said. “Even if it was someone else who reported it, Darius, he’s never going to go against Earl. And the fact that it was the two of
them
—well, that’s just fuel on the fire.”

And now Mr. Gordon looked back at her and their eyes met, and something passed between them—some kind of understanding or acknowledgment. I was stunned by what I had heard. For I knew now that she believed him. She believed what Mr. Gordon was telling her, which meant she believed the Garretts. She believed that Earl Watson was harming his son, and in this conviction, she was going against the explicit, active belief of my grandfather, who thought that the Garretts were lying. Or maybe he didn’t really think they were lying; maybe he just thought that things were being exaggerated.

And there’s this last possibility also. There’s the possibility that Charlie knew full well that Earl was hurting Kevin and was choosing to defend him anyway. This I could not entertain. This I could not fit into my image of him, and so I simply chose to ignore it. Because I always saw Charlie as my defender, as an honorable man who didn’t live in a world that allowed harm to come to children. It didn’t matter whether it was me, or a stranger, or Earl Watson’s son. There are things that good men do not tolerate.

Whatever the case regarding Charlie’s stance on Earl, my grandmother didn’t agree with him. And seeing her doubt, seeing her tacit agreement with Darius Gordon, made me realize that I didn’t know her as well as I thought. What else did she have her own mind about? How else did she diverge from her husband? And what had it cost her all of these years to be his silent wife, his constant supporter, with no opinions of her own; no way to make a space that was separate from him?

I don’t know whether she said something to Charlie, but I do know that it was right around this time that the house got very quiet. My grandparents didn’t engage in their usual chatter over coffee and toast in the morning. At supper, we all sat silently around the dining room table, speaking only to ask for butter or salt. In the evenings, my grandmother stayed in the kitchen to listen to a radio program or read her Bible—she no longer kept it hidden—and I wonder how much of her withdrawal had to do with her religion, with her belief that there are greater loyalties than allegiances to friends. As the tension in the house increased she grew more open, more defiant, displaying her faith as if she were flaunting evidence of a new, attentive lover. Even Brett seemed to pick up on the change in the atmosphere—he would go from one of them to the other, licking their hands and whining, as if begging for them to make up. Then one Friday afternoon when my grandmother set out the usual extra plate for Jim, Charlie told her she should take it away.

“Why?” she asked, genuinely surprised.

“Because he’s not coming over tonight.”

She picked up the plate, half-turned back toward the kitchen. “That’s too bad. I was going to make his favorite tuna casserole. Well, I guess I can just make it next Friday.”

Charlie was lying on the couch, and he sat up so he could look at her. “You don’t need to, Helen. At least not for him. He’s not coming over anymore.”

She turned all the way around and looked at Charlie hard, and he met her eyes with defiance. And I realized and saw
her
realize exactly what this meant—that Darius and Del Gordon weren’t the only ones in town who disagreed with what was happening to the Garretts.

NINE

T
he classroom visits stopped soon after that, seemingly on their own. I learned later by eaves-dropping on the teachers at lunch that Mr. Baker had put an end to them—not out of any concern for Mr. Garrett, but because the constant presence of strange adults was becoming a distraction. It was upsetting the students, alarming the teachers, causing trouble all around. And he was worried about the declining enrollment—not only in Mr. Garrett’s fifth grade class, but in the fourth grade classes below it, because parents were already making arrangements with parochial schools in the event that Mrs. Hebig did not return. So gradually things returned to normal, or as normal as they could be.

Except that my comfortable invisibility of a few weeks earlier had vanished, and everyone discovered me anew. I don’t know whether the increased attention was a spillover of the hostility toward the Garretts, or if, with the classroom visits coming to an end, people needed a place to channel their anger. And I don’t know if the change was related to the latest news from overseas. The North Vietnamese Army was on the move back into the southern part of the country—and suddenly, the other kids were giving me colder, harder stares. I was being called names again—Jap, Chink, Gook—and getting pushed around more in the hallway.

And going to church wasn’t any more pleasant than going to school. At Sunday services that week, no one would sit next to us, which really meant next to me; they’d pause briefly when they saw me sitting in the pew and then continue down the aisle. Even Father Pace greeted me with a bold and naked stare, which Charlie noticed and returned with a glare of his own.

But if church was hard for me, it had also gotten awkward for Earl Watson and his family. Earl was almost feverish as he shook everyone’s hand; his wife waited silently behind him. Next to her was Jake, who looked uncomfortable in his jacket and tie, and Kevin, who kept his watery blue eyes on the floor. It seemed to me that some of the greetings that Earl got were less than enthusiastic; that a few people appeared to change direction when they saw him; that there was something veiled or distant in their eyes. Deerhorn was a small town, and word of his troubles was likely to have traveled all over, from the bars to the beauty salons to the feed and tack store where the farmers came in from the country. Maybe I was imagining all of this, though, and everything was normal. Maybe everyone would have stood by him no matter what was being said, especially given who had started the talking.

My grandfather remained steadfast in defense of his friend. If anything, as the days went by without further word from my father, he grew even stronger in his convictions. But because of the new silence between him and my grandmother, because she no longer welcomed some of his friends in the house, Charlie was spending more and more time at the gun store. He went there now between his two trips to the coffee shop instead of coming home, which meant that when he left the house at eight in the morning, we didn’t see him again until supper. If my grandmother was unhappy with this new arrangement, she didn’t show it; she just worked harder around the house and spent more time with her Bible. When Charlie did come home, we’d eat supper without talking; then he’d lie down in the living room to watch TV while my grandmother retreated back into the kitchen.

It didn’t feel right in the house anymore. Between not hearing from my father, and the absence of Charlie, I was lonelier than ever. The silence between my grandparents was heavy, uncomfortable, full of disappointment and mistrust. I’d never seen this before, never known them not to agree, and I didn’t like to be there inside of it.

The dog was as unsettled as everyone else. He watched me all the time now, even more closely, his brown eyes filled with concern. Wherever I went, he needed to be touching me, and I wasn’t sure if it was for my reassurance or his own. One day he went after a loose dog in the neighborhood, and then, a few days later, he bared his teeth at the mailman. We both needed to be outside, to run out the agitation, but it was December now and so cold most days that even three layers of clothes and a heavy coat was no defense against the biting air. I had to stay indoors whether I liked it or not, even though the cold outside was easier to bear than the chill inside the house.

The only time I left was to go to school, and that was becoming more difficult, since Jeannie Allen had suddenly rediscovered me. I’d managed to avoid her for most of the fall—maybe she, like everyone else, had been distracted by the Garretts—but on Tuesday morning, Jeannie was waiting for me at the edge of her yard like she was defending her house against an invasion.

“You better go another way,” she called out as I approached. “No niggers or Japs allowed on this road.”

I didn’t answer and tried to figure out what to do. Jeannie was a big girl, half a foot taller than me, and my encounters with her the previous spring had left me with bruises on my knees from when she’d thrown me on the ground, and a black eye from when she had punched me. Her family, for some reason I never learned, was avoided by other people. At school, Jeannie had two equally outcast friends; the three of them clustered together on the playground and in the cafeteria and tried not to draw attention to themselves. But here, out of school, she was master of her domain, and as soon as I got close enough she lunged. I sidestepped her, swinging my body as far as I could to the left, and her fingers grabbed the end of my jacket.

“Where do you think you’re going?” she asked as she swung me around, and I went with the motion, not resisting, flying like a cat, thinking that she might lose hold of me.

“Let go!” I yelled out, and then I struck down just like Charlie had taught me, a hard chop above her wrist, where the arm is tender and vulnerable. Jeannie howled and let go of me and touched her hurt arm. I jabbed left, and she reached out again, but by the time her arms came together on the empty air, I’d drawn up and taken off to the right. She was off-balance, almost falling, and I was past her.

* * *

My run-in with Jeannie made me remember another difficult trip to school. That earlier trip had been several years before, when I was still living in Japan. My father usually walked me to the English-language school in the morning, and then a teacher’s aide or one of our neighbors would walk me to the Japanese school after lunch. But on this day, for some reason, my father couldn’t go, and so my mother had to take me instead. She didn’t speak much as we passed by the stores close to our apartment—the bicycle shop, the fish market, the ubiquitous noodle houses—and unlike my father, she didn’t hold my hand. She wore high heels and an outfit straight out of a fashion magazine, with a scarf around her neck and big, dark glasses. As we walked through the noisy, crowded sidewalks of Tokyo, people turned to stare at her, and I remember feeling nervous and also a bit proud to be in the company of such a glamorous woman.

When we got to the English-language school, the teachers welcomed my mother warmly and scurried about as if they were receiving a celebrity. They told her how well I was doing—I could write the entire English alphabet, and spell out my full name—but when they showed her one of my drawings, she glanced at it indifferently, as if it were a letter in a language she couldn’t read. They looked from her to me and back again, curious, perplexed, and I could see they were trying to make sense of her beauty in relation to my plainness. Other parents—expatriates from England, Australia, New Zealand, America—arrived with their children; they dropped them off with kisses and hugs and spoke easily to each other.

That stopped when they got to my mother. They greeted her politely, some spoke a few words, and she replied in her easy English. But it was clear to everyone, even to me, that she was out of place here. Not because she was Japanese—that would have been too easy an explanation, and besides, these were all foreigners who had chosen to live in Japan. And I don’t know that it would have felt any less awkward if she’d taken me to the Japanese school, which she didn’t; the usual teacher’s aide would do that. No, the disconnect was something much more fundamental than nationality or language or race. My mother did not know how to relate to other parents or to teachers; how to behave in a place that focused on children. She did not know how to exist in a world where she wasn’t at the center of everything.

In early December, finally, there was one nice day—a day when the sun briefly made an appearance and the temperature cracked forty. Feeling as sprung as I would have on the first day of summer, I took my bike—once again leaving Brett behind—and rode the three miles out of town. I followed my usual route along the back roads, passing the park but not entering it. I went by the turnoff for the trailers too, then turned onto Besemer Road, not slowing down until I reached the satellite clinic. The parking lot—like the side of the road—was ringed with dirty snow, which had been pushed there by the plows after the most recent storms and was speckled with gravel and mud. There were three cars parked in front of the clinic, and through the windows I could see the shapes of people moving inside. I circled back and waited behind a small stand of trees so that people coming out wouldn’t see me. I waited there an hour, although it felt more like ten, and each time the door opened I stood straight up, but the first time it was somebody taking out the trash and the next time it was a mother and her boy. Then finally, just as the cold was starting to get to me, the door opened and Mrs. Garrett came out.

She sighed and pulled her blue coat tight against the cold, as she had the first time I came to see her. But this time, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a cigarette. She lit it and then stood holding it in her right hand, her left arm keeping the coat closed around her. I couldn’t read the expression on her face, but it looked like her thoughts were heavy. I wondered what she had felt the day she reported Earl, what she felt going to work every day. I wondered if she and her husband were wearing down, as my grandfather and his friends believed. And from the distance of almost forty years, I wonder this too: why exactly had the Garretts come to Deerhorn? For the sake of their careers? I knew that the clinic expansion provided an opportunity for Mrs. Garrett, but surely they could have found good jobs in Chicago. For the quiet rural life, far from the noise and stress of the city? Or to get away from something? It seemed an odd choice to move to Deerhorn, even if you factored in Mrs. Garrett’s connection with Del Gordon. But maybe they weren’t really aware of what they were getting into; maybe they had no sense of how bad it would be. The truth is, I’ll never understand what led to their decision. We never really know why anyone does anything.

I do know, however, that they occupied a space in my mind I hadn’t realized was there. It wasn’t just curiosity, or attraction, or loneliness, or allegiance, but a need to have them like and acknowledge me. I admired them—for what they’d achieved, but also what they’d endured; they’d risked more than me, and bore their hardships gracefully. I fully realize that behind the image they projected, they could both have been rife with faults and imperfections. Maybe Mr. Garrett never put the toilet seat down. Maybe Mrs. Garrett never called her mother. Maybe they drank too much or littered or were petty and jealous; maybe they weren’t the good people I imagined. I will never know who they were beyond my limited perceptions, and in not knowing, I realize that my picture of them will always be incomplete. It’s a picture I’ve burnished to an improbable sheen because I knew them when I was a child, because they were good to me, and because I see them through the lens of time and sadness.

Mrs. Garrett’s cigarette had burned down to a nub, and I was afraid I’d miss my chance if I waited any longer. So I pedaled out from behind the trees and rode into the parking lot. I must have shot out more quickly than I’d intended, because I didn’t see the deep pothole at the top of the driveway—my front tire caught it and the bike came to a dead stop, catapulting me over the handlebars. As I flew, my leg got tangled and I came down on the gravel, my right ankle caught and twisted in the back wheel. I cried out in surprise as much as in pain, and felt more than a little embarrassed. But the fall must have looked spectacular, because it brought Mrs. Garrett running down from the landing, yelling, “Michelle!” and then, “Shit! Shit!”

She reached me in what seemed like an impossibly short time and disentangled me from the bike. “Are you all right?” she asked as she helped me roll over into a sitting position. Her hands seemed both to check and position me—putting me into place while also feeling for any obvious fracture. Nothing hurt except my ankle and I told her so.

“Okay,” she said, “let’s get you inside.” And with that she helped me stand—right foot not touching the ground—and then lifted me as easily as if I were a cat and carried me toward the front door. She had one arm under my legs and the other beneath my back; my arms were around her neck for support. I remember being surprised that such a slight-looking woman could handle my weight so easily. And as I became aware of her thin shoulders, her strong hands, even the press of her breasts, I remember thinking that I couldn’t recall the last time a woman had held me. Had this trip lasted more than about twenty seconds, I might have gotten far too used to it. But it was over as soon as she carried me through the door. She set me down, and then there I was inside the satellite clinic—the place that had been the topic of so much speculation, the target of so much disapproval. Inside, two other adults—one man, one woman—stood blinking their surprise.

We appeared to be in a kind of reception room with a desk near the door and some upholstered chairs, a few nondescript paintings on the walls. There was also a desk and file cabinet against the far wall; the work and waiting must have occurred in the same space. Once inside, I was reminded of how small the building was, especially since it had been divided to make separate rooms.

“She fell,” Mrs. Garrett told the two other people, as if that explained my presence. “I’m going to take her into Exam One.” And with that she led me into one of the subdivided rooms and sat me down on the raised exam table. I wondered what other people had thought when they found themselves alone with her. Were they nervous or uncomfortable, as they often seemed with me? Were they scared? Or were they perfectly all right? Did they avoid her eyes or shrink back as she approached? Did some people refuse her help altogether? I was sure they did; I was sure that some people would rather endure their pain and illness than subject themselves to her touch. And how did she deal with their reactions to her, the extra level of anxiety her patients might feel? Was she comforting and soothing? Was she annoyed?