Martin and John (6 page)

“That Johnson,” my father was saying, pushing his empty plate away and reaching for his beer. “Do you know how much he got for plumbing that new Casa del Sol?” I looked at him over my mother’s arm as she placed a thick slice of chocolate cake in front of me. I shook my head; my father drank some beer. “Let me tell you: thirty thousand dollars.” I widened my eyes as far as I could, my mouth already full of cake. “More?” my mother said, a hand on his plate. “I’m full, thank you very much,” he said, and my mother moved to the
oven and played with the towel in her hands. To me, my father said, “And who
really
did that restaurant?” “You,” I got out between bites. “Damn straight I did.” My father shoved his chair back several feet, almost hitting my mother. “That little Mex just wrote out the check like it was nothing. Here you are, Señor Mister Johnson sir, and thank you very much. Well,” my father said, and then he swigged the last of his beer and set his glass on the table heavily, “I guess I’ll be damned if I’ll ever see money like that.” As he walked from the kitchen my mother swept his plate and glass from the table. He stopped in the doorway and turned on me. “You clean The Factory’s stall today?” My jaw stopped working and a forkful of cake clung to the roof of my mouth like wet clay. I stared at my father. He looked back, one hand rubbing the expanse of his belly. “Well?” “Henry, please,” my mother said. “John always does his chores.” “Well then,” my father said. “Good night,
family.”
My mother watched me while I chewed and swallowed the last bite of cake. Behind his closed door, my father burped. The sound was short and explosive, but muffled, like a distant gunshot. I put my fork and plate in my mother’s outstretched hand. She kissed me on the forehead. “I’ve made up the couch for you tonight,” she said. Her voice was tired. I wanted to apologize for not taking out the cans, but I didn’t. As I left the kitchen I heard her behind me, washing away the last traces of the meal.

WAKING UP DURING the night put me back in the hospital: the living room walls weren’t what I normally opened my eyes to, and the strange pull of pajamas had me scratching my neck and crotch. I sat up just in time to see the refrigerator light go off. After a few seconds I heard a glass being set on the metal grate in the sink. I slid down into the couch and watched my father walk past the door, feet heavy on the linoleum. A few minutes later I walked as silently as I could to my room. Hearing nothing, I moved to my parents’ door; it was partially open, but I couldn’t make out the bed. My father was already snoring. Back on the couch it was hot and the blanket weighed on my body, but I didn’t kick it off. In the hallway the clock cuckooed three times. Then, almost as if he’d heard, our stupid rooster crowed, announcing a dawn still hours away.

AT SCHOOL, KIDS I hardly knew asked me questions that started with “My father told me.…” I told them nothing. They’d been like that the day after Justin’s funeral, and when I told them about Justin they just nodded their heads solemnly—they didn’t understand. Because it wasn’t solemnity I felt, it was just a strangeness. And telling them, or telling my teachers, who gave me breaks on my tests as though my brain were dead and not my brother, just made me feel empty. Robbed, really, of a feeling that I hadn’t even had time to understand. No, Martin was mine, and I told them nothing about him, nothing at all.

By the time I got home it was four o’clock. There was still an hour or more before my father came in. I found my mother on the living room couch, her sewing baskets filling the cushions on both sides of her. I sat down, resting my back against the foot of the couch and her soft leg. “How was school?” she asked. “Fine,” I said. “Everyone was talking about Martin.” “Word travels fast.” She chuckled a bit, and I heard the nearly silent rasp of thread being pulled through fabric. “What did you do today?” I asked her. “Well, I’ll tell you,” my mother said, and her finger tapped me on the head once. “I was going out by the old barn to see how much firewood we have, and I nearly stepped on a rattlesnake.” “No!” “Really, John, I’m serious.” “But I didn’t think there were any around here. I thought the woods were too cold for them.” “They don’t come from the woods, they come from the fields. An old barn is a great place for them to catch rats and mice, not to mention poach eggs.” She worked another length of thread through whatever it was she was sewing. “So what did you do?” I asked. “You mean after I pulled my heart out of my mouth? Well, I went straight for your
.22.
And then I thought, The dogs, and I called them in. You can just imagine. Squire was flipping cartwheels at being let in the house, and Major just limped straight to your father’s chair and went to sleep.” I laughed with her, looking at my father’s big brown chair, and imagined Major curled in its sunken seat. “Well, Martin practically jumped out of bed when I barged into your room. And he nearly had a heart attack when I grabbed your gun from
the closet. Snake, I said, though I doubt that made him feel any better, but I was gone before he could say anything.” She laughed. “I think I interrupted him, you know?” Quickly I said, “You shot it.” “One shot, through the head. Surprising even myself, I might add.” I turned and looked up at her. “You’re not putting me on, are you?” She dropped her needle and thread noisily and raised her arms in an open gesture. “Have I ever put you on before?” “No,” I had to admit, and turned around again. A moment later, I heard a thread snap. “So what did Martin do today?” “Stayed in bed. I think his eye is bothering him more than he lets on.” She seemed about to go on, but just then the dogs barked and pebbles crunched in the driveway. “Is that your father already?” my mother asked, and her sewing supplies rattled as she stuffed them in a basket. “Well, isn’t he early today?” I followed her to the kitchen, surprised when, moments later, Martin joined me at the table. He wore the jeans I’d found him in and one of my shirts. “Well, look who’s up,” my mother said, stopping what she was doing to wash her hands and pour Martin a glass of milk. “How’s your eye feeling?” “Fine,” he said, lightly touching the bandage. “Thanks for the milk.” “Oh, nothing at all,” my mother said, and stopped for a moment to look at Martin. “Nothing at all.” Martin looked into his glass of milk, but he didn’t drink it.

My father opened the door. He stood in it long enough to pat a couple of panting brown snouts and then he entered the house, the door slamming on the heels of his boots. “We’re
having pork chops,” my mother announced. “Hi, son,” my father said, but he wasn’t looking at me. Martin looked up from his milk. “You’re Henry, right?” “I’m Henry,” my father said. “John tell you that?” “No, Bea did.” From the counter my mother said, “Mr. and Mrs. seemed so stuffy—” “You,” my father interrupted her, turning to me. “What is your rifle doing by the old barn?” Wide-eyed, I looked from my father to my mother. The last hour vanished from my brain. I extended my hand, pointing at my mother. “It was her,” I said, “she did it.” “That true?” my father said, no longer looking at me. My mother laughed a little. “Oh, I completely forgot about it. The excitement of the moment, I guess.” “What
are
you talking about?” My father came the rest of the way into the kitchen, went to the refrigerator, popped open a beer. “You’ll never believe it,” she said, back to him, hands buried in a bowl of something. “There was a rattlesnake out there. Four feet long, I’d guess.” “Horseshit,” my father said. “There aren’t any rattlers around here. Stop making excuses.” He sat at the table across from Martin, adjacent to me. Quietly, my mother said, “Well, I’m pretty sure it was a rattlesnake.” “Horseshit,” my father said again. “Female hysteria. And it’s still no excuse for leaving a gun lying around where anyone, one of the dogs, anything, might happen across it.” In a solemn voice he added, “You know, after what happened with Justin I’d have thought you’d be a little more responsible.” My mother washed her hands again, then went to her baking cabinet. She returned with a plate of brownies
and set them heavily on the table. “Here,” she said. “Dinner won’t be ready for an hour. Might as well help yourself.” To my father she said, “It won’t happen again.”

Suddenly I was behind Martin’s eyes again, and the bandage over the left one gained new meaning. Half a picture, it must seem like.
What happened here?
I’d have asked myself if I were he: where’s the other half? Martin raised his milk to his mouth and drained the glass in one quick movement. I waited impatiently for him to ask his question, for my parents to try to answer it. But all he said was, “Need any help?” He spoke to my mother. My father laughed as if he’d just heard an absurd joke, then grabbed the brownies. “Make these in between shooting rattlers?” he said. “Or bears?” He laughed again, then left the room. Loudly, I said, “I told her I didn’t believe her.” Martin looked up at me. He seemed confused, but he turned away when my mother put her hand on his shoulder. “Why don’t you join John and his father in the living room and watch a little TV or something while I finish dinner?” She picked up his glass. Her cheeks were red, her forehead damp. Then she reached her empty hand in her pants pocket and pulled out something. She fingered it once or twice noisily, then set it before me. “This is for you,” she said, and went back to the sink. The object on the table was semitransparent. Its thirteen beads were irregularly shaped, and it was pierced at the top by a braided length of dark blue thread. I slid it off the table as quietly as possible, but the beads announced themselves with each motion.
Then, the rattle silenced in my pocket, I went to the living room. My father was wiping the chair seat and his backside. “Goddammit,” he said. “Dog hair everywhere.”

MARTIN SLEPT QUIETLY, though his body seemed incredibly hot. Maybe I just wasn’t used to anyone sleeping beside me. My father’s only comment about Martin’s continued presence was that he wasn’t going to have someone sleeping on his couch every night. Every half hour or so, Martin rearranged himself, arms, legs, which side he slept on. Once, he twisted about in bed, and when he’d finished one of his arms lay across my stomach. Crickets ground their legs together among the closed petals of the roses struggling on that side of the house. I could feel a line of sweat forming underneath Martin’s arm. He coughed once, then started snoring quietly. I tapped the rattle I’d tied to my neck and suddenly both he and the crickets were silent.

MY MOTHER TOOK the bandage off Martin’s face on a Wednesday, and all day Thursday I stared at the long curved scab that just chopped off his left eyebrow. By Friday I was used to it, just as I’d become accustomed to sleeping under his arm. On Saturday, as we were waking, I said, “Want to go for a walk?” Martin pulled his arm from my body and rolled across the bed. “Where?” he said, sounding wide awake and
wary already; I was still half-asleep and hadn’t thought about the question before asking it. “Swimming,” I said. This, too, just popped out. “So you mean, do I want to go swimming?” “Well, it’s a long walk there.” Martin jumped from bed. His tan legs and a yellow T-shirt, one of mine, made his underwear seem even more white. He grabbed a red shirt from the floor, a button-down, and put it on over the T-shirt. “Sure,” he said then, pulling on a pair of blue jeans. In the living room, my mother vacuumed underneath my father’s proppedup legs. His mouth was distended over a BLT and he watched a television made silent by the vacuum’s roar. My mother looked up as we walked by, still pushing the vacuum back and forth. “Where are you off to?” she called. “We’re going for a walk,” I said. “We’re going swimming,” Martin said at the same time. “What?” my mother said, her face confused. “Walking,” I said, and showed her with my hand, index and middle fingers striding an imaginary path. “Swimming,” Martin said, and pantomimed the act, one arm over the other. “What!” my mother yelled, her eyes wide and darting from me to Martin. My father pushed her out of the way of the TV with his leg. He yelled over the vacuum, “Get. But don’t forget your chores.” Quickly I pushed Martin outside, and my mother’s final protest—“But they didn’t eat”—was cut off by the closing door.

The sound of an approaching car overtook us on the road. When Martin heard it, he stopped. He turned and looked at the car, and when it got a little closer he pushed me back a
foot so he could see it, and be seen by it, clearly. I started to ask him what was up, but he cut me off. “Just try to disappear for a sec, okay?” When the car was about fifty feet away, he posed himself. There’s no other word for it. He stood with his legs spread wide, pants pulled up tight in the crotch, pelvis pushed forward. His shoulders were thrown back and the button-down rode low on them, flapping like a cape, and with his right hand he pushed up his T-shirt so that a taut line of bare stomach was exposed. At the last minute, he pushed his bangs over his left eye. The car was big and old and rust-eaten, and it came up on us fast, and then, I’m not sure, but I think it was just as Martin pulled up his shirt, it slowed down with a short screech of dry brake pads, and at the sound I was moved as I had been so many times in the past few days behind another person’s eyes, this time the eyes of the old man driving the car. And there was Martin: he looked like a—I was going to say he looked like a prostitute, but who ever heard of a boy prostitute? And there I was: head down, hands in pockets, looking like—the car suddenly sped up and passed us in a cloud of dust. When it disappeared over a slope Martin started walking again. “What was that?” I asked. “An experiment.” “Did it succeed or fail?” “Both,” Martin said, and though I didn’t feel he’d told me anything really, the way he said it made me decide not to ask another question.