Having laid his pack’s flap open, Brian took a moment to admire his arsenal. The uniformity of his rock collection served as a considerable source of pride for the boy. He had gotten most of his stones at the creek bed, and each projectile had been meticulously selected for a smoothness, shape, and heft that perfectly suited Brian’s preferences. He palmed one, stood back up, and looked once more into the grove, this time without using a hand to shade his eyes. With his knapsack at his feet he stood squinting and scanning the umbrage, his body tense and half poised to throw, waiting to spot another squirrel and let loose his first missile of the day.
He did not need to wait long at all. After 15 minutes Brian had launched nearly as many stones. All had missed their mark, as usual, but each had given the boy the minor thrill of causing some small disruption. Also, with every pitch he felt the slight ecstasy that comes with the physical release of stress. Brian still had plenty of rocks left in his knapsack, but he began thinking that after one or two more hurls it would be time to enter the small grove in order to retrieve as many of his stones as he could find.
As he bent down and grabbed another stone, Brian saw a calico cat jump gracefully down off a wooden fence to his left across the quiet street that served as the park’s western border. That first property, the one whose fence the cat had climbed over, was the Murphy home, but Brian thought he recognized the cat as belonging to Billy Hudson, who lived some eight or nine houses up. The Hudsons, Billy remembered, had two cats, Tumbleweed and Charger, very similar in appearance, and Brian was fairly certain that this cat was one of the two. The cat walked slowly along the ground by the base of the fence, moving about six feet farther away from the boy, and then it settled to groom itself. As it lifted its paws and scraped them with its tongue, it seemed to be watching Brian. The alertness in its eyes belied the lazy confidence with which it moved its body.
Brian stared back at it. He imagined throwing the rock that he’d just picked up at the cat. He literally pictured himself winding up as though he were a big league pitcher on the mound. The mental vision he conjured was only of himself winding up and throwing, there was no actual image of the cat in his fantasy, but as his imagination worked he gazed fixedly on the animal, and the reality of the cat held his mind as completely as did his athletic figment.
Brian understood that it would be unacceptable for him to throw his rock at this pet cat, and this though the chances of his stone hitting its target be virtually nil. He suddenly swiveled his neck and shoulders around, looking behind him to his left toward the sidewalk at the edge of the park, relieved to see no one. He dropped the stone down back into his open knapsack and, with arms akimbo, began slowly marching in place, stretching one leg or the other out in an exaggerated kicking motion with each step. This exercise blurred the boy’s memory of the transgression that he’d fancied seconds earlier and had the effect of dispelling from Brian’s mind any shame attached to his imaginary assault on the Hudson cat. He carried on with this clownish march for about a minute and then, swooping his knapsack up by one of its shoulder straps, he jogged off into the grove to find the rocks that he’d thrown there.
As Brian emerged from the grove and back into the warmth of the summer sun, slightly perturbed at having retrieved only eleven of his prized stones, he saw an elderly woman in the distance walking north along the sidewalk that lined the edge of the park. The woman wore a peach dress and was holding a pink box just like the boxes in which Brian’s mother sometimes brought home cakes from the bakery. Brian went toward the woman, fastening up and strapping on his knapsack as he walked, and before long Brian thought he recognized her as the lady who had won the rose contest at the Independence Day pageant earlier that summer. He stopped walking and waved hallo, holding up his right arm and swinging it from side to side in unison with his upper torso as though he were an upside down pendulum. The woman stopped and looked at him. She could not wave back as she was using both her arms to carry the box, but she leaned slightly forward and to her right, in the boy’s direction, as her way of acknowledging his greeting. She waited there as the boy ran up to her.
“Hi,” Brian said, coming to a stop in front of the woman. “You’re the rose lady.” Before the statement could register with the woman, Brian added, “You’re the woman from the rose show that beat my mom…at the Fourth of July.”
The woman closed her eyes, relaxed her mouth, and tilted her head back with a slight nod as it dawned on her what the boy meant. “Aahhhh.”
“I’m Brian Dailey.”
“Ah, yes, the Daileys’ boy. I remember,” the woman said pleasantly. “How are you and your family?”
“I’m fine, thank you very much,” the boy responded quickly, as though reciting by rote. “You had the prettiest roses….”
“Why, thank you! How nice! Thank you,” said the woman, charmed by Brian’s compliment. “Oh, and your mother’s roses were so beautiful.”
“Pop said Mom’s roses were even nicer than yours,” the boy said matter-of-factly.
“Maybe so, maybe so,” mused the woman, and she jutted her lower lip out and nodded her head diplomatically.
“What’s in the box?” Brian asked.
“This is a cake that I’m bringing to my sister for her birthday,” the woman answered with satisfaction. “My sister Ruth is 76 today,” she added fondly, proudly.
“Wow!” Brian said. He thought for a moment. “That’s 70 more than me!”
“Not quite, I’d say, but almost,” said the woman, pleased that her sister’s age had made such an impression on the boy.
“Uh huh,” Brian said. “70 plus six makes 76.”
“Oh, but you’re not six,” the woman protested.
“Uh huh,” said the boy with a mock pout. “I will be in October.”
“Surely you can’t be five?” the woman asked. The boy was rocking on his toes and nodding pridefully. “I thought you were eight or nine,” she said, believing but astonished. “Maybe ten.”
“I’m bigger’n all my friends,” Brian said, beaming. “Mom says I’ll be bigger than Pop soon.”
“Well, I wouldn’t doubt it,” the woman said. “You are a fine young man, Mr. Brian Dailey.” She paused and considered the mood in which her sister might be. “You know, Brian, I’m sure my sister Ruth would be delighted if you were to come and have a piece of cake with us. Would you like to help us celebrate her birthday?”
“You bet!” the boy answered enthusiastically.
“Well, then you come with me and that’s what we’ll do. Would you be so kind as to carry our cake?”
“You bet,” said the boy, and he carefully received the cake as the woman handed him her pink box. “Is this from the baker on Chapel Street?” he asked.
“It is,” replied the woman.
“What flavor?”
“It’s chocolate,” the woman said, “and it’s got a ribbon of raspberry.”
“Wow,” Brian said. “I forgot your name.”
“I’m Naomi Garratt,” the woman said, and with the upturned palms of her newly unburdened hands she made a gesture indicating that she and the boy should cross over the street in the direction of the Murphy house and continue on that way. They began walking.
“That’s right. Nice to meet you, Mrs. Garratt,” Brian said politely.
“Oh…it’s ‘Miss Garrett.’ You can call me ‘Miss Garratt.’ I never married.”
“Okay,” said the boy. They crossed the quiet street over to the sidewalk on the other side, and then they went on, almost immediately making their first left to head west on the residential street that dead-ended into the park behind them. “Where does your sister live?”
“On McKinley. Six more blocks,” Naomi answered.
Brian’s rule was that he was not to go farther west than Maplewood Park, but he had safely broken this rule before, many times. He thought of it more as his parents’ rule than as his own. “How old are you, Miss Garratt?” Brian asked cheerfully.
“67…68 soon; I have a birthday in October just like you.”
“Oh. Hey, Miss Garratt, do you like baseball?” the boy asked.
“Uhhh,” the woman said ambiguously, letting her voice trail off. Brian got the impression that it was difficult for her to walk and talk at once. He whistled a few bars of Yankee Doodle Dandy. Naomi turned her head to smile at Brian, and he stopped whistling to smile back. They walked on, and Brian resumed his whistling and thought about how much he liked cake.
*** *** ***
Naomi and Brian approached Ruth Garratt’s house, and Naomi stopped walking. The boy stopped with her, and they stood together looking at the corner-lot house, its yellow paint fading and peeling and its lawns brownish and poorly tended. Brian had seen this house before on many occasions. He had walked past it several times, and sometimes his mother and he would pass it as they drove to do errands.
“This is my sister’s house. Our uncle used to live here many years ago.”
“Where
do you live, Ms. Garratt?” asked Brian, understanding intuitively that Naomi
Garratt did not live with her sister.
“I
live all the way across town. But
I come out to see Ruthie at least once a month…much more often than that,
really.”
“Why
don’t you and your sister live together?” Brian asked.
“Ruth
decided she prefers to live alone,” explained Naomi. “She’s very independent that way. I suppose I am as well. Now, Brian, do you remember my sister’s name?”
“Ruth?”
the boy answered.
“Good,”
Naomi affirmed, smiling. “You can call
Ruth ‘Miss Ruth,’ okay? And you
can call me ‘Miss Naomi’ if you’d like.”
The
boy nodded seriously, as if they were agreeing to something solemn. “Okay, I will. ‘Miss Naomi’ and ‘Ms. Ruth.’”
“Good,
Brian. You are such a smart young
man! Now, Brian, Miss Ruth doesn’t
hear very well, so you will probably find that you must talk very loudly for
her to understand you, and it’s okay to talk louder than you would usually.”
The
boy was nodding and paying close attention, and Naomi continued with her instructions. “The most important thing, Brian, is
that you not get in her way when she’s walking. Have you ever heard of arthritis?”
Brian
shook his head, disappointed with himself for not knowing, almost contrite.
“Arthritis
is a condition that affects older folks’ health, and it makes it hard for them
to move around easily the way young people do. My sister uses a cane, and she moves quite slowly when she
walks. You must be careful not to
bump into her because you could easily knock her down if you did. You must be careful not to bump into
her or trip her up. If you’re
rambunctious, you might hurt her, do you understand?”
“Yes,
ma’am. I’ll be careful,” Brian
promised.
“That’s
good. Thank you. Now, Brian, my sister is expecting me
but she doesn’t know that you’re here with me, so I’m going to have you wait on
the porch a minute while I tell Ruthie that you’re here to celebrate with
us. Ruth loves children and it
will be good for her to see you, but you should know that sometimes she can
seem a bit ill-tempered. She
doesn’t get too many visitors, and, other than myself, the only people she
really sees are the people who come each morning and evening to help her around
the house. So if she should seem a
bit short with you or a bit grouchy, then just remember that older folks are
tired and sometimes they seem irritated even when they are happy to see
you. Do you understand?”
“Yes,
Miss Naomi,” said Brian, nodding.
[NOT YET WRITTEN: birthday “party” at Ruth’s house, where Brian maims the old bag, spits in Naomi’s face, and runs away]
*** *** ***
The elder Brian Dailey had finished eating what he wanted of his dinner, and he had finished telling his wife and son about the family’s plans for the upcoming weekend. He sat at the table listening to his wife answer their son’s question about why a gravy boat was named such. He shifted in his chair a bit, and he flicked at the crumpled cotton napkin by his plate, expressing his impatience through the crispness of these randomly timed flicks. He wanted dinner to be over, and he wanted to fix himself another cocktail. With the fingertips of his right hand he rapped in quick succession on the table, and in a tone balancing exasperation with condescension he said, “Just tell him you don’t know….”
The woman and the boy looked up from their confab and turned their attention to the man. The boy, seeing that his father had not been directing the remark toward him, looked down at the carrots and peas still on his plate and scooped some onto his fork for a bite. The man tipped backward in his chair a little. When his chair’s front legs had settled squarely on the floor again, the man raised his buttocks slightly and with the crooks of his knees he pushed his chair back a few inches from the table. His wife watched him and waited to listen to him continue.
“Who knows?” the man asked rhetorically, as if answering a question that had just been put to him. “It doesn’t really look like a boat, it’s just called a boat…why is a shoe called a shoe?”
The man’s wife turned her face downward, and she straightened the napkin that lay upon her lap.
“‘Gravy floats in it like a boat floats on water’?!” Brian added, mimicking his wife. “Honestly, Helen, you tell the boy stories like you were making up fairy tales.” The man looked over toward his son and namesake, who still had his eyes down as he ate and focused on the vegetables on his plate in front of him. Straining to imbue his voice with a gentle seriousness, the man went on: “Everyone just agrees to call it a gravy boat so we can all know what it means when we say it, that’s all. It doesn’t matter why it’s named that…it’s got to have some name so you can say ‘pass the gravy boat’ and people will know what you’re talking about. That’s all.”
The matter of the gravy boat’s name had been settled, and Brian sat quietly. His wife began carefully pulling some of the dishes and serving utensils at the table’s center toward her and stacking them neatly, preparing to bring them into the kitchen later. The boy hurried to finish the carrots and peas still left on his plate. He did not enjoy carrots and he detested peas, but he knew that only the consumption of everything on his plate would entitle him to dessert.
Just as the boy was finishing his vegetables, the doorbell rang. The boy looked up and over at his father, who was in turn looking toward the boy’s mother to see if she might have some idea as to who might be calling. The man could see from his wife’s face that she had been expecting no one. He stood up from his chair, grabbing at his soiled napkin and balling it up in his hand as he rose. Once to his feet he dropped the napkin back down onto the table before him, and turning from his family, who sat watching him, he walked out of the dining room to go answer the doorbell.
Brian opened his front door to Ed Wells, a deputy sheriff and Brian’s acquaintance since childhood. Ed was in uniform, and behind him, beyond the front lawn and parked in front of the house, was the squad car in which he’d arrived. “Hi there, Ed. What brings you by?” Brian asked.
As he listened for his answer, Brian broke eye contact with Ed and looked over the officer’s shoulder and across the street toward the Harris home, where the Harris boy was watering agapanthus in the early evening sun. The Harris boy wore a wide-brimmed straw hat, and he slowly waved his hose to and fro along his driveway. He kept his back to the street as though oblivious to the deputy’s presence at the Dailey house.
“Howdy, Brian. I was just swingin’ by,” Ed said awkwardly but cordially, with a quick tip of his hat. “Hopin’ to chew your ear for a minute.”
“We were just finishing supper, Ed…but you know I always got a minute for the law.” Brian pulled softly on his front door’s inner knob and then let go; as the door was swinging further open, he caught its outer handle to stop it. He leaned stiffly against the doorway’s jamb as if he were settling more comfortably for a chat. “What can I do for you?”
“Well, I ain’t really here on official business” the deputy said, and he flopped a hand to one side so as to dispense with any need for formalities. He looked briefly over his shoulder to his vehicle. “I just got the squad car ‘cause the fuel line on mine…oh, it’s a long story….”
“What’s it all about, Ed?”
“Well, it’s about your boy, Brian,” said the deputy, lowering the volume of his voice some. “You know Naomi Garratt, right?”
Brian nodded, and he leaned forward a bit to encourage the deputy to maintain this more discrete volume.
“Well, she’s been down at the station for the last couple hours, raisin’ all kinds a hell…said your boy pushed her sister down at her house earlier this afternoon, and then he run off. They had to take the sister to hospital – broke a hip, I guess – and, well, Mrs. Garratt’s sayin’ it’s all your boy’s doing…sayin’ we oughtta come down here and arrest him. She wanted Riley to get the district attorney on the line. She said she wants to press charges; she’s claimin’ she saw your boy push her sister off her chair and that he done it on purpose.” Deputy Wells paused so that Brian Dailey might process this accusation against his son.
Brian stopped leaning against his doorway’s jamb and stood up straight. “Aw, hell, Ed…that’s crazy,” he said with a puzzled look, shaking his head. “My boy’s been ‘round here all day. No…I left the office early today, must’ve been home by quarter to four. Brian was out back there at his sandbox, fillin’ cans or what he does. No. Naomi Garratt’s got the wrong boy. Why would my boy be with them two old bats, anyway…how’d he get out to Riverview?”
“Nah, it was at the older one’s house…Ruth Garratt, out on McKinley,” the deputy explained, gesturing westward. As he spoke, Helen and little Brian Dailey appeared behind their patriarch, rounding the corner of the hallway that connected the living room to the dining room. Young Brian had his hands thrust into his front pockets, and he looked glumly toward the ground. Helen bent slightly as she moved, trying to keep her arm about her son’s shoulder, though it was obvious that the boy did not want to be held. Deputy Wells bent his knees a bit and spoke past the man, directly to the child: “Brian, were you at Ruth Garratt’s house on McKinley earlier today?”
The boy looked up from the floor and at the deputy. Between them stood his father in the threshold, who, following the deputy’s gaze, was swiveling around toward the boy. The boy turned his face back down to the floor. The child’s vision was blurring as tears welled in his eyes, and he tried to stare deeply into the area rug on which he stood, to lose himself in the earth-toned patterns of its rough weave.
“Helen, goddammit!” exclaimed the man. Then, embarrassed by this outburst on his part, he turned quickly and looked at the deputy with an apologetic expression, as if imploring the officer to bear with any of his family’s poor manners. He then turned back around toward his wife and son. “Helen, get him on outta here!”
Helen knelt down and wrapped her arms around her son, pulling him toward her tightly as her husband stood in the doorway, the man rocking his hips slightly from side to side, with his arms akimbo and his back to the deputy. She whispered into the child's ear, after which the boy pulled his hands out from his pockets, turned, and ran up the staircase behind them. Brian turned back around toward Deputy Wells and swung the front door open wide. Helen walked back around the corner into the hallway from which she had emerged. Once out of sight, she stood silently and listened.
“So what’d Riley say,” asked Brian once his wife had disappeared.
“Well, I was hardly in the room, but he said that if she wanted to call Lewis then that was her business,” the deputy reported. “He said an old lady fallin’ over a five-year-old boy weren’t no police matter but that he’d gather up a report and file it with Lewis by the end of the week, Monday at the latest. He’s gonna call you first thing in the morning…probably gonna want you to come down. I imagine he’s gonna need to talk to your boy, too, at some point.”
Brian heaved up his shoulders and, pursing his lips together, he breathed out heavily through his nose. “Thanks, Ed. I really appreciate you comin’ by.” Sincerely grateful, he held out his hand to shake the deputy’s hand.
“It’s no problem,” said the deputy as the men shook hands. “I figured the sooner you knew about it, the better.”
“Thanks,” iterated Brian.
As they broke off their handshake, the deputy added, “You know, Brian, I’d give old Floyd Brady a call if I was you. I figure you can handle Riley no problem, but still….”
“What do you mean?” Brian asked apprehensively.
“Well, Mrs. Garratt was goin’ on and on about how she was fixin’ to sue you. You or your boy. She said that she didn’t expect nothin’ from Riley or from Lewis but that she weren’t going to just let it go. I think you should talk to Brady. He done great by us in that business ‘bout the fence last year…with the Parsons. Wrote a couple letters, and that was that.”
“What’s Garratt gonna sue me for?!” asked Brian angrily, indignantly.
“Well…the doctors’ bills, Brian,” answered the deputy, surprised that he would have to spell the situation out for the man.
“Fuck!” Brian muttered under his breath, and he looked up toward the sky as he considered his predicament. After a couple of seconds he looked back down and asked the deputy, “So this Garratt woman, the older one, she broke her leg?”
“Hip,” said the deputy, “even worse.”
Brian looked down at his shoes, shaking his head.
“An old woman don’t rightly recover from a spill like that,” Deputy Wells continued soberly.
Brian looked back up at the deputy. “Fuck!” he snapped. “Oh, those fucking kikes!” He shook his head some more. “Jesus!” He looked to the deputy as if for the man’s sympathy. “What do these bitches need with my money?! They got a house in Riverview, for godsakes; they got two houses!”
The deputy did not know what to say, and he just stared at the man. Brian breathed deeply, trying to gather composure, to control his frustration. Lowering his voice in an effort to make his point more cogently, he went on:
“We fought for those people, Ed, and a whole lot of us died in the fightin’. And then we gave ‘em a country. Do you think they just got their own country? No; we gave them a country. So now they got their own goddamn country! And now this…bitch! This old bitch, she wants me to pay for her sister’s doctor’s bill?! It’s unbelievable! Now, Ed, you know that old Garratt, he left them sisters plenty, you know that...they got more money 'n they got need for. And I put my ass on the line for these people, Ed. We all did.” Brian paused, waiting for his comrade’s validation.
“Well, I was in the Pacific,” the deputy answered, shrugging his shoulders, not knowing quite how to respond.
“Oh, Christ, Ed! That’s not the point….” Brian threw his hands up in disgust, and he shook them there in the air between the two men. “I’m saying these people will just…they’ll do whatever it takes to get their hands on some money, you know?” He stopped shaking his hands, dropped them down, and sighed to indicate that he was resigned to the reality of his unpleasant situation. “Look, Ed, I really do appreciate you comin’ out here,” he said, winding down his conversation with the officer.
“Yeah…no problem,” the deputy said, shrugging again and nodding his head with noncommittal empathy. “I guess maybe I’ll be seein’ you down at the station.” He tipped his hat once more to Brian, who was nodding unhappily. The officer turned and descended the steps of the Daileys’ porch, and he started toward his parked squad car. As he stepped along the walkway crossing the front lawn, he stopped for a moment to look admiringly over at the rose bushes that bloomed luxuriously against the wall of the Daileys’ garage. Brian Dailey stood at his front door and watched the deputy leave.
Once Deputy Wells had reached the sidewalk, Brian slowly closed the door. He stood listening for the deputy to pull away. Brian pushed his chin down and into his chest, trying to stretch the muscles in the back of his neck. He lifted his head when he heard the squad car’s engine turn over, and he reached with his right hand up over his left clavicle to the fleshy crest of his left shoulder, pressing with his fingertips as hard as he could into the muscles there. Brian heard the deputy’s car drive off, and he switched to massaging his right shoulder similarly with the fingertips of his left hand. He then raised both arms, held his elbows out to the sides and his hands behind his neck, and began swirling his fingertips into the tissue on either side of the back of his neck. He arched his lower spine and closed his eyes, and for more than a minute he stood digging with stiffened fingers into the knots where the back of his neck met the base of his skull.
When he had finished massaging himself, the man began to walk slowly toward the stairway. His wife came out from the hallway where she had been waiting. She was wringing her hands, and she looked at her husband with trepidation and tender pity.
“You know about this?” he asked calmly, not really suspecting that she did.
Helen shook her head. Holding her hands up and together as though in prayer, she walked into her husband’s ambit, in close, that he might embrace her or compass her as he would. He did not hold her, and she bowed her head and lowered her arms to her sides. Brian looked down at the top of his wife’s head as she huddled in toward his chest, as close as she could get to him without touching him. He looked upward to his right, up the stairs, and back again to his wife, who had lifted her face and was now gazing up at him. “Where is he?” he asked quietly, without affect.
Helen raised her hands up along Brian’s torso and began to softly paw at her husband’s chest. “Oh, now, honey….”
“Goddammit, Helen!” Brian barked, buckling his knees and jerking his body downward in momentary tantrum. His wife shrank with him, absorbing the man’s contempt somewhat as she cringed, though none of his rage. The man bounced up and pulled away from his wife. “Where is he?” he repeated, sounding absentminded. He turned about where he stood, appearing confused, back and forth between the staircase and his wife. Then, as if suddenly regaining his wits, he started moving for the staircase closet where he kept the leather strap with which he whipped his son. “Boy…” he called out as he walked. The woman turned away, receding back toward the dining room and kitchen. “Boy!” the man yelled up through the ceiling to his son, not so much to terrify as to give fair warning.
