Best Boy (5 page)

I kept cutting while watching from behind the way his shoulders hunched up as he held the phone between his chin and his neck. I stared at his neck while feeling the big, swinging, easy power of the blade of the scythe in my hands. It sliced easily through the thick grass. It clipped the living green stalks and killed them. I began swinging harder, back and forth, enjoying the feeling.

“Little lamb,” I thought I heard Mike say into the phone, “I like when you go baaa.”

He turned back around towards me and gave me a wink as he slipped the phone into his pocket. He was smiling and shaking his head.

“Things just ain't always how they seem in life,” Mike said.

“No?” I said, and lowered my eyes and kept the blade swinging.

“Take you,” he said. “Now, I know you got some kind of allergy against me, like I'm born to be bad to you, but I ain't. Actually, guy, I'm looking out for you.”

I looked up in time to see him showing the lifted-lip smile.

“Word,” he said.

“What?”

“I've got a project that I need your help on.”

“Really?”

“Hell yeah. That's what the call was all about.”

Together we started cutting the grass again. The sounds of the two scythes at the same time are different than one. They make the noise of a large animal eating.

“What it is, I've gotta see someone right now in Peace Cottage named Greta,” he said. “I'm helping her with her GED which you probably don't know what it is, but no worries. She's
a little embarrassed about the, uh, tutoring so she doesn't want anyone to know. I can get behind that. What I was thinking was that you might just keep on working here for about forty-five minutes without me and then I'll be back.”

“Back?” I said.

“Right where we started, which is clearing the grass. And by the way, you're doing a slam-bang job, my man, but while I'm gone you just switch to raking, okay? The other thing is to remember that what I'm doing is a secret.” He stopped swinging his scythe and put his raised finger to his lips. “Poor girl would just be mortified if people knew.”

“Why?” I said.

The finger went away from his mouth and the mouth frowned. “You see, that's what I'm talking about. You just mistrust everybody. What was it Annie was saying? Oh yeah, that you have to be less, uh, ‘defended' I think it was. Well, here's your chance. You don't need to know why. I'm asking you to do me a solid for the sake of the community and one person in particular who needs a helping hand, and that's all you need to know. Stepping-stones, remember?”

“Stepping-stones” was something that people at Payton always talked about as part of the larger goal of “crossing the river of life without getting wet.” Mike flicked his moustache with his fingers and made the smile.

“Okay,” I said, lowering my eyes to look down at his boots that were covered with bits of grass.

“You just took a very positive step,” he said, “and I'll be letting Annie know.”

Mike stored his scythe behind a low stone wall and left for Peace Cottage walking fast. Peace Cottage had four girls in it who were the highest-functioning of all the houses at Pay
ton. They worked in real jobs in the real world. They cooked at McDonald's, or did things under close supervision like restocking parts in a warehouse or they cleaned. A lot of them were cleaners. One of them might even have had a license to drive a car.

I raked the clippings into piles and as I did I thought of the girl at Peace Cottage named Greta. Her full name was Greta Deane and I liked her very much. She wore her hair at an angle across her head. She was tall and slender and she spoke in a funny way that made everything she said sound like a question because her voice went up at the end. The other girls in Peace Cottage didn't talk to me or even notice me but Greta Deane was very friendly and called me “Stretch” sometimes maybe because I'm tall. Also at assemblies she'd come right up to me and shake my hand like a man. Another thing was that she liked spending time with the animals in the fields which most other villagers did not. She especially liked cows. She once told me they were very sensitive like people and they spoke to her. What they mostly said, she told me, was, “We're here as meat.”

I raked the lawn and thought of Mike's low voice moving around the apartment with the girls in it. I thought of his mouth slowly opening to show his wet yellow teeth. I hoped Greta Deane wasn't hearing him. I hoped she wasn't seeing his mouth. I hoped he wasn't making “baa” sounds at her.

A while went by though I'm not sure how long and then suddenly Mike appeared again. He smiled at me and he touched me on the shoulder and in a softer voice than usual he said I had “passed the test with flying colors” and that “a shitload of good stuff will happen” as a result.

I said nothing, and we continued clearing the grass until he told me we were done. When I got back to my cottage, staff had
left a note saying that my brother would be coming to visit the next day and that I had the day off and should be ready. This gave me something else to think about other than Mike the Apron and I thought about being a little boy growing up with a brother until I went to sleep.

TEN

E
VEN THOUGH HE DOESN'T COME VISIT ME THAT
often and this sometimes makes me sad, my brother tries to call me on the phone almost every week. Often these calls are interrupted by his wife or his children or his work. Nate is an Environmental Accountant. I've heard him say many times to different people, “Environmental Accountants are in it for the green,” and laugh. Nate taught me the word “eco.” He has an eco-car and an eco-house. He goes on eco-vacations and he says the word “planetary” a lot. But Nate also told me that all he does all day is think about money for a living. Sometimes when he calls me I can hear a flat, hitting sound in his voice and then he usually apologizes and says that “work is choking me out.” Whenever he says that I think what I'm hearing is the actual sound of money in a person's body, a stacked, walking machine of nickels and dimes called “my brother.”

The next morning after getting the note I was sitting in my bedroom waiting when I looked out and saw a red rental car
with Nate in it expanding in the window. The car crunched on the gravel and I got up and went outside to meet him.

“Tubes!” he cried, getting out and standing up, smiling. “Tubes” is my family nickname.

“Hi,” I said.

“All hail the conquering Tubester!” he said and reached forward to hug me. I don't like when people touch my hair or clap me on the back but I like when they hug me. I like when they hug me really hard. I like when they crush me to their chest and build a wall around me that I can't escape.

“Can we go out to lunch at the Pilgrim Diner?” I asked as soon as he let me go.

He laughed and said, “Good old Tubes. Of course we can. But let me look at you first.”

He held me by the elbows.

“Looking pretty sharp, you old jailbird,” he said.

I was wearing brown pants and a white shirt that Raykene had recently bought me on a “shopping run.”

“Thank you.”

“And am I mistaken or have you dropped a pound or two?”

“I weigh two hundred twenty-one and a half pounds,” I said.

“Sleek!” he said and let go of my elbows and looked around the front of the cottage where there was a little garden of flowers. “Everything's spic-and-span as usual. Your new roommate in?”

“No, he's out somewhere,” I said.

“Just as well,” he said. “Let's go inside for a sec, I have to take a leak.”

My brother and I walked back into the cottage and he first came into my room like he always did. The room always looked exactly the same and he always said the same thing.

“There they are,” he said, pointing to the photos of our parents on the wall. “And they would be so proud of you.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Okay,” he said, “one sec.”

He used the bathroom which made me happy that he was in my apartment doing that, and then he came out.

“Shall we dine?” he said.

“Okay!” I shouted.

From the very beginning I've always liked to eat more than almost anything else in life.

“Let's split,” he said.

We got into his red car and soon we were bouncing over the gravel. Then we were entering the two-lane paved road at the end of Payton and as he accelerated onto the road I felt the small, even push back into my seat that always happened then, and I shut my eyes.

“So,” he said, “how would you rate things just now?”

He always liked to play the rating game with me. Keeping my eyes shut, I said, “Eighty percent.”

“Eighty percent is a solid B. We can live with a B. Hell, we like a B.”

My eyes opened. We were moving at what seemed incredible speed.

“Talk to me, Todd,” he said. “What's the latest with your people?”

“Um,” I said, “they're all okay.”

“Raykene?” he asked.

“Fine,” I said.

“Raykene,” he said, “is a peach in human form. We are very grateful to have Raykene.”

I don't know why my brother said “we” so much.

“But there is somebody else,” I said.

He was driving the car with little jerks of the steering wheel.

“Who's that?” he said.

“A daystaff who is called Mike,” I said.

There was a pause.

“And?” he said.

“He scares me.”

My brother's head revolved all the way around so that he was looking at me, but only for a second.

“He scares you?”

“Yes.”

“But why, Tubes?”

“Because I don't know.”

“I don't like the sound of this.”

We were silent for a moment and then we were pulling into the parking lot of the restaurant. We walked into the big chrome room filled with people who were sitting down before plates of food. I couldn't see anyone talking but there was a roar of conversation that seemed to hang in the air, apart from the people making it. My brother knew this noise frightened me and he shouted, “Steady on!” in my ear, and then he said something to the hostess who took us to a carpeted back room that was quieter.

As we were sitting down Nate said, “Don't get in between these country people and their food, eh?”

My brother once told me that he's very handsome. He said women look at him. The waitress came and gave us the menus and looked. I watched her looking.

“We'll have a bottle of fizzy water,” Nate said to her, “and I'll have a Heineken. And . . .” He glanced at me with a question on his face.

“Yes please,” I said.

“An O'Doul's,” he added, “for my brother.”

I can't drink because of the meds but I can order an O'Doul's non-alcoholic beer and pretend. Also, it has a tiny bit of alcohol in it that I can feel, which makes me happy.

“So you were saying,” he said.

“What?”

“Napkin in lap,” he said.

“What was I saying?”

“About Mike.”

“Yes?”

“That he scares you?”

“He does.”

“But why? Is it something he does or something he says, or both? You got me worried.”

I wanted to tell him all about the bad thing that Mike the Apron was going to bring into my life and that I knew it, I just knew it. I wanted to tell him that his face gave off the same sour hot feeling as the face of our father and that he was a creeping coyote-person who was going to hurt the lamb of Greta Deane and sooner or later do something terrible to me, but I didn't know how to say that when I had no proof.

“I don't know,” I said.

“Well try,” he said.

I tried but nothing happened. “I don't know,” I said again, but more softly.

“Hmmmm,” Nate said, and then made his eyes small while he thought. “Say
something
,” he said finally.

But I couldn't say anything at all. Nate waited with his eyes mostly shut and then they opened again and he smiled sadly and said, “I think I know what you're doing.”

“What?” I said.

“No, I
do
know,” he said.

“What?” I said again.

“You're trying to guilt me out, aren't you?”

“No,” I said.

“Oh but you are, Toddie. And you're so good at it. But it's not gonna work. No, not this time. Not again.”

I said nothing.

“Bro,” he said in a soft voice while he leaned close to me, “do you think I don't know you wanna come home? Of course I know. How could I not? But like I've told you a thousand times before, we just can't do that, at least right now we can't. Now, if it was just me, then no problem, of course. The problem,” he shrugged his shoulder. “Well you know the problem. It's Beth.” Beth was his wife. “She took what happened to heart, and who can blame her—I mean as the mom, right? But I'm working on her, Tubes, swear to God I am. And she's softening.”

“Stuffed shells,” said the waitress, lowering the hot food that steamed to the table, “and a cheeseburger deluxe.”

“Lunch,” I said, mostly to myself. My brother was continuing to talk about how upset Beth was about “what happened” but I wasn't listening exactly. I had begun eating and was concentrating on my burger, which was very good. Also, what he was saying he'd said many times before. He'd said it almost every time he came to visit over the last few years. I always hoped he would finally say that I could come back for an extended visit but he never did. Instead he always said that Beth was the problem. Now that Mike the Apron was staff I wanted to go home more than ever and live in the woods behind where I was born or stay at Nate's house nearby for a long time. Normally I chatted a lot with my brother during
lunch but knowing I couldn't do these things even now made me sad and I stopped talking.