Carthage (17 page)

He’d said, Jesus Mom! If they catch you what’re you going to say?

I’ll say
You owe me! Cheating bastards owe me.

Embarrassed of his mother. Yet there was something crazy and thrilling about Ethel, too.

As in a quasi-public place for instance the food court at the shopping mall where you could take sugar packets, miniature salt and pepper packets, paper napkins of a particular coarseness, plastic cutlery. Grim-faced with stealth Ethel would stuff these in the deep pockets of her nylon parka. Even Styrofoam cups, though these were more difficult to conceal. Never know when you might have use for supplies, she’d said. It didn’t feel like stealing to Ethel just what she called
evening things out.

The world was a God-damned unjust place, for some people. Single mothers, women-left-behind treated like shit by men. You had a right to take revenge where you could.

From those who have, you take. You take, and you take.

So long Ethel had been complaining bitterly of Brett’s father. Then with startling abruptness she would speak in praise of his father.

Brett tried so hard to remember him! A blurred memory like something smudged with an oily cloth though he’d been six years old when his father had left—old enough to remember, in a normal child.

Without both parents you don’t feel confident you know what
normal
is. Like walking on a tilting floor but you can’t gauge in which direction the floor is tilting.

Brett’s father had been a noncommissioned officer in the U.S. Army: Sergeant First Class Graham Kincaid who’d served in the first Gulf War, May 1990 to March 1991. In the keepsake album were photos, fading and dog-eared. Sergeant Kincaid appeared to have been a handsome man despite a thick jaw, squinting eyes, an unnerving habit of smiling with half his mouth.

In each of the army photos Sergeant Kincaid was with other soldiers in his platoon, in uniform: you could see a family likeness among the men, from the oldest to the youngest. Here was a mysterious family of
soldier-brothers
.

You felt—if you were a young child, fatherless—a profound envy of this family, like nothing in your own diminished life.

Brett Kincaid: what do you want to be when you grow up?

A sergeant! Like my dad.

After Sergeant Kincaid had been discharged from the army he’d been too restless to remain in Carthage working at Klinger Auto Parts as production foreman. He’d driven west with a promise that he was “looking for work” and would send for his family when he found a suitable job and in the interim he sent postcards to “Ethel & Brett”—(these postcards were still in Brett’s childhood room affixed to the wall beside his bed with yellowing Scotch tape)—and the last of these was Yosemite Park, jagged and streaked-looking mountains across which vaporous clouds trailed.

Ethel would have torn these postcards into bits except Brett prevented her
No, Mommy! Please don’t.

It was like his father had been secretly wounded, crippled—and that part of him, that was broken and defeated, had been left behind.

Ethel was boastful of Graham Kincaid at times and at other times furious with him. He was a
natural-born leader of men—should’ve been a major, or a captain.
Or, he was a
God-damn son of a bitch. Period.

They’d met when she was just seventeen. He’d
taken advantage
of her, she said. He’d
made her get pregnant,
she said.

Hadn’t wanted to marry her, but it had happened.

(Brett knew, from his careless-talking grandmother, Ethel’s mother, that this first pregnancy had ended in a miscarriage. And a second pregnancy had ended in the birth of a “preemie” who’d lived only a few days. And so by the time Brett was born Ethel had become
kind of crazy
and Graham had
kind of turned himself off, like men do.
)

Ethel felt keenly the injustice of the world: snatching up a magazine to hold beside her face and there on the glossy cover was the face of a woman—film actress? rock star?—and Ethel demanding
She’s better-looking than me? Like hell!

Or she’d demand of Brett
What’s the difference between her and me, d’you know?
and Brett wouldn’t know; and Ethel would say
She got all the breaks, that’s what. And what did I get?—shit.

The Mayfields were not the only “snooty” Carthage family whom Ethel scorned but her proximity to Zeno Mayfield earned him a particular notoriety in her life. As a boy Brett had heard repeatedly of how the mayor would invite city employees out for drinks on Friday afternoons—and never got around to inviting
her.

Never even remembered her God-damned name, the hypocrite son of a bitch!

Except when Brett was older and in high school on the varsity football team. And his picture in the newspaper. And people talking of him. And Zeno Mayfield wasn’t too snooty to take note of
that
. And one day in the office he’d stopped to say to her
Are you Brett Kincaid’s mother? You must be very proud.

She’d said
Yes, Mr. Mayfield, I am.

And God-damn if that wasn’t the end of it! Hypocrite bastard never said five more words to her, for years.

Until two years ago it turned out that Brett was “dating” one of Mayfield’s daughters.

Ethel hadn’t ever seen the daughters. But she knew from what people said that one of them, the elder, was
the pretty one;
the other was
the smart one.

When Brett told Ethel about Juliet she’d been astonished, disbelieving.
Mayfield? You’re going out with a—Mayfield?

Ethel had been so savagely critical of the luckless girls Brett had occasionally brought home to be introduced to her, he’d given up bringing them home; but now, with Juliet, he had no choice.

You can’t be serious. She’ll make a fool of you.

Or—is she the homely one? He’s got two daughters.

By this time Brett had learned not to be upset or annoyed by his eccentric mother. He’d warned Juliet that his mother was “difficult” but “good-hearted” though he wasn’t sure that that was an accurate description of Ethel Kincaid.

He’d felt a curious little thrill of vindication, satisfaction—bringing Juliet Mayfield together with Ethel, not at Ethel’s sour-smelling house but on neutral territory, at a riverside café in Carthage.

The first glimpse Brett had had of Juliet Mayfield, all his resentment of the Mayfield family had faded. The quick connection between them—like a match struck into flame.

He’d seen her smiling eyes on him. He’d felt lighted-up inside.

In Brett’s young life there had been a succession of girls, and more lately women. He’d moved out of his mother’s house on Potsdam Street after graduating from high school, despite his mother’s protests; he’d needed to live alone, to
breathe.

When he’d enlisted in the army, he’d given up his rented apartment in South Palisade Park. When he’d returned from the army, discharged and disabled, like trash tossed off the rear of a speeding truck, he’d had to move back into the house on Potsdam Street, which was like a death sentence to him. Back into his old, boyhood room which Ethel had left as it had been, the room of a dead child.

But that was in the future: when he’d first met Juliet Mayfield, he’d had a place to bring her to, where they could be alone.

Fuck he’d try to explain anything of the way he felt to Ethel. He would not.

He was crazy for Juliet and for her family, that was a fact. And they seemed to like him, too.

His heart leapt, when Zeno strode forward to shake his hand.

Hiya, kid! Great to see ya.

The Mayfields were the nicest people he’d met. Ever.

Even the funny little sister with the funny name—Cressida.

Which he’d heard wrong, at first—thought they were calling her something like
Cressita, Cressika—
the name of a foreign country.

Little dark-eyed girl with almost Afro-style hair, inky-dark hair, frizzing out from her head. Wiry little body like a child of eleven or twelve and with a deadpan-face, you couldn’t guess what she was thinking.

Of the Mayfield girls, the smart one.

But even Cressida was nice to him! Shaking his hand with a solemn smile that quickly faded though her inky-dark eyes remained on his, searching, startled.

We all love you, Brett. Mom, Dad, Cressie. You are the most wonderful person to walk into our lives—I swear!

Juliet slipping her hand into his. Juliet squeezing his fingers with hers. Juliet nudging him gently with her shoulder, to alert him to—something . . .

The guys never asked Brett about Juliet Mayfield. Guys he’d gone to high school with, and he’d outgrown—to a degree: Halifax, Weisbeck, Stumpf.

There was no vocabulary with which they could speak of girls or women who meant anything to them. And so, they did not try to speak of women except in the crudest terms.
Cunt, tits, ass. Hot as hell. Slut.

So how could he speak of Juliet to them. He could not.

Just to say her name—to risk hearing her name repeated in the mouths of Halifax, Weisbeck, Stumpf—he could not.

Like a flower she’d opened to him. One of those roses with many petals wrapped around one another, enclosed in a tight little bud and then, who knows why, the warmth of the sun maybe, the petals begin to open, and open.

He’d been
so happy
. He’d said stammering
I guess I love you, is it too soon—is it too soon to say? Don’t laugh at me, OK?

HE COULD NOT COMPREHEND,
why he’d hurt her, then.

This girl he loved, he’d hurt—had he? (
Had
he?)

First, knocked her away from him. A sharp little cry like an animal kicked.

And her jaw bruised, dislocated.

No: in fact not dislocated.

At the ER they’d taken an X-ray. The bone hadn’t been dislodged. She’d said.

Explaining how she’d slipped, fallen. Clumsy! Her own fault, no one else’s.

Weird how everyone accepted this. Believed this.

Beautiful Juliet with a faint bruise like a purple iris rising from beneath the left side of her jaw into her cheek laughing insisting she’d slipped, she’d fallen, it didn’t hurt at all and anyway she could cover it with makeup—and no one had noticed.

Not even the parents. Hadn’t seen.

See what you have eyes to see. All else, you are blind to.

Then, another time. Why she’d provoked him teasing him with—who the fuck was it—one of the guys he’d known from high school:
Bisher.
Teasing him
Where’s Corporal Kincaid that cool dude.

Or she’d provoked him saying
The only person who can understand you in Carthage is me. Because we are both freaks.

In a nightmare trying to resuscitate her. Pushing on her chest with the flat of one hand, as he’d been trained, leaning on her chest, trying to revive her breathing, sobbing and whimpering begging
No no no no no don’t die
.

Later, he’d found a shallow place for her amid marshy soil, rocks. Tried to cover her with rocks and handfuls of muck. Trying to think
A body must be buried. A body must not be left for animals and birds
. He wasted precious time searching for a marker—a cross.

Why was this, Corporal?

Because—it is the Christian burial.

Elephants bury their dead too. He thought this was so.

Maybe on Discovery Channel. Maybe he’d seen a documentary there.

Except elephants could recognize the bones of their dead, years later. A matriarch elephant bellowing and agitated seizing the great curved bones of her grandmother lying in the dried-up earth.

But no human being could recognize the bones of a relative. Could not recognize his own fucking bones set before him on a platter.

Of earthly creatures only
Homo sapiens
and elephants buried their dead. Out of anguish, and out of respect.

And out of a wish that the dead remain
dead
.

In one place, where you’d left them. Covered with mud-chunks, rock, earth.
Dead.

IN THE LETTER
to Juliet he’d asked her never to open except if he did not return from the war he’d written in the careful stiff handwriting of one who rarely wrote by hand
Knowing a thing should give you the strength to do it but sometimes you are not strong enough. God does not make you strong enough.

Do unto others. Love thy neighbor.

Thou shalt not kill.

Confused he’d thought possibly he had buried the letter with her in the shallow marshy grave beside the river! In which case the (wet, torn) letter would be deciphered in his handwriting, signed
Love, Brett
and traced back to him.

Maybe this was meant to be so. Maybe this was why God had guided his hand writing the letter.