Fragile Beasts (22 page)

Stan wanted me to marry him. Joe wanted the same thing. I couldn’t do it.

I had slept with Joe to get things for Stan, but I couldn’t marry and promise to spend the rest of my life with a man I didn’t love, I didn’t care for, and I wasn’t attracted to in order to cement certain business dealings for my brother. Stan said he respected those feelings.

A few months later, Joseph Peppernack, the single and childless heir to the Peppernack Steel fortune, whose father had passed away a decade earlier and whose mentally unbalanced mother was a resident of a picturesque asylum in upstate New York, was dead, having left his best friend and trusted business partner, Stanford C. Jack, the vast bulk of his wealth.

While I sat next to Stan’s bedside making chitchat and avoiding the subject of the dead miner, all I could think about was Joe.

If he had killed Joe, Stan would have seen it as an act of love and generosity toward me: he killed him so he wouldn’t have to make me marry him.

As horrible and indefensible as that reasoning may seem to an outsider, as a longtime observer of the workings of my brother’s mind and psyche, I understood how he could justify his actions to himself; but there could be no justification for the miner’s death. It was blatant murder, an act of revenge and the sending of a message to those he considered his enemies.

He seemed so normal, so sane. He was my big brother, Stan, looking uncomfortable and silly in a hospital gown. We had been joined at the hip since we were children. He had always taken good care of me. He had given me everything I wanted as long as he approved. We could talk to each other about anything. We laughed together. We worked together. My admiration and devotion toward him was no different from what Kyle so obviously feels for Klint.

Stan was all I had.

I couldn’t face the idea that he could be a monster, so I ran away across an ocean.

I don’t think Cameron is a monster. He’s a bully and bullies can do unpleasant things and cause grief, but they’re not ruthless. They’re motivated by a sense of inferiority. All their bluster and cruelty is a misguided and distorted attempt to find love and gain approval, whereas a man like my brother did what he did and took what he took because he believed he was superior and entitled.

Cameron was the only child I’ve ever had any real exposure to during his
formative years, and it was enough to convince me that there are other reasons not to have children besides a fear of the overwhelming responsibility of parenthood. What if you had a child who was an idiot? were you still obliged to love him and care for him?

Cameron was obnoxious, but his personality wasn’t entirely his fault. He was overindulged and ignored. He was a blank canvas surrounded by the finest brushes and a palette of the richest colors left alone in a dark room and expected to paint himself. It wasn’t any surprise that when the door to the room was finally thrown open, he was still a big blank.

Yet I will admit that even he had his charming moments. I remember the way he used to slip his little hand into mine and lead me around the vast grounds of his parents’ new mansion chatting all the while about cartoons and killing flies and the merits of sprinkles on ice cream. I remember his shrieks of delight whenever he’d start to run away from me into the woods near my house and he’d see me coming after him with my hands raised like claws threatening to eat him up when I caught him.

I still have the clumsy construction paper cards he made me for various birthdays and Valentine’s Days decorated with doilies and glitter and dozens of exclamation marks:
TO THE WORLD’S PRETTYEST ANT!!!!!!!!!! TO MY FAVRIT ANT!!!!!!! TO ANT CANDIS FROM THE BEST BOY SHE NOSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(To my dismay, his spelling never improved much past this point.)

There’s something about the earnestness of little boys and their boundless joy and curiosity that has always tugged at my heart. Maybe it’s the tragic knowledge that they will lose their spirit and zest for life when they become men as surely as they will lose their freckles and lopsided grins.

Men are cursed with the onerous task of finding a purpose. They need more than something to do; they need something to be. Women don’t have this problem. Women are women. Our purpose is to be women. But to simply be a man is never enough.

I watch these two boys, Kyle and Klint, and I try to imagine what kind of men they will be and I can’t. I can’t imagine what kind of children they were, either. I don’t think they were ever allowed to be children, even though one is a type of deified child, frozen in perennial boyhood, a man whose destiny is to play a game for most of his adult life. And the other exudes a street urchin sweetness and ruin that attracts and also repels. In him it’s all too easy to see
the cherub face barely alive beneath a layer of emotional grime. They’ve come from a different world than mine, one strewn with empty beer cans and cigarette packs where a mother’s bony embraces can be lost forever if she suspects you’re not on her side. I can’t begin to understand it.

My decision to offer them a home was a rash one, but I haven’t regretted it. I’m treating them like any pet project and have busied myself making plans for them I haven’t unveiled yet.

I’m also getting an education myself. I’ve already learned quite a bit about teenage boys. For one thing, they smell. I can’t adequately describe the odor that comes from their rooms, but it’s very distinctive: a combination of sweat, livestock musk, stale snack food, and bizarrely enough, motor oil.

They make an amazing amount of noise. The way they place a glass on a table, close a cupboard door, walk across a room, take a seat at a table, eat, drink, breathe; it’s all done aggressively, even the manner in which they express their emotions. Happiness, affection, anger, and disappointment are all displayed the same way: by cursing, punching, and calling each other terrible names.

Marjorie has informed me that they’re completely incapable of putting anything away in a drawer or a cabinet, of making a bed, or of lowering a toilet seat. And the amount of food they eat is incredible. Not good food, mind you, although I’ve been extremely pleased to see Kyle’s willingness to try everything Luis puts in front of him, and it’s been wonderful to see how much he enjoys his meals. He’s a budding gourmet while Klint picks at everything like Rae Ann when she’s on one of her fad diets. But dinners aside, between the two of them they eat a loaf of white sandwich bread, two pounds of bologna, a dozen eggs, a gallon of milk, a pound of bacon, a quart of orange juice, a large box of cereal, a box of Little Debbie snack cakes, and two bags of spicy Doritos every day.

My attempts to get to know Klint haven’t fared well. He arrived here rude, sullen, and uninvolved and has remained that way. However, I find I can’t dislike him as much as I should. I think this is because I don’t believe his behavior stems from conceit or animosity as much as from an inability to communicate.

Kyle is willing to talk, but he’s much more comfortable asking questions than providing answers. He’s naturally inquisitive and appears to have a sharp
and imaginative mind, although he sometimes tries to hide it by using poor grammar or resorting to an uninspired vocabulary. I can tell he does this on purpose.

Klint, on the other hand, appears to have the mental enthusiasm of a garden toad. Yet I don’t think the boy is dumb; I think he simply chooses not to think. I’ve seen the way his features collapse into a wince of pain whenever someone speaks to him. He deals with questions as if they were punches to be dodged or absorbed without flinching.

I don’t know if he’s decided not to use his brain because no one has ever expected him to or as a form of self-defense against flatterers and users. People make a fuss over what this boy is, but I don’t think anyone cares who he is. I don’t think anyone has ever looked past his amazing ability with a ball in search of a personality.

Manuel had similar problems. People adored him but without knowing him. They thought since he was exceedingly good at one thing, he must be good at everything. He wasn’t allowed to have problems and if he tried to claim that he did, people could be almost vicious in their insistence that he didn’t.

What they failed to understand was not only did he have many of the same problems they did, but those problems affected him in a much more debilitating manner.

An accountant can be down in the dumps and still add up his daily figures. A teacher can be concerned about her sick mother and still assign chapters for her students to read. A truck driver can be angry at his spouse and still cover all the miles on his route. But an artist’s self is his work. If something is wrong with one, the other falls into decay. I imagine it’s the same for an athlete and his performance.

Manuel didn’t have to deal with this problem too often. For the most part, he avoided people outside the bullfighting world and those he did spend time with were either too tongue-tied or too much in love with him to say anything critical.

I think it will be harder for Klint. Americans have an obsessive need to tarnish their heroes while Spaniards have an equally obsessive need to keep theirs shiny. Both practices require a great deal of denial and unfairness toward the heroes, but at least Manuel never had to feel guilty about being good.

I’ve come up with an idea that can only improve my relationship with
Klint and will also make life easier for Luis, thereby giving him less to complain about, which will make my life easier, too.

As things stand now, Luis has to drive the boys everywhere and I can tell he’s had enough. It’s been a very big imposition on his time and it was wrong of me to ask him to do it, but I came to realize after the fact that I wasn’t fully prepared to care for two teenage boys. Transportation was a problem I never considered.

Luis never outwardly fumes to me at first whenever I’ve upset him. He rolls his eyes. He makes his disgusted put-upon snort. In this case, if he has to leave in the middle of preparing a meal to drive the boys somewhere, he lays down his knife a little more forcefully than needed. He hasn’t yet uttered a word of complaint, but I know he’s accumulating the memory of each instance, stacking them inside himself like kindling, and one day some random word or action from me will provide the match and I’ll be forced to spend the next week trying to put out his latest inferno of grudges.

It’s occurred to me that if Klint had his own vehicle, Luis would be released from one of his many wretched bonds. It would also give the boys more freedom and independence. Not to mention, something of that magnitude would have to finally elicit a smile from Klint. I haven’t seen him smile once, not even when talking about baseball, his supposed reason for living. This fact is beginning to haunt me.

I know he doesn’t like the current transportation situation. I’ve heard him grumble to his brother about how embarrassing it is to get dropped off like a little kid, and he’s also told me to my face that my Mercedes sedan is an “old lady car” and an “in your face car.” I’m not absolutely certain about the meaning of the latter expression, but it made Luis grin from ear to ear. I sense it has something to do with showing off, which neither of these boys wants to do. They’re both humble. They don’t seem impressed at all by wealth and what it can buy. This is one of the reasons why I’ve felt compelled to be generous to them.

Taking all this into consideration, I’ve decided to buy Klint a truck. I’m observant enough to realize he’d prefer a pickup truck to a car and one that isn’t too flashy.

Both boys talk reverently about their father’s truck and enviously about Bill’s truck, a vehicle so covered in mud and rust, I’ve never been able to quite decide on its color. I’ve seen them standing with Jerry peering under the open
hood of his old Dodge, saying nothing to each other, just staring contentedly with hands in pockets.

I discussed the idea with Bert yesterday, and he agreed it was a good one. He’s going to take care of all the financial arrangements for me, but he doesn’t feel comfortable picking out the truck since he knows nothing about them.

I’m certainly not going to do it, and the odds of Luis succeeding at picking out the appropriate vehicle for a teenage boy like Klint would be about the same as Starbucks-sucking Aunt Jen being able to pick out an appropriate hair color for her age.

There is only one sensible candidate for the job.

“Good morning, Jerry. How are you?”

He looks up from loading a roll of barbed wire into the bed of his truck. A half-dozen fence posts are already waiting there.

“Can’t complain, Miss Jack. You?”

“I’m fine, thank you. It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?”

We both glance around at the vividly colored trees surrounding us. Their leaves of red, yellow, and tangerine pink look as though they’ve been painted onto the flat blue sky.

Jerry nods.

“Cold, though. Was almost cold enough to have a frost last night.”

“Yes, I noticed. I haven’t seen Kyle’s cat around. You don’t think last night was too cold for him?”

“I’m sure he was fine. You don’t have to worry about a cat like that.”

“I wasn’t worried.”

He nods again.

“You’re sure this break in the fence wasn’t caused by Ventisco?”

He pulls his cap off, folds it in two at the bill, and sticks it into his back pocket, his sign that he’s prepared to give me his full attention. The cap on his head seems to act as a protective covering for his thoughts like a blanket thrown over a birdcage.

“There weren’t no signs that anything hit it or tore at it,” he answers me. “It’s just an old fence falling down. Also too close to the road. I’ve never seen signs of Ventisco near a road.”

He rubs at the white stubble on his jaw.

“I guess it’s about time to let the cows loose into the upper pasture to help coax him back down closer to home.”

“Soon,” I say. “Luis will let you know. Jerry, I was wondering if you could assist me with something?”

“That’s what I’m here for.”

“This is not the type of thing you usually do for me.”

He doesn’t say anything. He waits for me to continue.