Kicking the Sky (21 page)

“Help him, pelo o amor de Deus, you can help my son.”

“I can’t,” I said.

My father climbed the steps onto the stage and stood beside me.

“I can’t,” I said. “Please, Pai, I can’t.”

The woman reached for my face. She dabbed the tears from my eyes and cheeks. She brought the handkerchief down and stuffed it in her son’s shirt, rubbing it on his back. It was hard to breathe. Bursts of air squeezed through my sandpaper throat. I fumbled with the knot of the cape, gave in and tore at it as a warm trickle of pee ran down my inner thigh. The snapped tinsel powdered the air with sparkles. The crowd broke into song,
Alleluia, Alleluia
.

I had recovered from scarlet fever. My mother blamed my father, said it was brought on by exhaustion. A week of rest was all I needed, my father said.

His wine press had been assembled where my chair had stood. The rest of the garage remained the same. In a matter of hours my father could have the whole damn thing running again. The sweet smell of grape juice filled the garage. It was the smell that reminded me that winter was on its way. We were late this year. My father had bought the last thirty crates of grapes, and according to my uncles, he had waited too long—too mushy, they said. It was my job to remove the
nails and staples from the empty crates. There was no one around. I saw the hammer lying on the ground. I dragged a stool from the corner and got to work, piling the slats of wood into small bundles that my father would use for tinder when we smoked the
chouriço
.

“You is here.” My father entered the garage from the laneway. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows and his arms were dark with matted hair, stained purple with grape juice. “You find the hammer okay?” he said. Other than letting me know his sister wouldn’t be coming to stay with us until next summer—the delay, unexplained—few words had been shared between us in the week since the worshippers had been left swaying in disbelief. The last thing I saw was how frightened they looked before I collapsed on the stage. The situation was getting out of hand, and my father was smart enough to know when to let things rest. “This is a ship! I am the captain!” he had argued with my mother that night. My father lit a cigarette and looked at me with one eye through the smoke. He headed to the wine press and torqued the ratchet head a few times. “I’m at your uncle house. I helping them to bury the fig tree.” His voice was soft, almost pleading. I didn’t say anything. “We have to bury it now before the freeze.” I couldn’t face him either. “The lapa’s gone,” he said.

“What do you mean,
gone
?” My voice was strong, and it surprised me.

“Someone come in through the basement window and steal it.”

“If you’re lying—” I stood up, tall and straight. I couldn’t back down. I waited longer than I needed to, waiting for him to lunge at me. He looked small.

“Filho, I did it for you.” I stared at the pile of crates and wiped my nose and eyes. He cranked the large metal bar of the ratchet, and then he reached down for a jug of last year’s wine and raised it to his lips. He took a deep swig, enough to make the jug gurgle. “Pronto, I go to your uncle’s house now.” He swiped at his mouth with his hand. The drip of grape juice turned into a thin, steady stream that pissed into the bucket.

I travelled up the lane straddling the thin river of watered-down wine. It looked like our houses were bleeding. Red ran down the spine of the lane, all the way to its ass. That’s what we called it—where the sewer was at the bottom of the lane close by my uncle David’s garage. Senhor Anselmo was hosing down his garage after making wine. So were Senhor Rodrigo and Senhor Benjamin. They acknowledged me by tilting their hats as I walked by.

Once on Markham Street, I beelined to Mr. Serjeant’s house. I walked along the narrow stretch at the side of his house through to his backyard. I opened the door that led into his garage. James stood facing his canvas, a gallon of paint in his hand. Agnes sat on her rocking chair and smiled. A Swanson’s TV dinner balanced on her lap.

“Are you feeling better, Antonio? Would you like something to eat?” Agnes said. Her face and arms had plumped up. I tried to avoid looking at her belly. James looked at me for a second before turning back to his painting.

“No, thanks.”

I noticed Mr. Serjeant’s trunk was opened. Its brass lock had been broken off. The rim of the chest was covered in ruffled
fabric and the inside was lined with quilted material, a balloon print. There was a small yellow blanket folded neatly in the bottom beside a tiny pillow.

“It’s early, I know,” Agnes said. “I like yellow. And the baby will like the balloons.”

“It’s pretty,” I said.
Pretty
sounded like the wrong word—a girl word. There was something creepy about a crib with a lid. “My mother says it’s bad luck to prepare anything before a baby is born. She told me that when I was born she let me sleep in a drawer in her bedroom, just for a couple of days, until my father could set up the crib.” I could tell from the look on Agnes’s face that it didn’t come out the way I wanted. I turned to James, who kept painting. He swung the tin of paint a bit and then splattered the canvas in the same way that Padre Costa blessed the congregation with holy water.

“It’s over,” I said.

Still James did not turn around. He put down the tin of paint. He smudged the paint in swirls on the canvas. “Your aunt says that dreams and nightmares are like cleaning out the trash. You wake up with a fresh mind.” He stopped to light a cigarette. “No worries. No troubles.”

I heard creaking and saw Agnes climbing up the ladder, her belly rubbing against each rung before she disappeared into the loft.

“Painting does the same thing,” James said, blowing smoke out his nostrils. He faced me now, his curls fighting their way out from underneath his painter’s cap. “Edite’s a good lady. She doesn’t judge.” He reached for the rag dangling from the loop in his jeans and wiped his hands, picking at the webbing between his fingers.

“Does she know what you do?” I asked, lowering my voice.

“I’m not a faggot, if that’s what you’re thinking. It means nothing. You’re not a kid anymore, Antonio. There’s lots of stuff in this world that ain’t pretty.”

“I know.”

“Do you?” James said. “Look, Edite helps us out a bit, that’s all.”

“And what does she get from you?”

“I fill her in on what’s going on downtown. I give her information.”

“About the murderers?”

“Something like that. She’s working on a story in the lead-up to the trial.”

“There’s nothing about the trial in the papers or on TV anymore.”

“Wait until the trial begins. But Edite’s not really interested in the trial. She’s investigating another kind of story.”

I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t want him to think Edite kept secrets from me. I was mad that she didn’t trust me enough to tell me what she was really working on, though.

“She’s interested in what makes people tick,” James said. “Edite’s brave, you know. She’s more interested in how Emanuel’s murder has affected the gay community, how they’ve all been made out to look like animals. It’s the kind of story most reporters are afraid to tell.”

James came closer to me, placed one hand on my shoulder. His hand was hot. I shook it off. “The world is full of monsters,” he whispered. He put his hand on me again. This time his fingers dug in. “I’m not one of them. I look after you guys.” He let the cigarette butt slip from his fingers and drop to the
floor. He spread his arms wide, as if daring me to take a step back. I was ready to push him away, punch him if I needed to.

“The limpet’s gone,” I said. James’s face betrayed nothing. “Did you steal it?”

James looked stunned for a second, but then I thought I saw something, the tiniest flinch, the quickest blink. It
was
him; he had put an end to it. My mother and Edite had made promises, but it was James who had saved me. I took in his smell of tobacco, sweat, and turpentine. I pressed my lips to his chest, but pulled away at the sound of the garage door opening.

“You should see them,” Ricky said, slipping under the door like a crab. “I’ve never seen Manny in a suit. I followed them all the way to the door.”

“What are you talking about?” I said.

“They were going to meet Lygia’s parents to talk about Eugene and her getting married.”

James flicked a switch and the disco ball started turning. “Isn’t that the way you Portuguese people do it? Meet before a marriage is set?”

Climbing down the ladder, Agnes slipped on a rung but regained her balance.

Near the basin at the rear of the garage James stripped down to his waist. He splashed water on his chest and under his arms, dragged a face cloth he had patted with soap along his skin. Droplets of water splashed onto the baseboard heater coils and sizzled. Agnes turned away as he unzipped his jeans and reached down into his groin to clean with the cloth. I watched from the corner of my eye. James caught me looking. He reached for a towel and tossed it over his shoulder. He placed his hand on his belt buckle. Ricky turned to face the garage wall.

“I’ve got to get dressed,” James said. “You mind?” I could feel my dick getting hard. I turned around and stood next to Ricky.

The bulge pressed against my jeans. I tried imagining starving kids in Africa with their bubble bellies and the flies that swarmed around their mouths, and what things would be like if my parents were killed in a car accident and I was left alone to live with my sister. And then my grandmother, waxy and scrawny, lying in her coffin. Anything to force my dick to go limp.

“You can turn around now,” James said. “Don’t you have to be somewhere, Ricky?”

“I almost forgot. I’ll go now,” Ricky said.

“Everything going okay?” James asked. Ricky nodded and left. Agnes reached up behind her, and without looking at James, she rested her hand on his chest.

“Antonio?” James said, as I zipped up my coat and tugged it down as far as I could. “Follow Ricky to Red’s. Just stand back and keep an eye out for him. Don’t let him see you,” he added. “Will you do that for me?”

“Sure,” I said, before dipping under the garage door. I figured Ricky was just dropping off the rent or some money to cover the electricity bills. Red lived all alone in a big brick house on Markham Street, three storeys high and just a few houses down from Ricky and Edite. I climbed over Red’s fence. He had a lawn, not a vegetable garden. A bluish light from a television shone from the basement window. I crouched down, off to the side of the house. I saw an elongated shadow, which shrunk and then turned into Red as he came into view. He was probably twenty feet away from me. He walked over to an easy chair, the kind with a handle on the side, reclined,
and a footrest magically appeared. He had a beer in his hand. His flaming red hair turned a strange colour in the television’s light. Ricky walked by him. He carried what looked like a roll of toilet paper and a bottle and placed them on the floor beside Red. Red plunked his beer bottle on an angle between his legs. He loosened the knot of his robe before lifting the cable box from the floor and resting it on his knee. The long wire that stretched to the TV was tangled under his feet. Ricky positioned a small stool in front of Red’s recliner. He sat on it facing him, between his spread legs.

What the fuck has James gotten him into?
I thought. I wanted to pound on the window, make enough noise to have it all stop. But my feet felt like they were stuck in wet cement, my arms just tubes of air.

Ricky sat on the stool. Red stared at the TV, watching
Tom and Jerry
in the freaky glow. Every so often a slice of Red’s belly would jiggle with laughter. Ricky remained quiet. Red then reached down with one hand and drew his robe to his sides. His dick was hidden in his bush of red pubic hair. Ricky picked up the bottle of baby oil and lathered his hands. My mouth went chalk dry. Ricky was about to place his small hand on Red’s bush but Red’s fat hand came up and slapped Ricky in the head. Ricky almost toppled over. I thought about calling the police. I knew what the police would do to men like Red, but I didn’t know what they would do to Ricky. Ricky righted himself, blew on his hands and rubbed them together. Red’s head fell back as he closed his eyes and spread his legs wider.

I waited in the cold, crouched against the brick wall next to the basement window. I couldn’t watch anymore. Spit gathered
in my mouth like a puddle. I fought not to swallow because I was afraid all the spit would gush into my stomach and that would make it worse, trigger the vomit. I sank into the fog that had settled near the ground and tried to breathe in the frosty air.
James was sending Ricky in to do this shit. Making him do the same shit he did. The world was full of monsters and he was one of them
.

I heard the side storm door open. I slunk behind the garbage can. Ricky wiped the snot from his nose with his sleeve. He zipped his jacket up to his chin and looked up to the sky. His breath made small puffs in the night air. He turned and walked between the houses, toward Red’s front yard and onto Markham Street.

I followed. I saw him turn into his walkway. He looked so small. He shut his gate and disappeared onto his porch. I wanted to make sure I heard his front door closing behind him. I crossed over to the sidewalk and hid behind the trunk of a maple tree. I tucked my face up to my eyes in my jacket and breathed hard to keep warm. I waited until his bedroom lights went out. It was all I could do.

E
VEN THE
D
ECEMBER AIR
couldn’t erase the smell of cat piss and dog shit in the Patch. A mattress covered in brown stains leaned against the brick wall of a garage. It seemed like everything got sucked up into the Patch, like it was a gigantic magnet for diapers, shampoo bottles, broken chairs, squashed lampshades, and I don’t know how many shoe boxes. It was early in the morning and the clouds in the sky looked bruised, as if they were about to burst. Even though James did the one thing everyone else promised—destroying the
lapa
—I hated him. And after everything I knew about him, I hated what my body did when I so much as thought of him.