Little Bird of Heaven (29 page)

M
ARCH
1990

T
HE WOMAN TURNED TO HIM,
at his touch she turned to him and seeing his face began to scream. And he didn’t like that, God damn he did not like being screamed at. Reaching for her to quiet her with his hands blunt and clumsy as a beast’s paws and at his touch she began to scream louder shrill and piercing in his ears in her terror he’d needed to silence her but instead he was waking and there was no woman—the woman had vanished—except the screams were a telephone ringing close beside his dazed head where he seemed to have fallen at a sprawled angle across a soiled bare mattress in just boxer shorts, T-shirt yanked halfway up his back and fumbling for the damn phone he’d knocked it onto the floor, snatched up the receiver and there was an actual woman’s voice frantic in his ear
Aaron! God damn answer the phone! It’s Delray come get him immediately.

In his drunk-dazed state Aaron managed to sit up. Where he was exactly he’d postpone for later. Head felt like he’d been struck with a shovel. Mouth sour as puke. His grimy bare monkey-toes dug into the stained carpet like that part of him was instinctively grabbing hold of something solid. The woman he’d been with seemed to have vanished. There had been an actual woman here with Aaron on this mattress naked and grunting and straining but she was gone now. By a luminescent watch seeing it was 4:20 A.M. No moon to reflect snow outside the window thus so dark it was like the bottom of the sea. He’d seen a TV documentary
on the depths of the sea where no light ever came, weird fish-shapes there in the perpetual gloom no human eye had ever seen nor could the deep-sea creatures see one another. Why such creatures existed was a mystery no one could solve. What purpose to life on earth, no one could solve. But the situation was, you were here, you’d got born, you had to play the cards dealt to you. Aaron rubbed his eyes seeing through the part-opened doorway—into the bathroom—there was a light, a scent of steam from the shower wafting to his nostrils but the woman was gone.

“Jesus!”—seeing on the doorframe and on the wall beside the bed what appeared to be smears of blood of a kind made by a swiping hand.

Could’ve been blood from a bloodied nose he seemed to recall a woman’s nose he had not meant to injure, or was it his own nose, the woman had smacked with her elbow. Aaron wasn’t sure.

Out of the phone came the female voice urgent and bossy more clearly now: “Aaron! Are you there? Are you awake? God damn this is Viola I’m talking to you! I said Delray is hurt bad. Must’ve passed out hit his head on the pavement. Or somebody hit it for him. If you don’t come pick him up he’s your God damn father you owe him that, if you don’t get your ass over here Aaron I’m going to call 911 to come get him. Take him to the ER. God damn Delray isn’t going to die on these premises.”

Aaron was stammering telling his aunt not to call 911, don’t call for help, Pa wouldn’t like that—“Tell me where he is, Viola—I’ll come get him.”

“Where he is’—didn’t you just hear me, for Christ’s sake! Are you drunk? Are you high? He’s here! He’s at my place! He’s got no right here! All of you, you and him, and her, your damn mother—all you are has been trouble to us! To the family! Last time Delray showed up here it was half the night trying to locate you, you took your own sweet time getting over here, and this time I am not hauling your father inside, and up the stairs, and him puking on me—the hell with that. Where he is, Aaron, he’s in the driveway here, outside my house in the snow where somebody dumped him. One of his biker buddies. Or a cop friend. You know that crowd he runs with. Has to be somebody knows that I am his sister. I’m in bed I hear
a car horn, someone yelling, look out the window and there’s somebody laying in my driveway dead or too drunk to stand. Delray must’ve left his car somewhere, at some tavern and he couldn’t drive in that condition so they brought him here and dumped him on me. Oh, God.” Viola paused breathing heavily. When she resumed she was sobbing, furious. “What if your father has some brain injury? You know he’s half-crazy as it is. What if his liver is poisoned? Try to talk to him he says yes, sure he will cut down on drinking, check into detox, there’s half of us in the family offered to drive him there and visit with him while he’s in then this happens, scares the hell out of me. I’m Delray’s sister not his mother! Not his wife! Or his son!
You’re
his son—see? So get over here, Aaron, take him back to your house with you or I’m calling 911 and if it’s the police or the ER the hell with you both.”

Aaron said he was coming. Be there as soon as he got his clothes on. By this time he was on his feet, and reasonably alert. Stone cold sober in ten seconds. Telling his aunt not to call any God damn cops or ambulance, Delray might get busted—“Like if they ‘commit’ him and he can’t get out like that time at the VA in Watertown, that almost killed him.”

His aunt had hung up. Aaron lost the receiver, it clattered onto the floor. It was coming back to him where he was. A familiar place made unfamiliar. In a shaft of light from the bathroom he saw something that made the short hairs at the nape of his neck stir—a snake? A snake in the house? In winter? Had to be more than just a garter snake it was thick-bodied, dark, lustrous as grease. Or maybe Aaron’s eyes weren’t focusing right, like his brain. If this was a meth high it had taken a malevolent turn. If this was just a drunk maybe he had D.T.’s. Another wrong thing was this wasn’t Aaron’s bedroom but a back room on the first floor of the house on Quarry Road, dirty old mattress on the floor and a filthy fiber carpet strewn with mysterious articles of clothing, shoes, stained towels, cigarette stubs and husks of dead insects, but—a
snake?
Maybe in summer, the back door has been left carelessly open, chinks and tears in the screens, possibly a snake could get in that way or through the cellar, crawl up the stairs to the first floor but this snake looked lifeless, or in a
deep sleep. Cautiously Aaron approached it and dared to prod it with his bare foot: what’s it but a hair braid, dark shiny fake-hair, has to be ten inches long.

Fake hair! Showy-looking brunette braid must’ve been twined in with the woman’s own hair, shiny and sexy and the first thing Aaron had noticed about her but it’s fake.

Why you can’t trust women. Even young girls. Can’t know what the fuck they are thinking, can’t know what they are feeling, can’t know how they will surprise you except you know it won’t be a surprise you will like.

Drove to his aunt’s house on Dock Street. Viola hadn’t fully forgiven him for bringing the Diehl girl there, that night. And now, there was Delray. In a state of dread driving the utterly deserted late-night streets of Sparta suspended as an inheld breath thinking
God don’t let my father die. Not like this he deserves better
and as the van skidded on the icy streets thinking
If he’s dead when I get there—whose fault is that?
Aaron loved his father but frankly he’d been putting up with the old man’s bullshit for too long. Since Zoe was killed, and Delray a “suspect.” Since Zoe left the house saying sure she’d be back, give her a few months. A few months just to breathe Zoe had promised but Delray had never believed her.

Third time since New Year’s he’d been wakened from sleep to drive out and bring Delray back home. It was shocking, shameful, an ugly sight to see a man like Delray Kruller sick-drunk and helpless as a baby. There were guys his age with fathers like Delray that’d been alcoholics for longer than Delray, you get fed up with them, you’ve had enough of them, still they don’t go away, and they don’t die. A long time they hang on. God damn Aaron resented it. Wanted to keep his good memories of Delray—like his good memories of Zoe—what they’d been when Aaron was a little boy. Not like now. This wasn’t right.

It was a night of unnatural stillness, very cold. Not even a wind from the mountains, or the river. Smelly clothes he’d thrown on back at the house, bare feet shoved into boots. And there on Dock Street beyond a block of darkened store fronts and a shuttered A & P was the red-brick row house where Viola rented a second-floor apartment. In the driveway
was what might’ve been a bundle of old clothes. A body carelessly tossed into the snow, unmoving. You could see where the body had been dragged in the snow a few yards toward the house as if despite what she’d said on the phone Viola had intended to get him into the house but given up and covered him with a blanket in a gesture of dismay and disgust hiding most of the man’s face so your first thought seeing him was this was a corpse.

Loudly Aaron said: “Pa? Wake up.”

Cautiously he pulled the blanket away from his father’s face. Wanting to think what you always want to think at such times
This isn’t him!

The old man’s face was battered, swollen. It looked like a football that has been kicked too much. The graying hair Aaron remembered used to be glossy-black Delray had worn with a headband like a Comanche warrior to strike fear in the hearts of Caucasians was now thinning at the crown and matted and messy and his jaws were covered in whiskers sharp as an animal’s quills. Delray was only forty-eight—forty-nine?—Aaron wasn’t sure which but looked a decade older, or older than that, bruises under his loose-shut eyes and mouth slack as a dead fish’s. There was some mangy old Seneca death-mask Aaron had seen in a museum display, hollow eye-sockets, mouth in an open O and owl’s wispy feathers in the headdress and God damn if Delray didn’t resemble that death-mask the kids had laughed at, trooping through the dusty museum displays. The Indian kids in a tight little band had laughed hardest, harshest.

Looked like Delray been beaten, kicked. This wasn’t just falling-down drunk. Aaron guessed that all over his father’s body he’d soaked up considerable hurt.

From a doorway in the row house came a woman’s voice. Aaron’s aunt hunched inside an overcoat calling to him, “Just get him out of here! I can’t take more of this! He’s killing himself, God damn he is not going to kill
me.
”

But seeing Aaron struggling with Delray, Viola relented and came to help him. The two of them grunting as they tried to lift the heavy man, managing finally to heave him—now he was part-wakened—to his feet.
“Hey Pa, you can’t sleep here, see? Freeze your ass? It’s me, and Viola. C’mon
wake up.”

Viola slapped snow onto Delray’s bruised face which helped to revive him. Aaron slung an arm around him to hold him up. Jesus, the old man had put on weight! Like a sack of potatoes. No taller than Aaron but outweighed him by thirty pounds at least. Delray was muttering as if incensed, indignant. Shoving at Aaron not seeming to know who Aaron was, and he meant to help. Aaron pleaded, “Jesus, Pa, come
on.
I got to get you home before the cops come by.”

This kind of serious drunk, it’s like brain damage. Nothing funny or jokey about it. Delray’d been drinking vodka lately to take him to a place where, just maybe, he would not come back from.

Where you could see him, at a distance. A vapor in the shape of a man fading the harder you peered at him.

With Viola’s help Aaron managed to walk Delray to the van, lift and shove him inside where he sprawled across the front seat groaning and cursing. Viola was laughing in exasperation, her face wet with tears. She’d had enough, Viola said. Delray was her big brother she’d looked up to all her life and Delray had taken care of her at crucial times in her life—when her first husband had gone kind of crazy and tried to kill her—before he’d been incarcerated at Potsdam, where he died—and some other times—but now, this was a new turn, this was more than Viola could handle.

Among the Krullers it was openly said
Delray is headed for hell, after her.

Her
meaning Zoe. Who was already in hell.

Viola said: “Take him to Watertown tomorrow, the VA hospital. They’ve got his files. They have to take him. Get him into detox. Another night like this, Delray will be dead.”

Aaron said O.K., he would. Aaron said he’d see how things were in the morning.

Viola said sharply: “I said take him. Commit him. Fuck how ‘things are in the morning.’”

Aaron said O.K. He was frightened of his aunt’s anger, a woman’s anger
has a way of translating into claw marks on your face if you aren’t vigilant. Thinking how seven years after Zoe had been murdered—seven years!—his mother was still to blame. Whatever was happening in their lives now, a consequence of what Zoe had started.
Headed for hell, after her.

Aaron drove out to Quarry Road slowly. Cautiously. His drunk old man could start flopping like a fish, puking or fighting him—a drunk in such an extreme state is dangerous, like a meth tweeker. Aaron’s own adrenaline high had peaked and was now ebbing. His head began to pound with pain as if the veins and arteries inside his skull were rubbery and stretched tight to bursting, and it scared him.

Ahead, a Sparta police cruiser was turning onto Post Road. Aaron slowed the van. Didn’t want to attract the attention of law enforcement officers tonight. He was pretty sure he was sober by now but earlier that night he’d been drinking and if cops stopped him and made him take a Breathalyzer test maybe it would show alcohol in his blood and he’d be charged with driving while “impaired”—lose his driver’s license and then what? Can’t live without a driver’s license.

At the Grotto he’d been drinking with his friends after work. Two guys from Delray’s garage, older married guys reluctant to go home to their families. And there was this girl—woman—a few years older than Aaron—named Sheryl?—Shirl?—she’d given Aaron some kind of speedball, wanting him to get high with her, no damn good getting high alone she said, and Aaron said O.K. like doing drugs was some special thing for him, at age twenty-one, she’d be the one to turn him on. Now it was coming back to him, a little: Sheryl with the tight-braided hair she’d swung like a horse’s tail, and a quick panting breath in his face like hissing steam. In the parking lot behind The Grotto the two of them fumbling and grunting and later he’d taken her home guessing that Delray wouldn’t be there—which Delray was not—and whatever happened between them at the house, in that back room, Aaron wasn’t sure.