COMING HOME—LONG ISLAND MIST

1

BOY ON A FENCE

He sat on the top rail of the fence with his back to the woods trying to whistle, his lips puckering, but no whistle sound emerging.  His older brother whistled.  It was a mystery to him.  In spite of his mother sending him to Sunday school, he never thought of God or of the angels, or of saints, or of being “saved” from his own “fallen” nature and thus going to heaven, or of not being saved and what that could mean.  He puckered his lips and blew. 

     It was a bright warm Saturday morning in July.  He could hear his mother in the house over the music on the radio.  She was talking with his grandfather.  He paid no attention to her voice, even though he stayed deliberately within reach of his hearing it.  He gripped the white rail of the fence on either side of him and cheerfully began to hum.  This he could do.  The woods behind him were dark and deep and he never went in them.  His older brother did, sometimes.  There were paths in the woods.  One, interrupted by the yard, led into darkness under the trees and it never even occurred to him to follow it.  He was seven years old. 

     The time was two years after his father returned from the war.  He had no active memories of his father being gone, only that feeling, the shared family sense of an absence, which had become since his father’s return the unspoken, the unmentionable, while the feeling remained, the feeling which had become for him as one of the paths in the woods—that which led into darkness, where he dared not go.  What he did remember is the street in Brooklyn where he was born and where he played during those terrible years unconscious of their pain.  He remembered his friends and nuns in the school and the church.  He remembered the change of the seasons, the snow on the sidewalks, the leaf fall in autumn, and the hot asphalt of the street in summer. 

     His father worked as one obsessed to ready the house on Long Island.  The yard was carved from the woods and surrounded by it on three sides.  His father and older brother put up the fence he was sitting on, and he had helped paint it.  He worked diligently with the brush his father gave him, holding it with both hands, pushing its bristles loaded with white paint back and forth, back and forth.  He had no friends.  Their house was all alone in the wood, the lane on which they lived at that time being narrow and made of gravel.  After a year, he still did not know any of the boys in school by first name.  But he was not troubled by friendlessness.  He was content to sit on the fence and hum and, later, when the mood struck him, to hop off and go near the garden.  Sometimes he played with his brother.  Even though he knew his brother didn’t like him, and even though when they played his brother tried to hurt him, he relished their brief moments together.

     He blew again through rounded lips and gave up.  He was about to hop off the fence when he felt something at his back.  He became aware suddenly that something was breathing behind him.  Hardly daring to move, he slowly turned his head to look over his left shoulder, for that was the direction he felt it come, and saw a disheveled, shaggy, filthy animal.  It was a collie gone wild, living in the wood.  It pushed its long, slender snoot into his back and made quick whining yelps.  His hands tightened on the rail, and he felt a lightening-like thrill raise the hair on the back of his neck.  With a lucidity caused by terror, he saw, in the instant, the unbridgeable distance between himself and the house. 

     At the dog’s first touch he had gasped in air and held it.  And still he held it as he imagined himself running.  But he could not push off from the fence.  For a long while he held his breath.  When he began again to breathe, he peered cautiously over his left shoulder, and not seeing the immense animal there, as he did before, he slowly turned his head to peer over his right shoulder.  The animal was gone.  He had not heard it leave.  Nor had he heard it come.  For a moment he seemed to have stepped out of himself.  He could not have explained the feeling to himself.  He felt it as a saving moment, not just as a relief from danger, but as a lifting away from it. 

     He pushed off the fence and stood, grateful for the touch of ground under his feet.  He turned to the wood, feeling brave for the sudden capacity he discovered to peer intently down the path his brother often explored.  There was no sign of the dog.  As he walked surprisingly steadily toward the house, skirting the garden which always tempted him, he felt the animal at his back.  It was a presence that would not leave, even though he knew the beast was gone.  He felt it as teeth in his hand, and as teeth in his side.  And still he walked steadily.  When he reached the steps his father built that rose to the kitchen door, he turned and sat on the bottom step.  He felt safe here. 

     It did not occur to him that the animal meant no harm.  It was there, it touched him, he heard it, and it alarmed him, more, it frightened him, and the fright was all the meaning he could make from the encounter.  As he sat on the step, he kept his head turned toward the fence and the wood on that side of the house.  The fence was no longer that familiar thing he had helped paint.  Enshrouded by the darkness of the woods, it had become strange.  The dog was there, part of the mystery of it all, and when he looked at the fence, it, too, was imbued with mystery. 

     When he stood, he looked around the yard.  The woods on all sides pressed on him.  The gnarly pines, their reddish bark and twisting branches nude to their tips where pine cones clustered amid the shaggy gray-green needles, seemed almost to touch the fence, and here and there actually leaned over it.  He had not noticed it before.  Their pine cones fell to the grass in the yard!  He closed his eyes and opened them, and nothing changed.  And yet, everything had changed.  He felt the dog at his back, and the twinge of terror darkened the woods and unsettled him.

     He had not been near a dog before.  He remembered in Brooklyn the boy across the street whose family did not speak English.  Nobody played with him, not because he didn’t speak English but because the family owned a German shepherd, and the boy appeared outside only when he walked him.  Safely across the street, he nevertheless ran to the steps of his house and stayed there until the dog was taken back inside.

     He began to attend now to his mother’s voice and the music on the radio.  Her nearness made him feel less afraid.  He thought of the dog, how it came near him and didn’t bite him.  He wondered if he would see it again.  As he stood at the bottom of the steps, he kept himself turned to the fence where he had been sitting, ready to run up the steps if he did see it again.   The fence was in the shadows of the trees and seemed now to press close to him.  The trees leaned over the fence, as though beckoning.  He had been sitting on the fence all unaware, and now he felt it.  He felt it as a terrifying darkness which he knew he would not return to. 

     Then he saw movement in the bushes under the trees.  As he stared, ready to flee up the steps, the collie emerged into view.  It came right up to the fence and looked across the yard at him.  Between the top rail and the bottom rail was enough space for the dog to hop right through.  But it didn’t.  The boy and the dog stared at one another, the boy frozen in fear, the dog in anticipation. 

     He could not run up the steps.  He could not even call to his mother.  The dog whined, now, as though calling him, calling him to something he could not imagine, and not seeing him move, it barked.  At the bark, the boy gasped and held his breath.  Then, once again, they stared at each other.  The spell was broken when the dog turned back to the path in the woods.  As it walked slowly into the obscurity, it turned its head and barked a last time.  The boy watched until he could no longer see him.  As his breathing calmed and his heart settled, everything he thought he knew in the yard had become unfamiliar to him.  He yearned to sit by his grandfather in the cool dimness of the kitchen and to be near his mother, who would talk and talk as though the world had not changed.

2

A BOY AND HIS BROTHER

His father told him not to walk in the garden, so he stood at the edge, looking at the peppers.  The longer ones, curling at their tips, were starting to fleck with red.  It was hot and humid, and as he looked at the peppers, he wiped the sweat from his forehead with the palm of his hand.  Then something caught his eye above, and he looked up.  Seagulls, more than he could count, were sailing very low, just above the roofs of the house, and he could see their grayish-white bellies and yellow feet curled under them.  His father told him never to go in the garden because when he did he picked things from the bushes before they were ready.  He didn’t like it when his father got angry and yelled at him.  Even though he wanted to, he didn’t go in the garden. 

     He remembered what his mother said.  She said his father’s temper was bad because he still hurt from the war, because bad things happened to him.  That was why he worked so hard, why he was away from home so much, and that they, he and his brother, had always to do what their father said.  He helped his father plant the garden.  They did it together without his older brother.  Some things they started from seed, and some things from tiny plants his father brought home in the car.  His father said he liked to plant and had a happy look when he spaded and raked the ground, removing the grass and dandelions that grew in the spring.  His father let him put the cucumber seeds into the hole on top of the little mounds he made.  He especially watched the cucumber vines as they grew and yearned to go in the garden and spread the leaves of the vines to see the dark green cucumbers.  His father said every flower would become one.

He heard the garage door rumble open in front of the house and knew that it was his brother getting out his bike.  He  wanted to be with his brother, but his brother didn’t like that.  Even though he wasn’t lonely when he was by himself, he still wanted to be with his brother.

     His father had only just finished building the garage.  He helped him paint it, the brownish-yellow color so pleasant when he smeared it on the sides where he could reach.  His mother laughed and took a picture of him.  That day, his brother wasn’t there.  He didn’t know where he was.  His brother was mysterious, leading a life of his own, going off on his bike with friends.  They went to the bay where they swam and sometimes caught clams and crabs, which he brought home on his bike. 

     His brother had taken the bike out of the garage and was about to ride off when, running as fast as he could, he came round and hollered out, asking if he couldn’t go, too.  Instead of saying no, his brother turned to him, grabbed him in a headlock, punched him on the cheek, and threw him to the concrete.  He didn’t start to cry until after his brother rode off.  He was only seven years old, his mother said, and when he was older, everything would be different.  But that didn’t matter now.  His sobs came in breathless gasps as he brushed his hands against the legs of his pants.  He wanted to be with his brother and his brother’s friends, having no friends of his own.  But all he ever got for his pains was a beating. 

     Hearing him cry, his mother looked out the front door and called to him.  He stood in the driveway, looking down the gravel road that parted the forest at his brother pedaling faster and faster, and wiped his nose and cheeks with his hand.  Then he turned and went up the front steps to his waiting mother, who cooed sympathetically and stroked his head and asked if he wanted a glass of milk and some cookies.

His white-haired grandfather was a playful and mischievous man.  He was a barber in the Italian army before emigrating to Brooklyn, where he still lived with his remaining three daughters.  His fourth, the third in terms of birth order, was the first to be married and to own her own home.  He came east to the Island on weekends whenever he could, enjoying the garden in the yard and the mussels, clams, and oysters from the bay only a short walk from the home.  His son-in-law worked long hours and was often away on Saturdays, which made his weekend visits very welcome to his daughter.  He watched without comment the older grandson mistreat the younger, not wanting to interfere in his daughter’s raising of the boys.  But he couldn’t help paying special attention to the boy, most especially when he responded with such earnestness and gratefulness. 

     That boyish earnestness and gratefulness he accepted as the great reward of raising four girls.  They were still children when his wife died.  Having survived the great war and the emigration, he took her death as his greatest blow:  because it was so intimate, because she died in their own bed, and because she had to be removed from their Brooklyn house, which for her sake he suffered innumerable pains to support.  When he held his grandson’s hand, his eyes twinkled with impish delight, and there was no telling what they’d end up doing. 

     On this Saturday, he witnessed the beating from the window and called to his daughter.  He was upset that she didn’t intervene and reprimand her son.  So he took the boy by the hand and led him outside in front of the house, saying he wanted to teach him a game.  He went to his car and opened the trunk and with tender care took out a dark shiny wooden box with brass hinges and clasp with a little brass lock in it.  He showed the boy a tiny key on his key ring, and handing the keys to him, told him to open the lock and look inside.

     When the boy finally opened the box, he saw inside dazzling colored balls, green, yellow, blue, and red, two of each.  One ball, smaller than the others, was just plain wood, uncolored.  They seemed precious to the boy, and with a look of wonder, he touched them and searched his grandfather’s face, as though to ask what they were for.

     “I’ll show you how to play with them,” his grandfather said.

     He lifted the box and carried it into the yard behind the house.  Then he took the smaller of the balls and tossed it into the grass in front of them.  Then he told the boy to choose a color and take those two balls and hold them, which he did, selecting the red ones.  The old man took the yellow ones and put the box aside.  Then he told the boy to toss one of his balls at the smaller ball sitting in the grass some dozen feet in front of them.  The boy managed a toss and the grandfather told him to try again with the other ball.  Then the grandfather tossed his yellow balls.  In this way, they wiled away an hour, the boy as fascinated as with nothing he had ever done before.

     When his grandfather put the balls back into the box, he told the boy that the game would be their secret, and they would play it again whenever they were alone.

     That night, when he and his brother were in their bedroom putting on their pajamas, he told his older brother he had a secret.  His brother said, “Tell me!”

     And he said, “I can’t.  It’s my secret.”

     Then his brother got angry and pushed him onto the bed and said again, louder, “Tell me!”

     Afraid of what his brother would do, he nevertheless repeated what he said before, “I can’t.  It’s my secret.”

     His bother slapped him, then, hard across the face, and it stung and made him cry.  His cry came as a wounded sound, and the tears began to flow. 

     “I can’t,” he said between his breathings, “I can’t.”

     For a moment, his brother stood beside the bed and looked at him with a look the boy didn’t know how to understand.  It was a look he would not forget.  It made him wonder about his brother and about himself.  It was the difference between them.  Whatever it said, he knew it was something he would never say.  It scared him.

3

BOY ALONE

Sunday!  Everyone was home.  His father, his brother, his mother, his grandfather.  They would go to church after getting up and getting dressed.  When they came home from church they would all sit together at the breakfast table.  He loved Sundays, especially when his grandfather came.  He got out of bed, went to the bathroom, and got dressed.  He’d be first.

     When he came into the kitchen, he heard his mother and father talking.  His father sounded angry.  Their voices came from behind their bedroom door off the hallway near the kitchen.  His father was angry.  His voice was loud.  His mother’s voice was quiet.  He thought she sounded like she was crying.  He couldn’t make out the words, only the sounds, the anger in them, and the quietness of his mother.  Usually, his mother put up coffee, and they had some before they left for church, he and his brother getting a little bit of coffee in their milk, into which he put a whole teaspoon of sugar.  This morning his mother had not put up the coffee.  He loved the smell of it when he came down from the bedroom.  Hearing the voices made him want to run.

     It was sunny outside.  He stepped into the hall and listened at the bedroom door.  There was a long silence and he stood there hardly breathing.  Then he heard his father say, “I can’t stand it going to church.  You don’t know what it’s like.  I can’t make you know, either.  I don’t want to talk about it.  Can’t.  You go, take the boys.  With your father.  I just can’t.  Leave me alone.”

     There was another long silence.  He couldn’t leave the door.  He didn’t understand, though he tried.  He closed his eyes and thought of his father sitting in the pew with all of them, dressed in his brown suit.  He went last week, the week before.  He didn’t understand.  He heard his mother say, then, in her quiet voice, “I’ll just make us a nice breakfast.  Dad will understand when he comes down and sees the table laid out.  Don’t worry.”  She said that so soothingly, “Don’t worry.”  It calmed him and made him feel better.  But his father’s voice came angry again, “Don’t worry, don’t worry!  Why do you say such things?”

     He ran from the door.  His father’s anger terrified him.  It terrified him because he didn’t understand.  He never knew what would make his father angry so he could avoid it.  He felt this was so for his mother, too.  Only his brother was not afraid.  He would just go get on his bike and take off.  He ran across the kitchen to the door.  The sun was shining and it was bright and clear outside.  He unlocked the door, turned the handle, and pulled.  It made that dull thunking sound when it came open.  He stepped out and pulled the door closed behind him.  He hoped his mother and father didn’t hear.

     He put his hands in his pockets and looked at the forest across the yard beside the house.  The pine trees were dark and the scrub oak were lit by the sun and everything looked wet.  Grabbing the rail, he took the steps.  He wanted to get out of sight, in case his mother or father came into the kitchen and should see him through the window on the door.  When he came to the bottom of the steps, he turned to the left and went to the fence on that side of the house.  This is where he saw the dog, saw it disappear down the path that cut through the woods.  He stood at the fence and looked down the path.

     The dog is out there, he thought.  Is it there now?  What would happen if he climbed through the fence and started to walk down the path?  Would the dog come?  If it came, would it bite him?  It was so big.  It could bite him and bite him.  He stared down the path, frozen.  His hands seemed glued to the top board of the fence.  He didn’t know how far the woods went.  Once, he walked down the road to where it ended at another road that came through the forest.  The woods were on both sides of the road.  It was a long way away.  He slipped through the boards and stepped into the forest.

     Holding his breath, he stared down the path.  Light came through the trees in places, making what looked like pools of sun on the path way ahead.  He looked and stared at those pools.  There was nothing in them.  They seemed so alone and empty.  He shuddered.  He felt tremors in his abdomen, light little tremors, and his breathing was shaking.  When he took his first step down the path, all his shaking stopped and he gasped. 

     He started to walk, slowly at first, fearfully, but then more quickly and steadily.  He came to the first pool of sunlight.  He stopped and looked up at the sky.  It was very blue.  The trees on the sides of the path here were very large, and their branches came down almost to the ground.  He climbed onto the lowest branch of the biggest tree and looked up to its top.  It wouldn’t be hard, he thought, to climb up there.  He thought he should try it, just in case the dog came.  It made him feel safe thinking about it.  He looked back toward the fence, and when he saw it, he was surprised how far away it seemed.  He didn’t think he had come so far.      

     As he pulled himself onto the next branch, he felt his hand become sticky.  He got his knee onto the branch, pulled up his other knee, grabbed for a branch above his head to pull himself up onto his feet, and looked at the palm of his hand.  He saw a white glue stuff in his hand, already stuck with bits of bark and fragments of needles, and what looked like dirt.  He tried to rub it off on his pants, but it didn’t come off his hand.  He smelled it and it smelled like the tree itself, piney, nice, he thought.  He rubbed his hand hard on the side of his leg, then climbed up onto the next branch. 

     When he was standing again, he looked down and was amazed at how high he seemed.  He had a feeling of excitement, a feeling that he was really brave to be doing what he was doing, all alone, away in the woods, by himself, his father not knowing where he was.  He turned his head away from the side of the tree the house was on and towards the depths of the forest, in the direction the path went. 

     He climbed onto the next branch, leaning against the trunk of the tree, and rose high enough to see over the tops of the smaller trees.  He climbed again.  He was very high now.  He could see the tops of most of the trees and how far the forest went.  It seemed to go on forever, as far as he could see.  He climbed again, and looked far over the canopy.  He thought he could see in the very far distance the ocean, because it was all vaguely blue out there, a grayish blue, and he knew that the ocean wasn’t far.  He hugged the tree trunk and stood. 

When he came into the house through the kitchen door, he saw his brother at the table eating breakfast, his grandfather next to him sipping coffee, and his mother standing at the stove with a spatula in her hand.  Only his father was not there.  He didn’t ask about his father.  His mother looked at him and said crossly, “Look at your Sunday clothes?  What have you been doing?”

     He said, bravely, almost defiantly, “I’ve been looking at the world.”

     Having no idea what he meant, and not feeling in the mood to chastise him, she asked him if he wanted eggs for breakfast.

     “And toast,” he said, looking over his brother’s rapidly emptying dish.  “Can I have some coffee milk?” he asked. 

     His grandfather got up and took a glass from the cupboard and poured the milk for him, leaving a space for the coffee. 

     “More coffee,” he pleaded, and his grandfather slowly poured a little of the milk back into the bottle and held up the glass, showing the deeper space for coffee.  

     “Thanks, grandpa,” he said, and took the glass of milk, darkened now with more than the usual amount of coffee.  He took the glass and when his grandfather pushed the sugar bowl toward him, he refused it, looking over the rim of the glass at his brother as he sipped.  Sugar was for kids.

    

4

IDLING

He couldn’t make her understand.  It wasn’t her fault.  He loved her.  He always kept in mind how the thought of her kept him from going crazy, how he would see himself through her eyes, and how, somehow, that made it possible for him.  He survived.  He came home.  He had no wounds.  What he carried was all buried in him.  He knew it all meant nothing.  He came home, others didn’t.  The way to live with it was to forget.  Two years now since he came off the ship.  A lot of it was going fuzzy.  He was caring less about it, watching his sons grow, building the house, making a lot of money.  There was that.  It helped more than anything he could have imagined, making money.  He liked making money. 

     But there were some things he could not do.  Some things which having been there he could not do again.  Going to church was one.  Instead of making him feel close to God, the smell of the church, the women with their heads covered, the men with their hats in their hands, the children dressed in pretty dresses and white shirts and ties,--all made him feel the absurdity.  The divide he had to cross to come back to this was too great.  There was no coming back.  Sitting in the pew was betrayal.  He closed his eyes and wanted to run.  There were other things he could not do.  His wife made many friends, especially in Brooklyn during the years he was away, but here, too, on the Island.  He could not go to their houses, party in their living rooms, barbecue in their yards, talk about things that had no meaning, drink, laugh.  This, too, was betrayal.  He could not do it. 

     Now, her father here again for the weekend, she wanted him to take the family to St. Joseph’s when they were all up and dressed and make a great Sunday morning by having a sumptuous breakfast when they came home.  “Don’t worry,” she said, when he told her he couldn’t do it.  She understood that.  She had gotten into the habit of adapting.  It was as though she veered whatever way came natural when he became the obstacle he was more and more becoming in her life.

     “Don’t worry,” she said, and it drove him crazy.  He felt instinctively that it was wrong of her, that she had to insist, to force him, but she didn’t.  It drove him crazy.  It drove him crazy because he knew how he’d erupt if she did insist, how he would brutalize her with his anger.  It drove him crazy.  He couldn’t bear to see her face turn down to the floor, see her eyebrows ridge up, that look of disappointment, how, sometimes, even, she would pale and get that look he couldn’t interpret--fear? astonishment? bewilderment? hurt?  It drove him crazy and he didn’t know what to do with himself, to get out of her presence, to run, or to apologize and just calm down and let her alone.

     He ran.

     He had heard the kitchen door open and then close again.  He pulled the bedroom door open and looked across the hall through the doorway into the kitchen and could see no one.  He went into the kitchen and looked out the window on the door.  He had heard the door, he was certain.  When he turned, she said, “Who was it?  One of the boys?”  He shrugged, pulled open the door and went outside, closing the door behind him.  When he reached the bottom of the steps he heard the door pulled open again and looking behind he saw her head poking through the door.  He looked behind the house and saw his youngest boy at the fence, holding onto the top rail and seeming to peer from under it down the forest path.

     “It’s Ricky,” he said over his shoulder. 

     When he looked at her, he felt a pang in his gut.  Her hair was loose and framed her face and draped over her shoulders.  She stood in the door looking at him, expressionless.  He wanted to run up to her, to take her by the shoulders and embrace her, to tell her he’d try, try harder, anyway, that he would go to church with them.  Instead, he turned away.  Once he had taken his eyes from her, it was easy to leave.  He rounded the house to the front yard and crossed to the black Desoto sitting in the driveway.  He pulled the keys from his pocket, got in, started it up, and backed out onto the gravel road.

     He drove out onto the main road that led into the village.  Huddled on the bay, the village was small, only a couple dozen buildings, in the midst of which was a dock with about twenty slips, and off of which was what appeared to be a canal that cut behind the buildings on the west side.  It was to one of these buildings that he drove, parking in front.  It was a small storm-shuttered, steep-roofed building with a weather vane in the form of an arrow at its peak.  This was one of his money-making ventures.  Monday through Saturday, he was on the bay an hour before sunrise, casting out his crab cages, digging clams and oysters, setting his longlines for flounder, and casting his round net for shiners.  He would come in by noon and put his catch on ice, open his shop for business, then clean up the boat. 

     By three he was pretty much done.  With his pockets bulging, he would then head to the building site, where he kept two men employed in construction.  He would help, see what needed to be ordered, meet with the realtor, who would come with prospective buyers, or with deals to buy more land.  He had built and sold four houses so far.  The fourth for more than the first two combined.  Then he’d head for the bank, where he talked with the loan officer he knew about what he needed for the coming months, make his deposits, then head back to the village to get the boat ready for the next morning.

     He got out of the Desoto, unlocked the door of the old shop, and crossed to the back where the fuse panel was and turned on the lights.  Standing in the door between the back room and the front, he couldn’t imagine why he had come here.  He felt ashamed leaving her standing in the kitchen door.  He wondered about her expressionlessness.  What it meant, what she was feeling to make her look like that.  It made him feel all the more guilty thinking about it.  He rubbed his hand through his hair and kicked at the door jamb.

     He turned and went through the double-wide doors that opened on the canal and the boat out back.  The boat had a little shed on it with a window facing the prow and a door in the back.  The pilot’s wheel was in the shed, as well as the radio, and a lifesaver hung on the one wall and his round nets hung on the other.  He went in.  The key for the motor was on the ring with his car keys and the key to the front door of the shop.  He still had them in his hand.  Almost unconsciously, he started the motor.  It rumbled and made the water bubble and churn.  He put the motor in reverse and backed the boat slowly toward the docks.  Entering the little harbor, he turned the prow to open water and pushed the gear into forward.  He found himself in the bay, heading toward the inlet, a portal through which he could cross the Fire Island strip into ocean.

     He never pushed through that portal.  His little boat wasn’t made for such a struggle.  It was made for the bay which was sheltered and navigable by small craft. 

     It took the boat a long time to cross the bay and wend its way to the mouth of the inlet.  Already, the water was ominous.  It heaved in swells that were many times larger than the boat, lifting and dropping its prow in motions that seemed to take an eternity.  Still, he kept the heel of his right hand on the throttle, nudging it forward when the prow rose, forcing the boat to climb, then easing when the prow dipped.  In this manner he passed through the inlet into the broad infinity of the Atlantic.

     He punched the throttle and shot the little boat southeast into big water.  Once there, the boat didn’t struggle so much.  The sky was clear and blue.  It was the funneling of the wind through the inlet that raised the swells so high, so that the ocean settled as he got away from it.  It took several hours to lose sight of land, but when he did, he eased back on the throttle and turned his prow northwest, idling in the water. 

     He left the shed and went out to the stern, where most of the work was done when he was on the bay.  His wire traps were stacked on one side, his bins for the clams and oysters were stacked on the other, the middle section of the stern holding the big coolers for the fish and crabs.  His scoop nets and fishing poles were fastened on either side of the shed.  He took down the larger of the poles.  He had no bait.  But that didn’t matter.  He put no hook on the line.  He tied an eight-ounce lead sinker to the line and lowered it into the water and let it drop.  It dropped and dropped.  He knew when he was out of line it would be nowhere near the bottom.  It didn’t matter.  He was where he needed to be.  In time, he would get over all this.  His boys, after all, were growing up.  They would want to know.  They would want to know many things.  It was up to him to tell them.

5

BROTHER BOY

I can’t stand the little fag.  He’s gotta do everything I do.  Always whining.  Wanting to hang on me.  And mom letting him.  And dad never saying anything.  I can’t stand him.  He gives me the creeps.  So.  He’s crying no doubt.  Piss on him.  Do him good.  Crying never hurt nobody.  Why the hell does he have to hang on me?  So.  So!  One punch.  Big deal.  It didn’t kill him.  Let him cry.  Do him good. 

     I’ve got my own worries.  Who needs him.  Not me.  Why worry.  Piss on him.  So he’s crying.  If he wasn’t crying he’d be whining.  Mom’ll pick him up.  Pat him like a baby.  Who needs it.  I don’t.  Piss on him.

     Anyway he couldn’t keep up.  He’d get clipped by a car.  What am I supposed to do.  Put him on my handlebars.  Can’t he just leave me alone.  Can’t he.  Damn.  Can’t he.  The boat’s only so big.  Anyway who cares.  They don’t take their brothers.

     Humph humph humph, at the top of the hill, humph humph humph, only the long coast down to the bay.  They’ll have things ready to go.  Skid out onto the water, lay back, light up.  Chug up to the mud flats.  Humph humph humph.

     “What’s the matter with you, kid?  You’re in a mood,” he says, just because I let the bike roll after I get off and collapse of itself, handlebars turned under, wheel up and spinning.

     “Shut up, will ya.  Don’t call me kid.”  He knows I hate it when he does that.  He only smiles.  I can’t get mad at him, though.  His name’s Telly.  What a name.  Short for I don’t know what.

     “You’re in a mood, all right.  What’s the matter, your mother whip you today?”

     “Gimme a cigarette, will ya.  Let’s get loaded and start ‘er up.”

     “Aren’t you too young to smoke?”

     “Why do you always say that?  You say that even when you bum one from me.”  It’s a ritual.  He acts like my big brother, like he cares.  Like I should care that he cares.  I do, though.  And he knows it.

     “Ok, have it your way.  Hey, Franko, toss that stuff down.  C’mon.  The kid says we gotta start ‘er up.”

     Franko is the organizer, like we both, Telly and me, just go for the ride, him, Franko, being his own man, tolerating us hangers on.  It’s not so, though.  But we let him act like it.  Doesn’t hurt us.  Makes him feel good.

     “Screw him.”

     “Tide’s not waiting, Franko,” I shout back from inside the boat.  I had climbed in almost as soon as I got there, started climbing in before the wheel of the bike stopped spinning.  Getting out on the water—that’s what I wanted.  I couldn’t get further from everything I hate than getting out on the water.  Further from that whining little bastard of a brother, who I hate more even than my father.

     “Screw you, kid.  We’ll get off when I’m good and ready.”

     Franko wouldn’t be rushed.  Rushing would mean he wasn’t in control.  But that was OK.  I liked Franko.  I liked him because he liked me.  So did Telly. 

     “I’ll just sit here, Franko, I need the rest anyway.”

     “Screw you, kid.”

     “C’mon, Franko, the kid’s right.”

     “All right, all right.  Here, stow this under the stern bench.”  He handed down the canvas sack with our food, usually a loaf of bread and a couple of lemons and a bottle of ketchup and a thermos with water.  The bread was there because we all liked to nibble on it from time to time.  What we ate during the afternoon was the clams, mostly, which we shucked open and squeezed lemon and ketchup on and ate right off the shell.  Sometimes the oysters, too.  Though I don’t like them as much. 

     “Now, careful with the gas, easy, easy.  Good job, kid.”  He let himself down off the dock as gently as he could, the boat rocking like mad anyway.

     “Here, now, let me hook up the lines.  Wanna start it?  Last time you couldn’t, remember?”

     “Yea, but it wasn’t my fault.”

     “Never is, kid.  Never is.  OK.  Good job.  Love that sound.  Let’s go.”

The tide was out and the water was as low as it was going to get, what we needed when working the mud flats for clams.  We’d go over the side, then begin treading the muck, feeling for clams, and dip under and grab for them when we felt them, then drop them over the side of the boat. 

     We’d swim and horse around, float on our backs, dive over each other’s shoulders, and just have a good time.  Sometimes, when the air got calm and the water was low enough where we cast anchor, we’d stand around in a little circle and smoke and tell stories.  Telly and Franko—they were taller than me, being sixteen already.  I’d have to stand on my toes to keep my head and neck out of the water, and I’d have to keep my hand holding the cigarette resting on my head, which made them two laugh.  But I didn’t care.  Later, when we puttered back to the docks, Franko would crack a beer.  It was hot from sitting on the floor of his car, and it’d foam all over his hands when he crunched the church key into it, but that only made it better.  We’d each chug-a-lug until it was gone.  We’d horse around on the docks after tying up the boat, Franko clearing the gas lines of the motor, then tipping it up to keep the screw out of the water till we came back.  Then they’d take off in Franko’s old Chrysler with the rumble seat.  I’d mount my bike and push off pedaling, having to work hard, standing up on the pedals to get the full weight of my body on them going up the long hill back to the highway, when the ground would slope down again to our road out there crossing that damn forest, and I’d have to watch for that bitch of a dog coming out of the woods and snapping at my feet, which I’d just raise up to the handlebars to keep out of her reach, and depend on the speed I’d worked up to get by her.  She near got me good once.  Tore my jeans at the ankle.  One thing I hate, them dogs people just let go.  When I’m old enough I’ll get a gun and shoot them bitches.  But that won’t be for half a lifetime yet, me being just twelve.  Getting home to that whiner, then.  Can’t stand him, can’t stand any of them.

     And that little bastard with his grandfather.  What I care about his crying.  What I like is that look in his face after I leave my handprint on it.  Stop his whining.  Little fag.  Hanging on dad like he was his tail.  And dad lets him.  I’ve seen him on the bay sometimes.  Me and Telly and Franko out there horsin’ around, puttering along the shore, maybe out half a mile, and him on that stupid boat with the shed for a cockpit, raking the muck for clams.  How the hell he does it I don’t know.  Telly says he must have some arms to do that long as he does.  He never sees us.  Dumb ass.  We could motor right under his nose, me with a cigarette blowin’ smoke, and I could bet a thousand he’d never notice.  Rake rake rake, shake shake shake, lift lift lift, over and over—his mind’s gone to clam heaven, what can I say?  But cross him at home and it’s goodbye.  That time I called him fuckhead at the dinner table, he threw the table up in the air, mom’s dishes with all their food going across the kitchen, and me scramblin’ for the attic, locking the door, and hiding in the dark.  He kicked that door down, and when I saw him coming, all black like a shadow with the stairwell light at his back, I couldn’t help myself, I peed all over, all over everything.  And did he punch me.  In the face.  Knocked me back against the dorma window.  Lucky I didn’t go through it.  Mom’d be sorry, anyway.  Though I’m not certain of that, either.  Hate everybody.  Even that dumbhead of a mother.

    

6

MILLIE

Artie Shaw was piping “Begin the Beguine” on his clarinet.  With the blade of the paring knife against the meat of her thumb, she snipped the stem ends off the green beans her father had harvested from the garden and dropped them one at a time into the bowl of water in the sink, feeling worn beyond her years, unable to care that her father, even though he too had been a soldier, was incapable of understanding her husband’s inability to adjust, his coming home from Germany unscratched being the only measure her father could calculate a man’s good luck by, sighing, for so much weight she carried in her heart.  He, her father, thought her husband was a whiner, a complainer, though he never said so, thought him unfit even to raise the boys, which she could see in him as his judgment of the man she wanted to keep loving, though it was hard, harder every day, especially when her father came, which he did now almost every weekend because he sensed the marriage was failing and that he was needed with the boys, the younger one especially.  As she snipped the stems off the beans, she listened to her father with half her mind and with the other half kept present to her vision the image of her husband’s red, angered face, the voice accompanying the features occluded by the sweet clarinet on the radio.  It was not the anger or the redness, not the words that didn’t come that filled her with grief and made here sigh, wearing her beyond her years.  It was that flicker of self- condemning awareness she caught in his eyes as he turned from her, the almost imperceptible shudder of his chin as his hands went up to cover his face in the turning of his body away from her.  That flicker of a moment, that less than half a second, told a different story than the redness and the anger, a story she knew she could never fully read in him because he kept it away from her, as he did every morning leaving the house.  It, his turning and covering it up, his running, what could she say about these things to her father that would make him know?  As she contemplated with half her mind and listened to her father with the other half, snipping the stems, dropping them into the sink, which contained also seven spikes of plum tomatoes, each with six or seven plump red fruit her father had also picked, she saw through the window over the sink her youngest boy, Ricky, walking stiffly across the yard, looking as though he had seen something menacing, and felt at the sight of him thankful they were no longer in Brooklyn, where his being outside alone would have exposed him to truly menacing things.  He must, she thought, be playing at something adventuresome, perhaps climbing in the trees in the woods, and he had scared himself.  She let a half smile curve her lips and at the same instant let the thrill of Shaw’s clarinet enter her.  Her mood changed.  She turned and said, “Bernie said this morning there are more people moving east than there are houses for them and that he can keep on building, there’ll be no end to it.  He said he already needed another man and was looking for someone, and the bank said go ahead, there’s money no end, and Bernie thinks he can build three more houses this year.  Isn’t that great, Dad?  Imagine all the money.  Maybe he can build one for you right near here, buy a piece of the forest right next to us and build for you, and you and Fanny and Anna and Josephine can move out here.  Wouldn’t that be just right for all of us?”  She knew by his frown that such a move would never happen, not only because he wouldn’t leave Brooklyn, wouldn’t leave that house where mama died, but also because out here, here, in the forest especially, her sisters would think of themselves as next to dead, there being no men, no other women their ages, there being in fact nobody, and all her acquaintances from around the area being already married.  But also she knew her husband wouldn’t do it, wouldn’t buy a lot and build for her father, because he was her father, he was the man from whom he had almost literally to pry her, with a crowbar almost, and the two of them got along because they spent at most two hours a week in each other’s presence.  She pushed the hair from beside her face and turned back to the sink, glancing out the window and seeing now her boy standing stock still and facing the forest across the yard.  He had a look of astonishment on his face, and she wondered what he could be playing at out there to occupy himself with such feeling.  As she gazed at him, she thought of her other boy, the older one, and his independence, his being gone all the time, and worried about him, at his age doing so much, going so far from home on his bike, so much like his father that they grated on each other, clashed, the grating sometimes erupting into violence, causing blood, and worse, bad blood between father and son.  Her mood changed again.  Artie Shaw was done.  The Andrew Sisters played, then an old piece by Tommy Dorsey, “Sentimental Journey,” which brought back memories of Brooklyn, of the old house, of the anxiety that lived perpetually in her abdomen in those days, fearing the man in uniform at the door who never came, never to her door, but who did come to others on the street, and the agonies when they all gathered in the basement of the church on the corner, everybody coming, Presbyterians, Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalians, sitting together, thinking who would be next, her little one on her knee, her father, having no sons to lose in that war, sitting next to her and resting his hand on her shoulder, his touch literally keeping her from falling apart when the wife, the mother, the sister of the one newly killed pulled her hair and cried.  And cried, and she couldn’t help it, now, the crying coming upon her, and to stop it she threw the knife into the bowl in the sink and wiped her hands on her apron, then pulled the bow loose behind her and took the apron off, throwing it over the back of a chair at the table and rushed out of the kitchen into the living room, where she heard the door of the garage pulled open and curious looked out the window to the drive to see who would come there, her husband or her son.  Her father came then into the room, cautiously, not knowing what set her off, and, to let the awkwardness pass, stared with her out the window.  She half turned then and pulled the blanket off the cushion chair in the corner and sat down heavily, as though her bones had become lead and lifeless.  There was wetness on her face still, and she rubbed it with the palms of her hands, thinking that she had got him to go to church two weeks in a row, got him into his brown suit, and that tomorrow would be a good day if they could all go together, Bernie holding little Ricky’s hand as they crossed the street from the parking lot, some healing happening maybe for once, because of its becoming routine, or, just the same, some letting go.  “It’s Dominick,” her father said, and she rose and looked out and saw the boy wheel his bike out of the garage, push the kickstand down with the toe of his right Ked’s sneaker, and steady the bike so he could leave it for the moment it took to close the garage door.  When he returned to the bike, his little brother came running from the back of the house, and she turned and fell again into the chair, but she saw the look in her father’s face, the look that made her know instinctively that Dominick had done violence again to his brother, and with effort rose once more and looked out at the drive, where she saw the older boy pedaling up the gravel road and the younger lying face down on the concrete, which made the well from which her tears had come go dry in the ache of pity she felt for him, knowing, when he rose, he would not be able to hold back his seven-year-old tears.  Worn beyond her years, she said nothing, made no motion to help him, and, her father knew, would say nothing to that boy when he came home from wherever he goes all day, late in the evening, in time, if he was lucky, to sit to supper with the rest of them.