Chapter Sixteen #2
They showed up at Roman and Ida’s sometimes, too, but not very often.
Ida would make them what she called “a gourmet snack,” where she took two plates down from the cabinet and on each put one of most everything in the kitchen that could be considered snackable, such as a Hydrox cookie, a Vienna sausage, an olive, a pickle, a pineapple ring, and a saltine—that was high living to them.
But besides that, all they wanted to do when they were there was play with the trains, and there were so many rules about them that all the fun was wrung out.
They weren’t allowed to touch any of it.
If Roman was there—not just home, but with them in the basement, supervising—Skip and his friends were allowed to hold the transformer box and work the switches for five supervised minutes each. That was it.
“When can we really play with it?” Skip asked one afternoon, with Tom, in the basement.
“When I’m dead,” Roman said.
The boys went upstairs and found Ida in the dining room, a fan blowing on her as she snapped Theodore Roosevelt’s glasses into a jigsawed picture of Mount Rushmore. Skip asked her when Grandad was going to die, and without looking up from her puzzle Ida said, “Oh, honey, that’s anyone’s guess.”
Then they were back outside, pulling their bikes up from the hot grass and mounting them like cowboys on horses, at some point peeling off in different directions, because it was close to dinnertime and they each had to get home.
“Hey, watch out for the flattop!” Skip sometimes called over his shoulder, and Tom always called back, “Shut up!” because, while he appreciated Skip’s watching out for him, he wasn’t about to be teased for it.
—
They could go days without seeing each other and hardly notice. Tom had other kids he played with on his street, Talbots and Friedmans and Wallachs and Valencias. Skip had his various squadrons. But when they were together, something particular registered between them.
Every few days, making the rounds, Skip would get on his bike and ride through town to Tom’s neighborhood, ring the doorbell at Tom’s house, and Tom would usually answer.
If his father came to the door, he’d say hello and ask how Skip’s mother was before hollering for Tom.
The first time Tom’s mother answered the door, she said, “Yes?” and when Skip asked if Tom was there, she said, “Why?”
“To play,” he said.
She looked over his shoulder, at his bicycle lying on its side at the bottom of the porch steps. She asked how old he was.
“Nine,” he said, wondering if there was a cut-off age.
Margaret told him to wait there and closed the door. She went upstairs and found Tom on the floor in his room, on his hands and knees, positioning little plastic army men and little plastic animals as if to battle one another. “You have an older friend? Blond hair? On the tall side?”
Tom nodded.
“He’s here asking for you.” Feeling this was a moment when she should probably add something parental, she said, “Tell him only Goofus lays his bicycle down in the middle of people’s walkways. Gallant parks his bicycle to the side, and uses his kickstand.”
—
At the dinner table that year, when Skip told Cal and Becky about his day, Tom’s name began to pop up more often.
Tom also started coming around the house more.
He was playing in the yard with Skip sometimes when Cal got home from work.
He was a frequent guest at the dining table.
An amicable kid, if a little reserved. Still, Cal had to get used to having him around.
He could only defer to what Margaret had told him in the garden shop, but he had to learn how to be in Tom’s presence and not feel terrible all over again for what he’d done, back during the war.
He had to learn how to look at Tom and not wonder if Margaret had been wrong—or knew more than she was letting on.
It was both a help and a hindrance that the boy bore such a strong resemblance to his mother.
—
One evening in late July, at dusk, Margaret stood at the living room window, watching the boys climb the oak in the front yard—her son; the older, blond boy; and a wiry Black boy she’d never seen before—when she wondered aloud where all these kids were coming from.
Felix, sitting forward on the sofa and turning a tiny screwdriver into the door hinge on Tom’s toy safe, surprised her by knowing their names.
He sounded pleased with himself, in fact.
“But what are Vincent and Skip doing here?”
“Are you not okay with Vincent?”
“Of course I’m okay with Vincent. You know that. It’s the other one I’m wondering about. The one who looks like he should be playing with people his own size. Where did he come from?”
That boy, Felix said, was actually the son of a psychic he’d consulted a couple of times.
Actually as in, this might be a point of some interest. Margaret couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d said he’d consulted a hedgehog. “You did what?”
He acknowledged it sounded off-the-wall for him—but he also reminded her that she was the one who’d suggested he talk to someone.
“A psychiatrist,” she said. “Not a psychic. Why on Earth would you—what did you and this person ‘consult’ about?”
“The ship,” Felix said, and then added, “People who died on the ship.”
The people he hadn’t mentioned once since getting back from the war? Those people? She didn’t say that. She mentioned the budget they were supposed to be sticking to and asked what a psychic consultation cost. It cost nothing, he said.
“And she—saw ghosts?”
“No. It wasn’t like that.”
“What was it like?”
He paused his screwdriver work, glanced off to the side for a moment. “It’s hard to describe.”
She didn’t know how else to put it, so she asked, “Did it do you any good?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
The boys vanished into the tree, then reappeared higher up, in different places.
She couldn’t tell if Felix was being blithe or circumspect, but he did seem a little different lately.
A little more alert, maybe. A little more present.
Whether or not that had anything to do with this psychic, she didn’t know, because he wasn’t telling her much.
She asked where the psychic lived, and he said over in Brookdale.
She asked who the psychic was, and it wasn’t until he said the name that she realized she’d been picturing a man—in a turban, with a goatee.
The biggest shock, though, was the name itself.
It dropped through Margaret like a stone, abrading her insides as it went.
What Cal had told her about his wife, her “hobby,” it had all sounded so harmless, even silly at the time.
Now she imagined Felix in Cal’s house. Tom in Cal’s house.
Neither of which should ever have occurred, and here was Cal’s son—his other son—up in her tree.
Felix told her Becky advertised and said, as if feeling the need to defend her services, that she couldn’t have been nicer or more welcoming.
Margaret closed an eye against it all, removing its depth.
Oh, for a less complicated life. One where Felix hadn’t felt the need to go to a psychic or psychiatrist at all.
One where she’d never gotten pregnant, never left Columbus.
Above all, perhaps, at least in this moment, one where a giant hawk swooped down and—gently—carried all three of those boys away.
—
If there be a Hall of Records for dogs, and a ledger in which to report their joys and sorrows, let the entry devoted to Buster Keaton show that in August of 1953 he died with a happy, if worm-eaten, heart.
Everett wept. Then he went to look for his shovel.
The sun was low in the sky when he finished burying the dog. He took a packet of zinnia seeds and sprinkled them over the dirt mound. Took in a deep breath of warm evening air. Went inside and sat down at his typewriter.
Dear Presiden Eisenhower.
Blas your coral a oll o hell for all he pleasure i brings your murderous hear .
Wha a fool I was o hink we had evolved beyond our incredible capaci y for des ruc ion, because you, sir, are aking us back o he dark ages.
May God, if such a being s ill exis s in wha is lef of he Heavens, have mercy on all he underlings and wre ched sons of bi ches who promo e and encourage he dropping of bombs on innocen people.
As such individuals are following your orders, please know ha you have blood and worse on your hands.
May you suffer migh ily in a cour of law or by angry mob, for we all know you won s op un il hese hydrogen clouds are bigger han his bloodsoaked world.
Mos Sincerely.
Lance Corporal Everett B. Jenkins.
U.S. Army Re ired.
In his armchair, he rolled a cigarette and lit it.
He uncorked the bottle of Old Overholt he’d been saving for a special occasion and drank to Buster.
He drank to the end of the Korean War and to all the lucky men who’d made it home, and to all the unlucky ones who hadn’t.
He flipped through the Blade from a week ago and peered at it and drank to the Algerian protesters who’d been shot at by French police (recalling how the D.C.
police had shot at him and the other Bonus Marchers back in ’32).
He drank to Maude Adams, and to Miss Universe, whoever that was.
He drank to Buster’s namesake, Buster Keaton. And he drank, again, to Buster.
And to Buster.
And to Buster.
—
All he remembered about his dream that night was that the world was on fire.
He woke up in pure darkness. Felt around, and after a few moments realized he was in his bomb shelter. He had no memory of going out there, had been in his chair, last he knew, reading.
When he cracked the door up from the earthen ceiling, the sun was sitting like a pearl resting on a giant palm of smoke.