Scar lover, p.27
Scar Lover, page 27
And with his heart pounding as though it would tear out of his chest, Pete bent and lifted his brother into his arms. The little boy made a sound that might have been a word but it was not a word. Pete kissed him on his damp cheek. It was like kissing an open wound. The hunger that had been tearing at his stomach was suddenly gone. Jonathan put his baby-soft hands on either side of Pete’s head, and Pete buried his face in the child’s neck and hugged him and wept.
Sarah put her hand on Pete’s back between his shoulder blades and moved it in a slow circle. Pete could not stop crying. Jonathan made a sound like laughter and Pete felt warm drool slipping down his neck.
“Yes, darling,” said Sarah. “Oh, my poor darling. I’m so sorry. I’m so terribly sorry.”
Pete, still crying, moved his face from the child’s neck and kissed him soft and long on the twin purple scars on his forehead. The scars were like the lips of a mouth and he cried because they were not like scars at all but tender and dimpled and he felt as if he could—would—disappear into them, and the longer he had his lips on them the more he could remember the day and the hammer and the sound of metal striking flesh and the loss of his mother and father and the loss of his brother’s love and his own intolerable loneliness in the world and he could not stop crying, and Sarah had moved to hug both him and the child, her arms around them, and then Gertrude’s arms were around them too and she was crying now and Sarah was crying and Pete was choking on his own tears, unable to stop, unable to do anything but hug his brother, who in the midst of all the crying and wailing was crooning and gurgling as though this was just the happiest moment in the world.
“Don’t,” Sarah said finally. “It’s over. He’s back where he belongs and it’s over.”
“No,” Pete said. “It’s not over. It won’t ever be over.”
“Come and eat your supper, son.” Gertrude was still crying and could hardly make herself understood. “You eat and you’ll feel better.”
Pete, his lips still on the scar, said, “I’m not hungry.”
“Then come have coffee,” Sarah said. “Jonathan’ll sit with you.”
Pete had been holding the little boy with his right arm under his baby-soft bottom. He leaned back to look into the child’s eyes for the first time. He had avoided looking into Jonathan’s eyes since he came into the room, and he did not know why. They were startlingly blue and clear, with an intelligence that the child seemed to be keeping as his own personal secret.
“Will you sit with me, Jon?” said Pete.
Jon’s loose mouth made a long wet sound that could have meant anything or nothing.
“See,” said Sarah. “I told you.” Pete looked at her, puzzled. “Jonathan just said he’d love to come have supper with his big brother.”
Pete smiled and set his brother down. The child was surprisingly steady on his feet. “Let me wash my hands anyway,” Pete said.
“Your face, too, darling,” said Sarah. “It looks like you’ve been working in a coal mine.”
“That bad, is it?” He walked over to the sink and looked into the little mirror hanging there. “Yep,” he said. “That bad.” It was only then he noticed that his brother had followed him over to the sink. Under his arm he had the football helmet. “You want to wash up with your brother? Good enough, but let’s put this thing up here on the shelf.” He took the helmet and set it on a shelf on the wall. The child’s blue gaze had watched him intently as he took the helmet, and his eyes never left it where it sat on the shelf. A shadow seemed to pass over his face. He stretched his arms over his head, reaching for the helmet. Pete had soaped his face and his hands and arms to the elbow before he saw Jonathan reaching, staring, tears beginning to form in his eyes and his loose mouth starting to twist.
“You’re going to make him cry if you don’t give it back,” Gertrude said.
“He can have the helmet,” Pete said.
“It’s Henry he really wants.”
“He can’t have that. I’ll get him a football or something.”
“We tried that. Sarah tried a lot of things. All he did was bang his head and scream. He misses Henry.”
“I don’t want to sound hard or ugly, but he’ll get over it. We’ll all get over it. He’ll just have to bang and scream. I can stand it if he can. I don’t know how much discipline he can learn, but whatever it is, I intend to teach it to him. Knowing what he can do and what he can’t do might even help him. It sure as hell won’t hurt him.”
“And it won’t hurt you to stop that cussing either,” said Sarah.
Pete smiled at her. “You know some men would call that nagging.”
“You can call it what you want to, but I’m going to keep right on doing it until you stop.”
“Well,” he said, still smiling, “I told you it wouldn’t be overnight.”
“And I told you that was fine with me. But a few reminders might make it happen faster.”
“It might at that.”
Pete was dumbfounded when Jonathan suddenly took him by the finger and led him around to the table, turned his finger loose, and pulled his chair out for him. But his eyes were still on the shelf holding the helmet more than they were on him.
“Jesus,” said Pete, “what else can he do?”
“He can scream like a banshee, claw your eyes, butt and bang his head against anything handy for six solid hours without stopping,” said Sarah, dipping food from the stove. “And strong? That youngun is strong as a horse. Don’t let that baby fat fool you.”
“Somehow,” said Pete, “I don’t think anything much is going to surprise me anytime soon.”
Jonathan had taken a chair beside Pete and made a long ugly noise that ended with about three inches of his tongue out of his mouth.
At the stove, Sarah only smiled. “He wants a plate of his own.”
“Sarah,” said Pete, “you’re going to make a wonderful mother.”
“I am making a wonderful mother,” she said.
Sarah set Pete’s food in front of him, along with a glass of iced tea. She put cutlery and an empty plate and glass in front of Jonathan.
Pete looked at the empty plate and glass. “What’s this?” he asked.
“You’ll see,” said Sarah. “He’s a very neat eater at the table. But he likes to copy people loo. I guess it’s a kind of game for him, like wanting to wash his hands and face when you did just now.”
“I don’t get it,” said Pete.
“You will. Just eat your food.”
Pete forked some green peas into his mouth, and almost simultaneously Jonathan lifted his empty fork from his empty plate and put it into his mouth. His chubby little fist holding the fork went back to his plate while he chewed. Pete stopped chewing and watched his brother. Jonathan stopped chewing and watched Pete. Pete put his fork down and had a long drink of tea. Jonathan put his fork down, in the identical way his brother had—in the middle of his plate, tines up—and had a long drink from his empty glass.
Pete was amazed and, at the same time, a little proud. “You sure he’s not hungry?”
“Goodness no,” said Gertrude. “He’s already eat enough for two people.”
Pete watched him. “We’ll have to put him on a diet.”
“We’ll do no such thing,” Sarah said. “He’s a growing boy.”
“He’s a very fat growing boy,” said Pete.
“I think it was his diet at the home he was in,” she said. “We got there at lunch, and when we found him in the cafeteria, there wasn’t a thing on his plate but starch.”
“Damn.”
“I bought him a burger on the way home and he didn’t know what to do with it. I had to go back and buy myself one so we could eat it together. The child’s no trouble at all as long as he can do what you’re doing. He can even tie his own shoes if you’re tying yours too.”
“Great,” said Pete, “that’s just great.”
“He’s your brother, Pete,” she said. “It’s no use in being sarcastic. You’ll get used to it in time.”
“I guess that was sarcastic. But I didn’t mean it that way. And I didn’t thank you for finding him, but I’m grateful.”
Gertrude had sat down at the table with a cup of coffee and a Kool, which she smoked relentlessly. “Linga thinks she can cure him.”
Pete stopped chewing and looked at her. “Cure him of what?”
“Of himself.”
“Even if you are going into business with her, I don’t like that woman and I don’t want her messing with my brother.”
“I’m not going into business with her. I am in business. But I think you ought to know that it was her that got that helmet off his head. Me and Sarah tried but he’d just bang his head against anything he got close to. You ought to see the bruises on my ribs.”
“I think I’ll pass on that.”
“Then you can look at Sarah’s. But when she walked into this room, it was all the difference in the world. She took him over in the corner, set him down, and talked and petted him for only a few minutes. I don’t know what she said, but when she took that helmet off, he was cool as a cucumber. He hasn’t had it on since.”
“Between the helmet and Linga,” said Pete, “I think I’ll take the helmet.”
“I don’t know what the woman’s ever done to you for you to talk like that about her.”
“Just say it’s a feeling I’ve got about her. I don’t trust her, not for a minute.”
“Have any kind of feeling you want to, but if Linga can help this child get better she’s going to be given the chance to try.”
“No she won’t, Gertrude. He’s my brother, and I don’t want her anywhere near him.”
She smiled a gentle smile. “And you are my son.”
Pete had no answer for that and he was too tired to argue. He mopped up the vegetable juice from his plate and watched as Jonathan mopped up his empty plate with an imaginary biscuit caught in his chubby little fist.
“How did things go out there today?” asked Gertrude.
“None of them are lazy, I give them that. Oystershell and rock are being hauled in and a road is being put down. George and I spent most of the day in the biggest stand of cypress I ever saw. And that’s the real problem right there. I don’t see any way of getting them out. I thought of floating them out, but the water’s too shallow.”
“Where there’s money, there’s a way,” Gertrude said.
“We’ll talk about it later,” said Pete. “I’m too tired to make sense now.”
Pete picked up his plate and glass and carried them to the sink. Jonathan was right behind him with his plate and glass, with his knife, fork, and spoon stuffed in the front pocket of his overalls.
Pete looked down at him, ruffled his hair, and said: “Thanks, pard.”
The boy responded by pointing to the helmet and then to the skull on the cabinet.
“You’re going to have to trust me on this, Jon. The helmet you can have. That other thing is a no-no. You understand? The other thing is a definite no-no.”
“That other thing is definitely my father,” said Sarah. “I’m even glad Mama did what she did, bringing him home with us. It seems kind of nice having him around the house.”
“You’re beginning to sound like Max.”
“What if I am? Being different doesn’t make Max bad.”
“I didn’t say he was bad. He’s got his ways. I’ve got mine. And the more I see of his the less I like him. Max is a fool.”
“You don’t know a thing about Max except he’s old and walks a lot.”
“He lives in a world he makes up himself. Makes up as he goes along. He can’t see a thing when it’s looking him dead in the eye. Worse than a damn child.”
“What would you know about that?” said Sarah.
“Yaks.”
“Yaks? Is that what you said?”
“That’s what I said. Everything he said about them is a lie. They look like milk cows that’s being slowly starved to death. They ought to be killed.”
“That’s not what you said.”
“I lied too.”
“Are you saying you lied to me?”
“I didn’t want you to be disappointed. That’s no excuse, but yeah, I lied to you.”
“How could I be disappointed? I’d never seen them before. You made me walk nearly two miles and nearly get the stroke to see something that looked like a dying milk cow? I wouldn’t have done that to you.”
“I wouldn’t do it to you now. But now is now and then was then. You had me pissed off—I mean angry.”
“You still shouldn’t have done that.”
“I know,” said Pete. “You don’t think I feel good about it, do you?”
“I don’t know what you feel or think,” said Sarah.
“Here comes the first argument,” Gertrude said, firing up a Kool to stop a coughing fit that had started. She tried to laugh but her cough wouldn’t let her.
“It’s not the first one,” said Sarah.
“Could we save it for another time, Sarah?” Pete asked. “I’m tired, really beat, and I need to get some sleep. Where’s Jonathan sleeping tonight?”
“With us,” said Sarah.
“There’s hardly enough room on that bed for the two of us already.”
“He’s still sleeping with us. It’s his first night away from that horrid place he was kept. He’s liable to have nightmares and not know where he is.”
“Happens to me all the time. It won’t hurt him.”
“If it’s going to cause an argument—which both of you been right on the edge of since Pete come home—he can sleep with me,” Gertrude told them. “It’s plenty of room in my bed.”
“He’s my son now and he’s sleeping where I say he sleeps.” Sarah reached over and stroked his hair. “Poor little thing’s been throwed away most of his life, but he’s home now.”
“Your son?” said Pete.
“That’s what I said.”
“How’d he come to be your son?”
“The same way you came to be my husband.”
For the first time it occurred to Pete what a strong woman he had joined himself to. And strangely, it pleased him. Damn woman had fire in her blood. He liked that. His mother had been the same way. When it got too bad for everybody else, it was getting just right for her. A woman like that would keep a man steady in the world.
“If that’s the way you want it,” he said.
“That’s the way I want it. You go take a shower and get the stink of that swamp off you. I’ll take him up and get him ready for bed.”
“He’s too heavy for you to be toting up them stairs.” He stood up. “Let me do it.”
For an answer Sarah bent and effortlessly lifted the sleeping child. His head lolled back across her shoulder and a wet spot immediately appeared on her dress, but he didn’t make a sound as she turned for the stairs.
Gertrude dropped the butt of a Kool in her coffee cup. “Either she’s stronger than you thought or he’s lighter than you thought.”
Pete shook his head. “She surprises me every day I live with her.”
“That Sarah’s a lot of woman. If I don’t miss my guess you’ll learn to walk easier around her.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” he said. But he knew damn well he would. And more than that, he’d be glad to do it. She was some woman, Sarah was, and it surprised him that he was only just beginning to find it out.
He started out of the room, stopped, and looked back at Gertrude. “You’re a pretty damn strong woman yourself.”
“And don’t you ever goddam forget it, son.”
He smiled. “You better watch that cussing.”
“You’re just her fucking husband. I’m her fucking mother. I’ll talk any way I please.”
“I think, by God, you probably will.”
“Bet on it.”
“You have a good night.”
She winked. “Better’n yours probably. Won’t be much going on in that bed, I wouldn’t imagine, with that youngun jammed in there.”
“My daddy always said where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
“That’s the kind of men I like, the hard ones—the harder the better.”
“I think I better leave that one alone and go on to bed.”
“Don’t get a move on she’ll be asleep.”
Now it was Pete’s turn to wink. “I can always wake her up.”
“Be easy.”
“I’m always easy.”
“A woman don’t want her man to always be easy.”
“Damn,” said Pete, shaking his head as he left the kitchen.
He wedged himself into the tiny bathroom at the head of the stairs, stripped, and left his clothes in one corner, before stepping into the stall and turning on the water as hot as he could stand it.
When he went into their bedroom, wrapped in a towel, there in the middle of his bed was his little brother on his back, fast asleep, with his football helmet held with both hands on top of his chest. He was wearing pajamas with a pattern of rosebuds on them.
“Pajamas?” said Pete.
“I got’m for him today.”
“Nobody in my family ever wore pajamas, not to my knowledge anyway. Long johns in the winter, but the rest of the time it was naked.”
She came to him and put her arms around his neck. Her long, lean body with the unexpected curving and firm flesh pressed into him. “You’re not in your family anymore, my precious husband, you are in our family, the one we’re making together.”
“Is it my imagination, or has something changed in your voice since I last heard it downstairs?”
“It’s not your imagination,” she said, and her tongue, sharp-tipped and wet and incredibly long, traced the length of his mouth quicker than it took to think.
“What about the child?” he said.
“You can quit calling him ‘the child’ or ‘it’ or anything else that comes to mind. He’s your brother. Call him Jonathan. Actually,” she said, tilting her pelvis deeper into his, “I kind of like ‘Jon.’ “
The cheeks of her ass cupped firmly in his hands now, he whispered hoarsely: “What about Jon?”
