A Song for Carmine Read online

  “The pet doctor’s orders,” Mark laughs from the backseat.

  We drive past a billboard with a black politician. He’s tall, with broad shoulders, his eyes warm behind his glasses

  “Was that Dwayne Johnson?” I ask.

  “Yeah—he’s running for sheriff or some shit.” Jim flicks a cigarette out the window and messes with the knob on the radio.

  “Eton sure has changed.” I remember us again, that summer night, the last fourteen years of bravado, the twitch in my legs. I laugh to myself.

  “No, not really. The niggers just got bolder.” Griff takes a long drink from his can of beer and laughs.

  I watch the gray pavement twist in and out of the hills, the tall narrow trees shaking loose, the car’s headlights barely enough to light the dark way.

  “I can’t believe I’m back here, I really can’t.” I say it smugly. “This place still has nothing for me.”

  We pick up a bottle of whiskey at the corner liquor store and talk about old times, the windy roads pushing up into the hills, then back again, the sky growing so black. We drive until we hit the end of roads, till there is nothing but forest in front of us. I tell them about my two-thousand-dollar suits, how beautiful the big-city women are, how good they smell (and taste). I tell them about the empire I’m about to build on my own because the other one wasn’t good enough. My voice carries, and I sing it to them.

  “Carmine, dude, people don’t really change.” Griff takes a sharp left and heads up yet another hill, Eton is all slopes and descents; we’ve never done anything but go up and down them.

  “You ain’t any different than you were.” He laughs and looks at me for a second before looking at the road again.

  “That’s where you’re wrong, my friend.” I study the road ahead of me and think of all the ways I’ll show them.

  * * *

  The town has not changed. There’s a corner store, an old trading post selling antiques, a diner, a gas station with a couple of teenagers lingering around it, one road in and one road out, a post office, the sheriff’s station, no one on the streets, the shells of houses glowing light in the dark.

  I feel nausea, anxiety. My insides churn, and I want to get out of there, feel the buzz of Dallas, hear the car horns and the sounds of planes above, feel the money, live in the cocoon. I can’t stand this.

  “You can do this, Carmine,” I tell myself. I still feel the hum of the whiskey on my insides, the slow burn of my liver, the blackness of sweet escape, the goofy laughs of my old friends, the sting of Griff’s words.

  I look at the houses in my old neighborhood, small houses with big green yards and Confederate flags hanging in the front, old rocking chairs on porches, fake flowers in flower boxes. Can any of this actually be real?

  The sky is so dark above me, the streetlights barely glow; I haven’t known darkness like this in so long. The air is so quiet, no cars rushing past, no voices hanging out of buildings. There is no pulse, nothing alive here. I feel a wave of panic wash over me.

  I walk a few blocks from where my friends have dropped me off, get lost in the sound of my feet hitting the old pavement. When I look up again, there it is. I study the house. It’s a square box with dull gray siding, once white, two bedrooms, a tall attic, a handful of windows on each side of it. The porch leans, rotten wood at its edges, two-by-fours as posts; it’s still hanging on, empty flowerpots hanging in each corner. There’s the old wicker sofa sitting there, an ashtray full of butts on the table next to it, old work boots sitting by the door. There are cobwebs on them, stretching from sole to strings; Pa hasn’t used them in a while. How it is possible these same things remain in place?

  I walk up to the house, feel the anger begin to warm me. I make a fist, unzip my jacket, put my hand on the back of my jeans, on my wallet full of credit cards, pick up my duffel bag. The sky above me is now filled with heavy clouds, a deep mixture of blues. I smell something sweet in the distance.

  I take a deep breath and turn the handle of the door. It’s late, but the house smells like greasy chicken and cigarette smoke. The dark paneling on the walls is the same, two old recliners in the same spot, a big box television in the middle of the room, the old couch with upholstery so thin you can see the bones of the couch sticking out. The wood floors are dusty, dry. The house spills light, like a box of sticks were used to put it together.

  “Ma, Pa. Are you awake? It’s Carmine. Listen, I got your message and…” I stop when I see Ma coming from the hallway that leads to the bedrooms.

  She is fifty-nine, I think, but I can’t be sure. Her face sags and she looks so sad, but then her blue eyes are so alive, wet and pale, there and then gone. I recognize the old dress hanging from her frame.

  “Carmine, I didn’t think you’d come.” She puts her head down and shuffles over to me, house slippers on her feet, her long arms moving with her steps. She never stops looking at me. I stand there in the dull light, pull my cell phone out of my pocket, and begin to push buttons on it—e-mails, contacts, voice mails, there has to be something else to do in this moment.

  When she hugs me, something within me curdles, but I try not to pull away immediately. I take off my jacket and lay it over the kitchen chair. My mouth dries up. The light above me swings without a lightbulb.

  Ma asks me about the bus ride and about work while she puts on a pot of coffee. She’s still using that old silver percolator; her reflection bounces off of it as she moves around the kitchen.

  I turn around when I hear Pa coming from the hallway, slowly, a cane holding him up and his face leaning down toward the floor. I watch him move, see his body leaning to one side, halfway down to the earth already. My eyes dart toward the front door. I shift my weight in the kitchen chair, try to stay still.

  “Look, Pa, Carmine made it in. He looks good, don’t he?” Ma smiles that crooked smile and points a bony finger at me. The percolator spits and vibrates on the kitchen counter.

  When I see his face, I feel my shoulders begin to fold in, then straighten up tall again when I feel the impulse to pounce on him, then push the feeling away, try to find something in between.

  “Old man, how you doing?” I wipe the sweat from my top lip, put my hands in my pockets, look over at Ma lighting a cigarette, watching the two of us. I feel suddenly sober. I’ve thought of this moment for years.

  For a split second, I become my former self again, knobby knees and hair over my ears, Pa at the pulpit preaching the gospel, me sitting in the pew, the smell of coffee and donuts and pamphlets behind me, Ma on the pew next to me silent. I remember the smoky smell of our house, the empty clink of forks on dinner plates, the sound of Pa snoring in his chair, the sting of his clammy hand on my face in the morning, the tattered leather of the old Bible always sitting in the center of our house.

  “Carmine, son, what took you so long to get here?” He’s at least three inches shorter than I remember. His clothes hang from his coat-hanger bones, a button-down shirt, old pajama bottoms; I can see the yellow whiskers growing from his cheeks. He breathes in hoarsely and gasps, moves to the living room and sits down. I sit down at the other end of the sofa.

  “Pop. You look rough. Life finally getting the best of you?” I lean back on the sofa and sigh.

  “Listen, boy, I’m dying. I ain’t gonna do this with you.” He eyes me hard, tries to straighten his spine. The congestion in his chest boils, and he begins to cough.

  “Now don’t start this. You haven’t seen each other for fourteen years, for Christ’s sake.” Ma shakes her head and walks back to the kitchen.

  “Can I get you something, Carmine? We don’t have any of that fancy liquor you’re probably used to, but we do have some of that cheap bourbon your pa used to drink.” Her voice echoes and bounces off the old paneling, I can hear the hum of the old icebox, look on the walls and see my old pictures. I don’t know how it’s possible that time has stayed so still.

  I hear Ma in the kitchen opening and closing old cabinet doors while Pa st
ill catches his breath at the other end of the couch, his breaths short and weak; he tries to stretch them out. I can smell his oily skin, see him watching me out of his yellow eyes; we are in the wild again.

  “How have things been, Pa?”

  He shakes his head, sits up straight, tries to laugh before the cough grips him again.

  “What’s so funny?” I ask. “Is it because I’m here or you’re there?” This time he doesn’t laugh, looks across the room at something I don’t see, and grabs his knees with his hands. His nails are overgrown, and the hair on his arms has turned gray.

  “Here you go, Carmine.” Ma hands me a glass of bourbon. I take a sip, slide it onto the table beside me.

  “It’s been a long time. I didn’t think I’d ever be sitting in this room again.” Ma sits in an armchair across from us and crosses her bony legs beneath her housecoat.

  “It ain’t normal for kids to leave home and never to come back,” she says. She lights up a cigarette and stares at Pa for a long time, waiting for him to say something.

  “Things have been going real good for me.” I make big hand gestures as I talk, paint a real colorful picture for them. “I’ve just been made partner at the advertising agency I’ve been working at, dating a nice girl; I’ve got loads of money. I don’t have long.” I take another drink of the liquor and wince as it goes down; it tastes like it’s been in the back of the cabinet for a long while.

  “Your pa, he ain’t got long either.”

  Pa starts to cough again, as though on cue, but manages to catch his breath before losing it.

  “Ma, don’t make this harder than it needs to be, you hear?” He tries to smile at her, but it doesn’t come out right. Instead, a crooked frown appears on his face; one cheek lifting up, he almost winks.

  After a minute, he pulls himself up to standing and leans on his cane. It’s the only thing holding his body in place. “I’m headed to bed, boy. You stayin’ or you goin’?”

  Ma looks at Pa, then at me. Nothing much has changed, and she’s waiting for the first swing, I think. I stand up and put my hand on my wallet, looking up at the faded white ceiling before answering.

  “I think I’ll crash. Is my old room open?”

  CHAPTER 3

  I AWAKE IN THE night to Pa screaming. I’ve never heard anything like it. It’s a screech. No, it’s more like a long, drawn-out hiss, like a siren, coming from his bones, crawling out of him. My brain doesn’t know what to do with such sounds. I turn over and try to focus on the sounds of the crickets outside my window, count the women I’ve been with, imagine the rising and falling of the stock market, the paper I’ll choose for my new resume.

  In the morning, Ma is at the stove scrambling eggs. I smell the yolks harden and the whites sticking to the bottom of the pan, the salty butter melting.

  “Does he always scream that way?” I stare at Ma’s back as she cooks and my head aches, and I try to think about why I’m here and what I want to do.

  “He has for the last month or so.” Her voice is low, the way new mothers sound after being up with a newborn all night, tired, worn-out, but still resilient.

  “The doctor tells us that the cancer is eatin’ him up inside.” She turns the pan over, dumps the eggs onto a paper plate, takes a long drag off her cigarette.

  I don’t have any experience with any of this. Illness. Weakness. I’ve been on a twelve-year happy hour, and none of it makes any sense. I think about Diego’s aging face, Melanie’s long, silky legs, the time we had a potluck for some account clerk’s dying wife. This is the stuff from other people’s lives. This isn’t really life.

  Outside the kitchen window, I can see the blue of a faraway mountain, remember its loneliness. I stand up to leave the room.

  “Don’t you want to eat?” she asks, searching my face for something familiar and knowing I’ll shake my head and turn away. I barely recognize her. She’s been dead to me for years.

  * * *

  My first memory of life is a little like this. There’s an opening in a room full of shag carpet, some kind of hole in the floor. I fall through. Somehow her skinny arms catch me downstairs. I am safe. Other memories are harder to remember, seem scattered, disconnected. Bits of color. Flashes of light. A piece of a memory here, a feeling there. I am following her around, clinging to the backs of her legs, looking up her narrow back, calling her name. She feeds me pancakes in front of the television. She brushes the knots out of my hair; she puts me in a tub of cold water and washes my fever away. Pa brings the belt down on my back and she leaves the room. I see red. Follow her shadow. Hear her moans as she leans on the church pew and talks to Jesus. I try to put it all together and imagine a woman that I know.

  * * *

  A couple of hours later, I walk three blocks and find the familiar tavern easily. I walk there almost on autopilot, noting my surroundings and remembering it was the place that Pa walked to a few nights a week, to reach his disciples he told us, his belly shaking as he laughed. Neon signs blink in the windows, and I can smell the stench of air-conditioning and cigarettes as I approach the door.

  I sit down at the bar. A silver Coors Light sign blinks in front of me; a layer of dust dulls the light. I remember seeing it as a child, walking up to the barstool, giving Pa a message from Ma, the sting of his hand pushing me away, my brain trying to process it.

  “Hey. Take a look at my son. He’s a shrimp, ain’t he? God help him.” His friends laugh; he doesn’t turn around to look at me again. I hear the beer glass slide across the bar as I leave, hear Pa saying something about the son of Job and the trials and tribulations of his life. He spoke, and everyone turned to listen.

  I tap my fingers on the bar and look around the room. The smoky air hangs, and the jukebox plays some country tune I’ve heard on the road somewhere. The faces look familiar: dark and weathered, but tender; there’s nothing more to them than what you see here. I can smell the sour of Jack Daniels in the air and my heart quickens.

  I order a beer and a shot, slide my hand through my hair, and take my jacket off. I think I’ll stay awhile.

  I think about my routine at home in Dallas, sitting at a bar so unlike this one. Glossy floors and high ceilings, leather chaises, the dark lights leaning in and out, the sound of money sliding across tables, deals being made, sex being bought and sold. My life was a prime-time show people live vicariously through.

  The bartender looks slightly familiar to me, a tall good-looking guy I remember playing football at school. I’d go and watch the games from the sidelines, smoking weed under the bleachers or trying to sneak my hand up girls’ skirts. I laugh to myself when I think about how he’s still here and pushing glasses around behind a bar. Then again, how I’m still sneaking behind bleachers—only bigger ones—and chasing skirts. I still like it; it still makes sense.

  “Hey, don’t I know you?” I down the shot and follow it with half a glass of beer. On the jukebox, Patsy Cline swoons about love and heartache. How does that woman still have a place here?

  He looks at me closely for a minute and squints. He’s putting it all together. I remember his name is Adam, Adam Short.

  “It’s Carmine, right?” He leans over the bar in my direction and looks at me, tries to find any memories stored, things we might have shared.

  “Yes, Carmine St. Clair. I think we went to school together a long time ago.” I drink the last of my beer and tap the glass on the bar. He fills it up from the tap and dries his hand on a towel.

  “You haven’t been around these parts in years, have you? Seems like I’d remember seeing you around. You’re big-city now, aren’t you?”

  I smile. Lean back in my chair. Tell him about all the money I’ve made in Dallas and how I won’t be here for long, that I’m only stopping in to check on my folks on my way to the East Coast to make some more coins.

  “You know how it is,” I tell him. “I can’t believe you’re still working at this bar. Didn’t your pop used to serve drinks to mine back in the day?” A ju
kebox switches songs, something by the Rolling Stones, and I hear the pinball machine clicking somewhere in the room.

  “Yep, still here, like a lot of us. Your folks have been struggling the last few years, I hear.” He turns a sink on behind the bar and starts washing a glass.

  “Ain’t been a whole lot happening in these parts for any of us, but after the church, your Pa couldn’t seem to stay out of trouble. But I’m sure you know about all of that.” He dries the glass and then dips another one into the sudsy water.

  He keeps talking for a long time and tells me how Pa’s had some trouble with some folks around town, how Ma’s been in the food line at the charity, how some of the winters have been harsh.

  “Sounds like they made it all right,” I say, tipping my empty glass toward him again. “Only Pa is sick now.” I look around the room behind me, but only see a few scattered faces, no one I recognize. “I’m just not sure what that has to do with me, you know?” I reach down the bar and grab a bowl of peanuts, toss a few in my mouth. They taste like the bar smells. It’s something to do.

  “My pa passed away a few years ago, left me this bar. Sometimes I find myself waiting for him to come out of the cooler, a case of beer in his arms. It’s tough, man, tough, and now my mother can’t take care of herself, needs help with the simplest of things. It’s a strange position for a man to be in, a strange feeling to get used to. I still don’t know what I’m doing.” He drains the sink and folds the towel, his eyes turned in.

  “Why is that?” I ask him. He looks at me strangely, as though he suddenly doesn’t recognize me, like I’ve just walked up to him, a new face in the crowd.

  Just then a group of men come up to the bar and order drinks, a rowdy group; they fill in the voids and the room has become something else. I slide my coat on and walk out. When the cold mountain air hits me, I remember I’m not in Dallas anymore.

  CHAPTER 4

  FOR THE FIRST COUPLE of days, it all feels so mechanical. Little stick figures walking about, changes in scenes, background noise; it all seems so separate from anything I know about. Ma shuffling in and out of their bedroom, Pa’s moans, the Price Is Right on the TV, then later in the evening, Wheel of Fortune, the clink of his spoon hitting the bowl of oatmeal he eats before bed.