A Song for Carmine Read online

  “There is God, and then there is everything else. All you need to do is ask for forgiveness for whatever it is and offer the same to others.”

  “If all we have to do is ask for God’s forgiveness every time we do something wrong, what’s the point of living right at all then?” I am angry all of a sudden. I rock back and forth in my shoes and wait for him to answer. I look at him long and hard, dare him, beg him to come closer.

  “Aren’t you going to minister to me, minister?” I walk and stand right in front of him. My fists clench and I eye him hard.

  “Listen, services will be starting soon, and I invite you to worship with us. If you’d like to make an appointment with me, I’d be glad to sit with you and answer some of your questions.” He doesn’t blink, but his eyes are soft and kind and wet at the edges. His hand rests on the pinewood of the pew. He is not afraid and I can’t understand why.

  I walk out the front door of the church, push the door hard so that it makes a sucking, final sound.

  I walk down the stairs slowly, and my legs feel so weak beneath me; I am famished. I have never felt so hungry in my life. My mouth waters and I search for the smells from earlier, pick up my pace, and walk past the white houses. The smells have faded, but I look inside the windows of the houses at TVs blaring, recliners with people in them, hear kids playing in their backyards, see a couple on their porch holding hands. Life here seems so simple, yet so complicated.

  CHAPTER 7

  I AM SLEEPING DEEP, so deep I can hear Pa’s voice in the distance. It is acrylic and dry. He is young and I can see his broad shoulders, vast hands, hear the sound of his booted feet. I am dreaming my own memories. Outside, I hear the big, billowing horn of a boat, smell salt in the air, look around and see clutter: ashtrays full of cigarette butts, empty food cartons, rolled-up socks, a Tonka truck, a handful of Legos. Outside the window, I see the U-Haul truck in front of the house, the back of it open.

  “I ain’t dealing with it no more, Ron, you make it too hard. Something’s got to change or our boy ain’t gonna come out right. I’ve got to save you or us, and I’m starting to get the feeling that even Jesus himself can’t save you.” Through the crack of my bedroom door, I see her in the kitchen with her hands on her bony hips, her light hair pulled back in a ponytail at the bottom of her neck. She’s making a bunch of sandwiches on the table, buttering all the pieces of bread with mayonnaise before putting them down again, adding slices of bologna two at a time.

  Pa sits at the table drinking a cup of coffee. He is calm; he swooshes the cup around and makes circles with the coffee in the bottom of the cup.

  “Virginia, you aren’t going anywhere. How would it look if the town’s preacher’s wife left him? You think you can raise that boy alone? Where you gonna go? You think your people are gonna take you and that boy in? All I’ve been trying to do is put the fear of God in him so that he comes out good and godly, and you wanna walk around here like I’m some kind of animal.”

  He goes on to tell her that she can’t survive without him, that she’s nearly helpless anyhow, that he’s the boy’s father and that he knows right from wrong, that he’s going by the Holy Book, and that it’s the only way, says that’s how his pa did it. “If he knows how to hurt now, it’ll be easier for him later in life. Life is painful, Virginia, and you know it.” She slides into the chair across from him, rubs her hands up and down her cheek, rests her face in her hands.

  From the doorway, I am hopeful, I believe she might finally save me, might finally be turning over in her sleep. I wait for her to say something; I wait for so long, I twist and turn because I have to use it.

  When I get out of the bathroom, I sneak closer to the kitchen, hide behind an old sitting chair, hear her whisper that she just doesn’t want her son to hate her and that she’ll stay and pray that he’s doing right by them.

  The next memory I have is that inky stretch of night, the colored boy’s face, the feel of the starch of my bedsheets on my wet face when I crawled into bed that night.

  * * *

  I open my bedroom door in time to see him wobble to the bathroom. For a second or two, I watch him, how the old man nearly has to drag his legs each step, how he leans on the old paneling for support, how each breath is labored and hard and long and wet.

  The empty pages of my business plan scatter across my bed; the list of my old colleagues falls to the floor. I feel like I’ve never actually left this room and that Dallas is just a mirage.

  I start to walk down the hall toward the kitchen, stop a few feet away as he falls to the floor. It feels like it’s all happening in slow motion; I wait for time to catch up and resume normal speed. His legs fold beneath him. He doesn’t cry out for help, but his breathing is so loud, the phlegm holds onto the walls of his lungs, drags on the bottom like sandpaper on a wood floor; heavy, it keeps him down on the floor. He grasps at the doorway; his fingernails dig into the wood, but he’s not strong enough to get up.

  I continue to watch. It’s a spectacle; he looks like a bunch of bones in a yellow pillowcase, and I don’t recognize him. I look down the hallway hoping to see Ma. Time catches up and I stand up straight, my legs no longer soft.

  “Pop? Do you need some help?” I start to walk toward him; he grabs at his cane that’s fallen a foot away, but he can’t reach it.

  He waves his hand at me, pushing me away. “I got it. I don’t need any help from you.” He’s focused on his body, what it can and cannot do. There is no world beyond this hallway—he, me, the space between us, this is both the milestone and the mile itself.

  “Listen, Pop, just let me help you up.” I walk closer to him, but when I get there I don’t know what to do; a small smile forms on my face—it comes from somewhere deep.

  It throws me back to this one day. I had been playing on a tree outside, alone. The limb was wet and I fell to the ground on my back and the air had been knocked out of me completely, my throat was dry. I think I broke my elbow, the pain so piercing and ripe. I didn’t want Ma or Pa to find out so I kept it to myself, but during dinner as I carried my plate to the table, pain shot through my arm and I dropped my food and the plate shattered on the wood floor in the kitchen. Pa immediately picked me up and threw me across the room. It was just like that—seemingly so easy for him.

  He used to collect odd things—clocks, and more—his prized possession was a 1000-watt light bulb that he had found. When he threw me I fell on it and it shattered, a piece of it stuck in the skin right under my heart leaving the ‘x-shaped’ scar that I wouldn’t want to live without now. It is who I am.

  The memory comes back in fragments: burning skin, the smell of a rotting human soul, a thunderstorm raging outside, hot metal used to brand furniture, a customer that didn’t pay his bill, mom cowered in the corner. The pieces tell a story. Her voice. His strength. A lethal combination. Her words, the son of bitches, the morons, the worthless piece of shits, all of the names hurt just as much as his beatings, and in fact, I would have probably chosen the silent beatings over her voice.

  I think of how easily I could take him out. My foot fidgets at the thought. I lean to one side; it would just take one kick, a hard punch, there’s not much left to him. He smells of cold cardboard, mildew; he is sour inside.

  I lean down, take in his features: the gray eyebrows, the broad smile like my own, the arthritic hands, the stiff jawline, the disheveled yellow hair. The pulpit would have to hold him up now, not the other way around.

  “Here, Pop, grab my arm. I’ll pull you up.” I put my hand out and stare up at the ceiling. His skin feels hot to the touch; he’s heavier than I thought he would be. I am frozen inside.

  When I’ve pulled him up all the way, we stare at each other, feel the gravity trying to pull us back down. I’ve not been this close to him in many years. We are the same height for the first time; neither of us looks away. We search the other for as far as we can go; we hold on, climb, wince, twist, and turn. It happens so fast. His eyes are wet, and when they
pool over, I look away, blink, my skin burns.

  Ma comes to the end of the hallway but doesn’t say anything. The afternoon light reaches into the side window strong and hot; my skin prickles when I look at the oblong triangle we make in the hallway, the sharp edges we’ve always had, then the symmetry. It’s not special; you can’t tell that it is us.

  I hand him his cane and walk out the front door and head north. The leaves move in the trees above me and the sky is dry. I feel paralyzed, can’t tell if what I feel is pride, destruction, or the aftermath; there isn’t a palpable beginning or end to it.

  I keep walking, then start to run. I remember times when life was good, when the childhood memories were cherry in color and bled together, full and ripe, mouthfuls of them. The memories of those days used to flood me in Dallas at the weirdest times. Memories of when I’d watch cartoons on Saturday mornings, holding my mother’s hand, while she smoked Salems and laughed at the television with me, the old TV set buzzing; or sitting atop my father’s shoulders, fishing pole in hand, the low-hanging leaves of the trees brushing my head as we hiked down the trail to the Gulf in East Texas.

  I run through the neighborhoods of Eton and feel as though gravity has left me behind, that I’m destined to float through space, or bump along, hitting things here and there forever, never finding solid ground. It’s the way it’s always been. Touch-and-go.

  When I run long enough to get the high, I pay attention again, slip into the present. There is a sense of randomness in Eton, to the order of things here: houses and then trailers, white, white, white, and then an occasional black. The patterns here are hard to find, yet easy to identify. I count the number of houses I pass, the number of barefoot children, the curse words I hear; I see the dirty, old furniture on porches, skinny men on street corners, old cars on blocks in drives. Then the grandeur: the mountains so much softer and bluer than the Rockies, the sweet, melon air, the gusts of wind, the quiet calm of life here, the space in between it all.

  * * *

  A few days later, I am sitting at the kitchen table with Ma drinking a cup of coffee from one of the old plastic mugs we’ve used for years. The edges of the rim are frayed; the plastic chafes my lips as I drink.

  “Carmine, your father, well, he’s real sorry for how hard he was on you back when you were just a boy.” She’s drinking out of the same brown mug, and her hand shakes noticeably as she brings the cup to her mouth. She’s got a lifetime worth of something she’s holding back, and I’m always afraid the dam will break when I’m around.

  I run my hands over my face, feel the stubble, the rawness of my own face. There hadn’t been a day in twenty years that I haven’t shaved, but there’ve been ten lately. I wake up and don’t know what to do with myself anymore. My clothes are loose, they hang. My shirt is wrinkled and stained, I fold it at the elbows and go.

  “You see, he didn’t always know what was right, how to raise you good, you know? But you gotta know he meant well and that he loved you—you know that, right?” She lights another cigarette and stares at me with those same wet eyes.

  I look back at her, don’t blink or frown, just look back. I fold my legs beneath me and the table, fidget in my seat. I don’t know what she’s talking about.

  “I hear you, Ma.” I can hear the train passing in the distance; it rattles the house. The washing machine on the back porch switches cycles, a phone rings in the neighborhood somewhere; all of life is happening at once.

  * * *

  I wake up from a dream that night to hear my father scream: this is the worst that it has gotten, and I don’t know how to let it pass without grabbing hold of it and trying to wrestle it to the ground. Give it a good fight. Make it go away.

  “Lord, take me. Goddamn it—take me!” His cries are muffled by the sound of Ma pacing the wood floors, a scuffling sound, her feet pushing the energy from room to room. She stops at Dad’s bedside again, and I can see the hunch of her old back in my mind, I hold my groin and listen. Wait. Hope she can do something to make it stop. Just make it fucking stop.

  In Dallas everything, anything was within reach. I hold myself tighter and fall into another dream. I am commanding death, a cloaked figure, to come and take the old man away; a weary fog surrounds me. Whatever it costs, I’ll pay it.

  I chase the dream awhile, put the pillow over my head, manage to escape for an hour or two, less, more, I don’t know. The heavy curtains are pulled in my room and there is nothing but black.

  When I wake up again, my father is crying and screaming again, but the sounds are softer. Outside the heavy curtains, the dawn is busting through, and the light is a dull shade of pink.

  “You son of a bitch, you motherfucker. I can’t take this pain anymore…” My breathing is shallow as I listen and remember and feel small in this twin bed. I am suddenly aware of my own intestines, my liver, the beat of my heart pulsing warm blood through me. The bed squeaks beneath me as I turn.

  In the morning, as I’m on my way out to the front porch for a smoke, Pa calls to me from his bedroom. His voice echoes off the paneling in the hall; so much of it comes back, the past is just a series of echoes bouncing off walls and I know it. I pause at his door for a second before stepping back into the hallway. I reach for something in my pocket; it’s what I’ve always done: the silver money clip, loose change, even the cotton lining, something to stop the spin.

  The house is quiet; Ma has stepped out for the morning. I am going out to fax some resumes. Two days ago, I left another message for Diego, hoping he’d have something in the works, hoping I could close my eyes and follow the next thing, sleep through another decade.

  “Carmine, come in here for a second, would you?” When he speaks, he brings me back to this reality, but I am startled, and I don’t know if I am in the present or remembering something again. His voice sounds old but still wicked and sour.

  I walk into the room and smell him before I see him, find the footboard of the bed with my feet before I can see him; my eyes don’t want to adjust to the light.

  He clears his throat. I blink my eyes, and there he is.

  “What’s up?” I stop and look at him; he sags into the bed. I turn a pack of cigarettes and lighter in my hands, squeeze the end of the bed, hold back great images of attack, see planes fly around in my head and then crash-land.

  “Listen, Carmine. Your ma, she’s going to need you real soon. I’ve got nothing else to give her in this life, ain’t had much to give her in a long time, if I ever did. I got nothing else to give nobody. Can’t even get myself to the bathroom to take a shit anymore.”

  I look away, don’t want to hear it, then look back at him. What does this have to do with me?

  He’s half the man he used to be, maybe less, his body slowly disintegrating. I feel like a king. I get bigger as he gets smaller, and it feels wicked good. I have nothing to compare him to anymore. His bulging biceps are now limp, his arms now wiry and sullen. He swims in his pajamas, and his echoing, billowing voice is now a whisper.

  “Pop, Mom will be fine. I’ll give her some money, look in on her sometimes. She’s got friends, doesn’t she? She’ll be fine. I was just on my way out. Is that all?” I shake my head, punctuate my sentence with a long, deep breath, and leave the room. I light a cigarette before I reach the front door, wonder just where my legs will take me.

  CHAPTER 8

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON, I am laying on my bed, counting the ceiling tiles, the dust particles in the air. I hear my cell phone chime; there’s a handful of voice messages I don’t want to hear—Melanie, the landlord, the bank. I’ve been gone a month now, and I’ve not paid a thing, looked back at all; I am floating.

  When it starts ringing, I jump out of bed, look at the handset, and realize it’s Diego.

  “Diego, my man, where ya been?” A smile climbs across my face, rises at the thought of being something again.

  “Carmine, listen, I’m just calling out of real courtesy here, okay? There’s nothing up. Nothing’s happening, d
ude, and I’m serious about that.” I hear his raspy voice on the other end of the line as he tells me that he’s pretty much gone bankrupt and that he’s run his business into the ground for years. I don’t respond for a long time because I don’t know what to say.

  “I don’t understand how that is possible, Diego. I mean, you built a fucking empire, and you’re telling me that you don’t have anything to stand on? Nothing at all? I find that hard to believe.” I pound my hand on the small desk in my room, shake my head.

  I want him to tell me it was all a joke, to come on home back to the high-rise, to my old life and my old office, and to get ready to fly again.

  He doesn’t. There is silence, except for the birds outside, the familiar hum of the old mail truck, Pa’s cough a few doors down; there is actually nothing more happening.

  He tells me a bunch of stuff about money and about deals gone bad and about angry clients and that he’s moving back to Mexico to start from scratch again because he’s totally connected there and knows he can make some quick money and live off his family for a while. Yeah, he says, it’s not turned out like he thought it would be, but there’s always something to chase, isn’t there? Always another ride to jump on.

  I hang up the phone and start laughing. It starts off slowly, my cheeks rising, a short, sharp hiccup from my chest, then I’m rolling, laughing so deep and hard that it hurts and I’m shaking. He’s an old man, alone, a failure. He’s lived his whole life for nothing and he doesn’t even know it.

  * * *

  The next morning I sleep in late and then jump out of bed and change my clothes, look at the pile of resumes on my old desk, the crisp white paper, curled at its edges now from humidity, the sharp ink of the laser printer from the printshop downtown. I leave them and walk out the door.