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SOMETHING HAS HAPPENED. Something beyond the attack by Booker, beyond the beating red-black heart. He has come across an audio cassette, something he recorded at the Starlight Drive-in, years ago. It is a recording of a Pink Panther cartoon and some concessions ads, and part of a western movie, the name of which he cannot remember. In the recording he can hear Clint Eastwood and some other actor talking confrontationally amidst a commotion; he doesn’t recall what the commotion was— but can hear shouting and gunfire in the background. What interests him, however, is an almost silent stretch near the end, a stretch where nothing much can be heard, only stealthy footsteps on stones, a stretch that must have been recorded right before the batteries died. In the stretch he thinks he hears his mother’s voice—distorted, barely audible through the white noise—but clear enough to pick out some words, something about white blood cell counts and low-grade dysphasia, about red flags and warning signals, increased testing, additional x-rays. He is certain that he hears one word in particular that he has not heard in years. The word is ‘carcinoma.’
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HIS MOTHER HAS BEEN admitted to Sacred Heart Medical Center. He is told this by his father and Fast Eddy while sitting on Eddy’s back deck in east Spokane, a deck made of stained planks which supports a hot tub and a wet bar and has a roof and walls made of lattice wood, which are strung with Christmas lights and paper lanterns so that everything resembles a low-rent Tiki bar. Although he wants to speak to her right away his father tells him that the hospital is closed to visitors from 7 pm to 9 pm while the staff does their “change of shift report,” and that she’ll only be there a day or two anyway while they run some tests, though his father is going up again tonight to take her some books. In fact he excuses himself much earlier than that, having only had one beer to Eddy’s four, and leaves without so much as looking at the Kid, which he supposes ought to offend him but doesn’t, because there really isn’t that much to say. Without his mother to connect them they are strangers.
“Here,” says Fast Eddy, after seeing his father off and returning from the bar, and hands the Kid a can of RC, which Eddy has retrieved from the ice chest so that its sides run with water and pieces of frost. Eddy settles into his lawn chair and stares at the yard, which he’s transformed into a Japanese-style garden with bubbling fountains and lightscaped waterfalls and a brook winding around a Buddha—which he has more of in the basement, as well as oversized frogs and toadstools and garden gnomes, all lined up like the Terracotta Army (which the Kid has seen pictures of in National Geographic), but which he’s bought cheap in Mexico and plans to sell for a profit in Spokane. He hooks a finger beneath the pull ring of his can and tears it open, drops the ring into his ashtray. “You know how long I’ve known your father?” He doesn’t look at him as he says this, only stares straight ahead at the water garden.
The Kid hooks a finger beneath the ring of his can, tears it open, drops the ring into Eddy’s ashtray. He stares at the water garden also.
“Since ‘62—the year President Kennedy said we were going to the moon. I met him even before he met your mother—at Eddie Murphy’s Tavern in Hillyard. Good old Eddie’s, how’s that for symmetry?”
The Kid sips his RC, imagining the scene in his head, directing it like a movie, fading up on the illuminated sign outside Eddie Murphy’s—with its crossed bats and baseball, everything in black and white—craning to street level and up to the window as Fast Eddy goes in and sits next to his father. “He must have been about my age, twenty-nine, thirty, something like that. Nice-looking fellow—looked like Steve McQueen. But what I remember most was the contrast, because he was so impeccably dressed and his hair was slicked back and his shoes were shined, yet it seemed as though he hadn’t eaten or slept or bathed in days. And I asked him about it—partly out of genuine curiosity but partly just to be a smart-ass, because I liked the sound of my own voice then, liked being a smart-ass, I still had front teeth, see, to be a smart-ass with, and I said, ‘How ya feeling, Slick?’
“Now, there are men you can say that to and those you can’t. And I didn’t know which type your father was—which I suppose was half the fun. But I remember he shook a cigarette from his pack and placed it between his lips, and flipped his lighter open, but didn’t ignite it, and told me about finding a firecracker when he was a boy which he mistook for a cigarette even though it was colored bright orange, and about lighting it, one-handed, waving the match out real cool, just like he’d seen his father do, and waving his Zippo as he repeated it, like he might curl his fist around it any moment, adding, ‘And I just sucked that orange fag and watched its tip sparkle and hiss and smoke until its fuse burned to the stub and everything just exploded, right in my face.’”
The Kid looks at Fast Eddy, who takes a drag off his cigarette, his face lighting orange, and blows blue smoke through his nostrils.
“Now, I may not have had much of a formal education, but I was sober and what he’d said and how he’d said it sounded an awful lot to me like the preamble to a punch in the face, so I slid off my stool and told him I didn’t want any trouble, that I’d just been fooling with him, and could I buy him a beer because frankly it looked like he could use one, not to mention a good meal. And we became chums, because he was and still is the type of man you can say that to. And he went on to tell me about what the firecracker had done, which was to nearly blow his teeth out and to rip his lips open, but that he’d had to wait nearly an hour before going to the hospital because his father balked at the idea of a bill, suggesting his mother could take him if she wanted to pay for it, which she didn’t, at least not until she realized the extent of the damage—although she had to change outfits first and fix her hair.”
The Kid stares at Fast Eddy and takes a sip. Fast Eddy looks back at him. “This life you’ve had so far, this childhood, it ain’t your father’s childhood, see. Ain’t your mother’s either.” He gets up. “Let’s walk.”
The Kid gets up and they walk.
“See, he’d only recently moved back to Spokane from Seattle, where he and his brothers had been working for their father—Spitzer and Sons Painting—at Boeing Field, making lots of money. Or at least someone was making lots of money—Giff didn’t seem to think he was seeing his share, even though they were all supposed to be equal partners. But your father just did the work, see, the physical work, and some of the estimating and bidding. It was his eldest brother who handled all the books and was sort of the comptroller of the whole operation.”
“Uncle Shane,” says the Kid.
“Right. Not your Uncle Lew.”
Eddy leads him along a narrow stone path through the garden. “So there was always that, plus the normal sibling rivalry and the fact that old man Spitzer sort of encouraged it, because that was what had always worked for him—boost productivity by pitting workers against each other, for bonuses, titles, whatever. The problem was that your father and Uncle Shane weren’t just employees but co-owners and brothers—brothers with very different temperaments.”
Eddy crouches by the fish pond, running his fingertips through it, making little ripples. “Check this out.” The Kid crouches next to him and gazes into the water. “Got a little bit of everything, goldfish, carp, bluegills, rosy red minnows. See how the light makes the water glow? Like they’re swimming through air.” The Kid watches the fish weave in and out of the water lilies and each other, but also notices how they wheel off occasionally as a group, pivoting in unison, undulating as a single animal, like an eel. “This pond attracts all sorts of things, birds, garter snakes, frogs. Caught a salamander out here the other night—got it in a little cage in my kitchen. I’ll show it to you before you go. Been feedin’ it lettuce.”
The pond is scattered with water-hyacinths and irises which skitter away as the Kid touches the surface. Fast Eddy stands. “Tough customers, your grandfather and your Uncle Shane...” He laughs bitterly. “Not the type you want to go up to in a tavern and call ‘Slick.’ For men like that it’s all about the game, the fight, the purse. It may have been a family business but they weren’t in it for family. You don’t get as far as they do without...without having a demonic sublime. Your father now, he wasn’t like that. Not then. All he wanted, I think, was a real family.”
He starts moving again. The Kid shakes the water from his hand and follows.
“So when the contract was over and there was no more work they came home to Spokane. But there was no work here either—at least not in your Uncle Shane’s estimation; because he was the one who kept his ear to the ground and could divan these things. He had a knack for it, see, probably because he was a gambler, like your grandfather—Poker, mainly. Texas Hold ‘Em. I reckon your Uncle Lew’s played a game or two also. It was about this time that Shane suggested folding the company for good, that your father might benefit from withdrawing his share completely and starting his own business, which Shane would help him with by giving him his portion of the physical assets—scaffolding, spray guns, that sort of thing—because he was thinking about going into a different business altogether.”
Eddy pauses at a spot where the elephant ear plants encroach on the path, holding a frond so that it doesn’t strike the Kid in the face. The Kid steps through and Eddy lets it go. They walk back to their lawn chairs.
“Well, see, your father looked up to Shane, rivalry or no, and took his advice, and before your dad knew it he was out—out of the company and out of Spokane, because he fell for some Eskimo girl he met downtown, and I mean really fell, and took a Greyhound bus with her back to Anchorage, figuring he’d come back for his equipment later and start a new life with her in Alaska, maybe even homestead some land.”
Eddy collapses in his lawn chair, exhaling, as the Kid stands and listens. “That lasted maybe five or six months, until he came home one day and she had her ass in the air like a housecat being scratched—with the neighbor fella doing the scratching, see—and he ditched out to Anchorage International and spent everything he had on a plane ticket home, leaving Alaska exactly how he came, with nothing.”
The Kid tips his can to his lips and empties it, then scrunches it in his hand. He tosses it into the wastebasket, thinking about the Eskimo girl’s ass, imagining the curve of her olive-skinned back, like the upright lid of a Baby Grand Piano.
“Of course no one would pick him up at the airport, because it wasn’t that type of family. So he dialed a painter friend who had worked with him for his father—Dale Benner, I think—who offered to let him flop at his place in Hillyard and came out to get him. That’s when he found out that his brother hadn’t gone into ‘a different business altogether,’ but in fact had sued his father over a portion of the Boeing profits and established his own company, Shane T. Spitzer Painting, and had won the bid for the refurbishment of Fairchild Air Force Base, which was going to be huge, bigger, by far, than the Boeing deal.
“And finally, after telling the whole story, your father turned to me and said, ‘How do I feel? Well, I’ve gone from the girl, the gold watch, and everything—to a bag of clothes, a toothbrush, and enough money for this beer.’ Then he laughed and said, ‘I guess I feel like that firecracker just blew up in my face again.’”
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FAST EDDY LIGHTS A FRESH CIGARETTE, the glow of the flame turning his whole face orange. “Now, why do you suppose I told you that?”
The Kid just looks at him.
“I told you that because that had been the worst moment in your father’s life so far. He wasn’t old, but he wasn’t young either—thirty ain’t twenty no matter how much they say. Thirty is when you realize how much time you’ve wasted and that you better get moving—while fearing deep down that it’s already too late. I told you that because, as bad as things were for your father at that instant, as desperate and hungry and lonely and hopeless as he was, I walked by the window of Eddie Murphy’s the next day and saw him seated in a booth with the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. I mean, this woman looked like Lucille Ball—not the one from The Lucy Show or even I Love Lucy with Desi Arnaz—more like the one from Stage Door; with her hair bobbed around the back and coifed on one side, wearing a blue cocktail dress with one of those mandarin collars, and a blue cap, the netting of which sort of veiled her face. And there was the Giffer, looking pretty dapper for a penniless drifter, I thought— chatting her up, holding her hand across the table, both of them laughing—as though neither had a care in the world.
“Course they saw me gawking through the window—how couldn’t they? They were seated right on the other side of the glass; and Giff gestured for me to come in, which I did, and sat next to him. That was the first time I ever saw your mother, Mary Lee, and she had lines of grace that day, let me tell you. But she had a demonic sublime too. I don’t know if Giff could see it but I saw it right away— in the way she held her chin down and looked up at him through the veil of her hat. Know what a demonic sublime is?”
The Kid shakes his head.
“It’s something hidden, an electrical current say, which actuates something else. A necessary imperfection...” Eddy puts a fist to his chest, stifles a belch. His eyes are bloodshot and rummy. “Lines of grace.... Regardless, I knew right away the spark had met the gas, and that your father’s life was going to change—bang-bang-bang, like that.”
The Kid continues looking at him.
“Sheldon, Kym, you—bang-bang-bang, like that. I guess what I’m trying to say is, there’s ebb and flow to everything...everything breathes. It’s like I told you years ago, when your father brought home the Camino. The sparks push down the pistons and drive the crankshaft. The El Camino breathes; see, just like a person. The ocean breathes. But the breathing is different from the thing itself...” Eddy drains the last of his beer and stares at the little round candle on the table, which in fact is a big wooden spool he has brought home from the job site and lain upon its side—picks the candle up. “Now what do you suppose I have in my hand?”
The Kid looks at the candle, the actual wick of which he cannot see, only its glow. “A candle.”
“That’s right. So what’s a candle?”
“Something made of wax, with a wick inside it. You light the wick and get a flame—”
“A flame!” Eddy slaps his hands together. “That’s right.” He turns the candle this way and that. “Or is it? Okay, let’s call it a flame. Now—is that a noun or a verb?”
The Kid crosses his eyes at him. “Both.”
“Sure...it’s an action and a thing.”
“Right.”
Eddy blows the candle out, sets it back on the table. “Now what is it?”
The Kid watches a little wisp of smoke rise, and then looks at Eddy. “It’s nothing. You blew it out.”
“The action or the thing?”
“Both.”
“So what are those?” He points at the candles along the bar.
The Kid hesitates. “Candles—flames.” He looks at Eddy, who shakes his head. “Fire,” he quickly adds.
“Bravo!” says Eddy, grinning. “And not just there but everywhere. All throughout Spokane. So I didn’t blow out fire.” He frowns suddenly. “What did I blow out then?”
The Kid looks back at the candles; then at the painting mounted above them, which depicts geometric shapes, a row of women, he thinks, descending a staircase.
Eddy laughs. “Think about it.” He gets up, groaning. “Meanwhile, let’s find a container. Because I’ve got a salamander without a boy—for a boy without a salamander.”