The Day of the Reckoning of Names

[1960]

IT ALL STARTED ON THE AFTERNOON of my grandmother’s funeral. There are these caves down the beach from our house, tucked in among the trees and poison oak, and when Dad and I got home from the funeral and Dad decided to go for a run, I changed into these ridiculous Hawaiian swimming trunks I’ve got and went down to the caves. The tide was high, giving me only about six feet of beach to walk on, and the bay was still churning from a storm we’d had that morning. When I got there, I climbed the bank and sat at the entrance to the nearest cave in order to decide what to do with a three-ring binder that I’d shoved down the front of my swim trunks just before I left the house. It had my grandma’s diary in it, her memoir, I guess you’d called it, which no one else knew about, and which, for some damned reason, she gave to me the day before she died.

Here are the facts about my grandmother. Her name was Flora Magnolia Marigold Lilly, with Lilly being our last name. She was born in 1867 and died right now, in 1960, at the ripe old age of ninety-three. “Ripe old age” is how her minister put it in his pathetic eulogy. What got me was that he came out of retirement to say it, at the ripe old age of about one hundred and fifty himself.

The binder had belonged to my dad when he was in high school and was covered with scribbles that mostly said “Loretta sucks hind tit!”

I had just started thinking about what to do with the binder when down on the beach, hopping from boulder to boulder, came this kid I know named Perry White, with rocks in his hands and a slingshot in his pocket. He was a lousy sort of kid most of the time, but the most amazing shot with a rock in all of Brown’s Point, in all of Tacoma, probably. So I had a choice to make before I could decide about the binder, because Perry knew the caves as well as I did and might be coming here to smoke and look at dirty pictures. The choice was this: Should I call to him or stay quiet and hope he’d go away? It was important because if he saw me and I hadn’t called him, he might start slinging rocks.

Perry stopped below me to shoot a couple of the very rocks I was worried about at this metal buoy out in the bay. Ping! Ping! said the buoy. Two rocks, two hits, like always.

“Heeeeyyy, Perry!” I hissed, or not exactly hissed, but brayed, in what I thought of as a good imitation of a goat’s voice. Our next-door neighbors used to have a goat in their backyard. Perry was in love with one of their daughters.

“What the hell?” he said, and I said, “Up here” in my regular voice.

“Richie?”

“Yeah. Just got back from my grandma’s funeral.”

“My condolences,” said Perry.

I was surprised he knew the word but kept my mouth shut. He was wearing jeans and a striped T-shirt, his uniform for as long as I could remember. He ran up the bank and fell down beside me.

“How old was she,” he asked, “hunnert, hunnert’n one?”

“Ninety-three. We buried her next to her husband, who’s been dead since 1945 himself.”

“Nineteen forty-five …” Perry said it like it was the Jurassic Age, though it was the year we both were born in.

“Wanta know how he got killed?” I asked. “He was a preacher, my grandpa, with the actual name of Tiger Lilly.”

I opened the binder so I could read about him, but all Perry did was stare at “Loretta sucks hind tit!” And then he told me in this belligerent way to go ahead and read it. He was changeable like that, cheerful one minute, grouchy the next. I found the spot and read: “‘One summer when a local girl was caught drinking with some lumberjacks, Tiger decided to give a sermon about cupid and use his prowess as an archer to drive the point home. So he got out his bow and we walked down to an open space behind the lighthouse.’”

“I didn’t know the lighthouse was that old,” said Perry, but I could see that he was talking to himself.

“‘I’d made some rolls and Tiger was juggling them, roving around and saying that the odds of a girl finding love in a lumberjack bar were about as great as something or other. He was searching for the proper analogy when I said, “About as great as you hitting one of those rolls in midair. I’ll throw it up and you shoot. You’ll miss, of course, and that will show the girl how likely it is that she, too, will miss her mark.”’”

Perry took out his slingshot and sent a rock into the sky. If there’d been a roll up there he’d have knocked it down.

“‘Tiger was irritated that I’d said he couldn’t hit the roll. “Throw one up, Flora,” he said, “See if I can’t hit it. I’m good at this, you know.” I did and he missed. A bald eagle nesting in a nearby tree saw the roll and opened its wings, as if thinking about going after it itself. I’d only brought four rolls and fancied eating one, so I told him I’d throw just one more. It was still rising when he steadied his bow and shot. He missed again and said, “Don’t say anything, Flora. Throw up another.” I sighed and bent to get another roll, when the one I’d just thrown came down and hit Tiger on the nose. We both laughed, but then the arrow came down, too, and hit him in the forehead.’”

“Yer lyin’, Richie, a roll can’t stay up in the air that long,” said Perry. Then he snatched the binder out of my hands and ran down to the beach with it, his butt sticking out behind him like two hams in a sack.

“Bring that back!” I shouted, but he sent a rock into the dirt at my feet.

I danced around like a coward in a cowboy movie until another rock flew past my ear, and then I ran into the cave. Five minutes later, when I peeked out again, all I could see was the bay and the limbs of the nearby trees. Both Perry and my grandma’s binder were gone.

WHEN I GOT HOME, COLD AND SWEATY in my swim trunks, Dad had just come back from his run and was cold and sweaty and irritable, I guess because his run hadn’t gone well. He’d been a champion runner in high school and liked to remember his glory days. New glory days were few and far between for my dad.

“Go change, Richie,” he said, “I don’t want you dragging that beach crap into the house.”

He was sitting on our couch with a glass of scotch. When I told him that I’d knocked the beach crap off already, he pinched his stomach and said, “I’m getting fat.”

“You’re not getting fat, Dad,” I said, “You’re sitting down.”

I sat beside him, took his glass, and sipped from it. Have you ever tasted scotch? It’s incredibly awful, but the face I make when I sip it usually makes Dad laugh and go get me a Coke. This time when he brought the Coke back, he said, “What are we gonna do now?”

Grandma was his mother, of course, and he’d loved her as much as I had. At her funeral, he said in front of everyone that he liked the way she died because it kept our “goddamn ordinariness” at bay. I’m not kidding, he said “goddamn ordinariness” just like that. And then he said that all summer long we’d been having trouble with a mole who kept burrowing into our yard and eating Grandma’s chrysanthemums. We’d tried flooding it out, tried blocking its hole with stones, but nothing had worked. So Grandma decided to load her .22 and sit on our porch and wait. The way Dad told it, when he got up at 5:00 A.M., she was already out there, so all he could do was sit beside her. Grandma wouldn’t let him talk, but after a few minutes she said, “Here’s our Mr. Mole, soft shoulders filling up the diameter of his hole”; then CRACK! went her rifle and Mr. Mole slumped down.

“Here’s our Mr. Mole, soft shoulders filling up the diameter of his hole” were Grandma’s last words, since her heart stopped as soon as the mole’s did.

MRS. KANT, THE TEACHER I HAD for ninth-grade English, told us that the wherefore in “Wherefore art thou, Romeo?” didn’t mean “where” but “why.” So Juliet wasn’t asking where Romeo was, as we all thought, but “Why are you, Romeo? How come you have to belong to an enemy clan?”

Mrs. Kant was the best teacher I ever had, especially since her other almost full-time job was taking care of Mr. Kant, her husband, over on the other side of the lighthouse. I’d been to see her a few times this summer. Pitiful as it is, she was a pretty good friend. Mr. Kant was a college professor before he started having strokes. The Kants have a daughter, but she lives in a dormitory at Annie Wright, so she isn’t much help.

I’m saying this now because after Dad and I had dinner, I said I thought I’d take a bike ride. My idea was to go find Perry and get the binder back, but I decided to talk strategy with Mrs. Kant first, since she knew Perry from school.

The Kants’ house wasn’t large, but it had a deck that faced the beach and they were always out on it. I sneaked around so I wouldn’t have to go into their yard, where they kept a couple of peacocks. I got to the beach okay and was about to announce myself when Mrs. Kant said, “Sit tight, Herb. I’ll go get your ice cream.”

I slipped down under their deck. Its spotlight cast Mr. Kant in the center of a circle of light on the beach. He was decades younger than my grandma but in ten times worse shape, except for the fact that Grandma was dead. When Mrs. Kant came back with the ice cream, Mr. Kant said, “Ut esy, Ev A brak zel. Ut won ut on.”

“Let’s leave the seal alone for a while, Herb,” said Mrs. Kant. “We still have hope.”

Mr. Kant was a burden and Mrs. Kant was the bearer of it, that’s what he was saying. And the seal was on his medicine bottle. I knew it because I’d been there often enough to understand Mr. Kant pretty well. I also knew that that was not the time to show myself.

ONLY A FEW OF THE BROWN’S POINT HOUSES were on the water, and most of those were like ours, high up on a bank. They’re expensive, but when Grandma built ours, it cost five thousand dollars. It’s been paid off for thirty years, and these days the taxes are higher than the mortgage payments used to be. Dad says that’s ironic, but what I think is ironic is that Perry’s house is worth about one thousand dollars now. It’s an ugly three-room box, plunked down on the roadside like it was moved from somewhere else.

It only took five minutes for me to ride over there from the Kants’ house, but as soon as I got close, I ditched my bike and cut into the woods, where Perry’s got a tree house his dad built, beneath which, last winter, he set traps to try to catch weasels. He said that in the winter weasels turned white and if he caught enough of them, he was going to make his mother a white weasel coat.

I needed a plan to get the binder back. I had three bucks in my shoe and thought I might try buying it back, though it would set a horrible precedent. As I went toward his house, I had to wonder why I was bothering to sneak if all I could think of was buying it, but really it was because of this girl I was in love with, Precious Smiley, who lived across from Perry. My dad said her parents should be shot for naming her Precious, but I’m here to tell you she could have been named Dogshit Smiley and every boy in school would have thought it was the coolest name around. When I looked at her place, I could see her father, Howdy, standing in his shrubbery and staring at Perry’s mom, who was sitting in her doorway, drinking beer and reading a book.

“What are you looking at?” she asked, but quietly enough that Howdy couldn’t hear her. Next she said, “Who’s there?” and this time I knew she was talking to me, since I’d stepped from my hiding place and waved at her.

“Richie,” she said, “Perry’s not home, but come over here a minute.”

“Has he been home?” I asked. “I lent him something that I need to get back.”

“Lent him something, eh?” she said.

She had a tough manner, Mrs. White, but I had always liked her.

“Yeah,” I said, “It’s a sort of book.”

I wanted her to say I should go into his room and have a look, and when she didn’t, I said, “We had my grandma’s funeral,” hoping for a little sympathy.

“Let me ask you something, Richie, and if you can answer correctly, I’ll see if I can find your book. It’s an easy question. Who sucks hind tit?”

“Huh? What?”

She nodded behind her to a flimsy kitchen table. “See that stack of bills in there? Go and get them for me.”

“Go and get your bills?”

I thought maybe Perry was hiding behind the door, but I hurried in, scooped up the bills, and ran back out. “Here you go,” I said.

“Count them for me, will you?”

“One, two, three, four, five,” I said, “five bills,” but she shook her head. “I think it’s six,” she said. “Count them again.”

I didn’t need to count them again, but I did finally look at the bills, and right there in front of me, typed out five times, was the name Loretta White.

“How is old Jack?” she asked. Then she got up and went into the house and came back with the binder. “Here you go, Richie,” she said, “And sorry to hear about the old bird’s death.”

Once I got my hands on the binder, I figured I’d better get out of there fast, till “old bird” leaked into my head. She must have read what Grandma wrote, since Grandma called it “Old Bird’s Diary” herself.

“It’s not nice to snoop,” I said.

Righteous indignation had been Grandma’s specialty, but all the Lillys were good at it. Mrs. White, however, simply got out her keys, locked her door, got into her car, and drove away. And when I turned to look at Precious’s house again, a voice nearby said, “What happened, shithead, my mom bawl you out?”

“She told me Howdy Smiley wants to get into her pants,” I said.

It was a dangerous thing to say, but Perry had fewer friends than I did, so he let it pass.

“Ever been in Howdy’s basement?” he asked. “He’s got this old Ford flathead down there that Precious says he wants to put in my mom’s car.”

Pants, car. Same difference. “Come off it, Perry,” I said. “Precious won’t give you the time of day.”

He picked up a rock, always a bad sign, so I followed him into the Smileys’ side yard.

“That’s Precious’s window,” he said. “See that flower on the sill?”

I would never admit it, but I knew Precious’s window better than anyone. I knew that the flower was an artificial daisy in a thin brown pot and that when she closed her curtains, she left it between the curtains and the glass. I knew her room had yellow wallpaper, which you could see if you stood on a particular stump. I knew it all from passing by; I was no Peeping Tom.

“Yeah, I see it,” I said. “So what?”

“If the flower’s on the left, it means come in, and if it’s on the right, it means her father’s on the prowl.”

“It does not!” I almost shouted.

“Okay, smart-ass, which side is the flower on now?”

“It’s on the left, but I know her dad’s home, ’cause I just saw him. So it doesn’t mean shit what side it’s on!”

I wasn’t sure why I was so upset, but I was.

“Yes it does. Her father’s laid off, so he’s always home. The left-side flower means he’s busy, that’s all. Now look again. What else do you see?”

I saw a muddy yard and a rusted wheelbarrow filled with rain, Howdy’s truck, and a sheet-metal toolshed. I saw Mrs. Smiley’s planters and what used to be a doghouse but now stored wood, since Precious’s dog, Roger, got killed when we were in fifth grade.

“I don’t see anything,” I said.

“Is the back door open or closed?”

“It’s closed—or no, it’s open a crack.”

Perry was as happy as he ever got. “That means the coast is clear. You go first. Go down in her basement and don’t make any noise.”

I was scared but stepped into the clearing like I wasn’t. When I got to the house, I pushed on the door, but it caught on a throw rug. I peeked through the crack and saw a light at the bottom of the stairs, so I pushed harder and squeezed inside. The door leading up to their kitchen was closed, and hanging from a hook beside it was Precious’s winter jacket. She was too big for it now, if you know what I mean, if she tried to zip it up.

“Hello?” I whispered, “Anyone home?”

“Down here,” said a girl’s high voice. “Hurry up, honey, I’m cold.”

Christ on His big wooden cross.

“Hi, Precious,” I said, “it’s Richard Lilly.”

Why I had to use both my names, I didn’t know. One thing about Precious, she’d been the prettiest girl in school since forever, but she was also kind, with never a bad word for anyone. So when she didn’t speak again, I held on to my faith in her and went down to frame myself in their recreation room’s door.

“It’s Richie,” I said again.

“Oh, honey, I’m cold,” said Perry White.

High on the wall behind him was an open window, level with the ground outside. He was leaning against the wall with tears in his eyes and his mouth open. Precious was in a beanbag chair, wearing an angora sweater.

“I’m sorry, Richie,” she said. “It was his bright idea, the little dope.”

She looked like she hoped I’d see the humor in it, but by then Perry’d started to snort. He’d be the richest kid on earth if snot were gold.

“Quit it, Perry,” said Precious, “If my dad comes down here, I’ll ban you from my basement for life.”

“Yeah, Perry, quit it,” I said.

“I saw you talking to Perry’s mom, Richie,” said Precious. “How come you didn’t come over on your own?”

“I guess because my grandma just died.”

Precious stood and came across the room to me. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I remember her from your birthday parties.”

When she put a hand on my arm, I was struck by my best insight of the summer: Precious Smiley was bored! That’s why she let Perry come over. Oh, boredom! What a wonderful thing in the hands of a beautiful girl! But if I was going to use it, I had to act fast.

“Listen, Precious, do you still have your bike?” I asked. Then I told her that I thought Mr. Kant was going to kill himself.

Precious looked skeptical.

“I’m not kidding. He wants to take an entire bottle of medicine,” I said. “He’ll be dead any minute if we don’t help.”

I wished I hadn’t said it—I felt like one of the Hardy Boys—but once I had, there was nothing to do but tell her how I’d listened to the Kants from under their deck. Precious’s concern grew, neither of us glancing at Perry. This is what you do when you fish for salmon: first you set the hook; then you reel them in.

“Okay, let’s go over there,” she finally said. “You two wait outside.”

She pointed to the window, as if we’d have to climb out that way, but Perry understood her better than me and reached up and pulled it closed.

“I’VE GOT A BOOK I NEED TO RETURN TO HER; that can be our excuse,” I said when we leaned our bikes against the Kants’ garage. I held up the book I’d packed after dinner.

“What if she won’t let us in?” asked Precious. “Or just takes the book and closes her door?”

I didn’t know how to answer that without giving away the fact that I’d been going over there all summer. Perry saved me by saying, “Why would she do that? What could be worse than sitting around all the time getting old?”

That gave Precious courage again, but I’d forgotten to tell them about the Kants’ two peacocks, and when we stepped inside their gate, one of them jumped in front of us with his feathers out.

“Mother of Jesus!” she said.

We tried to walk around him, but he pivoted with us, first left, then right, until Mrs. Kant opened her back door. “George! Gracie!” she yelled, since she didn’t know which peacock was bothering us.

She got some grain and came down into their yard. Once the peacock was out of the way, she put her hands on her hips and said, “Hello, children, to what do we owe the pleasure?”

“What’s up with Mr. Kant?” asked Perry. “He still alive, or what?”

Mrs. Kant’s expression didn’t change, but Precious slugged Perry hard.

“All right now,” said Mrs. Kant. “It is a little bit late, you know.”

“I’m bringing back your book,” I said.

Mrs. Kant loved to talk about books and Mr. Kant used to love to talk about birds, back when he could talk.

“I only meant if Mr. Kant was home, we’d like to say hi,” said Perry.

“Lord, son, when is he ever not home?” said Mrs. Kant. Then she led us around the outside path to their deck.

“Guess what, Herb, Richard Lilly’s here again,” she said. “Isn’t that nice? This time he’s brought Precious Smiley and Perry White with him. They were in Richard’s class at school.”

When Mr. Kant swung around and started singing, “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” we all laughed like crazy.

“You kids tell Herb what you’ve been up to,” said Mrs. Kant. “I’ll go get some Cokes.”

Precious and Perry were beginning to look like they wished we hadn’t come, basically because Mr. Kant was drooling all over himself.

“Precious Smiley, don’t you have a middle name?” he asked, his voice understandable for once.

“It’s Donna,” she said. “And I’m gonna use it, too, as soon as high school starts.”

I looked at Perry and Perry looked at me. With a name like Donna, the world would be her oyster, both in high school and beyond.

“Good,” said Mr. Kant. “We should call ourselves what we feel like calling ourselves. Now you, Perry White, what’s your middle name?”

Since he was beginning to sound like a strangled cat again, I didn’t think Perry would answer, but he said right away. “I don’t tell no one that.”

“Ah, a secret middle name. I’ve got one, too,” said Mr. Kant. “Tell you what. I’ll tell mine if you tell yours. Mine’s Bilge, I’m Herbert Bilge Kant.”

He coughed up something orange, but his middle name wasn’t Bilge; no one had a name like that. I could tell that Perry was worried, because by saying it without waiting, Mr. Kant had held up his part of the nonbargain. Perry knew he could threaten me into silence, but he wasn’t so sure about Precious. He was savvy enough, though, to speak before any more tension built up. “It’s Frank,” he said, “Named after a singer my mom liked.”

“Frank Sinatra?” asked Mrs. Kant, back with the Cokes, and Mr. Kant said, pretty clearly again, “I want to tell you something, young man. Are you listening to me? Because I don’t want to have to say it twice.” He waved a hand in front of Perry’s face. “This is the day of the reckoning of names. Precious Donna Smiley, Perry Frank White, and Herbert Bilge Kant. From today, we all get new starts.”

“What about Richie and Mrs. Kant?” asked Precious.

“I don’t have a middle name,” said Mrs. Kant, “but my maiden name is Thomas.”

She barked out such a loud laugh that I laughed, too, though I didn’t know what was funny about Thomas. It wasn’t as lame as Darrell, which was my middle name. When Mr. Kant looked at her, the goodwill drained from his face. I nudged Precious. This was why we’d come, to save him from himself.

“I think it’s time for you to go,” said Mrs. Kant. “Bilge here needs to rest.”

The corners of her eyes had tears in them. When none of us made a move to leave, she said, “What?”

“Another book?” I asked, but Perry leaned down to speak into Mr. Kant’s face. “It ain’t true, is it, what you said just now?”

“What?” asked Mr. Kant, grumpy and garbled as hell.

“That from today we all get new starts. ’Cause lemme tell you, if I don’t get one pretty soon, I doubt I’ll last as long as you do.”

The tears in the corners of Mrs. Kant’s eyes moved out to fill them entirely.

“Richie’s grandpa killed himself, too,” said Perry. “Shot himself in the head with an arrow. If I get around to killing myself, I’m gonna swim out in the bay till I can’t swim no more. I’ll struggle like hell till I go down.”

“Why don’t we do that, Herb?” said Mrs. Kant. “Struggle like hell till we go down. Life’s not over till it’s over; we shouldn’t have to learn that from a child!”

We made our way back through their kitchen, all of us ready to get out of there. But Mrs. Kant forced a copy of Huckleberry Finn on Perry and, on Precious, an English novel about sisters trying to get married. She gave me The Grapes of Wrath, with her name on the inside cover, from back when she was a girl: “Eva Sylvia Maria Thomas.”

So Mrs. Kant had lied. She had two middle names, just like Grandma.

DAD WAS WAITING FOR ME WHEN I GOT HOME, beer bottles on the coffee table surrounding our phone. “What’s with the binder, mister, and what’s this about Grandma writing stuff down?” he asked from out of the dark.

I hadn’t seen him, and I jumped, letting the binder slip out from under my shirt. When I gave it to him, he went to the window with it. He was still wearing his running clothes but had pulled Grandma’s afghan from the couch and was wearing it, too, like a shawl.

“How much of this have you read?” he asked.

“Just the part about Tiger Lilly’s death,” I said, “but is there something in there about you and Mrs. White?”

Before he could answer, I realized that “what’s this about Grandma writing stuff down?” was like that “old bird” thing at Perry’s house. Our phone got bigger among the beer bottles. “Did Mrs. White call you?” I asked.

“She did, and she laid down the law. There’s nothing new about any of this, Richie. I want you to know it happens to a lot of people…. Look, are you sure you didn’t read more? Because Loretta read it all and she isn’t very happy about it.”

“What are you saying, Dad? Was Perry’s mom your girlfriend?”

He took off Grandma’s afghan, folding it like Grandma always had. In the car coming home from her funeral, he’d said we shouldn’t let our lives go downhill, that we should honor Grandma’s memory by keeping things the way she liked them, and I guessed folding the afghan was part of it.

“If you haven’t already read about it, then yes, she was my girlfriend. Ours was one of those deeply painful loves that only kids can feel, as I’m sure you’ll find out in a few years’ time.”

“I don’t want to find it out,” I said. “I’m doing fine not loving anyone.”

I didn’t mean that the way it came out.

“We’ll see, but when Perry’s mom broke up with me, it hurt like taking a bullet,” he said. “I hung around her house every day for a month, until her father chased me off.”

“If she broke up with you, then how come she gets to lay down the law?”

“Because for her, it was like taking a bullet, too. We were in love like Romeo and Juliet, Richie, but when World War II broke out and I joined the service, she didn’t want me carrying our love into battle. She thought breaking up with me was the greatest sacrifice she could make. We promised each other we’d meet after the war, but between Pearl Harbor and the end of high school, she started dating this army guy, and a week after we graduated, she married him. That was when I wrote what I wrote on my binder. It made me want to fight like hell during the war.”

He picked up a beer bottle and drank from it. “But time passed and I met your mom down around Fort Bragg, where I spent the whole damned time.”

One of Dad’s regrets was that he didn’t get to fight like hell but was trained as a drill instructor instead. “Down around Fort Bragg” was where my mom lived now.

He sat back down on the couch. “The month after your mom got pregnant with you, my dad died in the crazy accident you read about, and I came home for his funeral … and that’s when Loretta and I suffered a relapse.”

He tried to find my eyes, but I’d stayed in the darkest part of the room. If “relapse” meant what I thought it meant, I didn’t want to hear more.

“We met at her house. Her husband was in England, her father in the navy, her mother always working, so we had the place to ourselves. It was Valentine’s Day and I’d taken her flowers from my dad’s memorial service.”

He went on to say it happened only once, that Loretta was laying down the law because Perry and I both had a right to know, and that while he was telling me, she was telling Perry. More words came out of him, but I ran back outside, jumped on my bike, and zoomed off into the night. Perry’s birthday was November 14, nine months after Valentine’s Day, 1945.

IT WAS A LITTLE AFTER TEN WHEN I GOT BACK to the Kants’ house, with two beers I had filched from Dad’s stash. Since the tide was high, I couldn’t sit under their deck, so I climbed into a madrona tree in the next-door lot. Their bedroom curtains were closed, but I could see inside over the top of the curtain rod. One of the madrona’s branches was close enough to the house for me to reach over and pry off the beer bottle caps on a protruding nail. “Loretta sucks hind tit!” I yelled into the night.

Mrs. Kant pushed the curtains aside and cupped her hands against the glass. I was higher in the tree by the time she opened the window.

“Don’t tell me it was nothing, Herb. I heard what I heard, and I know who said it, too,” she said. “It was Perry White.”

She stuck her head out. “Perry, go home! Your mother deserves better than to have an ungrateful son calling her names!”

She closed the window and curtains, and I drank both beers and almost fell out of the madrona.

The lights were off at Perry’s house. I’d drunk the beers fast, so I wasn’t feeling great, but I still couldn’t help wondering if Perry was buried under his covers in his room, hating the idea that we were brothers. Mr. White had left his mom, which meant his mom was single, and my mom was down around Fort Bragg. I looked over at Precious’s house. If Grandma knew about Dad and Perry’s mom, and therefore about Perry and me, then a lot of the neighbors probably did, too.

It wasn’t until I looked back at Perry’s house that I finally saw Perry himself, sitting up in his tree house.

“Hi, Richie,” he said. “Are you happy or sad right now?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m still digesting it.”

“Yeah, well I’ve digested it and what I think we should do is join the band in high school and take up the same instrument, like trombone. My cousin plays trombone and says they have sword fights with their slides.”

If Perry had a cousin, did that mean I did, too?

“Now that I think about it, how about the sax?” he said. “But I get the bigger one, since I’m older’n you are.”

He wasn’t older; I was, by a month. He jumped down from his tree house, as quiet as a panther in the forest.

“What’s a saxophone sound like?” he asked.

“I don’t know, Perry. What does anything sound like? You know what a trumpet sounds like?”

“Course I do,” he said. “Who doesn’t know that?”

“Well, it doesn’t sound like a trumpet.”

I nearly said it sounded like a bird in flight—something Dad liked to say about his Charlie Parker records—but Perry’s mom’s car came up the street just then. She parked, got out, and lit a cigarette.

“She don’t let me smoke but smokes herself,” Perry said.

In the flash of the lights from her car, I’d seen his beady eyes, like the eyes of someone who would torment a weasel before taking its fur to make a coat. And in what he said next, I saw those eyes again, though it was dark.

“Listen, dipshit, we ain’t brothers. I ain’t nobody’s brother, and you’re dumber’n a skunk if you think I give a damn about the saxophone.”

His mother peered into the woods. “You boys come here,” she said. “I don’t guess this’ll be easy, but the truth is better than lies.”

“Not if it ain’t the truth,” said Perry.

He stepped into the clearing, like Billy the Kid before a gunfight. “My dad’s my dad,” he said. “I ain’t no Lilly; I’m a White.”

“Your dad was your dad, for the years we had him,” said his mother, “but now you’ve got me, Richie, and maybe Richie’s dad, if you can come to terms with it. He said he’d like to take us to a Giants game. How would you feel about that?”

The Tacoma Giants were the AAA club for San Francisco, and Dad had tickets for when the big club came to play.

I stepped out of the woods, too. “Word is, Marichal’s pitching,” I said.

“My dad could pitch better’n him,” said Perry. “Who do you think taught me how to throw rocks? He coulda been better if the war hadn’t got him.”

He looked so forlorn that I thought he might say that thing about swimming out into the bay again, when who should come outside just then but Precious, her father behind her with his hands on her shoulders.

“Precious, we’re going to a baseball game,” I said. “You wanta come?”

“I wouldn’t mind,” she said. “When’s the game?”

“Evening, all,” said Howdy.

No one spoke to him for such a long time that Perry’s mother finally muttered, “Howdy, Howdy,” like the neighbors always did to make him mad.

“I’ll find out when it is and call you,” I said. “Don’t go to sleep yet; wait by your phone.”

“And I’ll drive you home,” said Mrs. White. “It’s too late to be riding your bike.”

It wasn’t too late to be riding my bike; we all rode our bikes anywhere and anytime. But if Dad was as single as Romeo and she was as single as Juliet, a well-timed car ride might be just the ticket. She jangled her keys, not at me but at Perry. “You coming, too?” she asked.

“What’s in it for me?” he asked. “And what am I s’pose to call Richie’s dad?”

“We live next-door to Winnie; that’s what’s in it for you,” I said.

Mrs. White threw her cigarette down, opened her car door again, then looked at Perry and me. Not at the two of us together, but first at one of us and then at the other, like she was seeing if we looked alike.

Then she got in her car and started it.

AT OUR HOUSE, even though it was kinda late, Dad had showered, shaved, put back on the clothes he’d worn to Grandma’s funeral, and was waiting for us in our backyard. Behind him, a couple of Grandma’s candelabras sat on our picnic table. There were wineglasses and bunches of flowers from Grandma’s funeral, too. It meant that when Dad and Perry’s mom had their relapse back in 1945, he’d brought her flowers from his father’s funeral, and now, as they were about to have their second relapse, his mother’s funeral provided the floral arrangements.

When we went up onto the porch, I opened our back door fast so that Perry and I could go where we wouldn’t have to watch their second relapse right before our eyes. We’d watch it, but from behind Grandma’s curtains. That was a whole lot better than being there. If you don’t believe me, just ask Romeo. Once he came out into the open, things went downhill fast.

As soon as I could drag our phone into the dining room, I called Precious, even though I didn’t know the details of the baseball game yet.

“Richie?” she said.

Out the window, I could see Dad and Mrs. White sitting on opposite sides of a plate of little sandwiches, which we’d also brought from Grandma’s funeral.

Precious said “Richie?” again but I just sat there, with both of us breathing on opposite ends of the telephone line. Do you know how that can be? I knew it, and I swore that Precious knew it, too. But she didn’t, I guess, because she hung up without saying anything more. Perry’d found Grandma’s afghan in our living room by then and was wearing it like a cape. He ran past me a couple of times as Superman, then sauntered by as Clark Kent. The real Clark Kent, George Reeves, killed himself last year, just after Perry and Precious and I finished eighth grade.

Outside, Dad and Perry’s mom were drinking wine. I had the thought that “Loretta sucks hind tit!” might become a family joke, something we told one another over the years, but the thought went away when our phone rang….

It was Precious, of course, wanting to know what happened. I let it ring three times, since that was the number of times that Grandma said was necessary for a person not to seem anxious.

But my anxiety showed anyway, I think, in the tone I used to say hello.