Building Blocks

  Suzanne was tall and skinny, as tall as her older brother, and she had a big, sulky mouth. She looked like the kind of person to whom life is always disappointing. The twins were loud and filled with energy. Stevie, trying to pull his hand free from Kevin’s, seemed quiet by comparison, but he glared at Kevin and at Brann, as if he blamed both of them for his hand being held and would get even when he could.

  After the train had roared by, the twins and Suzanne ran across. Kevin carried Stevie, who kicked because he didn’t want to be picked up, across the two sets of tracks. Brann trailed along.

  Another road, dirt this time, and then a broad, empty lawn, scattered with trees, lay between the railroad tracks and the green river. Off to the right was the house the lawn belonged to, its porches falling down, its second story gaping and the charred after a fire.

  “Stay on the lawn,” Kevin said. The children burst away from him, before he had finished speaking. “I gotta stay at the other end, in case they try to sneak down the bank.” Brann could see the river glistening between the trunks of trees.

  “Can’t they swim?”

  “No, except me and Suzanne. Can you?”

  “Of course.”

  Kevin sat down under a cherry tree, old and gnarled, but giving plenty of shade. He faced the lawn where his brothers and sisters were playing. The twins fought over a branch of honeysuckle they both wanted. They yanked on it, each trying to get I away from the other, stripping the leaves off and screaming from anger. Brann stood still, looking around.

  He saw the green, neglected grass on the lawn and the many tall trees. He saw the shape of the burned house, as it might have been before the fire. He looked over the green water to the wooded hillsides across the river. “Boy, is it pretty here,” he said, thinking of the little square plots of flattened land he’d come from, dotted with rows of shoebox houses, where none of the trees had lived long enough to gain much height.

  “It’s hot,” Kevin answered.

  Even at this early hour, the temperature had mounted. The air hung heavy and no wind stirred the many branches.

  “It is,” Brann agreed, “but not like a city gets hot. The trees and bushes and even the grass, they cool things down. Why don’t you take them wading?”

  “In the Ohio River?” Kevin sounded shocked. “My mom would kill me. The river—it’s not safe, not even for fish. Grandma says when she was young everybody fished in the river, and swam in it too. But now—you can get sick and die from the stuff in that river. Go look at it and tell me you want to swim in it.”

  Brann clambered and slid down the steep overgrown bank, grabbing onto saplings when he thought he might fall. The bank went almost straight down for fifteen feet. He had to work to keep his balance. At the bottom, he braced his legs against a fallen tree and looked at the river.

  Kevin was right: Pollution was already here. (Brann had thought pollution—in 1974—was a new problem. Things were worse with the world than he’d known.) The water wasn’t green from reflecting the hills across the river. It was green with unhealthy algae, and floating on it were stringy brown globs of something Brann was glad he’d never heard the name of. Where the river oozed up to the shore, gray bubbles appeared on islands of debris—branches, pieces of wood, scraps of tire rubber. And it smelled, like garbage and sewage mixed in with the tangy odor of tidal marshlands; a faint, unpleasant odor seemed to float along the top of the river.

  He scrambled back up the steep slope. “What causes that? Who’s responsible?”

  Kevin looked up at him without much interest. “The city, I guess, Pittsburgh. The mills and factories. People dump their garbage in.”

  “Sewage too, I bet,” Brann said grimly. “You ought to stop them.”

  “Stop who? How? You can’t do anything. It’s too late. Grandma said they used to go out in the winter and cut huge blocks of ice out of it. The people in the big houses up the hill would store the blocks in straw and sawdust, in their spring houses. They’d have ice all summer long. Nobody would want to do that now.”

  “Ke-ye-vie,” Suzanne called out from the top of a tree.

  Kevin looked up. “That’s too high. Come down.” She thumbed her nose at him and leaned out, holding on with just one hand, waving with the other. Kevin turned his back to her and sat down again under the tree.

  Brann shrugged and sat in the shade beside Kevin. “Big houses? What big houses? Bigger than yours? Your house is pretty big.”

  “Not like these. These belong to the rich people, who own the mills and coal mines and things. They’re beautiful, there are statues in the gardens and swimming pools, and the houses look—different. I’ve never been in a swimming pool.”

  “I have,” Brann said, before he thought.

  “That isn’t true. Is it?”

  Brann lied quickly. “There was a kid at my school, his grandmother had one. He invited all the boys over one day and we went swimming and had lemonade.”

  Kevin believed that. “Once when I was little,” he said, “before things got really bad and we had to move in with Grandpa—we used to have our own house, but my father got laid off.” Brann nodded. He didn’t have to pretend sympathy about fathers who were failures. Except Thomas Connell didn’t seem like he was a failure. “We went to a lake once. The twins weren’t born. I learned how to swim. I don’t remember it much.” Brann waited to hear something interesting, but Kevin didn’t say anything more. Kevin kept his eyes on the other children.

  Stevie stood watching the twins, across the lawn by an overgrown woods. The two dark-haired figures were quarreling about something, stooping over and then pulling one another up and away. They pushed and jerked at one another. It looked like there was something on the ground that they both wanted to keep the other from getting.

  Kevin got up slowly and walked over. Brann followed.

  “It’s mine, Hannah!” Billy yelled. “I caught it!”

  “It’s the one I found! I remember the hump in its middle!”

  Billy jammed his elbow into her stomach. She punched him in the side of the neck.

  Two bewildered frogs quivered in the long grass.

  “OK, stop now,” Kevin said.

  “We’re racing them!” Hannah yelled into his face, as if that explained everything. Kevin looked helplessly at Brann. Stevie stood behind the twins, sucking one thumb, the other hand behind his back, his eyes watching.

  “You ought to leave them alone,” Kevin said.

  Billy ignored him. “Suzanne?” he whined. “They won’t go, they won’t even start.”

  “Prod ’em,” Suzanne suggested. She shoved in front of Kevin, a stick in her hand. She jabbed at one of the frogs with it. The frog leaped ahead, then froze again.

  “That’s mine!” shrieked Hannah.

  Stevie brought his hand out form behind his back and threw a stone at the frogs. He missed, but they both jumped in alarm. Then stopped. Stevie trundled off to get more stones.

  “Where’s the end of the race?” Suzanne asked the twins. They pointed to the honeysuckle vine, laid down twenty feet away. “You could throw things at them,” Suzanne suggested. “Or each get a stick. I don’t think they’re much on racing.”

  The twins ran off to get sticks. Stevie returned with a handful of stones, which he showered down on the frogs. Suzanne watched the uninteresting results. When his hands were empty, the three-year-old went off for fresh supplies. Suzanne prodded with her bare foot at one of the frogs. It leaped sideways.

  It made Brann sick. “Why don’t you stop them?” he asked Kevin.

  “How? They always do this. They used to take them home and keep them in shoeboxes, but Mom made them stop because the frogs always died and then they stank. What did you say last night? It’s fate.”

  “Fate, my left foot,” Brann said. He knew he was angry—and his mother would have known too because she would have seen how his eyes got cold, icy gray. But Kevin didn’t know.

  The twins ran up, brandishing sticks. Eagerly, they ja
bbed at the frogs.

  “That’s it,” Brann said, just he way his mother said it. His voice was low and cold. “That’s the end of this game. Leave the frogs alone.”

  “Says who?” Suzanne faced him with a stick in her hand. She was an ugly kid, and if she hadn’t been a girl he wouldn’t have wasted any words on her, he would have just pasted her one.

  “I say,” Brann said. He looked at her, feeling the anger shooting out of his eyes. “I don’t like torturing frogs.”

  “Yeah? Well, maybe I do.”

  “Too bad for you then, isn’t it?” Brann stared at her for several minutes. He could see her making up her mind. The twins and Stevie watched, interested in what was going on. Finally, Suzanne threw down her stick—close enough to make the frogs jump, but not exactly at them—and ran off. Brann turned his attention to the twins. “You two, did you hear that?”

  “We don’t have to do what you say!” Hannah yelled.

  “Oh yeah?” Brann asked quietly.

  They gave in right away. Only Stevie stood watching Brann, his thumb in his mouth, his blue eyes like somebody looking down a microscope.

  Brann turned on his heels and walked back to the old cherry tree. What a family.

  Kevin ran up beside him. “That was great! I’ve told them and told them, and about how the frogs must feel too, but they never did what I said. How’d you do it?” His eyes gleamed with admiration.

  Brann didn’t know. He just saw that something had to be done and did it. A train roared by, so he didn’t have to answer. He shrugged. After the caboose had rattled off and curved away, he said, “You could, too.”

  Kevin shook his head. “Anyway,” he stared, then didn’t finish the sentence. “And my mother’s going to have another one. Another boy. But I’ll be older then, when I have to take care of him, so probably I can manage it better, like you did. Being older helps, doesn’t it?”

  “I guess so.” Being older never was going to help Kevin, Brann thought. He wondered how old Kevin had been when he finally figured that out. “Let’s do something.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. What do you and your friends do around here?”

  “I don’t have any. Anyway.”

  “What about the other kids?” Brann was getting impatient. “What do they do?”

  “They play baseball, kickball. If they can swim and have a place, they do that. There are some caves, but they’re dangerous and we’re not supposed to. There are lots of woods around. And stuff, you know.”

  “Caves? I’ve never been in caves.”

  “It’s dangerous. They say the caves run all the way under the river because it used to be part of the underground railway, for escaping slaves. Sometimes kids have gotten lost in them. So we’re not allowed.”

  “We could play catch.” Brann was getting restless.

  “With what?”

  “There must be something. A stone? C’mon, Kevin, let’s do something.”

  They played catch with stones for a while. Another train went by and then another. At that, Kevin dropped the stone and called his brothers and sisters. “And please hurry,” he asked them. At that they all slowed down, especially Suzanne, who pretended she had to run back for something. “My mom will have my hide,” Kevin said desperately to Brann. Stevie sucked his thumb and looked up at his brother, considering.

  Kevin herded them back across the tracks and down the streets. Brann recognized the house now, a sturdy stucco construction that reminded him of Mr. Connell. They ran into the house, Kevin first and Brann after him dragging Stevie by the hand. The twins and Suzanne lagged half a block behind.

  The kitchen was bright with midday sunlight, but Mrs. Connell loomed like a dark storm, even sitting down at the table. Her anger filled the whole room, and it rushed to the door to meet Kevin.

  She held Kevin responsible. Only Kevin. Brann, slipping into a chair, did what Suzanne did when she sat down: picked up his spoon and started eating. He was more careful to eat quietly than he ever was in his own house. The rest of the children ignored the scene and ate as if nothing was happening. Only Kevin, hunched over his bowl with his hands in his lap, didn’t eat.

  Mrs. Connell had already finished lunch. Her bowl was pushed away into the center of the table and a half-eaten slab of bread lay on the checkered oilcloth. “Late again.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kevin mumbled.

  “Twice a week I ask you to be on time and twice a week you’re late.”

  “I’m sorry. But Mom—”

  “I don’t want any excuses,” she cut him off. “You’re the oldest and it’s your job, and if it’s a whipping you need to do it properly, it’s a whipping you’ll get.” She brushed her dim hair back off her forehead. “It’s not much responsibility we ask you to take and you can’t even manage that. Can’t you get it through your head? We can’t afford to hire somebody to do the books and invoices, or to clean the house, or to keep you all in clothes, or make meals.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kevin said again. She didn’t listen.

  “I can’t do everything. You have to help me. You’re old enough to take a little responsibility, more than old enough to know how to get back here on time. Instead you go lollygagging around at the river. And what’s going to happen when this baby comes, I ask you that. When I’m in the hospital, who’s going to take care of things? Your father has to work. Your grandmother—she’s close to useless, you know that. I have to count on you. And I can’t count on you, can I?”

  Her voice droned on and on, hammering down on Kevin. Brann thought of speaking up, saying that Suzanne wouldn’t come when Kevin told her and the twins followed her when she ran off, but it was Kevin’s job to tell that.

  As she was talking, and the rest of them were eating, the grandmother shuffled into the room. She ladled soup from the pot on the stove into a tall pitcher and put it onto a tray where two bowls and a plate of bread had been set out. She picked this up and shuffled off, her face vacant. She was pretending she didn’t hear.

  Kevin sat alone under his mother’s anger. He didn’t even pick up the soup spoon. His mother rubbed at her swollen belly with one hand as she hammered and hammered on him.

  Poor Kevin. Brann felt a mixture of sympathy for the boy, anger at Suzanne, and frustration that Kevin didn’t fight back at all. (And then he’d gone and married a woman who talked to him exactly like this; later when he’d grow up and could have chosen someone else. Why would he do a thing like that?)

  “You’ll have to wash up by yourself and bring down your grandparents’ tray and wash that when they’re through. There’s fried chicken on the sideboard and nobody’s to touch it—it’s for your father and Uncle Andrew for supper. Stevie, drink your milk up. The rest of you—put yourselves into your rooms now for naps. I’ll phone when it’s time to come out.” Suzanne and the twins left the table obediently.

  Mrs. Connell’s eye fell on Brann. “You’re not much of a friend,” she said to him.

  Brann met her eye and his mouth closed on the words he could have said, that he wasn’t any friend of Kevin’s. Because then he wouldn’t’ have any reason for being there and then—he couldn’t begin to think about that. She didn’t even know him, how could she pretend to know what kind of friend he was. Besides, keeping the little kids in order was Kevin’s job and he wasn’t even related to them. (But he was. But that wasn’t what he meant.) Besides, she had a pretty unrealistic idea of what it meant to be a friend. Besides, next time Brann would help more. (Next time? What did he mean, next time?)

  Mrs. Connell was watching Kevin. Finally the boy spoke: “I’m sorry.” His eyes slid away from hers and he picked up his spoon. He looked like he was trying not to cry. Mrs. Connell spat out an angry breath of air and took Stevie out the back door, a brown paper bag in her other hand.

  Brann got up and ran some hot water into the sink. He washed and rinsed the six bowls, then the six glasses, then the six spoons. He dried them and carefully put them away in the cu
pboards.

  Kevin washed his own bowl and spoon, glass, and the bread plate. Brann dried. After a while he asked, “Why were we late?”

  “I think the trains must have been running late. And I haven’t been late but once before, honest.”

  “Your mother sure has a temper,” Brann said. “Suzanne does what she says, though, even going up for a nap.”

  “We always do, for a couple of hours after lunch in the summer.”

  “You too?”

  “Yeah,” Kevin said. His whole face sagged. He looked at Brann and his eyes were gray pools into which Brann could not see.

  “What do you do up there?”

  “Nothing much. You gonna go now?”

  “No,” Brann said. He didn’t want to stay, but he didn’t have any other ideas about what to do. No ideas at all. “At least, if it’s OK with you I’ll stay.”

  Kevin’s face lit up. “You mean that? I thought—after my Mom—and this morning—and I—It’s not very nice here.”

  Brann shrugged. “It’s not as bad as all that.”

  “Yes, it is,” Kevin answered, and Brann couldn’t really argue.

  • • •

  This time, as they walked through the house, Brann looked at the rooms they passed through. There was a dining room with a glass chandelier hanging over the heavy table and a living room where the sofa and chairs all looked fat and soft to sit on. In his own house, the furniture was modern, the rooms were sparsely furnished and they were always filled with light during the day. In this house, the shades were down and a misty light floated through the cluttered rooms.

  (His own house wasn’t even built yet. If he went to find it, it wouldn’t be there. How was he going to find his way back? When he didn’t even know how he’d found his way here. His mind ran away from that question.)

  They went up a broad staircase, with a wooden banister that gleamed with polish and use. The stairs had carpet on them, worn smooth. The long hallway he’d walked in darkness last night was shorter than he’d thought. Six doors opened onto it. Kevin opened two and looked into the rooms behind.