Wonderland

  Jesse thinks this is strange—of course he will go in the house. Why not?

  “Aren’t you coming in?” he says.

  “In a minute.”

  Jesse gets out, goes to the porch. He hears his father get out of the car behind him. But his father goes to the trunk of the car. Jesse half-sees that he has opened the trunk … maybe there is something inside, a small Christmas tree, a present, a secret …? And he turns away before his father sees him watching.

  When he opens the door, he is grateful for the warm air. His face burns with it. And a smell of something sweet: some kind of food. The house is quiet except for a noise like arguing, almost inaudible. Jesse stands in the kitchen and his fingers instinctively grope for the zipper of his jacket. Then he sees a smear of blood on the floor.

  A faint smear. It seems to lead into the front room.

  Jesse’s face comes open with the warmth of the house. His mouth opens into a question. He comes forward on legs that are suddenly elastic and springy.

  Someone is lying there—in the doorway to the front room. It is a joke, Jesse thinks. His brother is hiding from him. It is Bobby lying there on his stomach. His face is turned to one side, far to one side, the eyes open, a pool of blood beneath him. Jesse stares down at him. “Bobby,” he says. The boy’s eyes are open. It is strange to see that they are open, that he is lying right in the doorway, not hidden at all.

  “Bobby …?”

  Jesse looks up, his head springing up, and now he sees them all: he has been seeing them without knowing it. There is a jumble of bodies, arms and blood, drifts of hair like field grass, stiff with blood. His sister Jean lies with something shattered beside her—a lamp, maybe—and there is white glass mixed with the blood. A lampshade is splattered with blood. Jean’s face is turned away; no, it had bled away, half of it is soaked in the rug, half of it is gone … and at the very tips of her fingers, as if straining to get away from her touch, is Shirley, doubled over, lying doubled over with her arms shielding her stomach. Jesse steps forward into the blood. He has begun to hear a whimpering sound. It is the dog, Duke, locked up somewhere …? Jesse sees blood on the rug. It is glistening, it is still wet—where will he be able to walk? What if he steps on it? His mother is sitting in the armchair by the radio, her head back, her throat and chin and the upper part of her chest blasted red, raw, the bone somehow showing through the mess of bleeding flesh. All down the front of her body there is blood, a cascade of blood, on her great round stomach and in her lap, on her parted legs, on the chair, the floor.… The radio is still on, its dial glowing, but the station is too faint to hear and there is only an irritable, arguing noise.

  Jesse stands there.

  The blood smells so sweet, it is like summer; it rises to him in a cloud, blotching his sight. The whimpering from another room is sweet because it is so muffled. Why did he lock the dog up? Jesse asks lightly. The words whirl in his head, lightly, like snow.

  His father’s footsteps on the driveway outside, the quick crunching steps.

  Jesse stands there, not thinking. His face is hot with the welcome air of the house. His brain has dissolved in this warmth, this sweetness, and he looks around at these dead people as if to figure them out—is it a joke, are they playing a game? He looks carefully at Jean, who might jump up to tease him. But everyone is so quiet!

  His father opens the kitchen door.

  Jesse steps forward suddenly into the blood. Through the blood. His feet carry him through it and something is knocked over—a splintering crash—and Jesse is at the bedroom door now and fumbling with the doorknob, getting it open. Jesse pays no attention to the yipping dog crouched in a corner of the room, but throws himself against the window. Everything bursts—it gives way—comes apart as if in a dream. Jesse falls through the window, covering his face with his hands, and then he is outside and running.

  The shotgun blasts behind him.

  He knows that sound and he runs with his hands up to his face, his shoulders hunched. Running, he seems to charge the air, still falling out of that window but already on the run, while the blast from the gun shudders in the air around him. Something strikes his shoulder, high. A clot of mud? A rock? It is solid and hot and heavy, dragging his shoulder down, but he keeps running. He heads for the thicket. Another blast from the shotgun—now he is in the thicket, gasping, his hands quick to make a way clear for his body—

  He runs. His lungs and stomach define themselves terribly inside this body, expanding as if they would burst, and his eyes are like bubbles in his skull, bulging. Everything wants to burst! He hears his own voice, which springs out of his throat like Duke’s whimpering, leaking out of him. He runs through the thicket and out the other side and throws himself over the barbed-wire fence, noticing with part of his mind how the fence catches at him, stinging his hands, but still he is running, running, against the wall of snow—

  He runs into the dark.

  3

  Is that the one over there? The first bed?

  Be quiet, he can hear you—

  He detached himself quickly, guiltily, from his hearing.

  He slept.

  Has he been sleeping all morning? I better wake him up—

  He’s a good-looking kid. Christ, it’s a pity—

  Pretending to sleep so the nurse could wake him. Politely, fuzzily waking. He rubbed his eyes and felt the innocent sandy grit in his lashes. Good morning! said the smiling nurse. His mouth smiled and replied, a formal, distant set of words. In this hospital bed he held himself stiff, rigid, out of a fear of making some mistake, showing that he didn’t know how to behave. It was always a shock to lie in bed like this and to see a woman, a stranger, standing beside him.

  His eyelids were heavy with shame.

  Behind him, inside him, was the place where he had been lying just now, partly unconscious, suspended between this hospital ward and the darkness that had no exact shape to it. The hospital ward was one big long, wide room, two rows of beds with many yards of floor space between them where nurses and attendants and doctors walked, usually in a hurry. Things were wheeled by on carts with creaking joints; dishes from meals clattered. Out there everything was public and open and noisy; the darkness was Jesse’s own private place, a place deep inside him like a well.

  How do you feel? the faces all asked him hopefully; hoping he would give the correct answer, which they already knew. He was sitting up now, smiling, drinking orange juice and milk. A healthy boy. A healthy boy, damaged but still healthy and eager to be a boy again, to be released into boyhood again—which was not found in the hospital but only outside.

  There was a bright, glittering pinpoint to their stares, the focus on his face, only his. He had to sit still in bed and accept those stares. No escape. No pretending to sleep in the middle of the day. So he looked right into the stares, right into the piercing blinding point of their attention, and felt with a kind of surprise how readily he could accommodate himself to them. He had become a polite boy.

  And what do you remember next? the policeman asked him. He was not dressed in a policeman’s uniform; he wore a suit and tie. A young man was with him, taking notes. And then …? And then …?

  How old are you, about fifteen? asked a chatty nurse on night duty.

  It was night now; Jesse woke to discover that time had passed; his mouth and throat were very dry from the sleeping pills he had been given.

  Fourteen, he said.

  I have a brother your age. Real pest. Well, how do you feel?

  Ready to go home, he said, because he supposed that was what everyone wanted to hear. But he felt the startled jab of the woman’s stare and knew that he had made a mistake. He amended his answer slightly: Ready to leave the hospital.

  She smiled. He must have given the right answer.

  On one side of Jesse was the wall, several yards away. A white plastered wall with many fine cracks in it. On the other side was a young man in his twenties who had had an operation. Gall bladder. Jesse did not know
what that meant. A small tube had been placed in the man’s skin on the back of his wrist, and from a contraption that hung over the side of his bed fluids were moving into him. Jesse tried not to look at him, knowing how shameful sickness was, how you wanted only to hide, to hide yourself from the curious faces of the healthy.

  His grandfather came to visit him. Grandpa Vogel himself. An old man with a blunt bald head and a bald face, smooth and hairless, the skin very smooth, almost shining, crisscrossed with hundreds of small, nearly invisible wrinkles. His skin had been burned and baked by the sun for years. Years of suns. He carried the air of the deep country with him, a shiftiness of the eye, a pursed, cautious mouth inside pouches of fine wrinkles. When he stirred, Jesse could smell must about him; he carried it like a cloud, a vapor—the mustiness of old closets, old clothes. The suit he wore for these visiting days was dark, probably thirty years old, too large for his slightly shrunken body. The white shirt had turned a faint gray. No necktie. His hands, on his sharp knees, were very large, distorted, even freakish, the knuckles hardly more than bunches of bones that looked swollen, but the skin over them was very smooth, as if drawn tight, painfully tight, and fastened that way, while the old man gripped his knees and talked about Jesse coming to live with him.

  Your dog is right at home, he said slowly, with the shifty, cautious look of a liar.

  While his grandfather was there the doctor came by on his rounds. He had Jesse lean forward so that he could check the bandages. He was springy and young, with glasses that were wire-rimmed and severe. He listened to Jesse’s heart and Jesse stared anxiously into his bright, young, closed face, not flinching at the cold metal of the instrument. Well, Jesse, said the doctor, how are you feeling today?

  Okay. Ready to go home, he said. Then he said quickly, I mean, ready to leave the hospital.… But the doctor gave no sign of hearing these particular words. He nodded. He smiled down upon Jesse as if from an enormous height.

  You are healing well, he said kindly.

  Jesse began to cry.

  Why are you crying? Living begins when crying leaves off.…

  After a while he went away and Jesse heard him ask, a few beds down, How do you feel, Ed?

  The wound ached. It was high on Jesse’s back, his right shoulder. It would heal, but what if, somewhere deep inside it, some of the shot remained? A piece of poison, a tiny invisible piece of metal? What then? Jesse did not want to ask the doctor about this. It might make him angry. No use to ask for more pity, more pitying stares.… Jesus, but he was tired of them! He admired the doctor because he was so busy, because he was impersonal and wise. His name was Alvin Farley and he was the son of a Yewville doctor; the nurses talked about him and Jesse could overhear. Young Dr. Farley and old Dr. Farley. Jesse gathered that they were both important men. He tried to imagine Dr. Farley with a father. A man like him, but larger, the two of them wearing glasses, with that clipped, fleshy, confident nose, that intelligent smile, that short, chunky body.…

  Tears rushed into Jesse’s eyes.

  His grandfather might have seen him cry, but he said nothing.

  That evening Mrs. Brennan stopped by to visit him. She was in town for Friday-evening shopping and she wore a dressy coat, black with a maroon suede collar, with large rhinestone buttons. Her face was coarse and reddened, as if with permanent embarrassment. She held her large patent-leather pocketbook on her lap. Inside her thick brown stockings her legs were beefy, strong; she sat with her coat pulled tight across her lap, primly, her eyes darting shyly about the ward as if she had no business looking at anyone except Jesse.

  It’s funny how all these beds are together, people sleeping in a row like this, she said. I never been in a hospital myself. Had all the kids at home, there wasn’t any trouble.… Oh, Matt said to ask you are they feeding you right?

  Jesse hoped none of the nurses could hear. Yes, he said.

  You get enough milk? Eggs every day? Is the butter fresh?

  Yes.

  Jesse’s smile was wobbly.

  Well …

  Her face went slack with a bleak, dumb worry. What to say to him? A neighbor boy. Just a boy who lived next door to her and her own family, no kin of hers, not even a boy she knew very well. She didn’t know any of the Hartes well. If he wouldn’t talk about food, what was there to talk about? Jesse could understand her uneasiness. But he could not think of anything to say to her. If only she would go away.… But when she shifted the pocketbook on her knees he was startled, thinking she was about to leave him.

  Jesse, you know if you ever need … if … Her gaze dropped in sorrow. She was a large, clumsy woman, built in the shoulders like a man, her graying, frizzy hair short and shapeless about her face. Her skin was prematurely creased from the sun and tiny veins had worked their way to the surface of her nose and cheeks, giving her a flushed look. If you ever need anybody to take you in …

  Jesse remembered her screams that night: It’s the Harte boy, somebody shot him!

  Her voice now was not a scream but an ordinary voice, floating on a shapeless, dark space within him, a fluid space that shimmered and tilted when he moved. He adjusted his perspiring body in the bed. His body was private and warm and agitated, but the bed was public. It belonged to no one. With part of his mind he could hear her voice—she fumbled on, talking now of their sick cows, of how lucky Matt was to sell the farm the way he did, how everything needed fixing, how they were going to move in a few weeks; and here he sensed her hesitating, her wondering if she should say how lucky Jesse was that they hadn’t moved yet—And with another part of his mind he could hear that other voice, that terrible muscular yell of hers: Get the car started! Get it going fast!

  They saved his life.

  We heard about your grandpa going to take care of you, she said, that’s real nice.… A man his age shouldn’t live alone anyway. But if you ever need help or a place to live …

  Jesse could not look at her. The Brennans had nothing of their own; Matt Brennan had had to sell his farm, and yet she was offering him … offering him what? A home? A chance to be a son again? The Brennans had five children of their own. They were very poor. And yet she was offering to take him in.

  He was relieved when she stood to leave. She had waited until visiting hours were over, as if leaving before the very end would have hurt Jesse’s feelings. Here are some things, just some … I don’t know if you want any … just some brownies and … She spoke apologetically, her face reddening. She handed him a box and Jesse thanked her.

  Well! One thing I’ll tell them is that they feed you all right in here. Matt was real curious about that!

  Jesse smiled good-by. Good-by. When she left, his warm face turned pale.

  He hoped he would never see her again.

  He was discharged from the hospital the following week. His grandfather came to get him in a pickup truck, which rattled and bounced because it was empty in back except for some straw. From time to time the old man made a sharp noise with his throat and nose, a tsking noise that made Jesse glance at him. But he was not conscious of what he was doing. He leaned up close against the steering wheel, squinting peevishly; finally he said, “What’s that say? Why’s that so big over there?”

  It was a large white sign advertising automobiles.

  “Just to sell cars,” Jesse said.

  “What?”

  “A sign to sell cars.”

  Jesse’s grandfather shook his head angrily. He did not understand what the billboard meant, why it was there. He seemed irritated by it and by the other signs along the highway. They were just leaving Yewville and there were many things to see, a confusion of signs and houses and traffic. It was a Saturday afternoon; farmers and their families were driving in to town. Jesse stared at the cars that passed by, dreading a familiar face—someone he might know from school—he dreaded faces turning in surprise at the sight of him, fingers pointing toward him. He held himself still, his arms folded and pressed against his ribs as if he were conscious of the
gift of himself, the gift of being here, living. He would never forget. He listened for the beating of his heart, remembering Dr. Farley’s swift professional concern for that heart: it was saying gently Here I am, I am here, I am beating. So he would not be frightened at the thought of seeing someone he knew. That would happen, eventually. Fingers would be pointed at him. Eventually.

  Mrs. Brennan had held him in her arms on the drive in … the bouncing drive in, through a snowstorm … held him in her arms as he bled onto her.…

  He narrowed his eyes sharply to stop this thinking. He would not think about it. His grandfather was muttering something about Yewville, about all these people making fools of themselves buying things and hanging around on the streets, the kids running loose, the women dressed up as if for parties, the men piling up debts at Montgomery Ward’s for things they didn’t need, and when Jesse opened his eyes again they were out in the country. Safe. The air here was cold and sunny. Fields were stubbled with snow; everything was raw and frozen hard, the ditches jagged with ice. Jesse belonged in the country, like his grandfather. The hardness of the sky, the hardness of the flat earth matched something in himself.

  Getting to his grandfather’s farm was like sleepwalking: you drove in one direction and then turned and drove in another, as if by instinct, groping in a dream, turning from one narrow dirt road to another road more narrow, until the last road was hardly more than a cow lane leading back into the wilderness. Tall cattails stuck up out of the ice in the ditches in stiff, frigid clusters. Everything was silent here—no other cars or trucks, only a few homes far back from the road, looking vacant. No telephone poles this far into the country, no electricity at all. Distance. Silence. Something began to throb in Jesse, deeply and heavily, this thought of their being so far away from the town and from his old home, from what he could remember of himself … out here every-thing would become flattened by the brutal sweep of the land, the wind, neutralized by distance.

  He would forget.

  The drive had made his shoulder ache, but he held himself tight, carefully. His grandfather had fallen into a sullen silence, as if he were alone, and Jesse was grateful for his silence, watching the fields blotted out by woods and the woods falling back to open fields again, a rhythm of fields and woods and fields that was peaceful, hypnotic. Yes, he would forget; he would be lost in all this distance, this wilderness, the electric nervousness of his own soul neutralized by the silence of this old man and the land he lived on.