The Burgess Boys

  “Bob Burgess.” It was Margaret Estaver, who had appeared from behind him. “Oh, that’s quite all right,” she said when he told her he was sorry he had missed her remarks. “It’s going beautifully. Better than we’d hoped for.” There was a luminescence to her he’d not noticed the day she sat next to him on Susan’s back steps. “Only thirteen people showed up at the Civic Center for the counterdemonstration. Thirteen.” Her eyes were gray-blue behind her glasses. “They’re estimating there’s four thousand here. Feel how lovely it is?”

  He said he did feel that.

  Approached by many people, she was greeting them all, shaking hands. Like a nice version of Jim, Bob thought, back when Jim considered being a politician in Maine. Someone called out to Margaret, and she nodded and said, “I’m coming.” She waved to Bob, put her fist to her cheek to mime “Call me,” and Bob turned in the direction of the bandstand.

  Jim had not yet climbed the stairs. He was standing with a big shaggy-looking man whom Bob recognized as the attorney general, Dick Hartley. Jim stood with his arms crossed, glancing down and nodding, his head tilted toward Dick, who was talking. (“Let people talk,” Jim used to say. “Most, left unchecked, will talk a noose around their neck.”) Jim looked up, grinned at Dick, clapped him on his shoulder, then took the stance again of looking down, listening. A number of times both men seemed to chuckle. More clapping on the shoulders, and then Dick Hartley was being introduced, and he walked up the stairs ungracefully, as though he had always been a thin man but had now, mid-fifties, found himself to be much larger and didn’t know how to finesse the extra bulk. He read his speech, flipping his bangs out of his eyes constantly, which caused him to appear—whether he was or not—uncomfortable.

  Bob, who had intended to listen, found his mind drifting. Margaret Estaver’s face returned to him and then, oddly, Adriana’s, her exhausted and wild-eyed look the morning after she had called the police on her husband. But honestly, it did not seem possible right now, standing in this park of his childhood, to believe that his life in New York was real, that the couple across the street in their white kitchen actually existed, or the young girl who walked around her apartment so freely, or that he himself had spent so many evenings there looking out the window of his apartment. This image of himself seemed sad to him, but he knew when he sat in Brooklyn and looked out his window it did not seem sad, it was his life. But what seemed most real right now was this park, these familiar-looking pale people, unassuming, not fast-moving; Margaret Estaver, her manner … And he wondered fleetingly what it was like for the Somalis, if they lived constantly with the sense of bewilderment he felt this moment, wondering which life was real.

  “Jimmy Burgess,” Bob heard a woman say quietly. She was white-haired, short, wearing a fleece vest, standing next to a man who was probably her husband, also short, large-bellied, also wearing a fleece vest. “Nice he’s come up for this,” the woman continued, her eyes watching the bandstand, but her head moving toward her husband’s. “Suppose he feels he has to,” she added, as though this thought had only now occurred to her, and Bob moved away.

  He felt the urge for a cigarette as he watched Jim climb the bandstand stairs, nodding to Dick Hartley, who was about to introduce him. Jim, even from this distance, seemed strikingly natural. Bob rocked back on his heels, his hands in his pockets. What was this thing that Jimmy had? The intangible, compelling part of Jimmy?

  It’s that he showed no fear, Bob realized. He never had. And people hated fear. People hated fear more than anything. This is what Bob was thinking as his brother began to speak. (“Good morning.” Pause. “I’ve come here today as a former citizen of this town. I’ve come here as a man who cares for his family, as a man who cares for his country.” Pause. Quietly: “As a man who cares for his community.”) Standing here, Bob thought, in Roosevelt Park, named for the man who had assured the country that fear was the only thing to be feared, Jimmy had presence because he looked like fear had never tapped his shoulder and never would. (“When I was a child playing in this park—as children are playing in this park right now—I sometimes climbed that hill right over there in order to see the railroad tracks and the small railway station below, where hundreds of people had arrived in this town a century earlier, in order to work, and live, and worship safely. This town grew and prospered with the help of all who came here, all who lived here.”)

  You couldn’t fake it. It showed in the glance of an eye, in the way you entered a room, walked up the steps to a bandstand. (“We know that to watch with indifference as fellow men and women and children experience pain and humiliation is to add to that pain and humiliation. We understand the vulnerability of those who are new to our community, and we will not stand by idly while they are hurt.”) Bob, watching his brother, aware that all those in the park—and the park was packed with people now—were listening to him, not moving or strolling or whispering to others, Bob, noticing how all these people seemed wrapped in some large shawl that Jim drew closer to him, had no idea that what he felt was envy. He knew only that he stood there feeling very bad, when before he had felt hopeful at the excitement of Margaret Estaver, glad for what she was doing and what she felt herself, and now that ancient recrudescence of dreariness arrived, disgust at his big, slob-dog, incontinent self, the opposite of Jim.

  But still. His heart unfolded with love. Look at him, his big brother! It was like watching a great athlete, someone born with grace, someone who walked two inches above the surface of the earth, and who could say why? (“We will come out to the park today, thousands of us, we will come out to this park today to say that we believe what is true: The United States is a country of laws and not men and that we will provide safety to those who come to us for safety.”)

  Bob missed his mother. His mother, with the thick red sweater she often wore. He pictured her sitting on his bed when he was little, telling him a story to get him to sleep. She had bought him a night-light, which seemed an extravagance back then, the swollen bulb sucked into the socket above the mopboard. “Sissy,” Jimmy said, and soon Bob told his mother he didn’t need the light anymore. “Then I’m leaving the door open,” his mother said. Sissy. “In case one of you falls out of bed or needs me.” It was Bob who fell out of his bed, or would wake, yelling, with a nightmare. Jimmy did his taunting of Bob when their mother was not there, and while Bob might fight back, in his heart he accepted his brother’s scorn. Standing in Roosevelt Park watching his brother speak with eloquence, Bob still accepted it. He knew what he had done. The kindhearted Elaine, in her office with the recalcitrant fig tree, had one day suggested gently that to leave three small kids in a car at the top of a hill was not a good idea, and Bob had shaken his head, no, no, no. More unbearable than the accident itself was to hold his father responsible for it! He had been a small child. He understood that. No malice aforethought. No reckless endangerment. The law itself would not hold a child responsible.

  But he had done it.

  “I’m sorry,” he’d said to his mother as she lay in the hospital bed. Over and over he’d said that. She’d shaken her head. “You’ve all been such good kids,” she said.

  Bob’s eyes scanned the crowd. Around the edges of the park, policemen stood; even as they stayed watchful, they seemed to be listening to Jim. Over by the playground, Somali children were dancing, spinning around with their hands up. Sunlight fell over all of it, and beyond the park sat the cathedral with its four spires, beyond that was the river, seen from here as a small winding strip, twinkling, between its banks.

  The applause for his brother was sustained, steady, a sound that carried itself throughout the park, continued, dipped slightly, came back up, a soft, full sound. Bob watched as Jim stepped from the bandstand, greeted people, nodded, gave Dick Hartley another handshake, shook hands with the governor, who was going to speak next, all the while the applause continuing. But Jim was not eager to stay. Bob could see this from where he stood: Jim’s polite responses as he kept walking away. Always on
the exit ramp, Susan had once said of Jim.

  Bob moved around to join him.

  As they walked quickly down the street a young man wearing a baseball cap approached them, smiling. “Hey,” said Jim, nodding, still walking.

  The young man kept pace with them. “They’re parasites,” he said. “They’re here to wipe us out and maybe today you didn’t see it but we’re not gonna let them.”

  Jim kept walking. The fellow persisted. “The Jews are going, and these niggers are going, you’ll see. They’re parasites feeding on the globe.”

  “Lose it, dickwad.” Jim kept walking the same pace.

  The fellow was no more than a kid. Twenty-two, tops, Bob thought, as the kid kept looking at them eagerly, as though what he had just said would please the Burgess brothers. As though he had not heard Jim call him a dickwad. “Parasites,” Bob said. A sudden deep anger pulsed through him. He stopped walking. “You don’t even know what a parasite is. My wife used to study parasites, which meant she was studying you. Have you gone past the eighth grade?”

  “Cool it,” said Jim, still walking. “Let’s go.”

  “We’re God’s true people. We won’t stop. You might think so, but we won’t.”

  “You are,” said Bob, “a little piece of coccidiosis, infecting God’s intestine, that’s what you are. Asexual,” he added, over his shoulder, following Jim. “You belong inside the stomach of a goat.”

  Jim said fiercely, “What’s wrong with you? Shut up.”

  The young man came running to catch up. He said to Bob. “You’re a fat idiot, but him”—nodding to Jim—“he’s dangerous. He works for the devil.”

  Jim stopped so quickly that the fellow bumped into him, and Jim grabbed his arm. “Did you just call my brother fat, you fucking little punk?”

  Fear stunned the kid’s face. He tried to free his arm, and Jim gripped it tighter. Jim’s lips had gone white, his eyes small. It was amazing, the power of the anger that was there. Even Bob, used to his brother, was amazed. Jim put his face close to the kid’s and spoke quietly. “Did you call my brother fat?” The kid looked over his shoulder, and Jim tightened his grip more. “Your little-dick friends aren’t around to protect you. I’m asking you one more time: Did you call my brother fat?”

  “Yes.”

  “Apologize.”

  Tears were in the young man’s eyes. “You’re breaking my arm. I mean it, you are.”

  “Jimmy,” murmured Bob.

  “I said, apologize. I’ll snap your neck off so fast you won’t even feel it. Painless. You lucky little shit. You can die pain-free.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Immediately Jim let go, and the Burgesses walked to their car, got in, and drove off. Through the window Bob saw the guy rubbing his arm, walking back toward the park. Jim said, “Don’t worry, there’s just a few. It’s over. But stop calling people parasites. Jesus.”

  There was the sound of cheering from the park. Whatever the governor had to say on the bandstand, people liked it, the day was almost over, Jim’s job was done. “Nice speech,” Bob said as they drove over the river.

  Jim kept glancing in the rearview mirror while he reached into his pocket, flicked open his cell phone. “Hellie? It’s done. Yeah, it was fine. I’ll talk to you more when we get back to the hotel. You too, sweetheart.” He clicked the phone shut, returned it to his pocket. He said to Bob, “Did you see that little worm’s cap with ‘88’ on it? That stands for ‘Heil Hitler.’ Or ‘HH.’ The letter H being the eighth letter of the alphabet.”

  “How do you know all that?” Bob asked.

  “How do you not,” Jim answered.

  Night arrived with the sense that the day would go down in the history of Shirley Falls, the day four thousand people marched peacefully to the park to support the right of a dark-skinned population to join their town. The plastic shields were put away. There was a tender gravity of solidarity but very little self-congratulation, because northern New Englanders are not like that. But it was big and good and that could not be taken away. Abdikarim, who had attended only because one of Haweeya’s sons came running to get him, saying his parents insisted he come to the park, had been puzzled by what he saw: so many people smiling at him. To look him straight in the face and smile felt to Abdikarim to display an intimacy he was not comfortable with. But he had been here long enough to know it was the way Americans were, like large children, and these large children in the park were very nice. Long after he left, he kept picturing the people smiling at him.

  That evening men gathered in his café. Mostly they weren’t sure what the rally meant. It felt important, and it had been surprising, because how could they have known so many ordinary people would have put themselves in danger today on their behalf? Time would tell what it meant. “But it was amazing,” Abdikarim interjected. Ifo Noor shrugged, and repeated that time alone would tell. Then the men talked of their homeland (this is what they always wanted to talk about), and the rumors that the United States was backing warlords in Somalia who were trying to overthrow the Islamic Courts. Roadblocks set up by gangsters, riots started with the burning of tires. Abdikarim listened with a sinking heart. That people in the park today had pleasant faces was a fact entirely separate from the inner lamentation he lived with every day: He wanted to go home. But people there had lost their senses, and he could not go home. A congressman in Washington had publicly referred to Somalia as a “failed state.” The men in Abdikarim’s café mentioned this with bitterness. For Abdikarim, there were too many feelings for a heart to contain. The humiliation of the congressman’s words, the anger at those at home who were shooting and looting and preventing order, the people smiling at them in the park today—and yet the United States was full of lies, a country of leaders who lied. The Alliance for the Restoration of Peace—it was a farce, the men said.

  Abdikarim stayed and swept his café when the men finally left. His cell phone vibrated, and he felt his face opening in pleasure at the sound of his daughter’s lively voice, calling from Nashville. It’s good, very good, she said, having seen on television the gathering in Roosevelt Park. She talked of her sons playing soccer, how they spoke almost flawless English now, and his heart seemed an engine that both raced and stalled. Flawless English meant they could disappear as full Americans, but it gave them a sturdiness too. “They stay out of trouble?” he asked, and she said they did. The oldest boy had started high school and his grades were brilliant. His teachers were surprised. “I’ll send a copy of his report card,” his daughter said. “And tomorrow I will text you pictures for your telephone. They’re very handsome, my sons, you’ll be proud.” For a long time after, Abdikarim sat. Finally he walked home through the dark, and when he lay down he saw the people in the park, wearing their winter coats, their fleece vests, open-faced, looking pleasantly right at him. When he woke in the night he was confused. There was a tugging on his mind, familiar from long ago. When he woke again he realized he had dreamed of his firstborn son, Baashi, who had been a serious child. Only a few times in the boy’s short life had it been necessary for Abdikarim to strike him in order to teach lessons of respect. In the dream Baashi had looked at his father with bewildered eyes.

  Bob and Jim had endured one more evening at Susan’s house. She’d microwaved frozen lasagna, while Zach ate hot dogs from a fork as though eating popsicles, and the dog slept without moving on her dog-hairy bed. Jim had shaken his head once at Bob to indicate they would not tell Susan right now what they had learned about Zach and his father; Jim took a phone call from Charlie Tibbetts in the other room, and when he returned to the kitchen and sat back down he said, “Okay. Word on the street is people liked me, good feelings about seeing me up there, all that.” He picked up his fork, moved some food on his plate. “Everyone’s happy. Freedom from white guilt makes everyone happy.” He nodded toward Zach. “Your ill-conceived behavior will sink back into being exactly what it is, a Class E misdemeanor, and by the time Charlie takes it to trial, months will’v
e passed, he can get all sorts of postponements and that’s good. People won’t want to go stirring this up. It’s a happy time now, and they’ll want to keep it that way.”

  Susan blew out a breath. “Let’s hope.”

  “I’m thinking this twat Diane Dodge in the AG’s office will stop pushing for the civil rights violation, and even if she does push, Dick Hartley has to agree to it, and he won’t. I could see that today. He’s a big old stupid thing, and people were happy to see me, and he’s not going to rock that boat. Which sounds grandiose, I know.”

  “Little bit,” Bob said, pouring wine into a coffee cup.

  “I don’t want to go to jail.” Zach mumbled the words.

  “You won’t.” Jim pushed back his plate. “Get your coat if you’re staying with us tonight. Bob and I have a long ride in the morning.”

  Back in the hotel room, Jim said to Zach, “What happened to you in that cell while you were waiting for the bail commissioner?”

  Zach, who had looked more normal to Bob as the weekend went by, gazed at Jim with a slightly stunned look. “What happened is … I, you know, sat.”

  “Tell me,” Jim said.

  “It wasn’t much bigger than a closet, the cell, and all white and metal. Even what I sat on was metal, and these guards were nearby and kept looking over at me. I asked them once, ‘Where’s my mother?’ And they said, ‘Outside, waiting.’ They wouldn’t talk to me after that. I mean, I didn’t try.”