Rainer’s woman, Vida, was from Mexico City. Her name, Cole knew, meant life. She had a tight mouth, like she was holding pins between her lips. Then she’d smile all of a sudden like someone on a merry-go-round. Rainer had found her someplace, saved her. It’s what their uncle did, save people. Now he was saving them. You could see she’d lived hard. In her eyes you could see her quiet past. After she cut onions and cried or rolled out tortillas, she’d rub her hands like they were sore. Her cooking tasted good, and she was nice to him. Sometimes she pushed his hair off his forehead with her damp, onion-smelling hands and said, Tan bonitos ojos. Just wait till the chicas find you. They no let you alone.
His uncle warned them to stay away from the ex-cons, who lived in a cinder-block addition off the back porch, but this one named Virgil did card tricks and one time pulled a blue feather out of Cole’s ear. He had a face like a mess of old wires. See here, he said. I got the devil in my pocket. He turned his pockets inside out, black dust running through his fingers. You ever seen somethin’ like that?
No, sir.
I already been to hell and back, can’t go twice.
What was it like?
Let me show you somethin’. He sat down and untied his shoes and took them off and set them aside. Then he rolled off one of his socks. The bottom of his foot was charred black, like he’d walked through fire. See what they done? That’s what you get in hell.
How’d you get out?
Virgil glanced up at the sky. The man upstairs got me out. That’s the only explanation for it. But I know somethin’ ’bout you.
What’s that?
Virgil took a pencil from behind his ear and drew an oval on a piece of paper and gave it to Cole. Hold that there, over your head.
What for?
Go on.
Cole did what he said.
Hallelujah! I’m in the presence of an angel.
You’re crazy. Cole crumpled up the paper and threw it away. I ain’t no angel.
They would talk about their crimes: what they did, what they should’ve done, what they would’ve done different if they’d had the chance. By the time some of them had gotten caught they were ready and went willingly. Others put up a fight. It seemed to Cole that their prison memories kept them company, like old friends.
Their uncle’s business gave them hope. To his assembled infantry he would declare, Here’s your chance at redemption. Make it count.
Solemn as pallbearers, they’d line up to receive their ammunition: a squeegee, a sponge and Rainer’s marvelous window-cleaning solution, the recipe for which he would take to his grave. Everybody jammed into Bertha, a boxy copper van that said Truly-Clear on either side of it, and, like warriors, they set out to wash windows all over the county, from Hudson all the way to Saratoga.
On weekends, Rainer let the boys work off the books. Even Cole got paid, and he absorbed the experience like an education, peering into the fancy houses in Loudonville or the crooked old row houses down in Albany or the factories on the river, the dirty windows blinking in the sunlight like the sleepy eyes of gangsters and thieves. They did the old house where Herman Melville had lived as a boy, and his uncle gave him a rumpled copy of Moby-Dick. Read this, he said.
Cole did. He stayed up turning its pages, the book heavy on his chest. Wade fussed, yanking the blankets up over his head, but Cole kept reading until his eyes drooped. Then he set it down on the nightstand and closed his eyes, thinking about the sea and the smell of it and the sound of the wind and what it would be like out there in the middle of the ocean, and he wished he could go. He wanted to be free, to be on his own. When he worked for his uncle he felt good and he enjoyed it. He liked to use his hands. To go out in the truck. You saw things on the road, people doing stuff you never thought of. Ordinary things. You’d catch people doing this and that.
You see all kinds of things in this business, his uncle told him. Rich and poor, we see it all.
One time they did the college, named after some Indian chief. The campus was high on a grassy hill. You could see the river in the distance, bright as a switchblade, and it gave him the feeling of a miraculous recollection, a memory that comes to you so sudden and true, like the smell of his mother’s coffee, how it always woke him before light, or her perfume at the end of the day, hardly noticeable, when she’d lean down to kiss him good night.
They set their ladders up against the library and went to work. The men tried not to be noticed, like they’d get kicked out for being stupid, and it occurred to Cole that being smart was another reason people could be afraid of you. On the drive home, his uncle asked if he wanted to go to college, and the men started whistling and making jokes, so he shrugged as if he didn’t care, but Rainer reached across the seat and gripped his shoulder like he knew better. I got a feeling about you, boy, he said. You may just make it out of this town.
—
RAINER SAID he knew what people were made of. The war had taught him. I could tell you stories, he’d say, make your hairs stand on end. Speculating about one person or another, he’d say, Well, I wouldn’t put it past him. If you messed with him he’d never forget it. Same thing if you did something nice. He’d read the newspapers with a magnifying glass, like someone searching for clues. Taking an interest, he called it. You had to look out at the world. You had to open your eyes.
He knew things about his customers, what cars they drove and when they went on vacation. Once, they did some banker’s house in Loudonville. Rainer tiptoed all around the place, like someone walking through a minefield. He told Cole to do the garage windows. You won’t find no trouble out there. Cole set up his ladder and got started. He had a view of the pool. It was still cold and the pool was covered. He could see a boy around his age in the yard, playing catch with a friend. Must be nice, he thought, rolling out of bed on a summer morning and jumping into that pool. He wondered what it was like to be rich. It didn’t seem right that some people got to live like kings and others lived in shit-boxes like the old farm.
After he finished his windows he told his uncle he had to use the bathroom.
Make it quick.
The housekeeper was a black lady with tough eggplant skin, wrangling the hose of the vacuum like an alligator wrestler. She pointed him down the hall. He wandered up a back stairway and found the boy’s room, his name, Charles, spelled out in red letters on the door. Soccer trophies lined a shelf, along with other things the boy had collected. Cole had begun to perspire. He went to the window and saw the boy and his friend in the yard, tossing the football. The men were loading the ladders into the truck. He could hear the housekeeper running the vacuum. He was about to leave when something caught his eye on the shelf, a snow globe. On impulse, he took it down and got some dust on his fingertips. Inside the globe was a trolley car. Cole wondered where he’d gotten it. He knew there had once been trolley cars in Albany and he remembered seeing one on a box of rice in the cupboard, but since the boy had put it on his shelf he concluded that it was a souvenir from some special place. Cole didn’t have any souvenirs of his own; he’d never gone anywhere. He shook the snow globe and watched the little flakes dance. Then he put it in his pocket and went back downstairs.
He muttered his thanks to the housekeeper and climbed into the van, his hand curled around the warm glass. Everybody piled in and they got back on the road and a few minutes later they were on the interstate. He felt strangely light, weightless, a little dizzy. Almost like he’d left a piece of himself in that room, some clue to who he was, the real person inside that nobody else knew, not even him.
Later that night, he took out the snow globe and held it in his hands. He shook it once. Taking it had been wrong, but he didn’t care. He was glad he had. It was his souvenir now. Again he shook it, watching the flakes swirl, and wondered if the boy would even realize it was gone.
4
THEIR UNCLE KEPT a used 1967 Cadillac hearse in his barn that he’d take out now and again for what he called State Occasions. It still had the wh
ite curtains in the windows and he kept a good shine on it. Sometimes he’d go out and sit in it and Vida would leave him be. Death is closer than you think, he told Cole. You can wake up one day not even knowing it’s your last. By sundown it’s all over.
His other prized possession was an old Harley-Davidson with hornet-green fenders. He’d tinker around with it sometimes, but he never took it out. How come you never ride it? Cole asked him one afternoon.
Rainer looked over at the bike longingly. Someday I’ll tell you a story, he said, and wandered off, scratching his head.
Cole decided it was a sad story that had to do with a woman. He had found a dusty old Polaroid in his uncle’s desk of this woman who looked like Pocahontas, sitting on the bike with her arms crossed, smirking at whoever was taking the picture. Cole had a feeling that his uncle had missed out on some things. But there were a lot of people like that. This thing or that had happened, or they’d done something stupid. And suddenly their lives weren’t what they’d thought. Cole wondered what had happened to this woman, and if his uncle even knew.
At school, people kept their distance, as if the bad thing that had happened to his family was a smell on his clothes, like skunk spray. But there was this one kid, Eugene. Free period, they’d go down the street to Windowbox for burgers. Or they’d walk around the corner to St. Anthony’s to see Patrice. She was always hanging around the doors without her coat, shivering. She’d wander over to the fence at the last minute, after the nun blew her whistle. They’d only have a second, her eyes roaming over his face as if she was looking for something. Their hands touching on the fence, her fingertips like raindrops. She had stopped wearing baggy knee socks. Now they hugged her scrawny calves, and her hair was coiled up on the back of her head like a doughnut. Blue powder dusted her eyelids like sky dust, if that even existed. They had something between them, something quiet, true.
Eugene’s grandmother lived above Hack’s Grocery. His father was in prison for running drugs off the trains. He never spoke of his mother, but one time a picture of her fell out of his pocket when he took out some change and Cole picked it up off the sidewalk. She’s dead, Eugene told him. It was something they shared, dead mothers. His grandma worked at the plastics factory. She was a sorter and had the biggest hands he’d ever seen on a woman, like scooped-out tortoise shells. She would rest them on her lap and weave her fingers together. Eugene was serious about school. They did homework together at the library. People would always look at Eugene on account he was black and stood out. The library was in an old house, and when it was cold out they’d light a fire, and the fireplace was so big you could walk into it, with an old black kettle hanging there like the kind witches use. The books sat on their shelves like spectators and smelled of all the dirty hands that had turned their pages. The regulars sat in the green leather chairs, geezers with sharp red faces, or ladies who looked like teachers, sourpusses, Eugene called them, snapping their pages, pursing their lips. Old people were always ready to condemn you for something. Even his own grandfather used to beat him with a rolled-up newspaper when he hadn’t even done anything. There was this one guy who sat up in the stacks at his own personal table, with papers all over the place. He’d made an impressive chain out of gum wrappers, the length of his arm. Once, he offered Cole a piece of Wrigley’s Spearmint. A day or so later, Cole remembered the stick of gum in his pocket, now warm, and took it out and split it with Eugene, thinking fondly of the man up in the stacks as he chewed it.
In Chosen, there was a man who walked backwards. He was nearly seven feet tall, stooped over a little, with legs like an ostrich’s. He made it look easy, his neck twisted over his shoulder so he could see where he was going. Nobody had a clue why he did it. One day they followed him home, zigzagging across the street like spies. The man lived with his mother in a trailer park behind the Chinese restaurant that was rumored to cook dogs and cats. People said they drove around in a van at night, picking up strays. When you walked past the kitchen door you could hear the steaming pots and hissing woks and the cooks arguing in Chinese with cigarettes hanging out of their mouths or sometimes shooting dice. Cole didn’t know how the man who walked backwards could even fit inside the trailer. He’d heard his mother was a gypsy, that you could go to her if you wanted your fortune told. They saw her poke her head out to see if anyone was watching, then she slammed the door and dropped the little shade.
He and Eugene left the trailer park walking backwards. It felt kind of good. You saw things differently. When they got back to Eugene’s, his grandmother was sitting out on the stoop in a lawn chair. What you boys doing walking like that? she said. For some reason it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard and they couldn’t stop laughing. The old woman shook her head. Lord, you a pair. I just don’t know what to do wit you.
His uncle dug up a bike for him, a rusty blue Raleigh, and set it up with a crate on the back tire and had him do errands when he needed something, lightbulbs at the hardware store, a carton of smokes, and Cole didn’t like how people always looked at him in town, like he had the words Dead Parents stamped on his forehead. He found he could get away with things. He could lift a candy bar in plain sight, and even if somebody noticed they never said anything.
On Sundays, Rainer made them go to church. They slicked down their hair with Brylcreem and buttoned up their shirts and polished their shoes, and he’d hand out ties. They walked there, passing the front porches on Division Street, inviting the sympathetic admiration of the neighbors. Impromptu fatherhood had elevated their uncle’s status in the neighborhood, and he walked with the sweep and grace of a dignitary.
In church, Rainer would sit in the last pew with his long legs stretched out in the aisle and his arms crossed over his chest, rolling a toothpick around in his mouth. Usually he’d do the crossword puzzle. A look of enlightenment would cross his face and then he’d fill in a word. After church he bought them doughnuts and the other customers would nod and smile too much, like they felt sorry for them and were trying hard not to show it.
Everybody knew the Hales. You’d see it register on their faces. Even his teachers. They knew the dirt farm he’d been raised on. They knew his parents were freaks who’d killed themselves. They knew his brother Wade got in fights, and that Eddy was a lowlife hood who’d end up fixing cars. They didn’t like Rainer and his ratty ponytail and his Mexican girlfriend and his halfway house and his crooked window-washing outfit. And even when Cole knew the answers and raised his hand they never called on him.
But his uncle thought he was a genius.
One Sunday, late in the afternoon, this salesman came to the door, hawking encyclopedias. They were in the middle of supper, but Rainer let the man in. You won’t be needing no sales pitch in this house, he told him. I got a real intelligent boy on my hands.
Is that so?
Rainer came around behind Cole’s chair and put his hands on his shoulders. The weight of his uncle’s hands reassured him that he was all right, that he would grow up and become a man just like anybody else. In that same moment he knew that he loved his uncle better than his own father and that he hated his father for hurting his mother and taking her with him.
I always say you can’t go no place in this world without an education. Just look at me if you don’t believe it.
How’s that? the salesman asked.
I guess I got sidetracked.
What by?
A little something called Vietnam.
The salesman nodded and took his money. Well, you won’t find no better source than them books.
They figured out how to make shelves out of cement blocks and wood planks and stacked the books while Rainer stood there with his hands on his hips. Not half bad, boys, not half bad. His eyes twinkled with happiness and pride, and Cole was proud, too. From then on, every night before bed, his uncle asked him to read something out loud. Cole would pick one of the volumes at random and close his eyes as the pages flipped back and forth, then stick a finger down to mark a
spot, any spot, it didn’t matter. He read about ancient civilizations, aerodynamics, medieval castles, India, taxidermy. You can never know too much in this life, Rainer said. Don’t be ignorant like your uncle.
—
SOMETIMES, they missed her so bad they had to go home. They ran through the woods like wolves, jumped over logs, spun out of thickets. With the moon on their backs they ran.
They stood at the top of the ridge.
Wade said, It’s still ours.
Always will be, Eddy said.
They ran down through wet grass, knocking crickets to the ground. They climbed onto the porch, noisy in their muddy boots. They peered through the black windows. You could see the empty living room where they used to watch TV, and the couch where their father slept away half the day. They found the spare key where their mother kept it, in the spigot of the water pump, and went in like thieves and dug around in the old cupboards. Up in the very back of one, Eddy discovered a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and saltines and baker’s chocolate, and they handed the whiskey to Cole and he swallowed some, and Wade said it was about time he got drunk, and Cole wanted to. They all three of them drank the whiskey and ate the crackers and the bitter chocolate, and pretty soon the world looked soft and warm instead of cold and sharp, and it was a good feeling and he liked it. They ran into the field and howled at the moon, riling up the coyotes, whose cries rose up over the trees like fire, and then they appeared on the ridge with their tails up like the tips of bayonets and went on yelping, too scared to come down. Wade did his monster walk and the whole pack ran away. They found a horse blanket in the barn and lay in the cold darkness under the stars and slept all rolled together, as they’d done as small children, until the sun came bright and sudden, like a fist.