All Things Cease to Appear

  —

  THE HOUSE WAS cursed. That’s what people said. No one wanted it. The bank owned it now. They’d already sold off the land on the other side of the ridge and somebody was putting up houses. You could see the frames going up, one next to another around a horseshoe, and bulldozers slumped in the field like strange clumsy animals. During the day you could hear the hammers and the radio and the laughter of the men, who always pissed in the woods. They had taken away their mother’s car on a flatbed. The car was in the junkyard, waiting with all the other ruined cars to be crushed for scrap. After hours, they’d go to see it, knowing it was never getting out of there in one piece. Eddy had a thing for this girl, Willis, who sometimes came along. They would climb up on the old cars and Eddy would play his horn. Some of the cars looked pretty good and Cole liked to pretend to drive them. One time Eddy got one started and showed him how to drive it. He steered around in the field with the tires squealing and the girl laughing in the back seat and fireflies all over the place. Willis had the prettiest laugh he’d ever heard and she always smelled nice. When they found a car that worked, he’d play chauffeur and Eddy would act like a big-deal trumpet player, sitting with his woman in the back. If they started kissing, Cole got out and wandered around. He’d climb up the hill near the wires. From up there you could see the little houses in town and the big houses here and there on the outskirts. You could see their old farm with its empty barns. And you could see the long silver trains, the moonlight gleaming on the rails, and you could hear their sad songs all through the night.

  A couple weeks later, a big brown dumpster appeared at the farm, up on the lawn. A man in coveralls was down there, throwing stuff out. At night the boys went through it all, the artifacts that defined the Hales. They opened his mother’s old canning jars and ate the fat, sweet peaches and oily red peppers, the juice dripping down their wrists. They found their father’s fishing gear and wading boots, Wade’s football trophies, Cole’s old crayon drawings from kindergarten, Eddy’s boutonniere from the prom, and there were birthday cards and Halloween masks and marbles everywhere. It was all stuff that had no meaning to anyone else, but to him and his brothers it was evidence that their family had existed, that they’d lived a happy life here once, that they’d raised cows whose sweet milk was put in bottles and hand-delivered all over the county. All because of them, people had milk in the morning and ate corn in summertime with lots of butter and salt and pepper on it. If that wasn’t something to be proud of, he didn’t know what was.

  Winter ended finally and you’d see colors here and there and people came out of their houses, yanking at their gardens, hammering nails into fences. You’d see horses kicking out their hind legs like they were figuring out how to use them again. Cole was busy with school. He’d fold his tests up in his pocket and present them later to his uncle, ironing out the creases in the paper with the heel of his hand, his grade, usually an A, chicken-scratched in red pen as if based on some tentative conclusion and bestowed with regret. Still, he got along all right, but the farm, the house, was always in his mind, the idea of his mother wandering past the windows, fluid as water.

  In May their father’s birds returned, landing on the barn up near the cupola, the same three falcons that came back every year when the weather started to warm. His father had raised them from birth. He’d kept rats in the cellar to feed the baby birds, and sometimes the rats would escape and their mother would stand on a chair and scream while everybody ran through the house trying to catch them. You can’t count on much in this world, his father told him once, but those birds come back every year.

  Always in spring, when the apple trees got their pink buds and you could go outside without your coat and the air smelled like his mother’s perfume, his father would walk out into the field like a soldier in his F Troop gloves and stretch out his arms like a crucified man. A bird would drop down on his arm for a moment, flutter its wings a little and then fly away again.

  They were majestic creatures, he thought, perched up there on the roof. They lifted their brown wings ever so slightly, as if in greeting, their claws clicking on the rusty sheet metal. Cole wondered if they’d seen his father up in heaven. Maybe they’d brought a message from him. Hey, you birds, he called. They fluttered their wings again and he knew what they wanted, so he lifted up his arms into a T and stood there waiting, rigid as a scarecrow. The birds teetered on the ledge like they were trying to decide, and then the biggest one flew down and landed on his forearm. He wasn’t prepared for its weight and staggered back a step. The sharp yellow claws tore through his shirtsleeve and cut his skin.

  Easy, now, Eddy said, coming up behind him.

  The falcon fluttered prettily. Cole’s arm shook under its weight and it hurt, but he refused to cry. He thought maybe it was a test. The bird looked at him and he looked at the bird and in that moment something was decided, something important that Cole could not name, and then it opened its wings and flew off. It made a wide arc across the sky like a sigh of music, then joined the others and disappeared behind the trees.

  5

  THE NEWS ABOUT the farm started down at the café over hash and eggs and went home with a variety of strangers, who exchanged it with deliberation, like a foreign currency. They were city people. He was a professor, she a homemaker. They had one little girl.

  Bank practically gave it to ’em, their uncle reported over supper.

  But the house stayed empty for a few months and then one day in August they saw a car parked on the lawn. It was a sports car—a shiny green convertible. Then they saw her, and everything slowed down. She was like the delicate porcelain figures his mother had collected, with pale skin, blond hair. She was carrying a cardboard box and talking to someone over her shoulder, and then a man came around behind her and they climbed up the porch steps and went inside, the door closing with a slap that echoed through the air.

  It’s theirs now, Eddy said.

  They were up on the ridge, their pockets jammed with raspberries, and Wade and Eddy were getting high. They watched the lights come on one by one. They could hear the little girl laughing. Soon it was dark and the whole place was all lit up, big yellow squares of light, and Cole remembered how their father would holler about burning electricity for no good reason and how money was running down the drain every goddamn second. Well, that was all right with him, because it didn’t matter anymore, there was no money anyway. And then he’d scoop up whatever change he could find and drive off in his truck. But these people didn’t seem worried about their money running out. They opened the windows and their voices drifted out, and it occurred to Cole that they sounded happy and he found himself feeling happy, too, like he did when he watched happy people on TV shows. Then somebody started playing their old piano, the first song his mother ever taught him, the Moonlight Sonata, and it came back to him how she’d told him to play it slow and explained that when Beethoven wrote it he was full of longing, and how she longed for things, too, and how longing was a private thing, it was a part of life you eventually got used to, and he remembered that she’d looked up at the window for a moment, at the willows scratching against the glass, and he could see the woman she was, underneath the one he knew as his mother, and it scared him.

  The music stopped, and he realized they’d all three been listening.

  How could she do it? Cole said.

  Eddy smoked his cigarette down to the filter and flicked it into the dark. I don’t know, Cole. Some things you can’t explain.

  They didn’t want us no more, Wade said.

  Hey. Eddy yanked Wade’s arm. Quit that. She didn’t mean nothing. It was Pop. He made her do it.

  Wade shoved him away and Eddy looked mad and suddenly they were on the ground, pushing and pulling and smacking each other. Cole tried to pull them apart, but once they got going you couldn’t stop them, and he started to cry a little, and it felt stupid and good so he cried some more and it made them stop, and they got up off the ground and came over to him
and tried to steady him and waited for him to calm down.

  Eddy said, Hold on, now, Cole. Take it easy.

  She loved you best, Wade said.

  Come on. Let’s get you home.

  Cole glanced back at the house and saw somebody pulling down a shade and then another, and before long all the shades had been pulled, and this signified to him that it was over, this part of his life, this place. Everything would be different now. Everything would change.

  They walked back to Rainer’s in silence. Vida had kept supper for them and they sat down and ate with the TV on, some John Wayne movie, and nobody said anything and they brought their dishes to the sink and went up to bed. Cole got into bed and Eddy came and sat on the edge and pulled the covers up and smoothed his forehead with the cold, rough palm of his hand. I’ll be back later.

  Where you going?

  I got a date.

  With Willis?

  Yeah. You okay?

  He nodded and turned away so Eddy would leave, but he wasn’t okay. He could feel a darkness filling up his legs and arms and hands and feet, like the blackest, coldest water. As he lay in the dark the idea occurred to him to run away. He let himself picture life on the road, hitchhiking from place to place, sleeping in yards and churches, cooking hot dogs on sticks like he’d done in Boy Scouts, but the interstate with its screaming trucks and doting strangers terrified him.

  One of the ex-cons started playing harmonica on the back porch, and he liked the cowboy sound of it. It was a comfort to him. And he knew that whoever was playing it had been through something, too, something bad, and had survived it. When you thought about it, a lot of people did things. It wasn’t like you could just jump off the side of the earth and disappear. You had to figure out how to go on. That’s all you could do.

  All these men had done things, been through things. They didn’t want to be there, either. Maybe they wanted to live someplace warm, where the sun was hot and bright, where nobody knew them. He felt kin to them now. Men who’d been in prison had dulled-down faces like the dented hubcaps his uncle sold to the poor suckers on Baker Avenue. Rainer would set up a lawn chair and lay out all the hubcaps like expensive jewelry and then bring home pork chops for Vida. You could see in their eyes they had broken hearts. They were heartbroken men who couldn’t do much, couldn’t even love. It was the simplest thing to do, loving someone, only it was the hardest thing, too, because it hurt.

  The next morning, his uncle took him to buy shoes. These are going in the trash, he said, holding up Cole’s old pair. For one thing, they stink. And for another, they don’t tie good.

  He’d always worn his brother’s shoes, third time around.

  You can’t walk around in another man’s shoes, his uncle told him. That’s enough of that.

  They went to Browne’s and looked over the selection. Now, style’s important, but comfort matters most. You can’t mess around when it comes to your feet.

  What about these? He showed his uncle a pair of Converse sneakers, the same ones Eugene had.

  All right. Let’s see if they have your size.

  The woman measured his feet and then squeezed his bones. You’re a thirteen, she said.

  You got them tall genes from your father.

  She disappeared into the back and they sat there, waiting, in the vinyl chairs. Finally, she brought out a box. We have them in white. It was like opening a present—taking off the lid, pulling the paper away, holding the brand-new sneakers. They had the good smell of fresh rubber.

  You won’t get struck by lightning in those, his uncle said. Them things are sharp.

  They fit, Cole said.

  You’re your own man now, son.

  Yes, sir. He walked around the store, back and forth and in a circle.

  Can he wear them out?

  Of course, the lady said.

  Sold! his uncle proclaimed, taking a wad of cash from his pocket.

  He felt good in his new All-Stars and he wondered what Eddy would think. He touched his uncle’s shoulder. Thanks, Uncle Rainer.

  That’s my pleasure, son. Wear them well.

  Disappear

  DISAPPEAR, she thinks. And he does.

  Now she is alone.

  And the world is gray.

  She won’t miss him. She refuses to.

  Before, well, there was a whole life inside that word. Before he lost all their money. Before that woman. Had he convinced himself she didn’t know?

  The last time, she sent Cole in and sat out in the car, watching the empty streets, thinking maybe he’d come out and apologize and they could go back to being normal. The minutes went by and she watched the trains rolling in, rolling out. People going and coming. Not her, she’d never gone anywhere. All of a sudden a whole hour had gone by, so she had to go in. She didn’t like bars, and especially not Blake’s, which smelled dirty, and she inevitably saw people she could do without, men at the bar or shooting pool in the back, men she’d gone to high school with who had wanted to date her, men who’d fixed things around the farm or did business with her husband. Her boy wasn’t there, and the bartender nodded that he’d gone upstairs. She stood there, trying to look indifferent, and he poured her a coffee, but she pushed it back for something stronger. I’ll take some of that Wild Turkey. She drank it down. She wasn’t a drinker, this was only medicinal. He didn’t charge her.

  She stepped into the narrow vestibule and saw her son waiting for his father at the top of the stairs, the door shut, their drunken laughter pushing through. Come on, she said, and waved him down. He can walk home for all I care.

  Relieved, Cole hurried down. She heard the door open, but she didn’t look back to see her half-dressed husband. Instead, she took her son’s warm hand, a hand already callused beyond its years, and they went out to the car and drove back to the farm. She’d glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Cal running into the street, his shirt buttons undone, his shoes and socks in his hand. He could go to hell.

  For her, it was over right then. They were over. Nothing much mattered after that, not really it didn’t. But she knew he’d never let her leave him on her own two feet.

  Still, she entertained a variety of fragmented dreams. For many years she’d done so and had a whole collection of possibilities that sang to her like the silver bars of a tree chime. She’d always wanted to go back to school, to become a nurse. Medicine intrigued her. Maybe because she’d grown up with sick adults and tended to them. Her mother first, then her father. She’d done right by them; she had nothing to apologize for. Like many women, she’d dreamed of marrying somebody rich. She’d had the looks for it. But she’d fallen for Cal and that was all there was to it. How he’d loped around in that big coat of his with eyes that could stop your heart at a glance. Even how hard he’d hold her; she was not fragile.

  Somewhere around three in the morning, she heard the truck. She’d fallen asleep on the couch, a little afraid about what she’d done, guilt pinching her nerves. He came in heavily, stomping through the house in his big boots. Maybe he saw her, maybe he didn’t, she couldn’t tell with her eyes shut tight, and then he yanked on the banister and hauled himself upstairs, where the door closed behind him. They were apart all right. They were done.

  In the morning, she got the boys up to milk and feed the cows, then fixed them eggs and pancakes and sat there drinking coffee while they ate. The younger two caught the bus, and Eddy took her car and drove out to the community college, where he was taking a business course, even though he had no interest in it; he wanted to be a musician. It was his father pushing him to go, but of course he wouldn’t pay for it. Eddy paid his own fees.

  That’s all right, Ma, he told her. I don’t want nothing from him.

  She’d heard him play in the school band, going to all the football games just so she could. Same bleachers as when she was a girl, to watch Cal play. With his broad back and big hands, he’d been a good quarterback. Once she first saw him she knew she’d have his babies. His pretty eyes, his good-sm
elling red coat, how warm he was underneath, the sting of tobacco on his tongue, the moon later in the field. But she was terrified of love. She did what he told her to.

  That morning, she did the breakfast dishes, then washed the floor and went up to make the boys’ beds and clean their bathroom, and when she had finished that she went back down to the kitchen and made a pot roast with potatoes and carrots and onions so they’d have a decent meal when they came home. Finally, she did the ironing, taking care to get Cal’s collars just so, the way he liked them. He was a farmer through and through, but had certain vanities when it came to special occasions. After church he always went to the track and lost more money, and she’d scream at him and flail away at him, but he’d always give her some little gift, saltwater taffy or licorice drops or just a sweet gesture, and she always ended up forgiving him. And they’d go on again till the next time. He could be gentle with her when they’d cuddle up at night, and sometimes she was so amazed that such a rough man could show such sweetness that she’d cry over it.

  —

  SHE’D BEEN a good mother. This is what she has, the one thing she knows for sure. It was best when they were babies. Those little T-shirts with the snaps. The smell of the baby detergent. Their little puffy hands, perfect little feet. She and Cal made pretty babies—everybody said so. They’d grown up to be strong, good-looking boys and they’d be good men, too, she’d put money on it. Even Wade, who liked his food. He was the child who made her feel safe. Her protector. Anything happened, Wade could take care of it. But people thought he was slow. Dumb, even. He just took his time, that was all! The teachers didn’t have the patience to teach him right, only she did, and she’d taught him to read as well as anyone else. And he had the same lovely disposition as their cows. Sometimes he’d get sent home from school for beating somebody up, but when he told her about what happened with such earnestness, his blue eyes so wide and true, she always believed he’d been in the right. Sometimes it’s innocent people who get punished the most, she’d tell him, and he’d cry in her arms. She’d spend the next few days just being around him, working side by side doing chores, or watching him build something, as he so often liked to do. Her oldest, Eddy, didn’t fight but still had an edge to him. He’d give you a look and that’s all it took. He was something like Cal, with the same ego, the same showy confidence. Her youngest took after her in how he thought and saw things. A diplomat. They had long, detailed conversations even when he was a small child. He could work things out in his head so they made sense. He could put things together and take them apart. At the age of ten he could wire a lamp and fix a radio. She could talk to him like an adult and sometimes told him private things that she knew she shouldn’t. He didn’t need to hear about her problems, but he’d listen. And she needed somebody to talk to. Considering all the aspects of a problem, he’d finally say, You’ll be all right, Ma.