Glass Boys (6 page)

Frustrated that his tree still flourished, Garrett invented other games a lone youngster could play with a stolen knife in summertime. At first he removed his shirt, coated his stomach with lines of mud, then darted from tree to tree, knife poised, stabbing the wooden enemies that got in his way. He shaved long peelings of bark from a birch, wore them like primitive necklaces and bracelets. Pretended he was a feral animal, popped a wriggling earwig into his mouth, then spat it out for fear it might scramble through the holes in there, travel up to eat his earwax.

One summer evening, as the sun was setting, Garrett watched his stepfather spit on a whetstone, glide his hunting knife over it, one side, then the other, and test the sharpness of the blade against the back of his arm. As soon as Garrett saw this, he knew he would try it the very next morning. The knife he kept in the woods was dull, so he tossed it into the creek, and quietly returned to the kitchen, extracted his stepfather's knife with its bone handle from the drawer. Looking both ways, he scooted across the backyard and into his wooded play space.

He unsnapped the leather case, removed the knife, and stuffed the case up underneath a rotting log. Then, as his stepfather had done, he scraped the thin blade across the soft hair on the back of his hand. As he shaved the baby fur, he blew it, watched it scatter into a shaft of sunlight. Holding the knife, Garrett shivered, and his skin prickled with goose bumps. There was a thrill there, metal against flesh, and he panted, tongue jutting out, while he squatted, let the blade glide over his calves, over bony grooves and joints, effortlessly removing patches of hair.

As he moved the knife up his shins, he felt fierce, in control, and he imagined that this self-possession was what pulled a boy towards manhood. He belonged here, in these woods, away from his mother and stepfather. He was powerful and free, even though he was only a few steps away from the slaps and the ringing ears and the wooden spoon with the godforsaken hole in the middle. Finally on his own, and he could control any inhabitant that resided near him. Every worm and forest flower and maple sapling that might burst through the dead layer would live in his realm. He could punish them if he wanted. Slice them in half, slice them down. Or live among them as their leader. His choice. He laid the knife aside, licked his finger, rubbed the saliva into the whitish marks where the knife had been. Then threw his head back, hooted with unfettered joy.

Pressure down below, and Garrett stood, dropped his shorts, dull gray underwear, kicked them away from his ankles. Relief now as he arched his back, allowed a stream of his animal piss to coat the purplish testicle flower of a lady's slipper.
Aahhh.
He watched the flower shudder, then bounce back to position, dripping. He scooped up the knife again in a dagger hold, swung around, weapon poised towards an invisible enemy that was creeping up from behind. Spitting and snarling, he slashed the air, screamed, “Die, you stupid thing.” Hacked open its imaginary belly, ducked as the maggoty guts came spraying out. Knees bent slightly, he turned a full circle, seeking out any other creatures that might come up against him. “Dare you,” he cried. “Double dare.” Nothing appeared. No beast was brave enough to emerge from the ether and challenge him.

Garrett leaned back against a tree. In those dusky woods, he could be a hero. But out in the light was another matter. Though he tried, he was unable to quarantine his stepfather's words, would say them inside his mind whenever his bladder threatened to relax on the stained fabric of his pungent mattress. Those words were there now, even though he did his best to leave them at the forest's edge. Must have been hiding, he realized, inside the pouch of the lady's slipper. He heard them blaring, and he was suddenly aware he was still standing there, with his bottoms missing. What would his stepfather do if he came upon him like this? What would his stepfather say?

Trembling hand, Garrett let the blade hover over his parts, bent his head to see it, said in his gruffest stepfatherly voice, “If you wets the bed once more, my sonny boy, I'll hack your flicker off.” Garrett raised both hands above his head, stomped his feet. He scanned the canopy for signs of arrival. His stepfather was supreme. That man could be anywhere. Was everywhere. “I'll hack your flicker off.” Hysterical drunken laughter, replaying in Garrett's mind. “Come 'ere, boy.” Point of a knife between his stepfather's two front teeth. Picking away a strand of meat. “Come 'ere, I says. Turn you into a lassie.”
No, sir.
Garrett poked the sky with the knife.
No, sir. That you won't.
But there was little conviction in his high-pitched voice.

A shriek from a crow. “Garrett Glass! What in God's name are you doing?”

He jumped, nicked the flesh near the crease of his upper thigh. His mother standing there, between two scarred trees. “Idn't doing nothing, Mama,” he squeaked. Knife dropped from his frightened hand, hidden underneath the broad wet leaves of the lady's slipper.

“You could cut yourself something fierce, horsing around like that.”

“Clothes got wet.”

“Well, they better get unwet. If Eli gets back, finds you haven't done what he ask, you'll feel the switch, my son. And you knows nothing I says'll make a difference.”

9

SURE, LEWIS HAD dangled a fistful of carrots along with his proposal. But he wasn't the first man to do so. Alan Firsk, who called himself a pop artist, had offered up a silver band only a short time before she met Lewis. Wilda was his muse, Alan told her, and he couldn't abide a life without her. He was handsome, kind, and quirky, but it made her nervous when he sketched distorted line drawings of her face, images strained and haunted, smeared charcoal shadows in places that should have been shadow free. She disliked the enormous representation of her head made with a collage of clippings from old comic strips. Hated when he took snapshots of her, showcasing her attempted smiles, and strung them with cat gut inside a rusty bird cage. “These are your essence,” he called it, but she did not want to see her essence. Did not want Alan attempting to capture it on paper or otherwise.

She had been carrying around his ring in the front pocket of her work apron for nine days, his proposal unanswered, when he gave her a handmade card. Bright white paper full of pretty silver fibers. He likely made it himself. On the cover was a single phrase, “My heart bleeds for you,” and beneath, a miniature painting of a bright red heart, tilted on its side, anatomically correct with veins and arteries arching upwards. And beneath that, several droplets, frozen mid-drip, traveling down to a tiny pool, complete with spatter. She slid the card into the pocket of her apron, along with the ring, but all afternoon she kept removing it, staring at it. She thought she felt it beating against her lower stomach, heard the card, too, those fat drops letting go, whizzing through the air, splashing in an ever growing pool of liquid.

Such a horribly familiar feeling as she imagined the blood staining the hem of her skirt. Her tiny feet. Then, a swelling of words pressing behind her eyes. Her mother's voice, high and tight and filled with fury.

Wilda snatched the card out of her pocket, tore it into a thousand pieces. Dropped the ring into the penny slot of the cash register. When he next came to see her, she fled to the small bathroom at the back of the store. He rapped, several times, but she would not emerge, and he was forced to speak through the door. “Come on, Wil. A joke, is all,” he said. “Meant to be dramatic. I thought you'd find it funny. A good laugh.”

“I don't care.”

“Did you even open it up? See what I wrote inside?”

“No. Now leave.”

“But, Wil.”

“Leave.” The card was a sign. Wilda knew a vaporous bridge had formed between her present and her past.

And then, two weeks later, Lewis arrived, with his gray eyes and determination. Over the course of several months, sporadic visits, he lured her with many promises. He had some acreage, he said, a fair bit of it, and enough money to go along with it. There were spruce woods where she could roam, a warm stream to wade in during summer, and a tidy house that she could make into her own. Wallpaper and an electric stove and a robin's egg blue soup tureen that had belonged to his dead mother. She could have it all if he could take her home. Said that if she didn't agree, he'd club her over the head and drag her there anyways.

Francis told her not to worry. “Go on,” he'd said. “Love when you're young. When 'tis easy.”

Leave it to Francis to turn a snarl of emotional yarn into a neat skein. But it wasn't that simple. Even though she had grown used to Lewis over the months that he traveled back and forth to see her, his eagerness made her nervous. As he spoke of home life and family and any number of fat smiley babies, she noticed the soles of her feet starting to twitch. Her legs became restless, wanting to carry her away from those possibilities. To leave Lewis, and pretend she'd never met him. That would be easier. Before he realized what kind of things she had done.

She decided to marry him anyways, decided the moment when she noticed someone had strolled across that bridge. She had been walking to the bank on a March afternoon, and passed a man she recognized. Six years since she had been home to Teeter Beach, but she still knew his face. Not that this particular neighbor had meant anything to her, but it was another sign. Anyone could be next. She was not willing to wait, a sitting duck, to see who or what might emerge, materializing at the crest of the bridge, riding through the fog.

10

“HERE'S GOOD.”

“Here?”

“Let me out.”

“Your father might need you.”

“He idn't my father.”

“Still. You got work to do, and you best do it. You don't question him, Garrett.”

Garrett nodded. On a cloudy morning in May, he'd gone with his mother to the drugstore, picked up yellow pills and toothpaste and tins of canned milk. He had planned to go straight home, but now, seeing that the harbor was full of pack ice, he needed to get out. “Early this year,” he said.

“I don't like it.”

“I think it's beautiful.”

His mother never responded, but he saw her chest rise and fall in a silent sigh.

“Tell him I won't be long.”

She gripped the wheel with wooly mittens, cuffs of her dark green coat worn. “No good comes from dwelling, my son.”

“I idn't dwelling, Mom. Seeing idn't dwelling.”

“Still. Steer clear of it. Steer clear of the water.”

Garrett stepped out onto gravel, slammed the car door, heard her pull off the shoulder, drive slowly away. He went to the edge of the cliff, sat on the frozen lichens, let his legs dangle over. Out in the bay, huge shards of ice had crowded in, sharp layers lifting and buckling on the ocean waves. His heart skipped a beat when he saw three young boys dressed in navy parkas skipping from pan to pan. Arms out, balancing, and Garrett could hear them squealing. Maybe some cusswords, but he couldn't be sure. Watching them through slit eyes, he pretended they were fleas, popping about on a clean bluish sheet. He projected himself out there next, spread eagle on the cold sheet, and the young fleas sprung over, grateful, weaseled their way underneath his layers. He would allow this, allow them to take what they wanted, wouldn't think of nipping their hard shells between his two thumbnails.

As he daydreamed, Garrett felt a familiar fever clamber across his body. He put his hands beneath his thighs, pressed them into the rock. His thoughts bounced back and forth, volleying, one side explaining how he might go down to the water, step onto the ice. Play. A second side telling him to stay put. Leave them alone. Move now. Don't budge. Move now. Don't budge. The opposing positions, like hot tea sloshing about inside his mind, and Garrett's head swayed from side to side. Stay put. They were not fleas. They were young boys, and building friendships was not that easy.

But what if one of them slips? What if one of them drowns? There is no one else around. No one but you, Garrett.

He stood up.

Garrett remembered how his mother told him that Morris Murphy had hauled him out of the water when he was four. When Garrett explained he remembered it all, his mother said that was impossible. “Morris assured us you was completely unconscious.” And Morris was the son of a doctor, so Mrs. Fagan gave no weight to any other scenario.

Still, Garrett insisted he was fully aware. That those moments changed his entire life. He could easily recollect the face that peered down through the surface. The light surrounding the head. Every detail was right there, on a shelf, tucked away behind other thoughts. The truth that he, Garrett Wesley Glass, had touched the mouth of God.

In the harbor surrounding Split Rock, Morris Murphy had been playing with his brother. They'd pushed shards of thick ice with sticks, laughing and stomping, until Mrs. Murphy tromped to the end of the wharf, holding her cardigan against the wind, told the boys that lunch was on the table. She said, “Tomato soup and crackers.” Garrett remembered that because he was hungry, as he often was. He imagined the thick red liquid spilling over his guts, warming him from the inside out.

When no one was looking, Garrett had edged onto the wharf, walked to the end, and lowered himself down onto a slippery chunk of ice. Then he stepped gingerly onto the next broken hunk. The pans wobbled, but not nearly as much as Garrett had feared, and within a few minutes he was leaping like the boys had been. He glanced over at the Murphys' saltbox, and wished, wished, wished for the Missus to appear as she had, call him in for some soup. Some crackers. Garrett hollered and leapt, head twisted towards the house, waiting for the curtains to shudder. Arms straight out, dancing over the ice, he moved confidently, but the clouds divided, and for a second Garrett was blinded. An irritable wave, the shards bucked, and Garrett jumped as high as he could, came down onto a patch of slob ice, alarm triggering when nothing solid touched his feet. A hidden mouth, opening wide and swallowing him. Dreams of hot soup and crackers shot to the moon.