“Then what happens?”
“Well, then your aunt Julia suddenly snaps up and remembers somewhere she has to be or someone she has promised to visit. It’s rude, you’re probably thinking, but it’s the only way.”
Now, with Oslo gone, my mother had taken to visiting her sister on a daily basis, usually right after she left the salon, and would most often take Julia a sandwich or burger from somewhere, knowing she probably hadn’t eaten that day. It was one Saturday, a day that I had surprisingly not been put on the schedule to work at the store, that my mother called home and I answered.
“Hello.”
“Cullen?”
“Hey, Mom.”
“Can you do me a favor?” she asked in that way that implied that saying no would cause someone to die.
“I guess. I mean, I don’t have to go anywhere, do I?”
“I just need you to go by Burke’s or somewhere like that and pick up a cheeseburger and some fries and take it over to your aunt’s house. Can you do that for me?”
“You can’t do it on your way home?” I asked.
“I’m swamped down here. I know she’s probably waiting for some food. Please just go.”
“Fine.”
“Good. Love ya.”
“You too.”
Click.
I could not convince Lucas, who had a strange fear of my aunt, to go with me to her house, and because I had my own odd fear of waking people up, I dared not mess with my dad, who had fallen asleep on the couch watching Wheel of Fortune, which he was no good at anyway. So I very carefully picked up his keys from the coffee table and tiptoed through the living room and out the door. I hated driving my dad’s too-wide truck, which made one feel as if he were driving in both lanes at once. I pulled through Burke’s, got Aunt Julia a Number Three with fries, and headed toward her house.
Aunt Julia was wearing a silk nightgown, and I followed her into the dining room while wondering if that same nightgown had belonged to my dead grandmother. Aunt Julia sat down at her table, and I sat down beside her and watched as she devoured the cheeseburger like a lion eating a zebra. I stared at her wood-paneled walls, her light pink curtains, her statue of a golden owl in the corner. I rocked lightly from left to right in the chair and pretended that the fake bird chirping her clock made when it struck six hadn’t scared me.
“You want some fries?” she asked with a mouth full of food.
“No thanks. I ate earlier.”
“I just don’t think I can eat all these.”
“Well, you don’t have to. Just throw them away,” I said.
“No, that’s silly. Here, have some.” She pushed the fries over to me.
“No, I’m good. Not hungry.”
“Eat a damn fry, Cullen!” she yelled. I picked up a fry and tossed it into my mouth.
Aunt Julia watched me intently as I continued to eat. I said nothing, because that’s what I do when someone yells at me, and I wondered whether she was going to do it again. I just kept picking up one fry after another and tossing them into my mouth, chewing slowly but not too slowly and staring down at the shiny wooden tabletop. Then I felt her hand rest heavily on top of mine, and when I looked up I saw that she was smiling. I smiled back. Aunt Julia got up and walked through the living room and into her bedroom. I waited there for about ten minutes, and right as I was about to walk out the door, Aunt Julia walked back into the room.
“Cullen, ya know, it just isn’t right that we should all be left here to rot like this.”
“What?” I asked.
“Us. Me, you, your mom, your dad. Here we are, all of us good enough people. All of us living our lives, not hurtin’ a soul. And here we are left behind in this godforsaken place called Earth to do what?” She paused and stared at me.
“Is that rhetorical or do you want me to answer?” I asked.
“To sit here and rot like we’re some sorta animals. They all expect us to pretend that it’s okay and that it’s gonna be all right. Well, it’s not. Nothin’s all right anymore. I hate this house. I hate this town. I hate the damn mailman who keeps peeking through my front window!” She stretched her neck toward the porch.
“Aunt Julia, please,” I said calmly.
“Please what?’
“Please just sit down for a minute,” I said to her, walking over and putting an arm around her shoulder.
“I can do that myself, Cullen. I’m not old, I’m pissed off.”
“I know. I know.”
We sat across from each other, she in a recliner and me on the couch, which I’m pretty sure she’d slept on for weeks. Aunt Julia had gotten dressed; had put on a nice outfit, a lacy blouse and skirt; and had attempted to put on makeup, though it was obvious she’d done this quickly; her attempt at making me a more comfortable guest. I sat up in my seat, resting my elbows on my knees. I looked at my aunt and remembered that she used to be pretty.
“Why don’t you just come stay with us for a while?” I said to her.
“Because y’all got enough to deal with.”
“It wouldn’t be a problem,” I said.
“It would for me, okay?” she said back.
“Well, you’ve been through a lot, and it just makes sense for you not to be out here all alone, that’s all.”
“Cullen, no matter what y’all do, I’ll always be all alone. A dead husband, a dead son. Then there’s me. Ole Julia”—she began to get louder—“the queen of Sherwood Drive!”
“Are you on medication?” I asked bluntly, that being the first time I had ever had the nerve.
“Honey, I got more chemicals in me than a bottle of dishwashing liquid.” She laughed, and loudly, I might add.
“Gabriel used to say that you were the best cook in the world, did you know that?” I said.
“Did he?” She looked at the floor.
“Yeah. We used to fight over your cookies. And Dad would always come in and say, ‘Now, now, the only way to settle this is for me to eat the last one,’ and then he’d snatch it before we could stop him.” I laughed.
“Is that right?” she asked.
“That’s right. Have you been cooking much lately?” I asked, knowing the answer.
“Cullen, does it look like I’ve been doing anything lately?”
“Not really.”
“Then why ask?”
“Well, why not get back in the kitchen, then?” I said with fake enthusiasm.
“I forgot how to do it all. It’s been so long. I think what I need is to get ready for bed, and maybe you could just get that light right there”—she pointed to the kitchen switch—“on your way out.”
“You’ll call if you need anything?” I asked.
“I’ll call, baby.”
I had never before felt compelled to turn around and hug my aunt, but something made me do it, the same thing that makes people hold doors open for old ladies at the grocery store or stop and let people cross the road; things that felt regular and impersonal to those doing them, but meant the world to those on the receiving end. I wrapped my arms around her and held her to my chest. It was very quiet in the room, I remember because I could hear Aunt Julia’s breathing. As I walked out the door, she stood watching me from the living room, her arms limp at her sides, her shoulders slumped over, her face only half alive.
Book Title #83: The Mailman Always Peeps Twice.
Lucas Cader walked into my bedroom and sat down beside me on the floor the afternoon after my aunt Julia forced me to eat french fries. He had a grin on his face, but not the same kind of grin that he would have had before Gabriel left. This was sort of a forced elation, which we all seemed to be getting pretty good at.
“What is it?” I asked finally.
“I have big news from town.”
“What is it?”
“They got a picture of the bird this morning.”
“No way,” I said, almost actually interested.
“Yeah. John Barling, that son of a bitch, went out before the ass crack
of dawn and swears up and down that he has a photo of a real live, living, breathing Lazarus woodpecker.”
“Well, I’ll be damned, Lucas. Stop the presses, the world’s gonna be all right after all!” I said comically, standing up and slapping my knee.
“What I heard is that they’re going to unveil it at the festival next weekend,” Lucas said, standing up as well.
“Festival?”
“Oh, don’t tell me you haven’t heard about Lily’s own Woodpecker Festival!” Lucas shouted, slapping me on the back.
“You’ve got to be—”
“Nope. I’m dead serious. It’s in the paper, Cullen. Do you ever leave this room?”
“Not anymore.”
“You working today?”
“I quit.”
“You did what?” Lucas sat down on my bed.
“I called Ted this morning and I told him I wanted to quit.”
“Was he mad?” Lucas asked.
“No. He was all ‘I understand, son. You’ve been through a lot lately,’ and shit like that.”
“And your mom? Your dad?” Lucas asked.
“They’re too preoccupied to notice. Let’s keep it that way, okay?”
“Fine, but why’d you quit?” he kept on.
“Because every person who walks into the store isn’t my brother, and I can’t keep looking up every time that door goes ding and being disappointed.”
“Oh. Okay. Well, what now?”
“What now? Well, I’m gonna sit in this room until someone better-looking than you comes to pick me up, and then hopefully she’s gonna remind me of why I have hands and a mouth,” I said, half-seriously.
“You mean Ada, right?”
“Right.”
“She’s at Russell’s,” Lucas said, his expression nervous.
“The Quit Man’s?”
“Thought you were gonna stop calling him that,” Lucas stated plainly.
Every morning I would hear from my bedroom window the sound of John Barling slamming the Dumases’ front door, letting the screen door shut (tap tap tap), and, a few seconds later, cranking up his monstrosity of a truck and backing out the gravel drive. Fulton Dumas informed me one awkward day in the yard that John Barling had been sleeping in the guest room for some two and a half weeks. He also said that Barling stayed up all hours of the night, usually in the kitchen, flipping through books, listening to audio recordings of birdcalls, and speaking his notes into a handheld tape recorder. Fulton Dumas said that if John Barling didn’t find that bird soon and leave, he would personally slit his throat as he slept.
“Why wait?” I asked him, laughing.
“My mom used to think he was brilliant,” he answered. “I think she wants him to find the bird even though she hates his guts now.”
“Is he brilliant, you think?” I asked.
“He’s maybe the dumbest person I’ve ever met.”
Dr. Webb says that people like John Barling will always be looking for something, whether it’s a two-foot-tall woodpecker or the meaning of life; they are simply born and stay incomplete. And when I thought about it enough, I decided that maybe everyone I knew was looking for something in different ways. Lucas Cader looked for his lost brother in everyone he met, but in Gabriel and me in particular. Aunt Julia would, from then on, look for Oslo in the people she met. And like-wise, I assumed that my mom and dad would always look for Gabriel, both literally and figuratively speaking. And as for myself, well, I was still trying to find out who I was back then. Trying to figure out why I said and did the things I said and did. Trying to understand why I cried ten minutes after Lucas told me Ada was at Russell’s but never shed a tear when my cousin dropped dead. Wondering why I had written nearly ninety titles, but not one single book. Questioning why I couldn’t do a damn thing to bring my brother back, no matter how often I sat and tried to think of ways to do so.
When one is sitting on the floor of his bedroom and waiting for a girl to show up who might not show up at all, he begins to remember the last time he sat in church with his little brother. He remembers that after Reverend Wells’s sermon, the congregation began a discussion on the remaining funds needed to complete various and largely unnecessary renovations to the building. He remembers rolling his eyes, looking over at his mother, who was doing the same, and then whispering in his brother’s ear something very close to, “They shouldn’t discuss money here.” He then remembers, just as some ass-hat from the balcony shouts down the number “two thousand,” that his little brother, showing little hesitation, said loudly enough to be heard but not shouting, “Why don’t we give it to the poor?”
I walked into the living room to find my mom sitting alone and looking at a photo album the way a woman who has one missing child would do. I sat down beside her on the couch. She looked up at me with a sort of what-are-you-about-to-say-to-me-that-I-don’t-want-to-hear? look, and I began to speak.
“Why do you do this to yourself?” I asked.
“Because there’s nothing else I can do,” she answered quickly, as if she’d rehearsed it in her head.
“These are from last Christmas,” I said, pointing to one of me standing in front of the Christmas tree.
“There aren’t many of Gabe,” she said plainly.
“He’s camera shy,” I said back.
“I remember when we snuck into his room and took that picture of him sleeping just so I’d have something besides your school picture to put on the fridge,” she said, laughing.
“Yeah. He tried to convince me once that pictures steal part of your soul. He saw it on some documentary or something,” I said.
“That’s Gabe,” she said, shaking her head, “always coming up with something bizarre to freak us out.”
“It’s been eight weeks, Mom,” I said.
“It seems like so much longer, doesn’t it?”
“Seems like eight years,” I said quietly.
“We’ll be buying school supplies soon,” she said with a sigh.
I did not see Ada Taylor that day or the next one either. Instead I saw her car parked at the Quit Man’s house and saw red when I closed my eyes. I saw Lucas Cader trying his best to make me laugh as we drove past. I saw Mena Prescott telling me I was better off. I saw my mom and dad watching TV in their bedroom, wearing their pajamas at three p.m. I saw Fulton Dumas mowing his front lawn slowly, headphones attached to his head, his hair in tall spikes, his eyes glazed over with boredom.
Lily’s first annual Woodpecker Festival made me want to throw up in my mouth a little bit. I was only there because Lucas Cader had convinced me that it was a sure way of seeing Ada Taylor, who was becoming increasingly skilled at avoiding me and screening my phone calls. The festival took place where anything in Lily takes place: the city park. Let me give you a visual of this park. Two swing sets. One merry-go-round. Three slides, one metal and two plastic. One potentially dangerous seesaw. A set of multicolored monkey bars. A ditch full of elephant ear plants and soggy grass. And best of all, a hexagonal gazebo with white latticework and a steeple. This park is where I first learned not to trust kids holding handfuls of dirt and not to jump from things when dared.
For the Woodpecker Festival, metal trailers had been brought in from as far as Harrison, and they now enclosed the park in a full circle. In the center, near the gazebo, a wooden fence separated the passersby from horses giving rides for five bucks each and a small petting zoo complete with goats, deer, and one black-and-white calf. To the left of the animals was a trailer that folded out into a stage, where, when Lucas and I arrived, a herd of glittery young girls clogged and tapped in unison to a song about honky-tonk, whatever the hell that is. On both sides of the stage hung long, narrow banners with crude likenesses of the Lazarus and the words LILY LOVES THE BIRD.
The one thing I did like about small-town festivals was the food. And more specifically, the corn dogs. There is a certain uniqueness to a festival corn dog, an undeniable combination of grease and cornmeal, of hunger built up from ma
neuvering around the crowd, of anticipation from the fifteen-minute line. Mustard? No thanks. I like my corn dogs bare and thrown nonchalantly into a paper sleeve. I like to see how fast it takes me to talk myself into a second or third one. As I was waiting in line for corn dog number two, a small boy ran by me with a stick horse between his legs, shouting, “Ride ’em, cowboy!” I laughed.
“When I was a kid, I made many a mile on stick horses,” the man behind me said in my general direction.
“Is that right?” I asked, turning slightly around.
“Yep. Till I got a real one, and then it just wasn’t the same,” he said with a laugh, elbowing me in the shoulder.
I’d like to tell you that at that point I suddenly remembered a time when Gabriel came bouncing through the house on a stick horse, but that wouldn’t be true. I did, however, imagine it happening anyway as I waited there, staring down at the little boy with sweat dripping from his temples as he raised one hand up into the air, let out intermittent yelps, and then trotted away.
“Makes you glad you don’t have kids, huh?” the man behind me said.
“Yeah, I guess so,” I said back.
“My grandson’s about your age. What are you, fifteen or so?” he asked me.
“Seventeen,” I said blankly.
“Oh. You look young. Lucky. Hold on to that. One day you’ll appreciate it.”
“I bet,” I said before turning around to give my order.
Lucas Cader walked up to me as I sat on the steps of the gazebo, finishing corn dog number two and gazing over at the Baptist church choir performing on the stage. He sat down beside me, a burger in hand.
“These aren’t so bad, really,” he said.
“What?”
“Lazarus Burger,” he said.
“Good Lord.”
“Shut up. Festival’s not so bad, is it?” Lucas asked.
“Not so good, either,” I said.
“Well, have you seen her yet?” he asked.
“Ada? No. Have you?”
“No. But I saw Russell. He’s over there, by the face-painting booth.” Lucas pointed across the way to a small table surrounded by children that had been set up by my church.