Chapter Two
“Where’d you go this morning, Brian?” Brandon asked him finally, when both of them were a little calmer.
“Oh, nowhere much,” he replied, still not wanting to say too much about the amulet.
“Yes you did. I saw you cross the pasture and you was gone forever,” Brandon contradicted. Brian shook his head and sighed. So much for secrecy.
“I had to go up to the Rock for a little while, bubba, that’s all,” he said. That was all Brandon really needed to know.
“Well, you stayed gone too long. Mama was mad cause you left and didn’t tell her,” Brandon told him. Brian tasted a fresh surge of guilt when he heard that.
“I’m sorry, bubba. I won’t do that anymore, okay?” he promised. Brian figured a little humility never hurt anybody, and Brandon smiled.
Before either of them could say anything else, they were both startled by the sound of the front door slamming, followed by Mama’s old green Monte Carlo spinning out of the pothole it had made in the driveway.
Brian glanced out the window just in time to see the car turn left at the end of the driveway, and then he knew without a doubt where she was headed. That was the way to the nearest liquor store, twenty miles away at the county line, and also the way to the nearest bar if Mama felt like venturing a little farther afield. That meant she wouldn’t be back for at least an hour or two, maybe not even for the rest of the day if they were lucky. Brian felt a weight slip off his shoulders as he watched her leave, even though he knew what it probably meant for later.
The rain was falling heavily now, and it looked like it meant to keep on for a while this time. That was just fine with Brian, now that Mama was gone. He meant to catch up on some sleep for a few hours, if he could only convince Brandon to do the same. If Mama came home drunk again later on and started trouble, there was no telling how late it might be before she let them go to bed.
Of course, it was always possible she’d meet somebody interesting at the bar and stay out till midnight or maybe even all night long, but that was no sure thing. Brian knew better than to count on it.
So he found a more comfortable position in the chair, and started rocking while they watched the rain together. Before long, Brandon laid his head down on Brian’s shoulder and his thumb crept slowly toward his mouth, a sure sign of sleepiness. Brian slipped an arm around and gently dislodged the thumb, but Brandon wasn’t nearly asleep just yet and put it right back.
“Sing me a song, Brian,” he asked suddenly. This was a normal request, and Brian didn’t mind. Music was a thing that came naturally to a boy who spent so much time alone. He’d found an old guitar in the attic a few years ago and learned to play it by ear, but he had a good singing voice, too; a high treble that hadn’t quite started to change yet. He would have died a thousand deaths before letting anybody else hear him sing, but for Brandon he didn’t mind.
So Brian sang softly for a while, an old song he remembered from church and which both of them had always loved, especially the last verse:
Oh, they tell me that He smiles on His children there,
And His smile takes their sorrows away,
And they tell me that no tears ever come again,
In that lovely land of unclouded day,
By the time he finished the song Brandon was asleep. The thumb had fallen out of his mouth, leaving a thin thread of slobber stretching from his lip to his hand. Brian carefully pushed his mouth shut so he wouldn’t get drooled on, and that was that.
The back of the rocker was high enough for Brian to rest his own head there, so he did. After a while, the wind shifted around to the south, blowing the rain in heavy sheets against the windowpanes and blocking most of his view. Brian closed his eyes, and before long he was fast asleep, too.
He slept for several hours, until finally the discomfort of sitting in the rocker woke him up. It was still raining a little, but other than that the house was silent. Brian listened carefully for the sound of the TV or anything else that might tip him off that Mama had made it back home, but there was nothing.
He yawned, and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes with balled fists. His neck ached from sleeping in such an odd position for too long, and the rest of him wasn’t too comfortable, either. He wanted to stand up and stretch his legs. He carefully got up from the chair and laid Brandon on the bed without waking him, and then rubbed the back of his neck to ease the cramp.
As soon as that was done he padded downstairs to get a drink of water and possibly clean up the kitchen while he still had time. He knew Mama would be furious if she got home and found it still dirty, and she might show up at any moment. She’d been gone for hours already. He almost dared to hope that maybe she really would stay out all night this time. He knew it was almost too good to be true, but you never could tell.
He went to the screen door and peered outside at the rain. It had slacked off to a slow drizzle again while he slept, and there were heavy wisps of smoky white mist drifting across the face of the mountains in the distance. It made them look dreamlike and insubstantial, like a country in some fairy tale he’d never heard before but would have very much liked to hear. They were called the Crystal Range, and the name only made them seem even more mysterious and beautiful than they already were. Brian watched them for a few minutes, eyes unfocused, lost in thought. Many times, he’d looked at those distant mountains and wished he could run away to some shining land where there were no tears and no miseries, where fathers never disappeared, and mothers never gave their children black eyes, and all things were forever bright and beautiful. It was perhaps the dearest and deepest wish of his heart.
He knew it was nothing but a childish daydream, of course, and for a long time he’d told himself it was foolishness even to wish for such things. The world didn’t work that way, and it was no use to break his heart with longing for things that could never be. So he’d told himself, many more times than he could ever remember, until he’d come to believe it for the most part.
Still, he was a little sad when he turned away from the mist-shrouded mountains, and no amount of reasoning about the way the world worked could quite shake it loose. He’d never spoken of these things to anyone; it was simply his own private sorrow, always there in the back of his mind but seldom thought of anymore.
He sighed, and turned his attention to cleaning up the mess in the kitchen instead. That was something practical he could think about, instead of empty pipe dreams.
He grabbed a wet dishrag from the sink and mopped up the meatball, which had somehow gotten crushed since earlier and was now smeared greasily across the floor in a long maroon trail. The empty vodka bottle by the refrigerator was quickly thrown in the trash, and he was in the middle of sweeping up the beer and cigarette butts when he suddenly realized there was no reason why he should have to work so hard.
He glanced at the stairs and listened, to make certain Brandon was still asleep. He hadn’t seemed to think much about what Brian had done to his eye, but the less he saw, the better. Brian stealthily touched the amulet, then closed his eyes and imagined the kitchen to be spotlessly clean. He wasn’t sure whether it was really necessary to keep his eyes shut or not, but it did help him form a clearer image of what he wanted, and surely that helped, didn’t it?
When he looked again, no one would ever have guessed the kitchen had ever been messy. Not a speck or a stain was on anything, almost like someone had scrubbed the whole room with a toothbrush.
Brian smiled with satisfaction and then headed back up to his room. It always made him vaguely uneasy to be down there in Mama’s territory for very long, even when she wasn’t home. Now that his work was done, he was ready to be upstairs again.
The room he shared with Brandon was the second one on the left hand side at the top of the stairs, and besides the attic, it was Brian’s only real refuge. Mama did have obscure scruples at times, and one of them was that she let him do pret
ty much whatever he liked with his room.
On the wall above his bed was a tattered picture of his grandfather, and on the back of the door was a height chart for Brandon and a faded copy of the Ten Commandments. A single goldfish swam lazily in a glass bowl on top of Brandon’s toy chest. In the corner was a dirty-clothes box that had once held Washington apples, and just above it a big red crayon scribble that he’d never been able to scrub off the wall. Other than that, everything was as spotless as Brian could make it. He liked order and stability in his world, and this was one of the few places he could make it happen.
On the desk was an old steel buck knife with his grandpa’s initials, SDG, carved deep into the base of the blade; a parting gift from the old man not long before he’d passed away. On the wall behind it hung a cork board with a collection of photos pinned neatly side by side; mostly of Brian or Brandon, of course, with a handful of Grandpa Stephen or Aunt Carolyn, plus a few of Mama and Daddy back when they were still together.
Besides the bed and the desk, the only other piece of furniture was the big antique rocking chair. Brian had salvaged it from the dump a few months ago with one of the arms broken in half, but he’d fixed that by binding it tightly with half a spool of yarn, and then he’d wrapped the other arm so it would match. It was still a little wobbly, but not too bad.
Brandon was still sleeping, so Brian sat down in the rocker and soon fell to daydreaming about Spring in the mountain meadow, and all the great things he might do in the world.
He still had the hole in his shirt from climbing through the fence that morning, and it crossed his mind that it might be worthwhile to try fixing it. He wasn’t worried about holding the amulet away from his body anymore; he simply let it rest against his chest. The metal had quickly picked up his body heat and lay almost unnoticed against his skin, just a round flattened lump under his t-shirt.
He traced the shape of it with his forefinger, and then with a silent wish he sealed up the hole in his shirt. He reached behind his back to make certain it was really gone, and his hand met nothing but smooth fabric. He nodded with satisfaction.
He glanced again at Brandon, but the boy still seemed dead to the world for the time being. Cleaning the kitchen had put Brian in the mood to try something else, but he was still afraid to be too obvious about it. So, what to do?
A tiny fleck of paint on one of the windowpanes caught his eye, and with a snap of his fingers it was gone. The windowsill was already as clean as he could scrub it, but upon further inspection he decided it still lacked something. He erased the paint off the surface and polished the wood underneath so that it almost glowed. Brian contemplated this change for a second, then dyed the faded curtains a rich midnight blue, at the same time mending every tiny run and spot-hole.
The colorful window was in such contrast to the rest of the room that Brian decided to go a little farther, just to see how it would look. He could always put it back the way it was.
He turned his attention to the wallpaper, which was cracked and peeling in spots. Some of the places were discreetly patched with scotch tape, but Brian thought that looked pathetic now. He soon fixed the problem, restoring the paper to like-new condition. He bleached the fly-specked ceiling to bright white, and polished the hardwood floor, too. He sealed up a rip in the mattress where stuffing was coming out, and fixed the tatters in Papaw’s picture. Soon, the brass doorknob glittered like gold, every piece of clothing in the closet became brand new, and the fishbowl turned sparkling clear. Even the goldfish looked bigger and brighter than ever before. Within minutes, Brian had changed the room utterly, and he could hardly contain his pleasure.
He knew it couldn’t stay like that, of course, and with a disappointed sigh he changed everything back the way it had been before. Almost. He didn’t undo the floor polish or the new curtains, and he didn’t dirty the fishbowl or dull the goldfish. He also left Papaw’s picture alone. He thought those things were small enough that they wouldn’t be noticed, and if somebody did notice then he could explain them pretty easily. In fact, if he was slow and careful enough, he thought he might even fix up the whole house little by little when Mama wasn’t paying attention.
He had high hopes.