***"No, not here to visit. Not visiting at all." The pallor of the man's skin was not the white of poor health, nor the pink of wellness, but more and more as I stared, transfixed, it took on the gray of mausoleum walls and head stones. His eyes focused sharply on my own, one definitely yellow and the other white with cataract. "Not visiting at all."***
My mom said she was going to Connecticut and taking my little sister with her. Fine by me. I haven't had much time to myself between the nonsense of graduating high school and moving to Todt Hill, and quite frankly I'm not trustworthy. At least that's what Donna said before she pulled out of the driveway in the station wagon. I stood there for almost a full minute watching her drive away. Not that the road was that long, but the driveway we have now is laughable. Personally I can't stand it. I used to be able to sit on the front steps and watch the girls soccer team run down the street in Brighton, but now I can't even see the road. The hedges are as tall as I am. Honestly the girls were half the fun, the other half was spitting into traffic.
"So Scum, it's you and me," though I would under other circumstances have the whole place to myself I am graced with the presence of my step brother Ben. He is much more comfortable leaning against the columns of our mile wide porch than me. "You, me, and this shit hole."
"It's not a shit hole, Ben," a jacket would have been a good choice this morning, but the walk to my bedroom on the second floor was about ten minutes too long.
"It is a shit hole. Smoke?" No thanks. I didn't have to say it and he never offered anything twice. He was on the border of grad school but was taking a few years off to clear his head. Whatever that meant. "You should come to the real city some time." He lit up. That was the one offertory exception. In fact every time they ran into each other inside the house the only thing he talked about was downtown Manhattan. "Don't you ever get tired of Staten Island?" Smoke from his mouth blew across my face, but I didn't really care. I thought I saw another car at the end of the winding driveway, but there was nothing but a scampering dog.
"Yeah, I do once in a while. Sometimes." Mimicking his casual lean in the breeze, I realized there was no way he could be comfortable.
"You should leave. Just go," his voice was a stupefying mix of serenity and angst, as if the Catcher in the Rye hatched a baby and the baby turned out to be the lead singer of a 50s folk group. "Do whatever the fuck you want, you know?" I didn't know, but there was nothing wrong with make believe.
"Fuck yeah," the words didn't feel right, but he nods approval so I quit while I was ahead. Niether one of us were big talkers. I hardly knew him, and he definitely did not know me. His dad was an officer of the court downtown. He also had a hard on for my mom. I stopped caring how they met, or about age differences, or about any of the intervening details when I realized that no one at school cared either way. Not that being noticed was that big of a deal, but I'm more or less certain I passed through high school quieter than a fart through silk drapes.
"How's school, Scum?"
"My name's Scranton."
"How's fucking school, Scum?" The floor boards of the long porch deck groaned as Ben climbed the second set of front steps and began to walk along its length, brushing cob webs off of never used sun chairs and plucking the few withered black berries off of the black vines curling around the wooden railings at the porches edge.
"My name's Scranton, Ben." I didn't pick the name. Donna was not the most creative person in the world. She didn't even know she was pregnant until I was practically falling out of her. I'm not sure I could have thought of a better name than the town I was in were I in a similar circumstance. "Could you pretend for a minute that we are actually related."
"Don't think so, Scum. You're only related to my dad's bank account. I don't know what he sees in Donna."
"Neither do I." Normally I would have thought about going to my room and turning on my stereo loud enough to make my ears bleed in lieu of fantasizing about punching him in the mouth, but that stairwell was not looking any more appealing a trip to make. Plus he did have something of a point.
"You know, he was supposed to be here. That's the only reason I'm here visiting. He called off at the last minute. I'm leaving tomorrow, just so you know. I already bought the ticket at the airport when I landed."
"Did you tell my mom?"
"Would you bother telling Donna, Scum?" All at once, it was as if Ben materialized at my elbow, leaning against the column like he never left. "Who'd she go visit anyway?"
"She went to grandmas in Connecticut."
"Grandma doesn't live in Connecticut, Scum."
"Your grandma doesn't. Mine does."
"Fuck her," it wasn't as much of a slap in the face as that kind of thing used to be. I learned to ignore it way before Ben came along.
"Yeah." He lit up another cigarette. "Chain smoking kills." I suppose the main goal was to have some space to myself. In that, I found success in Ben's once again receding footsteps. The planks moaned their welcome and the screen door heralded his entrance to the sagging ramparts. With no more focus than I had before I walked in the short grass by the porches edge, allowing my fingers to run along the criss crossing fence of the crawl space that came up to my chest. I hadn't noticed before, but it struck me that the grass never seemed, or at least not since my mom, sis and I moved in, to need cutting.
The sound of a throaty V-8 caught my attention, but glancing as far as I could see there was nothing more than the meadow that wrapped around the entire 20 acre property and the winding driveway to the hedge rows and more sunlight than I cared to take in at a single go. My gaze fell back to the black diamonds of darkness in the criss crossing fence and the stubbly blades of grass. And a glimmer of something I did not notice on my first patrol around the house when I first got there. Kicking it I realized it had to be metal.
"What's the address here, Scum?" Ben's voice drifted down from behind the porches overhanging roof and I couldn't tell if it was from the third floor, the attic, or the second floor where my new bedroom was.
"Suck a nail."
"Fuck you, Scum. Okay?" I didn't really know how to answer that. Ben always had a look on his face like someone with a talent for argument, and I did not doubt for a second that he was firing that look as hard as he could hoping I walked into the line of arcing tracers. I bent instead to investigate the object further. Peeling it from the flat, almost furry, blades of stumpy grass it had a heft like a gym free weight and a long handle. It was a hatchet, covered in rust for the most part. The handle was wrapped in a leather thong, looped over and over itself, but it was so old the leather was beginning to crack. Running my fingers over it some of the rust flaked, but it didn't smell like iron as much as it smelled like decay. I kept at it until I got down to bare metal. I even used my shirt for a little while to buff it, but all said and done I only cleaned a square inch of the blunt edge of the blade. Still discolored, I buffed it some more, but the color remained. It wasn't rust or mud. Still, it was the coolest thing I'd come across since my step dad bought Donna this place.
Sometimes I wonder why here of all places. Todt Hill was supposed to be the place you moved to in Richmond county, but none of the properties looked like this. Not in my imagination at least. Brighton was tops when it came to friends and school. I suppose I'm grateful he waited to buy her this place until I got out of high school. Or maybe that was just coincidence. I'm no fan of hers, but I don't think she would plan something so cruel as a mid school shift to another district. In fact I don't think she's planned a day in her life.
My thoughts snapped out of focus as a twig broke in the driveway dozens of yards off beneath the tires of a car. I don't know why I did it, but I dropped the hatchet and kicked it into the darkness beneath the crawl space's fence. The car was a big, low, blue sedan and as it rumbled nearer up the pebbly crumbling pavement of the winding driveway I could see it was a pale blue Cadillac deVille, its wide grill swinging one way and then the other as it drew nearer. The headlights were on, but only one side was lit. Like a blue pendulum it rolled and drew into the turn about at the end of the walk in front of the porch and the brakes gave off a high pitched and short lived squeal, reigning in its ponderous mass.
The driver side door squalched open and the suspension rose noticeably as a man in nothing less than a top hat rose from the door frame. "Ben!" I called, hopefully loud enough to raise him without sounding off the panic that immediately clamped itself around my belly. "Ben, did you call somebody to come visit?" The tall man strode around the lengthy nose of the Cadillac. He had the stride of a man used to the accompaniment of a thin brass handled walking stick, though he had none. His shoulders hunched uncomfortably close to his narrow chest, but his sparsely bearded face did not show any signs of malcontent. I began to walk toward the tan walkway, but my own halting gait quickly dissolved to a stand still as the man's footsteps reeled in the intervening distance with the speed of spider legs to wisps of cobweb.
He stood several heads taller than me and the sun cast his shadow over my face like an aged oak casts its shadow over a patch of fresh moss. "This used to a be a fair grounds." The man's voice had the timber of autumn leaves sweeping through a gutter though the season was well into the freshness of spring. "Did you know that?"
"No." What courage I mustered came out of my throat like the peep of a chickling.
The man clasped his hands cooly before him. He was dressed head to toe in a gray suit that held the crispness of something saved for a special occasion that never quite made it to fruition. The tall hat that stood on his bushy brow stood like a grim castle tower, silent and full of reprehensible and unspoken atrocities, though his eyes were clear of all emotion. "Before the landfill. Years before. Do you remember that? No? Well it was the most beautiful thing." A long line of yellowing teeth peeked out from beneath his clean shaven upper lip as he smiled. "Before your time, I hazard. This house was not even a drawing then. Unborn." He craned his neck upward, taking the not quite geometric designs of the thing at my back. "Looks like they've even filled in the land fill. Used to be refuse as far as a man dared to look."
"My mom's not here. Are you here to visit?" Speeding him on his way seemed the most reasonable thing to do.
"No, not here to visit. Not visiting at all." The pallor of the man's skin was not the white of poor health, nor the pink of wellness, but more and more as I stared, transfixed, it took on the gray of mausoleum walls and head stones. His eyes focused sharply on my own, one definitely yellow and the other white with cataract. "Not visiting at all." Like the long dusty lace curtains draped across the bay windows of the sun parlor in the rear of the house he turned and methodically retraced each of his steps. Pausing one last time to gaze again at the clustered and darkened windows of the facade, he climbed into the drivers side of the blue deVille. Part of me stood in wonder that so much length of human being could fold and slide inside a space as claustrophobic as that drivers seat. The V-8 coughed to life with low burble and the pop and grind of the wide white walled tires crunched into the distance, the pale blue cadillac snaking away toward the distant hedge rows and for the second time that day I stood and counted the seconds, only this time my heart beat in my temples.
"You should come to the real city sometime, Scum." Ben was once again at my elbow.
"What?"
"You heard me."
"Where were you? Did you see," I trailed into silence.
"See what?"
My mom said she was going to Connecticut and taking my little sister with her. Fine by me. I haven't had much time to myself between the nonsense of graduating high school and moving to Todt Hill, and quite frankly I'm not trustworthy. At least that's what Donna said before she pulled out of the driveway in the station wagon. I stood there for almost a full minute watching her drive away. Not that the road was that long, but the driveway we have now is laughable. Personally I can't stand it. I used to be able to sit on the front steps and watch the girls soccer team run down the street in Brighton, but now I can't even see the road. The hedges are as tall as I am. Honestly the girls were half the fun, the other half was spitting into traffic.
"So Scum, it's you and me," though I would under other circumstances have the whole place to myself I am graced with the presence of my step brother Ben. He is much more comfortable leaning against the columns of our mile wide porch than me. "You, me, and this shit hole."
"It's not a shit hole, Ben," a jacket would have been a good choice this morning, but the walk to my bedroom on the second floor was about ten minutes too long.
"It is a shit hole. Smoke?" No thanks. I didn't have to say it and he never offered anything twice. He was on the border of grad school but was taking a few years off to clear his head. Whatever that meant. "You should come to the real city some time." He lit up. That was the one offertory exception. In fact every time they ran into each other inside the house the only thing he talked about was downtown Manhattan. "Don't you ever get tired of Staten Island?" Smoke from his mouth blew across my face, but I didn't really care. I thought I saw another car at the end of the winding driveway, but there was nothing but a scampering dog.
"Yeah, I do once in a while. Sometimes." Mimicking his casual lean in the breeze, I realized there was no way he could be comfortable.
"You should leave. Just go," his voice was a stupefying mix of serenity and angst, as if the Catcher in the Rye hatched a baby and the baby turned out to be the lead singer of a 50s folk group. "Do whatever the fuck you want, you know?" I didn't know, but there was nothing wrong with make believe.
"Fuck yeah," the words didn't feel right, but he nods approval so I quit while I was ahead. Niether one of us were big talkers. I hardly knew him, and he definitely did not know me. His dad was an officer of the court downtown. He also had a hard on for my mom. I stopped caring how they met, or about age differences, or about any of the intervening details when I realized that no one at school cared either way. Not that being noticed was that big of a deal, but I'm more or less certain I passed through high school quieter than a fart through silk drapes.
"How's school, Scum?"
"My name's Scranton."
"How's fucking school, Scum?" The floor boards of the long porch deck groaned as Ben climbed the second set of front steps and began to walk along its length, brushing cob webs off of never used sun chairs and plucking the few withered black berries off of the black vines curling around the wooden railings at the porches edge.
"My name's Scranton, Ben." I didn't pick the name. Donna was not the most creative person in the world. She didn't even know she was pregnant until I was practically falling out of her. I'm not sure I could have thought of a better name than the town I was in were I in a similar circumstance. "Could you pretend for a minute that we are actually related."
"Don't think so, Scum. You're only related to my dad's bank account. I don't know what he sees in Donna."
"Neither do I." Normally I would have thought about going to my room and turning on my stereo loud enough to make my ears bleed in lieu of fantasizing about punching him in the mouth, but that stairwell was not looking any more appealing a trip to make. Plus he did have something of a point.
"You know, he was supposed to be here. That's the only reason I'm here visiting. He called off at the last minute. I'm leaving tomorrow, just so you know. I already bought the ticket at the airport when I landed."
"Did you tell my mom?"
"Would you bother telling Donna, Scum?" All at once, it was as if Ben materialized at my elbow, leaning against the column like he never left. "Who'd she go visit anyway?"
"She went to grandmas in Connecticut."
"Grandma doesn't live in Connecticut, Scum."
"Your grandma doesn't. Mine does."
"Fuck her," it wasn't as much of a slap in the face as that kind of thing used to be. I learned to ignore it way before Ben came along.
"Yeah." He lit up another cigarette. "Chain smoking kills." I suppose the main goal was to have some space to myself. In that, I found success in Ben's once again receding footsteps. The planks moaned their welcome and the screen door heralded his entrance to the sagging ramparts. With no more focus than I had before I walked in the short grass by the porches edge, allowing my fingers to run along the criss crossing fence of the crawl space that came up to my chest. I hadn't noticed before, but it struck me that the grass never seemed, or at least not since my mom, sis and I moved in, to need cutting.
The sound of a throaty V-8 caught my attention, but glancing as far as I could see there was nothing more than the meadow that wrapped around the entire 20 acre property and the winding driveway to the hedge rows and more sunlight than I cared to take in at a single go. My gaze fell back to the black diamonds of darkness in the criss crossing fence and the stubbly blades of grass. And a glimmer of something I did not notice on my first patrol around the house when I first got there. Kicking it I realized it had to be metal.
"What's the address here, Scum?" Ben's voice drifted down from behind the porches overhanging roof and I couldn't tell if it was from the third floor, the attic, or the second floor where my new bedroom was.
"Suck a nail."
"Fuck you, Scum. Okay?" I didn't really know how to answer that. Ben always had a look on his face like someone with a talent for argument, and I did not doubt for a second that he was firing that look as hard as he could hoping I walked into the line of arcing tracers. I bent instead to investigate the object further. Peeling it from the flat, almost furry, blades of stumpy grass it had a heft like a gym free weight and a long handle. It was a hatchet, covered in rust for the most part. The handle was wrapped in a leather thong, looped over and over itself, but it was so old the leather was beginning to crack. Running my fingers over it some of the rust flaked, but it didn't smell like iron as much as it smelled like decay. I kept at it until I got down to bare metal. I even used my shirt for a little while to buff it, but all said and done I only cleaned a square inch of the blunt edge of the blade. Still discolored, I buffed it some more, but the color remained. It wasn't rust or mud. Still, it was the coolest thing I'd come across since my step dad bought Donna this place.
Sometimes I wonder why here of all places. Todt Hill was supposed to be the place you moved to in Richmond county, but none of the properties looked like this. Not in my imagination at least. Brighton was tops when it came to friends and school. I suppose I'm grateful he waited to buy her this place until I got out of high school. Or maybe that was just coincidence. I'm no fan of hers, but I don't think she would plan something so cruel as a mid school shift to another district. In fact I don't think she's planned a day in her life.
My thoughts snapped out of focus as a twig broke in the driveway dozens of yards off beneath the tires of a car. I don't know why I did it, but I dropped the hatchet and kicked it into the darkness beneath the crawl space's fence. The car was a big, low, blue sedan and as it rumbled nearer up the pebbly crumbling pavement of the winding driveway I could see it was a pale blue Cadillac deVille, its wide grill swinging one way and then the other as it drew nearer. The headlights were on, but only one side was lit. Like a blue pendulum it rolled and drew into the turn about at the end of the walk in front of the porch and the brakes gave off a high pitched and short lived squeal, reigning in its ponderous mass.
The driver side door squalched open and the suspension rose noticeably as a man in nothing less than a top hat rose from the door frame. "Ben!" I called, hopefully loud enough to raise him without sounding off the panic that immediately clamped itself around my belly. "Ben, did you call somebody to come visit?" The tall man strode around the lengthy nose of the Cadillac. He had the stride of a man used to the accompaniment of a thin brass handled walking stick, though he had none. His shoulders hunched uncomfortably close to his narrow chest, but his sparsely bearded face did not show any signs of malcontent. I began to walk toward the tan walkway, but my own halting gait quickly dissolved to a stand still as the man's footsteps reeled in the intervening distance with the speed of spider legs to wisps of cobweb.
He stood several heads taller than me and the sun cast his shadow over my face like an aged oak casts its shadow over a patch of fresh moss. "This used to a be a fair grounds." The man's voice had the timber of autumn leaves sweeping through a gutter though the season was well into the freshness of spring. "Did you know that?"
"No." What courage I mustered came out of my throat like the peep of a chickling.
The man clasped his hands cooly before him. He was dressed head to toe in a gray suit that held the crispness of something saved for a special occasion that never quite made it to fruition. The tall hat that stood on his bushy brow stood like a grim castle tower, silent and full of reprehensible and unspoken atrocities, though his eyes were clear of all emotion. "Before the landfill. Years before. Do you remember that? No? Well it was the most beautiful thing." A long line of yellowing teeth peeked out from beneath his clean shaven upper lip as he smiled. "Before your time, I hazard. This house was not even a drawing then. Unborn." He craned his neck upward, taking the not quite geometric designs of the thing at my back. "Looks like they've even filled in the land fill. Used to be refuse as far as a man dared to look."
"My mom's not here. Are you here to visit?" Speeding him on his way seemed the most reasonable thing to do.
"No, not here to visit. Not visiting at all." The pallor of the man's skin was not the white of poor health, nor the pink of wellness, but more and more as I stared, transfixed, it took on the gray of mausoleum walls and head stones. His eyes focused sharply on my own, one definitely yellow and the other white with cataract. "Not visiting at all." Like the long dusty lace curtains draped across the bay windows of the sun parlor in the rear of the house he turned and methodically retraced each of his steps. Pausing one last time to gaze again at the clustered and darkened windows of the facade, he climbed into the drivers side of the blue deVille. Part of me stood in wonder that so much length of human being could fold and slide inside a space as claustrophobic as that drivers seat. The V-8 coughed to life with low burble and the pop and grind of the wide white walled tires crunched into the distance, the pale blue cadillac snaking away toward the distant hedge rows and for the second time that day I stood and counted the seconds, only this time my heart beat in my temples.
"You should come to the real city sometime, Scum." Ben was once again at my elbow.
"What?"
"You heard me."
"Where were you? Did you see," I trailed into silence.
"See what?"
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