Lisey’sStory Read online

  “Are you talking about self-mutilation, Scott?”

  He shrugs, as if unsure. She is unsure, as well. She has seen him naked, after all. He has a few scars, but only a few.

  “Blood-bools?” she asks.

  This time he’s more positive. “Blood-bools, yeah.”

  “That night when you stuck your hand through the greenhouse glass, were you letting out the bad-gunky?”

  “I suppose. Sure. In a way.” He stubs his cigarette in the grass. He takes a long time, and doesn’t look at her while he does it. “It’s complicated. You have to remember how terrible I felt that night, a lot of things had been piling up—”

  “I should never have—”

  “No,” he says, “let me finish. I can only say this once.”

  She stills.

  “I was drunk, I was feeling terrible, and I hadn’t let it out—it—in a long time. I hadn’t had to. Mostly because of you, Lisey.”

  Lisey has a sister who went through an alarming bout of self-mutilation in her early twenties. Amanda’s past all that now—thank God—but she bears the scars, mostly high on her inner arms and thighs. “Scott, if you’ve been cutting yourself, shouldn’t you have scars—”

  It’s as if he hasn’t heard her. “Then last spring, long after I thought he’d shut up for good, I be good-goddam if he didn’t start up talking to me again. ‘It runs in you, Scoot,’ I’d hear him say. ‘It runs in your blood just like a sweetmother. Don’t it?’”

  “Who, Scott? Who started talking to you?” Knowing it’s either Paul or his father, and probably not Paul.

  “Daddy. He says, ‘Scooter, if you want to be righteous, you better let that bad-gunky out. Get after it, now, don’t smuckin wait.’ So I did. Little…little…” He makes small cutting gestures—one on his cheek, one on his arm—to illustrate. “Then that night, when you were mad…” He shrugs. “I got after the rest. Over and done with. Over and out. And we ’us fine. We ’us fine. Tell you one thing, I’d bleed myself dry like a hog on a chain before I’d hurt you. Before I’d ever hurt you.” His face draws down in an expression of contempt she has never seen before. “I ain’t never yet been like him. My Daddy.” And then, almost spitting it: “Fuckin Mister Sparky.”

  She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t dare. Isn’t sure she could, anyway. For the first time in months she wonders how he could cut his hand so badly and have so little scarring. Surely it isn’t possible. She thinks: His hand wasn’t just cut; his hand was mangled.

  Scott, meanwhile, has lit another Herbert Tareyton with hands that are shaking just the smallest bit. “I’ll tell you a story,” he says. “Just one story, and let it stand for all the stories of a certain man’s childhood. Because stories are what I do.” He looks at the rising cigarette smoke. “I net them from the pool. I’ve told you about the pool, right?”

  “Yes, Scott. Where we all go down to drink.”

  “Yep. And cast our nets. Sometimes the really brave fisherfolk—the Austens, the Dostoevskys, the Faulkners—even launch boats and go out to where the big ones swim, but that pool is tricky. It’s bigger than it looks, it’s deeper than any man can tell, and it changes its aspect, especially after dark.”

  She says nothing to this. His hand slips around her neck. At some point it steals inside her unzipped parka to cup her breast. Not out of lust, she’s quite sure; for comfort.

  “All right,” he says. “Story-time. Close your eyes, little Lisey.”

  She closes them. For a moment all is dark as well as silent under the yum-yum tree, but she isn’t afraid; there’s the smell of him and the bulk of him beside her; there’s the feel of his hand, currently resting on the rod of her collarbone. He could choke her easily with that hand, but she doesn’t need him to tell her he’d never hurt her, at least not physically; this is just a thing Lisey knows. He will cause her pain, yes, but mostly with his mouth. His everlasting mouth.

  “All right,” says the man she will marry in less than a month. “This story might have four parts. Part One is called ‘Scooter on the Bench.’

  “Once upon a time there was a boy, a skinny little frightened boy named Scott, only when his Daddy got in the bad-gunky and cutting himself wasn’t enough to let it out, his Daddy called him Scooter. And one day—one bad, mad day—the little boy stood up on a high place, looking down at a polished wooden plain far below, and watching as his brother’s blood

  8

  runs slowly along the crack between two boards.

  —Jump, his father tells him. Not for the first time, either.—Jump, you little bastard, you sweetmother chickenkike, jump right now!

  —Daddy, I’m afraid! It’s too high!

  —It’s not and I don’t give a shit if you’re afraid or not, you smucking jump or I’ll make you sorry and your buddy sorrier, now paratroops over the side!

  Daddy pauses a moment, looking around, eyeballs shifting the way they do when he gets in the bad-gunky, almost ticking from side to side, then he looks back at the three-year-old who stands trembling on the long bench in the front hall of the big old dilapidated farmhouse with its million puffing drafts. Stands there with his back pressed against the stenciled leaves on the pink wall of this farmhouse far out in the country where people mind their own business.

  —You can say Geronimo if you want to, Scoot. They say sometimes that helps. If you scream it real loud when you jump out of the plane.

  So Scott does, he will take any help he can get, he screams GEROMINO!—which isn’t quite right and doesn’t help anyway because he still can’t jump off the bench to the polished wooden floor-plain so far below.

  —Ahhhh, sweet-smockin chicken-kikin Christ.

  Daddy yanks Paul forward. Paul is six now, six going on seven, he is tall and his hair is a darkish blond, long in front and on the sides, he needs a haircut, needs to go see Mr. Baumer at the barbershop in Martensburg, Mr. Baumer with the elk’s head on his wall and the faded decal in his window that shows a Merican flag and says I SERVED, but it will be awhile before they go near Martensburg and Scott knows it. They don’t go to town when Daddy is in the bad-gunky and Daddy won’t even go to work for awhile because this is his vacation from U.S. Gyppum.

  Paul has blue eyes and Scott loves him more than anyone, more than he loves himself. This morning Paul’s arms are covered with blood, crisscrossed with cuts, and now Daddy goes to his pocketknife again, the hateful pocketknife that has drunk so much of their blood, and raises it up to catch the morning sun. Daddy came downstairs yelling for them, yelling—Bool! Bool! Get in here, you two! If the bool’s on Paul he cuts Scott and if the bool’s on Scott he cuts Paul. Even in the bad-gunky Daddy understands love.

  —You gonna jump you coward or am I gonna have to cut him again?

  —Don’t, Daddy! Scott shrieks.—Please don’t cut ’im no more, I’ll jump!

  —Then do so! Daddy’s top lip rolls back to show his teeth. His eyes roll in their sockets, they roll roll roll like he’s looking for folks in the corners, and maybe he is, prolly he is, because sometimes they hear him talking to folks who ain’t there. Sometimes Scott and his brother call them the Bad-Gunky Folks and sometimes the Bloody Bool People.

  —You do it, Scooter! You do it, you ole Scoot! Yell Geronimo and then paratroops over the side! No cowardy kikes in this family! Right now!

  —GEROMINO! he yells, and although his feet tremble and his legs jerk, he still can’t make himself jump. Cowardy legs, cowardy kike legs. Daddy doesn’t give him another chance. Daddy cuts deep into Paul’s arm and the blood falls down in a sheet. Some goes on Paul’s shorts and some goes on his sneaks and most goes on the floor. Paul grimaces but doesn’t cry out. His eyes beg Scott to make it stop, but his mouth stays shut. His mouth will not beg.

  At U.S. Gypsum (which the boys call U.S. Gyppum because it’s what their Daddy calls it) the men call Andrew Landon Sparky or sometimes Mister Sparks. Now his face looms over Paul’s shoulder and his fluff of whitening hair stands up as if all the lectricity he works
with has gotten inside of him and his crooked teeth show in a Halloween grin and his eyes are empty because Daddy is gone, he’s a goner, there’s nothing in his shoes but the bad-gunky, he’s no longer a man or a daddy but just a blood-bool with eyes.

  —Stay up there this time and I’ll cut off his ear, says the thing with their Daddy’s lectric hair, the thing standing up in their Daddy’s shoes.—Stay up there next time and I’ll cut his mothersmuckin throat, I don’t give a shit. Up to you, Scooter Scooter you ole Scoot. You say you love him but you don’t love him enough to stop me cutting him, do you? When all you have to do is jump off a sweetmother three-foot bench! What do you think of that, Paul? What have you got to say to your chickenkike little brother now?

  But Paul says nothing, only looks at his brother, dark blue eyes locked on hazel ones, and this hell will go on for another twenty-five hundred days; seven endless years. Do what you can and let the rest go is what Paul’s eyes say to Scott and it breaks his heart and when he jumps from the bench at last (to what part of him is firmly convinced will be his death) it isn’t because of their father’s threats but because his brother’s eyes have given him permission to stay right where he is if in the end he’s just too scared to do it.

  To stay on the bench even if it gets Paul Landon killed.

  He lands and falls on his knees in the blood on the boards and begins crying, shocked to find he is still alive, and then his father’s arm is around him, his father’s strong arm is lifting him up, now in love rather than in anger. His father’s lips are first on his cheek and then pressed firmly against the corner of his mouth.

  —See, Scooter old Scooter you old Scoot? I knew you could do it.

  Then Daddy is saying it’s over, the blood-bool is over and Scott can take care of his brother. His father tells him he’s brave, one brave little sumbitch, his father says he loves him and in that moment of victory Scott doesn’t even mind the blood on the floor, he loves his father too, he loves his crazy blood-bool Daddy for letting it be over this time even though he knows, even at three he knows that next time will come.

  9

  Scott stops, looks around, spies the wine. He doesn’t bother with the glass but drinks straight from the bottle. “It really wasn’t much of a jump,” he says, and shrugs. “Looked like a lot to a three-year-old, though.”

  “Scott, my God,” Lisey says. “How often was he like that?”

  “Often enough. A lot of the times I’ve blocked out. That time on the bench, though, that one’s stone clear. And like I said, it can stand for the rest.”

  “Was it…was he drunk?”

  “No. He almost never drank. Are you ready for Part Two of the story, Lisey?”

  “If it’s like Part One, I’m not sure I am.”

  “Don’t worry. Part Two is ‘Paul and the Good Bool.’ No, I take that back, it’s ‘Paul and the Best Bool,’ and it was only a few days after the old man made me jump off the bench. He got called in to work, and as soon as his truck was out of sight, Paul told me to be good while he went down to Mulie’s.” He stops, laughs, and shakes his head as people do when they realize they’re being silly. “Mueller’s. That’s what it really was. I told you about going back to Martensburg when the bank auctioned off the home place, right? Just before I met you?”

  “No, Scott.”

  He looks puzzled—for a moment almost frighteningly vague. “No?”

  “No.” This isn’t the time to tell him he’s told her next to nothing about his childhood—

  Next to nothing? Nothing at all. Until today, under the yum-yum tree.

  “Well,” he says (a little doubtfully), “I got a letter from Daddy’s bank—First Rural of Pennsylvania…you know, like there was a Second Rural out there somewhere…and they said it was out of court after all these years and I was set for a piece of the proceeds. So I said what the smuck and went back. First time in seven years. I graduated Martensburg Township High when I was sixteen. Took a lot of tests, got a papal dispensation. Surely I told you that.”

  “No, Scott.”

  He laughs uneasily. “Well, I did. Go, you Ravens, peck em and deck em.” He makes a cawing sound, laughs more uneasily still, then takes a big glug of wine. It’s almost gone. “The home place ended up going for seventy grand, something like that, of which I got thirty-two hundred, big smogging deal, huh? But anyway, I took a ride around our part of Martensburg before the auction and the store was still there, a mile down the road from the home place, and if you’d told me when I was a kid it was only a mile I would have said you were full of shit up to your tick-tock. It was empty, all boarded up, FOR SALE sign in front but so faded you could hardly read it. The sign on the roof was actually in better shape, and that one said MUELLER’S GENERAL STORE. Only we always called it Mulie’s, see, because that ’us what Daddy called it. Like he called U.S. Steel U.S. Beg Borrow and Steal…and he’d call The Burg Pittsburgh Shitty…and…oh dammit, Lisey, am I crying?”

  “Yes, Scott.” Her voice sounds faraway to her own ears.

  He takes one of the paper napkins that came with the picnic lunch and wipes his eyes. When he puts the napkin down, he’s smiling. “Paul told me to be good when he was gone to Mulie’s and I did what Paul said. I always did. You know?”

  She nods. You’re good for the ones you love. You want to be good for the ones you love, because you know that your time with them will end up being too short, no matter how long it is.

  “Anyway, when he came back I saw he had two bottles of RC and I knew he was going to make a good bool, and that made me happy. He told me to go in my bedroom and look at my books awhile so he could make it. It took him a long time and I knew it was going to be a long good bool, and I was happy about that, too. Finally he hollered to me to come out to the kitchen and look on the table.”

  “Did he ever call you Scooter?” Lisey asks.

  “Not him, not never. By the time I got out there t’ kitchen, he was gone. He ’us hidin. But I knew he ’us watching me. There was a piece of paper on the table that said BOOL! and then it said—”

  “Wait a second,” Lisey said.

  Scott looks at her, eyebrows raised.

  “You were three…he was six…or maybe going on seven—”

  “Right—”

  “But he could write little riddles and you could read them. Not only read them, figure them out.”

  “Yes?” Raised eyebrows asking what the big deal is.

  “Scott—did your crazy Daddy understand he was abusing a couple of smucking child prodigies?”

  Scott surprises her by throwing back his head and laughing. “That would have been the least of his concerns!” he says. “Just listen, Lisey. Because that was the best day I can remember having as a kid, maybe because it was such a long day. Probably someone at the Gypsum plant screwed up and the old man had to put in some serious overtime, I don’t know, but we had the house to ourselves from eight that morning until sundown—”

  “No babysitter?”

  He doesn’t reply, only looks at her as if she might have a screw loose.

  “No neighbor-lady checking in?”

  “Our nearest neighbors were four miles away. Mulie’s was closer. That’s how Daddy liked it, and believe me, that’s the way people in town liked it, too.”

  “All right. Tell me Part Two. ‘Scott and the Good Bool.’”

  “ ‘Paul and the Good Bool. The Great Bool. The Excellent Bool.’” His face smooths out at the memory. One to balance the horror of the bench. “Paul had a notebook with blue-ruled lines, a Dennison notebook, and when he made stations of the bool, he’d take a sheet out and then fold it so he could tear it into strips. That made the notebook last longer, do you see?”

  “Yes.”

  “Only that day he must have ripped out two sheets or even three—Lisey, it was such a long bool!” In his remembered pleasure, Lisey can see the child he was. “The strip on the table said BOOL!—the first one and the last one always said that—and then, right underneath—


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  Right underneath BOOL! it says this in Paul’s big and careful capital letters:

  1 FIND ME CLOSE IN SOMETHING SWEET! 16

  But before considering the riddle, Scott looks at the number, savoring that 16. Sixteen stations! He is filled with a tingling, pleasurable excitement. The best part of it is knowing Paul never teases. If he promises sixteen stations, there will be fifteen riddles. And if Scott can’t get one, Paul will help. Paul will call from his hiding place in a spooky scary voice (it’s a Daddyvoice, although Scott won’t realize this until years later, when he is writing a spooky scary story called Empty Devils), giving hints until Scott does get it. More and more often, though, Scott doesn’t need the hints. He improves swiftly at the art of solving, just as Paul improves swiftly at the art of making.

  Find me close in something sweet.

  Scott looks around and almost at once fixes on the big white bowl standing on the table in a mote-filled bar of morning sun. He has to stand on a chair to reach it and giggles when Paul calls out in his spooky Daddyvoice,—Don’t spill it, you mother!

  Scott lifts the lid, and on top of the sugar is another strip of paper with another message printed in his brother’s careful capital letters:

  2 I’M WHERE CLIDE USED TO PLAY

  WITH SPULES IN THE SUN

  Until he disappeared in the spring, Clyde was their cat and both boys loved him, but Daddy didn’t love him because Clyde used to waow all the time to be let in or out and although neither of them says it out loud (and neither would ever dare ask Daddy), they have a good idea that something a lot bigger and a lot meaner than a fox or a fisher got Clyde. In any case, Scott knows perfectly well where Clyde used to play in the sun and hurries there now, trotting down the main hall to the back porch without giving the bloodstains under his feet or the terrible bench so much as a glance (well, maybe just one). On the back porch is a vast lumpy couch that exudes weird smells when you sit down on it.—It smells like fried farts, Paul said one day, and Scott laughed until he wet his pants. (If Daddy had been there, wetting his pants would have meant BIG TROUBLE, but Daddy was at work.) Scott goes to this couch now, where Clyde used to lie on his back and play with the spools of thread Paul and Scott would dangle above him, reaching up with his front paws and making a giant boxing shadow-cat on the wall. Now Scott falls on his knees and looks under the lumpy cushions one by one until he finds the third scrap of paper, the third station of the bool, and this one sends him to—