If I Should Fall: The Second Book of Geshichte Falls

NAISSANCE

2

In the backroom that was becoming a library, Anigel Reyes stretched out on the old daybed that had belonged to Chayne Kandzierski’s grandmother, and turned the page as she read Rob’s story. She heard his approaching footsteps.

“Look, I can’t read with you hovering over me.”

“I just wanted to know if you were done yet,” Rob, against his will, kept pushing himself up on his toes and clasping and unclasping his hands.

“Not yet, and the funny thing is that the more interruptions I get the longer it takes me to finish.”

Rob Keyes sank down on his heels, sighed and then the doorbell rang. Chayne called, “Somebody make themselves useful!”

Rob went to the door. Anigel had come two months back to visit her brother Bobby and been seen by Russell who brought her to Chayne who liked her and thought she should live here with him and Rob.

“But… I can’t,” she’d originally said.

“What else are you doing?” he asked.

And so she had become the third resident on Curtain Street.

Rob was gone a long while and now, in curiosity, Anigel Reyes got up and went to the living room, only to see that Chayne was already there too.

Rob was talking to some grizzled old man he had ushered into the living room.

“Are you sure you don’t want anything? We’ve got lemonade. I think juice—apple juice, Chayne?”

“Yes, Rob, apple—”

“And I went and got some V-8 and we’ve also got—”

“Robert.”

“I’m just trying to be a host, Chayne.”

“Thank, Rob. Can I help you, sir?”

“Do y’know a Thomas Lewis?”

Chayne sussed up the old man trying to imagine what he could possibly have to do with Thom. Medium height, white, grizzled, he looked like a drunk pulled off the corner of some country town in a 1950’s TV show.

“I know’m,” Chayne said. “You’re at the wrong house. But I know him. I—”

“Just...” said the old man. “If you see him tell’m Arrell’s looking for’im.”        

“Arrell?”

“Um,” the old man nodded.

“God bless,” he said, and tipping his hat, walked out of the house, down the steps and down the lane.

Rob’s elven face looked intrigued as he shut the door, and he and Anigel followed Chayne into the kitchen.

“Now that—” Rob started.

“Could go in a story,” Chayne said.

And the two men nodded to each other and smiled.

 

When Ralph dropped Russell off and honked three times before speeding away in his mother’s station wagon, Thom Lewis was standing in the yard looking half young, half silly in white tee shirt and khaki cargo shorts, a floppy fisherman’s cap on his head to keep away the sun, his legs covered in black hair that Russell had not inherited as he watered the lawn.

“Y’should have invited Ralph in,” Thom said.

“He had to go home.”

“You got a phone call,” Thom told his son.

“From who? Whom?”

Thom shrugged and knitted his brows. “One of your friends.”

“It’s not like I have a raging social life, Dad.” Russell said, heading into the house. “Gilead must be back.”

As Russell came through the door into the newly air conditioned foyer, Patti shouted from the kitchen. “Gilead called. He just got back from Washington.”

 

“Cousin Chayne!”

“Cousin Gil,” Chayne murmured in the monotone that did not mean he was unhappy to see his younger relation.

“Russell,” Chayne added, as the boy came into the house with Gilead.

 “How is Sharonda?”

“Mom’s fine,” Gilead said, walking into the kitchen.

“And Washington?”

“Dirtier than I expected,” Gilead admitted, tilting his head, then sitting down on the couch between Rob, whom he greeted as Russell took the large wing back chair by the picture window and Anigel. “But fun. I think I wanna go back. The National Shrine was something else.”

“The what?” said Rob.

“It’s the really big Catholic church on CUA’s campus,” Anigel said. “One of the ugliest buildings—at least from the outside—that you’ll ever see.”

“What did the inside look like?” Chayne asked Gilead.

“Well the basement has all of these chapels, rows and rows of chapels.”

“In the basement?” interrupted Russell, and Gilead nodded, put Chayne shushed Russell away with a hand and said, “But whaddid it look like Gil? The actual church?”

“Oh, I never saw it,” Gilead said.

“What?”

“I never got around to actually seeing the church proper. I was worn out by the basement.”

“Well did you at least go to the Smithsonian?” Anigel demanded, sounding a little put out.

“Of course.”

“What was it like?” Rob leaned forward. “I went all over Europe, but I never saw our capital.”

“It wasn’t bad,” said Gilead.

“We’ll never make a travel writer out of you,” Chayne muttered. Then he snapped his fingers.

“That’s right!”

“What’s right?” Gilead looked at his cousin.

“This man came by. Grizzled. Old.”

“Whaddid he look like?” Russell asked.

Chayne cocked his head at the boy and repeated, “Grizzled. Old.”

“White?” Gilead suggested.

“Well... Yes. He said he was looking for your father. And his name is Arrell. You know any Arrells?”

Russell stuck out his lips, furrowed his brow and looked amazingly like Thom for a moment. Then the moment was gone.

“No,” said Russell.

“Well,” Chayne shrugged and sipped from his glass.

“Speaking of weird,” Russell said now, “I still can’t believe I’ve been hanging around with Ralph this summer. I mean, I thought he hated me for the last two years and I returned the favor and now....”

“Peace rains at last,” Rob declared.

“I told you,” Gilead said, “it’s like when you’re walking down a street and you see a dog just growling and barking at you. At first you’re a little scared. A little pissed off. Then you hear it whimper and you realize—It’s just trying to talk to you. The damn thing just doesn’t know how to.”

“You’re saying Ralph’s a dog?” Anigel asked Gilead.

“Not to put too fine a point on it,” Gilead hedged, “but... Sort of.”

 

“I love that Chayne’s got an assistant,” Patti said as she handed Felice the plates to take to the dinner table.

“Assistant?”

“Yeah, Rob,” she said as Felice bumped her hip against the swinging door and went out to the dining room table.

“Patti,” Felice, returning, looked at her like she was stupid, “that’s not Chayne’s assistant.”

“Yeah, he is. He’s his apprentice, and he answers his phone and… all that other stuff.”

“Well,” Felice gathered the gleaming flatware, “if he’s assisting him, he’s assisting him in taking his clothes off, cause Rob’s his boyfriend.”

While Patti considered this she murmured, “Well, I’ll be damned. Son of a bitch moves fast.”

That night Patti felt like cooking. Smothered chops, fresh, bright green beans, baked potatoes with fat yellow pats of butter melting into them and thick sour cream, green onions and bits of crispy bacon. She was glad to have Chayne over and even happier because of the two young people staying with him. Russell had something like a crush on Anigel, a girl who had far more sense than Patti could remember having at her age, and she liked Rob, whom Patti thought of as a healthier big brother figure than her own brother, John.

John had been strange and irascible last Christmas and returned from Russell’s room with a black eye. Neither she nor anyone had asked any questions, but Patti was sure he had earned it. It had taken so long to get Russell feeling right about himself, and then a few minutes with John and he had returned almost in tears and cut most of his hair off. A mother could not pry into her son’s life when he was sixteen, but she was sure he had given John McLarchlahn a black eye for a good reason, and her younger brother had greeted the rest of that Christmas as a quieter, wiser man.

“What have you kids got planned for tonight?” Thom asked.

“Am I a kid?” Chayne asked.

“To me you are.”

“Nice,” Chayne said. “Well, I’m going to be at Jewell’s club with all the old folks, and Russell and Rob are doing… Something?”

“That new movie,” Russell said. “Where the guy gets hacked to death by his wife and son and then comes back as a caterpillar to get revenge on his family.”

“That sounds….. horrible,” Patti said.

“I know, right?” Russell said, brightly.

“And Anigel is going to have her sister over. I think?” Chayne said.

“Yeah,” Anigel said. “Caroline’s big as a house, which is why she says she needs to get out of hers.”

Rob told Russell, “You forgot to tell your dad.”

“Tell your father what?” Thom said while cutting into a chop.

“Oh, yeah,” said Russell. “This guy came to Chayne’s house looking for you. His name was Earl.”

Thom frowned and lifted meet to his mouth.

“I don’t know any Earl.”

“Not Earl,” Chayne said. “Arrell. Like Ar-El.”

Thom stopped cutting and looked up sharply at Chayne, blenching.

“Who?”

“Ar-El,” repeated Chayne, certain this time. “Do you know him? He was country as fuck....”

Chayne dropped the thread of conversation as Thom’s face paled a little more and his brow beetled.

“Thom,” Patti reached out to touch her husband. “What’s wrong?”

Thom shook the troubled look off his face and said, “Nothing, Pat.”

He patted her on the arm and smiled. “Just thinking.”

“Well,” Felice murmured to her cousin, “that was the worst lie I’ve heard in a while. Pass the corn, Chayne.”

---

-- Thomas, go down to the cellar!

--I wanna be here with you, Mama!

--Not when your father gets in.

--That’s why I wanna be here!  I don’t want you to have to be with him alone.

--And what can you do if your father gets out a’hand? Don’t worry. I’ve dealt with him this long. Now you get! Go! Take Jaclyn with you. Go to the cellar.

--Where’s Kristin?

--She can handle herself. Now Go!

--Kathy! KATHLEEN! AHM Home now!

--Go!

--Fix me somethin’, baby! I’m hungry. You ain’t seen your papa for days and you ain’t got nothin ready for him when he comes through the door.

--Sometimes I wish you wouldn’t come through the door!

--Kristin, be quiet! Where’ve you been?

--Better places that you’ve been. You smell like a gutter.

--You wicked little bitch! I’ll teach you to talk to your daddy that way--

--Leave her alone!

--Shut your mouth, you cheat slut.

--Or what’r you gon’ do? Beat me? You can’t even walk straight across the floor to do it you drunken ole sonovabitch!

--Potty mouthed slut!

--Fat ass drunk. Ow, shit! You fucking bastard!

--LEAVE ‘ER ALONE R.L.!!!

 

Thom shot up in bed, the scream still vivid in his ears. He was covered in sweat and fear and shame. His heart was beating. It was cool. The air was on at 1735 Breckinridge. There had been no air conditioning back then in that house.

Thom, in his boxers, climbed out of bed. Patti was asleep. It was hard to believe that loud and vivid horror had not leaked out of his mind into the cool darkness of this bedroom. He tipped down the hall to see if Russell was home yet, but his door was open and the light was out. Thom stepped into the large bedroom made blue by the moonlight, and sat on the edge of his son’s bed.

 

Russell Lewis and Robert Keyes had been talking animatedly when suddenly Rob and the car stopped.

“What’s wrong?” Russell asked after a while.

Just for ceremony’s sake, Rob turned the key in the ignition again. The engine coughed.

“The car’s dead,” Rob said.

“Well shit,” Russell murmured. “Engine shot?”

“I’m not sure. Sometimes the Duster does this. It just stops.”

The air conditioning was meager at best, but now the heat of late summer began to fill the death wagon with a sullen humidity.

“Ani’s car does that too,” Russell said. “We always pray when that happens. Wait a few seconds and pray.”

So they sat on the desolate stretch of Thompson Street, by the river and not near anything even remotely safe, and Russell chanted over and over again. “Come on, Jesus! Come on, Jesus! Jesus! Jesus Jesus. Hit the ignition now, Rob.”

The engine coughed at Rob’s command.

Jesus was not forthcoming.

“Com’ on, Jesus!” Russell urged, a little miffed at his savior now.

Privately, Russell thought that while he understood Anigel driving that old El Camino, Rob could well have afford something other than the red, beautiful but impractical Plymouth Duster. He cleared his mind of uncharitable thoughts and committed himself to prayer.

On the fiftieth “Com’on, Jesus,” Rob said, “Maybe we should just walk home.”

“Rob, you don’t even know how unsafe or impractical that is. Com’on, Jesus!” Russell demanded again.

But instead of Jesus, the lights of the first vehicle they’d seen on this stretch of Thompson Road rolled unsteadily up the gravel. Country music was blaring from the truck, and over it, out the window, a woman’s voice was screaming in the thick night,

 

Ooooooooooooooh!

Ooooooooooo

oooooo

AH!

I’m a happy girl!

 

Then, as Martina McBride died down, the voice screamed out into the hot, cricket song filled night:

“I’m a happy girl, goddamnit!”

And the enormous truck stopped beside the Duster and the two mystified young men.

It was a tow truck.

The red headed girl who had been singing, looked down at them. Beside her head popped the face of a dark haired guy that Russell almost mistook for his father.

“Yawl need some help!” he shouted.

“Thanks, Jesus,” said Russell.