The Brothers K Read online

  PRAISE FOR DAVID JAMES DUNCAN’S

  THE BROTHERS K

  American Library Association

  Notable Book of the Year

  Pacific Northwest Bookseller Award-Winner

  “Duncan’s prose is a blend of lyrical rhapsody, sassy hyperbole and all-American vernacular.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “The Brothers K does what a novel should do, what one almost despairs of contemporary fiction ever doing: it teaches you something, makes you think, breaks your heart, and mends it again.”

  —Booklist (starred review)

  “The Brothers K affords the … deep pleasures of novels that exhaustively create, and alter, complex worlds. … One always senses an enthusiastic and abundantly talented and versatile writer at work.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  “Duncan … tells the larger story of an entire popular culture struggling to redefine itself—something he does with the comic excitement and depth of feeling one expects from Tom Robbins.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  MORE PRAISE FOR THE BROTHERS K

  “Marvelously detailed and poignant, and a garden of delights for baseball lovers.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “[A] large and marvelously ranging story.”

  —The Miami Herald

  “Heartfelt, ambitious and as hefty as a Bible, The Brothers K offers a loving portrait of family, a fierce indictment of Vietnam-era America, and an eclectic erudition that manages to put Yogi Berra, Porky Pig and St. John of the Cross in the same ballpark.”

  —The Seattle Times

  “Terrific … thoroughly engrossing … firmly establishes David James Duncan as a writer with an original voice that is not only a pleasure to hear but also has a good deal to say.”

  —The Flint Journal

  “David James Duncan, in what should go down as one of the great books of this century, has done the impossible. He has made sense of the 1960s. … A master storyteller.”

  —Cape Cod Times

  “This is the stuff literature is made of. … Simply stunning: human, bold, sweetly simple yet sensitive.”

  —The Sunday Oregonian

  “Generous, resonant and funny … An affirming epic that’s complicated, messy, mirthful and has the smell of real life.”

  —The Des Moines Register

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I wish to thank my wife, Adrian Arleo, my son, Thomas Faredoon, and my mother, Donna, for their faith and great patience throughout the writing of this book, and my daughter, Cecilia, for providing us a happy ending. For getting the show on the road I thank my ex-editor, Nick Bakalar, and my agent, Michael Snell. For the kind of indispensable, hands-on, up-to-her-elbows editorial advising and debating and tinkering and championing that I thought no longer existed, I thank Ms. Casey Fuetsch. For an excellent critical reading of the first half of the novel, I thank Dr. Kevin Oderman. For their equally encouraging inability to slow down and read the same pages critically, I thank Melissa Madenski, Tom Crawford, and Casey Bailey. For saving my sanity and possibly this manuscript during my run-in with floppy disks, I thank David Ousele. For that frigging disk-drive (which I now use as a chipper to clean up tree-trimmings in my yard), I thank Apple.

  In 1990 I heard a comedian named Steve Smith speak, on television, virtually the same sentence that Papa speaks about God and money. I wish to acknowledge the coincidence. Less coincidentally, my sub-chapter, “Everett Routs the Ottoman Empire,” was inspired by an urge to pit my own revolutionary against the most eloquent anti-revolutionary I’ve ever encountered—a man named Gürtzner-Gontard in Heimito von Doderer’s novel The Demons. By the time I’d finished Americanizing Gontard’s ideas and audience I’d altered his ideas so thoroughly that I’m not sure Herr Doderer would appreciate my acknowledgment, but I am indebted. For his excellent proofreading of the baseball details, I thank Steve Colton. For the same kind of proofing of the Indian linguistic details, thanks to Carl and Judith Ernst. For his portraits of prison work camps and draft resisters, thanks to Robert Wollheim. For their help with the Vietnam scenes, I thank Dick Morgan and Doug Haga. For centrifuging flickers, I thank the Boyden brothers. For help with the limericks, I thank Gale Ousele. For infecting me with their love for baseball, I thank my father, E. Dean Duncan, and my late brother, Nicklaus John.

  CONTENTS

  BOOK ONE

  Joy to the Wordl!

  CHAPTER ONE

  Chevalier

  CHAPTER TWO

  Moose, Indian

  CHAPTER THREE

  Excepting Christ

  BOOK TWO

  Dogmatomachy

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Shed

  CHAPTER TWO

  Strike Zones

  CHAPTER THREE

  Psalm Wars

  PSALM WAR ADDENDUM

  BOOK THREE

  Rebels & Scientists

  A POEM

  CHAPTER ONE

  Gunshots

  CHAPTER TWO

  Rebels & Scientists

  CHAPTER THREE

  Kinds of Salvation

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Epiphany of a Toe

  BOOK FOUR

  The Left Stuff

  EVERETT: ROGER MARIS, RADICAL OF THE SIXTIES

  CHAPTER ONE

  Our Brilliant Careers

  EVERETT: RENUNCIATION

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Left Stuff

  EVERETT: THREE KINDS OF FARCE

  CHAPTER THREE

  Linda

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Leftovers

  BOOK FIVE

  The Brothers K

  EVERETT: A DEFINITION

  CHAPTER ONE

  Names of Stars

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Kwakiutl Karamazov

  CHAPTER THREE

  Ace of Hearts

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Watch

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Our Mistake

  CHAPTER SIX

  The White Train

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Moon People

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  God’s House

  BOOK SIX

  Blue Box

  CHAPTER ONE

  We Support Our Troops

  CHAPTER TWO

  Broken Boat

  CHAPTER THREE

  Dream Come True

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Wake

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Woodstoves

  CHAPTER SIX

  Winter

  BOOK ONE

  Joy to the Wordl!

  CHAPTER ONE

  Chevalier

  Thank you! Thank you!

  —last words of D. T. Suzuki

  Camas, Washington/September/1956

  Papa is in his easy chair, reading the Sunday sports page. I am lying across his lap. Later he will rise to his feet and the lap will divide into parts—plaid shirt, brown leather belt, baggy tan trousers—but for now the lap is one thing: a ground, a region, an earth. My head rests on one wide, cushioned arm of the chair, my feet on the other. The rest of me rests on Papa. The newspaper blocks his face from view, but the vast pages vibrate in time to his pulse, and the ballplayer in the photo looks serious. I ask no questions. I stay quiet. I feel his slow, even breathing. I smell his smoke.

  On the opposite chair arm, beside my argyle shins, is a small ashtray—an upholstered sandbag with five brass grooves arching over a green glass dish. Papa’s cigarette smolders in the center groove. It has no filter. It’s called a Lucky Strike. Past its slow blue smoke is the diningroom window. Past the window, yellowing maples and a low gray sky. Past the maples and under the sky, a neighbor man with a pitchfork, burning an immense pile of black l
imbs and old brown leaves.

  Papa’s hand appears. It hangs above the ashtray. It is blue-veined, black-haired, brown-skinned, scarred and powerful. It takes up the cigarette and disappears behind the paper. The neighbor man throws an enormous forkful of leaves onto the burn pile, smothering the flames. Papa takes a deep breath. The hand returns the cigarette to the same brass groove, a quarter-inch orange coal on the end of it now, the smoke rising up much faster than before. A dense cloud of white billows up through the smoldering leaves. Papa breathes out. The leaves ignite. Even through the window I hear them bursting into flame. Papa turns a page, the paper makes the same crackling, burning sound, and I glimpse his eyes before the paper reopens: they are serious, like the ballplayer’s.

  Idly Papa’s long fingers twist the ashtray in a circle. Slowly the man with the pitchfork circles his burning brush. The hand picks up the cigarette. The man forks more leaves onto the fire. The hand returns the cigarette, folds it against the green glass, crushes the hot coal with the tip of a bare finger. The man stares for a moment into the fire, then sticks his fork in the ground and walks away.

  The newspaper shudders, closes, then drops, and there is his face: the sun-browned skin and high cheekbones; the slightly hooked, almost Bedouin nose; the strong jaw still shiny from a late-morning shave, a few missed whiskers at the base of each nostril; the gray eyes—clear, kind, already crowfooted, and always just a little sad around the edges.

  There he is. Papa. There is my father.

  The screen door slams. I lurch, open my eyes—newspaper falls from my body. I am lying alone in my father’s chair. He has vanished right out from under me, leaving a blanket of sports page when he left. I look outside: the sky is still low and gray, yellow leaves still waving, but the burn pile is ashes and the man and pitchfork are gone. I look at the chair arm: the ashtray is still there, but the green glass is clean, the ashes and Lucky butt gone.

  I can tell by the heaviness of step that it’s my brother Irwin back in the kitchen. When I hear the icebox open, I know that neither Mama nor Papa is in the house. I hear him gulping milk straight out of the bottle. Germs … I hear the careful folding and refolding of wax paper round a plate of leftovers. Thou shalt not steal … I hear a shout somewhere outside, and Irwin darts into the diningroom, his mouth stuffed full of something, his eyes bulging, then, seeing no one, relieved.

  “Where’s Papa?” I ask.

  He jumps, bolts the food, chokes a little, laughs. “Where are you?”

  I sit up in the chair.

  He laughs again, starts back toward the kitchen, then calls back to me, “Battle Ground. Playin’ ball.”

  The screen door slams.

  I am alone on the floor of mine and Irwin’s room now, picturing Battle Ground. I’ve been there, Mama says. It’s got the big park with the pool where I waded with my boats when it was too hot to be in the bleachers, she says. I can’t remember the bleachers, I can’t remember the ballfield, but I remember the pool. And now I think I remember the tall men with caps and gloves running over the grass, splashing in and out of the water, throwing and hitting baseballs and singing Aaaaaa! Aaaaaa! and Hum Babe! and Hey, Batter! My oldest brother, Everett, showed me how they sing. He said that Hum Babes are special, because Papa is the pitcher and it’s his pitches that hum. I said, They call Papa a babe? No, Everett said, they just sing Hum Babe to the pitches, but some players call him Smoke because of his Lucky Strikes and fastball, and some call him Hook because of his curveballs and nose. I said I thought they were just plain baseballs. He said they were, but that curveballs and fastballs are kinds of pitches, and pitches are special throws nobody but the pitcher knows how to make, and Papa has seven different kinds, not counting his different deliveries. He didn’t say what a delivery was, but he said Papa had a kind that went ffffffffwirp! called a sinker, and a kind that went ffffffffweet! called a slider and a kind that went ffffffffwow! called a forkball and a kind that went bleeeeeeeeeeurp! called a change-up and a secret kind too, called a knuckler, which he only used when he was red-hot since it might go rrow!rrow!rrow! or might do nothing at all, and I felt almost like crying by then, I was so confused and wanted so much not to be. Everett noticed, and shoved me in a gruff, friendly sort of way. Don’t worry, he said. Next summer I’d be old enough to go watch him pitch, and soon as I watched him I’d understand everything fine …

  But I don’t want to understand next summer. I want to understand now. So I have the sports page here beside me on the floor, open to the ballplayer with the serious face. And this is not an orange crayon in my mouth. It’s a Lucky Strike. “Fffffffweeet!” I tell it. This isn’t the lid of a mayonnaise jar in my hand, either. It’s an ashtray. “Bleeeeeeeeeeurp!” And Bobby, my bear, is the neighbor man and this salad fork is his pitchfork and these piled blankets are the pile of burning brush. Because I am not me. I am Smoke! I am my father! and the harder I suck the Lucky the hotter burns the brush! Aaaaaaaaaaa! the fire hums, babe, the flames ffffffffwirp and ffffffffwow! And when I spin my ashtray the neighbor man is helpless: I spin, spin, spin it, he whirls round and round and round. Then I throw, I forkball, I pitchfork my Lucky clear up to the sky and rrow!rrow!rrow! flaming leaves and limbs and papers knuckle every which way and the trees and batters and people and houses burn! burn! burn!

  I saw.

  I saw what Papa was doing.

  And next year I’ll go with my brother to watch all the ballplayers splash and throw and sing.

  Camas/February/1957

  My parents are sitting on the old purple sofa. Mama is peeling oranges on a dish towel spread across her lap, but she’s so hugely pregnant that the peels are collecting clear out between her knees. Papa says that she grew Everett, Peter, Irwin and me inside her one by one, but that she’s gotten so good at it she’s decided to grow two at once this time, to save money, time and trouble. “Now wait just a minute!” Mama always says to this. “Who’s the greedy farmer that planted two seeds at once?” Then they laugh. I don’t get it. They say this and laugh every time anybody stops by these days. If they don’t say it the people look sort of sick, Mama’s stomach is so big, so sometimes they even say it to the same person twice. I still don’t get it. Anyhow she’s huge, and the new two inside her are called The Twins, and once they’re born I won’t be the youngest anymore, and they might be sisters, which might be fun, and Mama will supposedly shrink back to her same old size and act more her same old way. So I guess it’s a good thing.

  It’s Peter’s turn for Papa’s chair, and he’s lolling in it like a cat on the hood of a warm car, trying to make Everett and Irwin jealous. They don’t even notice. They’re belly-down on the floor with their chins in their hands, watching some baby ducks on TV waddle through a dish of Purina Puppy Chow. “What does that prove?” Everett asks the TV.

  “Yeah,” says Irwin. “What does that prove?”

  “Ducks’ll eat slugs,” Everett says. “That don’t prove a thing about Purina.”

  “Yeah,” says Irwin. “That don’t prove a thing.”

  Everett turns to Irwin and glares. Peter watches them and laughs. Irwin’s bigger than Everett, but two years younger, and whatever Everett says or does lately, Irwin says and does the same. Peter thinks it’s funny. Everett thinks it’s idiotic. Irwin doesn’t care if it’s funny or idiotic, he just keeps doing it.

  The ducks waddle off. Ed Sullivan waddles on.

  “Ed Cellophane,” says Everett for the thousandth time this year.

  For the thousandth time this year, Irwin laughs.

  Ed Sullivan introduces Perry Como. Everybody on TV claps.

  Perry Como climbs up on a stool, smiles sort of wistfully, and sings a song about catching shooting stars, sticking them in buckets, then pulling them out again in dreary weather to cheer yourself up with. “I’m sure,” Everett snorts.

  “We’re sure,” says Irwin.

  Perry Como snaps his fingers to the beat. “Never let it fade away,” he sings, “never let it fade away …”
>
  Then his voice fades away.

  Everybody claps. Ed Sullivan comes out, clapping too. Perry Como chuckles and says something into Ed’s ear, and Everett chuckles and says, “You sure are ugly!” into Irwin’s ear at the same instant. Then Ed Sullivan pooches his lips out and Perry Como saunters away, so that it really does seem like what Everett said is what Ed Sullivan heard. Irwin laughs.

  Ed Sullivan talks for a while now, nodding his head as if to show how much he agrees with everything he’s saying. Then he holds out one hand and asks if we won’t please give a very warm welcome to a big Russian word I can’t pronounce. The audience applauds. The curtains open. And suddenly the stage is dark and shadowy, no one in sight, and a hidden choir of men with deep Russian voices begins doing some kind of chant with crazy little owl-hoots mixed in where you least expect them. Then, out of the darkness, a V-shaped wedge of shrouded humans comes sailing like geese into a pond, doing something impossible so effortlessly that we watch for some time before Mama whispers, “Lord! Will you look at that!”

  There must be twenty-five or thirty of them, all in black hooded robes that reach to the floor and hide their feet, faces and shapes completely. And what’s impossible is that they’re gliding as quietly and smoothly as skaters on ice—and there is no ice. Heads bowed, bodies hidden, the Russians slide through the shadows and over the floor as if they weigh nothing or there’s no one in the robes, the spiraling lines and leaning rows of them passing each other so closely you’d think they’d crash, yet they never touch, and the thick dark cloth doesn’t even quiver.