The Brothers K Read online

  If it is, it all started last week at a Babe Ruth game, when Everett tried to steal home on a suicide squeeze. What happened was that the batter whiffed the bunt, the catcher caught the ball, Everett tried to give the catcher a diving forearm shiver to knock the ball loose, the catcher sidestepped, tagged him out on the skull, Everett landed forearm-first on the plate, and it was his arm that shivered. Of course there’s nothing Miraculous about a busted arm. But when his team lost the game by a run and fell out of contention for the play-offs, Everett got so glum and crabby that Mama gave him permission to go to the Seventh Day Adventist Summer Camp down at Wolverton Lake in Oregon, then said if they wanted to keep him company, Peter and Irwin could go too. This was the first big hint of Miraculousness: Mama letting all three of them go even though it’s raspberry season and berry-picking is the way we earn our school clothes money. I think she was hoping to prove that a place could be fun even if it had to do with Adventists. And I think she’s wrong. But anyhow they left, which cleared the way for the part of the Miracle that came next.

  What came next—just yesterday at breakfast—was such a nasty fight between Mama and Papa over money, then religion, then a beer a neighbor man gave Papa the night before which he drank out in the yard where I could be tempted by it, that Mama loaded Bet and Freddy (that’s the twins, Beatrice and Winifred) into the Dodge and took off for Uncle Marv and Aunt Mary Jane’s up in Spokane.

  While she was cramming stuff in the car, Mama told Papa that she might be back when the boys came home from camp, or she might just send for them and give them a decent Christian upbringing someplace else. Papa told her she must mean a Tea Totaler upbringing. Mama shouted, “I mean Christian!”

  Papa said, “Jesus made wine and shared it with people. What was He, a Hopi Indian?”

  Mama snapped, “Jesus was Jesus, Hugh Chance. You won’t even go to church with your own children!”

  “Neither would Jesus,” Papa said.

  “He never had children!” Mama yelled. Then Papa smiled his nicest smile, and she saw he was pulling her leg and broke out in a grin, and I thought the fight was over. But then—I don’t know how or why she did it—Mama just amputated her grin, and looked at Papa like she hated him. And his smile fell from his face like ice cream off a little kid’s cone. It made me sick. I wanted to pick his smile up, clean it off, and hand it back somehow. But it was too late: he was mad as she was, now. Real quietly, he said, “He never liked churches, though.”

  “Who?”

  “Jesus.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  Papa pulled out his Luckies, letting her wait for his answer, and I noticed his eyes had gotten slitty and sleepy-looking, which is how they used to get on the mound, Everett says, when he really bore down on a hitter. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like him bearing down on Mama. He threw a curve first: knowing she’s never smoked and never will, he offered her a cigarette. She ignored it. “How do you figure?” she repeated.

  Papa stuck the Lucky in his mouth, lit it, and sent smoke streaming like a brush-off pitch, just past the side of her face. “As a kid, all He did at church was argue with the rabbis,” he said. “And as a grown man He went to church twice, if I remember right. Once to kick out the salesmen and ticket-scalpers, and once to cure that poor bastard with rabies.”

  “Well you don’t remember right!” Mama shouted. “Christ founded a new church! You’d know that if you ever opened a Bible! And that new church—”

  “And that new church,” Papa cut in, his face suddenly savage, “is two thousand years old now, and every bit as senile and mean-spirited as the one that killed Him!”

  “How dare you!” Mama hissed. “How dare you say such a thing in front of these children!”

  “How dare you throw a fit in the name of God over one damned beer!”

  “I’ve seen the hell one beer can lead to!” Mama cried.

  “And I’ve seen the hell your friendly preacher calls salvation!” Papa roared. “‘Come unto me all ye Tea Totalin’ prudes, bores and Bible-thumpers, bring your wallets and purses, and if your husband watches baseball or sips a beer with a neighbor on my Sabbath pay day then damn him to hell and whip his kids off to Spokane!’”

  “Satan!” Mama gasped, grabbing my arm and nearly throwing me into the car. But while she circled round and got in herself, I jumped back out and slammed the door. “Get back here!” she shrieked. But I wouldn’t. And her voice was so terrible that Bet and Freddy started crying, which made her so mad that she just tore out the driveway without even asking Papa if it was all right if I stayed.

  He told me it was okay, though. He said not to worry, Mama would be back. He said they were just two knuckleheads blowing off steam, and he was sorry I’d had to listen. I told him I sort of liked listening, but he said no, it wasn’t right. He said they wouldn’t be fighting at all if he hadn’t crushed his damned thumb two winters ago. I asked how he could know that. “Simple,” he answered. “I wouldn’t be here. I’d be on the road somewhere, playing ball.”

  As always, the thought of baseball turned him silent, and sent him groping for another Lucky. He fired it up and sighed out smoke, saying, “Oh well. You and I were due for some time alone together.” I told him we’d never in our lives had time alone together—not a whole day or night anyway. “That’s what I mean,” he said. “We’re due.”

  So yesterday he left me at Grandawma’s on his way to the mill, then picked me up late after working overtime. Grandawma asked us to stay for dinner, but Papa told her no thanks: when he and Mama have been fighting he doesn’t like to sit around listening to his own mom’s big theories on why. Grandawma seemed disappointed. She’d spent half the day getting ready for him by lecturing to me. She’d told me that Mama was naturally religious, and that having four sons and a ballplaying husband merely kept her that way. But having two daughters and a millworking, chain-smoking, non-Sabbath-keeping, ex-ballplayer husband had made her more than religious: it had turned her into a “hyperprotective paranoid fanatic.” Grandawma is English, and has two college degrees. Everett says that’s why she can’t make sense to kids like me. Her hero is somebody named Charles Darwin. He was just a scientist, Everett says, but she keeps this huge picture of him on her livingroom wall, as if he was Jesus, to her. I asked Papa once what the big deal about Charles Darwin was. All he said was that he preferred Charles Dillon. That’s Casey Stengel’s first two names. Anyhow, “Just you wait!” Grandawma kept telling me. “Just you wait till those two girls get older! Your mother’s going to make your actual lives hell trying to keep her daughters out of that paper hell in the Bible!”

  “Just you wait!” I wanted to yell back. But I was chicken. I didn’t know what she meant by “paper hell” anyway, unless it was the place where Papa works. Of course papermills aren’t in the Bible, but Grandawma never reads Bibles so she might not realize. I was glad when Papa came to get me, and glad we didn’t eat there. Mama may well be a hypo-parathinga-madoodle, but she doesn’t say crummy things about Grandawma behind her back.

  Getting back to the Underhanded Miracle: we had to run from Grandawma’s house to the car, and Papa drove to the bank as much like a maniac as his dead thumb and 1940 Ford would let him. We made it inside the doors at ten seconds to six, just as the bank manager was locking up, and while Papa cashed his paycheck he told me we came within ten seconds of having ourselves one heck of a boring weekend. But I told him no we didn’t, because he was forgetting about Babe Ruth, and he said, “Oops. You’re right.” He forgot I have this piggy bank that’s a clear-glass statue of the Babe, and it’s full to the nose, and none of it’s pennies. Irwin had one too, only his was Lou Gehrig. But one time at church this missionary guy came and showed us films of himself baptizing big long rows of brown people called Laotians in an even browner river out in the Mission Fields of wherever Laotians live, and Irwin got so inspired he took a hammer, smashed Lou Gehrig’s head in, and gave it to the missionary. The money, that is. It was over twenty do
llars. Mama cried when he did it, she was so proud. Everett about puked. Peter laughed. Papa just shrugged. Everybody’s different about money. Supposedly it takes all kinds.

  After the bank we got burgers to go at Zack’s In & Out—one for me and three for Papa—and on the way home we stopped by Six Corners Market, where Papa bought himself a whole case of a kind of beer called Lucky, and a whole carton of Lucky Strikes. When the grocer kidded him about buying Lucky this and Lucky that, Papa scowled and said, “I need all the luck I can get. Even the kinds I got to pay for.”

  “Ain’t that the truth?” the grocer said—only it came out “Ain dat duh troof” because he’s from New York or Philly or somewhere. Papa says they all say “dat” and “troof” back there.

  Papa called the grocer “Soap” and Soap called Papa “Smoke,” so I guess they knew each other, or used to. Soap had a walrus mustache, puffy eyes, a mashed nose which he used instead of his mouth to talk through, and ears like big wads of old gray chewing gum. Papa told me Soap used to box professionally, and to get boxed professionally too, which is why he looked that way. Soap laughed and nodded. Then Papa said Soap got the nickname because he was slippery in the clinch and liked to sting guys in the eyes. Soap shook his head at this, and said that really the name came from everybody bouncing their fists off his face so often it kept their hands nice and clean. “So you be smaht, son,” he said. “Listen to Soap. You stig wid baseball like Smoke here, huh? Huh? Wuz duh boy’s name, Smoke?”

  “Kincaid, Soap Mahoney. And don’t listen to that clean-hands crap, Kade. Soap murdered more’n his share.”

  The old man smiled as we shook hands, and I started to smile back. But when I felt his hand it scared me: it was cold, and as thick and scuffed as one of those old-time webless baseball gloves.

  “So how ’bout dat thumb?” Soap said to Papa. “Gettin’ some feelin’ in it? Doin’ some throwin’? Is duh comeback in duh works?”

  Not even trying to hide his instant irritation, Papa said, “You’ve been asking the same dumb questions for two years, Soap. The answers are still no, no and no.”

  “So I’m still waitin’ for yep, yep an’ yep!” he said cheerfully.

  “Be a hell of a wait,” Papa muttered, and he spun and stalked off toward the door.

  I was embarrassed by his rudeness, but Soap just smiled benignly at his back, then beamed down at me as if he and I both knew, even if Papa didn’t, that any day now ol’ Smoke’d be magically healed and right back out on the mound where he belonged. I knew no such thing, so I just blurted “Bye!” and hurried to catch Papa. But halfway to the door I heard Soap holler, turned, and saw a five-cent roll of Bazooka bubble gum about to hit me in the face. My hand flew up. To my amazement, I caught it.

  Soap gave me another ravaged, all-knowing smile. “Wud I tell ya?” he said. “Runs in duh family, huh?”

  It was easily the best catch of my life, but I nodded like I knew what he was talking about. Then Soap looked hard at Papa, and didn’t smile at all as he said, “Dat gum is lucky, Smoke. An’ nobody’s gotta pay for it.”

  Papa still looked irritated, but he nodded and thanked him. I put the lucky Bazooka in my pocket.

  Back in the car, I asked Papa if he’d ever boxed. He didn’t answer. I asked if he’d ever seen Soap box. No answer again. I asked if he liked Soap Mahoney. No response. I said, “Mama never shops at Soap’s. How come you do?”

  Nothing. He just drove.

  I said, “Mama says Safeway’s lots cheaper.”

  “She’s right!” Papa snapped suddenly. “They ever give you free lucky gum at the goddamned Safeway?”

  I decided I’d better change the subject. I said, “Soap likes you a lot, doesn’t he?”

  The car rolled up to a stop sign. “We’re just a lot alike,” Papa muttered.

  I laughed a little, thinking he was joking. “How?” I asked. “How are you and that old geezer alike?”

  Papa dug a bottle opener out from under the butts in the ashtray, popped open a beer, and started drinking. A pickup truck pulled up behind us, and after a while started honking. Papa just kept pouring it down. The truck finally revved its engine, slammed into reverse, and squealed around us, the driver laying on the horn as he passed. Papa ignored him. He drank till the bottle was empty, slid it back in the case, pulled out another, opened it, and stuck it between his legs. Then he looked at me. “We’re both washed up,” he said. “Both athletic wrecks. That’s how me and that old geezer are alike.”

  It wasn’t true. Papa was nothing like Soap Mahoney. He still played first base and hit over .500 for Crown Z’s fast-pitch softball team. And even with the dead thumb, even at thirty-one, he was the best athlete my brothers or I had ever seen. But when he let out a long belch and the air filled with beer fumes, I rolled down my window and kept my mouth shut. Papa drove, and drank his beer.

  Except for the beer in the yard that made Mama so mad, I’d never seen Papa drink. I’d never seen anybody drink except the bums down in Portland. But once you saw the bums you never forgot. They had eyes like mustard, mayonnaise and ketchup all stirred together; the skin of their faces was like Soap Mahoney’s hands; their teeth were bashed in or caramel-colored, if they had any, and their mouths dribbled tobacco or blood at the corners; they wore pieces of dead people’s old suits, wore greasy overcoats that flapped like mangled wings, wore sores instead of socks on their ankles; and after they’d drink a while they’d just sit or lie down right on the sidewalk, letting real people walk over them while they argued with people who weren’t even there.

  Once, while we were walking over some, Peter said to Everett that the bums had to listen to a whole sermon just to get a bowl of free soup at the Harbor Light Mission. Everett spat and said no wonder they stayed drunk. Then Mama scared the hell out of us, and out of some bums too, by hauling off and slapping Everett so hard he almost fell down on a fat old Indian passed out against the wall there. Yet it was Everett who instantly said, “I’m sorry.” Because he knew, we all knew, that she didn’t hit him for any weird religious reason, or for spitting on sidewalks, or even out of nervousness at having to step around bums. She hit him because her father was a drunk. A mean one too. Died before any of us ever met him, but Mama still has dreams about him. And even dead he was the reason why drinking terrified her.

  He was also the reason why—when we got home and Papa lined his whole case of Luckies up in the icebox like he planned on drinking them all that night—I went straight to the bathroom, locked the door, and got down on my knees to pray. I’d had mixed luck with prayer lately, and wasn’t all that high on it. But this time I gave it my very best shot. Keeping my eyes squeezed shut, calling Jesus “Thee” instead of “You,” sticking “-eths” on the end of words like “beggeth” and “beseecheth” just like the Elders did at church, I explained the whole situation. I told how Papa and Mama had had a bad fight, how He and a beer had been the cause of it, and how now Papa was out there drowning himself, with nobody home to save him but me. I reminded Him how Mama’s awful old man used to beat up his sons when they hid his whiskey, how Papa might do the same to me if I hid the beer, and how I knew He loved little children such as myself and wanted us to seek His help whenever we were in trouble. “And this is trouble,” I told Him. “So if You would disappeared the rest of Papa’s beers for me, Lord, I sure would appreciate it. I thank Thee. Amen.”

  I felt pretty good afterward, just like the Elders say you should feel. I’d taken a big fat crisis off my own shoulders and loaded it all on Jesus, which seemed unfair in a way, but was exactly what the Bible recommended. It got boring in the bathroom then, but I stayed five minutes to allow things to happen, knowing that in working with a guy like Christ you had to be willing to make sacrifices. Then I went to the kitchen to check the results. I found all nineteen of the undrunk Luckies still standing in the icebox, and the twentieth out by the TV, sliding down Papa’s throat.

  I admit I wasn’t surprised by this result, but I was annoyed by it. I
n fact I fired off another prayer (leaving out the “-eths” and “Thees” this time) to let Jesus know that only a wise guy would think I was asking for the beers to disappear down Papa. But then He started answering me in my head the way He does sometimes. He made me remember, for instance, that He knew everything. Knew, for example, that I had Soap Mahoney’s lucky Bazooka right there in my pocket and could easily have made a wish to disappear the beer on that. Feeling selfish, I admitted I was kind of hoping to save the lucky gum.

  But God helps those who help themselves, right? He said.

  “Where in the Bible does it say that?” I asked.

  The Bible doesnt say that. You say that.

  “All I know,” I argued, “is that I asked for Your help in a crisis, and as usual I didn’t get it!”

  It’s your father, kid, and your lucky Bazooka. Think about it.

  “What a friend I have in Jesus!” I snapped right back.

  But He just laughed. He could see right through me. We both knew I was just being greedy with the lucky gum. I stomped back into the livingroom and refused to give up even a corner of a piece while Papa downed a fifth beer, a sixth, a seventh, even an eighth. I grew so sure that he was going to pass out or puke or smash windows or beat me any second that it took me a long time to notice that he’d stayed fairly normal, except that he belched more, and ducked out to pee a lot. But he was better than normal in other ways. For instance he talked back to all the people on TV, imitating their silly voices and faces, making smart-aleck jokes at the idiotic stories, and arguing with everything the commercials tried to sell us, just like Everett likes to do. And when I asked if I could sit in his lap even though I’m too big for that sort of thing, he let me do it. We watched TV till 11:30, three hours past my normal bedtime, and after a while I felt so peaceful watching him guzzle beer and make wisecracks I halfway wished he’d get bombed every night. Last thing I remember he was carrying me up to bed, and I weigh a ton, but eight beers and all, he never once staggered. So after he slid me in under the covers and kissed me goodnight I shot off another sleepy prayer, just to forgive Jesus for not answering the prayer I’d prayed earlier. I suppose He knew all along how much beer Papa could hold. And who knows, maybe Papa had prayed himself. Maybe he’d asked Jesus to let him drink his fill in his own house in peace for once, and begged Him to ignore anybody who sent up messages to the contrary. Prayer is mysterious, and God is even worse. I don’t completely understand it yet.