Bridge of Clay(102)

We loved Agamemnon’s antics, the so-called king of men; and sometimes we sat and watched him, headbutting the glass of his tank.

“One…two…three,” we’d count, and by forty only Rory was left.

“Don’t you have anything better to do?” I’d ask.

    “No,” he’d say, “I don’t.”

He was still on the road to expulsion, but I gave it a shot, nonetheless. “Homework?”

“We all know homework’s useless, Matthew.” He marveled at the goldfish’s toughness. “This fish is the bloody best.”

Of course, Hector went on being Hector, purring and ball-tearing through summer, and watching bathroom-work from the cistern.

“Oi, Tommy!” I’d often call to him. “I’m trying to have a shower!”

The cat sat like an apparition, in the steam room haze around him. He’d stare and somehow smirk at me: And I’m tryin’ to get a schwitz!

He’d lick those tarmac paws of his, he’d smack his tire-black lips.

Telemachus (whom we’d already reduced to T) marched inside and out of his cage. Only once did the Trojan strike at him, and Tommy had told him no, and Hector went back to sleep. He likely dreamed of the steam.

Then Rosy, and Rosy still ran, but when Henry brought her a beanbag, which he’d found in a council cleanup (he always had his eye out), we loved how she’d cast it around. In the moments when she actually did lie down, she preferred the open sunshine; she would pick it up and drag it along, following the path of the light. Then she’d dig to make herself comfortable, which could only have one result: “Hey, Tommy! Tommy! Come have a look at this!”

The backyard was covered in snowfall, from the beanbag’s Styrofoam balls. The most humid day of the summer so far—and Rory looked over at Henry.

“I swear you’re a Goddamn genius.”

“What?”

“Are you kidding me? Bringing that bloody beanbag home.”

“I didn’t know the dog would destroy it—that’s Tommy’s fault—and anyway…” He disappeared and came back with the vacuum.

“Oi, you can’t use the vacuum for this!”

“Why not?”

    “I don’t know—you’ll wreck it.”

“You’re worried about the vacuum, Rory?” This time it was me. “You wouldn’t even know where to switch the bloody thing on.”

“Yeah.”

“Shut up, Henry.”

“Or how to use it.”

“Shut up, Matthew.”

All of us stood and watched, though, as Henry finished the job. Rosy leapt forward and sideways, barking and carrying on, and Mrs. Chilman, grinning, at the fence. She stood on her toes on a paint tin.

“You Dunbar boys,” she said.



* * *



—

One of the best parts of the anniversary was the great bedroom swap, which we did after moving her books, and the dress inside the piano.

First we dismantled the bunk beds.

They could each be made into singles, and although I wasn’t overly keen, it was me who moved to the main bedroom (no one else wanted anything to do with it), but I took my old bed there with me. No way would I sleep on theirs. Before any of that was dealt with, though, we decided it was time for a change—for Henry and Rory to disband.

Henry: “Finally! I’ve been waiting for this my whole life!”

Rory: “You’ve been waiting, bloody hell, good riddance! Pack up your shit and leave.”

“Pack my shit up? What are you on about?” He gave him a generous shove. “I’m not going!”

“Well I’m not going!”

“Oh, just shut up,” I said. “I wish I could get rid of the pair of you, but I can’t, so here’s what we’ll do—I’ll toss this coin. Twice. The first one’s for who moves out.”

“Yeah, but he’s got more—”

“Not interested. Winner stays, loser moves. Rory, you call.”

The coin went up, it hit the bedroom ceiling.

    “Heads.”

It bounced over the carpet; it landed on a sock.

Tails.

“Shit!”

“Ha ha, bad luck, buddy boy!”

“It hit the ceiling, it doesn’t count!”

I turned now to Henry.

Rory persisted. “It hit the fucking ceiling!”

“Rory,” I said, “shut up. Now, Henry—I’m throwing again. Heads you get Tommy, tails you get Clay.”

It was tails again, and the first thing Henry said when Clay moved in was “Here, get a look at this.” He threw him the old Playboy—Miss January—and Rory made friends with Tommy: “Get the cat off my Goddamn bed, shithead.”

Your bed?

Typical Hector.



* * *



—

Again, in the lead-up, mid-February, when he hit the Regional Championships, at E. S. Marks—where the grandstand was a concrete gargantuan—we had the tape network down to an art. We’d made it a kind of ritual; it was our version of what are your legs, or the power that came from within.