Bridge of Clay(20)

For a long time, he tried to forget:

The man at the table.

The quiet background noise of brothers and felt betrayal.

It came from many moments, that bridge of his, but there, at The Surrounds that morning, it came from last night most of all.



* * *



—

Eight hours earlier, when the Murderer left, there were ten minutes of uncomfortable silence. To break it, Tommy said, “Jesus, he looked like death warmed up.” He held Hector over his heart. The cat purred, a lump of stripes.

“He deserved to look a lot worse,” I told him.

“What a shocker of a suit” and “Who gives a shit, I’m going down the pub,” said Henry and Rory, in sequence. They stood like melded elements, like sand and rust combined.

    Clay, of course, famous for saying all but nothing, said nothing. He’d probably spoken enough for one night. For a moment he wondered, why now? Why had he come home now? But then he realized the date. It was February 17.

He put his injured hand in a small bucket of ice, and kept the other from the graze on his face, tempting as it was to touch it. At the table it was he and I, at silent loggerheads. For me, this much was clear: there was only one brother to worry about, and that was the one in front of me.

Hi, Dad, for Christ’s sake.

I looked at the ice, bobbing around his wrist.

You’ll need a bucket big as your body, boy.

I didn’t say it, but I was sure Clay read it on my face, as he lost the battle and placed two trigger-like fingers on the wound below his eye. The mostly mute little bastard even nodded a bit, just before the clean pile of dishes, in all its outlandish altitude, collapsed into the sink.

It didn’t stop the standoff, though, oh no.

Me, I went right on staring.

Clay carried on with his fingers.

Tommy placed Hector down, cleaned up the crockery, and soon returned with the pigeon (T looking on from his shoulder), and couldn’t get out of there fast enough. He would check on Achilles and Rosy—both exiled, out back, to the porch. He made a point of closing the door.



* * *



—

Of course, earlier, when Clay had said those two fateful words, the rest of us stood behind him, like witnesses at the scene of a crime. A grisly one. Caught and swollen, there were many things to be thought, but I only remember one: We’ve lost him now for good.

But I was ready to fight it out.

“You’ve got two minutes,” I said, and the Murderer slowly nodded. He slipped against his chair; it ground into the floor. “Well, go on then. Two minutes aren’t long, old man.”

    Old man?

The Murderer queried and resigned himself to it in the same breath. He was an old man, an old memory, a forgotten idea—and middle-aged though he might have been, to us he was all but dead.

He put his hands down on the table.

He resurrected his voice.

It came out in installments, as he awkwardly addressed the room.

“I need, or, actually, I was wondering…” He didn’t sound like him anymore, not to any of us. We’d remembered him slightly left, or right. “I’m here to ask—”

And thank God for Rory, because in a broiled voice that sounded just like it always had, he unloaded a full-blooded reply, to our father’s timorous stutterings. “For Christ’s sake, spit the fucking thing out!”

We stopped.

All of us, temporarily.

But then Rosy barked again and there was me and a bit of shut-that-bloody-dog-up, and somewhere, in the middle, the words: “Okay, look.” The murderer found a way through. “I won’t waste any more time, and I know I’ve got no right, but I came because I live far from here now, in the country. It’s a lot of land, and there’s a river, and I’m building a bridge. I’ve learned the hard way that the river floods. You can be locked either side, and…” The voice was full of splinters, a fence post in his throat. “I’ll need help to build it, and I’m asking if any of you might—”

“No.” I was first.

Again, the Murderer nodded.

“You’ve got some fucking neck, haven’t you?”—Rory, in case you didn’t guess.

“Henry?”

Henry took my cue and remained his affable self, in the face of all the outrage. “No thanks, mate.”

“He’s not your mate—Clay?”

    Clay shook his head.

“Tommy?”

“No.”

One of us was lying.



* * *



—

From there, there was a sort of bashed-up quiet.

The table was arid between father and sons, and a hell of a lot of toast crumbs. A pair of mismatched salt and pepper shakers stood in the middle, like some comedy duo. One portly. One tall.

The Murderer nodded and left.

As he did so, he took out a small piece of paper and gave it to that company of crumbs. “My address. In case you change your mind.”

“Go now.” I folded my arms. “And leave the cigarettes.”



* * *



—

The address was torn up straightaway.

I threw it into the wooden crate next to the fridge that held assorted bottles and old newspapers.