Bridge of Clay(88)

    He said, “I missed you, too.”

When they lessened, she asked him, “Later?”

And, “Of course,” he said. “I’ll go there.”

They would go there and they’d be disciplined—their rules and regulations; unsaid but always sensed. She would itch but nothing-more him. Nothing more but tell him everything, and not saying that this was the best of it—her feet on top of his.





In the past there were hardening facts.

Our mother was dead.

Our father had fled.

Clay searched for him after a week.

In its lead-up, with every passing hour, something in him was building, but he didn’t quite know what it was; like nerves before a football game, but it never seemed able to dissolve. Maybe the difference was that football games were played. You ran out onto the field; it began, it ended. But not this. This was constant beginning.



* * *



—

Like all of us, Clay missed him in a strangely worn-out way.

It was hard enough missing Penny.

At least with her you knew what to do with it; the beauty of death—it’s definite. With our dad there were too many questions, and thoughts were much more dangerous: How could he leave us?

Where did he go?

Was he okay?

That morning a week later, when Clay found himself awake, he stood and dressed in the bedroom. Soon, he made his way out; he had to fill that space. His reaction was sudden and simple.

He got to the street and ran.



* * *



—

    As I said, he went Dad! DAD! WHERE ARE YOU, DAD?!

But he wasn’t quite able to shout.

The morning was cool with spring.

He’d run hard when he first slipped out, then walked the early darkness. In a rush of fear and excitement, he didn’t know where he was going. When he’d started the internal calling, he’d soon discovered he was lost. He got lucky and wandered home.

Upon arrival, I was on the porch.

I walked down and took his collar.

I held him, one-armed, against me.

Like I said, I’d turned eighteen.

I thought I should try to act it.

“You okay?” I asked, and he’d nodded.

The stomach-feeling had eased.



* * *



—

The second time he did it, the very next day, I wasn’t quite as forgiving; there was still a reach for his collar, but I dragged him across the lawn.

“What the hell are you thinking?” I asked. “What the hell are you doing?”

But Clay was happy, he couldn’t help it; he’d quelled it again, momentarily.

“Are you even listening?”

We stopped at the fly-screen door.

The boy was barefoot-dirty.

I said, “You have to promise me.”

“Promise what?”

It was the first time he noticed the blood down there, like rust between his toes; he liked it and he smiled at it, he liked that blood a lot.

“Take a Goddamn guess! Stop bloody disappearing!”

It’s bad enough he’s disappeared.

I thought it but couldn’t yet say it.

“Okay,” he said, “I won’t.”

    Clay promised.

Clay lied.

He did it every morning for weeks.



* * *



—

Sometimes we went out, we searched for him.

Looking back, I wonder why.

He wasn’t in abject peril—the worst would be losing his way again—but it somehow felt important; another holding-on. We’d lost our mother and then our father, so we couldn’t lose any more. We simply wouldn’t allow it. That said, we wouldn’t be nice to him, either; he got dead-legged upon return, at the mercy of Rory and Henry.

The problem, already back then, though, was that it didn’t matter how much we hurt him; we couldn’t hurt him. Or how much we held him; we couldn’t hold him. He’d be gone next day again.

Once, we actually found him out there.

It was a Tuesday, seven a.m.

I was going to be late for work.

The city was cool and cloudy, and it was Rory who caught a glimpse. We were several blocks east, where Rogilla met Hydrogen Avenue.

“There!” he said.

We chased him to Ajax Lane, with its backstreet line of milk crates, and tackled him into the fence; I got a thumbful of cold grey splinters.

“Shit!” cried Henry.

“What?”

“I think he just bit me!”

“That was my belt buckle.”

“Pin that knee!”

He didn’t know it, but somewhere, deep inside, Clay had made a vow; he’d never be pinned like that again, or at least not quite so easily.



* * *



—

That particular morning, though, when we pushed him back through the streets, he’d also made a mistake:

    He thought it was over.

It wasn’t.

If Michael Dunbar couldn’t haul him through the house in the months that came beforehand, I could help him out; I shoved him down the hallway, slung him out the back, and banged a ladder against the gutter.