Nearer Than The Sky Read online

  “Did you see that?” he asked just after I accidentally let the screen door slam shut behind me.

  “Indie!” my mother screeched. Her transformation from calm to hysterical was just as quick as the reverse.

  “Sorry, Ma!” I hollered back and followed Benny’s gesture to the front yard.

  “It was a giant mouse!” he said, looking quickly from me to a spot on the grass.

  “Are you sure?”

  He nodded and pointed again. “It was brown and it ran under the porch. It looked like that mouse we found in the dryer. ’Member? ’Member the one that was dead inside the dryer and got rolled up in Daddy’s T-shirt? ’Member, Indie?”

  “That was just a field mouse. It was probably a squirrel.” I shifted the heavy backpack so that the weight of it was even across my shoulders. “Let’s go.” I took his hand and tugged gently. His large hand closed over mine and he resisted my pull.

  “It was a giant mouse,” he insisted, staring sadly at the front lawn. “I’m gonna go under that porch again and find him.”

  “Okay, Benny,” I nodded. “We’ll look for it when we get back. But let’s go so we can get a good spot by the creek.”

  “It was brown and it had squinty eyes.”

  “Okay, Benny. We’ll look for it later. Come on.”

  His grip loosened on my hand, and he followed behind me, tripping as he turned his head back to look for the mouse.

  To get to the creek from our house without crossing the train tracks you had to go all the way out to Depot Street and then go under the overpass to get to Highway 79. It was a lot quicker to go the back way, though, through the field behind our house, through the woods, and then across the tracks to the highway. Of course, we always pretended that we were going the long way, and then when I was pretty sure Ma was preoccupied with something else, we would edge along the side of the garage and make a run for the woods. It was hard with Benny because he made so much noise. But he was learning to be quiet. If I had taught him anything it was how to make Ma think he was doing exactly what she wanted him to do.

  Today, Benny was distracted by the so-called giant mouse, so I had to remind him to squat down and walk like a duck under the kitchen window so Ma wouldn’t see our heads bobbing along. He finally stopped looking for the mouse and quietly followed me to the garage, where we crawled through the waist-high grass in the field and then ran to the woods.

  “I didn’t make a single sound,” Benny said when we got to the tree I’d designated as the safety zone, where he could talk. “Not even a breathing sound.”

  “I know Benny, you did great,” I said. I was out of breath. It was hard to run with my backpack on.

  “I almost made a breathing sound when I stubbed my toe on that rock, but I held it inside,” he said, pointing to his chest. “Deep down.”

  “I didn’t hear you at all,” I said and pulled the backpack off. My shoulders ached.

  “Did you bring my new swim trunks?” Benny asked, tugging at his earlobe.

  “Benny, you saw me put the bag inside the backpack.”

  “Can I see them?”

  “No,” I said, pulling the backpack back on.

  “You brought them inside that bread bag because they were wet. Right, Indie?”

  “Shhh,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  I loved the walk through the woods to the tracks. The Ponderosa pines smelled so sweet in the summertime, like butterscotch, some people said. The ground was completely covered with their spiny needles. I could have lived my whole life here, surrounded by the giant trees. It was cool and dark and quiet.

  Daddy was the kind of person who didn’t like the woods. He wasn’t happy unless he was somewhere with a lot of noise and people. When he bought the bar from a friend and moved all of us to Mountainview from California, he’d never been anywhere in Arizona except for Phoenix. He didn’t know that up here there was almost nothing but woods. Of course, like Daddy always said, wherever there are people, there will be bars. And if a bar was open, there would always be someone who needed a drink. There was always somebody to talk to at Rusty’s, always some story to hear. Daddy didn’t even mind if he’d heard a story a thousand times. He’d rest his elbows on the smooth, polished wood of the bar and listen to Simon telling tired old Vietnam stories, or Nancy talking about the way her boyfriend used to make her the prettiest Indian jewelry before he got his fingers cut off in the factory. And how now all he did was smoke weed and watch basketball on TV. Daddy wouldn’t trade the sound of Johnny Cash on the jukebox and the music of the cue ball clacking against the other balls on the smooth green felt of the pool table for anything. I loved it too, but sometimes all that noise got my tongue confused. The sounds of the bar tasted like cigarette smoke and sour lemons. I could only take the bitter olive of Nancy’s sadness and the sickly sweet maraschino cherry of Sheila’s flirting before I longed for the forest.

  Benny liked the woods too, but only during the day. He wouldn’t even go near the edge of the forest at night. But now he was skipping and tripping over his big feet through the maze of trunks and branches. He was happy here. He almost never cried in the woods.

  After not too long, the woods opened up again to Highway 79, which ran all the way down into the canyon. But to get to the road, you had to cross the tracks. It wasn’t as safe here as it was in town, where there were flashing lights and wooden arms that descended to protect you every time a train went by. Out here, you needed to put your ear to the ground and listen because it was easy to confuse the sound of the train with the sound of your own breaths or the wind whistling through the tops of the trees.

  “Benny, come here,” I said and motioned for him to join me as I knelt down to the ground.

  We had done this before. He lay down on the ground, pressing his ear against the cool gravel near the tracks, and squeezed his eyes shut.

  “I don’t hear nothin’,” he said, opening his eyes. “It’s safe.”

  I raised my eyebrows at him. “Are you sure?” I could feel the train through the thin soles of my flip-flops.

  “You check, Indie,” he said. “I don’t know, maybe I heard somethin’.”

  “No,” I said. “I trust you.” I started to stand.

  “Stop,” he said. “Just a minute. Let me try again.”

  I smiled.

  “I hear it, I hear it!” he squealed. “It’s coming!”

  “Good, Benny,” I said. “Looks like you just saved my life.”

  “I just about saved your life,” he said. “Phew.”

  “Let’s move back,” I said, pulling him back away from the tracks.

  Within seconds the train approached us; the bright yellow light on the front could have been the sun. Benny yelled into the scream of the train, trying to match its noise with his own. When the caboose rolled past he waved frantically to the conductor, who looked startled to see such a tall boy grinning and jumping and screaming. He returned the gesture and Benny kept waving until the train was gone and the ground was still and soundless again. Only then did he tentatively step across the trembling tracks to the other side.

  I don’t like to swim. That’s not why I liked to go to the creek. Benny was the swimmer in our family. Swimming was the one thing he was truly good at. In the water he could have been any other fourteen-year-old boy. In the water everything else just floated away.

  We went to our usual spot, hoping that tourists hadn’t already discovered it. Weekends were always a little risky, and there was nothing worse than tourists spreading out their godawful beach towels on the smooth gray rocks that were rightfully ours. Nothing worse than some old lady with frosted hair spilling her suntan oil in the clean water. Sometimes the rainbows of oil would last for days after the tourists had already gone home.

  We crawled down through the woods and across the wobbly bridge to Benny’s favorite place. There were no people here. It was only the end of May. Too early in the year for tourists, I guess.

  Benny pulled off his cutoffs, g
rabbed the orange bread bag with his mildewy suit inside, and went behind a tree to change. When he came back out the other side, he disappeared into the creek. I sat down on my favorite rock. It was only inches from the water; when the creek was high, the running water would sometimes splash over the rock, touching me with its wet fingers. If I lay on my back it felt almost as if I were swimming. This was the closest I ever came to going in.

  But there was no time to dream-swim today. Inside the backpack I had the books I’d been carrying around for a month. One was a high school geometry textbook I bought at the school library book sale. The other was Ma’s Sears catalog. I would have torn out the page instead of lugging that thing around, but I was afraid she would have noticed. Ma knew the catalog like the lines in the palms of her hands. The pages were dog-eared and worn. Pink ruffly party dresses. Shiny white buckled shoes. I knew that she wanted these things for Lily, but that we didn’t have the money. These dresses were the blueprints for the patterns she pieced together to the make the homemade versions we could afford. And to me, the dress that hung from a curtain rod in my parents’ bedroom looked just as good as any in this catalog, but I’d watched her hold the catalog up to the dress she made and shake her head.

  “It’s pretty, Ma,” I said.

  “Chintzy fabric,” she said, shaking her head. “It’ll fall apart after one wash. And the flowers are plastic. The ones in the catalogue are silk. Hopefully, the judges won’t be able to tell the difference from so far away.”

  “Why don’t you buy the one in the catalog then?” I asked.

  “Ask your father,” she said, turning to face me. Her face was pinched tight, cinched into small pleats like the skirt of Lily’s new dress.

  I was careful not to let the water splash on the pages of the catalog. I’d dropped one of my own books in the creek once and couldn’t get the pages to lay flat again after it had dried in the sun. On page 454, past the party dresses and maternity bras and Barbie accessories, were the few pages of sporting goods. A free-standing basketball hoop. A bowling machine with tiny pins on strings. And two different styles of pool cues. The one I wanted had the biggest picture. Spalding personalized 2-piece pool cue. 57” maple shaft with inlaid blue, black, and white rings. Brass to brass joint. Nylon sleeve included. 2 lbs. $29.99. Ever since the catalog arrived in the mail I had been eyeing that stick. The pages opened up to this almost as quickly as they opened up to the frilly dresses and shoes of my mother’s fantasy.

  At night I imagined walking into Rusty’s, carrying that beautiful bag. I imagined sitting down at one of the booths near the pool tables and screwing the two pieces together while all the other tournament contestants watched. I imagined the way the smooth wood would feel in my hands. Not like the warped sticks that hung in the rack on the wall.You had to aim just a little off the mark to make a shot with those cues. When you rolled them across the smooth felt, they wobbled. But the Spalding personalized two-piece pool cue wouldn’t wobble a bit. And the tip was probably perfectly rounded. No chips or dings at all. I had twenty-three dollars saved. I was hoping Daddy might splurge for my birthday, but I doubted it. Plus, there would be shipping and handling charges. Two pounds. To get it here on time for the tournament would cost me a fortune. There was also the matter of getting Daddy to let me enter. But now, with him agreeing to let Lily and Ma go to Phoenix for the pageant, I figured he’d have to let me play. It only cost $5.00 to enter.

  I ran my finger across the glossy picture and then closed the catalog. I could see Benny just beneath the surface of the water, silent and graceful. He could hold his breath for hours, it seemed. It used to make me panic a little, but now I didn’t worry about him anymore. He was smart in the water.

  The geometry books were to help me with some of the trick shots that Little Ike had been teaching me. Little Ike was my size. He offered to teach me how to shoot because he knew better than anyone else that there were special skills needed to play pool when you were only four-foot-six. Plus, he was the only one who didn’t seem to mind playing with a kid. Some of the older guys pretended that I wasn’t even there, especially when I was playing really well. One time I played against an older guy and beat him in one turn. After he broke, he didn’t even get a chance to shoot again. He kept slamming his hand down on Daddy’s pool table and checking the pockets like he might find some trap doors or magnets inside that sucked all the balls in. People didn’t like being shown up by a kid, and certainly not by a girl. I was polite, though. Little Ike also taught me how to be a good sport. Always shake hands before the game starts and after it’s over. Always say, “Good game.” I remember the guy’s hand was big and sweaty. Up close I could smell motor oil on him. Motor oil and beer.

  Ike said, “It’s all geometry. You study your geometry, and you’ll be a great pool player. It’s probably the only math you’ll ever use in real life. Except for maybe adding up your winnings.” I stared at the drawings of an isosceles triangle and then lined up some stones to try to make sense of geometry.

  “Benny,” I said into the water as I shoved the catalog and textbooks back inside my backpack.

  Benny would stay in the water until his skin was wrinkled up like a prune if there was nobody there to stop him. He ignored me the first few times I called for him to get out of the water. Finally, he came out of the creek and walked over to where I was gathering up our things. I handed him a towel, which he wrapped around his shoulders like a cape.

  Underneath the towel he slithered out of his stinky swim trunks and handed them to me.

  “They stink,” I said, pinching my nose.

  “Do not,” he said, shaking his head, burying his nose in the trunks. His towel dropped to the ground.

  “Get dressed,” I said, embarrassed by his nakedness, hoping that there were no tourists at the lookout above.

  “Why?”

  “Put your clothes on, Benny,” I said, starting to get nervous. I peered up toward the lookout, shielding my eyes from the sun.

  “No!” he yelled and skipped from one rock to the next, dangling the swim trunks from one of his long, thin fingers.

  “Benny,” I said. “Please.”

  “Make me, make me . . .” he sang. His thin white body reflected in the rippled surface of the water. His skin was covered with goose bumps.

  I heard leaves rustling above me. When I looked up I saw people in brightly colored shorts and T-shirts hiking above.

  “Benny, if you don’t put your clothes on I am going to leave,” I said. And then I turned and started walking up the hill. I shouldn’t have threatened him. I knew even as I struggled through the brush that I shouldn’t even pretend to leave him. But my stomach turned as I imagined the hikers looking down and seeing my brother, my retarded brother, naked on the rocks, playing keep-away with a pair of stinky swim trunks. I knew I shouldn’t do this, but I kept moving up the embankment.

  When I finally turned around, I saw Benny lying on the ground near the stream. His shorts were around his ankles, and both of his knees were bleeding. His body shook as he quietly sobbed, and I felt like I might throw up. I ran back down the bank and sat down next to him on the ground. Silently, I helped him pull the clean shorts up over his cold white bottom and poured handfuls of cool creek water on the fresh cuts in his knees.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean for you to get hurt.”

  “I saved your life,” Benny said, tugging on his earlobe. “You would have gotten runned over by the train. But I listened and I made you wait.”

  “I know, Benny. I’m sorry.”

  “The train would have killed you and you would be dead like the mouse in the dryer,” he sobbed.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I rolled up his swim trunks and stuffed them back into the bread bag. Benny’s crying subsided and I helped him up. He inspected his new cuts.

  “I’ll put some Bactine on them back at the house,” I said.

  “I’m gonna find that giant mouse under the porch when we get back.”
/>   “Okay,” I said, grateful that he wasn’t mad at me anymore for leaving him naked at the edge of the water. The nice thing about Benny was that he would forgive just about anything. The one thing he didn’t do was forget. There was nothing wrong with Benny’s memory, nothing at all.

  “It was bigger than a squirrel even,” he said. “Bigger than a cat.”

  I fell asleep on the couch with the TV on, and woke at 4:00 A.M. to snow on the screen and snow falling softly outside. I leaned my head against the window and wondered if it was snowing in Maine. It was early, too early, and it was likely that the snowflakes, like stars, would be gone by morning. I must have fallen asleep sitting up, because when I woke up later my neck and shoulders were stiff. Outside, there was no evidence of snow. The sun was warm on my face and I could hear water dripping from the eaves.

  I wouldn’t be able to call the radon and asbestos people for a couple days. I’d already tried every number in the Yellow Pages, and no one had any open appointments until Monday. I thought I might go into town again. Maybe go to Rusty’s to visit Rosey. She was still working there the last time I came to visit. She was there when Daddy bought the bar and later when he left it. I suspected she’d be there until the building itself crumbled.

  Outside, the air was crisp and bright. I brought my coffee onto the front porch and sat down on a wooden box. The magic handkerchief had been lifted from the mountains, revealing two snow-dusted peaks jutting into the too-blue sky like monoliths. I breathed the cold air until my lungs felt almost numb. When I exhaled, a puff of smoke escaped from my lips. This was my favorite time of year when I was a kid. I loved the way autumn teetered on the edge of winter, how it could be a hot Indian summer one day and the next morning you could make angels just by breathing. In Maine, there was more warning. The leaves announced the beginning and end of fall. The air was bitter long before snow fell.