Sourland

said “I can’t fall behind, Dad, it’s like a Mobius strip. Anyway, it’s after school now. See? — it’s dark.” He pointed toward the window at the rear of the room as if his father required proof. But his father was laughing, a dry, mirthless laugh, the remark about the Mobius strip was so clever. David reached for his jacket, laid over the back of a chair. His mother called after him but he didn’t hear. He’d let forty minutes pass; he was in a desperate hurry.

20

Where the brothers had been playing their rough game earlier that day, there were patches of ice treacherous underfoot. A boy who might’ve been the Cheetah signaled to David from the far side of the open space, near the parking garage. He walked rapidly away, turned, and beckoned to David mysteriously. They’d entered the parking garage at the rear. This was level A, now mostly deserted. The Cheetah was smoking a cigarette and trailing smoke over his shoulder, exhaling through his teeth. He held out a pack of cigarettes and David was about to stammer, “Thanks, but — I don’t — ” when he understood that he must accept the cigarette from his friend and learn to smoke it. He laughed, excited at the prospect. His hand reached out and the Cheetah’s hooded eyes flashed and in that instant David was grabbed from behind, and his arms yanked painfully back. Someone had been waiting behind one of the posts. A tall, strong boy, of course it was the Cheetah’s brother. David was too surprised to cry for help. He might have thought this was part of a game. He heard his cracked voice, “What? — what — ” Already a flurry of hard blows like horses’ hooves struck his chest, his stomach, his thighs. He fell, or was pushed. Sprawled on the gritty pavement. The Hawk stooped over him, his breath in short steaming pants. He punched and kicked him and spat in his face and the Cheetah, making a high, whimpering sound like a malicious child, stooped over him too, striking him with his fists, not so hard or with so much fury as his brother.

The beating was quick and cruel and could not have lasted more than two minutes. The Hawk kicked him in the groin, cursing, “Fucker! Little fag!” The Cheetah drew his foot back for another kick but changed his mind. He pulled his brother, “Hey, no more.” He called the older boy by a name David couldn’t recognize, a name whose syllables were foreign, but in fact David heard little, the terrible fiery pain in his groin, his eyes misted over in shock, there was a roaring like a waterfall in his ears. Yet he would always remember the Cheetah hesitating. He would see the Cheetah not-kick. That glisten of fierce happiness in the Hawk’s face David would never forget; it would be one of the great riddles of his life even as he would cherish the gift of the Cheetah’s withheld kick. For both brothers might have kicked and kicked, leaving him limp, broken, bleeding; they might have kicked him to death for that was within their power, yet they had not. The younger boy panted, “Hey, no more. C’mon.”

The brothers walked swiftly away. David lay where he’d fallen. He was alone, dazed. Never such pain as the pain between his legs, yet he seemed to know it would pass, he wouldn’t die, wouldn’t even be crippled. Afterward he would realize that the brothers had deliberately spared his face. He wasn’t bleeding, he’d have no visible marks.

Always, he’d be grateful for this.

Honor Code

1

Seems like forever I was in love with my cousin Sonny Brandt, who was incarcerated in the Chautauqua County Youth Facility outside Chautauqua Falls, New York, from the age of sixteen to the age of twenty-one on a charge of manslaughter. You could say that my life as a girl was before-Sonny and after-Sonny. Before- manslaughter and after-manslaughter.

That word! One day it came into our lives.

Like incarceration. Another word that, once it comes into your life, the life of your family, is permanent.

No one says “incarcerate” except people who have to do with the prison system. “Manslaughter” is a word you hear more frequently, though most people, I think, don’t know what it means.

“Manslaughter.”

Those years I whispered this word aloud. Murmured this word like a precious obscenity. I loved the vibration in my jaws, my teeth clenched tight. “Manslaughter.” I felt the thrill of what Sonny had done, or what people claimed Sonny had done, reverberating in those syllables not to be spoken aloud in the presence of any of the relatives.

“Manslaughter” was more powerful than even “murder” for there was “man” and there was “slaughter” and the two jammed together were like music: the opening chord of an electric guitar, so deafening you feel it deep in the groin.

What Sonny did to a man who’d hurt my mother happened in December 1981, when I was eleven. A few years later my mother’s older sister Agnes arranged for me to attend a private girls’ school in Amherst, New York, where one day in music class our teacher happened to mention the title of a composition for piano — Slaughter on Tenth Avenue — and in that instant my jaw must have dropped, for a girl pointed at me, and laughed.

“Mickey is so weird isn’t she!”

“Mickey is so funny.”

“Mickey is funny-weird.”

At the Amherst Academy for Girls I’d learned to laugh with my tormentors who were also my friends. Somehow I was special to them, like a handicapped dancer or athlete, you had to laugh at me yet with a look of tender exasperation. When I couldn’t come up with a witty rejoinder, I made a face like a TV comedian. Any laughter generated by Mickey Stecke was going to be intentional.

“Hurry! No time to dawdle! This is an emergency.”

It was Hurricane Charley in September 1980 that broke up our household in Herkimer, New York, and caused us to flee like wartime refugees. So Momma would say. That terrible time when within twenty-four hours every river, creek, and ditch in Herkimer County overflowed its banks and Bob Gleason’s little shingleboard house on Half Moon Creek where we’d been living got flooded out: “Near-about swept away and all of us drowned.”

Momma’s voice quavered when she spoke of Hurricane Charley and all she’d had to leave behind but in fact she’d made her decision to leave Herkimer and Bob Gleason before the storm hit. Must’ve made up her mind watching TV weather news. This confused time in our lives when we’d been living with a man who was my brother Lyle’s father, who was spending time away from the house after he and Momma had quarreled, and every time the phone rang it was Bob Gleason wanting to speak with Momma, and Momma was anxious about Bob Gleason returning, so one night she ran into Lyle’s and my room excited saying there were “hurricane warnings” on TV for Herkimer County, we’d have to “evacuate” to save our lives. Already Momma was dragging a suitcase down from the attic. “You two! Help me with these damn bags.” Momma had a way of keeping fear out of her voice by sounding as if she was scolding or teasing. It became a game to see how quickly we could pack Momma’s old Chevy Impala in the driveway. Momma had just the one suitcase that was large, bulky, sand-colored, with not only buckles to snap shut but cord belts to fasten. She had cardboard boxes, bags from the grocery store, armloads of loose clothes carried to the car on hangers and dumped into the back. Already it was raining, hard.

Our destination was my aunt Georgia’s house in Ransomville, three hundred miles to the west in the foothills of the Chautauqua Mountains, we’d last visited two summers ago.

I asked Momma if Aunt Georgia knew we were coming. Momma said sharply of course she knew. “Who you think I been on the phone with, all hours of the night? Him?”

Momma spoke contemptuously. I was to know who him was without her needing to explain.

When a man was over with, in Momma’s life, immediately he became him. Whatever name he’d had, she’d once uttered in a soft-sliding voice, would not be spoken ever again.

“Pray to God, He will spare us.”

It was a frantic drive on mostly country roads littered with fallen tree limbs. From time to time we