Man Descending

here,” I said. “Beat it.”

“I took the wheels off his little red wagon,” said Gene. “It don’t pull so good now.” His hands were shaking and so was his voice. He hadn’t had half enough yet. “I remember that other guy,” he said. “Where’s his friend?”

I gave him a shove. “Get going.” Gene slid into the crowd that was slipping quickly away. Then I remembered his hockey jacket. It was wet with blood. It also had flashes with his name and number on it. It wouldn’t take no Sherlock Holmes cop to figure out who’d beat on Marvin. I picked it up and hugged it to my belly. Right away I felt something hard in the pocket. Hard and round. I started to walk away. I heard a car door slam. I knew what was in that pocket. The controversial four ball old Gene had palmed when he pretended to put it back. He likes to win.

I must have been walking too fast or with a guilty hunch to my shoulders, because I heard the cop call, “Hey you, the kid with the hair.” Me, I’m kind of a hippy for this place, I guess. Lots of people mention my hair.

I ran. I scooted round the corner of the supermarket and let that pool ball fly as hard as I could, way down the alley. I never rifled a shot like that in my life. If coach Al had seen me trigger that baby he’d have strapped me into a belly pad himself. Of course, a jacket don’t fly for shit. The bull came storming around the corner just as I give it the heave-ho. I was kind of caught with shit on my face, if you know what I mean?

Now a guy with half a brain could have talked his way out of that without too much trouble. Even a cop understands how somebody would try to help his brother. They don’t hold it too much against you. And I couldn’t really protect Gene. That geek Marvin would have flapped his trap if I hadn’t. And it wasn’t as if I hadn’t done old Gene some good. After all, they never found out about that pool ball. The judge would have pinned Gene’s ears back for him if he’d known he was going around thwacking people with a hunk of shatter- proof plastic. So Gene came out smelling like a rose, same suspended sentence as me, and a reputation for having hands of stone.

But at a time like that you get the nuttiest ideas ever. I watched them load Marvin in a squad car to drive him to the hospital while I sat in the back seat of another. And I thought to myself: I’ll play along with this. Let the old man come down to the cop shop over me for once. Me he takes for granted. Let him worry about Billy for a change. It wouldn’t hurt him.

So I never said one word about not being the guy who hopped Marvin. It was kind of fun in a crazy way, making like a hard case. At the station I was real rude and lippy. Particularly to a sergeant who was a grade A dink if I ever saw one. It was only when they took my shoe-laces and belt that I started to get nervous.

“Ain’t you going to call my old man?” I asked.

The ass-hole sergeant gave me a real smile. “In the morning,” he said. “All in good time.”

“In the morning?” And then I said like a dope: “Where am I going to sleep?”

“Show young Mr. Simpson where he’s going to sleep,” said the sergeant. He smiled again. It looked like a ripple on a slop pail. The constable who he was ordering around like he was his own personal slave took me down into the basement of the station. Down there it smelled of stale piss and old puke. I kind of gagged. I got a weak stomach.

Boy, was I nervous. I saw where he was taking me. There were four cells. They weren’t even made out of bars. Just metal strips riveted into a cross hatch you couldn’t stick your hand through. They were all empty.

“Your choice,” said the corporal. He was real humorous too, like his boss.

“You don’t have to put me in one of them, sir,” I said. “I won’t run away.”

“That’s what all the criminals say.” He opened the door. “Entrez-vous.”

I was getting my old crazy feeling really bad. Really bad. I felt kind of dizzy. “I got this thing,” I said, “about being locked up. It’s torture.”

“Get in.”

“No – please,” I said. “I’ll sit upstairs. I won’t bother anybody.”

“You think you’ve got a choice? You don’t have a choice. Move your ass.”

I was getting ready to cry. I could feel it. I was going to bawl in front of a cop. “I didn’t do it,” I said. “I never beat him up. Swear to Jesus I didn’t.”

“I’m counting three,” he said, “and then I’m applying the boots to your backside.”

It all came out. Just like that. “It was my fucking ass-hole brother Gene!” I screamed. The only thing I could think of was, if they put me in there I’ll be off my head by morning. I really will. “I didn’t do nothing! I never do nothing! You can’t put me in there for him!”

They called my old man. I guess I gave a real convincing performance. Not that I’m proud of it. I actually got sick on the spot from nerves. I just couldn’t hold it down.

Pop had to sign for me and promise to bring Gene down in the morning. It was about twelve-thirty when everything got cleared up. He’d missed his shift and his ride in the cage.

When we got in the car he didn’t start it. We just sat there with the windows rolled down. It was a beautiful night and there were lots of stars swimming in the sky. This town is small enough that street-lights and neon don’t interfere with the stars. It’s the only thing I like about this place. There’s plenty of sky and lots of air to breathe.

“Your brother wasn’t enough,” he said. “You I trusted.”

“I only tried to help him.”

“You goddamn snitch.” He needed somebody to take it out on, so he belted me. Right on the snout with the back of his hand. It started to bleed. I didn’t try to stop it. I just let it drip on those goddamn furry seat-covers that he thinks are the cat’s ass. “They were going to put me in this place, this cage, for him, for that useless shit!” I yelled. I’d started to cry. “No more, Pop. He failed! He failed on top of it all! So is he going to work? You got the boots ready on the back step? Huh? Is he going down in the fucking cage?”

“Neither one of you is going down in the cage. Not him, not you,” he said.

“Nah, I didn’t think so,” I said, finally wiping at my face with the back of my hand. “I didn’t think so.”

“I don’t have to answer to you,” he said. “You just can’t get inside his head. You were always the smart one. I didn’t have to worry about you. You always knew what to do. But Gene…” He pressed his forehead against the steering-wheel, hard. “Billy, I see him doing all sorts of stuff. Stuff you can’t imagine. I see it until it makes me sick.” He looked at me. His face was yellow under the street-light, yellow like a lemon. “I try so hard with him. But he’s got no sense. He just does things. He could have killed that other boy. He wouldn’t even think of that, you know.” All of a sudden the old man’s face got all crumpled and creased like paper when you ball it up. “What’s going to happen to him?” he said, louder than he had to. “What’s going to happen to Eugene?” It was sad. It really was.

I can never stay mad at my old man. Maybe because we’re so much alike, even though he can’t see it for looking the other way. Our minds work alike. I’m a chip off the old block. Don’t ever doubt it.

“Nothing.”

“Billy,” he said, “you mean it?”

I knew what he was thinking. “Yes,” I said. “I’ll do my best.”

Going to Russia

“ANOTHER of your letters arrived at my house yesterday,” the doctor announces. “That makes four now.” He says this in a colourless, insipid voice, in the way he says most things.

It is only the significant pause which follows that alerts me I am expected to respond, and distracts my attention from the scene outside his office window. For several minutes I have been watching two children as they tramp stiffly off into the distance. They lead me to think of my daughter, and to wonder if she misses my visits.

Here, we are on the outskirts of the city, where the new suburbs dwindle into prairie, and prairie into winter sky. The children, stuffed into bulky snowsuits, totter along, their arms stiffly extended like tiny astronauts foraging on the frozen cinder of a spent star.

Suburban tots often come to explore these splendid spaces. I have navigated them too, in my imagination, warm behind a double pane of glass. I find it strange that this blank sweep of land terrifies some of my fellow inmates and that they feel the need to keep their blinds down night and day. I like it. It makes me think of