“No.”
“Do you want to be?” He thought about it. “Or maybe you never will come back.”
Clay bristled, internally. “I’m coming back. I’ll miss these little heart-to-hearts of ours.”
Rory grinned. “Yeah, good one, look—” He was rubbing his hands together now. “Do you want some practice? You think I was tough down here? Matthew’s a whole other thing.”
“It’s okay, Rory.”
“You won’t go fifteen seconds.”
“But I know how to take a beating.”
Rory, a single step closer. “That much I know, but I can at least show you how to last a bit longer.”
Clay looked at him, right in the Adam’s apple. “Don’t worry, it’s too late,” and Rory knew better than anyone—that Clay was already ready; he’d been training for this for years now, and I could kill him all I wanted.
Clay just wouldn’t die.
* * *
—
When he came back home, cash in hand, I was watching a movie, the first Mad Max—talk about suitably grim. At first, Tommy had been with me, and begged to watch something different.
“Can’t we just once watch a movie not made in the eighties?” he said.
“We are. This was 1979.”
“That’s just what I was going to say! Eighties or even earlier. None of us were even born. Not even close! Why can’t we just—”
“You know why,” I cut him off. But then I saw that look on him, like he might even start to cry. “…Shit—sorry, Tommy.”
“No you’re not.”
He was right, I wasn’t; this was part of being a Dunbar.
When Tommy walked out, Clay walked in, once the money was deposited in the box. He came to the couch and sat.
“Hey,” he said, he looked over, but I didn’t take my eyes off the screen.
“You still got the address?”
He nodded, and we watched Mad Max.
“The eighties again?”
“Don’t even start.”
We were silent right up to the part when the scary gang leader says, “And Cundalini wants his hand back!” and I looked at my brother beside me.
“He means business,” I said to him, “doesn’t he?”
Clay smiled, but didn’t react.
So do we.
* * *
—
In the night, when everyone else was in bed, he stayed up and left the TV on, with the sound completely down. He looked at Agamemnon, the goldfish, who watched him calmly back, before a last good headbutt at the tank.
Clay walked to the birdcage, and quickly, no warning, he took him. He squeezed him in his hand, but gently.
“Hey, T, you okay?”
The bird bobbed a little, and Clay could feel him breathe. He felt his heartbeat through the plumage. “Just hold still, boy—” and quick, like that, he snapped at his neck, he held the tiny feather; it was clean and grey with an edge of green, in the palm of his still left hand.
Then he put the bird back in.
The pigeon watched him seriously, then walked from end to end.
* * *
—
Next, the shelves and the board games:
Careers, Scrabble, Connect Four.
Beneath them, the one he wanted.
He opened it up and was distracted, momentarily, by the movie on TV. It looked like a good one—black-and-white, a girl arguing with a man in a diner—but then, the riches of Monopoly. He found the dice and hotels till he handled the bag he wanted, and soon, in his fingers, the iron.
Clay, the smiler, smiled.
* * *
—
Close to midnight, it was easier than it might have been; the yard was free of dog and mule shit, God bless Tommy’s cotton socks.
Soon he stood at the clothesline, with the pegs pegged up above him, in rows of shifting color. He reached up and gently unclipped one. It was once bright blue, now faded.
* * *
—
He kneeled then, near the pole.
Of course, Rosy came over, and Achilles stood watch, with his hooves and legs beside him. His mane was brushed but knotted—and Clay reached over and leaned—a hand at the edge of a fetlock.
Next he held Rosy, very slowly, by a single black-and-white paw: The gold in her eyes, goodbye to him.
He loved that sideways dog-look.
Then he headed further back, for The Surrounds.
* * *
—
As it was, he didn’t stay very long; he was already gone, so he didn’t remove the plastic. No, all he did was say goodbye, and promise to return.
At home, in the house, in his and Henry’s room, he looked inside the box; the peg was the final object. In the dark, he saw the contents, from the feather to the iron, the money, the peg, and the Murderer’s patched-up address. And, of course, the metallic lighter, inscribed from her to him.
Instead of sleep, he turned on the lamp. He repacked his suitcase. He read from his books, and the hours swept him by.
At just past three-thirty, he knew Carey would soon come out: He got up and put the books back in the sports bag, and held the lighter in his hand. In the hallway he felt the engraving again, cut slimly into the metal.
He noiselessly opened the door.
He stood at the railing, on the porch.
Eons ago he’d been here with me. The front door ultimatum.
Soon, Carey Novac emerged, a backpack on her back and a mountain bike beside her.
First he saw a wheel: the spokes.
Then the girl.
Her hair was out, her footsteps fast.
She was in jeans. The customary flannel shirt.
The first place she looked was across the road, and when she saw him she put the bike down. It lay there, stuck on a pedal, the back wheel whirring, and the girl walked slowly over. She stood, dead center, on the road.
“Hey,” she said, “you like it?”
She was quiet but it came out shouted.
A delighted kind of defiance.
The stillness of predawn Archer Street.
As for Clay, he thought of many things to say to her then, to tell her and have her know, but all he said was “Matador.”
Even from a distance he could see her not-quite-white, not-quite-straight teeth, as her smile laid open the street; and finally, she held a hand up, and her face was something strange to him—at a loss for what to say.
When she left, she walked and watched him, then watched a moment longer.
Bye, Clay.
Only when he imagined her well down Poseidon Road did he look again into his hand, where the lighter dimly sat. Slow and calm he opened it, and the flame stood straightly up.
* * *
—
And so it was.
In the dark he came to all of us—from me lying straight in bed, to Henry’s sleepy grin, and Tommy and Rory’s absurdity. As a final act of kindness (to both of them) he pulled Hector from Rory’s chest, and clamped him across his own shoulder, like one more part of his luggage. On the porch he put him down, and the tabby was purring, but he, too, knew Clay was leaving.
Well?
First the city, then the mule, now the cat did all the talking.
Or maybe not.
“Bye, Hector.”
But he didn’t leave, not yet.
No, for a long time, a few minutes at least, he waited for dawn to hit the street, and when it did it was gold and glorious. It climbed the rooves of Archer Street, and a tide came calling with it: There, out there, was a mistake maker, and a distant statue of Stalin.
There was a birthday girl rolling a piano.
There was the heart of color in all that grey, and floating paper houses.
All of it came through the city, across The Surrounds and Bernborough. It rose in the streets, and when finally Clay left, there was light and gathering floodwater. First it reached his ankles, then his knees, until, by the time he made the corner, it was up to the height of his waist.
And Clay looked back, one last time, before diving—in, and outwards—to a bridge, through a past, to a father.
He swam the gold-lit water.
So this was where he washed up.
In the trees.
For years now, Clay had imagined a moment like this—that he’d be strong, he’d be sure and ready—but those images were swept away; he was a shell of all he was.
Trying to recapture his resolve, he stood motionless, in this corridor of strapping eucalypts. He felt the pressure in his lungs: a sense of oncoming waves, though they were made now only of air. It took reminding to breathe them in.