The two boys, they stood.
Their erections suddenly deserted them; dismantled, deep in their pants.
Henry called out, he reacted, and he was suddenly quite responsible. “Tommy? You home? Don’t come in here!” as they watched our mother’s fragility—and Miss January, rolled up, between them.
That smile, her perfect furniture.
It hurt now to even think of her.
Miss January was just so…healthy.
* * *
—
Early autumn it had to happen; there was a destined afternoon.
Rory was a month into high school.
Clay was ten years old.
Her hair had grown back, a strange and brighter yellow, but the rest of her was going-and-gone.
Our parents went out without us knowing.
It was a small cream building near a shopping mall.
The smell of doughnuts from the window.
A cavalry of medical machines, and they were cold and grey but burning, and the cancerous face of the surgeon.
“Please,” he said, “sit down.”
He said aggressive at least eight times.
So ruthless in the delivery.
* * *
—
It was evening when they returned, and we all came out to meet them. We always helped bring shopping in, but that night there was nothing more. There were pigeons on the power lines. They were coo-less, watching on.
Michael Dunbar stayed at the car, leaning down, his hands on the warmth of the hood, while Penny stood behind him, her palm against his spine. In the smoothing, darkening light, her hair was like straw, all tied and tidied back.
As we watched them, none of us asked.
Maybe they’d had an argument.
But of course, looking back, death was out there too that night, perched high up with the pigeons, hanging casually from the power lines.
He was watching them, side to side.
* * *
—
The next night Penny told us, in the kitchen; cracked and sadly broken. Our father in several fragments.
I remember it all too clearly—how Rory refused to believe it, and how soon he’d gone berserk, saying, “What?” and “What?” and “WHAT?” He was wiry-hard and rusty. His silver eyes were darkening.
And Penny, so slim and stoic:
She steadied toward matter-of-fact.
Her own eyes green and wild.
Her hair was out and open, and she repeated herself, she said it: “Boys, I’m going to die.”
* * *
—
The second time was what did it for Rory, I think: He clenched his hands, and opened them.
There was a sound inside of all of us then—a sound of quiet-loud, a vibration unexplainable—as he tried to beat the cupboards up, he shook them and bucked me off. I could see it, but couldn’t hear.
Soon he grabbed the person nearest him, who happened to be Clay, and roared right through his shirt; and it was then when Penny came at him, she finished across them both, and Rory couldn’t stop. I could hear it far away now, but in a moment it blew me back—a voice in our house like a street fight. He roared into Clay’s chest, straight through the buttons; he shouted right into his heart. He struck him over and over—till the fire was lit in Clay’s eyes, and his own turned flat and hard.
* * *
—
God, I can still hear it.
I try so much to keep my distance from that moment.
Thousands of miles if I can.
But even now, that depth of scream.
I see Henry near the toaster, speechless when it counted.
I see Tommy all numb beside him, looking down at the blurry crumbs.
I see our father, Michael Dunbar, unfixable, at the sink; then going down for Penny—hands on shaking shoulders.
And me, I’m in the middle, collecting a fire up all of my own; paralyzed, folded-armed.
And lastly, of course, I see Clay.
I see the fourth Dunbar boy—dark-haired and thrown to the floor—his face staring up from below. I see the boys and tangled arms. I see our mother cloaked around them—and the more I think about it, maybe that was the true hurricane in that kitchen, when boys were only that, just boys, and murderers still just men.
And our mother, Penny Dunbar, with six months left to live.
On Wednesday morning, Clay ran to town in the dark, got there in the light, and bought a paper from the Silver Corner Shop.
Halfway back he stopped; he studied the form guide.
He looked for a certain name.
In the day, as they talked and worked, wrote and planned, the Murderer was curious about the newspaper, but he didn’t yet dare to ask. He busied himself with other things. There were sheets of sketches and measurements. There were wood costs for the falsework and scaffolding. There were stone plans for the arching—for which Clay said he had some money, but was quickly told he should keep it.
“Trust me,” said the Murderer, “there are holes out here all over the place. I know where to find the stone.”
“Like that village,” said Clay, almost absently. “Settignano.”
Michael Dunbar stopped. “What did you just say?”
“Settignano.”
And there, caught in the moment, from absence to realization—of what he’d said, and more importantly, what he’d referred to—Clay had managed to both bring the Murderer closer, and also push him away. He’d erased, in an instant, the previous night’s generosity—of “I like it here, I like being here”—but let it show he knew so much more.
There, he thought, think that one over.
But he left it alone at that.
* * *
—
At just past twelve-thirty, the sun was blazing in the riverbed, and Clay said, “Hey, do you mind if I borrow your car keys?”
The Murderer was streaming sweat.
What for?
But he said, “Sure, you know where they are?”
It was the same just before two, and then once more, at four.
Clay jogged across to the eucalypts and sat inside at the steering wheel, listening to the radio. The horses that day were Spectacular, then Heat, and Chocolate Cake. The best she placed was fifth.
After the last race, when he got back to the river, he said, “Thanks—I won’t ever do that again, that was bad discipline,” and Michael Dunbar was amused.
“You better do some overtime.”
“Okay.”
“I’m kidding.” But then he found the nerve. “I don’t know what you’re doing over there”—the aqua eyes brightened, momentarily, in the depth inside his cheekbones—“but it’s gotta be pretty important. When boys start walking away from things, it usually means a girl.”
Clay was appropriately stunned.
“Oh—and Settignano,” the Murderer went on (given he had him on the ropes), “is where Michelangelo learned about marble, and carved slabs out for his sculptures.”
Which meant:
I don’t know when.
I don’t know how.
But you found it, you found The Quarryman.
Did you find the woman, too—Abbey Hanley, Abbey Dunbar? Is that how you got it?
Yes.
Penny told you about her, didn’t she?
Before she died.
She told you, you found her, and she even gave you the book—and the Murderer looked at Clay, and the boy was sculpted himself now, as if made of blood and stone.
I’m here, said Michael Dunbar.
I left you, I know, but I’m here.
Think that over, Clay.
And he did.
In the tide of Dunbar past, three and a half years passed, and Clay lay in bed, awake. He was thirteen years old. He was dark-haired, boyish and skinny, and his heartbeat stung in the stillness. There was fire in each of his eyes.
In a moment he slid from bed, he was dressed.
He was in shorts and a T-shirt, barefoot.
He escaped out to the racing quarter, and he ran the streets and screamed. He did all of it without speaking: Dad!
DAD!
WHERE ARE YOU, DAD?!
It was spring, just before first light, and he ran at the bodies of buildings; the rumored placement of houses. The lights of cars would shine at him, twin ghosts, then by, then gone.
Dad, he called.
Dad.
His footsteps slowed, then stopped.
Where were you, Michael Dunbar?
* * *
—
Earlier that year, it happened:
Penelope was dead.