“And you don’t like us?”
Soon we heard Tommy’s announcement, and Clay’s instantly blunt response: “I’m gonna call him Achilles.”
Abruptly, “No, not this one.”
Immediately, I looked at him.
I was stubborn and certainly unfrendly: No, Clay, Goddamn it, I said, if only with my eyes—but who did I think I was kidding? After all, Tommy held the cat like a newborn.
“Okay then,” he said, “Agamemnon,” and now it was Rory who stopped him.
“How about a name we can fucking pronounce?”
And still he paid homage to Penelope.
“What about Hector then?”
The champion of all the Trojans.
There were nods and murmured approvals.
* * *
—
Next morning, out in the racing quarter, there were turns I’d never known of, and we came to Epsom Road. Not far from the Lonhro Tunnel. The train line rattled above. It was one of those forgotten streets here, with a single forgotten field. The fences were mostly wayward. The trees were molting stringy barks; they towered and stood their ground.
At the bottom was the patch of land; and grass, like fists, in the dust. There was a barbed wire fence, corroded. A shack had faded to greyness. And a caravan, old and weary; a drunk at three a.m.
I remember the sound of his footsteps then, how they slowed on the potholed road. Clay never slowed down at this point of a run; it was up and only up—and soon I understood. Once I’d seen the caravan, and the unkempt segment of land, I saw that logic didn’t live here, but mules most definitely did. I walked and spoke with disgust.
“You called the number from the Tribune, didn’t you?”
Clay walked purposefully on.
His breath was so quick to normalize, from running to everyday life.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
And then we saw the sign.
Looking back, there was something right about it.
I can see it and say that now.
At the time, though, I was suspicious—highly annoyed, as we walked to the fence line—and the sign had once been white. Musty and dirty, it hung diagonally, from the middle of the highest wire—probably the greatest sign in the racing quarter, if not racing quarters worldwide.
In faded thick black marker pen, it said:
ENYONE CAUGHT
FEEDING THESE HORSES
WILL BE PROSECUTED!
“God,” I said, “look at that.”
How could a person spell anyone wrong and get prosecuted right? But that, I guess, was the racing quarter. That, and there weren’t any horses there, and for a while, it seemed, nothing else— But then he came rounding the shack.
Quite suddenly there was a mule’s head, and the expression that often defined him:
He watched, he gleaned.
He communicated.
Like a supreme-yet-derelict being.
Already he had that what-the-hell-you-lookin’-at look on his long, lopsided face—till he’d watched a moment longer, and seemed to say, Oh, okay then.
In the pieces of dappled sunrise, he slowly gangled over.
Up close he was almost charming; he was talkative, though mute, and personable. His head was a texture, a scrubbing brush—and he ranged in careless colors, from sandy to rust throughout; his body, a dug-up farmland. His hooves were the shade of charcoal—and what were we supposed to do? How do you talk to a mule?
But Clay would take him on.
He looked in the eyes of the animal, which seemed so much like calves’ eyes, like babies sent for the slaughterhouse, pure sadness but so alive. He went to his pocket and reached for it; and it wasn’t the bright yellow peg.
No, it was Clay Dunbar at his best:
A hand, a sandful of sugar.
It was raw and sweet in his palm—and the mule was eternally blessed—and to hell with the sign and its spelling; his nostrils began to spin. His eyes were undone as he grinned at him: I knew you’d one day come.
You had to give it to the older Michael Dunbar.
This time he got it right:
The photo was a work of art.
When Clay came back to Silver, he stood in the kitchen near the oven.
“So you gave it to her?”
His sunken eyes were hopeful.
His hands looked vague; distracted.
Clay nodded.
“She loved it.”
“So do I; I’ve got another one I took earlier,” and reading Clay’s thoughts, he said, “It’s pretty easy to sneak up on you out there—you’re lost in another world.”
And Clay, the right response; and something else, first time since coming.
“It helps me to forget,” he said, and he looked from the floor to face him. “But I’m not sure I really want to.” By the sink was a certain Mistake Maker; the blond-haired Penny Dunbar. “Hey—Dad?” It was such a shock, to both of them, and then came a second, a follow-up. “You know…I really miss her. I miss her so much, Dad, I miss her so much,” and it was then, a few footsteps, the world altered: He went over and brought the boy closer.
He grabbed his neck in his arm and hugged him.
Our dad became his father.
* * *
—
But then they went back to the bridge.
Like nothing had ever happened.
They worked the scaffold and prayed for arches, or better, arches that lasted forever.
It’s funny, though, really, when you think of it, the air between fathers and sons—and especially this one and this one. There are hundreds of thoughts per every word spoken, and that’s if they’re spoken at all. Clay felt it especially hard that day, and in the days that stacked up after it. Again, there was so much to tell him. There were nights he’d come out to talk, then retreat, heart beating, to the bedroom. He remembered so vividly the boy he’d been, who’d ask for the stories from Featherton. He’d been piggybacked, back then, into bed.
He’d practice at the barren old desk; the box and his books beside him. The feather of T in his hand.
“Dad?”
How many times could he rehearse?
Once, he almost arrived, in the heavier light of the kitchen, but again, he returned to the hallway. The next time he actually made it, The Quarryman tight in his grip—and Michael Dunbar caught him: “Come in, Clay, what have you got there?”
And Clay stood snared in the light.
He brought the book up from his side.
He said, “Just.”
“Just,” then held up higher. The book, so white and weathered, with its creased and crippled spine. He held Italy out before him, and the frescoes on the ceiling, and all those broken noses—one for each time she’d read it.
* * *
—
“Clay?”
Michael in jeans and a T-shirt; his hands were weathered concrete. They might have had similar eyes, but then, for Clay, all the constant burning.
He’d had a concrete stomach once, too.
Do you remember?
You had wavy hair; you still do, but more grey in it now as well—because you died and got a bit older, and— “Clay?”
He finally did it.
Blood flowed through the stone.
The book, in hand, held out to him: “Can you tell me about the Slaves and David?”
In many ways, you could argue the cat was our biggest mistake; he had a string of disgraceful habits: He drooled almost uncontrollably.
He had a nasty stench of breath.
He had a God-awful shedding problem, dandruff, and a tendency to throw his food overboard when he ate.
He vomited.
(“Look at this!” shouted Henry one morning. “Right next to my shoes!”
“Just be grateful it wasn’t in ’em.”