The scars were healing nicely by anniversary day, but since we’d started taping his feet up, it was something he’d loved and maintained. As I finished up the reading, in Penny and Michael’s bedroom, he was rubbing them, in and away. The soles were calloused but cared-for.
At last, our parents’ clothing was gone; there was only one garment we kept. I walked it through the hallway; we found its rightful resting place.
“Here,” I said to Rory, who opened the lid to the strings.
“Hey, look!” said Henry to all of us. “A packet of cigarettes!”
And first I laid the two books down, and then the blue woolen dress. They belonged for now to the piano.
“Quick,” said Rory, “shove Hector in!” but even he couldn’t summon the strength. He placed a hand down gently, on the pocket and button within; she’d never had the heart to mend it.
* * *
—
In the lead-up—in January and February that year—I realize there were hardships. But there were good times, there were great times, like Tommy and each of his pets.
We loved Agamemnon’s antics, the so-called king of men; and sometimes we sat and watched him, headbutting the glass of his tank.
“One…two…three,” we’d count, and by forty only Rory was left.
“Don’t you have anything better to do?” I’d ask.
“No,” he’d say, “I don’t.”
He was still on the road to expulsion, but I gave it a shot, nonetheless. “Homework?”
“We all know homework’s useless, Matthew.” He marveled at the goldfish’s toughness. “This fish is the bloody best.”
Of course, Hector went on being Hector, purring and ball-tearing through summer, and watching bathroom-work from the cistern.
“Oi, Tommy!” I’d often call to him. “I’m trying to have a shower!”
The cat sat like an apparition, in the steam room haze around him. He’d stare and somehow smirk at me: And I’m tryin’ to get a schwitz!
He’d lick those tarmac paws of his, he’d smack his tire-black lips.
Telemachus (whom we’d already reduced to T) marched inside and out of his cage. Only once did the Trojan strike at him, and Tommy had told him no, and Hector went back to sleep. He likely dreamed of the steam.
Then Rosy, and Rosy still ran, but when Henry brought her a beanbag, which he’d found in a council cleanup (he always had his eye out), we loved how she’d cast it around. In the moments when she actually did lie down, she preferred the open sunshine; she would pick it up and drag it along, following the path of the light. Then she’d dig to make herself comfortable, which could only have one result: “Hey, Tommy! Tommy! Come have a look at this!”
The backyard was covered in snowfall, from the beanbag’s Styrofoam balls. The most humid day of the summer so far—and Rory looked over at Henry.
“I swear you’re a Goddamn genius.”
“What?”
“Are you kidding me? Bringing that bloody beanbag home.”
“I didn’t know the dog would destroy it—that’s Tommy’s fault—and anyway…” He disappeared and came back with the vacuum.
“Oi, you can’t use the vacuum for this!”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know—you’ll wreck it.”
“You’re worried about the vacuum, Rory?” This time it was me. “You wouldn’t even know where to switch the bloody thing on.”
“Yeah.”
“Shut up, Henry.”
“Or how to use it.”
“Shut up, Matthew.”
All of us stood and watched, though, as Henry finished the job. Rosy leapt forward and sideways, barking and carrying on, and Mrs. Chilman, grinning, at the fence. She stood on her toes on a paint tin.
“You Dunbar boys,” she said.
* * *
—
One of the best parts of the anniversary was the great bedroom swap, which we did after moving her books, and the dress inside the piano.
First we dismantled the bunk beds.
They could each be made into singles, and although I wasn’t overly keen, it was me who moved to the main bedroom (no one else wanted anything to do with it), but I took my old bed there with me. No way would I sleep on theirs. Before any of that was dealt with, though, we decided it was time for a change—for Henry and Rory to disband.
Henry: “Finally! I’ve been waiting for this my whole life!”
Rory: “You’ve been waiting, bloody hell, good riddance! Pack up your shit and leave.”
“Pack my shit up? What are you on about?” He gave him a generous shove. “I’m not going!”
“Well I’m not going!”
“Oh, just shut up,” I said. “I wish I could get rid of the pair of you, but I can’t, so here’s what we’ll do—I’ll toss this coin. Twice. The first one’s for who moves out.”
“Yeah, but he’s got more—”
“Not interested. Winner stays, loser moves. Rory, you call.”
The coin went up, it hit the bedroom ceiling.
“Heads.”
It bounced over the carpet; it landed on a sock.
Tails.
“Shit!”
“Ha ha, bad luck, buddy boy!”
“It hit the ceiling, it doesn’t count!”
I turned now to Henry.
Rory persisted. “It hit the fucking ceiling!”
“Rory,” I said, “shut up. Now, Henry—I’m throwing again. Heads you get Tommy, tails you get Clay.”
It was tails again, and the first thing Henry said when Clay moved in was “Here, get a look at this.” He threw him the old Playboy—Miss January—and Rory made friends with Tommy: “Get the cat off my Goddamn bed, shithead.”
Your bed?
Typical Hector.
* * *
—
Again, in the lead-up, mid-February, when he hit the Regional Championships, at E. S. Marks—where the grandstand was a concrete gargantuan—we had the tape network down to an art. We’d made it a kind of ritual; it was our version of what are your legs, or the power that came from within.
First, I’d crouch below him.
Slowly I’d roll out the strapping tape.
A line straight down the middle.
A cross before his toes.
It started like a crucifix, but the result was something different, like a long-lost letter of the alphabet; a few edges would curl to the top.
When the 400 was called, I walked with him near the marshal zone, and the day was muggy and motionless. As he left he thought of Abrahams, and the bible-man, Eric Liddell. He thought of a skinny, diminutive South African, whose taped feet inspired his.
I said, “I’ll see you after the end,” and Clay had actually answered me, his peg in his shorts, in the pocket:
“Hey, Matthew,” and then just, “Thanks.”
He ran like a Goddamn warrior.
He was truly the lightning Achilles.
* * *
—
In the end, it was close to evening that day, on that first anniversary, when Rory came to his senses; he said, “Let’s burn the bed.”
Together, we made the decision.
We sat at the kitchen table.
But there was no decision to make.
Maybe it’s a universal truth of boys and fire; the same way we’ll often throw stones. We pick them up and aim for anything. Even me, edging close to nineteen: I was supposed to be the adult.
If moving into the main bedroom was the grown-up thing to do, then burning the bed was the young one, and that’s how I bit the bullet; I took a bet each way.
Initially, not much was said:
Clay and Henry were assigned the mattress.
Rory and I took the base.
Tommy, the matches and turpentine.
We took it out through the kitchen, into the backyard, and launched it all over the fence. It was roughly the same place, all those years earlier, where Penelope met City Special.
We got to the other side. I said, “Right.”
It was warm and a breeze had picked up.
Hands for a while in our pockets.
Clay had a handful of peg—but then the mattress went back on the base, and we walked out to The Surrounds. The stables were tired and leaning. The grass was patchy-uneven.
Soon we saw a distant old washing machine.
Then a shattered, lifeless TV.
“There,” I said.
I pointed—close to the middle, but nearer our place—and we carried our parents’ bed there. Two of us stood, and three crouched. Clay was off to the side; he was standing, facing our house.
“Is it a bit windy, Matthew?” Henry asked.
“Probably.”
“Is that a westerly?” It grew gradually stronger each minute. “We might set the whole field on fire.”