room. At two, knowing I had to leave soon, I stopped reading letters in detail and began flipping through the contents of the remaining cartons. In the middle of a set of manuscripts, I found a manila folder labeled “Total Eclipse: Unfinished, unpublished ms., 122 pp.” It was typed on yellowing paper, with Pelletier’s handwritten notes in the margins. The writing itself was shaky; this must have been written at the end of his life, when he was often drunk or ill or both.
They want us to think that when Lazarus rose from the dead, his friends and sisters were beside themselves with joy. But inside the grief when he was buried were the secret thoughts: thank God we got him safely underground, revolting drunkard, couldn’t keep his hands to himself. Thank God he won’t live to tell a soul about that night in Jericho when he caught me with my mother’s maid behind the sheepfold. No more scurrying when we hear him coming in late from tavern or tussle, demanding hot food and wanting it now.
And then he rose again, and behind the joy saw his loved ones’ thoughts writ large: we were just settling down with the new shape to our lives, minus his sharp words and demands, and here he is, raised from the dead.
I know. I was dead, and now that I’ve slunk out of the grave into a corner of the basement, trailing my winding sheets, I can smell the stink of fear rising from my dear ones. Although maybe it’s just the stink of my own rotting flesh.
Gene, who is the most terrified, predictably wept loudest at my grave. The baby, the darling, he used to tag after me when he was five, let me play, Herman, show me how, Herman, following me from sandlot ball to taverns [crossed out; “bar” written in by hand] and then to girls. I should have known from the way he watched me, but that was when he was still my eager golden brother, the one I teased and gave a little careless attention to.
I was the hero back from the war, a hero in some places anyway, with my arm in an interesting sling and my eyes dazed from too much blood, so much blood that I couldn’t drink it away. A hero to my golden brother, who’d spent my war years getting rich. I was fighting, he was taking over the family firm.
No George Bailey role for Gene, nossir. No, Gene had a truly wonderful life. Big brother risking his life on the Ebro, little brother minting the stuff in buckets, turning a sleepy family business into an international power. So that when I came back, although the girls clustered round to hear my battle stories, they slipped out the side door with Gene. He was renting the apartment on Elm Street in those days, just the place to take the girls, where Mother couldn’t see, and then come home for church on Sunday, hair slicked back, bending solicitously over her, butter not melting in his mouth.
We hung out at Goldie’s. It was just one of those west Loop bars. Guys heading home for work stopped for a quick one, listened to the racing results or a late ball game. We used to go after a meeting, Toffee Noble all excited about his basement magazine. He sometimes came with Lulu, who painted outsized canvases of African ritual dances. He also hung out with Edna Deerpath, the tiny black whirlwind who represented the hotel laundry workers in their bloody battles against the Mob.
Toffee never joined in anyone’s battles, just smirked from the sidelines, Mr. Cool, then went home and wrote us all up in stories he cranked out on his basement press. We never knew whether he held one of those pasteboard squares, the pass to the inner circle, or not. Some said he was too chicken to join, others that he was too chicken to admit he traveled all the way.
We were all brothers then, or brothers and sisters, even Gene, my blood brother, although everyone knew he only came to meet girls. We used to tease him, you think you’re the good capitalist? The one who won’t be hanged from the lamppost just because you like Red nookie?