Ho-hum, I acted as if I didn’t see them, as if they were not present. I opened my book since their headlamps were now providing me with perfectly adequate light.
“Frankie—!” William was too angry to say more.
“Oh, hallo,” I said.
“It would be considerate—” He was so worked up he was starting to cry, my brother. “It would be—” Not only had it taken him forever to find me, he also couldn’t manage to speak in complete sentences. How in the world did he think he was going to conduct himself at college? “Nice,” he hissed. “If you could give us the car keys.”
“Marlene,” my father said, “we’re all pretty tired.”
That was their problem, not mine. They wanted to be rested and happy, they had only to get a basket and come into the woods.
“Ma’s out of her head with worry,” my father added.
William just then began to pound, with his bare hands, on the gigantic upturned platter of roots and earth. Very melodramatic for anyone but for William especially surprising. Was he crying or choking? I couldn’t tell.
“So go away,” I remarked. To tell the truth, it was frightening, his display. I said, “Would you please just leave.” I meant it in a local way.
At that he sprang into the hole. “Ow!” I yelled. “Get off me! Stop it!” As I said, the hole was considerably smaller than it had been when we were five and six.
“GODDAMN IT, Imp!” He seemed to hover before he came down upon me. I suppose it happened quickly. The press of him, a darkness in my mind, my brother smothering me. Such weight, the boy himself in his padded canvas jacket. Before you knew it you could be snuffed out, you might surrender, one bright bloom in your head, the last flowering firework, almost a happiness to have everything over and done. I heard him cry out, “YOU ARE SUCH A—BABY.”
BABY like an ugly word, like the worst curse. It was close to me, that word in the hole, and yet it didn’t matter, the canvas like an old chapped hand, William’s jacket covering my face and in my mouth. Before I could try to struggle, even as I was thinking to, my father was yanking William, my father with all his strength pulling his nearly grown son up out of the hiding place. All at once the light was back in my eyes, I was gasping for breath. There was noise, my father I think talking to William, maybe he was saying something, a confusion even though the main action had already taken place. I thought, Okay, I am now going to climb out. I could see that there was no reason to stay put. They had found me, I wasn’t dead from suffocation, perhaps my point had been made, time to go home. I couldn’t exactly think in the moment what the point was. But before I could get out, before I realized what was happening my father had also dragged me up and next I knew he somehow had hauled me over his shoulders. Wait! The duvet had fallen away, my father, as old and as tall as I was, my father adjusting me as if I were a sack of grain, as if he thought I wouldn’t come home with them, as if he thought I’d try to fight. I could still feel the weight of William, the jacket, that stuffing, in my mouth. I should tell my father that he could let me down but I couldn’t think of the words. Baby. That’s what I kept hearing.
We set off down the path. William was running ahead probably. I couldn’t hear him, didn’t think he was with us. I was not easy to carry, my father faltering. I imagined I was going to say Let me down and so I must have because he stopped. I was then walking beside him. He smelled of apples, the fragrance thick and sweet, the smell bonded deeply into his jacket and his coveralls, his hair, his skin. Even though I was no longer slumped over his back I felt as if I were being carried along in a dream, the night, my father, the two of us maybe walking forever. Where was William?—Oh yes, in the dream, remember he is gone? On we went until we came out of the woods. We walked down the dark drive of Volta and crossed the road to Velta.