“I don’t want to walk home,” Jake said. “I’m tired.”
“Then stay here.”
I started away. After a moment Jake came too.
We didn’t go home. Not directly. At Sandstone Street I turned off Main.
Jake said, “Where are you going?”
“You’ll see.”
“I want to go home.”
“Fine. Go home.”
“I don’t want to go home alone.”
“Then come on. You’ll like this, I swear.”
“Like what?”
“You’ll see.”
A block off Main on the corner of Walnut was a bar with a sign over the door. Rosie’s. A ’53 Indian Chief with a sidecar was in the lot. Gus’s motorcycle. Only one automobile was still parked there. A black Deuce Coupe with fire painted along its sides. I approached that beauty and spent a moment running my hand admiringly over the slope of the front wheel well where a silver snake of moonlight shot along the black enamel. Then I set myself and swung the tire iron and smashed the left headlight.
“What are you doing?” Jake cried.
I walked to the other headlight and once again the sound of shattering glass broke the stillness of the night.
“Here,” I said and offered the tire iron to my brother. “The rear lights are all yours.”
“No,” he said.
“This guy called you a retard. You and Bobby Cole. And he called Ariel a harelip and Dad a pussy. You don’t want to break something on his car?”
“No.” He looked at me then at the tire iron then at the car. “Well, maybe.”
I handed that magic wand of revenge to Jake. He walked to the back of Morris Engdahl’s precious set of wheels. He glanced at me once for reassurance then swung. He missed and banged metal and the tire iron bounced out of his hands.
“Jeez,” I said. “What a spaz.”
“Let me try again.”
I picked up the tire iron and handed it to him. This time he did the deed and danced back from the spray of red glass. “Can I do the other one?” he pleaded.
When he’d finished we stood back and admired our work until we heard the screen door of the house across the street squeak open and a guy shout, “Hey, what’s going on over there?”
We tore down Sandstone back to Main and down Main toward Tyler. We didn’t stop until we hit the Flats.
Jake bent over and held his ribs. “I got a stitch in my side,” he gasped.
I was breathing hard too. I put my arm around my brother. “You were great back there. A regular Mickey Mantle.”
“Think we’ll get in trouble?”
“Who cares? Didn’t that feel good?”
“Yeah,” Jake said. “It felt real good.”
The Packard was parked in the church lot across the street from our house. The light over the side door was on and I figured Dad was still inside putting Gus to bed. I set the tire iron on the Packard’s hood and we walked to the door, which opened onto a set of stairs that led to the church basement where Gus had a room next to the boiler.
Gus wasn’t related to us by blood but in a strange way he was family. He’d fought beside my father in the Second World War, an experience, my father contended, that made them closer than brothers. They stayed in touch and whenever Dad updated us on his old friend it was usually to report another in a long litany of missteps. Then one day just after we’d moved to New Bremen, Gus had shown up at our doorstep, a little drunk and out of work and with everything he owned stuffed in a pack in the sidecar of his motorcycle. My father had taken him in, given him a place to live, found him work, and Gus had been with us ever since. He was a source of great disagreement between my parents but only one of many. Jake and I liked him immensely. Maybe it was because he talked to us as if we weren’t just kids. Or because he didn’t have much and didn’t seem to want more and didn’t appear to be bothered by his questionable circumstances. Or because on occasion he drank to excess and got himself into trouble from which my father would predictably extricate him, which made him seem more like an errant older brother than an adult.
His room in the church basement wasn’t much. A bed. A chest of drawers. A nightstand and lamp. A mirror. A squat three-shelf case full of books. He’d put a little red rug on the cement floor of his room that added a dash of color. There was a window at ground level but not much light came through. On the other side of the basement was a small bathroom which Dad and Gus had put in themselves. That’s where we found them. While Gus knelt at the toilet stool and puked my father stood behind him and waited patiently. Jake and I lingered under the bare bulb in the middle of the basement. My father didn’t seem to notice us.
“Still ralfing,” I whispered to Jake.
“Ralfing?”
“You know. R-a-l-f,” I said and drew out the word as if I was vomiting.
“That’s it, Captain.” With some difficulty Gus stood and my father handed him a wet cloth to wipe his face.
My father flushed the toilet and walked Gus to his room. He helped Gus out of his soiled shirt and pants. Gus lay down on his bed. He wore only his undershirt and shorts. It was cooler in the basement than outside and my father drew the top sheet over his friend.
“Thanks, Captain,” Gus murmured as his eyes drifted closed.
“Go to sleep.”
Then Gus said something I’d never heard him say before. He said, “Captain, you’re still a son of a bitch. Always will be.”
“I know, Gus.”
“They’re all dead because of you, Captain. Always will be.”
“Just sleep.”
Gus was snoring almost immediately. My father turned to where we stood in the middle of the basement. “Go on back to bed,” he said. “I’m going to stay and pray for a while.”
“The car’s full of puke,” I said. “Mom’ll go berserk.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
My father went up to the sanctuary. Jake and I went out the side door. I still wasn’t ready to call it a night. I sat on the front steps of the church and Jake sat there too. He was tired and leaned against me.
“What did Gus mean?” he said. “Dad killed them all. What did he mean?”
I was wondering about that too. I said, “I don’t know.”
The birds had started to chatter in the trees. Above the hills that rimmed the valley of the Minnesota River I could see a thin line of vermilion in the sky that was the approach of dawn. And I saw something else. On the other side of the street a familiar figure separated itself from the cover of the lilac bushes that edged our yard. I watched my older sister sneak across the lawn and slip into our house through the back door. Oh the secrets of the night.