Craig Davidson - Rust and Bone - Stories

“Are you all right?” the producer asked. “Herbert? Herbert?”

“It’s eternity in there,” was all he said.

The network cut to a rerun.

Jess sat down. “As far as I’m concerned, our father deserted us. But if you want to track him down, I’ll tag along. I don’t want to speak to him, or even look at him. But I’ll go.”

Herbert stared out at the world as he’d known it for nearly two years: vague and filtered, kept at bay by bricks and mortar and filthy window glass. “So you’re saying I have to go?”

“Know what Sam calls this place? The Fortress of Solitude.” Jess raised the soda can to her lips, mildly surprised to find it empty. “I don’t know what happened in that casket. You never told me—I don’t know you’ve told anybody. I imagine it was horrible. And I know you’ve got money, enough to build this place and pay for that Jag and keep you in foreign soft drinks the rest of your life. But you need to get out.”

Herbert gave her a look—a funny, diverted glance, turning away from her as you might from someone who is sick. “You know why I’ve never talked about it? Nobody’s ever really asked. My agent, my publicist, they were always telling me to get over it, forget it, it’s the past. Do you really want to know?”

“Do you really want to tell me?”

After a moment, he said, “It was dark. It was dark and I could hear the casket creaking. The sand was imported from Egypt. Powdered bones, mostly, animals who’d died in the desert; supposedly more airy, lighter. I felt the pressure building as they poured it in—my ears popped. I knew it was going to shatter. That was the worst part. It was dark and I knew it was going to shatter. I called out a few times— screamed, I guess. Four tons of sand. That’s like, two and a half elephants.” He shook his head wonderingly, as if the weight, stated in plain physical terms, shocked him. “It buckled. A shard of wood cut my cheek. That’s all I really remember. My life didn’t flash before my eyes. All I remember is darkness and pressure. This hard, featureless pressure.”

For a long time neither of them spoke. Why would anyone squirrel himself away after something like that, Jess wondered. She’d never want to be cooped up again—sleep in an open field under the stars, no walls, no roof. No pressure.

“A lot of luck in my life, up ’til then.” Herbert shrugged. “Streak was bound to end.”

For the first time in many years Jess thought of walking home from school with him in the winter twilight, their flesh an oyster-gray color against the snow, Herbert animated beyond all reason, circling her like an excited dog until she’d wrestled him down and given him a snowy face wash, the two of them tumbling over the clean white ground like shirts in a dryer. She couldn’t connect the man sitting across from her to the boy she’d known years ago. There wasn’t even a vague outline, a silhouette.

“I’ll be here tomorrow morning at nine,” she said. “You walk out the front door and I’ll drive wherever you want.”

“Can’t you give me a few days?”

“How serious are you about this? The article’s dated yesterday.”

Herbert followed his sister to the front door. Hazy autumn sunshine streamed through a bank of saw-edged clouds; after the sepulcher that was her brother’s house, Jess had to squint. Opening the Jeep door, she cast a brief glance over her shoulder: Herbert stood in the hall, face broken into shadowed squares by the screen door’s mesh.

THAT EVENING she sat on the porch with her husband, his hand holding hers under a blanket. Since being promoted off the factory floor his hands had softened, become more careful and defensive, as though, numbed from years on the line, feeling had returned to them.

An early twilight hung suspended over the downtown skyline, patches of pewter burning between the high rises.

“So, you’re sure it’s your dad in the photo?”

“It’s him.”

Ted’s father was an insurance agent, his mother a nurse. His family history was marked by the characteristic dullness resulting in well-adjusted offspring: no extramarital affairs or crushing debts or manic, right-brain-oriented parents. Having never known people like them, he could conceive of Jess’s father and brother only as vague abstractions, over-the-top comic book characters brought discordantly to life.

“Think Herb will leave that house?”

“Depends how important it is to him.” Jess touched her top lip to her nose, inhaling. “I think so. Unfinished business.”

“And you?”

“With Dad? We’re through.”

Later, lying in bed, she watched Ted’s reflected image brush its teeth in the bathroom mirror. His body was that of a retired athlete gone slightly to seed. A newly acquired paunch overhung the waistband of his boxers, though he carried it well, as some men had the ability to. He brushed with swift, raking strokes, as though scouring a crusty pot. White foam ran down his fingers and wrist.

It really is true, she thought to herself. Men are almost always more attractive when they think nobody’s watching.

Fakery #22: The Bleeding Wall . Invented by Robert-Houdin, grandfather of modern magic, it is best performed in a public square. The magician draws a pistol, aims at a wall, and fires. Whitewash and plaster chips fly, and where the bullet strikes, blood drips down the masonry. The deceit: earlier that day, the magician drilled into the wall’s opposite side, filling it with a solution of ferric chloride. When the bullet—coated in a solution of sodium sulfo-cyanide—punctures the wall, a chemical reaction occurs, causing a thick crimson substance to spill from the hole. Interesting note: Houdin initially used his own blood, but, following a stretch of daily performances that left him wan and depleted, opted for this chemical substitute.

[4]

It was a fine, crisp morning. After last night’s rainfall the sun was blanketed by a layer of wrung-out clouds; they streamed down the sky, misty and tattered, a frozen waterfall. Jess unrolled the window to let cool, creosote-infused air rush in. It was the sort of day she wished she could freeze-frame and repeat indefinitely—she’d take this day the rest of her life.

She pulled into Herbert’s driveway. Her brother sat on a trunk behind the screen door.

“Coming?”

“I’m debating.” Herbert’s voice was thin as a communion wafer.

She glanced at her watch: 9:03. “Do I have to hogtie you and drag you out?”

“For god’s sake—a minute, Jess, alright?”

Her brother performed a series of rapid in- and exhalations, a powerlifter pumping himself up for a record-breaking clean-and-jerk. He pushed the screen door open with the toe of his loafer and made a timid half-step from darkness into daylight. He wore a six-button double-breasted wool gabardine suit, creases sharp as a soldier’s dress uniform. His face bore the squint-eyed, faintly horrified expression of an infant forced prematurely from the womb. He stepped down onto the driveway. To the best of Jess’s knowledge, it was the furthest he’d ventured in years.

“Hard part’s over now.”

“I’ve been out once or twice,” he said defensively.

“Oh?”

“Just last spring, in fact. A hobo took up residence in the gazebo.” He tilted his face to meet the sun. “I rousted him with a stick.”

The next obstacle Jess faced was her brother’s luggage. She’d packed a small knapsack with a change of clothes. Herbert’s luggage consisted of a trunk, a footlocker, two suitcases, and a duffle bag of sufficient bulk to smuggle a pair of contortionists.

“We’re going on an eight-hour car ride, not around the world in eighty days.”

He looked wounded. “I need these.”