John Domini - Talking Heads - 77

“A war hero in love,” Kit looked towards the door. “That was my father. A war hero with orchids in his hand.”

Of course: the heavy tread came to halt outside the Rebes doorway. Kit flashed on motorcycle boots, a cop, a warrant.

“A man,” Kit began, but then the door opened and he was on his feet, once more making fists around his glass. Aw, come on. What kind of trouble was he expecting? The newcomer had a key — he was huge, but he had a key. Even the guy’s biker boots looked small on him. His fatigue jacket was open, his shirt collar open, and he went around bareheaded despite the weather. He had a kinky beard and a lot of hair. Just standing there he made the pinups on the walls flutter.

“What the hey’s going on here, Mama?”

Mama? The newcomer’s eyes were young, quick, worried.

“Who’s the boyfriend, Mama?”

Once more Kit didn’t hear the mother. It took energy enough to catch up with the change of mood — to yank his mind out of a cloud of fragments over Korea and instead get a fix on this baby brother, this Louie-Louie. The man had a good forty pounds on Junior. He had the Caribbean blood, the father’s side of the family. The beard was Castro. So was the shirt-stretching chest, the cinnamon-butter skin. Beside her younger son, the mother seemed to darken.

“You the reporter.” Louie-Louie met Kit’s stare.

The mother made introductions, but Kit didn’t offer his hand. Anyway the brother’s hands were full. He’d come in carrying a bundle of magazines, four or five slick things that caught the glare. Reading material for the invalid?

“The reporter, yeah,” he said. “So what you going to do for us?”

It must have dumped another spoonful of gall into Junior’s stew, growing up with a baby brother twice his size.

“You hear me, man? You told our story , you dig?” At least Louie-Louie hadn’t been drinking; his breath smelled of gum. “This is my family, man, the people I love, you dig? And you used us. You used us for your own gain.”

“Oh Louie-Louie,” the mother said. “You got no right.”

“You got our story, man, and now what do we get?”

“Oh see, how you talk. You know he din even use our real names.”

“You think you can just come in and get our story and then take off, man? That the way you reporters think?”

How many times did Kit have to hear this question? Leo, Junior, Zia, Bette — now Louie-Louie — how many times?

“You come in and get what you want and then you scoot. That the way it works?”

“Oh see. Oh Luis . I’m afraid I’m goin to have to apologize now. Louie-Louie, you soundin like a baby.”

“Mama why — why don’t you understand? This guy ain’t no friend of ours.”

“Missah Viddich, I do apologize.” She went on staring up her son, without so much as a glance at Kit. “You goin to have to excuse us now, Missah Viddich.”

“Ma-ma. This guy, he ain’t no kind of friend, you dig? I still can’t believe you gave him the letters.”

“Those letters would’ve stayed in a closet without this man. Junior’s letters would have stayed in a closet, and Junior would’ve stayed in a closet. My boy was a hero and nobody would’ve never knowed.”

“Aw, Mama.”

“That’s how it woulda been without this man.”

“Mama, please.” The brother broke into a whine. “Can we just talk about this? Just you and me, huh, please?”

“Way I remember, Louie-Louie, even you didn’t want to listen to those letters. Even you didn’t want nothin to do with your brother.”

*

Aw, my basementarians. You know how those ‘60s relics see Good Guys versus Bad? You know how they see, say, an argument between a man and woman? The way they see Good versus Bad, it’s totally a fairy-tale. Like, a big burly Gl grunt and a wispy weak peasant woman. Or like, a Southern sheriff in a shirt too small for his chest and a grandma on her first Freedom March, wizened but brave.

Oh see. They blind, these ‘60s guys. They soundin like a baby.

Kit had at last let go of his glass. He’d retreated towards the door; he knew a family squabble when he heard one. The mother was showing her sharper corners again. Her glare imperial, her gestures sober, Mrs. Rebes backed her remaining son towards the kitchen archway. When she snatched the glossy magazines from his hand (“You insultin this man bringin this trash, this man run an honest paper”), Kit may have glimpsed a bright flyer from Alcoholics Anonymous. But Louie-Louie wasn’t going to get his mom to look at any flyers. Not today. The big kid was teetering backwards, having trouble on the extension cords. His chest and shoulders had shrunk. No, the squabble was no mystery — and Kit’s side had won already. The mother worked fast. Kit had been sprung already, given an excuse to go, and it had happened without his putting in a word in his own defense. He’d only emptied his soft white-boy hands and drifted once more into the cold by the doorway out. Cold, on his back: the worm.

His idea had seemed so simple, so right. He would go to the woman and tell her. But he’d wound up off by himself, talking to himself. He’d wound up shaming himself with the things he’d found to talk about. How had he ever gotten started on his father? How, in a room where Junior’s ghost burned in every nook and cranny? He’d found no way to free the unhappy spirit, to start it speaking honestly. Instead new ghosts had gotten in the way: the skeletons in Kit’s closet, the hero the mother imagined, the looming Grand Jury. Too many ghosts, too much confusion. He couldn’t even set the story straight for the one person who should hear it first.

“I ain’t done with you yet!” Louie-Louie called suddenly, across the room.

The brother’s features remained powerful, though his glare had lost something. “Yeah, you,” he said. “You still got a lot to answer for.”

“Huh,” the mother said. “Little boys got to play.”

One last time, Kit looked around the overcrowded room. The Krishna curtain flapped and winked over a radiator making more noise than ever, doing its best against the deepening cold, pumping out rainbows and halos.

Monday morning Corinna beat the process server to the office, but not by much. Kit was the first one in. His empty apartment drove him away, with no more than coffee and an unbuttered slice of toast to go on. Then came Corinna, heaving a big, body-length sigh to see her boss once more at his desk. Naturally, Zia arrived last. The writer showed up yawning and stomping off boot-slush, a good three quarters of an hour after the process server had gotten Kit’s signature and gone. But in the meantime Kit had said nothing about the paper. When Zia got to the office he still hadn’t explained to Corinna — to anyone — what he’d decided to do.

The process server made Kit nervous just to look at him. The man wasn’t forty yet, not much older than Kit himself really, but already he appeared to be a boozer. His pouchy, florid face called to mind vodka breakfasts. It called to mind Ad and Amby out in Monsod. Mechanical over his clipboard and mail-packet, he was with the sheriff s office. He was serving a subpoena.

Kit took the packet back to his desk, behind the reflections afloat in his glass walls.

NOTES: phone con. Asa Popkin, att’y .

(Monday AM)

criminal subpoena—2 kinds of cases, civil & criminal. Misdemeanors etc. = civil; felonies etc. more serious = criminal . Thus crim. sub., subpoena to “criminal case,” but not necess’ly for “criminals.” Name misleading. SOURCE: Asa Popkin, jr. partner at Steyes family att’ys.