The woman’s hair wrapped itself around her head like a towel, one loose end hung over the back of her chair. “Get your ass downstairs! I told you.”
“It’s my house too!”
The men sat at the table with their heads down, waiting.
“What did we say? Huh? Tell me. Didn’t we say to stay downstairs?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“It’s cold down there!”
“Go by the furnace like we said.”
“You go by the furnace! There’s no light down there!”
The woman picked up one of the ashtrays and threw it across the room, cigarette butts and all. It landed upside down on the floor next to the boy. “I’ll send you back to goddamn Salina Street! To that son of a bitch calls himself your father!”
“Do it then! See if I care!”
The woman turned back to the three men. “Christ Jesus Michael, give me a drink.”
The boy started to cry.
It made me feel sad, that woman with the factory men, smoking cigars and laughing, talking now, not paying any attention at all to the little boy. I wanted to give the woman a piece of my mind. I wanted to tell her that a Momma shouldn’t act that way. I tried to remember how my own Momma acted but that only made me sadder. I could smell the woman’s perfume, the stink of the cigar, the beer and the whiskey.
I went over to the boy who was now lying on his belly with his head down, ashes and cigarette butts scattered all around. The paper he’d been writing on was dirty with cigarette ashes. Across the top it said, Room 5A. Dearborn Elementary. Mrs. Reed. On the line underneath was the little boy’s name. Victor Denalsky.
Moses’ accordion voice wheezed from above. “LOOK at the KNIFE!” it said. The kitchen and the little boy quickly vanished. In their place was the pool again with Granny’s big butcher knife at the bottom. It lay down there on the pebbles, a blue flame. I reached in and pulled it out of the water; held it, glowing, in front of me. If you take this up son, you’ll have to live with it. I had no idea what to do with the knife or why I was holding it — why it was supposed to be held. Seeing Victor’s name on the little boy’s paper had confused me, had turned everything I thought to be mine inside out and into somebody else’s. I liked the little boy; I felt sorry for him, but I couldn’t bring myself to feel the same for Victor. Victor, I hated. Wasn’t I supposed to hate him? Didn’t he kill Daddy? Isn’t that what the dream said? My arm began to tremble with the knife, with my shoulder, the whole front part of my body.
“Good! Good!” Moses said. The light from the knife blade shined in his eyes. He nodded and opened his mouth at me, a black jack-o-lantern head, the mouth cut in a way you couldn’t tell if it was smiling at you friendly or laughing at you mean.
Some son of a bitch, a Negro, poured hot steel on Jessie. That’s what happened. Burned him up alive!
“Good, good,” Moses whispered.
“What you whispering for, Moses?” I said, but it was like the words belonged to somebody else.
I could see the green flicker of the water, the pebbles on the bottom. Then a picture came to me of Moses, hanging upside down in a tree, naked, his hair so long it almost touched the ground. Blood curled around his wrists, dripped off the ends of his fingers.
“What you mean, Moses? What’s good?”
Before I could get the answer, my head hit the water.
I woke up dazed and sitting with my back against a rock wall. I was at the high end of a long ridge that looked like an empty swimming pool with the floor tilting up from the deep end. A forested hill rose up in front of me, taller than the ridge. Wind howled, but the sky was clear, and the sun was still high. Granny’s knife was tucked in my belt, wrapped in its sock like before. I got up and leaned against the wall, waiting for my head to clear. Under my bare feet stretched a smooth rock floor. I pulled a hard bulge of something out of my pocket — a bone white skull with eye sockets and fangs — the skull Moses used on Granpaw. Something inside made a swishing sound like sand or maybe seeds. I pushed it back inside my pocket and looked out over the ridge. I saw then that I was on top of the hump, atop the dragon’s back. In one direction it tapered and curled down into the woods. In the other it also tapered but to a place above the trees, a place thick with gooseberry bushes. Two black pine trees bent toward one another there — the dragon horns I’d seen from below.
My shirt was still damp from the rain, but the day now was bone dry and hot. No puddles. No sign of rain anywhere. Wind howled over the hump. Half a white dandelion-puffball twirled in front of me and twirled away. I looked out along the neck of the Dragon. Beyond the head, waving in the light, I could see the shiny tops of a few poplar trees. I started along the spine of the neck, picking my way toward the head where the two dead trees bowed, waded through gooseberry bushes out to where the dragon’s head ended — out to the very end of its nose — and looked down. There I saw the grassy roadbed and the railroad tracks. I saw Willis and Chester, waiting under the poplars. I was on top of the fist of rock I’d seen when we’d first rode up. Vines and little bushes grew all down the front.
“Ah Willis!” I shouted.
Willis looked up to where I was and smiled. “Ca-Come down, boy! Dey a path!” He pointed to a place above where the vines started. A narrow ledge went down from there, down the face of the rock and disappeared behind the vines.
“Ain’t wide enough!” I yelled.
“Ya’ll gots a hold on dem grape vine!” Willis shouted. “Come down dat way! It easy!”
“It don’t look easy!” I shouted. “Shit Willis!”
Willis picked up a rock and threw it halfway up. “Right in dare! It get wide!”
“I don’t know Willis,” I said, but I started down the ledge anyway, my back to the rock. I tried not to look down. I grabbed for the vines, knocked off a bunch of grapes and heard them smack against the rocks down below. I grabbed out again, got a hold of the vines and started down. The ledge was broken and not much wider than a six-inch plank but the vines, they steadied me. I held on, working my way down until the ledge finally widened and the going got easier. When I got all the way down, I ran over to Willis. I had a bunch of grapes in my hand.
“Dem grape mmmake you sick,” Willis said.
“I don’t care.” I put one in my mouth but it was so bad sour I had to spit it out.
Willis laughed. “You a sight! Pine needle all ova you!”
I looked back at the fist of rock. From this side you couldn’t tell it was the front part of a dragon. You couldn’t even see the horns.
“There’s a cave Willis.”
“Cave?”
“Uh huh. In that ridge. There’s a cave-room down in there.”
I looked at Willis. “I was gone a long time.”
Willis shook his head. “Fifteen minute. Maybe twenty.”
“Liar,” I said. “Didn’t you get wet?”
“Na-uh.”
“The rain! Didn’t you see the rain?”
“It didn’t rain,” Willis said.
“It did! Look at my shirt!” I pulled my tee shirt away from my body so Willis could feel of it, but it was already dry.
21
The Rain Skull
They brought Granpaw back from the hospital on a Friday, the second day of August. His right eye stared straight ahead. The left stared off to the side. He sat in his wheelchair all day — day after day — out on the front porch or in the front room. Sometimes he hollered out words. “Tribulations!” he would yell, or “Goddamn!” Sometimes he called Momma, ‘Mattie’ and Granny, ‘Ruby’.