Slide - Kyle Beachy [53]
As cars passed by, we heard bits of stereo against the underlying and constant cicada buzz. Just south of the Rocket Slide, Hanley Road changed to Springer Road where it entered into Webster County and became more residential and curvy and tree-lined. Roads did this in St. Louis, spontaneously switched names without warning. Zoe smacked a mosquito that landed on her arm, then showed it to me on her palm, bloodless.
“Ebullience will be on there. I personally guarantee.”
“Oh, I like that,” she said. “Eb-boo-lee-ents. Another one, please.”
“Marasmus. A wasting of the body associated with insufficient intake of food.”
“See, this deserves pay. You could be on the clock right now.” She threw a handful of gravel at my legs.
“I don't have any sort of teaching certification,” I said. “There could be surprise inspections. Who knows what sort of trouble I'd be in.”
After a few minutes she said, “I think there are insects living in this gravel,” and we drove back home.
three
the noise that woke me was thunderous and singular, contained to a small region just above my head. In the otherwise black of middle night, big green hexagon numbers glared tauntingly from my bedside clock. Now I heard a drastically different sound, small and softer. Sounded almost like the chirp of a bird but muffled, with a note of restraint. Sounded like a bird in the attic.
I opened the closet and moved Christmas decorations and winter coats into the hallway. I climbed the ladder into an attic I hardly recognized. Everything was brighter. It seemed that the top box of the stack I'd constructed in front of the window had fallen, and now light poured in from the streetlight outside and I saw more of this room than I had in weeks. I could see distinct shapes where I was used to blackness, including what appeared to be a bird perched atop a box near the window. And Freddy, except this time he was wearing only a Speedo and no water wings.
“The box I had to move the box to let in light it was too dark up here.”
I had promised myself if I ever saw him again I wouldn't look, a promise just self-defeating enough I thought maybe I had a chance. Our last meeting had been cut short, and fault was entirely my own. A valuable lesson learned: do not look. I took a seat on my makeshift bed and watched the bird sitting by the window, its head antsy and curious.
“If you stare I have to go away.”
“I promise to not stare.”
“Going away is the closest I feel to pain not pain exactly but it feels odd and so please do not this time don't stare.”
“Promise.”
“Are you willing to cross your heart and hope to die?”
I had a feeling that this line, this artifact joke left over from his life as a five year old, was a test. And now my urge to look was compounded by a fresh and crushing understanding that my brother Freddy had at one point been a human being. This ghost swimsuit Freddy was once a person, with flesh and hair and bones. Freddy the son and Freddy the brother, who really only wanted to retrieve his ball. A little person who wore shoes. How in the world had I gone twenty-two years without thinking of Freddy's feet?
“It's a cardinal too did you notice that part probably yes you did because you seem to notice everything.”
My stomach went tight. I folded at the waist and rocked gently back and forth, clenching. When the feeling subsided, I sat back up on the box and looked to the bird in the window. It had the triangular beak and distinct head plumage, chest puffed out in round contention.
“I thought you would appreciate that since baseball and how important baseball is to you.”
“Thank you, Freddy.”
“It's too bad we never got to play catch later you were good at it when you played your arm could have been stronger and sometimes you swung too hard with two strikes but overall you were a real addition to the team.”
I had thought myself well equipped to meet Freddy again; I had devoted hours to solitary rehearsal