Brother Carnival Read online

  Then nothing.

  All we could hear was each other taking air. And for what seemed a whole minute, surely a dime’s worth, we breathed heavy, sucked wind, scrambling away from Mr. Taps.

  Cajoling the operator not to cut us off.

  For his boy was about to find his way to Huck and Jim’s proverbial raft.

  It could be Westley’s and mine. Maybe that’s where we would converge: down at the mouth of the Mississippi. And start all over, this time creating ourselves, christening ourselves with our own names, abandoning the pasts that were never truly ours anyway.

  And if fortune smiled upon us, one identity would suffice for navigating the rapids surely ahead of us.

  It was at this moment that I sat up, faced my bedroom window, and saw him staring back at me.

  “Westley,” I murmured, fearing I would cause him to vanish. But he continued to stare at me, unblinking.

  “What is it?” I asked. “Please answer me.”

  I slowly crawled out of bed and stepped to the window. He had not moved. As I got closer, I urged him to speak. “Call my name. Something. Identify yourself, for Christ’s sake and your unholy brother’s.”

  I moved my face to the window and pleaded with him not to move his. Then, as if from some long-buried memory, I placed my lips to his and sang a lament. And the pane buzzed.

  The window harp sang in my room that night.

  I wept to his image.

  As he surely did to mine, for the room wept in a harp’s despairing tone. A keening of sorts, an unholy song of separation. A longing for the selves to be reunited.

  He warbling to me, I to him.

  And somewhere in this hymn of lost brothers, I begged for him not to leave. And if he would stay . . . so would I.

  For I could foresee in his eyes that dark night what he wished to say to me if he could have spoken.

  But he couldn’t, for it was my voice, my tongue, my utterance.

  He could only signal by his eyes that at the most intense moment of that brief encounter, they appeared as headlights on our family car, and I saw them stopping before me as I climbed the parapet, blinking on and off, as if in fright that I could go through with it.

  The headlights nearly blinded me, letting me know I wasn’t alone. There was somebody inside that automobile, signaling me to stop.

  And I did.

  I did, understanding that if I left, he had no choice but to leave also.

  An epiphany on the bridge of acid-green lights.

  When daylight broke, I knew what I must do. It couldn’t have been more evident. I would join him in the very same way he’d joined other identities in “Going Dark.” I would become my brother as a means to reunite us.

  This was the true pathway to discovering him.

  His appearance in the window told me that.

  I would become Westley Mueller.

  BOOK TWO

  PART ONE

  THE METAMORPHOSIS

  CHAPTER ONE

  It is as if [Genet] recognized that during the brief period when he acted as a normal representative of French society, he was as absurd as that society itself—doubly so, since he was only impersonating a normal man.2

  His photograph in tennis whites at the seminary would be my starting point. The manuscripts, my primer. Amused that he was more real to me than my anodyne self, how could I not effect verisimilitude? Who was the chrysalis unveiled?

  As we sat across from each other at the Gorge, I recalled Papa’s admonition regarding Westley’s writings: Having read much of what’s in here . . . I believe it may have been written with you in mind. He surely suspected your mother was with child prior to his departure. He awaits you, Ethan.

  But it will not be revealed to you easily.

  And as the moments passed, I began to sense that this person I’d never touched had sat alongside me, offering an encouraging yes when I began telling his story, now mine. Scribbling away, I experienced a palpable sense of abandonment. We were conspirators of sorts. At times, it felt as if he had begun placing the words onto my tablet. As if to say: Here, let me do it.

  At one point, I thought I’d heard someone at my door and, when I found no one there and returned to my chair, a stranger in a man’s felt hat stood grinning back at me in a wall mirror. “Westley?” I asked.

  “Hurry back to your chair,” he said. “Oh, Christ yes, write.”

  It was as if I had begun giving birth to myself; for now, as the hours elapsed, one sentence after another took form with an authority foreign to me. No equivocation. And each time I passed that mirror as late afternoon succumbed to evening, the hatted gentleman was no longer a stranger.

  He was the Normal Man.

  Why I Wrote Those Stories

  I’d always wanted to be a Normal Man, one who wore a wide-brimmed hat, a fine suit, and shoes that took a burnished shine and lasted for several years. I wanted to own a recent-model automobile with a bespoke wife in the passenger seat, a child or two in the backseat, a brick house hedged by rose bushes, and a backyard where we’d gather with friends on a summer evening.

  Normal men did not reside in our neighborhood.

  I’d stroll down elm-canopied streets on their north side of town, where manicured lawns ran long distances from grand homes. Gazing into their rooms, I’d imagine one ensconced in a leather chair while awaiting dinner, the interior lit as if by dying embers; the plump beds on the second floor dressed in cloud-white sheets and pillowcases; and the tiled, clotted-cream bathrooms with nickel fixtures and beveled mirrors.

  There were, of course, mirrors in our house. I’d feign being the son of a Normal Man by daubing my hair with a fragrant pomade and combing it with a distinct part while standing before a mirror next to my father, who’d sprinkle blue cologne on his chest in preparation for going out for the evening. Except he knew who stared back at him. As did the scarlet women he’d rendezvous with later.

  Mother, who loathed the looking glass, suffered bouts of depression and had an ongoing liaison with death. Escaping into the arms of Christ occupied her waking hours, whereas Papa didn’t believe in postponing rapture for what he couldn’t touch.

  I had friends who thought the Normal Man lived on the other side of town, too. Except they never hoped to become one. “How can you become somebody you aren’t?” they’d ask.

  But I aspired to a life where days weren’t defined by dystopian surprises. Though I was enamored of them in my dreams, I was not inspired by my father’s dalliances, his absorption in louche women. And as for my dear but troubled mother, she, too, would happily have led me up a blind alley.

  Inept at sports, I had become immune to the shame of being the last one chosen when sides were picked. Ironically, it was my acting the part of the scion of a Normal Man that caused others to take a benign and risible liking to me: I attended church regularly, never cussed, answered Yes ma’am and No sir when addressing adults, treated the opposite sex deferentially, and excused myself when they shadowed Rosa Nowiki into the woods. Since I trusted that I was created in God’s image, it was not in my interest to leave any stains. Occasionally in the schoolyard after dark, I’d be cajoled to list all the possible sins that I’d never commit. It was as if I were reciting the stats of Ralph Kiner or Roberto Clemente. I laughed along with my friends.

  I was the ersatz Normal Man’s son.

  My friend Anthony’s father had one leg and owned the one-pump gas station at the bottom of our street. He spent his working days mostly in the grease pit under the canopies of aged cars. Larry’s father was a Pentecostal preacher who sold Electrolux vacuum cleaners door to door. Ben’s “old man” was retired and morbidly obese, and could only steer his aged Buick; Ben would be summoned to shift the gears on their way for groceries.

  One sunny day while school was in recess, Larry asked me to recite the Twenty-Third Psalm for his father. The man wore a brush mustache and had his hair parted down the middle. His mouth formed a tight oval when speaking as if he were miming on
e of the vacuum’s accessories. The part-time cleric nodded approvingly and cast a chiding look at his son. He invited me to his church the following Sunday, but Mother nixed my attending because “those folks speak in tongues.”

  Her barely disguised scorn confused me because when unduly depressed, she’d stand against the hallway window at some point during the night and, placing her lips against the pane, would begin to mewl, creating an unnerving glass harmonium.

  Over time it began to dawn on me that in order to survive, I had to become somebody other than who I was.

  And, if I was created in the image of God, who was that?

  It’s why, after considerable bedevilment, I chose the Normal Man for my role model. Who but he, I surmised, would earnestly aspire to fulfill the promise of his maker’s image?

  Soon I began comporting myself as his presumed son. I worked after school and on Saturdays for a florist whose clientele resided on the north side. Delivering floral arrangements, I became accustomed to entering hushed Georgian interiors with hardwood foyers; some were brightly papered and well lit, while others were less welcoming. Ample dining rooms were furnished with the requisite Chippendale furniture to accommodate several guests, and the living rooms were graced with an abundance of overstuffed chairs, often Queen Annes, of course, and sofas in muted fabrics. Oriental carpets were de rigueur.

  It was generally the Normal Man’s wife who would call out when I rang the bell to place the vase of, say, tulips or irises on the breakfront or on the grand piano in the living room. Since we delivered flowers for births, weddings, and funerals, and even decorated the burial plots in the cemetery—a glade of white birches and towering elms traversed by pebble pathways—I became intimately accustomed to the lives of many of the Hill customers through my early high school years.

  It wasn’t long before I began to express a liking for a number of the Normal Men’s daughters, a natural outgrowth of my believing that I belonged. For one classmate, to whom I was especially attracted, I’d filch a dozen of red roses or fashion an orchid corsage at the florist shop and then on a general delivery drop the “secret admirer” box off at her house, always feigning ignorance as to the sender.

  If I kept the secret, nobody, especially me, would get hurt.

  The role was growing on me, and over time I realized, paradoxically, that I was better off playing the role of a Normal Man’s son than being one. I was not captive to the identity as if I had been granted it at birth. I relished the notion that I was creating my own persona by adopting the traits and characteristics of having been born on the other side of town . . . while knowing full well that, in truth, I was nobody.

  It all began to make profound sense to me—having been created in God’s image.

  But, about to embark on my last year in high school, I had begun to tire of impersonation. Despite being practiced in the ways of the Normal Man, knowing in my heart that I was still a nonentity was quite honestly more gratifying to me than the diminishing returns coming from my role.

  It felt as if the entire “God’s image” mien was crumbling.

  I began writing my thoughts down and found relief of a sort unique to me. It was equal to and often greater than the satisfaction that resulted when the onlookers truly believed I was the person I feigned being.

  And a month into my senior year, I found myself withdrawing even more. Friends queried what was going on. I’d answer that it had nothing to do with them, that there were troubles at home. But the truth was that earlier on, a large part of who I was had depended on their accepting me. This was no longer the case.

  I had someone else who fulfilled that need now. He was five years younger, and I wrote about him almost every day.

  And for the first time in memory, I was truly somebody . . . Jeremiah’s brother.

  CHAPTER TWO

  JEREMIAH’S BROTHER

  He was becoming as real to me as I was to myself. We laughed often in the dark confines of my bedroom, and his presence mitigated the anguish I experienced when Momma went to the hallway window. I’d awaken him when Papa returned home long after midnight upon hearing her pad down the stairs.

  I no longer aspired to be the grown son of the Normal Man, having come to judge that act as an empty existence. Not unlike, in truth, what I was now living. But at least I knew it and could no longer keep up the appearance.

  Then one day I begin chronicling the life of this mystery brother. What endeared him to me most was his irreverence, a veritable tonic for me. It no longer mattered that much to me what was occurring outside our bedroom door. We had each other. And those times when I felt dispirited, Jeremiah would perform a little dance on our bed.

  Christ, I often thought, where have you been?

  There were moments when I’d wonder why he had showed up at this point in my life. Everything about him was authentic, the total opposite of me, really. He joked about my prudishness; my inability to swear; the Sunday School homilies I’d recite; my fear of eternal damnation; and above all my admonishing him, when he blasphemed, that each of us was created in God’s image.

  His usual retort to that chastisement: “Not me, brother. It’s why I’m so goddamned lucky.”

  Those words darkly presaged what was soon to occur to me. I couldn’t have known it then, but in looking back upon that time, it seems clear that was why Jeremiah entered my life.

  I’ve lifted from my journals an excerpt detailing the incident:

  THE VISITOR

  (excerpt)

  If I acceded to its logic, surely the voice would stop badgering me. One spring morning, I suggested, “If I agree to a time and place for the act, will you promise to leave me alone for a while?”

  The voice hesitated.

  I persisted. “I’ll give you the name of the time and place when I will perform the act if you permit me to enjoy my last days in relative peace. It’s a fair request, is it not?”

  Name it, then.

  “Promise?”

  Name it, and I’ll lay off. However, if you fail to carry out your end of our bargain, Westley . . . I will have no mercy.

  “Washington Street bridge, second Sunday morning in April—at daybreak. One condition: if the sun doesn’t appear, we postpone it to the following Sunday.”

  It laughed, another first. But always, I’d done what I promised.

  The following morning I crossed the bridge. In the past the voice would have compelled me to the parapet’s edge to peer far down at the cascading water, inquiring, Can you see yourself floating down toward the south side of Hebron, Westley? There you are! See the blissful grin on your face? For Christ’s sake, do it. Now!

  I did see my face, but I saw others, too. Those of the male residents in the City Rescue Mission abutting the Neshannock on the south side of the bridge. Reflections of pale faces smashed up against the windows of the Mission’s spartan rooms. The morning sun ignited both its glass and surface of the water. Among their faces was mine. Did they periodically jump too? I wondered. Perhaps at night, guiding their way down into the black Neshannock by moonlight?

  Three-quarters of the way across the bridge, I still hadn’t been accosted. The bridge had lost its curse, and for the first time in several months, I could answer Here for morning attendance and not be lying.

  That afternoon, I called Jeremiah up to our room.

  “I haven’t been able to talk to you or anybody else what’s been happening to me, Jeremiah. But I’m OK now.” And embraced him.

  He squirmed. “It’s no fun not having you around. Are you lovesick?”

  I laughed. “Jesus . . . yes, maybe I was. I thought I was gonna die.” We lay in our bed, coiled, rocking back and forth and giddily laughing for reasons neither of us fully understood.

  That evening, we walked towards the Neshannock River at the edge of town.

  “Why’d you want to meet me, Westley?”

  “I lied to you this morning. I was lovesick—but no woman was involved.”

  Jeremiah instinctive
ly drew back.

  “It isn’t that, either.”

  The streetlights were farther apart now.

  “Weeks ago, one Monday morning when I awoke, well, there were two of us—me and another me. I could barely get dressed for school that morning, the bickering inside my head got so deafening. ‘Maybe it will go away,’ I think. You know sometimes how you get double vision?”

  He began walking ahead of me.

  “Two voices arguing with each other!” I said.

  “Like you and me?” he asked.

  “Just like it. I go upstairs, pick out my favorite shirt to wear. All the time, this other voice is mocking how fucking stupid it looks. What the hell are you even dressing for, going to school? ‘Shut the fuck up!’ I reply. Jeremiah, I holler at you to shut up, huh? But to scream at myself to shut the fuck up? And in the mirror?”

  Jeremiah looked like Pap in the dark. Same build, a shadow over his face like the one the old man’s downturned fedora cast, and like his mind was off somewhere. “You gonna be all right, Westley?”

  “So listen . . . this son of a bitch pops the question on me.”

  “Who, Westley! Who in Christ’s name we talking about!”

  “I don’t know who!”

  “What’d he say?”

  “‘You’re a no-good fucking simple bastard, Westleymueller.’”

  Jeremiah started to laugh.

  “‘Life makes no goddamn sense,’ it bellowed. ‘Give me one simple reason why you should go on living, Westleymueller.’ The prick’s so much brighter than I am, brother.”

  Jeremiah palmed a Zippo lighter and thumbed its wheel against the flint, and the flame illuminated his hazel eyes, just like the old man’s. But his registered alarm. “Smoke?”