Blackburn

SEVEN

The water tower lay in pieces. Blackburn pulled the Hornet onto the far shoulder of the Potwin road and stared at the wreckage.

He had passed the new one out on K-132. It was a mushroom-shaped thing with letters that spelled TUTTLE CO. RURAL WATER DISTRICT #8 instead of WANTODA It had neither a catwalk nor graffiti. It was ugly.

He let Dog out of the car to take a piss, and she jumped into the ditch and rolled in the burrs. Blackburn got out and yelled at her. She ignored him.

Blackburn crossed the ditch and climbed into the field, shading his eyes. The tower looked like a dead robot. As he approached, he saw that its legs were only partially dismembered. If he had come two days sooner, he might have seen it still standing. Two days later, and he might not have seen it at all. But today was Sunday, and the carrion eaters were at rest.

He stopped beside the rust-smeared silver tank. Here were the letters wan, peeled and almost gone. And here were graffiti, although he remembered none of the phrases. ZZ TOP, they said. AC/DC. '84 RULES. PINK FLOYD THE WALL. KATHY BITES. JESUS IS LOVE. LOVE THIS. Beside this last was an arrow pointing to a red spray-paint drawing of a giant cock and balls. Blackburn pressed his lips and tongue to the tank's skin. The taste of paint and metal, at least, hadn't changed.

A truck rumbled past on the road, and Dog charged after it. Blackburn ran back to the Hornet, shouting. Damn stupid Dog had no sense. She would get herself killed. He blamed her first master. A mistreated pup never recovered.

After a while she came to him, looking happy. He shoved her into the car and then sat and talked to her. She put her head in his lap and slobbered on his jeans. He pointed at the crumpled tower.

"I used to climb that," he said. "I was king of the world."

He wished that the tower would reassemble and leap up, like a film run backward. He wished that the mushroom out on 132 would shrivel into the dirt. He wished that the town of Wantoda were as it had been when he had left it. He had wanted to think of this trip as a visit to the past, as a time-travel story about a man confronting his idiot ancestors. He had wanted May '84 to be a rerun of May '75.

But then tomorrow would be his seventeenth birthday instead of his twenty-sixth. It was better to be older. It was better not to be afraid.

Blackburn looked away from the remains of the water tower and started the Hornet. He steered back onto the pavement and drove down the Potwin road to kill his father.

Even for rural Tuttle County, the house was cruddy. The siding was blotched with orange, and the wooden shingles looked like scabs. The porch sagged. Dad had let the place go to hell.

A blue Celica sat in the dirt driveway behind a battered white GMC pickup. Dad had a visitor. That was too bad. Blackburn parked the Hornet against the Celica's rear bumper, then reached under the seat for his Colt Python. It had slid back, and he had to bend low and stretch before his fingers closed on the grip.

Dog barked in his ear, making him bang his head on the steering wheel. He yelled, and Dog barked again. Blackburn slapped at her with his free hand. Then he sat up, holding the pistol, and saw his mother on the porch. She was wearing a cream-colored summer dress like the ones she had always looked at in the Penney's catalog. Her hair touched her shoulders. Blackburn was amazed. He had thought she was in Oregon, or possibly dead. He ducked to hide the gun under the seat again.

When he rose, she was walking across the yard toward him. The south wind pressed the dress against her legs, and her hair blew back from her face. Her face was smooth.

Then she was at his window, and in her scowl he saw that she was not his mother after all. She was his sister. Dog barked at her.

Blackburn rolled down the window. "Jasmine," he said.

"Jimmy." She stepped back. She looked surprised.

Blackburn opened his door and got out. Dog cowered against the passenger door.

Jasmine was several inches shorter than her brother. He looked down at her. "You have breasts," he said.

Her eyes narrowed. "You don't."

Blackburn realized that he had said a stupid thing. But he had left when she was twelve, and now the twelve-year-old's eyes and mouth were pasted on a different body. Maybe he should have said "You're taller" or "You're bigger." Or "You look like Mom." But that would have been worse. She wasn't supposed to be here, anyway.

He pointed behind him with his thumb. "That's my dog."

Jasmine looked around him. "Black and white. Is she a border collie?"

"Beats me."

"What's her name?"

"Dog."

Jasmine looked back at him. "You're the same," she said.

Blackburn thought he knew what she meant. "You still hate me."

She shrugged. "I don't know you."

"But you said I was the same."

"You are." She glanced at the house. "Want to see Dad?"

Blackburn stared past her. "He isn't dead yet?"

"No." Her scowl darkened. "How'd you know he was sick?"

"Saw his name in the hospital lists in the Wichita paper. But when I went to the hospital, they said he'd left. They wouldn't tell me what he was there for."

"I'm surprised that you cared."

"Oh yeah," Blackburn said. "I care." He took a few steps toward the house, then stopped. "Is Mom here?"

"God, no."

"Any idea where she is?"

Jasmine gave him a sharp look. "We've been in Seattle for years, Jimmy. I'm a senior at the University of Washington."

"Outstanding." He started toward the house again.

Jasmine came along. "I would have graduated this spring, but I took incompletes so I could come down here."

"Why'd you want to do that?"

"Because he doesn't have anyone else."

Blackburn stepped onto the porch. "Of course he does." He nodded to his reflection in the storm door. Dad wouldn't like his haircut. "He has me."

Jasmine touched his elbow. "Jimmy. Are the police after you?"

"I don't know," he said. It was the truth.

Jasmine closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she looked different. Softer. "I haven't seen you in so long," she said. "I guess I should at least give you a hug." She put her arms around him and pressed close.

Blackburn didn't like it. He pushed her away, and she looked at him, blinking.

"Dog!" Blackburn called. Dog jumped from the Hornet and came running. Blackburn opened the storm door, and Dog sped into the house. Jasmine gasped.

Blackburn went inside.

The house smelled of ham and potatoes. Blackburn found the old man at the kitchen table, swiping at Dog with a butter knife. He was wearing blue work pants and a red plaid shirt. His face was still florid and stubbled, with the same broad nose and small, pale eyes. But he was skinnier, and he breathed with a phlegmy wheeze. His sparse hair had turned gray. Patches of scalp were visible, like dead leaves seen through mist.

"Hi, Dad," Blackburn said.

The old man glanced up, furious, and then looked back at Dog. "Get it out of here," he said. His voice shook. It wasn't as deep as Blackburn remembered. "Get the son of a bitch out of my house."

"Just 'bitch,' " Blackburn said.

Jasmine came past him and grabbed Dog's collar. Dog bolted. Jasmine lost her grip, and Dog collided with the old man's chair. Dad bellowed and tried to stab Dog in the neck, but his hand hit the edge of the table. The knife spun away and clattered on the linoleum. Dog whirled and ran from the kitchen.

Dad sat hunched over, gripping his hand. Jasmine reached toward him, but drew back when he started banging his fist on the table. Plates and glasses jumped. Then Dad swiped his arm across the tabletop, flinging a Pyrex bowl of salad. It would have hit Jasmine in the face, but Blackburn knocked it away. It slammed into the sink and shattered.

"Who let a dog in my house?" Dad yelled.

Blackburn squatted before his father. "She followed me home, Daddy," he said. "Can I keep her?"

Dad's eyes focused on him. Blackburn waited, letting the old man stare. Old man. Only forty-eight. But he looked ancient enough to be God.

The old man raised a hand and smacked his son in the mouth.

It was a harder blow than Blackburn had expected. His head jerked. He probed with his tongue and found that his teeth had cut into his lip.

Then he hit back. He had been saving it. Dad and his chair went over onto the floor.

Jasmine rushed to help him up. "What's the matter with you?" she shouted at Blackburn. "Can't you see he's sick?" She eased the old man into his chair again.

Blackburn stood. "What are you sick with, Dad?"

Dad glowered. His cheek was red. "Not a damn thing. I can still whip your ass any day of the week."

"So you aren't sick?"

"I just said I ain't. Ate some bad meat is all. They pumped my stomach and let me go."

"That's not true, Daddy," Jasmine said.

Dad looked at the table and muttered.

Blackburn sucked on his lip for a moment and then left the kitchen. Dog was waiting at the front door. Together, they went outside. Blackburn took a pair of wirecutters from the Hornet and walked to the telephone junction box on the west side of the house. After severing the cord, he returned to the driveway and let the air out of the tires of the GMC and the Celica.

Jasmine came outside as he was finishing with the Celica. "Jimmy! Just what do you think you're doing?"

Blackburn stood. "Giving the family time to get reacquainted."

He looked toward the house. Dad was staring out through the storm door. Blackburn supposed that he should count the old man as Number Sixteen, but he couldn't help thinking of him as Number One. And it only made sense that Number One would be the hardest.

As Blackburn started across the yard, the old man withdrew from the doorway, fading like a ghost.

Blackburn opened the storm door and gestured for Dog to go inside again. Dog did so, avoiding Jasmine.

"You know he doesn't like dogs," Jasmine said.

Blackburn said nothing. He went into the house and held the door open behind him so Jasmine could catch it. He was trying to be considerate.

Dog scurried back and forth across the living room, sniffing the tattered couch and recliner. Then she stopped in the center of the green carpet and squatted.

Dad emerged from the hallway to the room that had been his and Mom's. He was carrying his Remington pump twelve-gauge. He pumped it once, snapping a shell into the firing chamber.

Blackburn remembered lying in his tiny pantry room, reading a comic book, and hearing that sound outside. He remembered the explosion, and the shriek. He remembered running outside and going into the garage. He remembered finding the terrier hiding behind a pile of Dad's shop rags.

He hadn't understood what was wrong until the little dog had stood up. Then he had seen that its left side had no skin. The dog had come to him, trembling.

Now Dad was aiming at Dog. Again. And now Blackburn was fully ready to kill him. But he had left the Python in the car. Jasmine had distracted him, had made him stupid.

He grabbed the shotgun barrel with both hands, jerking it upward. As he wrenched the weapon from the old man's grasp, it roared with a flash of blue fire. Ceiling plaster exploded. Dog tried to scramble outside and ran into the base of the storm door. Jasmine backed against a wall and covered her ears. Dad collapsed onto the couch.

Blackburn went to the door and let Dog out. Then he pumped the shotgun, ejecting the spent shell, and fired upward again. He continued pumping and firing until the magazine was empty. The air filled with white dust and stank like the Fourth of July. Blackburn's skull rang.

He threw the shotgun at his father. The old man ducked, and the gun hit the wall and fell behind the couch.

"You don't kill a man or a dog with quail shot!" Blackburn yelled. He could hardly hear himself, so he yelled even louder. "You do it with a bullet! One bullet to the head!"

Dad sat up straight. "Damn dog was pissing on my floor!"

Blackburn came close and leaned over him. "Piss doesn't matter. Chickens don't matter. Dogs matter."

Dad looked confused. "You're crazy," he said. "I raised a goddamn crazy man."

Jasmine, her face pale with dust, stepped across the broken plaster. "He's talking about that terrier," she said.

The noise in Blackburn's skull was starting to subside. "Yeah," he said. "That terrier."

Dad lurched up from the couch. "Gonna call the sheriff."

Blackburn caught his arm. "I cut the wire. We never had much quality time when I was little, so I thought we should have some now."

The old man's eyes were as steady as a snake's. "If you'd turned out to be worth a crap, I'd've done it then."

Blackburn tightened his grip. "You never did know much about 'worth.' You thought the chickens were 'worth' something, but all they did was shit and eat. That little dog, on the other hand, killed rats. One bite through the head, and then he went for the next one. And then the next. But one day he happened to kill a couple of chickens. Two stupid chickens. So you took your shotgun and blew a hole in his side. Blew a big hole. Very psychosexual, Daddy. Very Freudian."

"Your mother overprotected you," Dad said. "You always were a sissy."

"I made him lie down on the garage floor," Blackburn said. "And then all I could find to help him was a hammer. Afterward I wrapped him in shop rags and buried him behind the chicken coop. I hoped he would haunt you."

The old man made a snorting noise. "Am I supposed to feel guilty? Is that why you came back?"

Blackburn smiled. "Not exactly. See, I've figured it out: It wasn't just that dog. It was everything. Every time I got to liking something, you'd blow a big hole in it. Kill it. But what you really wanted to kill was me."

Jasmine tried to step between them. "That's not so, Jimmy. You're his son."

She had grown breasts and gone to college, but Jasmine was still as dumb as a dirt clod. "Sure I'm his son," Blackburn said. "That's why he did it." He fixed his eyes on the old man's. "And that's why I've come back."

He released Dad's arm, and the old man ran into the kitchen.

Blackburn started after him. He glanced back at Jasmine. "Very psychosexual," he said. "Very Freudian." He followed Dad into the kitchen and out the back door.

Dad scuttled under the sheets on the clothesline, then ran across the backyard and through the windbreak of evergreens on the north. Blackburn stopped at the windbreak and watched through the trees as Dad crawled under the barbed-wire fence into the hay meadow. The old man's shirt tore.

Blackburn waited until Dad disappeared behind the crest of the hill. Then he turned and walked to the Hornet. Jasmine emerged from the house as he brought out the Python.

She froze at the edge of the porch, and Blackburn saw that she thought he was going to shoot her. This saddened him. He had never been a perfect brother, but she should have realized long ago that he never did anything to anyone who didn't deserve it.

"Don't be afraid," he said. "It isn't even cocked."

She didn't relax. "What are you going to do with it?"

Blackburn started toward the meadow. "Retroactive gene-pool maintenance."

Jasmine jumped from the porch and ran to him. She grabbed his wrist and tried to make him stop. He kept walking. Jasmine wasn't very strong.

"Jimmy, there's no point," she said. "He's got cancer, and he won't accept treatment. He told the doctors to go to hell. They said he only has three to five months."

"Then this is my last chance," Blackburn said.

"But he's paying himself back for the things he did. All you have to do is let him!"

Blackburn shook his head. "People can't punish themselves for their sins. Only the people they've sinned against can do that."

"The Bible says only God can do that."

"The Bible's full of chickenshit." He pulled free and sprinted for the windbreak. He heard Jasmine running after him. "Don't make me lock you up!" he shouted.

The sound of her footsteps stopped. When Blackburn reached the evergreens, he looked back and saw her getting into the Hornet. He wasn't worried. He had the keys. Even if she knew how to hot-wire, he would be finished before she could have anyone else here.

He climbed over the fence and ran up the hill. When he reached the top, he spotted Dad and Dog a few hundred yards away to the north. Dog was dancing around the old man, nipping, and Dad was kicking at her. As Blackburn watched, the old man kicked himself off balance and fell into the prairie hay. Dog darted in and slobbered on his face, then darted away again.

Blackburn slowed his pace to a walk. He cocked the Python.

"Hey, Daddy!" he called. "Wanna play catch?"

There was no fear in the old man's face, and Blackburn was glad. Fear might have made things difficult. It occurred to Blackburn that this was the first time Dad had ever made anything easier for him.

He stood over his father and aimed the Python at the old man's forehead. Then Dog came up and slobbered on Dad's face again. Blackburn yelled and chased her away. When he turned back, he saw that Dad had gotten up and was trying to run toward the house. Blackburn almost put a slug into the ground at Dad's feet, and then was ashamed of himself. He hadn't played around with any of the others. When he killed, he killed clean. Mostly. To do otherwise would be to behave as the old man would.

Dad was a pitiful runner. Blackburn caught him and grabbed his shirt where it had been torn by the barbed wire. Dad twisted around, flailing, and hit Blackburn's gun hand. The Python went off, the shot echoing. Blackburn stumbled, and he and his father fell together. Dad tried to scramble away backward, and his shirt ripped open wide, exposing his torso. Blackburn let go, and the old man collapsed onto his back. Blackburn, on his knees, straddled him.

Dad's narrow chest, rising and falling as the old man wheezed, looked hollow. The ribs stuck out. The hair and skin were as white as milk.

Except for the tumor.

It was a pink egg above the left nipple. Red capillaries, thin as spiderwebs, laced through the skin over and around it, vanishing beneath the whiteness a few inches away.

Then the whiteness melted as if the sunlight were X rays, and Blackburn saw the capillaries spreading throughout his father like a living net. He saw the heart stumbling. He saw the lymph glands strangling. He saw the kidneys shuddering, failing.

Blackburn looked up at his father's face. He couldn't see beneath the skin here, but he didn't have to.

"You have breast cancer," he said.

Dad's eyes flashed. "I ain't!" His breath stung. "I ain't got no woman's disease!"

Blackburn pointed at the tumor. "There it is."

The old man swung a fist. Blackburn blocked it with his arm.

"I ain't!" Dad yelled. "It ain't possible!"

"Why not?"

"Because I'm a man!"

The words struck Blackburn as hilarious, and he laughed and laughed. The tumor shook. It seemed to be growing as he watched, as if a cosmic clown were filling it with divine breath. As if it were a sacred balloon.

When Blackburn could laugh no more, he saw that Dad was crying. It was a miracle. Blackburn was stunned. He got off the old man and laid his pistol in the grass. He knelt there, hands clasped, and knew that judgment had been rendered. Punishment had been meted. The universe had proven that it was sometimes perfect, and he would not alter perfection. This one time, seeing it was enough.

As the old man wept, Blackburn bowed down and kissed his breast. The pink egg was hot. Blackburn wanted to always remember how it felt.

"You don't have to get me a birthday present," he murmured.

Then he stood and looked around for Dog. He spotted her lying fifty feet down the hill. He called to her, but she didn't move. He remembered then that the Python had fired.

When he went to her, he found that the bullet had gone through her skull behind the eyes. She hadn't even yelped. There hadn't been time for pain.

Blackburn couldn't cry for her. When there was no time for pain, there was nothing to cry about. Truly, in this place, in this moment, the universe was perfect.

He slowed the Hornet when he saw Jasmine. She was running toward town, coming up on the old water tower. She stopped and turned when she heard the car. Blackburn pulled the Hornet onto the shoulder, got out, and walked to her.

Jasmine was breathing hard. She had run two miles. Her dress was damp and dirty. She had fallen.

"That dress is too long for running," Blackburn said.

She didn't seem to hear him. "Well?" she asked.

"Well what?"

She wiped hair from her forehead. "Did you do it?"

He gazed at the remains of the water tower. It had been his hideout, his Rosetta stone, his starship. He had stood on its catwalk and watched his sister, the size of a doll, playing in the field below.

"Remember the snowball war we had here?" he asked. "You and I built a fort, and some of the town kids built another one. Ours was up against the tower fence. We pretended the water tank was our doomsday bomb."

Jasmine still wasn't listening. "Did you hurt him?"

"And in the spring and summer we flew kites. I made them myself. You were always kind of in the way."

"Did you do something to Daddy?"

Blackburn looked at her again. Had he done anything to Daddy? He supposed that he had.

Just after finding Dog's body, he had heard the Python's hammer click. He had turned to see that Dad had pointed the gun at his own chest. Blackburn had gone over and taken it away. Then he had gathered up Dog and left. At the windbreak he had looked back. The old man had still been kneeling in the same spot.

"All I did," Blackburn told Jasmine, "was kiss him good-bye."

Jasmine stared. "I don't believe you."

Blackburn went back to the Hornet. He retrieved the Python from under the driver's seat and tucked it into his jeans. Then he took his duffel from the back seat and tossed it into the ditch. He threw the shovel that he had taken from the garage down beside it. Finally, he lifted Dog's body from the passenger seat. It was wrapped in a sheet he'd pulled from the clothesline. Only a little blood had leaked through.

Carrying Dog, he returned to Jasmine. "You can take the car back to the house," he said. "See for yourself."

Jasmine was eyeing the bundle in Blackburn's arms. "Don't you need it?"

"No." He would steal another car in town. It was time for a switch anyway.

Jasmine went to the Hornet, then faced her brother again. "Tomorrow's your birthday, isn't it?"

"Yes."

Jasmine tried to smile. It didn't suit her. "Well," she said. "Happy birthday, then."

"Thanks." He turned toward the ditch. "Say hi to Mom for me." He heard the Hornet start as he climbed into the field. By the time he reached the fallen tower, Jasmine was gone.

He laid Dog beside the rusted tank, then retrieved his duffel and the shovel. As he dug the grave, he told Dog about the lessons he had learned from the things he had read and done here. A car on the Potwin road slowed, and its occupants stared at him as it went by.

When Blackburn lowered Dog into the grave, he saw an earthworm writhing in a corner. This reminded him of another story, and he told Dog about the one time that he and Dad had gone fishing together. He wondered if Dad ever went fishing anymore. He doubted it.

He patted Dog through the sheet and filled in the grave. He threw the shovel among the pieces of the water tower's legs, then slung his duffel over his shoulder and walked toward the heart of town.

His family had vanished into the past. For the first time in his life, Blackburn was alone. The perfection of the universe, embodied in the quiet Sunday evening of Wantoda, lay before him. He felt weightless, as if he were falling. Or flying.

Cars were pulling into the parking lot at the Methodist church, and ghosts were emerging from them. Blackburn's lips pulsed with warmth. He took out the Python and cocked it.

It was good to be home.