Together Tillman’s two younger brothers stood before the front parlor window and absorbed the scene before them: Tillman and his new girl Gail, lying tangle-limbed next to one another on the green lawn. “Someone will surely motor by and see them there and call for an ambulance,” said Palmer.
Hezzie shook his head. “They’re hidden from the street by that large hedge. Don’t you see?”
“Then we should telephone the hospital immediately,” said Palmer.
Hezzie shook his head again. “But we can’t. This morning I borrowed the electromagnet from the telephone receiver for my combination electric hair rejuvenator and radio helmet.”
“Then remove the components, brother, and put them back into the telephone.”
“The process would take time — time which we don’t have. One of us will have to go and seek help from a neighbor.”
“It would be death to me,” said Palmer, his expression transmogrifying itself into a look of abject terror.
“You think that only you would die were we to leave this house? I believe it to be true of myself as well, Palmer. But could it be — could it be, brother, that our brains are playing a terrible trick on us, the way that Mother’s brain made her go into that delicatessen and fill her purse with scrapple and headcheese when the butcher wasn’t watching?”
Palmer shook his head, confused, frightened, impotent, and self-loathing.
Finally Hezzie said the thing that his brother was wholly receptive to hearing: “All logic says that we will not die. It is only mindless illogic that requires us to remain within this house. And yet regardless of the outcome with regard to our own survival, do we not love our brother enough to put our lives on the line for him — for the girl he loves who climbs flagpoles and walks on the wings of aeroplanes? Has he not allowed us to live here in the house of our birth, to draw from the family accounts as needed while he must work in Scranton and demean himself by making buttons to keep himself financially solvent?”
“Yes to all of your questions,” said Palmer reverently and with an effusion of affection for his oldest brother that knew no bounds.
“Then we must risk our lives for them. We will do it together. Together we succeed or together we perish in that noble essay. Are we partners in this endeavor, my little brother?”
Palmer threw up. He took out his handkerchief and wiped away the bits of half-digested bread and pimento loaf that clung to his lips and chin while nodding his consent. “Let’s do this,” he said.
For the first time in almost nine years the two young men opened the front door and stepped over the threshold and out onto the front porch of their house. With a high-pitched ululation born of their great fear and with hesitant geisha-like patter-steps, they crossed the porch and descended the stairs to the front lawn. The screams of mortal terror subsided. A soft summer breeze caressed their faces. There was the smell of honeysuckle in the air, of something else floral and lovely that their gardener had planted when he wasn’t mowing their grass and trimming their hedges and running the illicit craps game that went on right under the brothers’ noses in the backyard toolshed. Hezzie knelt beside his older brother Tillman. He glanced up at Palmer. He took up Tillman’s wrist to feel for his pulse.
“He’s dead,” Hezzie said dolefully.
“I’m not dead,” snapped Tillman, his eyes still closed.
“He’s not dead,” said Hezzie, exultantly.
“I’m not dead either,” said Gail. “But I think we’ve both sustained some broken limbs, and someone in the woods who apparently doesn’t like to see people sitting on roofs has shot your brother in the shoulder.”
Palmer ran for help.
“The two of you — you did it! You have broken free of your personal Bastille!” said Tillman to Hezzie through various stabs of pain.
“By jingo we have, brother,” replied Hezzie. “Will you look at that beautiful blue sky? Can you hear the birds?”
“Is their song any different from what you might have heard through an open window inside the house?” asked Gail, who first thought it was her right leg that was broken but was now convinced that it was both of them.
“Gloriously different! Thank you, Gail. Thank you, brother.”
“For what? For falling off the roof?” asked Tillman.
“For coming here to see us. For believing that we aren’t freaks after all.”
The oldest of the three brothers kept his eyes closed. In the temporary darkness he had made for himself, he sought Gail’s twisted hand and clasped it tightly. “You know that you’ll never be completely normal, Hezzie,” he said, matter-of-factly. “It’s the family curse.”
“Yes, I know,” said Hezzie. “I have patents for forty-seven inventions that I’ve never been able to sell.”
“I’d like to take a closer look at that life preserver with the little propeller attached to it.” Tillman opened his eyes. The world was a blur, indicative of damage, he feared, to the optical nerve. “Now that you are out and about, Hezekiah, you should really sell this house and move away from Williamsport. It’s time for you and Palmer to give your lives a fresh start. Perhaps the three of us should go into business together.”
“Yes, I would like that.”
“Do you think Palmer would go for it?”
“Let’s run it up the flagpole and see if he salutes it.”
“Yes. Let’s.”
1926 BETWEEN THE hAMMER AND tHE aNVIL IN kENTUCKY
My parents divorced in 1928. Divorce was not as commonplace in that year as it would later become, especially in the small town of Winchester where we lived. Looking at my mother and father people have shaken their heads and clucked their tongues and commented in low voices about how much Mama and Daddy must have despised each other to come to this difficult decision. But I know that through the remainder of their lives (my father died in 1946 and my mother in 1962) there was never an ounce of hatred between them — only profound sadness over the fact that tragic circumstances had led inexorably to the end of their union. Each naturally blamed the other for what happened, but they must certainly have come in the end to the conclusion that they were both in part to blame — my mother for what she did and my father for not trying to understand why she did it.
It has been many years since I’ve been back to Winchester, and though it rips my heart to do so, I’d like to tell the thing that I’ve been carrying around for all these years. My name is Margaret Leach and I am an old woman with a very good memory.
In 1926 my aunt Kitty lived in Harrodsburg. She was several years younger than my mother. As far back as I could remember (I was twelve that year) Aunt Kitty had come to stay with us for several weeks in the summer. Mama was very close to her baby sister, and Daddy was fond of her as well. Kitty adored my two younger brothers and me, and I looked forward with great eagerness to each of her annual visits.
My aunt graduated from the Western Kentucky State Normal School and Teacher’s College in 1924 and got a job teaching geometry and algebra at a high school down in Harrodsburg. She would usually come for her visit in July, but in 1926, the second summer after her move, she showed up on our screened-in front porch in early June, right after school let out for summer vacation. She wore an all silk mosaic blue flat crepe dress with chenille hand embroidery, and the hat she had on was geranium red and dramatically wide brimmed (she told me she hated snug-fitting cloches — they gave her a headache). I was almost positive I’d seen Gloria Swanson wearing the very same hat in a picture that had come out just a couple of weeks earlier!