“I told him the story of Century.”
I closed my eyes. “Well, go on then. Tell it to me.”
“We all called him Cen. He had a vineyard, and one winter he found a grape growing out of season.
“He ate the grape, and people said he was sick for doing so. That it was unnatural to eat a grape out of season. That it went against the laws of God. They forgot that God is the great authorizer, and a grape can grow out of season only with His permission first.
“The people, in their fear and ignorance, chased Cen out of the town and into the woods. There he lived alone and unhappy as the sick Cen no one could accept.
“Then came the day the light went out. No sun shone. No flashlights turned on. No candles would light. God wanted the people to realize who they had chased away, so He left them in darkness to find out.
“After weeks of night, a light suddenly appeared in the woods. The people, desperate and hungry for light, ran to it, surprised to find Cen. They had been so certain of what they thought was wicked. Of what they thought was a sick desire. And yet, in that darkness, Cen was the only light God allowed.
“The light was coming from Cen’s blood. He had cut his finger by accident in the dark, and his blood was a bright pouring. That was what eating the grape had done. Light was the gift, the beautiful result of the man who dared not question his hunger for that which grows out of season.
“The sorry people fell to their knees before this very light. They said they were wrong to run him out of town. They had been fools, they cried. Won’t you forgive us? they asked.
“Other men would have turned them away, but Cen was a grand man and he allowed them to stay in the light. He would have allowed them to stay there forever, but his finger stopped bleeding and when that happened, the light stopped as well.
“‘It’s so dark again,’ they cried. ‘How will we ever get home?’
“‘I can help you home,’ Cen said.
“‘But how? You’ve no more light.’
“He took out his pocketknife and cut his arm, the light shining them through the woods to town. There were so many people to see home, Cen had to keep cutting his arm in order to bleed more light.
“After walking the last person home, he had to sit down, for he was far too weak to continue. He’d bled so much for them and there was no more to bleed, not even a drop left. He died alone and in the dark.
“The next morning, in the light of the returned sun, everyone saw the body of Cen on the ground. I guess some say he killed himself, cutting his arm like that, and I guess he did. But at least he killed himself on the way to something else. And that’s what I told Grand.
“I said to him when you hold the knife, you have to ask yourself will more light come from this than dark? And if the answer is yes, then by all means cut away. If through your death, you can walk someone home, then do it — but if by your death, they lose a home, then think again.
“I guess to him, slicing open his arm was walking someone home. It was walking himself. And how can you be mad at him, Fielding, if he’s home now?”
25
Tears, such as Angels weep, burst forth
— MILTON, PARADISE LOST 1:620
THE NIGHT BEFORE Grand’s funeral, Dad sat on the porch, squinting his eyes, folding his arms, and crossing his legs. He hadn’t bothered turning on the porch light. In those dark days following Grand’s death, lights were rarely turned on. It was as if we no longer knew how to pull a lamp cord or flip a wall switch. We’d suddenly gone dumb of the way to light.
Darkness was everywhere for us then. A darkness so thick, it was near solid. And it was all over the place, from Dad’s silence to the creases of Mom’s tissues. Everywhere there were tissues. Some piled, some scattered, some on tables, and some you had to step over on the floor. If you did step on one, your foot would be wet, the snot and tears carried on your heel.
These tissues light as air but denting the ground beneath them. As we were dented. Every time we passed Grand’s quiet room. A dent. When we looked at his empty chair at the table. A dent. When we saw all those crumpled white tissues and thought of baseballs. Dent, dent, dent. We were scooped out, hollowed in, and pocketing darkness all over us.
Dad stopped shaving. His hair came straight from the bed. His cheeks puffy, a coming swell. In his mouth, you could hear thunder in the distance and his breath came humid and smelled like toothpaste laid aside.
He stopped wearing his suits and wore a T-shirt and pajama bottoms all day and days at a time. He didn’t eat. He was trying to get even in the bone with Grand. If you thought it was a shadow passing, it was probably Dad.
Sometimes I’d find him on his knees, thinking at first he was praying, then realizing his arms were out, reaching beyond the wall in front of him. Twitching his fingers slightly as if to say, Come on, come on back to me, now.
Mom got thinner everywhere too, especially her fingers, like unraveling spools of thread. While Dad seemed unable to move, Mom seemed unable to survive stillness. Always up, always moving and circling the drain lest she stop and be sucked down it.
She cleaned out closets, cleared shelves, tossed fresh flour out, not realizing she was bringing more emptiness in.
Age had finally found her. The smoothness she once had appeared to have run out of her like water. A lay of wrinkles that would ordinarily have taken years to put down seemed to have come overnight. In her, something had been dimmed. I found myself unable to pull the strength together to look at her eyes, like gashes on her face torn fresh every few seconds.
I saw her once in Grand’s room, pacing around his empty bed. She was singing the lullaby.
Down in the hills of Ohio,
there’s a babe at sleep tonight …
I watched her, unable to stop moving around his bed, hugging his old sweatshirt in her arms. After every verse of the lullaby, she would fall silent. I’d watch her mouth open slowly in that one syllable word, Why. Another verse, another why. Over and over again, she was trying to figure it out, all the while unable to stop moving.
Fedelia gave Mom something to help her relax. I thought it was working as I looked in at Mom, lying on the bed, her back to me. I tiptoed around her. Her eyes shut. Her fingers in her mouth. I pulled them out and found her nails bleeding. She’d bitten them down to the quick in her sleep, her teeth still grinding. I stayed there, holding her hands away from her mouth while her eyes tossed frantically under their lids, her teeth searching for something to gnaw.
Fedelia never left the house. She slept in one of the extra rooms. We needed her there. She seemed the only one out of all of us capable of continuing. She would ask me if I was hungry and give me something even though I said I wasn’t.
She’d sit by Mom and hold her hand and nod out to me as she said, “Don’t forget him, Stella. He needs you too, remember that now, child.”
She would sit by Dad and hold her hands up, showing him a crack and how it grew. “It’s gettin’ bigger and bigger, Autopsy. You have to be careful because if the crack gets too big, it’ll break your whole world wide open and destroy you. I know something about being destroyed. I know a thing or two about lettin’ cracks get outta hand. You can’t let that happen, Autopsy. You have got to get up from here. Shave your face. Put your suit on. Fielding needs his father. He doesn’t need a great, big crack.”
After Fedelia left, I found a pile of tissues beneath her pillow. Never once did she cry in front of us. She knew it would do us no good. We needed her to be the strong one. She could say Grand’s name without breaking into a million pieces, and she taught us how to do it one letter at a time. She could walk by his room and not get dented. We tried her walk. We dented less and less. Our faces got drier and drier, and we went from tissues to sleeves, to brief wiping on the backs of our hands before one day finding there was nothing to be wiped, at least not on the outside.