And that was how I drove away.
In the back seat of my old station wagon that day were the skeletal remains of a dog, one typewriter, and the wiry boneline of a king brown snake.
About halfway, I pulled over. There was a place I knew—a small detour, with a bed and proper rest—but I decided not to take it. Instead, I lay in the car with the snake there at my neck. As I drifted off, I thought how before-the-beginnings are everywhere—because before and before so many things there was a boy in that old-backyard-of-a-town, and he’d kneeled on the ground when the snake had killed that dog, and the dog had killed that snake…but that’s all still to come.
No, for now, this is all you need:
I made it home the next day.
I made it back to the city, to Archer Street, where everything did begin, and went many and varied ways. The argument about just why in the hell I’d brought back the dog and the snake dissipated hours ago, and those who were to leave have left, and those to stay have stayed. Arguing upon return with Rory about the contents of the car’s back seat was the icing on the cake. Rory, of all the people. He, as much as anyone, knows who and why and what we are:
A family of ramshackle tragedy.
A comic book kapow of boys and blood and beasts.
We were born for relics like these.
In the middle of all the back-and-forth, Henry grinned, Tommy laughed, and both said, “Just like always.” The fourth of us was sleeping, and had slept the whole time I was gone.
As for my two girls, when they came in, they marveled at the bones and said, “Why’d you bring those home, Dad?”
Because he’s an idiot.
I caught Rory thinking it, immediately, but he’d never say it in front of my kids.
As for Claudia Dunbar—the former Claudia Kirkby—she shook her head and took my hand, and she was happy, she was so damn happy I could have broken down again. I’m sure it’s because I was glad.
Glad.
Glad is a stupid-seeming word, but I’m writing and telling you all of this purely and simply because that’s exactly how we are. I’m especially so because I love this kitchen now, and all its great and terrible history. I have to do it here. It’s fitting to do it here. I’m glad to hear my notes get slapped to the page.
In front of me, there’s the old TW.
Beyond it, a scratchy wooden tableland.
There are mismatched salt and pepper shakers, and a company of stubborn toast crumbs. The light from the hall is yellow, the light in here is white. I sit and think and hit here. I punch and punch away. Writing is always difficult, but easier with something to say:
Let me tell you about our brother.
The fourth Dunbar boy named Clay.
Everything happened to him.
We were all of us changed through him.
If before the beginning (in the writing, at least) was a typewriter, a dog, and a snake, the beginning itself—eleven years previously—was a murderer, a mule, and Clay. Even in beginnings, though, someone needs to go first, and on that day it could only be the Murderer. After all, he was the one who got everything moving forward, and all of us looking back. He did it by arriving. He arrived at six o’clock.
As it was, it was quite appropriate, too, another blistering February evening; the day had cooked the concrete, the sun still high, and aching. It was heat to be held and depended on, or, really, that had hold of him. In the history of all murderers everywhere, this was surely the most pathetic:
At five-foot-ten, he was average height.
At seventy-five kilos, a normal weight.
But make no mistake—he was a wasteland in a suit; he was bent-postured, he was broken. He leaned at the air as if waiting for it to finish him off, only it wouldn’t, not today, for this, fairly suddenly, didn’t feel like a time for murderers to be getting favors.
No, today he could sense it.
He could smell it.