SHORT STORIES

I don't believe our father ever mentioned the son who was named after him. It was only from our mother that I heard that son talked of, and the only things she told me were the circumstances of his death. In our house there were no pictures of this boy and so in my mind's eye I painted his portrait as best I could. Four years old, light brown hair, large and clear blue eyes, but with an overcast of melancholy, of something already lost. It was the picture of me, of course, taken when I was about the same age my brother had been when he died. I always say my brother, even though I never knew him. He left several years before I was born—

Some of your father's family was over to the house that day. His folks lived in the apartment upstairs and Mrs. Hinton, your grandma Hinton, had everybody just laughing and talking. I don't believe I ever recollect that happening before. She wasn’t one for making folks laugh. I can't rightly say just what on earth we were talking about but it was about the past. About the Quicks who lived down the road from your father years back, before any of us ever moved up to St. Louis after the Depression. Mr. and Mrs. Quick and all their rowdy sons. Not like my boy.

When I was about five, my mother used to dress me up and send me off to Sunday School lessons at the First Baptist Church which was within walking distance of our new brick home on the far edge of the suburbs. She had been raised in strict Baptist churches herself, in the American South, but after my brother was killed, she drifted away from being a church-goer, though I guess she continued to be a believer.

It was in Sunday School that I was introduced to sin, and to the wages of sin which was death—

“My sister married a Canadian and they have lots of Indians up there only they call them Pakistanis.  Do you want my driver’s license number or my car license number here?”

Evelyn poised the leaky ball-point above the registration form and looked through her thick glasses at the dark, young man.

“Your car plates, madam,”  said Mr. Gupta.  “That’s right.  Is it Utah plates?”

“No, California.  I live in California.”  She pushed her grey hair behind her ears.

“India and Pakistan are not the same, madam,”  said Mr. Gupta  softly. 

Evelyn dropped the pen on the counter and just looked at his black eyes.  She held out her hand for the room key.

“I’ve been driving all night,”  she said.

“Yes, madam, you are in number 122. Straight down here and around to the back of the motel. Drive around this way. Those men are working on the other side. You can’t get through that way.”

Evelyn walked out into the dry fire of the desert wind, and the heavy tar fumes sickened her stomach. The workmen looked at her and she looked away. She couldn’t believe a human being could pour asphalt in this desert heat. It must be like Hell. Just like being punished in Hell. But everybody had to earn a living, she thought, that’s true.

And some people earn death, she thought. That’s true, too. Retribution, she knew, was real.