Little Bird of Heaven. Joyce Carol Oates

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СКАЧАТЬ say that, Krissie. Hell no. You’re learning. You’re promising. Sports is all about who you’re contending with, see? Like life, maybe. You’re only as good as your opponents let you be. They’re only as good as you let them be.”

      This was so. Uncontestably, this was so. Now I had an idea of what my father might be feeling, his opponents thwarting him, blocking him, trampling on his life. And I had a sharper memory of how when we’d all lived together in the house on Huron Pike Road the very air reverberated with the swelling and shrinking, the waning and waxing of my father’s mood.

      “Baby, no. You don’t ever give up.”

      Daddy wasn’t staying with relatives or friends here in Sparta but, surprising to me, in the Days Inn on route 31. Maybe there was a reason for this, he’d explained. He was going to be “in the vicinity” until the following Monday—“seeing people”—“doing some business”—“tying up loose ends.” I hoped that this didn’t include trying to see my mother or any of her family. None of the Bauers wanted to see Eddy Diehl, ever again.

       Your father is not welcome with us.

       Your father is dead to us.

      Some of my father’s business in Sparta had to do with “litigation”—he’d been trying for years, with one lawyer or another, to sue local law enforcement officers and the Herkimer County prosecutor’s office on grounds of harassment, character assassination, criminal slander and misuse of authority. So far as anyone knew, nothing had come of my father’s lawsuits except legal fees.

      I dreaded to hear that he might be seeing yet another lawyer. Or that he might be planning on speaking again with the police, the prosecutors, the local newspapers and media. Demanding that his name be cleared.

      Whatever my father’s specific business in Sparta, I knew better than to ask about it. For though Daddy seemed always to be speaking openly and frankly and in a tone of belligerent optimism you could not speak like this to him, in turn. I’d come to recognize a certain mode of adult speech that, seeming intimate, is a way of precluding intimacy. I am telling you all that you need to know! What I don’t tell you, you will not be told.

      We’d exited the eerily humming suspension bridge from downtown Sparta to East Sparta, a no-man’s-land of small factories, gas stations, vacated warehouses, acres of asphalt parking lots creased and cracked and overgrown with gigantic thistles. In litter-strewn fields, in trash-choked gutters you saw lifeless bodies—you saw what appeared to be bodies—trussed and wrapped in twine, humanoid, part-decomposed. You saw, and looked again: only just garbage bags, more trash. East Sparta had lost most of its industries, now East Sparta was filling up with debris.

      I asked my father where was he living now?—and my father said, “Me? Living now?” meant to be a joke and so I laughed nervously.

      Maybe he wanted me to guess? I guessed Buffalo, Batavia, Port Oriskany, Strykersville…He said, “I’m between habitats, right now. Left some things in storage in Buffalo. Mostly I’m in motion, y’know?—in this car that’s my newest purchase/investment. Like it?”

      Though I was listening intently to my father yet I seemed not to know what he was asking me. This car? Do I like—this car?

      I had already told my father yes, I liked this car. This was a beautiful car. But he wasn’t living in his car, was he? Was he living in his car?

      The backseat was piled with things. Boxes, files, folders. A pair of men’s shoes, what appeared to be clothing: outer garments. Suitcase. Suitcases. Duffel bag. More boxes.

       Dead to us. Doesn’t he know it?

       Damn dumb ghost wish to hell he’d die.

      “Anywhere I am, Krista. In my—y’know—soul. Like in my thoughts, except deeper. That’s what a soul is. In my soul I’m here, in Sparta. Lots of times in my sleep in our house, on the Huron Road. That’s where I wake up, until—I’m awake and I see hey no—nooooo!—that isn’t where I am, after all.”

      To this, I had no idea how to reply. I was thinking how I loved my Daddy, and how strange it was that a girl has a Daddy, and a girl loves a Daddy, a girl does not judge a Daddy. I was thinking how I hated my brother Ben, who was free of having to love Daddy.

      Ben didn’t love me, either. I was sure.

      “It’s my birthplace here,” Daddy said. “My birthright. Nights when I can’t sleep I just shut my eyes, I’m here. I’m home.”

      “I wish…”

      “Yes? What d’you wish, Puss?”

      “…you could come live with us again, Daddy. That’s what I wish.” Daddy laughed, kindly. Or maybe Daddy’s laugh was resigned, wounded.

      “…wish you could come back tonight…It isn’t the same without you, Daddy. Anywhere in the house. Anywhere…” I was wiping at my eyes, that ached as if I’d been staring into a blinding light. Maybe one of the guards on the opposing team had thumbed my eye, out of pure meanness.

      Pissy little white girl get out of my face! “I miss you, Daddy. So does Ben. He doesn’t say so, but he does.”

      This was a lie. Why I said it, impulsively, I don’t know: to make Daddy happy, maybe. A little happier.

      “Well, honey. Thank you. I miss you, too. Real bad.” There was a pause, Daddy pondered. “And your brother.”

      I said yes, I’d tell him. I’d tell Ben.

      It had been one of the shocks of my father’s life, how his son had turned against him. His son, against him.

      And maybe he’d loved Ben better than he’d loved me. Or he’d wanted to. Having a son was the card you led with, in Daddy’s circle of men friends.

      “…she’s getting along, O.K.? Is she?”

      She. We were talking about my mother, were we? All along, since I’d scrambled to climb into the Caddie Seville, the subject had been my mother.

      “…to that church? The new one? How’s that turning out?”

      I told him it was turning out all right. My mother had joined a new church, my mother had “new friends” or claimed to have. I had not yet met these “new friends” but one of them was named Eve Hurtle or Huddle, the brassy-haired dump truck-shaped woman who owned Second Time ‘Round.

      I was uneasy thinking that my father might ask if my mother was “seeing” anyone—any man—and I prepared what I might say. Daddy I don’t know! I don’t think so. Hoping he wouldn’t ask, this would be demeaning to him.

      But Daddy didn’t ask. Not that. If Eddy Diehl felt sexual jealousy, sexual rage, he had too much manly pride to ask. Though I could sense how badly he wanted to ask.

      “…doesn’t pass on much information about me, I guess? To you and Ben?”

      Information? I wasn’t sure what Daddy meant.

      “It’s like I’m dead, yes? ‘Dead to me’—that’s what she says?”

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