Acre Under a Green Sky

Here I am fresh from my father's grave morphing between the man I am and the boy I used to be. Memories come to me in snapshots. Here's one. My father is standing bare-chested in front of the bathroom basin exploring his face in the mirror –– exploring his life in the mirror. I'm ten-years-old spying from behind the doorframe. He senses my presence. He turns to me and our eyes lock. Snap. We are seeing into each other through unguarded eyes. Each of us has been caught unmasked. I see his naked aloneness, and he sees mine. It is a terrible exchange of embattled souls lasting an eternity in that split second –– in that cobalt-tiled bathroom. I run to my mother's bed and dive in under the bedclothes that smell like her and then I burrow in under her like a suckling whelp.

My father and I shared something that morning so intense; so intimate that we cast ourselves as strangers from that day on. But fearful as intimacy is we grope toward it in spite of ourselves. He and I would seek each other out the rest of our lives together. Finding a safe distance; knowing it had to be a fighting distance, because we loved each other too much. It was the right thing to do.

Here's another snapshot. This one would change all our lives. Perhaps it was just minutes later that same morning. I'm out on the porch laughing with my friend, Garry.

Garry was my best friend though I don't know why. We fought constantly, and much of the time I didn't like him. His hair was so fair it was almost white, and his skin appeared sunburned year-round. He had trouble hearing, so he listened with a hard squint. Later in life, that quizzical squint would transform a very ordinary face into something playfully charming and interesting and would make him very attractive to girls.

Anyway, I'm out on the porch laughing with Garry, because Chuck Luka across the street parked his old '49 Dodge half up on his yard the night before.

"Must-a-been snot slinging drunk for sure last night," Garry was saying.

"You figure he's still in there? In the back seat or something?"

"Damned if I know. Go look!"

"Maybe he's in the trunk."

"Uncle Will says Luka shouldn't drink cause he's allergic. Alcohol makes him break out in handcuffs."

We double over laughing at that one when Garry adds the P.S.: "Sure would like to see Mrs. Luka naked though."

We were disgustingly candid with each other on every subject; especially girls, or to be more exact on the subject of what Garry looked forward to doing with girls. Things I didn't think possible until much later. How did he know so much so soon? It was as if he had done all these wonderful things before and couldn't wait to do them again.

Garry made me realize that we don't pick our best friends anymore than we pick our families. They just show up. Usually just in time.

The screen door slams behind us, and there's my father with his suit and tie and hat and battered briefcase looking as if he had just been startled awake. His face doesn't look so much shaved as scraped. He has a nasty blemish on his cheek which I hate.

"Good morning, Garry," he says which I hate, because he really doesn't give a shit about Garry. He's trying to touch me. It's a touch no one can feel.

"Mr. Wiley." Garry says with a nod.

Then my father sees the car across the street and shakes his head, and I know it is his disapproval that I hate more than anything in the world. His unhappiness and his disapproval of everything I find wonderful. Luka is wonderful. His getting "snot slinging drunk" is wonderful. Driving his car up over the sidewalk and half onto the lawn is wonderful. Everyone loves Luka. Except my father.

He's getting into our car now. It's a brand new '55 Ford. He's saying something to me about something meaningless. I can see his lips moving, but I'm not listening. He feels he has to say something to me. It doesn't matter what. It's a touch no one can feel. Then I hear:

"Sweep the porch today, will you, partner."

There it is. I've been told that he's my father and I'm his son, and that everything is right between us –– that we are partners. But we both know it's not true. I can see by Garry's smile that he knows, too.

Then: Garry is tugging at my shirt. My father is frozen with one foot in the car; his hand on the open door. They are both staring at the Luka house. Snap. Luka is standing on his porch at the top of the steps in his underpants and undershirt with his arms outstretched as if he wanted God to pick him up. His face is contorted in a grotesque, soundless cry; and he is covered in chocolate. Only it's blood. Looks like chocolate. Only it's blood. Blood you can smell. All the way over here.

Garry and I are laughing; hugging each other laughing. My father is going over there with a terrible look on his face. We follow him laughing and hopping up and down –– reeling in the unbearable exhilaration of terror. My stomach feels like a banana in a monkey's fist; a feeling I would come to know well from that day on. My father stops us with an outstretched arm at the bottom of the porch steps; his eyes never leave Luka.

"Chuck," my father says as if he were gently waking him. He starts up the steps, and Luka sees him for the first time as some kind of intruder. My father stops, and now I'm scared. Luka is gagging, choking; trying to speak, but gagging, choking. His eyes are big and begging for something. My father's eyes are begging for something, too. Luka falls into my father's arms, and I think he's getting blood all over my father. His suit and everything. They are embracing; these two men who don't even like each other, are embracing and searching into each other's eyes. I turn to see Garry running home. I start to cry. I'm trying to pull my father away from those eyes. But it's too late. Snap. These men are changed. They are bound together forever. They are best friends, and nothing will ever be the same again.

Suddenly, my mother is there with us. She grabs my arm and flings me aside as if I were a baby. She starts patting Luka down. She's lifting his arms, turning his head from side to side, searching for the wound; the source of all that blood, the wound. He's like a child in her hands –– compliant, trusting –– just as I have been with her in a million similar situations. Where are you hurt? Where's the wound? Then:

"Where's Gwen? Where are the kids? Luka, where are they?"

My mother and father exchange a terrible look. Someone has embraced me from behind. It's Mrs. Jett, a neighbor. She's holding me as if I were hers. I try to pull away, but she won't let me go. For the first time, I'm aware of the others there. Mrs. Eagle. Others. I look to them for help. My father is going into that house. Mrs. Jett has no right to hold me like this, and my father is going into that house.

"The thing about it was the quiet," my father would later tell us, ". . . so quiet the clock in the kitchen sounded loud. That's where I found the first one. The mother-in-law, Estelle. Lying on her stomach on the kitchen floor with her head turned to one side –– her eyes staring open. I saw those eyes, but somehow didn't see them. All I saw was her blue bathrobe. It was long –– down to her ankles I guess. Blue with fluffy pebbles in rows running up and down –– side by side. I got fixed on the rows –– the pattern of wool balls going up and down –– the blueness. It didn't register she was dead –– that there was a dead woman on the floor in front of me. I must have been in shock. It was both real and unreal at the same time. Then I went up the stairs and about halfway up I tripped over Chuck's shoes. One of them rolled all the way down to the bottom. I watched it roll all the way down. That's when I noticed his pants and shirt draped over the stair railing. I went up the stairs and down the hall straight ahead to their room. Gwen was in the bed. Her eyes were open and her breasts were exposed. I turned away like you do walking in on a naked woman. I even said, "I'm sorry," I think. When I looked back, all I saw was blood. The whole bed was blood. That's where I threw up, and I knew it was murder. It was real. I wanted to get out of there, but when I left their room I looked through the door to my right and there was little Marilyn lying dead on the floor with her arm outstretched like she was reaching for the door. The boy was in the bathtub. In his pajamas. No water in the tub. I saw him in the mirror above the sink. What happened was I got sick again in the bathroom sink, and when I raised my head and looked in the mirror I saw something was in the tub behind me. It was the boy. Just placed there out of the way. Or maybe he had been hiding there. I don't know. That's when Chief Mosko came up and got me."

Garry's uncle was the Chief of Police. Everyone called him "Will", but since my father was a lawyer in town, he called him "Chief Mosko". Garry had run home and told his Mom, and it was she who called the police that day. I don't know how I know that, but I'm sure it's true. Kids have an almost mystical way of knowing things. Perhaps because they are not as self-conscious about knowing things as adults are. Kids either know or don't know. They are shameless that way. We kids knew an awful lot about these murders almost from the start. We knew things we had no idea we knew. One thing we knew for sure. Luka didn't do it.