After the Fog Clears Read online

  She gasped and cried his name, tore herself from the porch and ran into the street and scooped up her baby, and it was horrible, looking into his face, his eyes locked open in an endless stare.

  She shook him, sobbing. He felt like a broken bag of sticks in her hands. She leaned his head, his cooling cheek against her shoulder and her whole body shook as she stumbled back a step, stroking his head so gently, thinking, No, baby, no, don’t go…

  And the cop car sat there like a sated beast, the driver frozen in the seat like she had been on the porch, but she could see him staring at her in the rearview mirror.

  Geneva staggered forward, rubbing her son’s one bare foot.

  The cop was pale, a decade older than her.

  She hit the window.

  She cried, “Did you see who did this? Hey! Why are you sitting there? Did you see—”

  But then she knew, and all she could say, in a whisper, was why?

  Sirens drew closer. It was too easy to imagine them as the screams of demons, and the welcoming song of angels, and she feared that whichever reached her son’s soul first would be the instrument to carry him away. A sob racked her again. She almost dropped her son, jarred him so hard that she thought she felt him try to cling to her, as he had done so many times in his too-short life.

  Oh, please…please!

  She knelt and cradled him, certain it was her love and her heartache alone that had brought him back, helped guide him back into the form she had watched so often with fondness and wonder.

  She placed her index and middle fingers over his throat and searched for a pulse. It was there, the faintest pulse in all the world, just the brush of a waking butterfly’s wings. She looked into the fog, rose to carry Dominic off the road, the sirens so loud they hurt her ears, the lights cutting the fog into ribbons.

  She clutched her son and whispered breathlessly, her lips against his throat, “Hurry!”

  5

  Luther’s older brother Herman was trying to help their grandmother up from the floor when Luther walked into the kitchen. The two of them were by the basement steps. She was lying on her back across the threshold. Herman was leaning forward as far as he could in his wheelchair, his gangly arms hairless and pale. He was six-foot-two but only weighed a hundred and fifty pounds. Their grandmother, Marie Anderson, was five-foot-two and pushed two-twenty, as wide in the shoulders as she was in the hips. Her flowery dresses all seemed to struggle at restraining her bulk, the seams and stitching stretched.

  She smiled when she looked past Herman and saw Luther. He used to get mad when other kids had teased her, saying you could use her butt as a couch. But they’d been right, he just didn’t like hearing it, and didn’t want her to overhear it. Not that he’d have to defend her; at least when he’d been a child and she’d been in her fifties. Men had been afraid of riling her, tough-looking men. She didn’t anger easily, but once she hit her breaking point she was a wrecking ball and it took God’s entire army to restrain her.

  Herman’s thin arms, his stooped breadstick torso, offered her no assistance in getting back on her feet. She had one hand over her heart, the other holding the hem of her dress tight to her thighs, as if, even distressed she was still a lady, which in Luther’s eyes, she was.

  He moved up on the other side of her and took her by the elbow and underneath her sweaty armpit. It took considerable effort to move her, but once she was on one knee it got easier. She wanted to take a break before she stood, her breath stale and quick. Luther said, “How long has she been laying here?”

  Herman raised his eyebrows and shrugged one shoulder. He looked spooked but then he always looked spooked. His voice was soft. He said, “We going fishing later?”

  Their grandmother batted her arms. “Help me up now, Luther.”

  Luther helped her. She sat in the chair at the table and pulled a napkin from the middle and wiped her face, then dabbed her cheeks, her neck. Her color didn’t look good and Luther thought he might need to take her to the doctor, but then she laughed and said, “Don’t go getting old.”

  Herman smiled at Luther. They’d been listening to her say that all their lives. Luther promised they wouldn’t. He always promised, and at eighteen he still believed it possible. He said, “You okay?”

  “My back hurts but it’s hurt a lot worse.”

  “Do you want water or anything?”

  “Give me some of that whiskey you boys are hiding.”

  Herman laughed. Luther chuckled. “We don’t drink, Grandma. You raised us better than that.”

  “Ah, hell,” she said, glancing from one to the other. Luther waited for her eyes to grow distant, the way they seemed to more frequently now, and then she’d start talking about her real son—their father—and she’d talk about their mom. The first time she’d said a bad word about them—he was a degenerate, and she was a jezebel—she’d seen how badly it’d hurt Luther to hear it. She’d apologized quickly, said it was just her opinion, but Herman brought it up later when they were in their bunks and the only light illuminating their bedroom came from the moon. “Are Mom and Dad evil?”

  “I don’t know,” Luther said.

  “Do you think it’s because of me?”

  “No! Why would you ask that?”

  “Do you think they’ll come back for us?”

  “They can’t go anywhere,” Luther said. “They’re in prison.”

  “What about when they get out?”

  “Why don’t you ask Grandma this crap?”

  “I don’t want her to worry. She worries about them enough. You think she blames herself?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You think she’s raising us the same way she raised Dad?”

  “Probably the only way she knows how.”

  “Then are we going to end up in prison?”

  Luther had been staring at the ceiling. He rolled over and glared down at Herman on the bottom bunk. “We aren’t anything like him. We aren’t ever going to get in trouble.”

  “Okay.”

  “That’s right,” Luther said. “Go to sleep. You worry more than a woman.”

  Herman stopped asking him questions about their parents after that—when Luther had been sixteen and Herman nineteen—and Luther missed it in a way, because he found he rarely thought about his parents otherwise, and he had his own questions he wished he could have answered, but feared he never would. Life didn’t give you shit. You had to figure things out for yourself.

  Herman was watching him now in his meek and innocent way. Luther had heard him: Are we going fishing? But he hadn’t answered. He didn’t know yet. He said to his grandmother, while he still had the energy to do anything, “What do you need done around here today?”

  “Oh, you don’t have to bother. Why don’t you rest?”

  “I don’t need it right now.”

  She leaned forward and rubbed her lower back. “Flower beds need weeding, gutters need cleaned, laundry—which is what I was doing when I fell—needs finished, garage needs organized, the—”

  “I don’t have that much energy!”

  She laughed, rubbed her heart again. “You asked what needs done. It’s a list of things to choose from. But you don’t have to do any of them.”

  “I want to,” Luther said. “Is there anything Herman can do?”

  “I’m going fishing,” Herman said.

  “Not without me you’re not. I’ll bring the clothes up from the basement and you can fold them on the table there.” He squeezed his grandmother’s shoulder and said, “You just take it easy from now on. That’s why you got me and Herman here with you.”

  “I got you here because you’re good kids and I love you.” She glanced up at him, her face clouded. “Plus nobody else wanted to take you.”

  “Ain’t that the truth? And I can’t blame them.”

  Herman said, “When the chores are done we can go fishing?”

  Luther squeezed his shoulder too. He brought the clothes up from the dryer and s
et the basket on the chair next to his brother’s wheelchair. Herman began folding them, grinning ear to ear. Their grandmother had cut them each a slice of pumpkin pie. Luther wolfed his down and went outside to the shed in the backyard and grabbed the wheelbarrow, a spade shovel, a pair of leather gloves and a bandana. He put the bandana on his head to keep the sweat out of his eyes. There was still ice in the flower beds, looked like broken glass in the shadowed corners. He chuckled to himself, wondering if his grandmother realized winter wasn’t even over yet, maybe in some places, but here it could snow until May.

  But he couldn’t complain; if pulling last year’s leaves from the beds made her happy, it’d make him happy too. It took him an hour to weed around the house and by the time he was finished his gloves were soaked and the knees of his pants frozen to him, and it hurt to stand, hurt to walk. He considered going inside and changing, but he didn’t want to distract Herman—who he was certain continued to work on the laundry, slowly and methodically, refolding garments that, upon a second look, did not meet his high standards of precision. Luther had tried to get him a part-time job at the GAP in the mall once, a year ago, but the boss there thought Luther was applying. He’d been beaming about, then he learned, or in his ultra-slowness, deduced, Luther was applying for Herman. The manager had looked like someone had squeezed lemon juice into his eyes. He asked, “Is he retarded?”

  And Luther had gone on a tirade. Those who knew his grandmother would have confessed her blood ran deep and hot in that one, at least on that day. He spat on the application and then spat on the manager’s shoes. He swept a pile of polo shirts to the floor and stomped on them. He knocked the cover off the cash register and slammed it down on the corner of the counter repeatedly until it shattered. When he looked up, the manager was gone, Herman was smiling over his antics, and two beefy security guards were bumbling into the store like a midsummer storm, all serious intent.

  Luther explained what had transpired, not ashamed at all, and not sorry either, although his cheeks and neck felt as if they were on fire. The manager had come back out by then, his nose in the air, and the security guards looked as if they were fighting the temptation to wipe their shoes on his face. Luther told them he’d pay for the damages but he wasn’t paying that cocksucker. Herman just watched it all go down, kind of confused, then he beamed when security offered to take him to the food court and buy him ice cream.

  The fog outside lifted. He smiled into the sun, remembering. It was a great day to be alive. His grandmother watched him from the window in the bathroom. He saluted her, which she’d always loved—it’d been something he’d done since childhood, something between the two of them. He dumped last year’s dead weeds and leaves in the fire pit, repositioned the broken pieces of concrete that ringed it, then snatched the stepladder, slinging it over his shoulder in a way that had always impressed his brother. It was damn hard sometimes, to look at your brother and keep your heart from breaking. They’d always been together, but he pitied Herman, although he hoped he never gave Herman or anyone else that impression. But how could he not look at his brother, see the way he sat there in his wheelchair like a long-burned-out stump with his hollow eyes following all those born normal, and not be willing to trade places with him?

  The job situation had to turn around, he thought. He had to take care of what remained of his family. He lay awake at night, dreaming with his eyes wide open, sucking his bottom lip, and watching the shadow of a tree play across the ceiling. And in his dream, he knew every beat of it as well as he knew his own face. He’d serve his community in that near future, wear a badge, that gold shield over his heart, the pistol on his hip, the hope he’d nurtured finally within reach. He’d be a good cop, he knew, he had a mind for it, could quickly learn the concepts and processes of anything he studied, he’d be so damn good other cops would hate him. Saginaw needed hope too. Places were falling in on themselves, just like a lot of the citizens; the roads were buckled, and at night random violence broke out in hundreds of homes, in so many shady alleyways. The air stank too often of anger and desperation.

  He’d talk to those in his community, teach them to band together; he’d help them see that nothing would ever get better until then. It’d take the majority to push that mountain of despair outside the city limits. People could learn to be kind again, wouldn’t be nobody starving so badly they had to beg or steal to eat. The community could rise up like a many-headed beast and drive out the drug dealers and gangbangers. He thought about all of this as he stepped lightly up the ladder to reach the gutters, and then climbed swiftly onto the roof.

  The shingles were as hard as tree bark. No matter how bright the sun shone, it couldn’t penetrate the cold settled deep in the roof. He scooped the gutters clean, taking his time, throwing the refuse to the ground so he could rake it up later. He was sure-footed, slightly reckless, working near the edge, thinking about the steps he had to take before, and during, and after the police academy. He had to change the future by changing things today, that’s how life worked. Nobody had to teach him that. But it wouldn’t be easy, doing all the training and testing, all while trying to care for Herman and their grandmother. But, climbing down the ladder, he knew he could do whatever it took to provide for them.

  He was just setting his sneaker on the ground when he sensed someone watching him. Out in the street, stepping off the curb and onto the small front lawn, an older man in faded blue jeans and button-up white shirt that had a brown stain around the collar, frayed cuffs, studied him. Luther didn’t recognize him, and despite his idealism and all his faith in humanity’s potential, his stomach clenched up. The stranger appeared to be in his early fifties. His face was long, mournful, and narrow. He had a wide gap in his front teeth when he smiled. It wasn’t a face that a smile looked natural on. The man raised a hand, gave a short wave.

  Luther said, “Can I help you with something?”

  “If you’re Luther.”

  “Who’s asking?”

  “You never came to visit.”

  “What do you need?”

  The man stopped ten feet away. He rocked from foot to foot, his hands stuffed deep in his pockets against the cold. Luther thought: It’s too early in the day for someone to try and rob me…

  “Is Herman here too?”

  Luther nodded, realizing who he was talking to, and said, “You just got out, huh? Grandma isn’t going to want you here.”

  “Well, I’m her son, and your dad, so—”

  “I don’t have a dad,” Luther said. “Not that I ever known.”

  His dad stole a quick look over his shoulder and Luther wondered if his mom was out there somewhere too, watching them, waiting to see how it went. He didn’t know what in the world they could want from him or his brother after all this time. Luther glanced over his shoulder too, worried he’d see his grandmother in the living room window behind him. A heart attack was all she needed.

  He turned back to his father and said, “You aren’t welcome here. Go somewhere else.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t try and run me off before I get to say my piece.”

  “I don’t want to hear it. Neither does Herman, or Grandma.”

  “It figures she’d stay in this house. I grew up here, did you know that?”

  “Move along, old man.”

  His dad smirked. “You look a lot like your mother.”

  “Get stepping or I’m going in the house and calling the police. We don’t know you and we don’t want to. Go before you end up back inside.”

  “Did you ever visit your mother? Did you get the letters we wrote you, or did someone hide them from you?”

  Luther swallowed, heard a click in his throat. The man was trying to lure him in and he knew it, had known that kind of person all his life and never had a use for a one of them. He clenched his hands. He stormed to the front door and went inside and shut it and locked it behind him. When he grabbed the cordless phone off the c
harger in the living room, his grandmother snuck up behind him and said, “What’s wrong, honey? I haven’t ever seen you so tense.”

  He kept his back to her, blinked the tears out of his eyes. He took a few labored breaths, blaming the man outside for every bad night he’d ever had as a kid. But his grandma didn’t need to know anything about it. Sometimes ignorance was a blessing. He said, “I’m okay. Almost fell off the ladder when I was cleaning the gutters. Shook up, that’s all. I’m okay. Be okay in a minute, at least.”

  He saw out the living room window that there was no longer a ghost in the yard, which was a relief. He felt the tension drain out of him, heard his grandmother shuffle up behind him. She slid her arms around his waist and pressed her warm face between his shoulder blades. She said, “Thank God you didn’t fall. I don’t know what I’d do without either of you boys.”

  He clamped her hands, so bony and delicate, and he just held on to her for a moment as strongly as she held on to him.

  He said, “I’ll make us something to eat.”

  She nuzzled him and said, “If you help me into the kitchen, I’ll help you back. The day I become useless is the day I’m ready to leave this earth.”

  He turned and hugged her, supporting her as he helped her out of the room, and he said, “You aren’t ever going to be useless, Grandma.”

  6

  Raul stopped in his tracks when he read Geneva’s text.

  Dominic was hit by a car! Call me!

  He couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d misread it.

  Raul read it two more times, his stomach sinking, his breath caught in his throat.

  He couldn’t see the road or the businesses lining it through the mist clouding his eyes. He wiped his hands on his pants and read the message again. He tried to call her back but her phone went to voice mail.