burned to forget how his sister was then—geriatric with meth, stooped and troll-faced. She had sores on her lips and a mouth of yellow glass for teeth. Her meanest eyes haunted every good memory he had of her.
When she was a kid, his sister had big silver eyes set deep in her head, and she was wild for talking. She followed his mom around, chattering on about osprey and bears, planets and stars. “Listen!” she yelled at her mom’s back. She ran in and out of rooms, shouting as if the curtains were on fire, till she was fifteen, when she lowered her eyes in a permanent brood.
But Lyle didn’t believe she was dangerous like people said. After the twins burned down a shack outside of Marshal, the state child psychiatrist had given them quick diagnoses. Since Lila got into fights at school and defended herself in town, they called her “violent manic-depressive,” and slapped the tag on Lyle as well. But a lot of kids in Marshal raised hell. One meth head liked to drive his ATV into the woods in night vision goggles, blasting Metallica on his headphones, and waste deer with his M16. Nobody called him crazy.
At five years old, the twins would roll around on Lila’s bed, fists full of each other’s hair. While she giggled, Lyle trapped her arms and swirled his tongue in her deep eye socket and her ear. She was all his, never Craig’s or his mom’s, only his own. They often woke inhaling each other’s breath—in bed, on the couch, in the backyard. His mom said that kind of affection was unnatural. When Craig found them embracing, he slapped at their heads or ran and told.
Lyle pulled on one side of the steering wheel now as if to make a turn, breathing out hard, then closing his eyes. In a while the driver’s side door opened.
“How did you get here?” his mom said. “I was looking at you through the glass, thinking who on earth? Then I remembered what you did to your hair.”
“How was work, Mom?” he said.
She displayed the brace on her right hand—flesh-colored, with Velcro straps.
“Would you drive tonight? My hand hurts from grabbing. My lead gave me this to wear, but she said I did a good job.” She sniffed the air in the cab. “Never mind. Not if you’ve been out swimming gutters. But maybe I’ll ask you to shift for me.”
“I only had a couple drinks.”
She eased the truck out of the parking lot, humming high and strained to the radio gospel, and he shifted gears when he was told, trying to sweep away his thoughts.
The bridge, the park, and Skinner Butte fell behind them. She had “visited” with some ladies on break. They’d invited the Rettews to an evangelical church in Springfield, a small town near Eugene. It was good to get out of the house and do a little old-fashioned hard work, she was saying. Her hand pained her but it was going to be fine. She’d get used to it. Her hands had been weak in the past, and then toughened, like when she’d spent summers on the ranch in high school—tying fences and throwing hay and twisting water from clothes.
“Don’t you miss her, Mom?” Lyle said.
“You like the truck? Five hundred bucks and it runs fine. Now Craig won’t have to worry about taking me anyplace. You can drive it, too. I’ll let you.”
“She wasn’t always the way she turned out. She was, like, a little kid once. Don’t you think we should have a ceremony or something?”
Her voice was thin. “I don’t know, honey. I don’t know.”
“Why don’t we tell Craig we want to?”
“Let your brother guide us, son. He’s done a good job of it all these years.”
“We could do something—you and me. We wouldn’t have to tell him anything.”
“Those ladies I met tonight,” she said. “They seem like country. I think we’ll like them fine.”
While a man sang Heaaaaa-venly Father, the damaged speaker on his side cut in and out, throwing the voice side to side. He felt a swimming sensation in his head and he kicked the speaker with the side of his foot. “This thing’s wired up all wrong.”
“Your brother bought me this for next to nothing. I’d say we’re lucky to have any speakers at all.”
The news came on. “Hear that?” she said. “They’re taking down the cross, they’re taking down the cross! It’s been on the news. Listen.”
The city had voted to remove the cross on top of Skinner Butte downtown. They were planning to take it down in two weeks. The radio woman called for candlelight prayer vigils.
“At lunch when I heard the news,” his mom said, “I thought I was imagining it. Where have we come to? What kind of people would take down a cross? Lane County has less people going to church than any place in the country. I heard that on the radio today, too.”
“I’m going to be a painter,” he announced. “Of portraits. Like the ones they used to do for kings. I think the Catholic Church will be interested. I’ll have to switch religions, though.”
“Please don’t fight me now, honey. Not now. I’m feeling better today.”
“I’m not fighting. A lot of painters are Catholic.”
“Oh, you’re not going to be Catholic—you’re trying to get my goat. And you’ve never even had a drawing class, mister. Good luck with the portrait business. My word.”
“I’m going to start tonight. You’ll see. You’ll see in the morning.”
She turned onto the boulevard and drove twenty miles an hour, as though children were present. When he tried to shift into third gear, grinding it, she took over the shifting, murmuring in pain.
“Tomorrow you could be a witch doctor. Wouldn’t surprise me at all. So who’s this Mexican girl? Is she teaching you about Catholics? Out partaking in drink and talking about God? They can do that, I guess. Catholics. They can do anything they please.”
A tire slammed into a pothole. Lyle picked out the many holes and cracks under the lights as they drove. The decay of city streets put him in mind of some final abandonment.
“We’re trying to stay positive,” she said. “‘Healthy lifestyle,’ you’ve heard the expression? Craig and I want a happy home, clean and sober.” Her pleasant voice had moved into wariness and was approaching anger. “You want to end up like your father? He came home filthy, too—filthy with whiskey and fighting, always fighting.”
“Do you know where Craig hid the photo albums?”
“Just stop asking to see those.”
“I want to see when she was little,” he said. “We had fun with Dad.”
“Your brother wants to talk to you about him. He says you have a crosswise view, since you was so young. Listen to your brother. Listen to what he says. Those times were bad and best forgot. Well, I know what your dad was. You’re halfway there. First alcohol, then drugs and hanky-panky. True of your dad, and maybe you too—and somebody else I know.”
“Who’s that, Mom? Who’s somebody else you know?” He placed the backs of his thumbs in his shut eyes and breathed.
“Honey,
