brother covered his mustache with his hand, blinking at him.
“We need to visit a doctor,” he said. “Get you on something that works.”
“I can’t do that right now. I have to be very on top of it. Mentally. I’m about to do something important. Nothing will be the same. I’m in the preparation stages right now. I’m in training.”
His brother never listened when Lyle talked fast. “Well, the judge ordered the two medications. But maybe the doctor can give you something you like better. At least with the Haldol you didn’t run around at night with your panties on fire.”
“You chained her to her bed. That’s why she ran the highway in her underwear that time. She got away from you.”
“Don’t make me out to be some kind of—I had to do something. She was insane, buddy, and, I believe, demon possessed. I only tied her twice. You think I liked it?”
Lyle shrugged.
“I’m done here,” he said. “Got to wake up at five, and I don’t need any extra. You stay put tonight. You’re part of this family. We need to get Mom back on her legs. That’s the first order of business.”
Lyle nodded his head as his brother went out. Martin was lucky he didn’t have to live with Bible-thumping Christians from the sticks. Whatever his family’s troubles, he must have grown up with people who talked about history and art, not how his mom was close to crazy. Lyle was going to read more books and learn to speak like Martin.
An idea for a painting seized him: Napoleon, Joan of Arc, and that artist Martin had talked about—Cézanne—all as kids, running an urban street, setting fires and breaking windows, stabbing the old and raising the dead. Martin would like it. He had mentioned all of those people.
Lyle went out to the living room, where he opened the dark round glass door of the oil heater—its casing was a narrow steel box, waist high and painted black, with rows of slits on the top of it for the heat to rise through—and shoved his arm down inside it and scooped handfuls of warm newspaper ash, filling an empty glass candy dish that had lain on the windowsill. The lighting mechanism was broken, so he clicked the metal lever at the bottom of the heater to flow the oil, set fire to a twist of newspaper like his brother had shown him, and dropped it in the belly, the flame rising in red and blue waves. He turned it to high.
Then he licked his fingers and dipped them into the candy dish. On the wall above the couch he made ash streaks—outlines of stars and half-moons over a coffin and a cross—and filled them in with crayons. A girl with spaghetti hair lay on top of the box. A tall, grinning man hovered beside the girl, sighting with a downward pointing rifle, smoke pluming from the barrel. Lyle turned off the overhead.
Flames rushed in the heater glass, and the figures in the mural danced in the spastic flickering. Soon it was hot in the room. He removed his shirt and dragged his damp palm across his forehead, ducked under the curtains, and slid open the window. He smoked and watched the street, the air cold on his chest. A four-seater truck pulling a U-Haul trailer was coming at a slow rumble on the far side of the road. A small, sleepy girl sat in the back seat of the truck. He thought-commanded her to look at him, and she did. He mouthed the words “I love you.”
At four in the morning, the mural was close, but there was work yet to be done. When a bedroom door opened, he squatted next to the heater and out of its light. His mom came out of the hallway into the living room. When she clapped her hands once, a table lamp came on near the front door, and she saw him resting on his heels. He clapped the light off, and she scurried down the hall where she spoke heatedly, waking Craig. They’d want to cover up his painting. As if to bring it to completion, he began to clap steadily, the lamp flashing behind him, his shadow thrusting up the mural to the ceiling. He varied the rhythm and settled on a frenetic applause, the brightness a pulsing force, as Craig and his mom moved into the room. His brother hit the overhead switch and ruined the effect with the clarity of light. His mom backed away two steps into the hall, leaning forward to see him.
“His face is black,” she said. “My God.”
“There’s nothing wrong,” Lyle said.
“He’s been skipping his pills again. He’s having an event!”
“I’m making a portrait.”
“Yeah,” Craig said. “Some piece of work there. Crayons?”
“It’s a crayon and ash medium.”
“Ain’t that fancy. A medium.”
“He told me he was receiving visits. From the dead.”
“I’m wide awake, is all. I have a lot of energy.”
“Slow down, buddy. Cool it down.”
“Remember what the counselor said? To check and see if I’m lucid.” He opened his arms in a gesture that invited them to see for themselves. “I’m fine. I can have normal conversations. I’m not having crazy hallucinations. I was tired earlier but I had this burst of energy. I keep having these bursts. I’m keyed up is all.”
“You better get some sleep. We’re going to see a doctor in the morning.”
“What about work?” said his mom.
“I’m calling in sick. This is family. You sleep in my bed tonight, buddy. I’ll sleep on the floor.”
“This thing isn’t done yet.”
“Let’s get some rest. You’ll finish it tomorrow. Let’s go to my room.”
Craig took hold of his arm and put him to bed, then lay down in a sleeping bag in front of the door.
“Put all that crazy stuff out of your head. You’ll be all right.”
“There’s nothing crazy,” Lyle said.
In his waking dreams, ghosts came shuddering down the hallways of his mind: his sister, shivering on the toilet. His sister, lying sick in her bed for days untended. His sister, lighting a cigarette and draining a half bottle of Night Train before the last drag was done. His sister, his sister.
A heavy truck shook the ground, headlights yawning across his brother’s shut curtains. His brain hurt, as if too many memories festered there.
On their last night out together, he and Lila had run down the highway to Pioneer House Museum. Starshine sifted into the canyon mouth, the river giving back stray sparks. In the faint light a crescent of sand grinned on the bank. They left the highway and crossed a gravel parking lot to the museum, which had been recently shut down.
“Me and my friends have been coming here for a week,” Lila said. “Nobody’s even cleared out all the shit in this place.”
The front window of the one-room house was empty of glass. She stepped over the sill through the opening, and he followed her into the black air of the museum. She loosed the tall flame of her lighter and went to the far wall where a mannequin couple sat at a kitchen table, and lit the candle next to the Bible they read. She pulled back a curtain beside them. The window let in the moonlight. They planted themselves cross-legged on the floor near the table.
“Why have you guys been coming here?” he said.
