CARNIVAL MIRRORS

Home is the place where,

when you have to go there,

they have to take you in.

- Robert Frost

If Charlie Hawthorne had been a dog, he would have circled three times and plopped down right there by the side of the road halfway up that long, sloping hill. Finally his brother, Ralph, spoke the words he longed to hear. “Charlie! Alma! Next place we come to, we stop.”

Their garbage bag scraped the pavement, then dropped. It was Alma’s turn to carry, but she was too weary. Her eyes began to leak the tears she always spilled whenever hunger, exhaustion, or fear caught up with her. And it always did, Charlie thought. No matter how fast they walked.

Ralph unhitched the canteen from his belt, passed it to Alma, then Charlie, then took a swig himself. He hoisted the bag to his shoulder, wiped his forehead on the back of his free hand, and glanced at his watch. Four o’clock. Still hot.

The air hung wavy over blacktop stretching to the horizon like an endless griddle. The sun burned down hot on their heads and radiated up through the rubber-tire soles of their huaraches, worn thin over the past year from so much walking. Their feet were on fire, their bodies damp, their t-shirts dark with sweat.

The promise of rest perked Charlie up enough to notice the cherry red barn set way back from the road at the top of the hill, a barn so fine it could have leaped right off the cover of “Country Living.” He saw newly mown meadows and in the distance, the sea. It was August, 1996. He couldn’t remember which day.

“Pretty place.” Ralph nodded toward the farm.

Charlie was too tuckered out to care about anything you couldn’t sleep on or eat. Then Mama’s voice, her broken Spanglish as fresh in his memory as the hurt of her leaving, swept up from the sea on the first blessed breeze of the day. “Charles Nathaniel Hawthorne, it’s sin for you feel bad on such beautiful day. Dios en su Cielo give you every day of your life one time, then poof – gone forever, and if it’s beautiful you should be grateful.”

Well, he was – in a way, but his stomach kept growling, and he wanted to sleep for a long, long, time. At least those fierce, green flies were thinning out as they climbed. He spat on his fingers and scrubbed at the runnels of blood drying on his skinny legs.

Ralph narrowed his man-boy eyes, too wise for his almost fifteen years. Charlie always took his cues from his brother’s hungry eyes. Hungry for food. Hungry for fortune. He watched them rove the landscape, taking in the golden grass against the pale blue sky and the cobalt blue of the sea. Charlie knew what he was thinking. They were that close. Right now it was, “Give it up, Chicken-shit. You ain’t gut enough spit in ya to clean up that mess. Then “Lotta work here.” Getting the farmer to hire them on would be the tricky part.

Fat amber rolls of hay lay scattered across the far end of the field. Charlie sqrunched up his eyes until the rolls became the crazy swirls in that famous painting of a starry night that hung on the wall behind Mrs. Greeley’s desk back in Cowper Elementary. The hay closest to the road lay loose and the scent of it tickled his nostrils.

Overhead a hawk glided, surveying the grass for a tell-tale ripple. He prayed it wouldn’t spot anything until they passed by. He had nothing against the hawk. He was hungry, too. He just didn’t want to witness the cruel, graceful swoop, followed by the sight of it flying away, living prey clutched helpless and quivering in its talons. That would give him nightmares, and in them, the hawk’s prey would have his mother’s face.

As they climbed, the hill leveled off in acres of wide, well-tended fields. He saw tomatoes, peppers, cabbages, tiny purple eggplants no longer than the palm of a hand. Root vegetables in the distance. Corn for sure. A real bonanza.

Ralph strode to the side of the road and stashed their big, black garbage bag behind a clump of wild raspberry bushes. His spaced-out stare told Charlie he was talking inside his head, the wheels turning...turning. He had always been the quiet type, but since the day he killed Doolan, their stepfather, whole days might pass without him saying a single word aloud. It made Charlie lonely – all that silence, so when Ralph started talking, Charlie listened up.

“There’s work here for sure. We’re summer folks ‘bout ready to leave. Wanna work a couple days to buy cool stuff for school. Nobody steals anythin’.” His soft Southern voice made the words sound calm and unhurried. So different from the short, sharp barks of Northerners.

“Y’all got it, Alma?”

Alma nodded.

Charlie?”

He nodded, too. Ralph could gut a lady’s purse on a moving bus without riling her, but Charlie, the only one who never got stuck in the dumb classes at school, couldn’t get the knack of it. He had tried. He was twelve years old and already a scar-face. In the speckled mirrors of gas station restrooms, he watched the thin trench snaking down his left cheek fade from red to white but never disappear. The memory of the shiny red points of that lady’s fingernails (or was it the golden clasp of her purse?) slashing his cheek, still frightened him. Caught in the act, and the woman screaming bloody murder for the police. After that Ralph plain gave up on him.

Ralph, who always stepped in to take the blows intended for them on his own thin body, took a few cocky steps towards the farm to show them he wasn’t worried. His worry level always grew with the length of their shadows, but at sight of that farm, his stiff back and hunched shoulders began to relax. A farm that size would surely have outbuildings they could sneak into for the night. Maybe they could even pick up a little cash before they beat feet back to the Deep South. The state of Maine was no place to spend the winter when you didn’t have a home.

Ralph would need to convince the owners of the farm not to contact their parents, but he was a tall, take-charge type. Could pass for sixteen, no sweat. They weren’t too skinny for poor-ass homeless kids either, thanks to Ralph’s ability to hold things together. “Next place. No matter what,” he promised, glancing towards Alma, whose feet plodded ever more slowly up the never-ending hill.

But the next place they came to was a dump.

“Shit!” Ralph brought up so short at the crest of the hill Charlie and Alma ran into him from behind. The fine, white farmhouse, companion to the beautiful barn, lay farther down the road. Directly across from the barn where they’d expected it to be, stood an old wreck of a house. A blue plastic tarp peppered with seagull droppings covered the whole mid-section of roof. A couple of windows were gone on the bottom floor, the holes boarded up with sheets of weathered plywood. Junk poked up through the tall grass. A place no one lived anymore.

Doolan called stuff strewn across a yard like that “poor man’s lawn furniture.” Whenever, they drove by such places, he’d announce they were “sailing through the Straits of Squalor.” He kept their lawns neat even when they lived in places that, strictly speaking, weren’t much. Well, Ralph would check the dump out anyway. If it seemed solid they might crash there after they checked out the farm. They’d been walking since dawn on half a bag of Granny Smiths, a canteen full of water, and three Ring Dings. Only one Granny Smith and a few swallows of water were left.

As his brother rallied them for one last spurt of energy, a soft thud followed by a blue streak of cussing rose from beneath an ancient red Corvette, come to its final rest by the edge of the road in a grave of pink jewel weed, yellow Jerusalem artichokes, and white Queen Anne’s lace.

One look at that car and – Lord alive – it hit all three of them at once.

“Holy shit!” said Ralph. His eyes raced over the old car’s carcass. It was as if Doolan’s car had traveled backwards in time, transformed once again into the heap it had been before he made it whole.

Ralph opened his mouth, but just a little “errrrr” sound came out. A long lightning bolt of a crack zigzagged across the car’s windshield. Paint flaked around the wheel wells. Rust had made lace of the lower left door panel, but nothing could destroy the image of its twin, exact same model, bumper sticker claiming “Jesus Saves,” rolling down their driveway a few light years ago in Ravenswing, Texas. That one was so carefully restored. Doolan behind the wheel, all cocky and proud. It had to be a sign. It was even the same fire truck-red, only rust-pocked and faded. This one’s bumper sticker read “The Ayatollah is an Ass-a-hole-a.”

“God damn it all to fucking Hell!” came a strangled voice from beneath the car. “You waiting for the second coming to get me outta here?”

Charlie’s eyes dropped to two huge legs poking out from beneath the perpetual sneer of the Corvette’s rusting front end. Ralph took a deep breath and walked over to address the legs. “Afternoon, Sir.”

“What’s good about it?”

“Didn’t say good, sir. Just afternoon. Need some help?”

“You some kinda comedian? Can’t ya see...the goddamn jack...went out on me. I’m stuck. Coulda…been killed. Didn’t ya…hear it fall?”

They heard it all right, and the gasping, panting way the man cussed with the weight of a whole car pressing him down into the tall grass, but they were so startled by the sight of that ruined ghost from their past settling deeper into its flowery grave, they barely noticed.

Except for Charlie’s nickname, “Chicken-shit,” Ralph didn’t cuss much. None of them did. “Jeesum crow” was about the worst thing they ever said, and today they’d already said “shit” twice in a row. Mama never liked cussing, but they’d danced around scorn all their lives and still come out ahead, so Charlie wasn’t about to take the bullying tone of the voice under the Corvette too seriously. Ralph had long since taught him to “listen to the words, ignore the attitude.” It kept things simple. Bottom line – the man wanted out.

Ralph jacked up the far side of the car and re-stacked the scattered pile of bricks for support. The man muttered and gasped some more. Charlie pictured him squashed flat as a bug, a gross mass of yellow-green liquid forming a puddle around his middle and prayed that wasn’t what they’d see when they pulled him free.

In an instant, Ralph sensed the source of Charlie’s worry. He pointed up to the Corvette’s heavy engine suspended by thick cables from the sturdy branch of an oak tree.

“He’ll be okay,” he said. “Engine’s out. That’s the heaviest part. Car’s still resting on its rims.” He motioned for Charlie to grab one of the massive legs. The man lay on a creeper so it was easy to fetch him out once they jacked up the rust-nibbled car.

What a relief, the sight of his face. Except for the drop of bright red blood drying around a little mashed place in the middle of his forehead, he wasn’t hurt at all, and he was nothing like their jungle-thin step-father. Not a hint of a twang to his voice. All the same, Charlie took a while to bring his breathing back to normal. The fat man sat up on the creeper, coughed hard, and puked. Twice.

Alma hightailed it for the bushes, gagging all the way. She always got sick whenever she was scared or if anyone else did, even on an empty stomach.

The man pulled a dirty dish rag from the bib of his triple X overalls, swiped it across his mouth, and peered into Ralph’s face. Ralph’s manly sweat had fooled him. Charlie thought he probably wouldn’t have bothered to sound so mean if he’d known it was only a sweaty kid with a grown-up voice.

He didn’t claim Ralph caused the car to fall on him, but he was cresting the hill when it happened. Not that he thought Ralph did it on purpose, but everything occurred for a reason, and everything was connected. Had the kid – kids (he suddenly seemed to notice there were three,) not crested the hill, not said “shit” at the precise moment to startle him into moving when he did....blah, blah, blah.

“Sorry to cause y’all any trouble, mister. We come up here, for one thing, ‘cause it was so pretty, an’ for another...” Ralph slowed his words until every trace of nervousness faded away. (His best trick, and he could pull it off even scared half to death.) “We’re lookin’ to work a few days ‘fore we head back home. School clothes. Can ya tell us anythin’ about the owners a that farm?” Ralph cocked his chin towards the fancy barn and outbuildings.

“Nothing fit to print in a church circular.” The fat man honked into his dish rag “Southron, huh. Whereabouts down South?”

“Georgia.” Ralph’s eyes flashed Charlie a warning. Alma was still in the bushes. Probably thought she might as well take a pee while she was in there. “We come from Georgia,” he repeated for her benefit when she came back. No one from as far north as Maine would be apt to nail a Southern accent down to one particular state.

“Ralph Robinson.” Ralph held out his hand. “Pleased ta meetcha, Mister...”

“Porker.” The set of the fat man’s chin dared them to challenge the name. He wiped sweat and grease from his cheeks and forehead with the puke-free side of the rag.

Charlie’s eyes slid over his dark, greasy hair, his big rear end, his small, quick hands. Porker eyed Ralph’s hand a moment before he shook. “Well, Albert Chamberlain to my mother.” Sweaty clumps of hair, littered with grass and weeds, hung limp over his shoulders.

“That’s my place.” He nodded towards the tumble-down shack. “And over there’s my place a business. My little hunk a the American dream.”

Not forty feet beyond the shack stood a big old double-bayed garage. Sheathed in its glory days with red asphalt roofing shingles, it had bleached out over the years to a dirty pinkish-white. A rusty sign nailed to one side of the double-wide door hawked Valve-O-Line motor oil in tall, red letters. To the opposite side, the Esso Tiger loomed large over a car full of rusted passengers, still smiling and waving, still eager to “put a tiger in their tank” to gobble up the miles on their way to some great, rusty adventure. The gas pumps were long gone, even the base crumbling into the earth.

In front of the garage was a half-moon driveway, and on the mowed patch of lawn between the “Enter” and “Exit” arrows stood a brand new sign, “Porker’s Used Parts.” A line of bright yellow sunflowers marched across the top. A neat arrow between the words “Used” and “Parts” pointed up to the word “Auto,” painted in as an afterthought.

“Ralph, huh?” Porker chuckled. “Like the sound you make when you puke?

“Yes sir. Ralph Robinson.”

Charlie studied Porker’s fat face and wondered why he added the part about puking. He might smell like motor oil and sweat, but he had this straight back and neat little ears and a confident way of moving through the world that made you wonder what he used to be like, back when people called him Albert Chamberlain.

“Mr. Chamberlain, my brother, Charlie, and this here’s my little sister, Alma.” Mama always warned them to be respectful to adults, and it certainly wasn’t respectful to call a grown man “Porker.” Besides they were in no position to go around attracting attention.

Only Alma was all Latina. Ralph and Charlie were half-Mexican and each looked more like his father, who was neither Mexican nor the same guy, so they barely looked like brothers.

Doolan used to claim Ralph was standing behind the door when beauty got passed out. He was tall and gawky, his stand-up, Woody Woodpecker hair, an orange flame in the late afternoon sun. He had a pointed nose and a pointed chin. Reddish-brown freckles so big they clotted into each other spread across every square inch of his skin. Little white crow’s feet, from squinting into the distance trying to figure out where they should be heading next, marked the corners of his rust-colored eyes.

It was probably a blue moon since anyone called Porker “Mr. Chamberlain,” and it worked like a charm. He ran his fingers over five days’ worth of chin stubble and looked Ralph over with more interest. Then his eyes landed on Charlie. He ruffled Charlie’s hair with a dirty hand. “Been out in the sun a lot, ain’t ya?”

Charlie’s eyes caught and held Porker’s gaze as though they were locked in some sort of crazy staring contest. Doolan had called his eyes “broody.” Mama swore they were the color of sea water on an overcast day. Ralph claimed Charlie was born pure chicken-shit to the core, yet he stood his ground under the scrutiny and didn’t turn away.

Once Porker’s eyes strayed to Alma, they clung to her curvy little body like Saran Wrap to a sandwich. Even longer than to Charlie’s sea-water eyes. Not his fault, Charlie reminded himself. No one could help but stare at beautiful things, and Alma was what Doolan called “a looker,” all giant dark eyes, black curly hair, and long, long legs. Only eleven and already a head turner like Mama. Before long her extravagant beauty would be a big liability, but Alma didn’t even notice Porker’s staring. Her eyes were glued to her toes.

“Where you staying?” Porker asked. “Out to the lake?”

Ralph nodded. Most adults supplied you with the answers they wanted if you listened carefully enough.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “We’re out to the campground. Papa’s got this cool RV. Reason we was starin’, we used to own a car just like yours.” He nodded toward the Corvette.

“Maybe y’all can help us. Our parents ain’t never gonna unnerstand how we wanna dress for school, so we thought we might earn a little money and buy the stuff ourselves.” He trotted out his good-citizen-of-tomorrow smile. Adults could never resist it. Mr. Chamberlain’s approval oozed over them like a preacher’s benediction.

“Beauty, ain’t she?” Porker patted the low slung hood of the old Corvette, attached to the jewel weed by the lacy webs of fat, black and yellow spiders. “Any day now I’ll sell a buncha old car parts and hop right to it.” He aimed his chin at the area behind his garage where a cemetery of dead cars spread out behind a tall, paintless fence with missing slats.

“Y’all know the folks that own that farm?” said Ralph. “’Pears they could use help.”

Porker leaned back against the body of the Corvette, crossed his legs at the ankles, and swiped at the trickle of blood starting up again on his forehead. The jack shifted dangerously beneath his weight.

“Got all the help they need. Migrants. Benson thinks it’s noble and broad-minded to hire migrants. Better yet if they come from Mexico or Cambodia or anyplace they don’t speaka de Engleesh. The King a Cheap ain’t about to bother his sorry ass with locals from the trailer park who are familiar with the value a the American dollar.” He dabbed at his forehead and tucked the filthy dish rag back into his bib. “Doubt he wants three kids anyway. He’s got VERY particular ideas about child labor.

“Quite a spread that farm. All organic. They got silage, beef critters, dairy herd.” Porker ticked off the farm’s assets on fingers with nails permanently outlined in axle grease. “Goats and sheep, ducks, chickens – egg-layers and fancies. Up the road aways they got Christmas trees and orchards. Blueberry barrens all along the ridge. Blueberry Mountain Farm.” He rolled the name around in his mouth like it had a taste.

Charlie figured Ralph was still fixing to give the pretty farm a try once they got away from Porker. Ralph always said too much talk caused trouble, so he’d peg Porker as a troublemaker from the git-go. They’d probably double back, bypass Porker’s place through the woods, and cross to the farmhouse sheltered by the field of cornstalks so he couldn’t call ahead and mess things up for them. Worse came to worse and the farm didn’t hire them on, they could probably steal enough fruit to last a few days.

“Did I mention cranberry bogs?”

“Y’all know anyplace ’sides the farm there might be a few day’s work for us?” Ralph asked, like he’d given up on the farm idea.

“Yeah! Right here. I might give ya a couple days work.”

They spoke Spanish if that was what it took to get a job at Blueberry Mountain Farm. Mama spoke to them only in Spanish, and they still spoke it among themselves, but here was an outright offer, theirs for the taking, and the car, probably a sign. This guy might not be too well-off, but he got plenty to eat, and he didn’t seem like the kind to insist on parental permission for them to work.

Say yes! Oh God, say yes, Ralph, thought Charlie. Ralph’s eyes cased Porker’s house. Story and a half tall. Two dormer windows facing the road. Deep bay window with a view of the sea. A tatter of lace hung in the door’s wavy, old-glass window. On the fancy knocker a pair of dolphins leaped through dulled, bronze waves. Someone cared about that house once.

Ralph was particular about the look of houses. From the time they were old enough to sneak aboard a bus without paying the fare, he dragged them off to the tree-lined avenues where houses gleamed with fresh paint and lawns never went brown; where people parked in circular driveways, paved just like the main road. “One day we’ll live like them,” he said. “And no one will ever look down on us again.”

Beside Porker’s front door, a gnarly, old-fashioned rosebush, heavy with dark-red blooms, rode its peeling trellis across storm-blackened clapboards, all the way to the buckled shingles framing the shit-spattered tarp.

“What would y’all be wantin’ us to do, sir?” Ralph asked.

“Cut out calling me ‘y’all’ for starters. And sir. I’ll show you around. You’ll see for yourselves what needs to be done. Be okay with your parents if ya stay for supper?”

“Yes!” Charlie and Alma all but shouted.

Ralph kept his cool. He nodded slowly, thoughtfully. “They’d probably think it was right nice for us to get to know some local folks ‘fore we leave.” He flashed Porker a smile, pretty as a sunrise. “I’d just as soon they didn’t know we was plannin’ to work. It’s a surprise.”

Charlie felt a surge of pride for his brother, the liar. He could never lie like Ralph. His skill was with language. He’d moved easily from Spanish to English and used the time they spent walking away from their past to erase the South from his voice. Tuning in on passing conversations, he imitated the short, sharp sounds in time with the beat of his feet on the asphalt.

“Well, what d’ya say we rustle us up some supper first, then I’ll show you the ropes. You don’t wanna work here, I’ll understand. Even recommend you over to the farm. Ain’t sure how much good it’ll do.” He shrugged. The way he said the words, there were no r’s in “supper” or “farm.” Charlie silently repeated “suppah” and “fa’am.”

“Beans and coleslaw okay?”

Charlie’s mouth all but squirted saliva. The idea of sitting down at a table with real forks and someone, anyone, besides each other to talk to made his insides go all fluttery.

“Okay, that’s settled. Ralphie, how’s about you mosey down the hill to the supermarket (wink, wink) and hustle us a fine big cabbage and four or five carrots. Meet us here when you’re done. We’ll set the table and get started.”

Charlie fought back a chuckle when Ralph told Porker he wasn’t crazy about his family seeing him steal a cabbage. They stole their way across most of Texas and Louisiana and up the entire east coast. Depending how much they earned off him, they’d likely steal most of their way back. You had to hand it to old Ralph. He might not like small talk, but he could talk the ticks off a hound if he had to.

Then he was gone. In the living room, a blue-velvet sofa, its former elegance threadbare and faded, sagged into a sea of black garbage bags. Charlie longed to curl up on its cat-furred cushions and close his eyes, but he knew if he relaxed, he would cry. Instead, he stood straight as a soldier and took Alma’s hand, like he was her protector. In truth, he needed her warm little hand to cling to. His mind’s eye trailed Ralph like an old dog. Watched him cross the field and pause a minute to select the best cabbage in sight. Imagined him stepping carefully along rows of carrots, pulling only those with dark-green, strong-looking tops. Smooth sided orange beauties, long and slim as Mama’s fingers. From the filthy bay window, Charlie caught sight of him the minute he crested the hill.

Ralph knocked.

“Come on in. Not much ceremony to stand on around here.” Porker herded them into the kitchen and tied an old apron with ‘Kitchen Queen’ stamped on the bib around Alma’s waist. “Here. You do the carrots, ma’am.” She giggled. He handed Charlie an onion, a smaller knife, and a grater. “I’ll shred up half a this cabbage. Ralphie’s done his bit. He can sit around awhile and watch.”

Ralph perched on the edge of his chair. The house was dirty as well as tumble-down. Three cats did the belly crawl among the garbage bags, and the eye-watering smell of cat piss from two overflowing cat boxes shallowed Charlie’s breath.

It was Mama’s worst nightmare come true. “You can’t help poor, but you can help dirty,” was her favorite saying. She said sloth was one of the seven deadly sins, but it looked like Porker had turned sloth into a religion. Heavy-duty garbage bags, stacked three deep, littered the entire downstairs. Most appeared solid, but the cats had clawed their way into a few near the sink and these wounded bags oozed little piles and puddles across the floorboards.

Narrow trails, blazed through the scrub forest of bags, led to the sink and its giant stacks of unwashed dishes, and to the wood-burning kitchen stove and pantry. Another trail wound through the living room to the bathroom, its toilet all black below the water line. The chairs were clear, like the man made a special effort in case company came, but it was hard for Charlie to imagine anyone paying a social call to a dump like Porker’s.