This Small a Mark

WHAT GEORGE FEARS MOST in life are strangers. At night he fears strangers will enter his home through a door he forgot to lock, take a weapon from the kitchen and proceed upstairs. He is afraid he has grown soft with age, been weakened by his comforts, and will not have the strength necessary to defend his family. The fear comes to him as he lies between the sheet and the blanket, his head on the down pillow. The house settles and somewhere below a wall cracks. George listens to the sound and his limbs stiffen, his breath disappears. He stares along the length of his room to the door and the hall beyond, sees shadows draped like funeral veils on the white wall. Straining to hear what he is unable to see, George waits for the shadows to reveal motion, his breath gradually returning as the black shapes stay suspended on the plaster, listens until he falls asleep. His wife and son are safe. The house is still.       The house where George Rose lives is white with black shutters in a neighborhood of houses that look much the same. In the front yard is a porch and a mailbox and a row of green yews, and in the back an empty birdhouse hangs from an elm tree. Each morning before work George reminds himself to buy seed to fill the birdhouse. His thoughts are preoccupied by the Winfield shooting and the distraction causes him to forget these little things, things like seed. So Fay, his wife, throws scraps out the back door. She throws toast and cereal and muffins, leftovers from the breakfast table to feed the neglected birds who have grown to rely on the seed. But always from the trees the crows come instead. In twos and threes the crows swoop down and scare away the wrens and the chickadees and the robins, eat the scraps while fighting with each other, then lurk in the trees, waiting for Fay, waiting for more. George Rose believes they have never been happier, these crows, not since the birdhouse went dry. Crows are clever and they know the holes leading to the seed are too small for their heads and beaks. Once George saw a pair of bluejays band together and chase the crows. The bluejays shot high in the air then dropped like feathered stones, one after the other, herding the crows away. Witnessing their courage George felt uplifted; the bluejays flecks in the sky alongside the enemy. But always from the trees the crows return.       "Don't forget dinner," Fay tells him, "the Blakes are coming tonight."       "Ah, damn," George says, "the Blakes."       "You like the Blakes."       "I like the Blakes."       Where George Rose purchases his newspaper there is a lottery machine behind the counter. At the register he watches the hopeful people waiting to buy tickets. Gloria Evans is among them. Gloria works with George and when their eyes meet she says hello. Gloria is convinced that one day she will win the lottery. She believes she is destined to win. Gloria tells George in a voice full of confidence it is like standing in line to buy groceries or waiting to board a bus. Eventually, she says, her turn will come. Every now and then George feels lucky and waits with Gloria. One winter morning he bought a ticket and out of curiosity read the back side. There in fine print were the game rules and below the rules the odds of winning. George remembers reading the odds and thinking that a Senate panel in the interest of the consumer made the lottery people put this on the ticket, demanded the odds be made plain and clear. And the lottery people smiled and said, "Why of course, Senator," knowing well that mere words have little influence on lotteries and hope and the like. He explained his discovery to Gloria.       "You take all the fun out of it," she said. "You're bad luck."       There is a coffee shop where George stops before work and sits alone with his paper and cup, sometimes with a cigarette. Nearby the customers sit at tables and stools, close where he can hear them. Over pancakes and eggs they are talking about the Winfield shooting, still talking, as though it had happened yesterday. These people are strangers, most of them, and because they believe George belongs to them, they offer him advice on how he should vote. George drinks the coffee and smiles.       "Yes," he says, "I see your point."       When George was a boy in seventh grade a bully named Lloyd waited each afternoon at his bus stop. Lloyd was three years older, a high school wrestler, and each day after a quick interrogation, he'd pull up his sleeves and pummel George's head.       "You think you're smart?"       "How about a punch in the face?"       The beatings went on for many days. George had small arms and small legs, thin as sapling limbs and useless in defense against the larger boy. After a cracked lip George's mother advised him to go to Lloyd's house and call the bully out, finish the issue once and for all, and George's friends agreed. So one evening after dinner George walked to Lloyd's house and rapped on the door. He demanded they finish it that night, there and then, put an end to the beatings. Surprised and confused, Lloyd stammered a bit then in a loud and gracious voice praised George's gumption. He announced the pummelings would cease, the score was settled. The boys shook hands. The following day Lloyd was waiting for George at the bus stop with several of his wrestling friends. Gripping George by the collar he said the previous night had been staged to fool his parents, who had been listening behind the door, and nothing had changed. He said the beatings would continue, now and indefinitely. Then he flattened George's nose. From a sports shop later that day George purchased a high-powered slingshot, a professional's slingshot, and that night he walked to the house where Lloyd lived. It was past midnight. Lloyd's car was parked in the driveway, a lovely red Mustang, recently polished. Standing on the moist grass George loaded the slingshot and in a single fluid motion fired a rock through the Mustang's windshield, smashing it to crystal chips. No one in the house stirred. On the bus stop the next day George explained to Lloyd that it was he who had smashed the windshield. George announced that for every future beating, he would fire exactly one rock into the red Mustang. Then from the ground George picked up a stone. Holding it to Lloyd's face George detailed how he would do it; how there was plenty of good cover around Lloyd's house, how the range of the slingshot was over three hundred yards, the fact that he didn't need much sleep, which parts of the car he would destroy and in what order. Trembling slightly, George finished by pointing out that Lloyd's father didn't own a garage.       "Lloyd," he said, "Lloyd, there's nothing you can do." George was never beaten again.       On the car radio a man is talking about astronauts. He says there are four astronauts in space searching for the origin of the universe. According to the newsman the astronauts are pointing a giant telescope at a quasar fifteen billion light years away. If the telescope finds helium, the newsman says, it will validate the theory that an explosion created the universe. The search will take five years. Sitting at a stoplight George Rose is considering the origin of the universe and its implications when a blind woman is nearly struck by a tractor trailer. The woman's seeing-eye dog has mistakenly led her into the middle of the intersection. The truck swerves and drives on, but not before sending a wave of air to lift the woman's skirt. George and the other drivers watch as the blind woman is too late to prevent the skirt from rising. She is wearing thick tan nylons and white underwear, hemmed in lace. When the woman reaches the curb she yanks hard on the leash, scolding the dog. Her head is shaking, her delicate hands ironing the skirt. She is mouthing the words "bad dog." She can't see George. There are purple bruises below her blind eyes. The dog is anxious to run, pulling her along.       The councillor Bill Williams is blind in one eye. Bill likes to tell the story of how he lost the eye to a careless nickel as a boy growing up in the south end. The coin fell nearly ten stories before removing his cornea, peeling the iris clean like skin from a grape. He jokes that it was the toughest nickel he ever earned. Bill Williams serves with George on the city council, and soon they will vote on the officer who shot Benjamin Winfield, on whether to suspend the officer or not. The vote will be a televised event, a spectacle, George calls it. Black leaders from the south end have promised to attend. They have organized a vigil to be held the night of the vote. The vigil will take place on the granite steps of city hall, in front of the council chamber windows, where their voices can be heard. At the commencement of the vigil, candles will be lit and prayers offered, for peace, the organizers say, for justice. Inside the curtain-lined chamber, Bill and George sit next to each other on the panel and often, after council meetings, they meet for a drink. Bill is blind in one eye and he sits slanted in his chair, so his one good eye can watch George's face.       "I saw you in the park," Bill says. "You and your son. By the basketball courts."       "I saw you too. You were playing ball. You're getting old."       "I am old," Bill says.       "You can't shoot straight."       "I've only got one eye."       "Sure, sure," says George.       Bill drinks beer from his glass and leans back in the chair. "Have you made up your mind?" He asks.       "Not yet," says George.       "Mmm." Bill looks through a window to the street out front. It is dark and quiet; his face is quiet. "I was thinking," he says, "I was thinking, either way, will they forgive us."       These words and a woman sitting at the bar remind George of his wife, of the time ten years before when he was unfaithful to her. The woman at the bar is wearing a yellow floral dress, a party dress, sheer beneath the arms. Through the chiffon George can make out the faintest line of a single breast, the line where the flesh of the woman's breast separates from her ribcage and rises to its peak, disappearing in yellow fabric. Slowly the woman lifts her head and catches George's eyes. She draws both arms tight, concealing her flesh. I am ridiculous, George tells himself, ridiculous, and he remembers his wife Fay locked in their bedroom, broken and pale, the truth revealed. He remembers himself standing and sitting and sleeping at the door, empty, like a hungry animal wanting to get inside.       "Anything can be forgiven," he tells Bill Williams.       Bill shrugs and looks away. "I don't know."       The place where George Rose works is a factory and in it the managers dress alike; ties and jackets and leather shoes, light colored shirts, everyone looking much the same. The managers sit in small offices located high on a mezzanine, each office equipped with a desk and chair and a window overlooking the production floor. George sits at a desk in the center of the mezzanine. There is paper on his desktop and when his eyes grow weary he looks up, gazing out the window at the workers below. He can see them at their machines. They seem small and far away, like miniature dolls set to life on a stage. The workers are dressed in jeans and pullovers, dark comfortable clothes to contend with the grease and labor of the production lines. Now and then George sees a white shirt moving among the brown boxes and gray conveyors, a stab of white approaching a dark shirt from behind. It is a manager. The manager motions to the worker and points a finger and nods, mouth working up and down, then turns and moves back along the same path, winding out of sight. The worker is alone. At Thanksgiving the company sets up tables and chairs and prepares a turkey dinner, there on the production floor. The managers and workers stand in line for the meal, stuffing and gravy, squash and peas, then fan out to find seats. The idea of a turkey dinner belongs to the company president, a pleasant, thoughtful man. It is to foster camaraderie, he says, between the managers and workers, a golden opportunity, he says. But after the meal is served and the seats are filled it is always the workers who sit on one side and the managers who sit on the other. Still the company president sees hope. Each year a growing number of managers break rank and sit among the workers. Together they eat and laugh and joke about the plastic taste of the food, then return to their desks and machines. Later the president pulls the managers aside and applauds their effort.       "There are many hurdles ahead," are the words he chooses to conclude. "Thank you for your show of support."       On Sundays, George Rose drives to the park with his son and from a hill overlooking the basketball courts they watch the games. Sitting beneath a tree, they watch white and black men playing together on the asphalt, sweating in tee shirts and shorts, working and playing hard, close together. George's son is small and he sits on his father's lap or climbs to his shoulders to get the best view, and when there is a lull on the courts below he asks questions about the game and the words he hears and their plans for lunch, when they will eat. One afternoon George fell asleep on the grass and while he dozed, his son wandered off. After a long and terrible search, George found the boy standing next to the basketball courts, throwing gravel at a light pole. His face was blanched with fear, his tiny lips trembled. Standing next to the boy was a man with bright brown eyes and chocolate colored skin. One of his hands rested on the boy's shoulder, patting him gently. As George rushed to approach, the man smiled, whispered to the boy then retreated to the courts. Later George asked his son what the man had said.       "I don't remember," said the boy. "He said, `Don't be afraid.'ÝFP1Þ"       Sometimes, on business, George must drive his car through the city's south end. The stories he reads in the newspaper lead him to believe it's not a good idea. According to the newspaper, the south end has become a dangerous place. Shootings are common. Children shoot each other; men shoot their lovers; women shoot their rivals. George drives through the south end and stares at the people mulling on the sidewalks. He wonders how many of them speak his language, which ones carry weapons. There is something George anticipates each time he comes here, some misfortune he fears will befall him, as though he will be swept up in a passing storm with no place to hide. At a red light George's car sputters and he imagines the engine stalling, horns blaring behind him, a crowd gathered at the curb. He tries to imagine what he would do next. The sun is out; the car doors are locked. The street where Benjamin Winfield was shot is in the south end. Sometimes George passes by the street, and if the traffic is light, he slows to take a look. What amazes George as he stares through the glass is the commonness of the scene. Parked cars sit in driveways. A sprinkler chugs endless loops through the grass. Under a porch a man wearing a windbreaker pushes a broom while two boys race barefoot across his lawn, chasing each other with sticks. Nowhere is there evidence of Benjamin Winfield's death, no remnant of tragedy. As George drives past, he wonders what it was he expected to find. He wonders if his own death will leave this small a mark. Then the scene is gone. From a street corner a man on a bicycle pedals towards him; the man has a basketball under one arm and he wears a cap, backwards on his head. George recognizes the man. He has seen him before, on the courts in the park. George flips him a wave. The sun is out, chasing the shadows from the alleys, flooding the street with warm light.       At dinner the Blakes are talking about their future. They want to send their daughter Emily to Yale. As a vacation, they've made plans to travel to England to visit the home where Shakespeare was born. It is hard, they confide, especially in these difficult times, to find the money to pursue their dreams. George listens and nods. He knows the Blakes are wealthy people. Tom Blake manages an insurance agency; Betsy Blake owns a hat shop. George feels no pity for them. He wishes Fay would stop inviting them to dinner.       "We'd like to move to the country," says Tom.       "To Brimfield or Hampden," says Betsy.       "The city isn't safe anymore."       "A girl was mugged in Emily's school."       "They broke her arm."       "This swordfish is delicious."       "Emily is in bed by eight. We insist."       "Homework, then bed."       "George, did you lose your fork?"       "I'm worried about the city's future."       "The future frightens me."       "The future is frightening."       George listens and nods. He studies the faces of Tom and Betsy Blake; their lips and chins, the distance between their eyes. "Oh yes," he murmurs, "yes, yes, yes."       As a child George lived with his mother in an apartment with three small rooms. They were very poor. In the evenings after his mother returned from the book bindery, George would set the table and together they would sit down to dinner. His mother loved to cook. She made casseroles and pies and Irish stew, stuffed chicken and pepper steak, anything to please her son. But no matter what meal she placed on the table, George always ate with a spoon. The last time he used a fork he was five years old. He was eating pan-fried potatoes. Just as he was pushing one of the potatoes in his mouth his mother backhanded his face. The fork punctured his cheek, four prongs piercing the skin like silver stubble. Placing a napkin on the wounds and dabbing the fresh blood, she explained; he was chewing too loudly. As George grew older he came to understand that his mother was insane. She whipped him for leaving wet towels on the floor; she yanked his hair when he sneezed. George could never be sure when the blows would come or where they would come from. He lived in constant fear of attack. To survive George learned to observe his mother, to read her every behavior. He learned to sense her moods by the way she held her hands, the way her eyes followed him across a room, the inflection in her voice. Every subtle motion, everything she said and didn't say, became a gauge to measure her madness. Now George studies the Blakes over fish. He is confident in his ability to read people. He is sure he can read the Blakes too. As their conversation continues, George tries to strip the words they use of pretense, where they seem candid he looks for something more; when suddenly George realizes he is caught. The Blakes are aware; he can see it in their eyes. They know he is doing more than listening. They know he is searching for something different in what they have to say.       "You want the same thing," says Tom. His voice is sharp now. "You do."       "What?" Says George.       "You want the same things for your son. The same things we want for Emily."       "I suppose."       "You want him to be happy."       George thinks for a moment. He is suddenly tired. It hasn't occurred to him that Tom Blake could be right about something as real as this. "Yes," he says. "Yes, that's true."       George locks the doors before bed then closes the shades facing the street. He falls asleep quickly and beneath the blanket dreams he is in the van with Benjamin Winfield. They are cruising through the south end, staring into the night, the darkness drawing past them like a coarse black curtain. George sees Benjamin behind the wheel, one arm on the door rest. He is flesh and blood, living, his living eyes fixed on the road ahead. Breath pumps from his nostrils, white streams in the cold air. The van windows are closed.       "The police believe the van is stolen," George tells him.       "But I borrowed it."       "She reported it stolen," George tells him.       "But she loves me."       "She is angry with you."       "We had a fight."       "She is playing a joke." Then somewhere in the darkness George feels Benjamin slipping away. He tries again. "She doesn't know they will kill you."       In the dream the blue comes rushing from behind to bathe the van in its cool light, the light ricocheting from wall to wall as around them all motion disappears. The chamber is suddenly smothered in a strange silence. It is like the hollow, empty sound George knew as a boy treading water beneath a capsized canoe. Listening, Benjamin alone turns away, and the window where he sits is already shattered. A bullet enters his skull just above the left ear, tearing neatly through scalp, punching through the other side, then tumbles to the seat next to George. There is quiet again, the same vast stillness, and George stares at the bullet. It sits erect on the vinyl, like a pen cap balanced on end. As he reaches to touch the smooth metal, to flick it away, the silence of the van surrenders to voices. One by one they call to him. George tries to screen the sounds, lend them order, but he can't make out the words. He listens for a voice he recognizes, someone to save him.       In a restaurant near the center of the city, George Rose sits with Bill Williams behind a plate glass window. Waiting for lunch they watch the buildings outside bake in the sun, the waves of heat rising madly from the pavement to distort the lines of symmetry. From a water glass, Bill fishes an ice cube and holds it to his wrist. "I don't like the heat," he says. "It's bad for my lungs."       "I'm getting used to it."       "Your lungs are pink," Bill says smiling. "Mine are black. I never get used to it."       "How's Theresa?"       "She's good, George, good." Bill drinks from the glass then sets it down. "I got a call from Clare Winfield again. She says her son was due to enter the university this fall."       "I've heard," says George.       "She wants to be sure the council knows he was a good boy." Bill drags the ice cube up and down his forearm then says, "It makes me think of my son, that's all."       "Mine too."       "It could have been my son," Bill says, and he drops the ice cube back in the glass. "It worries me."       On the sidewalk just beyond the window a man is walking past. He is an old man with gray hair on his face and rags for clothes, frayed and stained with oil. There is a long thin cigar pasted to his lower lip, not touching the other, getting no help, the tip of the cigar burning hot and bright. The man is pushing a rusty shopping cart, arms extended, and in the belly of the cart sits a naked mannequin, a department store dummy, crimped at the waist. Its arms and legs are splayed over the cart walls like broken boards; the dummy's face has no expression. As the man shuffles past the window, he shouts angrily at his lifeless passenger. His eyes are twisted in a mean rage, as though the mannequin has done him a great harm. Though the restaurant is quiet neither George nor Bill can hear the words. In between shouts the man stops the cart, leans over and brands the mannequin with the tip of his cigar. Again and again he brands the dummy's forehead and arms, its legs and chest, burns black scars the size of pennies in the pink plastic; like a pox there are deep scars running from head to toe. George watches as with each new singe the old man seems terribly pained. His lips are drawn tight, like he's repulsed, George thinks, no, like he's ashamed. Beneath the burning cigar the mannequin's skin smolders to white wisps, unmoving, dead, the wisps floating away. George lowers his eyes to the table.       "My God," he says.       "Poor bastard."       "I worry about my son too," George says, "with that out there," he says.       At the playground near his home, George sits on a weathered picnic table and watches his son run and scuffle with the other children. His son is not wearing a shirt and his tanned skin is the color of honey, perfectly smooth, beautiful in the light fading behind the hills. George reflects on his own skin, aging and cracked, and beneath his shirt on the skin of his chest the third nipple he inherited from his mother, the tiny defect he keeps hidden even on the warmest of days. George rubs his chest and is pleased his son has escaped this imperfection. He is pleased his son can run shirtless among the other children without explanation, stand and fight and scrap without the added weight of his father's mark. From the table George looks out at the other children and often he can feel the threat they pose, the immense cruelty inevitable to their hearts, all hearts, and how it will come to change his son, and sometimes he thinks that if he were a lion he would eat these other cubs, how if he were a lion he would slay each and every one of them. Then his son comes to release him.       "I've got a splinter," the boy says. "I got it on the slide, Daddy. It hurts."       "We'll get it out."       "A girl over there says a splinter can kill you."       "No," George says. "Now, don't you worry."       "She says if you don't pull it out, a splinter can get in your bloodstream and stop your heart."       "No," George says, "that's not true," and pointing to the sliver of wood he comforts him, "nothing this small can kill you. Let me see your hand."       Later, standing close to the forest behind his garage, George can see the crows waiting in the trees for Fay to return. They perch patiently among the gray branches, now and then calling to each other or hopping along the bark to find another roost. George stands beneath the birds and stares into their black eyes and thinks the eyes are as dead and cold as polished stones. In their eyes he can detect no alarm, something he presumes he will find; eyes and bodies alive with fear. Instead what he sees is an infinite calm, the crows calm and assured, like George imagines coyotes might look waiting out a bull caught in a hunter's trap. It is as though the birds could wait forever, George thinks, as though they have suffered this hunger for centuries and he has no chanceagainst them, no idea what pains they are willing to endure, none. Searching the grass, George retrieves a stick and without aiming flings it skyward, scattering the birds to flight. He turns to leave and knows even before he reaches the house that one by one the crows have returned.       On the night of the vote, the vote on whether to suspend the officer who shot Benjamin Winfield, a vigil is held on the steps of city hall. Hundreds of people attend. They huddle like battle-weary soldiers beneath blankets and umbrellas, protecting their candles and each other from the faint drizzle. The report made public and presented to the councillors has ruled the boy's shooting an accident. The officer stumbled, fell and fired; little more exists in the pages and diagrams. To those holding vigil the report is an outrage. They demand justice, a word repeated often at the podium, some kind of justice. It is nearly midnight when news of the council vote reaches the gathering. Above the sound of the drizzle there is a collective silence, a deep hush, as though a long expected death has finally come to pass. A minister steps to the stage and leads the group in prayer, pleads for calm, then everyone is asked to return home. From the back of city hall, the council members emerge unseen and are escorted to their cars, shielded by overcoats. In front where the crowd once gathered only scraps of paper remain, drops of wax and candle husks, while overhead the sky lapses into rain, pelting the pavement clean.       On Sunday George Rose drives to the park with his son and from a hill overlooking the basketball courts, they watch the games. It is cool in the shade of the tree as they watch white and black men playing together on the asphalt, sweating in tee shirts and shorts, working and playing hard, close together. George's son is small and he sits on his father's lap, then climbs to his shoulders to get the best view, and when there is a lull on the courts below he asks questions about the game and the words he hears and their plans for lunch, when they will eat, when they will return home. Heading from the park, George is determined to outwit the thick flow of traffic and he makes a wrong turn, driving into the south end. The car coasts to a stop sign where gathered at the curb is a group of men, nine of them bunched closely, standing and sitting, some straddling bicycles. The men are rolling in laughter, white teeth flashing, touching each other's arms as they share a joke, briefly locking palms. As the car slows to a stop, George reaches across the front seat in a gesture like a yawn, his right elbow grazing his son's forehead, touching his son's soft white skin, reaches across the seat and pushing down, locks the door. No one on the curb has noticed the movement. George looks again. Bill Williams is there, sitting on a basketball, smiling, unaware of his friend. As George pulls away from the intersection he takes his son's hand into his own and kisses the knuckle, mouths into the flesh words the boy cannot hear. He is beautiful, George thinks, my son, and the car rolls home, the boy staring in wonder at the city surrounding him, the buildings and sidewalks and people, close enough to touch.