Little Bird of Heaven by Joyce Carol Oates
It was a lonely afternoon, he’d biked out to Garrison Road. That morning he’d hung around the garage hoping his father would find use for him but Delray had not and then Delray went out with the tow truck and took a young mechanic with him, and Aaron wasn’t wanted.
Zoe had gone out shopping. Or wherever Zoe went, Saturday afternoons. Used to be Mommy took Aaron with her in the car maybe just for a ride but no more.
You’re a big boy sweetie, where are your friends can’t you go play?
It’s too boring with Mommy today. You’d cause me trouble. Yes you would!
Aaron dared to approach the pickup. Squatting and moving on his haunches like some ugly stunted creature. In gym class the other boys stared at him warily. The size of Aaron Kruller, his dark eyes and smudged skin. At Harpwell Elementary there were no other boys like Aaron, as there would be in middle school and in high school, to which children from the Seneca reservation were bused. What did you say to those boys did you threaten to hurt those boys Aaron’s teacher asked him in a hissing voice and Aaron was utterly astonished not knowing how to defend himself.
Sit here. Here in this desk. Don’t squirm! Don’t turn your head.
Just leave the other children alone. You are older, you are bigger than they are.
Rage smoldered in him, seeing the blond hair pressed against the pickup window on the passenger’s side. Where the man had pushed her, and she’d given in. Big lazy kitty giving in, stretching her arms. And now the man was leaning over her. Eddy, in the baseball cap. The woman’s arms came around the man’s neck gripping him tight.
Krull knew what they were doing. Krull knew what fucking was, what it meant: the nastiest thing you could do. Older boys had told him. At the garage the mechanics said fuck, fucking often. Delray said fuck in an explosive way when he was angry but you didn’t need to be angry to say fuck it was just a way of talking, even women said it sometimes, even Zoe said fuck. But if Aaron did, Zoe would scold him.
Watch that mouth! There are ladies present.
A joke of Zoe’s, who was not a lady. Why was that funny?
Krull at age eleven knew what fuck, fucking was and was disgusted by it. Krull could not have imagined why any woman would consent to be fucked by any man.
Whoever Eddy was, he drove a dark green Chevy pickup. New model in good condition and Aaron wondered if he’d seen it at his father’s garage. Maybe at the gas pumps. Maybe he’d pumped gas for Eddy himself.
Delray would not like it. Zoe with this man.
Krull didn’t like it. Stinging red ants in his armpits where coarse hairs were sprouting, and in his crotch he scratched with punishing vehemence.
Krull knew all about Aaron, but Aaron knew little about Krull. Krull was a special name the older boys had for him, to signal they liked him, maybe. Aaron was Zoe’s special name for him she’d selected, she had told him, before he was born, out of the Bible.
Never was an Aaron she’d known in all of Sparta, Zoe said. Why he was special and must live up to his name.
Why am I special he’d asked her.
Because you are mine! Mommy said.
Mommy laughed and kissed his nose. Like it was a joke? Or was not a joke? Mommy was so wonderful Mommy could make you believe anything if it was something you wanted to believe.
Because you are mine and also Daddy’s. That’s why you are a special boy.
Krull knew better. Krull bitterly resented being kept back in fifth grade lacking in reading skills and social deportment. Shamed and angry he would not trust any God-damned teacher not ever again.
Words were scrambled in his eyes, when he tried to read. And numbers were scrambled. He hated just the look of a page of print and writing on the blackboard he shut his eyes against, he hated so.
And if Aaron was called to the blackboard to take the chalk from the teacher and if Aaron could not comprehend which numbers to write on the blackboard it was Krull who consoled him Fuck them just walk out. Walk out of the fucking room just do it, man.
Staring at the Chevy pickup on the far side of the fence. No one was visible inside the cab now, even the flash of red scarf had disappeared. And the laughter had ceased. You would think if you’d just bicycled to the landfill now, that the pickup was empty, abandoned.
You’d think that whoever had driven it might be at the landfill somewhere or in the woods nearby, with a gun. A rifle. Hunting.
Pop! Pop pop pop! Krull could hear the guys sniggering, one of them handed him the rifle.
32
THOSE YEARS. Krull grew.
Blunt-sounding as a fist: Krull.
Heavy density as a block of concrete: Krull.
At home his father called him kid. Sometimes Aar-on if he meant to criticize. There were many ways to displease Delray and not so many ways to please Delray but overall, Aaron and his father got along. At the garage where Aaron worked part-time—for no pay—room-and-board is what I’m paying you, kid—Delray sometimes took Aaron aside to speak to him in what you’d call a special way, a personal way, almost tenderly, often teasingly, rubbing his big grease-stained fingers over Aaron’s head saying O.K. kid, you didn’t fuck up this time. In fact you did pretty damn good.
Like at lacrosse. One of the older guys staring at Aaron, nodding his approval of Aaron. Though Aaron lived in Sparta and not where they did. Though Aaron had a white mother, their mothers despised. (How did Aaron know this? Aaron knew.) Lacrosse was the medicine game. Lacrosse was the war-game. Not just anyone could play lacrosse: girls were forbidden. Even the heavy hard-muscled Indian girls who more resembled boys were forbidden. Players wore their war marks with pride, bruises, scars, knees and ankles and shoulders that throbbed with pain, it was an insult for females to take up a lacrosse stick still less run out on the field wild to play. Aaron had long been hearing tales of lacrosse players from the Herkimer reservation who’d been picked out by scouts for Canadian pro teams, brought to Canada all expenses paid to play lacrosse for a living. Renounce their U.S. citizenship and take on Canadian citizenship which they readily did.
Mostly now, now he was older, in high school Aaron was expected to work at Kruller’s Auto Repair longer hours. There wasn’t time for lacrosse. There wasn’t time for schoolwork. Homework assignments Aaron left behind at school in his locker or homeroom desk. Zoe objected saying their son was too damn young to be working like a damn grease monkey in that garage, he was just a kid, what about him learning something at school and getting a diploma and going to the community college? Delray said he’d never gotten any high school diploma still less gone to the community college and Zoe said Yes that’s exactly right, that’s why our son should not model himself after you.
Delray laughed What’s this “model”—you’re thinking, that should be you?
Zoe worried that Aaron might be injured in the garage. If a jacked-up car or motorcycle slipped, and broke his leg? Crushed him? Kruller’s garage was not the best-equipped garage in the Sparta area. Kruller’s garage did in fact have accidents, mechanics were occasionally injured. Delray himself had a crushed and nerveless finger on his left hand as well as a crushed left toe with a dead toenail thick and discolored as a hoof, he laughed at such injuries saying at least he hadn’t had to have anything amputed like his buddies who’d been in ’Nam. Nothing irked Zoe more than her young teenaged son returning to the house slump-shouldered as a middle-aged man, in grease-stiffened overalls and stinking of oil, gasoline, sweat, she insisted that Aaron wash his hands and forearms with Twelve-Mule Team Borax and before she’d let him sit down at the supper table she insisted upon digging the black grease out from beneath his ragged fingernails herself with her metal nail file, clipping his nails with her tiny nail scissors and even filing them where they’d been broken or torn. Grease on his face like Indian war paint, in his very eyelashes and in his hair. So Delray took Aaron out to have his hair cut short like a Marine recruit. Delray laughed at Zoe’s concern: Bullshit. Aaron’s O.K. with me.
This was so. Aaron was O.
It felt good to have a father like Delray who knew cars, motorcycles.
A father who owned a Harley-Davidson he still took out sometimes, with his biker-friends.
Rumor was, Delray Kruller had once belonged to the Adirondack Hells Angels. If anyone asked Zoe she would shrug evasively and say Ask Del. He’s got the tats.
Tats: tattoos.
Must’ve been, something had happened with some biker-band, years before. Something had gone wrong. Maybe that was the time his father had gotten incarcerated up at Potsdam. Aaron knew better than to ask. Even when he’d been a younger kid he’d known. You kept your mouth shut, if your father wanted to tell you something he’d tell you. Nothing made Delray angrier than to overhear someone ask something of Zoe that had to do with him.
Younger, Aaron had been invited occasionally to come ride with Delray on the Harley-Davidson. In a trance of happiness Aaron would climb into the wide fleecy seat behind Delray, arms around Delray’s midriff in a way that would have been unthinkable except on the ’cycle at such a time. So physically close to his dad! And how muscular his dad was, though the flesh of Delray’s lower back and waist was going flaccid, fatty. There was no call for Aaron and Delray to touch each other any longer, still less to touch in such an intimate way. Aaron’s trance of happiness was a kind of oblivion which, in times of deep unhappiness, at school for instance, or lying twitchy and sweaty in his bed unable to sleep, he could play and replay in his memory like rerun TV footage.
Zoe protested Del make him wear a crash helmet at least! Both of you. Delray teased saying Chill out sweetheart, the kid is safe with me. We ain’t gonna crash.
In fact both father and son wore crash helmets on the Harley-Davidson, when Delray believed that crash helmets were required. Not for brief teeth-jolting rides along dirt lanes between cornfields where seven-foot cornstalks whipped in the wind and blew and slapped like forlorn living creatures as the cyclists rushed past. If the ride was longer and on an actual paved road—along Quarry to Post, and to the River Road for instance—with a stop at the Post Tavern—Delray strapped helmets on both his and Aaron’s heads and without protest Aaron bowed his head like a young fighter pilot, or an astronaut, being geared-up by his superior, on a mission that might end in a fiery death.
Hang on, kid. Might be a little bumpy at first.
With Aaron behind him hugging him tight Delray rarely took the thunderous-roaring Harley-Davidson past seventy miles an hour. And this on clear stretches of country road. Beyond seventy, seventy-five, the vehicle began to vibrate and shudder ominously, Delray wouldn’t risk a crash. Not with his son on board. Much of his life he’d been a reckless son of a bitch—no one was quicker to acknowledge this, than Delray—but now in his forties he was learning caution. Even half-drunk Delray took pride in his instinct as a cyclist knowing to brake in quick little jerks going into curves—never to slide into loose gravel at even a moderate speed—hadn’t he witnessed such accidents in full daylight, one of them damn messy, and fatal.
Gripping Delray tight around the midriff as they sped on the Harley-Davidson Aaron was dry-mouthed with wonder seeing the familiar countryside begin to blur like something in water, ripples in water—oncoming vehicles on the road sped at them at astonishing speeds and were jerked past like toy objects on a string—overhead the sky dissolved pale as vapor penetrated by winking patches of sunlight through clouds like fire and it came to Aaron This is the happiest you can be, you will never be happy like this again.
Later in their lives Delray rarely took the Harley-Davidson out. In fact he was trying to sell the damn thing. He had back trouble—“cervical spine strain”—getting older, you acknowledged certain risks.
Still Delray was a tall stocky-bodied man with sharp-chiseled Indian features and dark shaggy hair like the hide of a bison as Zoe said half in disgust and half in admiration—her crazy biker-husband she’d married young—“too damn young to know what the hell I was doing”—who in the heat of summer wore a headband like a hippie of another era, drank beer and sometimes even smoked pot at Kruller’s Auto Repair which by the early 1980s had become a just-barely-solvent business Zoe had come to realize could only lose business as newer and better equipped auto repairs were established in the Sparta area. First thing you noticed about Delray was his tats: muscled shoulders and arms covered in black hairs and glistening with fantastical colors, a U.S. flag twined with a cobra etched into Delray’s right forearm, a U.S. eagle with glaring bronze eyes etched into Delray’s left forearm and on his back, which was broad and pale-fleshed and covered in dark wiry hairs like a pelt, a lurid-grinning black skull with flames shooting from its eye sockets and beneath this skull the mysterious letters aha61.
Adirondack Hells Angels 1961?
What Aaron figured. Not that Delray would reveal any secret of his.
On his craggy right knuckles, a crimson heart with Zoe in black script.
Man-to-man Delray confided frankly in Aaron he had second thoughts about his tats, especially the U.S. flag and U.S. eagle.
“See, it’s like your skin is given out to something not-you, you can’t get back. Like some asshole billboard or something. You’d have to skin yourself alive to get it back, see kid?—ain’t fucking worth it.”
Because you are special. You are mine!
Bullshit he was. Never was. Shrinking from his mother as she tousled his hair, poked and tickled him in that way of hers. Zoe was one who liked to touch, as she talked. Or touched without needing to talk.
Now he was Krull, he ceased believing her.
Came to the realization that so much she told him was bullshit because she was his mother, and she loved him.
Krull understood, such a love was weakness. It bore into you, weakened you. Like some kind of bone-marrow-cancer. Aaron had been shy and self-conscious in school, had difficulty reading and hated to be called on by teachers, feared stammering, giving a wrong answer and the other students would laugh at him and so he’d acquired a reputation for being sulky, “uncooperative.” His teachers had been uneasy with him mistaking him for a boy he wasn’t—yet—and then there came Krull when Aaron was thirteen and beginning to get his height, weight, muscled body and there was no mistaking Krull.
Beginning to like, in eighth grade, the way his classmates drew back when he approached. Some of them looking quickly away as if they hadn’t seen him. (But their eyes drifted back, covertly. Especially girls’ eyes.) It made Krull laugh, that glimmer of fear in their faces. Krull had no need even to push at them, collide with them, shove them against a stairway railing or a row of lockers to provoke that fear.
First fear. Then respect. Krull grew.
Krull had the respect of older guys. Some were from the reservation and others lived in the outlying northern district of Sparta near Quarry Road, a few were his neighbors. They were guys like himself. Their fathers were men like Delray Kruller: quarry workers, construction workers, truckers, welders, factory workers, mechanics. The guys shared cigarettes, joints, beers and even whiskey with Krull. You had to have an older brother or cousin to acquire such things for you at the 7-Eleven or Circle Beer & Wine or to steal them from home. In boys’ lavatories at school and sometimes—brazenly—in school corridors between classes they drank hastily and carelessly from cans of lukewarm beer and ale and the liquid stung their nasal cavities as they snorted with laughter, wild-dog-yipping laughter that attracted attention. For it was to attract attention, to alarm, intimidate and display themselves that they behaved in such ways with a hope too of being expelled from school, sent home permanently and totally fucked-up. Sure they smoked on school property—they’d been smoking since grade school. Some of them—though never Krull, who had too much sense—sniffed from plastic bottles of glue inside paper bags held to their faces. It was a sick giddy dazed “high”—a killer “high” said to fry the brain. Like crystal meth, they couldn’t afford. They got into scuffles with other boys—“good” boys—who reported them to au