Little Bird of Heaven by Joyce Carol Oates
That night at supper Zoe saw the swollen hand and asked what the hell had happened to him but quickly Krull pulled away his hurt-boy-face set in opposition to her like a clenched fist, didn’t want his mother to touch him, not ever again.
33
AUGUST 1981
SIX YEARS AT MINIMUM WAGE, treated like shit by prune-faced old Adele Honeystone who rarely had a smile for her just plain jealous of Zoe’s popularity with customers especially men, abruptly Zoe quit. Busiest time of a Sunday afternoon in summer, Zoe quit. Adele was saying in this simpering voice like there’s a poker up her bony rear Zoe please could you sponge the counter here it’s so sticky!—use the clean sponge please not the old dirty one THANK YOU and Zoe stood very still not daring to speak nor even to move and then slowly detached the God-damned fucking hairnet from her hair wadded it into a ball and tossed it into the trash.
“No, ma’am. I don’t think so.”
“What?”
“I said no, ma’am. I don’t think so. I quit.”
Oh this was a long time coming! Months and even years of hiding her resentment behind sweet-Zoe smiles, needing the extra cash, Delray refused to help finance anything to do with what he called her music career like it was a joke and not Zoe’s oldest dream from when she’d been a girl. Music career was something Zoe would have to find money for herself and so God damn she’d swallowed her pride and her fury having to endure being criticized by snotty Mrs. Honeystone for scooping too much ice cream for customers, heaping too many nuts and too much Reddi-wip onto sundaes, most of all what Mrs. Honeystone called carrying-on—laughing like a banshee—meaning flirting with the (male, admiring) customers and generally having a good time.
So, every nerve twitching in her body, Zoe quit.
“Zoe, what? What did you say?”—the astonished old woman was staring at Zoe through thick-lensed bifocals like some docile pet had kicked up at her, or nipped her—following Zoe around the counter and in the direction of the door as customers looked on alert and smiling, bemused—“Zoe, you can’t just quit! Not like this! Don’t be silly, Zoe, put your hairnet back on, you can’t just quit in the middle of—”
“Ma’am, I said I quit. Get someone else to put up with your old-biddy shit, ma’am. Zoe has had it.”
Ma’am. Old-biddy shit. Zoe has had it. These words uttered in Zoe Kruller’s sweetest girl-singer voice would pass into local Sparta legend, by sundown of that very Sunday.
In the wake of Zoe Kruller walking out of the dairy like a stage actress tossing down her hairnet, untying her apron and laying it on a counter there teemed rumors like rushing water in a gutter: Zoe had in fact been behaving strangely for months not just at Honeystone’s but elsewhere. Wouldn’t be surprised if Zoe had been embezzling from Honeystone’s or at any rate pocketing money instead of ringing it up in the cash register or possibly stealing outright though no one could claim to have seen her. Anyway it was known—in some circles it seemed to be known—that Zoe was slipping around with some man not her husband except which man?—the guitarist for that hillbilly band was too young for her but knowing Zoe it might’ve been him, or the old-guy fiddler you could see gazing at her with such love right on the bandstand, had to be embarrassing for the old guy’s family. And there were men, a half-dozen, a dozen, who patronized Honeystone’s frequently but only on weekends when Zoe Kruller worked, and making sure, when they did, that Zoe and not another clerk waited on them. Zoe’s quick sharp laugh sounded like uppers, speed—amphetamines—a kind of epidemic in Sparta of women and girls addicted to diet pills—cheerleaders at the high school, nurses at Sparta General, housewives, even grandmas. Speed was most popular with working women in their thirties hoping to maintain some edge of glamour and vivacity.
It made a woman sexy, too. Sexed-up: hot.
Nastiest rumors had to do with Delray: he was the one who’d forced Zoe to quit her job out of jealousy, resenting the men Zoe was meeting at Honeystone’s. Yet more, Delray resented Zoe singing with that country-music band. Delray was an ex-con, ex-biker, wife-beater. It was known he was one-quarter or maybe one-half Indian. You could see the Seneca features clearly in his face and in that hair. Why he went crazy if he had a few drinks. Why he had such a fiery temper. He’d blackened his wife’s eyes, why she wore dark glasses sometimes. Bruised her wrists, why she wore so many tinkling little bracelets. Half-strangled her, why her voice was so throaty-sounding. Widely it was known that Delray was a heavy drinker, drug-user, man-handler of his wife to keep her in line.
Why did I quit ’cause I am ready for a change that’s why.
Fuck you all of you looking at me like that, I deserve some happiness or at least the chance of it. That’s why.
“Pursuit of happiness”—that’s in the U.S. Constitution!
“All men are created equal”—that means women, too!
Not getting any younger, that’s a fact. None of us are.
If I’m going to be on my feet smiling at customers might’s well be a cocktail waitress. There’s tips!
I’ll get my chance one day. I know this.
I am not a superstitious person. Or a religious person. But I believe.
You must have faith in your destiny. You must not doubt.
At Checkers there’s a different clientele. More money, and classier, than the rest of the Strip. The owner has promised me, some Friday nights I can sing. A lot can happen.
How’s my husband feel about his wife working out at the Strip?—ask him.
And ask him why. Why’s she there. Ask him. See what Delray says.
HE WAS TWELVE. Grown to a height of five feet six and a half inches and weighing 117 pounds sinewy-muscled and edgy-quick and looking older than twelve. And feeling older.
Wouldn’t talk about his mother. What was happening between her and his dad. Stayed away from the house, when they quarreled. Slept outside in the old barn, in all his clothes and in his shoes.
Sure he’d seen this coming. When Zoe ran out to climb into the cream-colored van with BLACK RIVER BREAKDOWN on its sides. Carrying her suitcase, and Delray hadn’t been home.
Since the landfill, he knew the name of the man who drove the Chevy pickup: Ed Diehl.
Maybe he’d seen Zoe with Ed Diehl another time, too. He wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure. But he was sure he’d seen Diehl at his father’s garage getting gas.
One day on his rat-colored bike he showed up at Honeystone’s. No reason. Much of what he did had no evident reason. Once he’d picked up a skinned-looking little bird that had fallen out of a nest, and the parent-birds—robins—squawking and fluttering overhead—and he’d had a choice of crushing the little bird between his fingers or climbing up on a pile of lumber to put the bird back in the nest and for no clear reason he returned the bird to the nest as the parent-birds swooped and squawked dangerously close to his head but another time, no more reason, he’d kicked a turtle off a roadway, down an embankment and maybe its shell cracked on a rock, he hadn’t gone to investigate.
He’d have liked to have Richie Shinegal’s air-pistol. Better yet, a twenty-two rifle. Not sure why. Not yet.
At Honeystone’s he leaned the rat-colored bike against an outside wall and pushed the screen door in inhaling the milky smells, chocolate, sugary baked goods like an old lost dream of child-comfort. Though Zoe had worked at the dairy for several years Aaron had not been there in a while, he’d grown self-conscious seeing his attractive young mother in the white uniform behind the counter, how pretty she was, how fluttery and girlish and glamorous, how people looked at her, how men looked at her. When she’d seen Aaron come in immediately she would wink and smile at him calling out Hey there sweetie! C’mere. Now Zoe was gone from Honeystone’s. Now there was not any reason for Aaron Kruller to push his way inside out of the shimmering heat of late summer. Behind the counter a cat-faced girl stared at him in surprise. Others looked at him, too. Halfway across the floor to the counter where Zoe used to work when an old-woman nasal voice sounded sharply: “Aaron Krul
Behind one of the refrigerated display cases Mrs. Honeystone stood purse-lipped and tremulous. Krull’s mouth twitched. Not a boy’s uneasy smile—not Aaron Kruller’s uneasy smile—but a rude grimace baring teeth. Adele Honeystone had known Aaron since he’d been a young child—she had known Zoe Kruller for fifteen years, or more—but this did not seem to be Aaron Kruller. This was not a young boy but an adolescent male of an age no one might guess, taller than she and wearing a soiled black T-shirt and grease-stained work pants and in imitation of an adult biker he wore a black leather band on his left wrist. You would think that this was a wrist watch but it was just a black leather band. His eyes were deep-set beneath heavy eyebrows and glimmered with a kind of boy-mockery that unnerved the old woman. Hysterical Mrs. Honeystone would afterward claim to have glimpsed the handle of a knife—or some other weapon, like a hammer—protruding from one of the Kruller boy’s trouser pockets for clearly he’d come to commit a robbery and to terrorize and so the white-haired old woman began to scream, “Stop him! He’s a thief! Call the police!” Krull was taken by surprise. Even Krull, who had not expected this. Like an asshole he’d entered into the presence of his mother’s enemy naively with no plan. Fear and loathing for him glinted in the old woman’s glasses as daringly she advanced upon him, seeing that he was backing away, wildly she swung something at his head, might’ve been a baking tray she’d snatched up behind the counter, shedding brownie-fragments of which some would be caught in Krull’s clothes—Help! Thief! Vandal! He’s Zoe Kruller’s son! She’s sent him here! Call the police!”
There were few customers in Honeystone’s at this time. Several stood in line waiting to be served, other were seated at the wrought-iron tables. These were mothers with young children. None would see the weapon in the boy’s pocket still less in his hand as Mrs. Honeystone would one day claim but they were quick to take up the alarm, frightened and clutching at their children as white-haired Mrs. Honeystone swung the baking pan at the boy’s head as if to drive him to the door and in a sudden fury the boy punched blindly at the old woman, struck her on the hip causing her to lose her balance and totter as with a face contorted as a snarling animal’s he crouched low to deliver a second punch, would’ve been a wicked sucker-punch except suddenly a warning thought came to him he’d better not, better get the hell out of this place, running outside to the rat-colored bike awaiting him as inside Honeystone’s female screams lifted shrill as the shrieks of terrorized birds.
Never did! Never said that I would kill her.
Didn’t mean to hit her, the old bitch hit me first.
Never had a knife. Nobody saw a knife!
…telling lies about my mother. Guess that was why.
They came for him at the address on the arrest warrant: 1138 Quarry Road. In two police cruisers racing up the bumpy dirt drive to the peach-colored house amid cornfields. Advanced upon him with drawn pistols as if he were an adult known to be armed and dangerous. Spoke harshly to him and when naively he resisted—lifting his arms against them, turning as if to run away—he was thrown by three arresting officers to the floor (the linoleum floor of the kitchen, which Zoe did not keep quite so clean as sparkling-shiny linoleum floors in TV ads)—his pockets were turned inside-out, searched for weapons—wrists cuffed behind his back in an expert way to make him whimper in pain. Hauled then to his feet—two young flush-faced cops gripped his upper arms, tight—forcibly walked outside to the first cruiser nearly fainting with pain. Delray wasn’t home nor was Delray at Kruller’s Auto Repair out at the road and where Zoe was, Aaron stammered he did not know.
What he’d vowed was not to cry. God damn he would not cry.
At Sparta police headquarters he was booked on charges of criminal physical assault, attempted robbery, threatening human life and property. The complainant was Mrs. Adele Honeystone. The name on the arrest warrant was Aron Kruller.
At the time of the arrest, Aaron was twelve years, eleven months and six days old. Having been kept back he was in sixth grade at Harpwell Elementary.
It was hours later Zoe answered the phone at home, was summoned to police headquarters and arrived shaken and frightened and furious and her son was released in her custody after several further hours’ consultation involving the arresting police officers and a representative from Herkimer County Juvenile Court. Stammering and red-faced as if guilty—for sure, he was looking guilty—he repeated he’d gone to the dairy for no reason he’d just bicycled out to the dairy, gone inside for just the hell of it not intending to rob anyone, not intending to “vandalize” or “threaten” anyone, the old woman had begun screaming at him immediately like a crazy person, he had not done a thing to provoke her.
Maybe he’d hit her, yes maybe with his fist he’d hit her to make her back off while she was hitting him with something like a platter, on his head and shoulders. To defend himself he’d hit the old woman but just once, he swore. And not hard.
Driving home in the late afternoon Zoe stopped at a liquor store for a six-pack of beer and in the parking lot began to drink to soothe her shattered nerves. Telling Aaron who was rubbing his wrists and arms already darkening with bruises, “Oh, take one—take a beer. I know you kids drink. God damn you.” He’d been trying to explain to her why he’d gone to the dairy in the first place—this was the crucial question, Zoe kept asking—where he should’ve known, for Christ’s sake he wasn’t an idiot, or an asshole, should’ve known the Honeystones wouldn’t want him, and no explanation he could give made any sense even to Aaron himself until at last he gave up and Zoe said: “Why you did it, Aaron, was for me. For your mother. But it was a wrong thing to do, see? It was a reckless and mistaken thing to do. Even if you’d come after the dairy was closed, like to “vandalize’—‘set fire’—it was a wrong thing to do. Not because the Honeystones don’t deserve it but because you’d get caught. For sure, you’re get caught. So fuck them, we’ll get you off these charges. These are chicken-shit charges, that old bitch can’t prove any of it. Let her try! Let all of them try slandering me, telling their nasty lies about me, I don’t give a damn for them anymore. This is just my old life here in Sparta, see?—I’ll be laughing at this, some day. And you too, sweetie. You just wait.”
What these exuberant words meant, Aaron didn’t know. Zoe drained her first can of beer and opened another and drank thirstily and avidly as he’d never seen any woman drink, still less his mother. He too was drinking, but cautiously. He felt queasy, nauseated. One of the young cops had struck him with his knee, in Aaron’s abdomen. In the struggle he’d been kicked, punched, slapped many times. His mistake was that initial attempt to get away from them—like a panicked animal—which was a desperate asshole thing to do for within a second they had him on the floor, on his face, arms twisted up behind his back, one of the cops kneeling on his lower back, the weight of a full-grown man on his lower spine—at least three law enforcement officers of the size, heft, and belligerence of Delray Kruller shouting Lay still! Lay still punk! Fuckin’ little punk! Threaten some old lady, punk, there ain’t no old ladies here and he could not draw breath, he could not explain, all his effort had gone into staying alive, his wrists, his arms, his ribs, his back, his thighs, his belly and the right side of his face were bruised and scraped as if he’d been dragged along the ground which maybe he had been, out there in the driveway. Maybe he’d stumbled, or they’d knocked him down again, and dragged him half-conscious whimpering and trying God damn so hard not to cry knowing Delray would be disgusted with him, if he cried. And Zoe would not be so proud of him, if he cried. If for instance he pissed himself which he had not. Staring out the kitchen window at the police cruisers racing up the drive like TV cops he’d thought this had to be some sort of joke—was it?
His friends would talk of nothing else for days. For weeks marveling You heard? Krull was arrested! Faintly smiling trying to feel good about something, at least.
Zoe cuffed him on the less-bruised side of h
No, no! Quickly Aaron protested. Nothing was funny.
“Like your father. Del had a juvenile record, too.”
There came Zoe’s fingers icy from the beer can brushing Aaron’s sweaty matted hair off his forehead. With a detached sort of tenderness as you’d gaze at a wounded animal at the roadside, as you’re driving by, Zoe said: “You are like your father, I can see that. There’s good in Delray, a lot of good in Delray along with the other, that’s how he is. A certain kind of man, that’s how he is. You’re growing up faster than I’d expected, I guess. A hell of a lot faster than I can monitor. The cops didn’t hardly believe you’re the age you are, frankly I might not if I wasn’t your mother. But I don’t need you to intervene on my behalf, see? Honey? That can bring only harm. That can hurt you, too. In my life I’m moving in some other direction now. You’ll have to have faith in me, that I love you deep in my heart and forever even if things change, for a while. You’ll have to let me go, see? You, and him.”
Him. By which Zoe meant Delray.
Let me go. Aaron didn’t want to think what this might mean.
Framing his face in her hands, to kiss him. Wet beer-smelling kiss on his nose. Aaron laughed uneasily, wanting to slip free. They were laughing together, a little wildly. What was so funny? Why’d anybody laugh, in the situation they were in? He’d been arrested on the complaint of a hysterical vicious old woman and charged with serious adult crimes and he’d have to be taken back to the courthouse and if he was lucky the family court judge would give him probation not a few months at the county juvenile facility. And that evening his father would break his ass when he returned home, when Delray heard the news which Zoe could not keep from him. Even Krull was made anxious by the possibility of being sent away to juvie like certain of Krull’s friends nor did Krull relish the prospect of having his ass broke by the old man, in the beat-up state he was already in.