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Heart Is Home
Heart Is Home
The headbangers had staked out a fishing spot thirty feet down from us. They had
been there for hours. Not as long as my brother and I, but nearly. They had drunk
themselves sober and were now arguing over whether or not they should begin using
M-80s on whatever fish they caught. M-80s were a little expensive to be using on
catfish. One of them said they should just drag their catch from the bumper of their
car. The lone female, and there is always a lonely girl hanging out with zit-encrusted
headbangers, said they should take their fish home, scale them and eat them. Like
normal people. She was ignored. The girl is always ignored. Until around midnight or
so. Or until the men have had their fill of arguing with one another. At that time, the
girl always becomes the focus.
My brother pointed out that we knew them. These were the Emmanuels. Joe, Carrie
and Teddy. They occupied a house where we grew up, and were widely regarded for
their capacity for alcohol and pain. Their dogs ruled the neighborhood streets after
dark. These were lonely animals, proud and dangerous. They were little balls of
matted fur and starved, bitter anger. I had been attacked once by a tag-team made
up of the collie and the terrier. The bite marks on my legs and the claw marks on my
lower back drew laughter from the owners. They pointed at me from their screenedin front porch and suggested that I run faster next time.
Joe was old, something like 35. Carrie and Teddy were twins around the age of 18.
They had a common mom but different fathers. Joe was missing digits from his left
hand. He had been too slow to toss a lit firecracker and it popped while he held it. It
was late at night. All of us had been celebrating our country's birthday over kegs of
beer and gallon jugs of vodka. I was twelve then. From what I understood, Joe was
still angry about how everyone seemed more focused on the beer they had spilled
because of the out-of-nowhere screaming than the blood that gushed from his
smoldering wounds.
Carrie was the girl no one would get high with. She had a habit of sealing the joint
by rolling it up and down the inside of her sweaty forearm. If you spoke in
opposition, you would get no weed. Simple as that. Carrie had the best smokes.
Everybody knew that. So we smoked her damp numbers and kept our mouths shut
about the salt that coated our lips.
<2>
Teddy, no one really knew. He stayed in his room and played Nintendo all day,
blasting hippie bands punctuated by the occasional weekend block of Willie Nelson.
He was a Bud drinker, preferably from the can. A garbage bag of empties would sit
outside his room for days as he tried to beat Legend of Zelda. He watched the
afternoon soaps with his mother and was regarded as a decent cook, chili being a
specialty. These are superficial characteristics, nothing that serves to illuminate the
personality of Teddy Emmanuel. But it is more than I know about most people.
The arguing went on long enough to drive me and my brother back to my car where
we reclined in our seats and smoked cigarettes. We could hear that the two brothers
had begun to focus on Carrie. They called her names and insulted her intelligence,
each and every comment being one that could have been directed toward the two
men. They probably knew this. They were dumb and ugly. They were losers. Joe and
Teddy actually criticized Carrie for still living at home even though her bedroom was
right down the hall from their own.
This is the way an entire class of people fail. Entire generations drunk on the ugliness
of their loved ones. Simple projection, never learning anything from the image in the
mirror.
We dine on the hearts of our own people.
They were there. We were hungry. We felt like fighting.
They were there.
The breeze swept across the river, bringing to our noses a mixture of car exhaust
and damp soil. The beer that we had finished was feeling like a friend I hadn't seen
in a while. There was a distributor just up the street and a twenty dollar bill in my
wallet. It was already near sundown. But there was still time to properly waste the
entire day, putting it to rest with alcohol and sloth. It was a plan. Or maybe it was
something less than that.
The Emmanuels had parked their Toyota pickup almost directly under the High Level
Bridge, on a spot of earth that was burnt forever black by the fires teenagers
sparked during weekend beer blasts. The wreck was barely able to stand, its frame
being cannibalized by rust. The ancient truck had no tailgate. In each corner of the
bed was a stake that had been welded for those occasions when the family took their
dogs along with them. The dogs would be chained to these stakes. The dogs were
able to reach the edge of the bed where at each and every stop light they would
snarl at the driver who happened to be idling behind their owner. Or they would claw
at one another. Out of hunger. Out of malice. Out of boredom. I had witnessed this.
It was like an organized dogfight on wheels.
<3>
My brother said - Have you ever looked at Carrie Emmanuel? I mean really looked at
her?
- No. I try not to.
- She doesn't look like any of them. She looks almost normal. Clean her up a bit and
I'd say she was pretty fine. Not model fine. But at least decent. A seven maybe. She
circumstances, one day he would just go. Like so many people, he'd get in his car
and leave this city. He would just disappear from the local bar, from the
neighborhood, from the riverbanks, from this life.
Over the course of the last few months, my brother's idea of leaving Pittsburgh for
California was beginning to strike me as being part of our natural arc, our natural
storyline. I knew that I would probably join him. Nothing was holding me back. My
job was a crap job with no future and no benefits. The building where I lived had
recently been sold to a developer who would likely crush it and put up
condominiums. Leaving this city would be the most natural decision. It would also be
the single most dangerous act that I had ever committed in my entire life. No safety
net. No distant relatives I could call on if times got rough. We would pack up
whatever we could fit in the car and drive west. We would drive through Illinois and
Iowa and Nebraska and Nevada, the land slowly changing from green fields to yellow
fields to dry red earth. A person can do this sort of thing when there is not much to
leave behind.
<6>
I watched the moss on the rock dance underneath the water, moving with every shift
of the current, its color changing from gold to red to mud-colored depending on how
the light struck it. Moss the color of Carrie Emmanuel's hair.
I thought of her family and how they might behave behind closed doors.
I used to walk past the Emmanuel house and marvel at the lung power of the
mother, the sheer negative force of nature that she was. It never took much. The
uncut lawn. The poor grades on the report cards. The untouched dinner. Anything
would cause her to explode. Not yelling and screaming. It was a pure explosion of
words, a stream of gibberish from somewhere deep inside her dry, knotted heart.
Once a week the brothers would fight in the front yard while Carrie smoked
cigarettes on the porch. When drunk, they would light up the night by using their
massive canon of gutter-language, their shared encyclopedia of profanity.
I would miss them whenever my brother and I left the city. A person tends to miss
the events and people that have shocked them out of routine and monotony. Good
or not, families fighting are always worth remembering. People who were destroyed
early in childhood, fucked forever, are worth remembering. Their beginnings, their
end, their lives in between, everything is worth remembering.
Upon departure, I will look down at the riverbank and recall the day I listened to the
Emmanuel brothers berate their sister, then flee when the waters rose. Two grown
men, willing to rip to shreds their own flesh and blood. Flesh and blood is all that we
have. I have learned this. It is a place to live. A city that does not repel but attract.
Nothing feels better.
Everybody needs a place to run. Even if the destination is unclear.
Upon departure I will look down at the riverbanks and recall the day my brother
stepped into the swollen river, into the dark green water, near a rock covered with
flowing moss and said - I don't think that's a rock.
Blood upon blood upon blood. A million cities of refuge.
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