It seems best, usually, to start with the simplest things. At least, that's how Warren always felt. So, without even really thinking about it, and as he was concentrating on other things -- finding the boxes he could carry, without dropping anything -- Warren was figuring out where he was.
The family had moved so often -- this would be the... fifth? Sixth? No... He put the box with the others on the concrete basement floor, and counted in his head as he walked back to the truck. Two places in Alabama. One, upstairs from Grandma, who complained about the noise -- 'Y'all sound like a herd of cattle up there', and then he had the dream about living in a doll house, with an open back, and the floor slanting so everything would soon fall out, and there on the upper floor, roaming from room to room, was a herd of cattle. Just like she said.
Then, when his Daddy went back in the military, there was the house on the Army Air Force Base, where Greggy was born. Warren remembered when Greggy had pink eye, and would stand in his crib, with his eyes all crusted over, and Warren had to bring his little brother a warm bottle of formula. There was a dream in that house too -- the clown lamp by Warren's bed had become a monster, and Warren woke screaming so loud, his Daddy came and got him out of bed. Warren held onto his Daddy's neck so tight that his uncut nails drew blood.
One house in Texas, where they went to the zoo, and Warren saw the tarantulas, huge and hairy, and the alligators. Warren had his tonsils out in the hospital there, and even though his parents told him that after the operation, he'd been found wandering the halls, delirious with a fever of 105, all Warren could really remember was the taste of the Juicy Fruit gum his mother brought when she visited. The yellow wrapper, with the arrow on it.
There must be a million boxes in this truck, Warren decided.
Then they all moved north -- by then, Warren had another brother, Nelson -- and they lived in... four houses, while Warren went through three grades in school, and started the fourth. And the twins were born, across the river in St. Louis. And other, sadder things began to happen. But this is about the houses -- that's seven so far. Plus, four schools too. Warren wanted a drink of water, but thought he should wait. Besides, who knew where the glasses were?
On with the count. If you counted the stay with Aunt Margaret, after his parents had gotten the divorce, and he and his brothers, and his cousins too, all got the flu at the same time, and there were sick kids and mattresses everywhere, there were two more houses. Counting the orphanage as a house. Then there was Clairton, for just a year, in the little apartment over the garage, where he'd cried when his parents told him he could have some goldfish, so they changed their minds. And he hadn't been able to watch the whole 'Christmas Carol' movie that one time, because it was too scary. And now...
The newest house. The kitchen faces north, Warren could tell. This was one of the first things he did, when they got to another new place -- where's north? It just made him feel safer somehow. And then, while he was in the orphanage for that time, he'd begun to orient himself, when he went to bed, and when he woke up. North, he would think, lying on his cot, is... this way. It had nothing to do with Santa Claus. He would have liked to orient himself with his father too, but he didn't know where his father was. So, just north had to do.
Also, the wall in the living room with the stone-fronted fireplace -- if was on the north side of the house. Warren had felt so important, when his Daddy and Jane asked him to help pick the color for the slivers of wall on either side of the wide grey hearth, even though they picked another color anyway. The big picture window, and the front door, with the little concrete porch and the wrought iron railing running down beside the steps, faces east. The small dark dining room has a western window. Across the hall, the bathroom's narrow window looks east, like the front window, over to the muddy yard across the street, where there are even more kids living, and lots of dogs.
And in the new house, all three bedrooms are in a line, on the south side. The big one in the back, where the air conditioner is going, is for his parents. It has a big closet on one wall, with mirrored sliding doors. The smallest one, you have to walk through, is for two of his brothers, when they come home from the orphanage. There's a small closet, and a south-facing window. There will be two twin beds there.
And the front bedroom is where Warren will sleep. Two more windows -- one south, one east. Two more twin beds. It's already been painted an uninteresting blue -- with Warren's father making the usual comments about 'So you always say you want to be an artiste...' as he stirs the paint and gives Warren a brush. It's no use pointing out that there's a big difference between painting a wall, and painting a picture. Although there is a kind of calming quality, Warren thought, to covering, slowly and evenly, the old layer of paint with a new one, so you can't tell what used to be underneath.
All of this work, all of this packing and lifting and painting and getting in the way -- the selling of Jane's big maroon Mercury convertible -- to get ready for Greggy and Nelson and Elliot to come back from living in the orphanage. Warren had lived there for eighteen months, and was so scared of the place that, since he got out, and when his parents went to visit his brothers, Warren pretended to be sick to his stomach, so he could stay at Aunt Margaret's house, and play with the piano in her basement. Miss Cressley, one of the kinder housemothers at the Home, had been Warren's piano teacher, but he'd never been able to figure out the bass clef, no matter how hard he tried. And now, after a year and a half of living apart, his brothers were all coming to this new house, with the fresh paint smell in the rooms. All together, all at once. His brothers were coming home. He supposed he should feel something special, but he wasn't sure what that was.
When all but the heaviest of the boxes are in the basement, and nobody seems to need Warren to do anything else for a few minutes, he goes outside, to walk the perimeter of the double lot that comes with the house. There's a wide space, between the kitchen wall and the nearest neighbor, up the steep hill. When he first saw the yard, Warren thought it was some kind of jungle -- there were tall weeds, almost up to his chin, from the front edge of the property, all the way across to the little black stream that ran down behind all the houses. The only thing that stood out was the big old elm tree in the middle of the overgrown space.
Now, the yard was all cleared, but it had taken Warren days and days of hot sweaty work, mostly using a swing blade, but sometimes switching to a little crescent-shaped sickle, and getting blisters all over his hands. At the end of the back yard, by that little run of dirty water, was a row of willow trees, and beyond that lay the remains of a big old farm, with some abandoned apple trees here and there, the remnants of an orchard.
The south side of the yard was mostly dirt -- at least that was something to be thankful for -- no weeds to cut there. Maybe this was where the builders had dumped the dirt they dug up when they built the house -- there was a kind of suffocated feeling about it. And right at the end of the lot, there was the beginning of a thin forest of mostly elms and maple trees, running down the slope. It looked like a place worth exploring. Plus, at the end of the driveway, right where the concrete met the blacktop road, there was a rough wooden barrier, to keep cars from driving into the weeds, Warren guessed. But you could tell that long ago, the road had gone further than it did now. Warren wondered what it led to now.
'Get your ass in here, boy,' Warren's dad yelled. 'There's work to be done, and it ain't gonna get done by itself.'
© 2012 Walter Zimmerman
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