Free All Things Cease to Appear by Elizabeth Brundage

now warm, and took it out and split it with Eugene, thinking fondly of the man up in the stacks as he chewed it.

    In Chosen, there was a man who walked backwards. He was nearly seven feet tall, stooped over a little, with legs like an ostrich’s. He made it look easy, his neck twisted over his shoulder so he could see where he was going. Nobody had a clue why he did it. One day they followed him home, zigzagging across the street like spies. The man lived with his mother in a trailer park behind the Chinese restaurant that was rumored to cook dogs and cats. People said they drove around in a van at night, picking up strays. When you walked past the kitchen door you could hear the steaming pots and hissing woks and the cooks arguing in Chinese with cigarettes hanging out of their mouths or sometimes shooting dice. Cole didn’t know how the man who walked backwards could even fit inside the trailer. He’d heard his mother was a gypsy, that you could go to her if you wanted your fortune told. They saw her poke her head out to see if anyone was watching, then she slammed the door and dropped the little shade.
    He and Eugene left the trailer park walking backwards. It felt kind of good. You saw things differently. When they got back to Eugene’s, his grandmother was sitting out on the stoop in a lawn chair. What you boys doing walking like that? she said. For some reason it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard and they couldn’t stop laughing. The old woman shook her head. Lord, you a pair. I just don’t know what to do wit you.
    His uncle dug up a bike for him, a rusty blue Raleigh, and set it up with a crate on the back tire and had him do errands when he needed something, lightbulbs at the hardware store, a carton of smokes, and Cole didn’t like how people always looked at him in town, like he had the words Dead Parents stamped on his forehead. He found he could get away with things. He could lift a candy bar in plain sight, and even if somebody noticed they never said anything.

    On Sundays, Rainer made them go to church. They slicked down their hair with Brylcreem and buttoned up their shirts and polished their shoes, and he’d hand out ties. They walked there, passing the front porches on Division Street, inviting the sympathetic admiration of the neighbors. Impromptu fatherhood had elevated their uncle’s status in the neighborhood, and he walked with the sweep and grace of a dignitary.
    In church, Rainer would sit in the last pew with his long legs stretched out in the aisle and his arms crossed over his chest, rolling a toothpick around in his mouth. Usually he’d do the crossword puzzle. A look of enlightenment would cross his face and then he’d fill in a word. After church he bought them doughnuts and the other customers would nod and smile too much, like they felt sorry for them and were trying hard not to show it.
    Everybody knew the Hales. You’d see it register on their faces. Even his teachers. They knew the dirt farm he’d been raised on. They knew his parents were freaks who’d killed themselves. They knew his brother Wade got in fights, and that Eddy was a lowlife hood who’d end up fixing cars. They didn’t like Rainer and his ratty ponytail and his Mexican girlfriend and his halfway house and his crooked window-washing outfit. And even when Cole knew the answers and raised his hand they never called on him.
    But his uncle thought he was a genius.
    One Sunday, late in the afternoon, this salesman came to the door, hawking encyclopedias. They were in the middle of supper, but Rainer let the man in. You won’t be needing no sales pitch in this house, he told him. I got a real intelligent boy on my hands.
    Is that so?
    Rainer came around behind Cole’s chair and put his hands on his shoulders. The weight of his uncle’s hands reassured him that he was all right, that he would grow up and become a man just like anybody else. In that same moment he knew that he loved his uncle better than