Free All Things Cease to Appear by Elizabeth Brundage Page A

his own father and that he hated his father for hurting his mother and taking her with him.
    I always say you can’t go no place in this world without an education. Just look at me if you don’t believe it.
    How’s that? the salesman asked.

    I guess I got sidetracked.
    What by?
    A little something called Vietnam.
    The salesman nodded and took his money. Well, you won’t find no better source than them books.
    They figured out how to make shelves out of cement blocks and wood planks and stacked the books while Rainer stood there with his hands on his hips. Not half bad, boys, not half bad. His eyes twinkled with happiness and pride, and Cole was proud, too. From then on, every night before bed, his uncle asked him to read something out loud. Cole would pick one of the volumes at random and close his eyes as the pages flipped back and forth, then stick a finger down to mark a spot, any spot, it didn’t matter. He read about ancient civilizations, aerodynamics, medieval castles, India, taxidermy. You can never know too much in this life, Rainer said. Don’t be ignorant like your uncle.
    —
    SOMETIMES, they missed her so bad they had to go home. They ran through the woods like wolves, jumped over logs, spun out of thickets. With the moon on their backs they ran.
    They stood at the top of the ridge.
    Wade said, It’s still ours.
    Always will be, Eddy said.
    They ran down through wet grass, knocking crickets to the ground. They climbed onto the porch, noisy in their muddy boots. They peered through the black windows. You could see the empty living room where they used to watch TV, and the couch where their father slept away half the day. They found the spare key where their mother kept it, in the spigot of the water pump, and went in like thieves and dug around in the old cupboards. Up in the very back of one, Eddy discovered a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and saltines and baker’s chocolate, and they handed the whiskey to Cole and he swallowed some, and Wade said it was about time he got drunk, and Cole wanted to. They all three of them drank the whiskey and ate the crackers and the bitter chocolate, and pretty soon the world looked soft and warm instead of cold and sharp, and it was a good feeling and he liked it. They ran into the field and howled at the moon, riling up the coyotes, whose cries rose up over the trees like fire, and then they appeared on the ridge with their tails up like the tips of bayonets and went on yelping, too scared to come down. Wade did his monster walk and the whole pack ran away. They found a horse blanket in the barn and lay in the cold darkness under the stars and slept all rolled together, as they’d done as small children, until the sun came bright and sudden, like a fist.
    —

    THE HOUSE WAS cursed. That’s what people said. No one wanted it. The bank owned it now. They’d already sold off the land on the other side of the ridge and somebody was putting up houses. You could see the frames going up, one next to another around a horseshoe, and bulldozers slumped in the field like strange clumsy animals. During the day you could hear the hammers and the radio and the laughter of the men, who always pissed in the woods. They had taken away their mother’s car on a flatbed. The car was in the junkyard, waiting with all the other ruined cars to be crushed for scrap. After hours, they’d go to see it, knowing it was never getting out of there in one piece. Eddy had a thing for this girl, Willis, who sometimes came along. They would climb up on the old cars and Eddy would play his horn. Some of the cars looked pretty good and Cole liked to pretend to drive them. One time Eddy got one started and showed him how to drive it. He steered around in the field with the tires squealing and the girl laughing in the back seat and fireflies all over the place. Willis had the prettiest laugh he’d ever heard and she always smelled nice. When they found a car that worked, he’d play chauffeur and Eddy