Pat Cadigan - My Brother's Keeper

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The Master of Rampling Gate

My Brother's Keeper

Pat Cadigan

All this happened a long time ago. Exactly when doesn't matter, not

in a time when you can smoke your coke and Mommy and Daddy

lock their grass in the liquor cabinet so Junior can't toke up at their

expense. I used to think of it as a relevant episode, from a time

when lots of things were relevant. It wasn't long before everyone

got burned out on relevance. Hey, don't feel too guilty, bad, smug,

perplexed. There'll be something else, you know there will. It's

coming in, right along with your ship.

In those days, I was still in the midst of my triumphant rise out of

the ghetto (not all white chicks are found under a suburb). I was still

energized and revelling at the sight of upturned faces beaming at

me, saying, "Good luck, China, you're gonna be something some

day!" as I floated heavenward attached to a college scholarship. My

family's pride wore out some time after my second visit home.

Higher education was one thing, high-mindedness was another. I

was puffed up with delusions of better and my parents kept sticking

pins in me, trying to make the swelling go down so they could see

me better. I stopped going home for a while. I stopped writing, too.

But my mother's letters came as frequently as ever: Your sister Rose

is pregnant again, pray God she doesn't lose this one, it could kill

her; your sister Aurelia is skipping school, running around, I wish

you'd come home and talk to her; and your brother Joe… your

brother Joe… your brother Joe.

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The Master of Rampling Gate

My brother Joe. As though she had to identify him. I had one

brother and that was Joe. My brother Joe, the original lost boy.

Second oldest in the family, two years older than me, first to put a

spike in his arm. Sometimes we could be close, Joe and me,

squeezed between the brackets of Rose and Aurelia. He was a

boner, the lone male among the daughters. Chip off the old block.

Nature's middle finger to my father.

My brother Joe, the disposable man. He had no innate talents, not

many learned skills other than finding a vein. He wasn't good-

looking and junkies aren't known for their scintillating personalities

or their sexual prowess or their kind and generous hearts. The

family wasn't crazy about him; Rose wouldn't let him near her kids,

Aurelia avoided him. Sometimes I wasn't sure how deep my love

for him went. Junkies need love but they need a fix more. Between

fixes, he could find the odd moment to wave me goodbye from the

old life.

Hey, Joe, I'd say. What the hell, huh?

If you have to ask, babe, you don't really want to know. Already

looking for another vein. Grinning with the end of a belt between

his teeth.

My brother Joe was why I finally broke down and went home

between semesters instead of going to suburban Connecticut with

my room-mate. Marlene had painted me a bright picture of scenic

walks through pristine snow, leisurely shopping trips to boutiques

that sold Mucha prints and glass beads, and then, hot chocolate by

the hearth, each of us wrapped in an Afghan crocheted by a

grandmother with prematurely red hair and an awful lot of money.

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The Master of Rampling Gate

Marlene admitted her family was far less relevant than mine, but

what were vacations for? I agreed and was packing my bag when

Joe's postcard arrived.

Dear China, They threw me out for the last time. That was all, on

the back of a map of Cape Cod. Words were something else not at

his command. But he'd gone to the trouble of buying a stamp and

sending it to the right address.

The parents had taken to throwing him out the last year I'd lived at

home. There hadn't been anything I could do about it then and I

didn't know what Joe thought I could do about it now but I called it

off with Marlene anyway. She said she'd leave it open in case I

could get away before classes started again. Just phone so Mummy

could break out the extra linens. Marlene was a good sort. She

survived relevance admirably. In the end, it was hedonism that got

her.

I took a bus home, parked my bag in a locker in the bus station and

went for a look around. I never went straight to my parents'

apartment when I came back. I had to decompress before I went

home to be their daughter, the stuck-up college snot-nose.

It was already dark and the temperature well south of freezing. Old

snow lined the empty streets. You had to know where to look for

the action in winter. Junkies wore coats for only as long as it took to

sell them. What the hell, junkies were always cold anyway. I toured;

no luck. It was late enough that anyone wanting to score already had

and was nodding off somewhere. Streep's Lunch was one place to

go after getting loaded, so I went there.

Streep's wasn't even half full, segregated in the usual way —

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The Master of Rampling Gate

straights by the windows, hopheads near the juke-box and toilets,

cops and strangers at the U-shaped counter in the middle. Jake

Streep didn't like the junkies but he didn't bother them unless they

nodded out in the booths. The junkies tried to keep the juke-box

going so they'd stay awake but apparently no one had any quarters

right now. The black and purple machine (Muzik Master) stood

silent, its lights flashing on and off inanely.

Joe wasn't there but some of his friends were crammed into a booth,

all on the nod. They didn't notice me come in any more than they

noticed Jake Streep was just about ready to throw them out. Only

one of them seemed to be dressed warmly enough; I couldn't place

him. I just vaguely recognized the guy he was half leaning on. I slid

into the booth next to the two people sitting across from them, a

lanky guy named Farmer and Stacey, who functioned more like his

shadow than his girlfriend. I gave Farmer a sharp poke in the ribs

and kicked one of the guys across from me. Farmer came to life

with a grunt, jerking away from me and rousing Stacey.

"I'm awake, chrissakes." Farmer's head bobbed while he tried to get

me in focus. A smile of realization spread across his dead face. "Oh.

China. Hey, wow." He nudged Stacey. "It's China."

"Where?" Stacey leaned forward heavily. She blinked at me several

times, started to nod out again and revived. "Oh. Wow. You're back.

What happened?" She smeared her dark hair out of her face with

one hand.

"Someone kicked me," said the guy I vaguely knew. I recognized

him now. George Something-Or-Other. I'd gone to high school with

him.

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The Master of Rampling Gate

"Classes are out," I told Stacey.

Perplexed, she started to fade away.

"Vacation," I clarified.

"Oh. Okay." She hung on Farmer's shoulder as though they were in

deep water and she couldn't swim. "You didn't quit?"

"I didn't quit."

She giggled. "That's great. Vacation. We never get vacation. We

have to be us all the time."

"Shut up." Farmer made a half-hearted attempt to push her away.

"Hey. You kick me?" asked George Whoever, scratching his face.

"Sorry. It was an accident. Anyone seen Joe lately?"

Farmer scrubbed his cheek with his palm. "Ain't he in here?" He

tried to look around. "I thought…" His bloodshot gaze came back to

me blank. In the act of turning his head, he'd forgotten what we

were talking about.

"Joe isn't here. I checked."

"You sure?" Farmer's head dropped. "Light's so bad in here, you

can't see nothing, hardly."

I pulled him up against the back of the seat. "I'm sure, Farmer. Do

you remember seeing him at all lately?"

His mouth opened a little. A thought was struggling through the

warm ooze of his mind. "Oh. Yeah, yeah. Joe's been gone a couple

days." He rolled his head around to Stacey. "Today Thursday?"

Stacey made a face. "Hey, do I look like a fuckin' calendar to you?"

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The Master of Rampling Gate

The guy next to George woke up and smiled at nothing. "Everybody

get off?" he asked. He couldn't have been more than fifteen and still

looked pretty good, relatively clean and healthy. The only one with

a coat. Babe in Joyland.

"When did you see Joe last, Farmer?" I asked.

"Who?" Farmer frowned with woozy suspicion.

"Joe. My brother Joe."

"Joe's your brother?" said the kid, grinning like a drowsy angel. "I

know Joe. He's a friend of mine."

"No, he's not," I told him. "Do you know where he is?"

"Nope." He slumped against the back of the seat and closed his eyes.

"Hey," said Stacey, "you wanna go smoke some grass? That's a

college drug, ain't it? Tommy Barrow's got some. Let's all go to

Tommy Barrow's and smoke grass like college kids."

"Shut up" said Farmer irritably. He seemed a little more alert now.

"Tommy's outa town, I'm tryin' to think here." He put a heavy hand

on my shoulder. "The other day, Joe was around. With this older

woman. Older, you know?"

"Where?"

"You know, around. Just around. No place special. In here. Driving

around. Just around."

I yawned. Their lethargy was contagious but I hadn't started

scratching my face with sympathetic quinine itch yet. "Who is she?

Anyone know her?"

"His connection. His new connection," Stacey said in a sudden burst

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of lucidity. "I remember. He said she was going to set him up nice.

He said she had some good sources."

"Yeah. Yeah," Farmer said. "That's it. She's with some distributor or

something."

"What's her name?"

Farmer and Stacey looked at me. Names, sure. "Blonde," said

Farmer. "Lotta money."

"And a car," George put in, sitting up and wiping his nose on his

sleeve. "Like a Caddy or something."

"Caddy, shit. You think anything ain't a Volkswagen's a Caddy,"

Farmer said.

"It's a big white Caddy," George insisted. "I saw it."

"I saw it, too, and it ain't no Caddy."

"Where'd you see it?" I asked George.

"Seventeenth Street." He smiled dreamily. "It's gotta tape deck."

"Where on Seventeenth?"

"Like near Foster Circle, down there. Joe said she's got two

speakers in the back. That's so cool."

"Okay, thanks. I guess I'll have a look around."

"Whoa." Farmer grabbed my arm. "It ain't there now. You kidding?

I don't know where they are. Nobody knows."

"Farmer, I've got to find Joe. He wrote me at school. The parents

threw him out and I've got to find him."

"Hey, he's okay. I told you, he's with this woman. Staying with her,

probably."

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The Master of Rampling Gate

I started to get up.

"Okay, okay" Farmer said. "Look, we're gonna see Priscilla

tomorrow. She knows how to find him. Tomorrow."

I sighed. With junkies, everything was going to happen tomorrow.

"When will you be seeing her?"

"Noon. You meet us here, okay?"

"Okay."

Streep glared at me as I left. At least the junkies bought coffee.

I thought about going down to Foster Circle anyway. It was a traffic

island some idealistic mayor had decided to beautify with grass and

flowers and park benches. Now it was just another junkie hangout

the straights avoided even in daytime. It wasn't likely anyone would

be hanging out there now, certainly not anyone who wanted to see

me. I trudged back to the bus station, picked up my bag, and went to

my parents' place.

I hadn't told my parents to expect me but they didn't seem terribly

surprised when I let myself in. My father was watching TV in the

living-room while my mother kept busy in the kitchen. The ail-

American nuclear salt of the earth. My father didn't look at me as I

peeled off my coat and flopped down in the old green easy-chair.

"Decided to come home after all, did you?" he said after a minute.

There was no sign of Joe in his long, square face, which had been

jammed in an expression of disgust since my sister Rose had had

her first baby three months after her wedding. On the television, a

woman in a fancy restaurant threw a drink in a man's face. "Thought

you were going to Connecticut with your rich-bitch girlfriend."

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I shrugged.

"Come back to see him, didn't you?" He reached for one of the beer

cans on the end table, giving it a little shake to make sure there was

something in it. "What'ud he do, call you?"

"I got a postcard." On TV the drink-throwing woman was now a

corpse. A detective was frowning down at her. Women who threw

drinks always ended up as corpses; if she'd watched enough TV,

she'd have known that.

"A postcard. Some big deal. A postcard from a broken-down junkie.

We're only your parents and we practically have to get down on our

knees and beg you to come home."

I took a deep breath. "Glad to see you, too. Home sweet home."

"You watch that smart mouth on you. You coulda phoned. I'd a

picked you up at the bus station. It ain't like it used to be around

here." My father finished the can and parked it with the other

empties. "There's a new element coming in. You don't know them

and they don't know you and they don't care whose sister you are.

Girl on the next block, lived here all her life — raped. On the street

and it wasn't hardly dark out."

"Who was it?"

"How the hell should I know, goddamuit? What am I, the Census

Bureau? I don't keep track of every urchin around here."

"Then how do you know she lived here all her life?"

My father was about to bellow at me when my mother appeared in

the doorway to the kitchen. "China. Come in here. I'll fix you

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The Master of Rampling Gate

something to eat."

"I'm not hungry."

Her face didn't change expression. "We got salami and Swiss

cheese. I'll make you a sandwich."

Why not. She could make me a sandwich, I wouldn't eat it, and we

could keep the enmity level up where it belonged. I heaved myself

up out of the chair and went into the kitchen.

"Did you come home on his account?" my mother asked as I sat

down at the kitchen table.

"I got a postcard from him."

"Did you." She kept her back to me while she worked at the

counter. Always a soft doughy woman, my mother seemed softer

and doughier than ever, as though a release had been sprung

somewhere inside her, loosening everything. After a bit, she turned

around holding a plate with a sandwich on it. Motherhood magic,

culinary prestidigitation with ordinary salami, Swiss cheese and

white bread. Behold, the family life. Too many Leave It To Beaver

reruns. She set the plate down in front of me.

"I did it," she said. "I threw him out."

"I figured."

She poured me a cup of coffee. "First I broke all his needles and

threw them in the trash."

"Good, Ma. You know the police sometimes go through the trash

where junkies are known to live?"

"So what are they going to do, bust me and your father? Joe doesn't

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Pat Cadigan - My Brother's Keeper

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