Of the four brothers, only Karl took self-restraint as a serious option. (When the rest of us appeared restrained, we were just storing up.) Karl breathed deeply until the urge to do that thing passed, and calm was restored--or the next mad urge arrived. We heard him in the corner sometimes, breathing like a horse.
When dull anxiety arrived Karl didn’t drink or jack off. He didn’t even read tales of the Arctic. He just stayed there, remaining alert and uncomfortable, like a 12 hour guard at a summer festival in a polyester faux-fur gorilla suit. Incredible. Herculean, even. Naturally he was somewhat irritable. At night he wore teeth guards. His neck was not something he used. Anyone could see he was thinking, “I’m going to sit right here until the urge to do that thing passes.” And it did pass. But mostly it stayed.
* * *
Karl was actually Karl Jr., which is another thing which ought to be illegal. Everyone ought to receive a name of their own to use, to burnish or to soil, as they choose. Whereas Karl got a name our father was already using. Our father who had zero concept of sharing. No wonder they did not get along, those two big men with the same small name.
* * *
Karl’s voice was always kind and always soft, but the way he looked at me always made me feel like I reminded him of something terrible which, try as he might, he just couldn’t forget.
Karl never did anything wrong, as far as I know. He might even have been a saint, if a new variety of saint could be minted, one with zero forgiveness.
I make him sound harsh. He did not mean to be. I suspect he was incapable of forgetting. His mind was like exceptional historical mud, which is found to carry the imprint of a woman fleeing, three-point-two million years ago and even her panic remains visible there, on the in-step. Likewise Karl could not forget the chocolate I refused to share with him but then left to mold, or Duncan’s attempt at hard cider which ended in such a comprehensive and sticky explosion, or Thom’s theft and humiliating exhibition of Karl’s entire soft porn collection, which really was downright virtuous, at least compared to what the rest of us were looking at. All this along with a lifetime’s worth of snide remarks, small incidents, hurts intended or un--, embarrassments, humiliations.
Still, none of these harms compared to the damage done by Karl’s principal madness, his crucial mistake: Father was real to him. The rest of us dismissed Father as mad and paid little notice of his manias and petty rages. Karl, however, was unable to do this: Father must be proven wrong, Father must be confronted, Father must be obeyed. Karl thus charted his days by the ever-shifting map of our father’s madness.
Father thought Karl ought to go to school for computers, that was where the money was. And Karl should improve his posture. And show more respect and more independence. And be more spontaneous!
Then, with the rest of us, Karl would discuss--was Father right or wrong, should he obey or disobey, or would it be better to compromise? But Karl never seemed to understand that Father was a loony as a cuckoo bird.
Needless to say, Karl’s respect and concern made Father drastically worse. He seldom had a good word to say about poor Karl, his troubled son. The rest of us generally spoke to Father as if he were a Black Labrador Retriever. We were kind but firm and when he was causing a problem we put him outside. Thom, especially, was not above swatting Father with a newspaper when he got out of hand and seemed liable to soil the furniture. Father respected this and ceased to criticize us: even our court dates were only evidence of ’high-spiritedness’. But Karl, who gave importance to our father’s every word, Karl was really a problem.
Father decided that Karl was uppity, going to school for computers. What was wrong with working with working on a pumpkin farm? Did he look down on his father’s honest labor, the sweat of his brow? Father thought Karl ought to quit school and come to work on the farm.
And Karl agreed, which caused even our placid Mother to turn pale.
Pumpkin farming is of course an outrageous bit of larceny which makes even Christmas tree plantations seem honorable in comparison. Untold numbers of city people are conned into believing that, because it is a holiday, it is reasonable to pay thirty-five dollars for a squash. The scribes of ancient scriptures would have added it to the list of prohibited occupations had they but known: the whores, the usurers, the arms-dealers, the pumpkin farmers.
Our father of course thought nothing in the world was finer than being a pumpkin farmer. Also, it was quite a low-impact profession. He paid high school boys to hoe; in the Fall he sat behind the money box.
Not that Karl could take it easy, oh no, Karl must make an effort. Suddenly the pumpkin flowers could not be pollinated without Karl’s help and every sprig of ragweed was a reflection of his bad attitude. Soon Karl was spending all day out in the field, twisting the pumpkins on their vines, making sure they ’ripened equally on both sides’. He seemed to believe it was all some rite of passage, after which he would, once and for all, gain Father’s respect.
Karl was so earnest and so easily hurt. We did not know how to tell him that, yes, it was a rite of passage, but only to being a loony cuckoo-bird.
The Blue Hubbard acquired a scaly fungus, the acorn squash grew lopsided. The pumpkins, unaccustomed to so much attention, became self-conscious, started making mistakes.
One brilliant afternoon in the Fall, we heard shouting and found Karl and Father in Field #3, heaving pumpkins at each other, the small sweet ones which are so good for pie. Pumpkin guts were everywhere and the air was full of the smell of freshly cracked pumpkin, which is so shamefully intimate.
Karl and Father declared they could not work together, which was the first sane thing we’d heard out of either one of them for months. Our mother gathered up the shards of busted pumpkin, skinned them, boiled them down. Karl moved out, then back in, then out again, as all of us did, continually, for so many years. Karl arrived for holidays on time, he brought flowers or wine, he never raised his voice, but we could see from how he looked at us that he had not forgotten, and that he did not forgive us, not for anything.
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