The Way the Family Got Away
The Way the Family Got Away
Michael Kimball
A remarkable first novel about a journey across America and the effects of grief and loss on a family that is trying to stay together when everything is falling apart.This is the way the family got away. They pack all the things they can fit into the car and place the body of their dead brother in the toy box and put him in the boot. They leave Mineola, Texas and head across the terrifying, vacant landscape of Mid-America. In every place they visit, they sell off what they can to make it to the next town. They keep going to keep the family together.Michael Kimball’s remarkable The Way The Family Got Away is the story of the journey seen through the eyes of the family’s surviving children, a young boy and his younger sister. They try to make sense of death; why they must leave home and how they get from one place to the next. It is an extraordinary study of the effects of grief upon language and the ways that loss makes itself felt through a child’s imagination.
The Way the Family Got Away
Michael Kimball
Copyright (#ulink_8b7f6514-d77f-5685-837e-c7765abac0f3)
First published in Great Britain in 2000 by
Fourth Estate
A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/)
This edition first published in 2001
Copyright © Michael Kimball 2000
The right of Michael Kimball to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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Source ISBN: 9780007292073
Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2016 ISBN: 9780007394913
Version: 2016-01-12
Dedication (#ulink_0ab0d149-1a5e-57fc-bb30-39bee8a1e514)
For Bompa
Epigraph (#ulink_2ff0fc1e-5974-51dc-8a28-62aaadf5bca9)
The baby lived inside a world that was smaller and older where they still traveled by carriage and spoke a bawling language.
Bompa
The bawling language was small and died inside the baby and inside the bodies of everybody who could hear it.
Bompa
whah whaahh uuhhh dahhh dadadadada mabadaduwigo
My Little Brother
Contents
Cover (#u3b32b5e2-069d-59ff-a909-b3fd2741307a)
Title Page (#u7dbe362d-a3a6-57f2-af83-088c218665a6)
Copyright (#u54a79bc6-ecb7-5db2-9bc5-6d3300e77500)
Dedication (#u0c0f91fb-9ffb-5b51-aef9-79f1a918a36a)
Epigraph (#u53ff0cd2-7e08-5c79-ae0f-1ca7657d1da4)
The Whole Way We Got There (#u3162d4e1-68ac-5b55-ac2f-ce593764f8b5)
Living Anymore in Mineola (#u7686274b-e6a0-50eb-998a-647f60c7ee0f)
My Doll-Family, My People-Family, the Sun Outside, My Little Brother’s Insides, the Big-People, and How They Could Have Made Me Another One of My Little Brother (#u10f9e04a-990d-5170-b775-b04757aecf6f)
Our House in Mineola (#u4c90a162-c66d-5dcd-b4de-9b3d95987af7)
The Baby-Sized Hole Inside the Ground and Dirt-World and the Toy Box with My Little Brother Inside It (#ue20b71ef-4966-5ed5-a749-484d98411d01)
Mineola to Birthrock (#u849ca2a9-b281-5c27-b05a-fa7445ab0c7a)
Our House-Car, Bompa’s House, Going to Heaven, and When We Could Start Living Again (#u49686783-142e-59c8-8980-72739db1bff2)
Birthrock to Stringtown (#litres_trial_promo)
Some More Ways Dolls Keep People Alive, the Way You Go Away from Doll to People and Bigger, and the Big-People We Were Going to Grow Up into and Live Them (#litres_trial_promo)
Stringtown to Albion (#litres_trial_promo)
My Doll-Me, My People-Me, and the Way My Doll-Family Got Away (#litres_trial_promo)
Albion to Hot Springs (#litres_trial_promo)
How to Cut Dolls and People Out of Paper, Crayon-Faces, the String that Holds People Together, Holding Hands Together, and One More Way Any Family Can Break (#litres_trial_promo)
Hot Springs to North Little Rock (#litres_trial_promo)
House-Cars, Car-People, the Safety-Bars that Saved Me and My Bigger Brother, Some More Ways We Got Some of Everything Back, and Why Everybody Needs to Stop and Rest or They Will Break (#litres_trial_promo)
North Little Rock to Campbell Station (#litres_trial_promo)
How You Get the Breath All the Way Down into Momma and the Baby Alive, How Poppa Laid the Babies Down to Sleep and Grow Up Inside Momma, and Why We Kept Waking Each Other Up (#litres_trial_promo)
Campbell Station to Biggerton (#litres_trial_promo)
How to Make a Doll-Baby Out of String, Baby Clothes, Shoe Parts, Buttons, Stones, Balloons, a Hat, Glue, Crayons, a Needle and Thread, and Two People Too (#litres_trial_promo)
Biggerton to Glenallen (#litres_trial_promo)
How to Make a Baby Up, How to Make Me Up into a Momma, and How Many People Any People-Family Needs to Have Living Inside It (#litres_trial_promo)
Glenallen to Anna (#litres_trial_promo)
Looking, Looking-Pictures, the People Inside Momma, the Shape of the Baby, and Looking Inside Momma’s Stomach and Hole (#litres_trial_promo)
Anna to Henderson (#litres_trial_promo)
One of the Holes that Goes Down into the Ground and Dirt-World and Away to My Little Brother, the Other Momma and Poppa that Climbed Us Up and Up Out of the Hole, and How Our Momma and Poppa Kept Us Inside Our Family (#litres_trial_promo)
Henderson to Hendricksville (#litres_trial_promo)
My Little Brother and His Breath Inside the Toy Box, How We Played with the Doll and People of My Little Brother, and How Alive You Have to Be to Go Away (#litres_trial_promo)
Hendricksvllle to Bennetts Switch (#litres_trial_promo)
How Nobody Should Ever Wear Sun-Dresses Up to Too Hot, How Everybody Tried to Burn Me Up Inside One, and How You Make a Sun-Dress Out of the Sun Anyway (#litres_trial_promo)
Bennetts Switch to Frederick Perrytown (#litres_trial_promo)
The Doll-Family Inside the Toy Box and How Anything Bad You Say to Them Goes Away from You to Them So You Can Go Away to Somewhere Else Better Than Where Everybody Else Is Dead (#litres_trial_promo)
Frederick Perrytown to Edwardsburg (#litres_trial_promo)
How Momma Played Dead, the Shirt-Baby Poppa Carried, the Angels Inside the Clouded-House on Top of the Hot-Hill, and How Everybody Else Was Waiting for Us in Heaven (#litres_trial_promo)
Edwardsburg to Sunfield (#litres_trial_promo)
The House with Counting-Doors, the Man that Knew How Many People Were Alive, BoxRooms, More Holes, the Lady with the Rolling Trash Cans, and Why Everybody Has to Get Up and Live (#litres_trial_promo)
Sunfield to Far Town (#litres_trial_promo)
The People-Family that Had a Living-Baby Living with Them and the Way We Got Away with a New Baby of My Little Brother (#litres_trial_promo)
Far Town to Morrison (#litres_trial_promo)
How the New Baby of My Little Brother Started to Die Too and How We Gave Him Away to the Baby-Angel at the Hot-Hill (#litres_trial_promo)
Morrison to Gaylord (#litres_trial_promo)
How We Burned My Little Brother Up, How We Turned My Little Brother into See-Through Dirt, and How We Buried My Little Brother Inside a See-Through Jar and Farther Down into the Ground and Dirt-World (#litres_trial_promo)
Bompa’s House in Gaylord (#litres_trial_promo)
Why We Were Dead and Where Dead People and My Little Brother Go Away to Inside You (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
The Whole Way We Got There (#ulink_6d09a849-fa22-51e2-aad2-8dd4bee07313)
My brother’s cradle and other baby stuff got us from Mineola to Birthrock. My mother’s necklaces and other dress-up stuff got us from Birthrock to Stringtown. This girl there got my sister’s doll people along with all the other things that went with her practice family. They told my sister she wasn’t going to need her dollhouse and the doll people living in it anymore since we weren’t living in our house anymore. So my sister’s dollhouse and everything in it got us from Stringtown to Albion. That was where this other man got my father’s pocketwatch and pocketknife along with some other things my father almost always kept with him whenever we went anywhere.
Those things from my father’s pockets got us from Albion and all the way out of Oklahoma to Hot Springs and our start through Arkansas. That was where this other boy got my baseball bat and baseball glove along with some other things they told me were too small for me. This other boy got all my clothes but for the handed-down-to-me suit of clothes they made me wear and that left me with a ways to go before it would fit me. My brother might have gotten the baseball stuff handed-down-to-him along with the clothes but he wasn’t ever going to grow up into any of it anyway.
So all my stuff got us from Hot Springs to North Little Rock and we stopped for that one night. That was where these other people got our pillows, blankets, sheets, and the other stuff that helped us sleep. We got from North Little Rock to Campbell Station and we kept going away. My mother’s purse along with everything she had left in it got us from Campbell Station to Biggerton. This other girl there got my sister’s locket and chain that had a picture of my sister in it from when she was a baby and sick. But my sister did not die from that and that other girl getting it and that locket and chain still got us out of Biggerton and Arkansas and into Glenallen in Missouri. That was where these other men got my father’s wallet along with all the stuff my father had left in his wallet. There were the family pictures of us and the cards that had the names of other people and other places on them. There wasn’t any money left but we didn’t need any money anymore anyway. My father’s wallet along with all the stuff left in it got us from Glenallen to Anna, Illinois and left us in the middle of America with all those miles behind us and all those miles to go farther away in front of us.
Anna was where this other boy got my guns, my holster belt, and all the bullets that went in my gun or went in the loops of my holster belt and around my waist. My guns and other play stuff got us from Anna to Giantsburg and Old Shawneetown, over the Ohio River, all the way out of Illinois, and up into the hump of Kentucky that has Henderson in it. That was where my mother traded her wedding dress and wedding ring away to this other lady that wanted to wear them and get married. That other lady also wanted the veil to the wedding dress but my mother didn’t have it or any of her other wedding things left but my father. But my mother’s wedding things still got those two other people married and us from Henderson to Hendricksville. This girl there got all my sister’s clothes but for the dress my sister put on to wear out of Hendricksville, up through Six Points, Big Sheridan, Russellville, and into Bennetts Switch.
It was there that we got down to where my mother’s clothes were almost the last stuff of hers that anybody else really wanted and that got us from Bennetts Switch to Frederick Perrytown. This other brother and sister there got the record player and records that my sister and me played in the back seat. The record player and records made somebody up out of words and songs but trading them away also got us out of Frederick Perrytown, out of Indiana, and up into Edwardsburg at the beginning of Michigan.
All this stuff so far got us up to where this man got the silver frame with the picture of our whole family in it—the picture that had all the old people in it that were already dead and some others of us that weren’t dead yet. Our family was going to need everybody we had left in it to get there. That silver frame with the family picture and all those dead people and us got us the miles that got us out of Edwardsburg, up through Schoolcraft, over to Battle Creek, and into Sunfield. That was where this other father and his family got our suitcases and the other things where we had packed our stuff up. Those suitcases, boxes, and crates were almost empty anyway and that other father and his family let us keep the things we had left in them—the underwear and the shoes, the doll parts, our dirty clothes, and some other stuff of ours that nobody else ever wanted but us. My brother was the only empty thing that we kept with us.
But there was all that other stuff that wasn’t ours anymore. There was that other family on their way to somewhere else. There was all our other stuff with all those other people and other families all over America. But all this stuff so far also got us out of Sunfield, into and out of Lyons and Hubbardston, and up into Far Town. These other people there got everything we had left in the glove box—the maps and our other car papers, the flashlight, a pair of sunglasses, some batteries, a sewing kit, a first-aid kit, some gloves, and some other small things that fit in there. All that stuff from the glove box got us all the way out of Far Town and up into Morrison. That was where there were some men along the way that took our spare tire along with the hubcaps, the tire jack, the lug wrench, and some other tools that were in the trunk. Those men took our back seat for the back of their pickup truck and took our rearview mirror so they could see if anybody else was sitting down in it. The rest of our car got us up through Marceytown and Roscommon, on through Toms Mile, Bradford, and some other places that got their names from people that must have done stuff. Or maybe people got that far and then just stopped so that the town and everybody else kept growing up out of all those miles. We stopped in Gaylord and kept going—into its streets and up to the two-story house that was going to have Bompa coming out of it to take us inside it.
That was as far as all that stuff got us. There were all those towns that we stopped at and all those towns that we did not stop at until we got to Gaylord. We traded for the next town in Hot Springs and in Anna, in Henderson and in Frederick Perrytown, in places that never got big enough to get a name, and in all the other towns along the way that already had their names. We traded our stuff away for miles. We traded for the lives of other people, what might have happened to us for what did.
Living Anymore in Mineola (#ulink_202f653e-92f5-5be9-8962-8476d4e234e4)
My brother’s fever wouldn’t leave him or us and our house. My mother took how hot my brother was from out of his mouth but his fever didn’t go down. She rubbed ice cubes on his forehead and lips that melted on her fingers and dried on her hands and his face and he cried. My brother reached his small hands up to his face and shook his head back and forth and pushed away from us. He wouldn’t look at us or our family.
We weren’t supposed to go into my brother’s room anymore or he wouldn’t get any better than he was then. His whole room was sick. His body swelled up and made his cradle rock back and forth and rattle. My mother and father and sister and me all stood in the doorway to his sickroom where we could still look at him. My sister told us that we had to stop the cradle from rocking back and forth or my brother might tip over and fall and break. My sister went into my brother’s sickroom and carried my brother out of there and through all the other rooms of the house that weren’t sick or dying or small but we still had to go to the hospital.
My brother was going to die. We drove him down a road that wasn’t big enough to be paved yet but that had men standing next to it hammering nails into houses so other families would come and live there. We drove past the school where my sister was supposed to go with me next year but where she never did. We drove past stores and gas stations and places to eat but none of them had anything in them that would keep my brother alive.
We drove my brother to the hospital that had the doctor and nurse that were supposed to save my brother for us. My mother told the doctor and nurse that we starved my brother but even so his fever didn’t go down. The nurse fixed the table paper up and the doctor laid my brother down on it and on top of the metal table. The doctor looked inside my brother’s ears and mouth and down his throat. He pulled my brother’s eyelids up with his thumb but they closed up again when he let go of them. My brother squeezed his eyes down tight into wrinkles and cried. He shook his head back and forth so the doctor couldn’t put anything else in his mouth and the doctor put his hands down into his pockets and he frowned.
My brother stopped breathing anymore but his body was still hot when we touched him. My sister pulled her hand back fast and told me it burned. The nurse breathed out into my brother’s mouth and pushed down on his chest with her two fingers. My brother coughed and spit and cried. My mother and father cried too. My brother reached his small hands and arms out to us and my mother picked him up and held him in our family.
We took my brother away from the hospital alive but we didn’t get very far away before my brother stopped breathing again and we took him back home. My mother carried my brother into our house but he wasn’t going to live there or with us anymore. But we had to keep living even though my brother wasn’t going to do it.
We stayed inside our family and house and got ready for everybody else that was going to come over to see my brother and the way he died. My father looked out the windows and looked down into his hands. My mother sat down in chairs and touched her hair and wiped her eyes. My sister played with a doll that was supposed to make my brother alive again but it never did.
The whole time we stayed inside there there were people that came over to our house and up to our windows and looked at us inside. They brought over food in bowls and food on plates. They knocked on the windows and knocked on the doors and they waited there. They called us by our names but we never did say anything back to them. We couldn’t let any of them come inside yet.
They left food on the windowsill and my mother would open the window far enough up to slide the food inside our house and us. They left more food outside the doors or on the porch and we would wait for them to leave before we brought the food inside to eat it. They would always look back at our house before they got into their cars and drove away from our house and our family and us. They were trying to see what we looked like and did and the way that we lived there after my brother died.
We lived inside our house and ourselves. We did not talk to each other even though my mother would talk to herself. We got my brother and everything else in our family and house ready for everybody else to come over and inside and see it. People drove over from Sweetwater and Chico and Riverland and they parked their cars all up and down the road in front of our house and in our front yard. They drove in from Killeen and Overton and came inside our house to see my brother and us. They drove up from Tyler and Sugar Land and Old Dime Box and everybody wanted to talk about my brother and the way that we laid him down in his casket.
This lady from Amarillo talked about the dead people that we shared in our family—my brother and her sister. This man from Hull Lake told me that we die in families so that somebody remembers us and can tell other people about it. This man from Brownland told my sister and me that neither one of us was the dead one so we shouldn’t cry anymore. This lady from Kossetown told us that we can’t get away from our family or dying but that my mother and father would get another brother for us.
But everybody also stopped talking to us and looking at my brother and they all left my brother and us and our family and house. My father told us that my brother gone was enough for the rest of us to gather ourselves and our stuff up and leave that place too. We couldn’t stay in our house or Mineola anymore. My brother was dead and we couldn’t live there either.
My Doll-Family, My People-Family, the Sun Outside, My Little Brother’s Insides, the Big-People, and How They Could Have Made Me Another One of My Little Brother (#ulink_503f5780-c962-5ccf-ba1f-7c1258f8868d)
My doll-family plays better at family than my people one does. My Poppa-doll got lost somewhere but Momma told me it was okay for me to make me another Poppa-doll out of string-clothes and buttons and him all kept together with popsicle sticks.
The doll of my little brother got left out under the sun one day once and the yellow-fever colored my little brother in sun-colored. We had to take my little brother to see big-people where they put stuff inside his mouth and touched on how bright was the color of his forehead. There was the poke-poke lady with all her more fingers. There was the fold-handed man that threw drops of water all around the room but that never made it rain outside.
One more way they didn’t make up to make him not as sun-hot as he was was ice cubes inside his diapers. One more way was saying baby and in and air and out from my mouth on him. One more way was coloring his skin back in skin-colored with my crayons. One more way was hanging his baby clothes up on tree-arms but that was only to be inside the shade.
The sun-color got too bright and too inside under my little brother’s skin until it burned his insides out inside his crib. My little brother lived with me and my doll-family after he burned up inside and big-people came over to see how he did it. Big-people carried food over but we didn’t even feed any of it to my little brother. The rest of us ate all of it even though we were all already alive. One man had tree-arms that carried a treeful of red apples and green apples and that kept anyone else from catching any yellow-fever from my little brother.
One more man pushed a button that made light flash that burned your eyes up but did not make it so hot as to burn us up inside. The light flashing made looking-pictures of my little brother on Momma’s lap and one more way to make babies go away to alive. That man blew on the looking-pictures of my little brother until he was out of breath and which but that just left my little brother all small and flat.
My little brother was even littler when he was dead. But more and more big-people came over to our house and one more man had more ways than me to keep my little brother alive. That man wore a burnt-colored knee-coat that was still warm. You could see how hot it was in his hot-colored face and the way he blew his cheeks out to get the hot part out of him. Momma told me that dead people was all that that man did but that that man wasn’t going to take my little brother away from us. We were going to take my little brother away with us. That man was just supposed to get him ready to go.
He undressed the clothes even though my little brother was already cold. But clothes can’t be alive anyway and that man didn’t keep going when he got down to my little brother’s skin. That man took up a bucket of rain water and squeeze-clouds that he carried down with him out of the sky. That man squeezed the squeeze-clouds of rain water down over my little brother so it would drown him in the swallow of water and smoke the fire out that burned his insides up. He dried my little brother down inside a towel like the one they wrapped him up in to bring him home in after he was born. That man unwrapped the towel from my little brother and rained handfuls of rain water up over his head and down over his neck and out the ends of his hair. We combed it out and it looked nice. That man smelled his nose down into the neck and shoulder and snuffled my little brother. That man touched my little brother’s eyelids down with his finger and thumb like Poppa would pull the window-cover down before he would put us down for sleep. But how was my little brother going to see us anymore when his eyes were closed?
That man stuffed cotton balls and worded-paper inside my little brother’s mouth so he could see how to talk. That man got out the needle and thread and asked me how my little brother smiled. He threaded the thread through the needle and the needle and thread into and out of his lips so it could not be told. He got a moon-knife out of his night-bag and cut cuts inside both the elbows and the knees both. He pushed tubes into my little brother but we didn’t feed him any food through them. The squeeze-pump sucked and pulled. It spit and pushed the blood. The tubes he looped into my little brother were outside-veins for the clear-blood that flooded the burned and dead-blood out from my little brother.
That man let me touch where my little brother should have started up again but my hand never breathed up or down on him. We hit and pushed my little brother on his rib bones but that didn’t start his heart beating up or down again either. That just made my little brother go all see-through and angel-colored so we stopped squeezing the squeeze-pump and pulled the tubes out and stopped the holes up.
We colored his skin back in skin-colored with paint brushes from that man’s night-bag. We painted his face and neck and hands back on him but it did not look real or alive enough even when it didn’t even have to be pretty. That man told me let’s dress him up nice so we put dress-up clothes on him but my little brother still didn’t get up and live.
Our House in Mineola (#ulink_03583499-58fb-5408-b973-363ef3a97215)
The men went from living room to bedroom and bedroom and bathroom to kitchen. The men went into and out of the rooms and into and out of our house. The men went back and forth between our house and their truck. They got the couch up between two of them and carried it out. One of them took the cushions. Another one of them carried a chair. Another one of them carried another chair. Their arms and the other parts of them were all large. They made the doorways small with themselves and the furniture they carried out of the rooms, away down the hallway, and out of our house—table, lamp, table and chairs, dresser and dresser, bed and bed and bed.
These and the even bigger things they carried out across the front yard—ice box, bathtub, bathroom sink, kitchen sink, the kitchen table and chairs. They carried out boxes full of other stuff and carried other stuff out that did not fit into boxes. They rolled the carpet up and rolled the carpet up and folded it over their shoulders and shouldered it up into the truck. They pulled the cupboards from the kitchen walls down. The floors they pulled up—all the tile and board.
They took the windows out of the walls and took the way we looked out of the windows away with them when they did that. They took the doors off the hinges and banged them shut inside the walls of their truck so that those closed doors left us outside but also opened the rest of America up for us.
The men pulled the stoop away from the front door and took that away with them too. All that stuff wasn’t ours anymore and their truck was packed. The men climbed up into the truck and into the truck and into the truck. They sat down in the chairs at the kitchen table and among themselves and all the insides of our house that they had carried out. The last one of them pulled down on the rope that rolled the truck’s rolling back door closed. He climbed up through the truck driver’s front door and drove the truck and all our stuff that was inside the truck away from our house in Mineola to somewhere else in America.
My mother and father and brother and sister along with the other and smaller things that we had left were all that we had left of us in that house of our family and stuff. My mother and father packed the suitcases, boxes, and crates up with the rest of the stuff that was still ours. My mother and father packed my brother up in his casket and packed his casket up in the trunk. My mother and father carried everything else out to the car and packed it up too. My mother and father packed my sister and me up with the rest of the stuff that we had left and we left too.
The Baby-Sized Hole Inside the Ground and Dirt-World and the Toy Box with My Little Brother Inside It (#ulink_b446d02d-80dc-5550-8b99-1bbdca940213)
They dug the baby-sized hole deep enough for any of the big-people to go down into it. One man pounded stab-holes with the bone-stick he pulled out of his shoulder and back and swung down out of his arm and into the ground and dirt-world. One more man did it with a big-spoon he dug out of the hole and bone of his leg and foot. They dug all the way down into the hole until we couldn’t see them anymore but for their hands and arms and dirt and spoons and bones and sticks. But they didn’t make the hole go all the way through. Neither one of them dug the baby-sized hole deep enough or far enough away or down enough under for my little brother.
But they could both go all the way down inside the hole and still be alive when they climbed back up and crawled back out of it. They were both too big to die and lay down inside the hole. But they pounded the nails down into the top side of the toy box so my little brother couldn’t get out of it and they tied him up inside it with ropes too. They swung my little brother up over the hole with the ropes and they knocked the toy box back and forth against the side-walls all the way down to the bottom where the hole stopped.
But they didn’t cover my little brother up with anything so he could stay warm and go away to sleep. They left the hole open so we could throw dirt on top of him but none of us were going to do it. They left the ropes with him for him to crawl with back out but we had to go and pull him back out of the ground and dirt-world with our hands and arms and backs and ropes. The toy box hit and knocked back and forth against the side-walls and the dirt and rocks all fell down under my little brother and started filling his baby-sized hole back up. We got the toy box out and knocked on its sides and listened for noises but my little brother was quiet inside. We unpounded the nails from the top side of the toy box and pulled it open and looked inside but my little brother was still inside there and he was still dead.
The pile of dirt and rocks by the side of the hole wasn’t high enough and far enough away or up for him to climb on up into the sky and cloud. But we pushed the dirt and rocks back down into the hole and filled it back up with our hands and bones and shoes and hot and string and down and sun and burn and hills and ways and years and names and big and in and dolls and blood and dead and we kept my little brother up above the ground and dirt-world and with us.
Mineola to Birthrock (#ulink_ae086f33-9751-5ee3-b15c-da680125ad37)
We drove away from our house and away down the road. We drove past some other houses that were all broken at the walls and didn’t have any families living in them anymore. They had broken windows and broken doors. They had broken cars in the front yards that didn’t have any tires on them so that those people that had lived there never left but stayed there and died.
We drove all the way out to the far part of Mineola where there were houses that had people and families that were still living in them. We stopped and got out of our car and walked up to this one house and looked in the windows but they were only old people that lived there and they didn’t have any babies left in their family anymore so we didn’t even knock. We needed to find a house with a family that was going to have a baby in it.
We knocked on doors and looked in windows until this other family that needed a baby came up to their door and answered us. Their faces were the only things we could see through their screen door—their mother and father, their brother and sister, and the way they looked like a family in there. Their family stood there behind their screen door and in their doorway and inside their house and with all their stuff. Their father pulled their brother and sister in close to him and his leg and hip and their mother stood next to him too.
Our family stood there in the same way but outside their house and on their porch and without anything with us but us. My father asked their family if they were going to have a baby in it and their father nodded that they were and their mother held the bottom of her stomach up with her hands. My father asked them to stay there and wait there and we went back to our car and opened the trunk up. My father got my brother’s cradle out and my mother got my brother and the other baby stuff out. My mother gave my sister and me the small blankets and the little pillows, the stuffed animals and the other baby toys, and we all carried all that baby stuff back up to that family and their house and stood there on their porch with it.
My mother cradled my brother in the blanket in her arms and touched her hand over the blanket and my brother even though he wasn’t crying or moving his arms and hands or even doing anything anymore. My mother kept my brother with her inside herself and in her arms. My mother wouldn’t let anybody else hold my brother even when their mother talked like a baby talks and held her arms out for him. Their mother said that she wanted to practice with him some but my mother said the baby might break and she wouldn’t let go of him. Their family’s baby wasn’t born yet and their mother cradling my brother in her arms might have killed the baby inside her stomach. Nobody else was supposed to touch my brother anymore or somebody else besides him might die in some other family or house.
The thing that killed my brother was that the cradle didn’t have anymore baby years left in it. My mother didn’t have anymore baby years left in her arms anymore either. My sister and me had already lived them all up and the other baby stuff didn’t have enough baby years left in any of it to keep my brother alive. My brother’s cradle was probably going to kill their family’s baby too but they could not have known that yet.
They got my brother’s cradle and other baby stuff and we got away from there. We walked away from them and back to our car so we could be a family again. My father opened the trunk up and my mother laid my brother down in his casket and closed its top and closed the trunk. The casket was the only other baby place that we had left for my brother after my mother wasn’t holding him in her arms anymore. The rest of our family got back inside our car and closed the doors. Their family walked down off their porch and into the driveway so they could watch us go. Their family was a family there and then and we were going to be a family somewhere else. We drove away from them and they waved at us from their driveway and we waved back through our car windows.
They got my brother’s cradle and other baby stuff and we got out of Mineola. The only baby thing we kept with us was my brother. We stayed a family that way. We drove away from Mineola and toward Birthrock—away from where my brother was alive once and died there and toward the miles and the everything else that was going to happen to us everywhere else we went.
We traded my brother’s life away to that other family when we traded my brother’s cradle and other baby stuff away to them. My brother and the baby he was going to be were going to grow up with some other family somewhere else. We got the life of my brother that we didn’t leave buried in Mineola. That was why we were going to see my brother in so many other babies and other families and other places. My brother was going to be alive in Campbell Station and in Far Town and in other places that we went away to on our way to Bompa’s house in Gaylord.
Our House-Car, Bompa’s House, Going to Heaven, and When We Could Start Living Again (#ulink_3ee65efb-b618-5427-95c1-2c27f85109d1)
We drove our house-car over the road over and over until the tires got too hot and they colored the road in burnt-colored. But we weren’t going to burn up inside our house-car or us. We rolled the windows all the way down so the wind could blow through the insides of our house-car and us and push the sun off from our faces and arms so we didn’t burn up like my little brother did before he died.
We drove our house-car down into road-holes and rolled up out of them farther down the road. We hit little hills with our house-car and it lifted us up into the air until we weren’t touching the ground or road-world anymore. We were going to Heaven.
Our whole people-family was going to start living again as soon as we got to Bompa’s house in our house-car. Bompa wasn’t going to let anybody else die after we got there. Bompa was going to have bedrooms for everybody to sleep inside them so we could all get up and live inside his house. There was going to be a living room that was big enough for us to all live together with my whole people-family and my little brother alive inside it too.
But we weren’t living anywhere anymore. We kept leaving everywhere we went. We couldn’t stop and live anywhere until we got to Bompa’s house with our house-car and us and with everybody alive. We drove and rolled and bounced up and down inside our house-car the whole way there. Momma’s head would go up and down and Poppa’s would too. My bigger brother would hold on to his stomach and my insides would shake when they bounced up and fell down and they were empty inside them. You could hear the way my little brother would roll against the sides of the toy box and inside the trunk and you could feel it inside your own insides too.
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Michael Kimball
A remarkable first novel about a journey across America and the effects of grief and loss on a family that is trying to stay together when everything is falling apart.This is the way the family got away. They pack all the things they can fit into the car and place the body of their dead brother in the toy box and put him in the boot. They leave Mineola, Texas and head across the terrifying, vacant landscape of Mid-America. In every place they visit, they sell off what they can to make it to the next town. They keep going to keep the family together.Michael Kimball’s remarkable The Way The Family Got Away is the story of the journey seen through the eyes of the family’s surviving children, a young boy and his younger sister. They try to make sense of death; why they must leave home and how they get from one place to the next. It is an extraordinary study of the effects of grief upon language and the ways that loss makes itself felt through a child’s imagination.
The Way the Family Got Away
Michael Kimball
Copyright (#ulink_8b7f6514-d77f-5685-837e-c7765abac0f3)
First published in Great Britain in 2000 by
Fourth Estate
A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/)
This edition first published in 2001
Copyright © Michael Kimball 2000
The right of Michael Kimball to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.
Source ISBN: 9780007292073
Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2016 ISBN: 9780007394913
Version: 2016-01-12
Dedication (#ulink_0ab0d149-1a5e-57fc-bb30-39bee8a1e514)
For Bompa
Epigraph (#ulink_2ff0fc1e-5974-51dc-8a28-62aaadf5bca9)
The baby lived inside a world that was smaller and older where they still traveled by carriage and spoke a bawling language.
Bompa
The bawling language was small and died inside the baby and inside the bodies of everybody who could hear it.
Bompa
whah whaahh uuhhh dahhh dadadadada mabadaduwigo
My Little Brother
Contents
Cover (#u3b32b5e2-069d-59ff-a909-b3fd2741307a)
Title Page (#u7dbe362d-a3a6-57f2-af83-088c218665a6)
Copyright (#u54a79bc6-ecb7-5db2-9bc5-6d3300e77500)
Dedication (#u0c0f91fb-9ffb-5b51-aef9-79f1a918a36a)
Epigraph (#u53ff0cd2-7e08-5c79-ae0f-1ca7657d1da4)
The Whole Way We Got There (#u3162d4e1-68ac-5b55-ac2f-ce593764f8b5)
Living Anymore in Mineola (#u7686274b-e6a0-50eb-998a-647f60c7ee0f)
My Doll-Family, My People-Family, the Sun Outside, My Little Brother’s Insides, the Big-People, and How They Could Have Made Me Another One of My Little Brother (#u10f9e04a-990d-5170-b775-b04757aecf6f)
Our House in Mineola (#u4c90a162-c66d-5dcd-b4de-9b3d95987af7)
The Baby-Sized Hole Inside the Ground and Dirt-World and the Toy Box with My Little Brother Inside It (#ue20b71ef-4966-5ed5-a749-484d98411d01)
Mineola to Birthrock (#u849ca2a9-b281-5c27-b05a-fa7445ab0c7a)
Our House-Car, Bompa’s House, Going to Heaven, and When We Could Start Living Again (#u49686783-142e-59c8-8980-72739db1bff2)
Birthrock to Stringtown (#litres_trial_promo)
Some More Ways Dolls Keep People Alive, the Way You Go Away from Doll to People and Bigger, and the Big-People We Were Going to Grow Up into and Live Them (#litres_trial_promo)
Stringtown to Albion (#litres_trial_promo)
My Doll-Me, My People-Me, and the Way My Doll-Family Got Away (#litres_trial_promo)
Albion to Hot Springs (#litres_trial_promo)
How to Cut Dolls and People Out of Paper, Crayon-Faces, the String that Holds People Together, Holding Hands Together, and One More Way Any Family Can Break (#litres_trial_promo)
Hot Springs to North Little Rock (#litres_trial_promo)
House-Cars, Car-People, the Safety-Bars that Saved Me and My Bigger Brother, Some More Ways We Got Some of Everything Back, and Why Everybody Needs to Stop and Rest or They Will Break (#litres_trial_promo)
North Little Rock to Campbell Station (#litres_trial_promo)
How You Get the Breath All the Way Down into Momma and the Baby Alive, How Poppa Laid the Babies Down to Sleep and Grow Up Inside Momma, and Why We Kept Waking Each Other Up (#litres_trial_promo)
Campbell Station to Biggerton (#litres_trial_promo)
How to Make a Doll-Baby Out of String, Baby Clothes, Shoe Parts, Buttons, Stones, Balloons, a Hat, Glue, Crayons, a Needle and Thread, and Two People Too (#litres_trial_promo)
Biggerton to Glenallen (#litres_trial_promo)
How to Make a Baby Up, How to Make Me Up into a Momma, and How Many People Any People-Family Needs to Have Living Inside It (#litres_trial_promo)
Glenallen to Anna (#litres_trial_promo)
Looking, Looking-Pictures, the People Inside Momma, the Shape of the Baby, and Looking Inside Momma’s Stomach and Hole (#litres_trial_promo)
Anna to Henderson (#litres_trial_promo)
One of the Holes that Goes Down into the Ground and Dirt-World and Away to My Little Brother, the Other Momma and Poppa that Climbed Us Up and Up Out of the Hole, and How Our Momma and Poppa Kept Us Inside Our Family (#litres_trial_promo)
Henderson to Hendricksville (#litres_trial_promo)
My Little Brother and His Breath Inside the Toy Box, How We Played with the Doll and People of My Little Brother, and How Alive You Have to Be to Go Away (#litres_trial_promo)
Hendricksvllle to Bennetts Switch (#litres_trial_promo)
How Nobody Should Ever Wear Sun-Dresses Up to Too Hot, How Everybody Tried to Burn Me Up Inside One, and How You Make a Sun-Dress Out of the Sun Anyway (#litres_trial_promo)
Bennetts Switch to Frederick Perrytown (#litres_trial_promo)
The Doll-Family Inside the Toy Box and How Anything Bad You Say to Them Goes Away from You to Them So You Can Go Away to Somewhere Else Better Than Where Everybody Else Is Dead (#litres_trial_promo)
Frederick Perrytown to Edwardsburg (#litres_trial_promo)
How Momma Played Dead, the Shirt-Baby Poppa Carried, the Angels Inside the Clouded-House on Top of the Hot-Hill, and How Everybody Else Was Waiting for Us in Heaven (#litres_trial_promo)
Edwardsburg to Sunfield (#litres_trial_promo)
The House with Counting-Doors, the Man that Knew How Many People Were Alive, BoxRooms, More Holes, the Lady with the Rolling Trash Cans, and Why Everybody Has to Get Up and Live (#litres_trial_promo)
Sunfield to Far Town (#litres_trial_promo)
The People-Family that Had a Living-Baby Living with Them and the Way We Got Away with a New Baby of My Little Brother (#litres_trial_promo)
Far Town to Morrison (#litres_trial_promo)
How the New Baby of My Little Brother Started to Die Too and How We Gave Him Away to the Baby-Angel at the Hot-Hill (#litres_trial_promo)
Morrison to Gaylord (#litres_trial_promo)
How We Burned My Little Brother Up, How We Turned My Little Brother into See-Through Dirt, and How We Buried My Little Brother Inside a See-Through Jar and Farther Down into the Ground and Dirt-World (#litres_trial_promo)
Bompa’s House in Gaylord (#litres_trial_promo)
Why We Were Dead and Where Dead People and My Little Brother Go Away to Inside You (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
The Whole Way We Got There (#ulink_6d09a849-fa22-51e2-aad2-8dd4bee07313)
My brother’s cradle and other baby stuff got us from Mineola to Birthrock. My mother’s necklaces and other dress-up stuff got us from Birthrock to Stringtown. This girl there got my sister’s doll people along with all the other things that went with her practice family. They told my sister she wasn’t going to need her dollhouse and the doll people living in it anymore since we weren’t living in our house anymore. So my sister’s dollhouse and everything in it got us from Stringtown to Albion. That was where this other man got my father’s pocketwatch and pocketknife along with some other things my father almost always kept with him whenever we went anywhere.
Those things from my father’s pockets got us from Albion and all the way out of Oklahoma to Hot Springs and our start through Arkansas. That was where this other boy got my baseball bat and baseball glove along with some other things they told me were too small for me. This other boy got all my clothes but for the handed-down-to-me suit of clothes they made me wear and that left me with a ways to go before it would fit me. My brother might have gotten the baseball stuff handed-down-to-him along with the clothes but he wasn’t ever going to grow up into any of it anyway.
So all my stuff got us from Hot Springs to North Little Rock and we stopped for that one night. That was where these other people got our pillows, blankets, sheets, and the other stuff that helped us sleep. We got from North Little Rock to Campbell Station and we kept going away. My mother’s purse along with everything she had left in it got us from Campbell Station to Biggerton. This other girl there got my sister’s locket and chain that had a picture of my sister in it from when she was a baby and sick. But my sister did not die from that and that other girl getting it and that locket and chain still got us out of Biggerton and Arkansas and into Glenallen in Missouri. That was where these other men got my father’s wallet along with all the stuff my father had left in his wallet. There were the family pictures of us and the cards that had the names of other people and other places on them. There wasn’t any money left but we didn’t need any money anymore anyway. My father’s wallet along with all the stuff left in it got us from Glenallen to Anna, Illinois and left us in the middle of America with all those miles behind us and all those miles to go farther away in front of us.
Anna was where this other boy got my guns, my holster belt, and all the bullets that went in my gun or went in the loops of my holster belt and around my waist. My guns and other play stuff got us from Anna to Giantsburg and Old Shawneetown, over the Ohio River, all the way out of Illinois, and up into the hump of Kentucky that has Henderson in it. That was where my mother traded her wedding dress and wedding ring away to this other lady that wanted to wear them and get married. That other lady also wanted the veil to the wedding dress but my mother didn’t have it or any of her other wedding things left but my father. But my mother’s wedding things still got those two other people married and us from Henderson to Hendricksville. This girl there got all my sister’s clothes but for the dress my sister put on to wear out of Hendricksville, up through Six Points, Big Sheridan, Russellville, and into Bennetts Switch.
It was there that we got down to where my mother’s clothes were almost the last stuff of hers that anybody else really wanted and that got us from Bennetts Switch to Frederick Perrytown. This other brother and sister there got the record player and records that my sister and me played in the back seat. The record player and records made somebody up out of words and songs but trading them away also got us out of Frederick Perrytown, out of Indiana, and up into Edwardsburg at the beginning of Michigan.
All this stuff so far got us up to where this man got the silver frame with the picture of our whole family in it—the picture that had all the old people in it that were already dead and some others of us that weren’t dead yet. Our family was going to need everybody we had left in it to get there. That silver frame with the family picture and all those dead people and us got us the miles that got us out of Edwardsburg, up through Schoolcraft, over to Battle Creek, and into Sunfield. That was where this other father and his family got our suitcases and the other things where we had packed our stuff up. Those suitcases, boxes, and crates were almost empty anyway and that other father and his family let us keep the things we had left in them—the underwear and the shoes, the doll parts, our dirty clothes, and some other stuff of ours that nobody else ever wanted but us. My brother was the only empty thing that we kept with us.
But there was all that other stuff that wasn’t ours anymore. There was that other family on their way to somewhere else. There was all our other stuff with all those other people and other families all over America. But all this stuff so far also got us out of Sunfield, into and out of Lyons and Hubbardston, and up into Far Town. These other people there got everything we had left in the glove box—the maps and our other car papers, the flashlight, a pair of sunglasses, some batteries, a sewing kit, a first-aid kit, some gloves, and some other small things that fit in there. All that stuff from the glove box got us all the way out of Far Town and up into Morrison. That was where there were some men along the way that took our spare tire along with the hubcaps, the tire jack, the lug wrench, and some other tools that were in the trunk. Those men took our back seat for the back of their pickup truck and took our rearview mirror so they could see if anybody else was sitting down in it. The rest of our car got us up through Marceytown and Roscommon, on through Toms Mile, Bradford, and some other places that got their names from people that must have done stuff. Or maybe people got that far and then just stopped so that the town and everybody else kept growing up out of all those miles. We stopped in Gaylord and kept going—into its streets and up to the two-story house that was going to have Bompa coming out of it to take us inside it.
That was as far as all that stuff got us. There were all those towns that we stopped at and all those towns that we did not stop at until we got to Gaylord. We traded for the next town in Hot Springs and in Anna, in Henderson and in Frederick Perrytown, in places that never got big enough to get a name, and in all the other towns along the way that already had their names. We traded our stuff away for miles. We traded for the lives of other people, what might have happened to us for what did.
Living Anymore in Mineola (#ulink_202f653e-92f5-5be9-8962-8476d4e234e4)
My brother’s fever wouldn’t leave him or us and our house. My mother took how hot my brother was from out of his mouth but his fever didn’t go down. She rubbed ice cubes on his forehead and lips that melted on her fingers and dried on her hands and his face and he cried. My brother reached his small hands up to his face and shook his head back and forth and pushed away from us. He wouldn’t look at us or our family.
We weren’t supposed to go into my brother’s room anymore or he wouldn’t get any better than he was then. His whole room was sick. His body swelled up and made his cradle rock back and forth and rattle. My mother and father and sister and me all stood in the doorway to his sickroom where we could still look at him. My sister told us that we had to stop the cradle from rocking back and forth or my brother might tip over and fall and break. My sister went into my brother’s sickroom and carried my brother out of there and through all the other rooms of the house that weren’t sick or dying or small but we still had to go to the hospital.
My brother was going to die. We drove him down a road that wasn’t big enough to be paved yet but that had men standing next to it hammering nails into houses so other families would come and live there. We drove past the school where my sister was supposed to go with me next year but where she never did. We drove past stores and gas stations and places to eat but none of them had anything in them that would keep my brother alive.
We drove my brother to the hospital that had the doctor and nurse that were supposed to save my brother for us. My mother told the doctor and nurse that we starved my brother but even so his fever didn’t go down. The nurse fixed the table paper up and the doctor laid my brother down on it and on top of the metal table. The doctor looked inside my brother’s ears and mouth and down his throat. He pulled my brother’s eyelids up with his thumb but they closed up again when he let go of them. My brother squeezed his eyes down tight into wrinkles and cried. He shook his head back and forth so the doctor couldn’t put anything else in his mouth and the doctor put his hands down into his pockets and he frowned.
My brother stopped breathing anymore but his body was still hot when we touched him. My sister pulled her hand back fast and told me it burned. The nurse breathed out into my brother’s mouth and pushed down on his chest with her two fingers. My brother coughed and spit and cried. My mother and father cried too. My brother reached his small hands and arms out to us and my mother picked him up and held him in our family.
We took my brother away from the hospital alive but we didn’t get very far away before my brother stopped breathing again and we took him back home. My mother carried my brother into our house but he wasn’t going to live there or with us anymore. But we had to keep living even though my brother wasn’t going to do it.
We stayed inside our family and house and got ready for everybody else that was going to come over to see my brother and the way he died. My father looked out the windows and looked down into his hands. My mother sat down in chairs and touched her hair and wiped her eyes. My sister played with a doll that was supposed to make my brother alive again but it never did.
The whole time we stayed inside there there were people that came over to our house and up to our windows and looked at us inside. They brought over food in bowls and food on plates. They knocked on the windows and knocked on the doors and they waited there. They called us by our names but we never did say anything back to them. We couldn’t let any of them come inside yet.
They left food on the windowsill and my mother would open the window far enough up to slide the food inside our house and us. They left more food outside the doors or on the porch and we would wait for them to leave before we brought the food inside to eat it. They would always look back at our house before they got into their cars and drove away from our house and our family and us. They were trying to see what we looked like and did and the way that we lived there after my brother died.
We lived inside our house and ourselves. We did not talk to each other even though my mother would talk to herself. We got my brother and everything else in our family and house ready for everybody else to come over and inside and see it. People drove over from Sweetwater and Chico and Riverland and they parked their cars all up and down the road in front of our house and in our front yard. They drove in from Killeen and Overton and came inside our house to see my brother and us. They drove up from Tyler and Sugar Land and Old Dime Box and everybody wanted to talk about my brother and the way that we laid him down in his casket.
This lady from Amarillo talked about the dead people that we shared in our family—my brother and her sister. This man from Hull Lake told me that we die in families so that somebody remembers us and can tell other people about it. This man from Brownland told my sister and me that neither one of us was the dead one so we shouldn’t cry anymore. This lady from Kossetown told us that we can’t get away from our family or dying but that my mother and father would get another brother for us.
But everybody also stopped talking to us and looking at my brother and they all left my brother and us and our family and house. My father told us that my brother gone was enough for the rest of us to gather ourselves and our stuff up and leave that place too. We couldn’t stay in our house or Mineola anymore. My brother was dead and we couldn’t live there either.
My Doll-Family, My People-Family, the Sun Outside, My Little Brother’s Insides, the Big-People, and How They Could Have Made Me Another One of My Little Brother (#ulink_503f5780-c962-5ccf-ba1f-7c1258f8868d)
My doll-family plays better at family than my people one does. My Poppa-doll got lost somewhere but Momma told me it was okay for me to make me another Poppa-doll out of string-clothes and buttons and him all kept together with popsicle sticks.
The doll of my little brother got left out under the sun one day once and the yellow-fever colored my little brother in sun-colored. We had to take my little brother to see big-people where they put stuff inside his mouth and touched on how bright was the color of his forehead. There was the poke-poke lady with all her more fingers. There was the fold-handed man that threw drops of water all around the room but that never made it rain outside.
One more way they didn’t make up to make him not as sun-hot as he was was ice cubes inside his diapers. One more way was saying baby and in and air and out from my mouth on him. One more way was coloring his skin back in skin-colored with my crayons. One more way was hanging his baby clothes up on tree-arms but that was only to be inside the shade.
The sun-color got too bright and too inside under my little brother’s skin until it burned his insides out inside his crib. My little brother lived with me and my doll-family after he burned up inside and big-people came over to see how he did it. Big-people carried food over but we didn’t even feed any of it to my little brother. The rest of us ate all of it even though we were all already alive. One man had tree-arms that carried a treeful of red apples and green apples and that kept anyone else from catching any yellow-fever from my little brother.
One more man pushed a button that made light flash that burned your eyes up but did not make it so hot as to burn us up inside. The light flashing made looking-pictures of my little brother on Momma’s lap and one more way to make babies go away to alive. That man blew on the looking-pictures of my little brother until he was out of breath and which but that just left my little brother all small and flat.
My little brother was even littler when he was dead. But more and more big-people came over to our house and one more man had more ways than me to keep my little brother alive. That man wore a burnt-colored knee-coat that was still warm. You could see how hot it was in his hot-colored face and the way he blew his cheeks out to get the hot part out of him. Momma told me that dead people was all that that man did but that that man wasn’t going to take my little brother away from us. We were going to take my little brother away with us. That man was just supposed to get him ready to go.
He undressed the clothes even though my little brother was already cold. But clothes can’t be alive anyway and that man didn’t keep going when he got down to my little brother’s skin. That man took up a bucket of rain water and squeeze-clouds that he carried down with him out of the sky. That man squeezed the squeeze-clouds of rain water down over my little brother so it would drown him in the swallow of water and smoke the fire out that burned his insides up. He dried my little brother down inside a towel like the one they wrapped him up in to bring him home in after he was born. That man unwrapped the towel from my little brother and rained handfuls of rain water up over his head and down over his neck and out the ends of his hair. We combed it out and it looked nice. That man smelled his nose down into the neck and shoulder and snuffled my little brother. That man touched my little brother’s eyelids down with his finger and thumb like Poppa would pull the window-cover down before he would put us down for sleep. But how was my little brother going to see us anymore when his eyes were closed?
That man stuffed cotton balls and worded-paper inside my little brother’s mouth so he could see how to talk. That man got out the needle and thread and asked me how my little brother smiled. He threaded the thread through the needle and the needle and thread into and out of his lips so it could not be told. He got a moon-knife out of his night-bag and cut cuts inside both the elbows and the knees both. He pushed tubes into my little brother but we didn’t feed him any food through them. The squeeze-pump sucked and pulled. It spit and pushed the blood. The tubes he looped into my little brother were outside-veins for the clear-blood that flooded the burned and dead-blood out from my little brother.
That man let me touch where my little brother should have started up again but my hand never breathed up or down on him. We hit and pushed my little brother on his rib bones but that didn’t start his heart beating up or down again either. That just made my little brother go all see-through and angel-colored so we stopped squeezing the squeeze-pump and pulled the tubes out and stopped the holes up.
We colored his skin back in skin-colored with paint brushes from that man’s night-bag. We painted his face and neck and hands back on him but it did not look real or alive enough even when it didn’t even have to be pretty. That man told me let’s dress him up nice so we put dress-up clothes on him but my little brother still didn’t get up and live.
Our House in Mineola (#ulink_03583499-58fb-5408-b973-363ef3a97215)
The men went from living room to bedroom and bedroom and bathroom to kitchen. The men went into and out of the rooms and into and out of our house. The men went back and forth between our house and their truck. They got the couch up between two of them and carried it out. One of them took the cushions. Another one of them carried a chair. Another one of them carried another chair. Their arms and the other parts of them were all large. They made the doorways small with themselves and the furniture they carried out of the rooms, away down the hallway, and out of our house—table, lamp, table and chairs, dresser and dresser, bed and bed and bed.
These and the even bigger things they carried out across the front yard—ice box, bathtub, bathroom sink, kitchen sink, the kitchen table and chairs. They carried out boxes full of other stuff and carried other stuff out that did not fit into boxes. They rolled the carpet up and rolled the carpet up and folded it over their shoulders and shouldered it up into the truck. They pulled the cupboards from the kitchen walls down. The floors they pulled up—all the tile and board.
They took the windows out of the walls and took the way we looked out of the windows away with them when they did that. They took the doors off the hinges and banged them shut inside the walls of their truck so that those closed doors left us outside but also opened the rest of America up for us.
The men pulled the stoop away from the front door and took that away with them too. All that stuff wasn’t ours anymore and their truck was packed. The men climbed up into the truck and into the truck and into the truck. They sat down in the chairs at the kitchen table and among themselves and all the insides of our house that they had carried out. The last one of them pulled down on the rope that rolled the truck’s rolling back door closed. He climbed up through the truck driver’s front door and drove the truck and all our stuff that was inside the truck away from our house in Mineola to somewhere else in America.
My mother and father and brother and sister along with the other and smaller things that we had left were all that we had left of us in that house of our family and stuff. My mother and father packed the suitcases, boxes, and crates up with the rest of the stuff that was still ours. My mother and father packed my brother up in his casket and packed his casket up in the trunk. My mother and father carried everything else out to the car and packed it up too. My mother and father packed my sister and me up with the rest of the stuff that we had left and we left too.
The Baby-Sized Hole Inside the Ground and Dirt-World and the Toy Box with My Little Brother Inside It (#ulink_b446d02d-80dc-5550-8b99-1bbdca940213)
They dug the baby-sized hole deep enough for any of the big-people to go down into it. One man pounded stab-holes with the bone-stick he pulled out of his shoulder and back and swung down out of his arm and into the ground and dirt-world. One more man did it with a big-spoon he dug out of the hole and bone of his leg and foot. They dug all the way down into the hole until we couldn’t see them anymore but for their hands and arms and dirt and spoons and bones and sticks. But they didn’t make the hole go all the way through. Neither one of them dug the baby-sized hole deep enough or far enough away or down enough under for my little brother.
But they could both go all the way down inside the hole and still be alive when they climbed back up and crawled back out of it. They were both too big to die and lay down inside the hole. But they pounded the nails down into the top side of the toy box so my little brother couldn’t get out of it and they tied him up inside it with ropes too. They swung my little brother up over the hole with the ropes and they knocked the toy box back and forth against the side-walls all the way down to the bottom where the hole stopped.
But they didn’t cover my little brother up with anything so he could stay warm and go away to sleep. They left the hole open so we could throw dirt on top of him but none of us were going to do it. They left the ropes with him for him to crawl with back out but we had to go and pull him back out of the ground and dirt-world with our hands and arms and backs and ropes. The toy box hit and knocked back and forth against the side-walls and the dirt and rocks all fell down under my little brother and started filling his baby-sized hole back up. We got the toy box out and knocked on its sides and listened for noises but my little brother was quiet inside. We unpounded the nails from the top side of the toy box and pulled it open and looked inside but my little brother was still inside there and he was still dead.
The pile of dirt and rocks by the side of the hole wasn’t high enough and far enough away or up for him to climb on up into the sky and cloud. But we pushed the dirt and rocks back down into the hole and filled it back up with our hands and bones and shoes and hot and string and down and sun and burn and hills and ways and years and names and big and in and dolls and blood and dead and we kept my little brother up above the ground and dirt-world and with us.
Mineola to Birthrock (#ulink_ae086f33-9751-5ee3-b15c-da680125ad37)
We drove away from our house and away down the road. We drove past some other houses that were all broken at the walls and didn’t have any families living in them anymore. They had broken windows and broken doors. They had broken cars in the front yards that didn’t have any tires on them so that those people that had lived there never left but stayed there and died.
We drove all the way out to the far part of Mineola where there were houses that had people and families that were still living in them. We stopped and got out of our car and walked up to this one house and looked in the windows but they were only old people that lived there and they didn’t have any babies left in their family anymore so we didn’t even knock. We needed to find a house with a family that was going to have a baby in it.
We knocked on doors and looked in windows until this other family that needed a baby came up to their door and answered us. Their faces were the only things we could see through their screen door—their mother and father, their brother and sister, and the way they looked like a family in there. Their family stood there behind their screen door and in their doorway and inside their house and with all their stuff. Their father pulled their brother and sister in close to him and his leg and hip and their mother stood next to him too.
Our family stood there in the same way but outside their house and on their porch and without anything with us but us. My father asked their family if they were going to have a baby in it and their father nodded that they were and their mother held the bottom of her stomach up with her hands. My father asked them to stay there and wait there and we went back to our car and opened the trunk up. My father got my brother’s cradle out and my mother got my brother and the other baby stuff out. My mother gave my sister and me the small blankets and the little pillows, the stuffed animals and the other baby toys, and we all carried all that baby stuff back up to that family and their house and stood there on their porch with it.
My mother cradled my brother in the blanket in her arms and touched her hand over the blanket and my brother even though he wasn’t crying or moving his arms and hands or even doing anything anymore. My mother kept my brother with her inside herself and in her arms. My mother wouldn’t let anybody else hold my brother even when their mother talked like a baby talks and held her arms out for him. Their mother said that she wanted to practice with him some but my mother said the baby might break and she wouldn’t let go of him. Their family’s baby wasn’t born yet and their mother cradling my brother in her arms might have killed the baby inside her stomach. Nobody else was supposed to touch my brother anymore or somebody else besides him might die in some other family or house.
The thing that killed my brother was that the cradle didn’t have anymore baby years left in it. My mother didn’t have anymore baby years left in her arms anymore either. My sister and me had already lived them all up and the other baby stuff didn’t have enough baby years left in any of it to keep my brother alive. My brother’s cradle was probably going to kill their family’s baby too but they could not have known that yet.
They got my brother’s cradle and other baby stuff and we got away from there. We walked away from them and back to our car so we could be a family again. My father opened the trunk up and my mother laid my brother down in his casket and closed its top and closed the trunk. The casket was the only other baby place that we had left for my brother after my mother wasn’t holding him in her arms anymore. The rest of our family got back inside our car and closed the doors. Their family walked down off their porch and into the driveway so they could watch us go. Their family was a family there and then and we were going to be a family somewhere else. We drove away from them and they waved at us from their driveway and we waved back through our car windows.
They got my brother’s cradle and other baby stuff and we got out of Mineola. The only baby thing we kept with us was my brother. We stayed a family that way. We drove away from Mineola and toward Birthrock—away from where my brother was alive once and died there and toward the miles and the everything else that was going to happen to us everywhere else we went.
We traded my brother’s life away to that other family when we traded my brother’s cradle and other baby stuff away to them. My brother and the baby he was going to be were going to grow up with some other family somewhere else. We got the life of my brother that we didn’t leave buried in Mineola. That was why we were going to see my brother in so many other babies and other families and other places. My brother was going to be alive in Campbell Station and in Far Town and in other places that we went away to on our way to Bompa’s house in Gaylord.
Our House-Car, Bompa’s House, Going to Heaven, and When We Could Start Living Again (#ulink_3ee65efb-b618-5427-95c1-2c27f85109d1)
We drove our house-car over the road over and over until the tires got too hot and they colored the road in burnt-colored. But we weren’t going to burn up inside our house-car or us. We rolled the windows all the way down so the wind could blow through the insides of our house-car and us and push the sun off from our faces and arms so we didn’t burn up like my little brother did before he died.
We drove our house-car down into road-holes and rolled up out of them farther down the road. We hit little hills with our house-car and it lifted us up into the air until we weren’t touching the ground or road-world anymore. We were going to Heaven.
Our whole people-family was going to start living again as soon as we got to Bompa’s house in our house-car. Bompa wasn’t going to let anybody else die after we got there. Bompa was going to have bedrooms for everybody to sleep inside them so we could all get up and live inside his house. There was going to be a living room that was big enough for us to all live together with my whole people-family and my little brother alive inside it too.
But we weren’t living anywhere anymore. We kept leaving everywhere we went. We couldn’t stop and live anywhere until we got to Bompa’s house with our house-car and us and with everybody alive. We drove and rolled and bounced up and down inside our house-car the whole way there. Momma’s head would go up and down and Poppa’s would too. My bigger brother would hold on to his stomach and my insides would shake when they bounced up and fell down and they were empty inside them. You could hear the way my little brother would roll against the sides of the toy box and inside the trunk and you could feel it inside your own insides too.
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Michael Kimball
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: A remarkable first novel about a journey across America and the effects of grief and loss on a family that is trying to stay together when everything is falling apart.This is the way the family got away. They pack all the things they can fit into the car and place the body of their dead brother in the toy box and put him in the boot. They leave Mineola, Texas and head across the terrifying, vacant landscape of Mid-America. In every place they visit, they sell off what they can to make it to the next town. They keep going to keep the family together.Michael Kimball’s remarkable The Way The Family Got Away is the story of the journey seen through the eyes of the family’s surviving children, a young boy and his younger sister. They try to make sense of death; why they must leave home and how they get from one place to the next. It is an extraordinary study of the effects of grief upon language and the ways that loss makes itself felt through a child’s imagination.