Chapter 2 - The Cousins

The social apparati of the modern chimpanzee is nearly magical in nature. Forget the ant, the gnat, or the bee. Chimpanzees converse in a manner we cannot begin to dream about. And just think if we could take a step back from ourselves to see humans talk!

Miraculous. – probably not Jane Goodall

When I was seven, I had three cousins, all of whom were older than I. Kenzie was a senior in high school and probably the most popular person I would ever be close to. Had we all grown up in California, she might have become a model, an actress, or some kind of fashion designer. In Kansas she was not sure what she wanted, but none of us doubted that she would get it. Oh. And she was a monster on the basketball court.

Jonathan was about to be a freshman in high school. He was the type of boy who might play football, might run cross country, would probably be involved in track, but would absolutely not play basketball. He was one of the smartest kids in his class, but managed to avoid being stereotyped as a nerd.

Aly was in fifth grade. She was unlike either Jonathan or Kenzie in that she could never be called popular. Such a word would fail to describe her because everyone liked her too much, and she liked everyone around her. She was loved. She was the mascot. She was the little girl you invited to your party because you wanted her there.

And I thought they were all the coolest kids ever. My aunt would drop them off sometimes to visit or baby-sit or do chores for my father in exchange for dinner and money. My father was notoriously loose with his money when it came to my cousins. I believe they would have loved him anyway, but the cash probably did not hurt.

When they visited, the girls would coddle me and Jonathan would try to play catch or watch TV or in some other way help me become a manly man. They would listen when I told stories or secrets, and they never laughed at me.

To my great fortune, one of their ritual visits happened only a few days after the incident with the old man. Matty and his father were back up in Kansas City. I needed someone to talk to, and Kenzie, Jonathan, and Aly were going to be my audience.

As luck would have it, my father was not around when my cousins showed up. My mother and I were sitting around the kitchen table. She was telling me about the play she had been in with my father in high school. At the time they had barely spoken to one another. They had different circles of friends and never considered getting any closer.

When the doorbell rang, I leapt up and out of the kitchen. It was several years later that I realized my mother stayed behind in those moments. It is hard to believe now, but she was afraid of my cousins.

It is odd. One can be the most confident person in the world when it comes to interacting with other people, but the moment one must deal with family all bets are off. My mother knew how much my three cousins meant to my father, and it terrified her. She needed for them to love her, but she did not know how to make that happen. My cousins, being only children, never knew what to make of her. She seemed nice at the time, but distant. Kids know. They may misunderstand, but they know when an adult is acting far away. So they feared her in return, each in a slightly different way.

Of the three, I thought the funniest way was Jonathan’s. He was especially quiet whenever my mother would talk to him. His cheeks would glow red, like my father’s always did. Then he would mutter a reply and run away, though he would try to be cool about it.

Whenever this happened, Kenzie would look my way and give me a slow wink. My mother never seemed to figure it out – or never let on that she knew. And I never got jealous. I was way too confident in how my parents felt about each other to let a little crush bother me. Plus, Jonathan was too fun when he was around to let a little thing like that get between us.

However, when I was that age, all of the hidden turbulence between my cousins and mother flew right over my head. I was too busy being excited to see The Kids – that was what my dad called them. We were going to play. I was going to be hugged by two beautiful girls. And they were going to hear my secret and believe me.

It turns out they would hear my story and believe me. I was going to be hugged. And we would play. The only thing I had not planned on was the visitor we would have that day.

I yanked open the door and pulled them into the Library. Aly picked me up and twirled me around, while the two older kids watched and laughed. My aunt went into the kitchen and talked to my mom. As I led my cousins to my favorite play spots, my aunt walked back into the Library, intercepted us, told my cousins to be good, and walked back out the front door. High above, the sky was shining through the great dome window.

The Library was divided into two floors. The main floor was an octagon and covered by desks and couches and armrests. Built into the Parke floor was a great, wooden compass rose. The front door was at the south end of this rose. At the north end was a magnificent fireplace made of stones imported from Montana. My father used to make frequent trips up there, following his graduation, and he would often bring back great loads of rock. At the southeast point was the doorway to the kitchen. And the southwest point led to my parents’ bedroom.

The second floor opened in the center, allowing the light from the great dome window to reach the first floor. A banister was built around this hole on the second floor. When I was slightly younger, I would often sit along this banister and watch my parents read on one of the couches. I can still see my mother resting her head against my father’s shoulder. Until I got bored and made them play with me, I felt more content in those moments than any other moment I had as a child.

Circular staircases could be found at the northeast and the northwest points of the compass rose. Matty and I were playing on the second floor, directly over the west point of the rose, and that terrible man had vanished down the northwestern circular steps. On the day my cousins visited, I did not take them upstairs. Instead, we walked over to the couches facing the fireplace on the north side.

“What do you guys want to do today?” I asked. I was still little, but I had seen my parents being “good hosts” enough to know the guest was supposed to decide what to do.

Kenzie was oldest and the leader. She was practically an adult now, and we were all surprised that she still took time to play with us. If she said something was going to happen, we made sure that it happened. She spoke. “Why don’t you pick today, Dewey? It didn’t look like you were having much fun when we played basketball last time.” She was correct. Being only seven (and short for that age) made basketball a real chore, especially when playing against a girl my grandmother called “that Amazonian princess.”

“Ok!” I said. I scrunched my eyebrows together to make it look like I had to think about what I wanted to play. I already knew, but I did not want my wonderful cousins to think that I had planned everything out ahead of time. That would not be cool. “What about…,” I paused. I would have made an excellent seven year old poker player. I allowed my eyebrows to smooth out. “Mountain climbing!”

I loved mountain climbing. My father taught it to me. Mountain climbing was a noncompetitive sport. The rules were simple. Try to climb the mountain and make sure everyone else makes it up alive. Of course, in real life the “mountain” was just a couch, and instead of climbing up we were climbing sideways. It was a great game for pretending, though.

Kenzie was much too tall for this game, but did not have the heart to tell me. Instead, she said, “That sounds awesome! Why don’t you three start playing? I’m going to go talk to your mom about colleges and things, Dewey, but when I finish I’ll come back out and join you all.”

We all said that sounded great. Kenzie went to chat with my mom, who loved when this happened. Jonathan, Aly, and I walked over to the largest couch, leaned against one arm, and began to imagine.

We three were at a perilous juncture. The cliff beneath us had broken away. Our feet were swinging free in the wind, and our hands were beginning to ache. One of us needed to pull himself (“Or herself,” said Aly), or herself up. Then he or she could help the rest. We just had to get above this jut in the rocks. “Dewey! You’re going to have to do it!” called Jonathan, through gritted teeth. “You’re the lightest! Use my body like a ladder. If you can climb up me to get there, I think we all might make it.”

“But won’t that hurt?” I cried. “The spikes in my shoes might tear into your back!” The wind, which had previously been nonexistent, had picked up and was now howling.

“Don’t worry about me!” Jonathan called, nobly. “Just go.”

To add emphasis, Aly added, “I don’t know if I can hold on much longer!”

So I began to climb. I could feel Jonathan’s stomach knot under my foot. “Are you ok?” I asked.

Jonathan’s eyes were tearing up. “Go!” he grunted.

And so I climbed. First one arm made it over the lip of stone, then the other. After a bit more grunting, I’d managed to swing a leg over. After that, things got much easier. I pressed my body against the cliff face, leaned over, and grabbed Aly’s hand. “C’mon!” I said.

Up Aly climbed. After that, it was simple for both of us to pull Jonathan up. For a moment, the three of us stood gasping, backs pressed hard against the sheer cliff face. A gust of wind caught Aly, almost forcing her to a plummeting doom, but I caught her arm and yanked her back to safety. Pebbles shifted under her feet, bounced beyond the cliff face, and dropped. Five seconds later, we heard the rattling as they hit the ground. “It must be five hundred feet straight down,” Aly whispered.

When we’d caught our breath, Jonathan tapped me on the shoulder and signaled to start again. I turned around and reached for the first handhold. I pulled up and….

“What do you kids want for lunch?”

The cliffs vanished. We were lying with our stomachs pressed against the couch. Mom was at the doorway to the kitchen. Jonathan popped his head over the back of the couch and blushed. “Um. Could we have grilled cheese?”

Aly’s head also appeared over the couch, “Yeah! Grilled cheese!”

Then I hopped up, “Definitely grilled cheese!” I liked grilled cheese alright, but the important part was being a good host and agreeing with your guests. My mother smiled at this and turned back into the kitchen.

The three of us rested our heads against the couch again and the cliffs reappeared. Jonathan looked at me. “Ready yet, are ye?” he said.

I froze. I had heard that before. My eyes opened wide, and I stared at him. I could almost smell the sea and the brine. The old man’s glinting, gray eyes – had they been gray? – burned themselves back into my brain. Jonathan’s face was not that of the old man, though, and as he grinned, I relaxed. His eyes were soft and blue. I resolved to talk about it right after we finished our monstrous trek.

As I turned back to begin climbing, my thoughts returned to that day with Matty. It was strange. Somehow I felt as if I could remember more about that time now than I could moments after it happened. I could see the man’s eyes perfectly. I could hear the swishing of his oversized jeans as they slid against the wooden floor. The smell of olives and parmesan cheese reeking from his breath and body was now overpowered by the scent of raw sewage. Perhaps worst of all, I could now remember the slimy grumbling sound he made right before braying that mucus-infested “ha.”

Who was that old man, and why could I remember it all so much more clearly now? And Matty? Images flared in my mind that I did not have, that I could not have. I was not looking at Matty when the man first spoke. We did not talk about the incident when our fathers returned, so how could I now have memories of Matty’s thoughts?

I felt his fear. I felt his pain. I felt his need. I felt his strength. There it was. That moment of power that surged from him and into our as we moved the wheel at the helm of that ship. And it was a surge, was it not? It was as if he were drawing the power from everything around him. Even the wave’s strength thundered into him. I could feel it all now. It was a momentary suspension, almost in mid-air, as muscles tensed further and further, until they stopped feeling like a part of his body and started to feel like metal, like iron armor. Then it all shifted. It was all displaced into that resisting wheel aboard that terrible ship.

Even as my mind drifted, my body continued to climb the cragged face of that mountain. Once the last of us had risen beyond the lip and onto the top of the mesa, we let out a mighty cheer. Aly hugged me, and we danced in a joyous circle. Kenzie walked back in to see what the commotion was. I ran to her.

“We made it, Kenz! That wind nearly caught Aly, and I just about broke Jonathan’s back, but we made it!”

Kenzie grinned and said, “Good job, Dewey. I remember when I used to play that game with Jonathan and your dad. He used to pretend he couldn’t make it any further, so we had to pull him the rest of the way.”

I goggled at her. “Dad still does that! But I always get him up, though.” It was very important that Kenzie knew that I was a strong boy.

“I’m sure you do,” she said, grinning at me. I grinned back. And all the light vanished.