Tours of the Black Clock

20

IT’S 1925 AND I’M eight. I live on my father’s ranch in west Pennsylvania, near the Ohio border, in the nicest house I’ll ever know, white and blue, sound and certain. But … doesn’t this sound like I’m visiting? “I live on my father’s ranch. …” The house faces south. My father’s name is Philip; Jainlight’s an English name. He’s a burly little tyrant, a tyrant to the stable hands, the Indians worst of all. I never see kindness from him to anyone except once or twice when we go into town and he’ll buy a little present for one of the women strolling up and down the walk, assuming Alice isn’t there of course.

Alice is the woman he’s married to. She’s the woman I know as my mother, and if that really sounds like I’m visiting, you’re starting to get the picture. I also have two older brothers, Oral and Henry. Oral’s six years older and Henry’s four. They act like my father and look like their mother. Oral treats the old men who tend to the horses worse than my father does, he probably believes they’re our slaves. Henry might grow up to do something really evil like run for political office, if he were destined to grow up at all, which is something I’ll take care of later on. He sweet-talks Alice and steals money from her. The fact is that even at eight I realize not only that he’s stealing her money but that she knows it and likes it. Alice grew up in Pittsburgh and came to my father’s house so she could fill it up with bric-a-brac from the Old World. She wears her hair in tight little vaguely purplish curls. Her once-darkness has been passed on to her two oldest sons, and Oral has on his mouth the small birthmark that Alice has a little higher on her cheek. The only thing I share with any of this family is my father’s red hair.

I’m visiting, like I say. I’m a tourist. I don’t know when I begin to realize this, I think at this point I still haven’t realized it in full. I know of course that my brothers hate me, and my father’s indifferent though no more or less so than to my brothers or my mother or anyone else except the women he sees in the city. Alice doesn’t neglect me in terms of her obligations. When I’m sick she’s there to take care of me, and she attends to my needs no less than to Oral’s or Henry’s. But she’s cordial, you know? She’s hospitable. A hospitable mother, like a concierge in a foreign country. I think she must have had some doubts of her own right from the beginning. But when does a kid figure his family isn’t quite right? How old does he have to become, and how smart? I don’t know yet that it’s just me that’s a tourist. I figure it’s everybody.