Excerpt of Everything Must Go by Elizabeth Flock

2001

Five-fifteen p.m. Henry pushes open the door, drops his
keys on the front hall table.

"Mom?"

He turns into the living room, shut up and dark, the
curtain drawn against the brightness of the fall day. His
shrunken mother is on the couch balancing a highball in one
hand, a cigarette burning out in the other, in clothes that
once fit properly but now swallow her up. Her thinning
brown hair is flecked with gray and hanging loose from a
swirl of a bun.

"David?"she asks,not yet pulling her stare from the
television set.

"No, Mom. It's me," he says, "Henry."

She looks over and sees that yes, it is Henry. He can see
the disappointment in her eyes, glazed over from the glow
of the TV.

He takes the cigarette from her, stubs it out in the
overflowing ashtray on the coffee table and makes a mental
note to clean up all the drink rings and ashes.

He opens the curtains with the string pulley and when he
turns back to her she is shading her eyes against the
light, but then her hand drops back down to the couch.

"How are you?" he asks.

She does not answer him, but he is used to that and so has
not waited for a reply.

In the kitchen he opens the refrigerator to see what he'll
need to pick up at the grocery store.

Over the din of squealing contestants spinning large dials,
Henry asks, "How're you feeling?"

"Are you just home from football?" she asks. "How was
practice?"

"I'm home from work, Mom," he says, taking a deep breath
and leaning down to scoop her up. "Remember?"

She clasps her hands behind his neck, holding on, bumping
along in his arms with each step up the stairs.

Henry is gentle placing her into her bed. Moving through
the room, he picks up a Ladies'Home Journal that has fallen
to the floor from her nightstand, and replaces it within
reach, right side up. On top of the Readers' Digest.

"How was work?" she asks, pulling the covers up.

He pauses on his way out of the master bedroom to answer
her.

"You know what? It was a hard day," he says. He sighs the
kind of sigh that carries a weight."Bye, Mom. I'm going out
for a while but I'll be back later, okay? I'll check on you
later."

She is already sleeping when he leaves. It was not always
this way. 1967

"Henry, pass the baked beans, please," his mother says. She
rests her cigarette in the notch of the ashtray and reaches
across the picnic table toward him.

The clay container feels heavy to seven-year-old Henry and
he concentrates very hard to make sure it does not tip on
its way over the deviled eggs with the paprika sprinkled on
top. Black flies scatter.

"Thank you," she says. She is making a point by emphasizing
the please and thank you and waits with an expectation of
you're welcome from Henry. He stops chewing and with split-
second reasoning decides the greater offense would be to
talk with his mouth full so he nods his you're welcome and
hopes his mother will accept this as the best he can do
under the circumstances. Did you see I did the right thing
right you looked at me like it was good so maybe I did, he
thinks, in one jumbled seven-year-old thought process.

"Can I be excused?" Henry's older brother, Brad, asks.

"You haven't finished your hot dog yet," she says. Henry
races to finish his own, to escape into the sunny day, away
from the fragments of adult conversation floating over his
head: Detroit riots. Sergeant Pepper and The Downfall of
The Beatles. The Smothers Brothers, which he had indeed
watched with his parents one night when they let Henry and
Brad stay up past their bedtime, but Henry had not really
liked the show and fell asleep before it finished so all he
really wanted right now was to be released from the table.

Brad crams the rest of the hot dog into his mouth and
says, "Now can I?" Wonder bread bun flicks out of his mouth.

Their mother sighs at Brad and looks away so their father,
Edgar Powell, says, "Yes."

Henry's father has a spot of ketchup on the front of his
madras shirt, and Henry can tell this is bothering him
because he keeps wiping it with his paper napkin and
sighing in disgust when it refuses to disappear.

"Can I, too?" Henry asks. The dinner is cutting into the
July twilight that won't hold its breath for long. So they
squirm to be released because even hot dogs don't make up
for lost time in summer light, a conch-shell call to the
young boys.

"I swear it's impossible to keep these children in one
place for more than five minutes," Henry's mother says to
the two other mothers on her side of the bench, who nod
sympathetically, yes, yes it is hard to keep them in line
so why even try just let them go boys will be boys after
all.

"Yes, you may both be excused," she says, leaning across
the table so her husband can light her next cigarette with
his Zippo lighter.

Henry notices she has not completely stubbed out her last
cigarette. He looks up to see if this bothers her as much
as it does him, and determining it does not appear to
bother her in the least, he finger-stops the Coke in his
straw and releases it over the smoking remains of
cigarette. Gulping the last of his drink he sighs "aah"
like in the commercial but is disappointed nobody notices
his attempt at humor so he races off after Brad. On the way
he picks up a stick because they'd agreed to play cowboys
and Indians and he remembers he is supposed to be an Indian
and Indians used sticks not guns to fight the cowboys so
he'd better get a good one because Brad is tough
competition.

"Wait up," Henry calls out.

Back at the table all are laughing at a joke one of the men
makes and the women are shaking their heads at its
silliness. All except Edgar Powell.

Edgar Powell is the sort of man who only says "God bless
you" after the first sneeze. If multiple sneezes follow he
pointedly ignores them. For Edgar Powell this is a
pragmatic choice, a studied economy of words, not a
malicious wish that the sneezer be condemned to damnation.
He is equally frugal with his laughter.

"Boys,watch out for your brother,"their mother calls and
Henry groans,watching his just barely two-year-old brother
David toddle toward them,arms Frankenstein-extended.David
David David,it's always take care of your brother and watch
out for your brother. Brad's the oldest so he gets to do
older-kid stuff, David's the baby so he gets all the
attention, and then there's me, invisible me, he says to
himself, kicking at a rock, waiting for Brad to shoot him
like he always does.Henry's truth is that he is the one who
does everything right.But this seems very little compared
to David David David and Brad Brad Brad, and he wishes his
parents saw the gut punches, the head locks or the Chinese
water torture where Brad pins him down and lets the string
of spit hang down almost to his face before sucking it back
up. Then there was the time Brad made Henry eat dirt, which
still humiliates him even though it happened last year.
Thankfully Matt Rollins, who gave Brad the idea in the
first place, moved to Baltimore not long after. At least
I'm not a tattletale, he thinks.His best friend,Petey,had
cautioned against tattling and had told of even worse big-
brother tortures. Never ever tell on him, Petey had said in
the fort they'd built in back of Henry's house.

Sometimes, though, it was easy not to tattle because Brad
would unexpectedly stick up for him at school if the
occasion presented itself. Or Brad would talk baseball with
him—in a know-it-all way, but still. Life was good when
this happened. It made it all worthwhile when, say, the
Yankees won and they shouted with joy and leaped into each
other's arms and punched their fists into the air with
happiness.

"David's a cowboy with you," he calls out to Brad.

"No,he's not,"Brad yells,hiding somewhere out of Henry's
sight.

"Yes, he is. There are more cowboys than Indians so he's on
your team," he says. He turns to David, who has now reached
him.

"Davey, go over there, Brad's calling you. Go over there to
Brad."

"Bad?" David has not yet mastered his r"s and Henry has
encouraged this coincidental nickname.

"Yeah, Bad," Henry says, gently pushing his brother toward
the fringe of the park. "Go over there."

"Ha-ha," he calls out. "He's coming over."

"Yeah, well, you just got shot so you're dead," Brad says,
standing up from not as far away as Henry had imagined.

Cowboys and Indians gives way to a makeshift series of
sticks balanced across rocks at different heights so the
boys can leap over them, taking turns being Evel Knievel.
But Brad hurts his knee and starts a wrestling match that
is incomplete as David repeatedly tries to take part and
boys,watch out for your brother dots it and it is therefore
far less satisfying than any of them had hoped. Henry's
cousin, Tommy, at ten is bigger than both of them, and at
one point has Brad pinned down requiring Henry to jump onto
Tommy's back to peel him off.

"Get off," he says. "Get off," because brothers innately
stick together against outside foes even cousin foes.

It's two against one. The Powell boys against cousin Tommy
carries on until that, too, is exhausted. They scatter then
and Henry wanders off into the wood to see what's what. Let
Brad watch David for once how come he always gets out of it
anyway,Henry thinks. It's such a gyp.

It is two or three yards into the thick, cool shade of
trees when Henry happens on two birds. It's clear they are
fighting and he stops to watch.They are well matched—the
same breed,the same size.It does not occur to Henry that he
has the power to put a stop to this. To intervene. To
interrupt the natural course of events. He is frozen and
spellbound. He finds it strange how silent they are, the
pecking brutal, the feathers—the long ones on top—start
peeling off. The bird on the bottom, the one being nailed
over and over again by the beak, struggles slightly but
Henry sees it is resigned. Horrified, Henry watches the
weak one give in. The downy smaller feathers underneath
floating in the air like dandelion fluff.The beak pecking
pecking pecking red with blood.Henry is surprised at the
brightness of the color,so much like his mother's lipstick
or like the fake Dracula blood he had smeared on either
side of his mouth last Halloween.

The dying bird finally manages a mournful squawk. "Stop,"
he says out loud, finding his voice. "Stop it," he shouts,
running forward, waving his arms. "Stop."

The bloody beak rises and the bird flaps off. Henry's
spindly legs walk to the mess on the pine needles. He
squats down next to the bird on its side, a beady eye finds
his, locks and then shuts.

"It's okay," he whispers. "It's okay now." He is trying to
soothe the bird but is sick at his stomach seeing he is too
late.

Not so far away the stronger bird waits to finish what he
had started.

"Go," Henry yells. Tears in his eyes he rushes at the
bird. "Go away. Go."

He returns to the bird on the ground and kneels. This is
the closest he has ever been to a bird.He reaches out,and
with his index finger, he strokes the top of the bird's
head. The only part that is not bloody. It is membrane-
soft, smooth and still warm and Henry finds it the saddest
thing he has ever ever seen in the whole wide universe.

There is no time to bury it; Brad will be looking for him,
Henry thinks. Or Tommy. Or maybe his mother. If he is gone
too long. And it feels like he's been gone too long.

"Sorry," he whispers. "Sorry, bird." On his haunches he
allows the tears to fall.