The Coyotes of Carthage by Steven Wright

Author:Steven Wright
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2020-03-05T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

The next morning, Andre has a videoconference with a neurologist, an attractive, green-eyed Sikh with a Boston accent. The doctor, warm and patient, provides answers that emphasize the positive. Hector, she stresses, retains considerable motor control. He does not yet need a respirator, nor does he need a feeding tube to prevent choking when he swallows, but he may need one soon. She makes one surprise diagnosis. Hector, she says, is clinically depressed, an observation to which Andre thoughtlessly replies, “No shit,” an asinine comment for which he immediately apologizes. The doctor has written a prescription but worries Vera will not administer the medication. Vera has taken offense at the diagnosis, claims that, despite the illness, she and Hector make each other happy, an assertion she roared while waving her finger in the good doctor’s face.

The videoconference has nearly ended when Andre hears a ruckus in the kitchen. Andre abruptly folds his laptop, cutting off the doctor midsentence, and hurries into the kitchen in time to catch the kid racing into his bedroom. He thinks to shout an apology, but the kid’s already gone, the door slammed behind him.

* * *

Andre drums his forefinger against Chalene’s dinner table, staring at a splayed Bible open to Revelation, anything to avoid the hard, threatening stare of the Lees’ fourth son, the twelve-year-old with bronze skin, emerald eyes, and thick raven hair. The boy has bushy black brows, sports what Andre thinks is a grown-man’s stubble.

The boy has a story, of which Andre knows bits and pieces, fragments gleaned from overheard calls, unguarded moments, pleas in Chalene’s spoken-aloud prayer. The boy—what is his name?—was an eastern European orphan, a product of an unnoticed civil war, when a wealthy local family picked him out of a catalog and took him into their home. The boy arrived with problems—aggression, nightmares—and, except for a perfect pronunciation of American profanity, didn’t speak a lick of English. That first month, he broke his new brother’s collarbone. The next month, he bit off his sister’s earlobe. His family pursued every conceivable treatment—prayer; medication; talk therapy; exorcisms, both Catholic and Pentecostal. Nothing worked, and six months in, his father woke in the dead of night, found the cellar flooded, the family’s cat drowned, and the boy, all of five years old, standing naked in Wellington boots, yawning, a half-eaten peanut butter and syrup sandwich in hand.

Send his possessed ass back, recommended their pastor, who, that Sunday, delivered a sermon entitled “Understand When You’ve Been Beaten by Satan.” The family reached out to Chalene, who, days before, had delivered a stillborn child, this time a girl whom Chalene had held and hugged and loved until the nurses said she had to let go. The boy still has issues—he is a constant in his mother’s prayers—but Chalene claims God’s grace has changed his heart.

Outside, his brothers smash bricks against pavement, pausing occasionally to yell inside at the boy, Fucking Gypsy. Andre is troubled that the boys would use an entire class

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