The History of Luminous Motion by Scott Bradfield Page B

bunch of crap,” Rodney said. “What are we going to do with all this crap?”
    Rodney
was an idealist who refused to be corrupted by mere matter. If I was a sort of
exemplary enlightenment scientist, Rodney was a romantic poet, airy and
uncompromised. “Crap crap crap crap crap,” Rodney said as I loaded pearls and
sparkling brooches into my green plastic Hefty bag, watches and piggy banks,
digital clocks and compact discs. “They’ll never even notice it’s gone. They’re
probably at the shopping plaza right now, buying more crap.” He shook his head
wearily, and poured himself a stiff bourbon from the liquor cabinet. If he
found a pack of cigarettes on a bedroom bureau or kitchen counter he would
chain-smoke casually, filling those transgressed homes with the roiling, misty
odor of Marlboros and Kools. I had great hopes for Rodney in those days. I
believed then, as I believe now, he was destined for far greater achievements
than myself.
    “Good
riddance,” he always said, slamming shut the garage or front door as we walked
off down the suburban streets with our loot. We wore the purported innocence of
childhood wrapped around us like menacing cloaks and fog in some old movie. Only
Rodney and I knew what we hid inside those cloaks. Only Rodney and I knew the
secrets of the movies we lived inside, the movies other people only watched on
TV.

 
    THESE
WERE THE days of my exile, a time of dense silence, strange houses and broken
basement windows. They contained locks that could be uncranked with tire irons,
or cats that purred and rubbed themselves against you. Sometimes the dogs barked,
but if you approached them in a certain way they would bow submissively and
allow you to scratch their foreheads. Sometimes we fed the pets while we
gathered up the belongings of their masters, and they curled up purring and
dreaming on the living room carpets where we would activate the TV for them,
for Rodney and I also felt more at home with the sound of the television around
us. Game shows filled with jeering buzzers and brand-new cars. Morning chat
shows that interviewed interchangeable circus clowns and school board supervisors.
Inexhaustible diurnal melodramas in which beautiful men and women lived and
loved and hated and died. Then there was only the resinous darkness moving into
the houses when we left them. Sometimes we transported our new stuff home in
stray shopping carts; sometimes, brazenly, we parked these indemnified carts
outside a McDonald’s or Burger King while we paused inside for a well-deserved
cup of coffee, a sweet roll or fries. I always knew in those days that this was
not the world I really belonged to; it was not my mom’s world, which both Mom
and I had lost, but a world of other moms and dads I would never comprehend. A
stony vast plateau without any landmarks or colors on it. A pale cloudless sky
in which nothing moved, nothing sounded. You could walk and walk for miles in
this world without ever seeing anybody, except of course at night when you were
asleep and dreaming about the dense silence, strange houses and broken basement
windows. Locks uncranked with tire irons, purring cats and submissive,
basement-anxious dogs. Exile was a dream of a return to something you couldn’t
remember. It took you back to a place you’d never been.
    “I
think we should burn the dump,” Rodney said sometimes, languorously reviewing a TV Guide on the living room sofa
while I did all the hard work, disengaging the VHS from the Panasonic, stuffing
my coats full with quarters from a tin cookie jar in the kitchen. “I think we
should see if shit burns.” Rodney never seemed the invader of these broken homes,
but rather their more legitimate occupant, as if his invisible royal blood
admitted him to secret kinships and demesnes. Sometimes I felt awkward, looting
the silver and jewelry before Rodney’s calm and disaffected gaze. It was as if
Rodney was allowing my trespass and at any moment, if I made one wrong