by Tito Perdue
He had exposed his belongings to the crowd. Working efficiently with his milk-white hands, he put all things back into their best and most appropriate places, and then shut the valise and locked it twice. Instead of art, he had decided to read a chapter or two in the rather fascinating (and expensive!) monograph that explicated (in fraktur) the astronomical observations of the Assyrian astronomers under Ashurbanipal’s reign. The modern New York City had eight million subjects in it along with inmates recently released, and yet he felt certain that he alone was reading this particular tome at this exact moment. He was sure of it, in fact.
He read and sketched and slept, and with just a few moments before his train, sold his final New York drawing to a narcissistic girl who loved the way he had rendered her commonplace face.
“You’re so talented!” she said, staring at close range into his far from commonplace face. He let her go on with that for a short time before extracting the two twenty-dollar bills from her improvident hand. The hand had rings on it, including a gold mounting that had lost its stone. Apparently, the thieves in this place were more adroit than he had guessed.
“What’s your name?”
“Well!” he said. “I’m not at liberty to say. I’m sure you understand.”
He had given her a mystery she would never forget, an enormous bargain for just forty American dollars. And that was not even to mention the drawing itself.
He was glad to be out of New York City, but first he must come on board the train and work his way down the aisle between fat people and thin, imbeciles, children, businesspersons and the like. A man had died, or anyway his mouth had lapsed open to expose some of the worst dentition Philip had recently seen. He dallied for a moment between two women speaking a Slavic tongue. The vacant seats were rare and far apart, and it was unavoidable that he should end up seated next to someone. With that in view, he selected a vacant place that put him next to a reasonable-looking woman wearing glasses and a modest skirt. Courteous always, he hefted his suitcase to the overhead area while leaving his books, temporarily, in her lap. The woman appeared to be about 40, his favorite age for that gender, but was employing a perfume that caused him to change over to the adjoining car.
For someone like Philip who preferred women to males, it was a joy to have chosen a wagon full of the same. Most of them, of course, were either older or younger than he wanted, or were holding babies, or, or, or. Finally, in order to make a decision, he thought of a number between one and five and, having guessed the right one, slipped in next to a prosperous-looking and inordinately well-dressed woman with a string of inconspicuous pearls circling her slightly crinkled neck. Not that his own ensemble was anything to laugh at. On the contrary, he had chosen one of his better suits and most costly ties for the occasion. No doubt he was not as prosperous as the woman, whom he judged to be almost fifty, but in the matter of apparel he felt he could stand toe to toe with her while seducing her at the same time.
To begin, he kept his knee at a perfectly respectable distance from her own. Suddenly she turned, looked him over, and then said this:
“These trains! I’ve been waiting forty-five minutes at least!”
“Yes, and I’ve been waiting fifteen. Between the two of us we have a full hour to our credit. Think we should ask for a refund?”
By God, he wasn’t just good-looking, he was well-spoken, too. She was very near to getting down in the aisle and spreading her legs for him.
“Where are you going?”
“At this rate? Fifteenth street, I suppose.”
She smiled. Her initial appraisal having been too brief, she did it again. If only her own husband looked like that. Unknown to her, Philip’s personal good looks had already begun to decline over the past year, and he usually preferred to show his left profile over the one actually visible to her. That was when a vacancy opened up just three rows in front of him, a window seat that would put him next to a better-looking woman much nearer to forty than to fifty. He took it. Her skirt was an inch shorter than most people’s and she was dressed in the sort of glossy stockings that in his youth would have driven him wild. Would she, or not, remove her wedding ring once she had glimpsed his profile?
They drove through three successive slums, interlarded with a rich neighborhood of thirty-room houses adorned with water fountains and marble sculptures jumping up and down. He happened then to catch sight of what probably was the master of the place, a short man, dark and corrupt, a virtuoso of New York’s inhuman system. Came next a series of adorable little restaurants, curiosity shops, and then a public gymnasium in which a person could see complicated equipment that looked like cyclotrons.
But he was becoming demoralized by the woman next to him, whose knees and bosoms and personal address had turned out to be inferior to what he had at first supposed. Three times she tried to cover her knees, an endeavor that seemed at cross purposes with the rather short skirt she had chosen for herself. This was the sort of thing he was tempted to say: “My dear lady, I have no intention whatsoever of forcing my hand up between thine thighs, no, nor any of the other usual things either.” Instead, he asked if he might smoke and getting no reply, decided to forego that minor pleasure.
He read and slept and didn’t smoke. At one moment, he believed it might rain, but that, too, was denied him. He had been watching an elderly man just across the aisle, a depleted sort of individual who, judging from him, had experienced too much and been disabused of every hope. Philip’s favorite kind of person. He accepted the cigarette Philip offered, looked it over closely, read the tiny inscription that ran around the filter, and then gave it back. He carried the remains of a meal in his lap and it was probably this, along with other behaviors, that inclined Philip to wish that he had chosen some other place.
“I suppose we must be more than an hour late by now,” Philip speculated, once everyone had settled into their places.
The man turned slowly and began to read the braille that assumedly stood out on Philip’s forehead. He had bits and pieces of a beard, the old man, and appeared to have lost interest while in the midst of shaving. Instead of a suitcase, he owned a black leather briefcase that had provided him a surface for his recent meal. Of the meal itself, Philip was surprised to see that he had eaten the fat while ignoring the lean.
His nose was odd and he wore a bright red bandana about his neck. A lens was missing from his heavy glasses. Bending near, the linguist was able to delineate a long, very long scar that by great fortune had detoured around his eyes. He would have said, Philip, that the scar must have continued over to the other cheek at one time, although the remnants of it began to peter out once it had crossed his lower lip. As to the fellow’s teeth, Philip understood now why he dined perforce on fat.
His suit was modish and the “bandana,” as Philip had originally called it, was in fact a satin scarf that served in lieu of a tie. He wore a medal on his lapel embossed with the Hapsburg eagle. His watch, no doubt an heirloom, displayed on its face the image of a famous mouse. His shoes, Philip next attested, were ordinary enough, although their excessively-long laces had become so entangled he couldn’t have taken two steps back. Such a man like that, his head full of experiences, might normally be expected to have much to say and tales to tell. In fact, he never addressed a word to Philip, who gave up on him at a little past seven.
Fourteen
They rode all night through the northern states, and then on Friday halted at an inconsequential town surrounded on both sides by long and level sorghum fields that lapped the horizon. Collecting the suitcase that held his money, Philip strode quickly down the aisle and succeeded in putting himself out of doors before the other passengers could get in stride. He had an hour and forty minutes before the connecting train, and was grateful for the chance to be free of human company for even so short a time as that. And then, too, the town appeared to be an impoverished sort of place of his favorite kind — dilapidated houses, empty storefronts and some rather interesting litter b
lowing up and down the only important street. Truth was, he was in love with poverty and its aesthetics, and reveled in looking upon it from a safe distance.
He saw a beggar with a harmonica and then, coming nearer, two Caucasian children splashing in a thin pool of brown water left over, apparently, from a recent rain. He saw an old woman with a shopping bag, a transient dog, and a run-down movie theater advertising a semi-pornographic, boundary-defying film that had elicited the raves of the New York Times. At the intersection, he halted long enough for the woman and tried, uselessly and without calling attention to himself, to take responsibility for her shopping bag. He was behaving well, breaking no laws, his face was pleasant and he was far, far better dressed than the town could have required of a stranger just passing through. He nodded to the policeman at the intersection, a huge man who could have slaughtered poor Philip — and it wouldn’t matter how many books he had read — with a single blow of the two-foot-long wand dangling from his belt.
He went, Philip, another block, and then purchased an apple from a fruit seller. But soon came back and exchanged it for another once he had discovered the imperfections of the first one. It was a sleepy day, actually, the season’s last few gnats going about their business in a perfunctory way. Not so in Alabama, where the pestilential little animals would be in full tide this time of year, one more reason to let Leland have it.
It was early afternoon when finally Philip set foot on the sorghum field that lay in a westward direction from the city. His intention was to discover a hiding place for his books and suitcase that he might be at greater freedom for the stroll he had promised himself. The crops were high, and he shortly came onto a place well-hidden from city eyes. Next he took out a cigarette, an especially good one, and after appeasing himself with it, sent forward a long spume of smoke that drew off quickly toward the sun. He was a good 500 yards deep into the field, and no one could see him.
Perhaps this should be the place of his death. Why not? Here where the sun would speed the process of decay. Perhaps he should strangle himself and step at last through that membranous wall that had confined him for far too long. Or by will alone, stop his heart from going on. Or perhaps he should venture over to that little clump of pines, leaving in his wake a trail of hundred dollar bills. He could not but smile, thinking of the farm boy or tractor driver who in the face of all that money would think himself blest.
The connecting train had either the very same passengers, or else an equal sum of people who looked exactly like them. In obedience to his resolution, he tried not to look at the women, but made no protest when one or another of them might chance to look at him. Five minutes having passed, he did glance at a black-headed creature with an intelligent face, the sort who would be difficult to seduce, and time consuming. Not that he any longer gave much attention to such matters, now that he had turned 32 and had an accumulating list of books demanding to be read.
The topography was good and getting better, especially when the train ran down into a forested district where the foliage had been scorched, as it seemed, by on-coming winter. Orange, brown, gold and umber — no-one could persuade him that beauty like that was fortuitous only, a mere happenstance for linguists competent in autumn’s language. But why shouldn’t the world always look like this, and why weren’t the occasional farmhouses any more exemplary than they were, with flowers on the porch, women in bonnets, and every chimney supplying a nesting place for storks? He couldn’t understand why the atmosphere wasn’t at all times crowded with Italian arias, or why the citizenry had chosen to engage in practical matters when they might just as easily have given themselves to reading about history, or practicing wizardry, or fostering goldfish. He couldn’t understand the conversation going on across the aisle, a passionate discussion concerning gasoline prices.
The last he wanted was to be sucked into the conversation and made to pretend that he was an average human being with ordinary interests. Prices, wages, illnesses, automobiles? Better to be dead, or never born, than to squander time on the sort of rubbish that fascinated his countrymen. Accordingly, he now turned his attention to one of his long-standing experiments, an attempt to think deeply about two or more things at the same time — Greek verbs for example, along with a chronological recitation of the Saxon kings. Instead, he found himself bouncing back and forth between those two lines of thought without ever actually bringing into concert the two lobes of his over-exploited head. Never mind, someone else would do it some day, someone better than himself, with even greater will and intelligence and handsomeness.
With night coming on, he believed himself to be either in North Carolina or eastern Tennessee, mountainous territory, home to bandits and hermits, where people of the right sort could live self-sufficing lives. Shielding his eyes, he witnessed the sun and moon passing within an inch of each other as darkness filled the nearer valleys. Saw a long line of crows running off in lax formation.
It was just then that the train drove into a tunnel, leaving the passengers with nothing but the sound of subdued conversation and the glow of cigarettes. It was a rather good experience for Philip, who reveled in this sort of full-scale darkness joined to smoke and voices. In front, a woman was conversing softly (too softly for Philip fully to comprehend it) with an assumed companion who however could not be seen. Yes, and at one time the whole world had been like this, people calling out to one another in the dark before the invention of light and electricity.
All too soon the train emerged into early evening conditions favorable to stars. The locomotive had lapsed into a rhythm in perfect synchrony with the beating of his heart. Far away, he saw a cabin in which a lamp or stove or likely a television set was glowing greenly through the woods. Putting himself inside that one-room building, he saw an obsolete calendar on the wall, photographs on the mantelpiece, and the old man himself seated on the bed. No doubt he had a small hoard of golden coins, this person, though Philip could not begin to say where it was hidden.
At 7:02 he left his place and went forward to the dining car, where the sound of voices and dishes and clash of silverware had created a considerable din. He had expected to be given a choice of unoccupied tables, and was chagrined by the reality of the situation. He saw two overweight women blotting paper napkins with bright red lipstick, a youth with a peculiar hairdo, two Negroes, etc., etc. And then, too, the train was not so stable that some of the beverages weren’t threatening to leap from their containers. Unwilling to gamble his suit and tie against such likelihoods, he returned hurriedly to his base and satisfied himself with the apple he had acquired earlier that day.
It is strange that Philip, in view of the beauty of this region, had not already thought of abandoning the train and taking up his career among these hills. He wanted to, certainly, and then immediately promised to do exactly that. (It was his personality that led to such hasty resolutions on his part.) But first he must brush his teeth, furbish his clothes and in general put himself in better order. Needless to say, an ignorant-looking man had preempted the lavatory and was viewing himself in the mirror with a pleased expression. Philip left him alone for about five minutes and then returned to find that he had been replaced by the youth cited above, a lanky fellow whose hairdo needed some work.
It was just shortly before eight o’clock that the train finally halted and reversed itself to a coaling station about 125 miles southwest of Troizen, Tennessee. Seizing up his books and luggage, Philip chased down the conductor and asked, uselessly, for a consideration on the unused portion of his ticket. The weather was a few degrees cooler than a person would have expected, a reminder, as if he needed one, that he had fled the northern climate in just the nick of time. Soon they would be wearing galoshes in New York, and the subways would be crowded with beggars and idiots and homeless persons in that richest of all western cities.
He stalked to the end of the platform and, shielding his eyes, tried to bring the little town into better focus. He was quite calm. He had above $1
70,000 in his suitcase, a fund that ought to suffice him for the time still remaining to him. He had his suits and underwear, his bed linens and five several books. To offset the cold, he now lit up a cigarette and sucked on it. Unusual for the South, there were no Negroes hanging about the station in wait for guilt-ridden people. Was it plausible that at this early hour all the town was at home and in bed? Yes, and he seemed to see them propped up on their pillows reading last Sunday’s comic pages. Or watching television in well secured homes supplied with wives and dogs and coffee cups. Or had they fled the town entirely, knowing that he was speedily drawing nearer with his clothes and books?
No, his persona was a pleasant one, and along with his personal address and educated accent he had usually been made welcome in the half-dozen places he had so far visited. He knew how to smile and hold it for long periods, a much better weapon than Pefley’s .357 Smith and Wesson that held eight shells. In fact he was viewed by most people as a fully respectable human being, eligible for almost anyone’s daughter. Suddenly, Philip threw his hand over his mouth and made a stifled sound that soon enough turned to outright laughter.
The station master was an extinct sort of person waiting patiently for the sort of travelers upon whom he could visit his inventory of sarcasms. Philip recognized the type at once. His own inventory was nothing to be sneezed at, though he preferred to hold it in reserve for special purposes.
“I’m looking for a hotel,” Philip revealed.
“That a fact? Interesting!”
“Is there a hotel nearby?”