by Tito Perdue
Returned to the bank, Philip cashed a check for, naturally, cash. They smiled at each other, clerk and man, at the end of which period Philip abandoned the building and drove about five blocks in a westward direction before coming to a halt in front of a disgraceful structure — it tilted to one side — with an old man on the porch. Philip smiled at him, who smiled right back. The man’s hair was white and Philip’s blond, and between the both of them it came to an average tint about midway between their individual colors.
He liked what he saw, Philip, which is to say a tricycle on the sidewalk and a disused washing machine on the porch. He liked the man, too, who was shirtless and on his belly wore a plausible tattoo of his own intestines. Philip shook hands with him, or tried to, saying, “Give you five thousand for it.”
“You’d be cheating yourself. Hell, you could get a brand new one for a whole lot less than that.”
Philip laughed. He had the sort of laugh that forced people to like him. Next to his good appearance, it was the most lethal implement in his entire possession.
“No, no. It’s your house I want.”
“I see. Well now here again, you’d be cheating yourself. Me, I got it by taking over the mortgage.”
“Really! And how much is that mortgage, I wonder? Approximately speaking?”
“Don’t know. I don’t put a lot of stock in stuff like that.”
“You got it free.”
“I guess.”
“And so, if I gave you three thousand for it, it would all be pure profit to your account. Don’t see how you could pass that up.”
“I don’t allow people to smoke on my property.”
Philip put it out. “Place has crown moldings, I assume.”
“Oh, heck yeah! The whole thing is moldy. Me, too.”
Philip laughed. That was when a naked child appeared in the doorway, a person of great hardihood in the forty-degree weather.
“Well how about it?” Philip iterated. “Three thousand?”
“No sir-ree. Six.”
“Six! I thought five ought to be enough.”
“Would be. If you hadn’t tried to cheat me.”
“Cheat?”
“Well, hell yeah, ‘cheat’! You was talking about five thousand, and the next thing, you was talking about three thousand!”
Philip looked down.
“You come here. What’s your name? Trying to cheat folks.”
“All right, I’ll make it five.”
“I reckon you would! Anyhow, I ain’t selling.’
The next place, located about a hundred yards further up the hill, was in even worse condition but at the same time more poetically situated. Smiling, he strolled to the door, knocked twice, and then lifted his hat to the rather portly woman, whom he judged to be about sixty years old.
“I was just passing by,” he said, “and would like to buy your home.”
She blinked. She wore an apron and had that rather sad but also sweet-tempered face no longer seen in America. It was as if she had raised her children, had lost her husband, and had found herself settled in this place without any particular good reason apart from the fact itself. Old enough to be on her third set of teeth, she had tried to comb her hair, but had given up when only halfway finished. She had, he reckoned, graduated from a rural high school that was neither especially good nor yet terribly bad. And in short, she was doing about as well as could be asked by someone as intolerant as Philip. He predicted for her a postmortem admission unto where her husband waited.
“Madam,” he said, “I can offer you full five thousand dollars for this place. Together with the assurance that it will be well cared for.”
Tea was boiling on the stove. Invited to enter, he took up a position on the sofa, a dilapidated piece of equipment covered by a tarpaulin. As if he weren’t already predisposed to her, she had all manner of very old-fashioned photographs on the wall, formal portraits of her family members, as he supposed. These appeared to be a respectable people, save only for a youth of perhaps twenty years who had been caught by the camera while wearing a sneer. For him Philip predicted a thousand years in hell. Or worse, the scientific explanation of eternal death.
“Yes,” he went on. “Five thousand. No fees or paperwork, or anything of that sort.”
The tea had no sugar in it and was too hot for immediate consumption. He did like the cup though, which bore a cameo of Benjamin Franklin and his kite.
“I could move in right away.”
“I see what you’re saying,” she said slowly, thinking about it. “But then I wouldn’t have no place to live in.”
“You’d have five thousand dollars, however.”
“Yes, I can see that. But then I’d have to go somewhere. And I’ve got all those dogs out there.”
“Dogs?”
“Sammy, Pudding, Egburt. All of ’em is buried out there.” (She pointed.)
“But they’ll never know the difference,” Philip assured her. He corrected himself. “Unless they’re looking down on us from paradise.”
“Well sure they are. Even I know that.”
It was a problem. Together they considered it. Finally:
“Perhaps I could rent one of your rooms? For a few days anyway?”
“No. No, I need that five thousand you was talking about.”
“Hmm. Very well, how about this, I’ll buy the place, and rent one of the rooms to you!”
“No. No, I couldn’t afford to pay much rent.”
“But you’d have that five thousand dollars!”
“No. No, I need to keep that money. For the future, so to speak.”
“Jove. All right, you can stay here anyway.”
“I don’t know. Sounds kind of… nasty.”
Philip laughed out loud. The tea was still too hot to drink.
“No, ma’am, all I ask is that you keep the place neat and clean. Do the groceries. Cook a meal once in a while. You do all that anyway, don’t you?”
“Why yes, I guess I do.”
“Well, all right! I think I see the makings of an agreement here. Which room do you want?”
“West room, I guess. That’s where… I guess that’s the one.”
“Fair enough. Shall we go look at it?”
It was a decent-enough chamber holding yet further portraits of her people.
Here, too, she had stored any number of canned fruits and jellies in what had been designed for a book cabinet with four shelves. The bed was wide but short, and appeared to have been calibrated to her physique. It supported a puffy-looking mattress with two or three feathers sticking out. The floor itself was bare, and allowed a person to see just how robust the construction was. All in all, the place reminded him of his grandmother’s house. And as if that weren’t enough, she had a kerosene lamp.
“And now let us see the other rooms,” he explained. “Especially my study.”
But first the kitchen, a narrow chamber furnished both with an electric and a wood-burning stove. This was where she kept mounted photographs of her former dogs. Prying into the refrigerator, he saw a few squashes, the remains of a ham, a bottle of buttermilk, and not a great deal else. This was to be her province, however, and food no longer much mattered to him in any case.
His own room was on the leeward side, protected from the wind. Winter was coming in, and the last thing he wanted was to have to wear a coat and long underwear when seated at his desk. He pointed to the future placement of that desk, which ought to give a good view of the slum that ran up and down the mountain side. With a spyglass, he should be able to see what was going on in those faded little cabins painted in all the colors of the alphabet. One house, his favorite, was of a particular aqua-blue that had eroded down to something very seldom seen anymore. It tilted to one side.
He had left his money in the glove compartment. Working hurriedly, he peeled off the agreed $5,000 in hundred- and fifty-dollar bills, and then dashed back to the woman before she could change her mind.
First, he offered her one of the greater bills and then stood back to let her test it between her fingers and hold it up to the light. It had not recently been issued, that bill, and the least little bit of one of the corners had fallen away. Philip replaced the note with a new one. She had never seen such an important piece of currency, and needed a while to acclimate to it.
“Now whatever did this fellow do, I wonder?” she asked, pointing to the portrait of Alexander Hamilton.
He gave her many others of the same denomination and then returned to the truck in time to get the motor started. He had been loath to leave his money with the bank, fearing irrationally that in his absence the bills might become worthless paper with no pictures on them.
He drove at hazard down the town’s one thoroughfare, halting finally before a used furniture store that also served as a tax return service. The proprietress was an unspeaking type with the hairstyle (as if she weren’t tall enough already) of a woodpecker. They looked at each other. This person was by no means disposed to fall in love with him, as he divined right away.
“Pardon me,” Philip submitted, “I’m looking for a desk. Also, a number of other things. But first let me get rid of this cigarette, if it bothers you.”
“I won’t stop you.”
“Stop me from getting rid of the cigarette? Or looking for a desk?”
“Whatever. Anything that’s yours, you can get rid of it, OK? Anything that’s mine, leave it alone.”
He backed away, taking care not to come into communication with the small men, mostly bald, who sat waiting patiently in the tax section of the store. Already Philip had espied a perfect desk comprising six varnished boards, each board about five inches broad and tacked to a pair of sawhorses. Philip reached out gingerly, stroking the good texture of the lacquered surface.
“How much are you wanting for this?” he asked, addressing the bald-headed man. Instead, it was the woman who answered.
“Sorry, Mr. ———. You need to deal with me if you want to buy anything.”
“A privilege,” he said, bringing his courtesy and good looks to bear. (He would have thought that in a small town like this one… No, he actually did think that in a small town like this one, his personal qualities would suffice for almost any transaction.) “I’m interested in this desk.”
“First a truck and then a shack. Now it’s desks we’re talking about. All right, I’ll let you have it for, say, seven hundred.”
“Seven…!”
“And we’ll set it up in that office of yours for no charge.”
“Seven hundred! I could make a desk like this myself! For a few dollars in materials and supplies.”
“Well sure; anybody could. But you don’t want to waste the time, am I right about that? Someone like you?”
Philip replied, though no one could hear it.
“No, we had a fellow like you a few years back. About your size.”
“Yeah, but he didn’t last very long,” the husband added.
“Shut up, Andy. Listen to you, cackling like an old hen.”
“And we’ve already got more money than what we know what to do with!”
“See why I can’t leave him alone with customers?”
“I do. Yes.”
“Show him your arrowhead collection, Andy. He wants to see it.”
The old man rose up, his face full of delight, and then ran off into one of the back rooms, whence he never came out again.
“Very well, six hundred and fifty dollars,” the woman then offered, swiping her own hand over the faultless surface of the desk. Long ago, someone had carved a valentine into one of the boards, now made almost invisible from so many coats of varnish so conscientiously applied.
“And you‘ll deliver it?”
“You weren’t listening?”
“And set it up…”
“Right where you want it. In front of that window with the paisley curtains, would be my recommendation.”
He stood by as she wrote out the receipt, the instructions, the government warning, and schedules P and 4-3(iv) of the wood products uniform tax application. And continued to stand by as, without assistance, she lifted the heavy thing onto her shoulders and found her way to Philip’s truck.
“There’s likely some cord under the driver’s seat,” she told him. “No, no I don’t expect any help from you, not ’less you want to muss up that big old suit of yours.”
He stood back even further as she secured the object and then held out her hand for the cash. He tried, but failed, to pay her without exposing the full sum in his possession.
“Whew!” she said, touching the money. “Just take a gander at that! Tell you what, if you ever need anything, anything at all, well! You know where to find me.”
He smiled courteously, backing away even further than before. She was not inordinately unattractive, but he knew too well what lay beneath her woman’s surface — a congeries of pus and stools and glistening glands. And knowing what he knew, wondered how he’d ever done some of the things that he had.
Sixteen
They arrived back at Philip’s new dwelling at just past six. With little to spare, the desk was squeezed through the doorway and ended up in front of the east room window that gave the view he wanted. The curtains indeed were of paisley and very old, while the panes, older still, had actually flowed “downhill,” so to speak, and were detectably thicker at the bottom than the top. It verified what he’d once been told by his chemistry instructor, that contrary to popular prejudice, glass was just another fluid after all.
Taking up the position that shortly was to be habitual with him, he gazed out over the Tennessee landscape, the colored houses down below, and a smattering of little children running back and forth. One could imagine that in this place the nineteenth century still applied and the post-modern world hadn’t yet overflowed the mountain range.
“Post-modern world?”
“Just dreaming,” he said, laughing.
“Well, it’s your house I guess. Now you just let me know if you need anything at all.” (She turned, exeating stage left.)
He spent a minute or two exulting in his new desk. In case of need it might even be used as a bed, it was that big. Instead he went to check on his housemate, whom he found sitting on her own bed amid a pile of new shoes and clothes, a panda bear doll, and a saucy hat sprouting chrysanthemums of cloth. Showing him the bear, she said:
“That old man, he wanted to charge me $17 for it! But I jewed him down to twelve.”
“A bargain, a palpable bargain.”
“We’re having pork chops tonight.”
“Really! I’ve mostly been living on cheese and wine.”
“And I bought a pie, too.”
“Good Lord. No, I think our little arrangement is going to work out just fine.”
Having already explained how he had left New York with just seven books, he now unloaded them at last and set them up in sequence on his desk. Larger in size than all the others put together, he opened his private copy of the Byzantine Suda and read full five pages before resorting to his dictionary, itself a massy volume of some four or five pounds avoirdupois. He couldn’t pretend that his ability in Medieval Greek was remotely as good as in Attic and yet, somehow, he was able to decode the major part of what he was reading. Measuring by his watch, he needed twelve minutes a page, not counting time spent with the dictionary. Annoyed by the neighborhood children running past his window, he skipped over to the penultimate chapter in his rather uneven abridgement and read of some of the more notorious malfeasances ascribed to Justinian II, an underrated ruler both in his and, if he remembered rightly, Leland’s opinion. It was 5:42. The wine was good, the chops were average, and the television ads among the poorest he had ever seen. Addressing himself to the woman, he said:
“I won’t read out loud any more, provided you’ll keep the television turned low.”
“And you’ll wash the windows?”
“Very well. If you’ll vacuu
m the rug.”
“Oh, I’d vacuum it all right. If I had me a machine.”
“Ah. Very well, I’ll buy a machine.”
“You’re going to let me have a dog, too, aren’t you?”
“Dog! All right. But I don’t want to see any more of your female visitors hanging about.”
“I can always go to her house.”
“Excellent. And by the way, I don’t think you should be spending your own money for groceries and electricity bills. We’ll spend mine.”
“Well. If that’s how you want it.”
“Of course! And let me pay for that odd hat.”
She consented to it.
Night arrived at 7:27, at which time Philip sent the woman off to bed. He could still hear the television of course, but solved that problem by inserting two pencils, the erasers first, into his ears. Seldom had he seen so black a night, so starry a sky, so honeysuckled a breeze. Moving out onto the front porch, he ignited a cigarette and allowed the moon to gather the fumes unto itself. He remembered enough about the rural world that he could still identify the noises of crows and nightingales, cicadas and toads and far-away automobiles running at breakneck speed along the great world’s edge.
Moving deeper into the quarter-acre demesne that now was his, he found that he could peep into his neighbor’s house, a mere shack really with a man and woman and three children gathered about the evening meal. As to the dishes themselves, he thought that he could recognize a plate of pâté and truffles along with green peas, cornbread, and tall frosted mugs of Mountain Dew. Truth was, he was encompassed by a silent people who had to toil for a living, capitalism’s waste material. He could negotiate with these people, he was sure of it, and reach an accord that would let him be Philip and let them be them. Nor would he have to go about keeping guard all time over his facial expressions.
The adjacent home was a bright yellow color in sunlight, but now had turned as black as the engrossing night. Moving in perfect silence to the window, he spied an old man who had fallen asleep in his rocking chair. This was good; he had a cat in his lap while the fire in his pipe had gone into suspension during this time of mental incapacity.