Walking Across Egypt

by Clyde Edgerton

“I don’t know.”

  “You haven’t seen her lately?”

  “We stopped dating.”

  “You did? Well, I’m sorry.”

  Robert took a sip of tea. “You sure?”

  “Sure what?”

  “Sure you’re sorry.”

  “Well, yes. She was a nice girl and I thought y’all liked each other.”

  “I didn’t think you liked her that much.”

  “I liked her okay.”

  “That’s just it. You liked her ‘okay.’”

  “Let’s say the blessing. Do you want to say it?”

  “Not especially.”

  “Dear Lord, bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies. We pray in Thy precious name. Amen. Well, let’s see . . .”

  “You talked about the way she dressed.”

  “Well, there were times when she just didn’t fix herself up.”

  “You made that clear. Pass those potatoes, please.”

  “Robert, I liked Shirley fine. You don’t have to pay so much attention to every little thing I say.”

  “I know I don’t. You don’t have to say them either.”

  “Well, I should be able to speak my mind to my own son. You have to make up your own mind about who you want to marry.”

  “Cornbread . . . Thanks.”

  “Don’t you want some of this turnip salet?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  After lunch Robert settled again on the couch.

  Mattie washed dishes. “Have you got time to clean out my gutters?” she asked. Cleaning out the gutters was one of the things she couldn’t do around there anymore. She didn’t want to have one of her dizzy spells on the way up a ladder or squatting on the roof, perched over a gutter.

  “Yeah, I can clean out the gutters.” Robert didn’t consider himself a handyman, one of the main reasons he didn’t have a house. He’d learned a few things about himself and didn’t mind telling people. One thing he didn’t like was yard work. That’s why he bought himself a condo. Got one while the getting was good, too. He could sell it right now for twice as much as he paid for it. When someone asked him how he was investing his money, he said real estate. He didn’t say lamps unless he knew the person asking was interested in antiques. He had his thirty-two best lamps in his two bedrooms and the other fifty-six were stored. When they became worth thousands and thousands he’d start advertising them one at a time in Antiques Magazine. Many of them had more than doubled in value since he’d bought them.

  “We’ll need Finner’s aluminum ladder. But I don’t believe they’re home and I’ll bet their garage is locked,” said Mattie. “Walk out there and see if they’re home. If they’re not, the garage might be unlocked, but I doubt it. Let me finish up here and I’ll meet you in the backyard.”

  Robert walked out to Alora and Finner’s. They weren’t home and the garage was locked. Back in the backyard he said to Mattie, “We got that old heavy ladder stuck up on the back of the garage, don’t we?”

  “I believe we do. I’d forgot about it.”

  Robert got the ladder. It was a long, heavy wooden ladder with round wooden rungs. He leaned it against the gutter at the back of the house. “Where are some gloves?” he asked Mattie.

  “Right here inside the door. And I got a stick and the basket over there for you. You can sort of push up the pine straw out of the gutters.”

  “I know how to do it.”

  “I declare I wish Finner and Alora would cut some of those pine trees down.”

  “Have you asked them?”

  “No.”

  “Why don’t you ask them?”

  “They talk about how much they like them all the time. Wind blowing through them and everything.”

  “Well, I’d ask them if I were you.”

  Robert put on the gloves. Mattie handed him the stick and basket and he started up the ladder slowly, unsurely.

  The top half of the ladder was mostly rotten.

  When his hands were four rungs from the top—about a foot below the gutter—he stepped up. His foot crashed through the rung and his leg and knee hit against and popped out the next two higher rungs. His other leg jerked upward frantically, knocking out another rung. One side of the ladder snapped dully, but held together, throwing Robert slightly sideways so that he fell completely through—popping out more rungs. He hung from his armpits and chin on the fourth from the top rung. There were no rungs left between that one and the ones below his feet. He was barely out of reach of the gutter. Reaching the gutter would not have helped; it would only have given him a different place to hang from. He did not have the strength to pull himself up. He was too high to let go, and any maneuvering with his legs could cause the rotten, cracked side of the ladder to break completely through.

  “Christamighty,” he grunted.

  “Robert, I’ve told you about saying that.”

  Robert could feel that the ladder was barely holding together. He could feel it but not see it—as if he were standing in the dark on a creaking, swaying platform out over the Grand Canyon.

  “Can’t you climb up?” asked Mattie.

  “I can’t do . . . I can’t do anything. Not a thing. It’s just barely holding together I think. Idn’t it?”

  “I think it’s about to break in two here on the side. What in the world? Let me go get some couch cushions.”

  “Hurry up. Can you bring a mattress?”

  Mattie hurried in the back door, rushed back out with two green couch cushions, and stood directly beneath Robert. She carefully placed one cushion on top of the other on the ground. “Don’t fall while I’m under here.” She moved the cushions slightly to get the placement right. “I need a plumb line from your foot,” she said.

  “That’s not funny, Mama.”

  Lamar was speeding down Camp Road with Mattie’s rocking chair in the bed of his pickup. He’d wanted to make it for lunch. He’d planned everything to make it for lunch, but then there’d been an emergency call. A woman had sighted a rabid goat in a field and had driven home and called the pound. She knew the goat was rabid because it was foaming at the mouth. The pound called the vet, and then Lamar. Lamar and the vet finally found the woman, who rode with them to the field, but they couldn’t find the goat. When they gave up and started to leave the woman screamed, “There he is. There he is. Look at that foam.” They all three got out; the woman stood back while Lamar and the vet approached the goat. A gob of white fishing line was hung in the goat’s teeth. Lamar pulled up a handful of grass, and the goat came over to eat it. While Lamar straddled the goat’s shoulders and held him, the vet extracted the fishing line. But it took awhile.

  Lamar turned his pickup into Mattie’s driveway, stopped in back, and saw Robert hanging very still from what was left of the ladder, his legs straight, side by side. On the ground directly below him was a single-bed box spring, a mattress, and two green couch cushions on top.

  Lamar got out of the truck and walked over. “Why don’t he drop?” he asked Mattie who had just come out the door with two big white pillows, one under each arm. She placed them atop the cushions.

  “He can now,” she said.

  “I don’t want to drop,” said Robert, not moving.

  “I could drive my truck under him if it wadn’t for those flowers,” said Lamar.

  “If we had Finner’s ladder we could prop that under him,” said Mattie.

  “Where is it?” asked Lamar.

  “In the garage out there, but they’ve gone somewhere. The garage is locked.”

  “I can go through that window in back or pop a pane and unlock it if it’s locked, slide the ladder out, and then caulk the pane back in later.”

  “Hurry up. Do it,” said Robert. “I can’t hang here much longer.”

  “You think it’s okay?” Lamar asked Mattie.

  “As long as you fix the pane back.”

  Finner and Alora, returning from visiting Finne
r’s sister-in-law who had had a gall bladder operation, turned in their driveway. Finner had just said they needed a rock at the corner of the driveway and the street so they wouldn’t keep wearing away the lawn, when they both saw a pair of blue-jeaned legs—toes pointing up—pulling through the side window into their garage. “Damn! Damn if somebody ain’t breaking in the damn garage,” said Finner. “You get down on the floorboard. Let me lock the doors. Wait a minute. You wait until I get out, then you lock this door, then get down in the floorboard.”

  Alora’s eyes were as big as plates.

  “No,” said Finner, “come on in with me and—why the hell is he breaking in the garage instead of the house?”

  “Maybe we should just get his licen’ number, drive away, and call the sheriff.”

  “Why in the hell didn’t I keep that gun in the glove compartment? Put it under the pillow and sure as hell you need it in the glove compartment. Put it in the glove compartment and—okay, I’m going to . . . if there was some way I could stop up that window then he’d be locked in there.”

  “We got to do something quick or he’ll be gone.”

  The aluminum extension ladder started out the window.

  “Look at that,” said Finner. “I’m going in and get the gun and shoot the son of a bitch or hold him inside ’til the law comes. You better go with me—call the police. Let’s go. Come on.”

  They got out of the car and headed for the front door. Finner moved swiftly across the lawn in a combat crouch. Alora was behind him, crouched slightly less, trying to keep up with him. Finner had the front-door key pointed at the front door. But he was shaking so badly he couldn’t get it in the key-hole. Then it went in. He moved through the living room—pointed his finger at the telephone—and on into the bedroom where he got his pistol out from under his pillow. He returned through the living room and into the kitchen. “Don’t look it up, Alora, just call the operator.” He looked through the back window and saw the ladder on the ground, a man’s leg extending through the garage window, another coming out beside it. Finner went into a crouch, gun in both hands out in front of his face, arms straight. Beyond the burglar, he suddenly saw Mattie, and a man hanging from a ladder. “Call Mattie and tell her to get inside before she gets . . . wait a minute . . . he . . . I think . . .” It all fell together. Mattie needed a ladder out there. Somebody was helping her get a ladder.

  “What is it?” asked Alora. “What’s the matter? I got the sheriff.”

  “They needed a ladder out there at Mattie’s. Tell them to never mind.”

  “Never mind,” Alora said into the phone, hung it up, and walked into the kitchen. “Who is it? What’s the matter?” she said, looking through the window.

  “I don’t know, but they need a ladder . . .”

  “I believe that’s the dogcatcher.”

  “They need a ladder out there. Somebody’s hanging. Damn. Was hanging. Did you see that?”

  “You reckon it hurt him?” said Alora.

  “I don’t think so. All them cushions and stuff.”

  “Is that Robert?”

  “Believe it is. Yep. I tell you one thing. That other boy almost got hisself shot. I’d a shot him in a heartbeat.”

  Mattie stared at Robert who had hit squarely on top of the pillows and rolled gently off to the ground. “You all right?”

  Robert sat on the ground. “I’m all right except the muscles through my shoulders—from hanging. Aak, there goes a spasm.” He got up slowly, walked inside. In three trips, Mattie and Lamar put the pillows, cushions, box spring, and mattress back in the house.

  Mattie explained to Lamar what had happened.

  “I’ll clean out your gutters,” said Lamar.

  “Well, I would appreciate it. It’s something I just can’t do no more.”

  Lamar leaned the extension ladder against the gutter and climbed up, holding the stick and basket in one hand.

  Alora and Finner walked over into Mattie’s yard. As Mattie walked out to meet them, Finner said, “That like to have been one dead dogcatcher.”

  “What you mean?”

  Finner explained. “. . . and I said, ‘Call the sheriff, Alora,’ and I woulda shot him sure if I hadn’t seen you all out here with Robert hanging from the ladder. Why didn’t he check out that old ladder before going up it?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it being rotten,” said Mattie.

  As she followed Alora and Finner in through the door she heard Elaine’s MG and then saw its nose stop behind Lamar’s truck which was behind Robert’s Ford. “Y’all go on in; I’ll be right in.” She turned and met Elaine in the yard.

  Elaine, a small woman with wire-rimmed glasses, wore a serious expression. She didn’t like Finner and Alora. “Is that our chair?” she asked, looking at the rocker in the back of Lamar’s pickup.

  “Yes. I almost forgot about it. Robert just fell off a ladder. Or through it. That one on the ground, all broke up.”

  “Fell off a ladder?” Elaine looked at the ladder. “What in the world?”

  “It fell through. He was climbing up to—here, help me get this chair in. The dogcatcher had the chair. He’s up on the roof now.”

  “The dogcatcher? On the roof? Is there a, a dog . . .?”

  “Alora and Finner almost shot him trying to get a ladder out of their garage.”

  “Shot him?”

  “He went in through the garage window. Robert was climbing up to clean out the gutters.” Mattie started lifting the chair out of the truck bed.

  “Did he get hurt? Here, let me help you. You shouldn’t lift that by yourself.”

  “No, he fell on the mattress and some cushions and pillows.”

  “How did you get them under him? How did you know he was going to fall?”

  Mattie was walking backward, holding on to the front of the chair. “Let’s turn sideways so we can both walk straight. He hung from a rung for a right good while. He was going to clean out the gutters. The dogcatcher’s doing it now.”

  Elaine looked up at Lamar. She’d just been reading about how people used to build each other’s barns. Maybe that was the good thing about this community. The one good thing.

  “That’s Lamar, the dogcatcher,” said Mattie.

  Lamar gave a little salute from the roof, above the back door, where he squatted, one hand in the gutter holding pine straw, wondering if he’d get some apple pie or something like that before he left. That woman down there looked mad at him. What the hell had he done to her?

  Elaine and Mattie went in the back door. “Well, hey Elaine,” said Alora, with a small forced smile.

  “Hi, Alora. How are you all getting along? Robert, you hurt?”

  “I’m okay. I guess. I just had to hang on to a broken ladder out there for a half hour or so.”

  “Won’t over ten, fifteen minutes,” said Mattie. “Get up and move around if you don’t want the soreness to settle in.”

  “That dogcatcher like to been dead,” said Finner. “If I hadn’t seen y’all out here I would have shot his ass off. Excuse the French, ladies.”

  “Disgusting,” said Elaine under her breath as she sat down on the couch at the other end from Robert. Robert was sitting in his father’s place.

  “Speak up,” said Robert.

  Elaine didn’t look at Robert. They’d had a bad session on the phone a few nights earlier when Robert called Elaine, having himself been called by Alora who told about Mattie spending all that time hung in the rocker and wondering what could be done now that Mattie was slowing down, that her, Alora’s, daughter and son-in-law might be willing to come live with Mattie if Robert thought that would be a good idea, though she, Alora, did not want to be one to pry. It was just that when a seventy-eight-year-old woman sat for six or eight hours in a broken chair then somebody in the family ought to think about doing something in the line of getting assistance, that it would be a drastic step to put Mattie in a rest home, of all places—somebody as mentally fit as she was. Robert had then
called Elaine, who said Alora should tend to her own business. Robert had defended Alora and told Elaine she should spend more time with their mother because they were both women.

  “Let me fix everybody some coffee,” said Mattie. She mentally checked off what she had to offer to eat: pie, ice cream, pound cake, fudge, peanuts. “Who wants iced tea? Or a Coke.”

  “I’ll take a Coke,” said Robert.

  Robert, thought Mattie. Ladies first. I taught you better than that. “Ladies?”

  “I’d like coffee,” said Alora.

  “Okay, I’ll heat some water.”

  “No, don’t go to any trouble, Mattie.”

  “It’s not any trouble.”

  “Tea, unsweetened if you’ve got it,” said Elaine.

  You know what kind of tea I make, thought Mattie. “I think I’ve got some instant up here I can make,” she said. “Robert, you say you want Coke?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Finner?”

  “Coke’s fine. So you got hung up on the ladder?” he said to Robert.

  “Sure did.”

  “That old wooden ladder from out behind the garage?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “You didn’t check it out to see if it was rotten?”

  “Nope, didn’t think to.”

  “Mother, you need some help?” said Elaine, standing, starting to the kitchen.

  “No, I’ll get it; you keep your seat.”

  Elaine came into the kitchen anyway.

  “I got it,” said Mattie. “You go back and sit down. Talk a little.” Talk a little to the people you grew up beside but don’t hardly ever speak to now that you got a degree, thought Mattie.

  “I guess you heard about your mama falling through the chair,” Finner said to Robert, in the den.

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “How’d you know about that?” Mattie asked from the kitchen.

  “Alora just told me,” Robert lied. “Just a minute ago.”

  “Well, it was right funny in a way,” said Mattie. “I wadn’t planning on telling anybody, but it got out.”

  “The rocking chair?” said Elaine, pretending not to know.

  “Yes, the rocking chair—the one we just brought in. The dogcatcher fixed it. He’s the one got me out. He come after the dog.”