Meeks

by Julia Holmes

  Ben imagined two piles of men in the tailor's brain: the nameless, numberless bodies he had dressed, and, in the other pile, the tailor's son—and Ben. An advantage and a peril, to be so close to the tailor's heart.

  Ben reached the Nines, the row of Bachelor Houses along the north side of the park. He stopped to watch a city muralist at work on the freshly plastered sidewall of a Bachelor House. A classic scene: the river a ribbon of blue sateen, the bright green of the park trees, the towering buildings laying gray and ghostly parcels of shadow along the smooth, clean grand avenue, and, curling over the horizon, the vast and open sea.

  The artist ticked his brush lightly along the edges of the waves of the harbor to give them an optimistic trim of white foam uncharacteristic of the dark, sluggish swells one could see from the city. Through the clear blue waters of the mural sea, Ben could make out the shapes of ancient creatures.

  "There's a whale!” he observed, delighted.

  "Yes,” said the painter gloomily. A whale stared up at them benevolently from behind the blue-green veil of water.

  "My great-grandfather used to see them in the harbor,” said Ben. “Hard to imagine."

  Ben could see sailors on the ships that bobbed in the fresh white surf, the needlelike masts bristling, the shapes of people at ease in the park or bustling along the grand avenues, and along the edges of every scene, the murky figures, shadowantine, ashamed, the gray laborers armed with their pronged garbage stabbers, stabbing at scraps of shadow along the periphery. Ben recognized the scorched terrain of the opposite bank, and his heart sank: the Enemy's Territory laid to waste. He returned his gaze immediately to the beloved city. There was the statue of Captain Meeks peering from his great height through the trees; there were the bachelors, perfectly suited, at ease and as if facing an eternity of ease; there were the shapes of young women pouring into the park through the main gates. He looked again at the wrecked land across the river. A few preserved tufts of hard green forest where he had soldiered, the black masts of the Enemy's ships sunk in the rocky shallows. “What's this—the black smoke on the ridge?"

  "Soldiers’ camp."

  "And what about this smoke here?” Ben pointed to the inland wilderness beyond the train station.

  "Listening Party. Bachelors around the fire."

  "Much better,” said Ben and reached out to touch the lovely curls of pale smoke.

  "Please don't touch,” said the artist and grabbed Ben's wrist.

  "Sorry,” said Ben but continued to reach.

  Ben found the number on the street: Bachelor House 902. A solid white house, fissures in the plaster facade. Dark gray shutters. Rows of windows orderly as paintings on a wall. The window boxes were faded black, empty or soft and disorderly with wild grasses. Ben saw a face hovering in an upstairs window; he bounded up the front steps so the other bachelors could see his strength and his ambition, and be defeated, put down their smoldering cigarettes (he mustn't smoke, he mustn't smoke), stop harvesting silk ties from the tie-trees in their rooms, in order to worry.

  Ben stepped into the dim entry hall; he could smell cold grease and the loamy stench of long neglect. After a moment, he could see a loose boot tongue on the floor, one or two sun-bleached postcards, the edge of a coin wedged between the floorboards. Just pass through, he instructed himself—this is but a necessary passage, and life is waiting just beyond it. A man must suffer the confines of this life in order to reach the spacious enchantments of the next. Ben edged forward uncertainly. At the end of the hallway, he could make out the silhouette of an old-fashioned clock hanging over the fireplace, cool and shadowy in the warm spring air.

  Another bachelor stepped into the hallway, smiling in shirtsleeves.

  "Hey. I'm Albert."

  "Ben,” said Ben. Albert stepped up to shake his hand. Ben took note of Albert's thin, uneven beard.

  "The tailor said we should expect you,” said Albert, yanking self-consciously at his beard. “Let me show you your room."

  "I like the beard,” Ben said, tapping his own clean-shaven chin.

  "Oh, thanks. You know . . . new development."

  Ben glanced into the open rooms as they walked through the labyrinth of hallways. Young, intent bachelors—the tall, the hunched, the fat-faced, the over-groomed—alone in their rooms, honing their bachelor skills: one bachelor stood on a ladder with a paintbrush, painstakingly filling out the trompe l'oeil trees with fragments of green; another bachelor smoked a pipe and carved a bear's head out of a wet block of plaster (he glared up at Ben as he passed, the stem of his pipe clenched in his teeth); a bachelor pinned insects into a canvas-lined collector's box, pausing to brush the folded wings of his specimens with a soft brush, as if soothing them to sleep. As it was for Ben, it was for them: beneath the necessary intensity of mastering a bachelor skill churned the real restlessness, the great and thrilling imprecision of desire.

  Ben wanted to be home, at home in a warm, unregulated place, with the background family fountain of talk, little talk, talk, little talk, and orderly tables suddenly disorderly with the passing of plates. Until then: pushups, statistics, scrimshaw—enviable craft! Albert looked back to smile reassuringly—he looked so young. Ben was not as young as he once was. What if he had waited too long? He had been forced by duty to postpone things and now had to work from the disadvantageous location of a Bachelor House where illness could spread quickly through overcrowded halls and where the defeatist routines of ailing and luckless bachelors in adjoining rooms could demoralize, and even an ambitious bachelor might soon find himself falling into a malaise. At which point, a doomed man (not himself, Ben soothed, but someone else) might die very quickly, even suddenly, perspiring alone in his room, or at the hands of the police, or as a thrown-away man, a worker in the various factories by the waterfront that milled foodstuffs and pumped fresh water and slaughtered animals and electrified the night streets and who knew what else, horrible and communal, until one died of exhaustion or was yanked from the factory floor by the trailing teeth of some awful machine, as had once happened to a friend's unmarried uncle. A loveless, childless man chewed beyond recognition and what did it matter?

  A short, fat bachelor, seeing them pass, bounced up from his bed and swung out into the hall. “Hey there, Brothers! Can I give you a hand?"

  "We're good, thanks,” said Albert and took Ben's elbow, pulling him along quickly. “Hurry,” Albert whispered, “he's practicing."

  "What's his thing?” asked Ben.

  "To be the nicest guy ever,” said Albert snidely, and opened a door off the hall. “Here we are."

  Ben stepped into a small white room, the grooves of the molding softened and deformed by a thousand white-paint repaintings; through the square window he noted the desolate window box.

  "Toilet's down the hall, one per floor."

  Ben noticed another door in the room, the brass knob bent, the white paint around the knob smudged darkly with fingerprints. “Closet?"

  "No, no, no. Sorry—better leave that alone. It's another bachelor's room. Not ideal, I know, but under the circumstances . . ."

  "He has to pass through my room?"

  "Technically, yes. But he never goes anywhere, so I wouldn't worry too much. Finton—one of the old-timers. I think he moved in last summer and has hung on."

  "There isn't another room open?"

  "Nope. But you'll get used to it."

  Ben surveyed his new room, Albert's footfall retreated down the hardwood hall. The standard-issue bachelor's things: the battered armoire, the writing desk, the wooden chair, the narrow bed, the water pitcher. Not standard: the disconcerting door. Ben struggled to open the lone window, and then gave up, resigned to the stuffiness of the room, the heat of the days to come.

  He fished in the satchel for his honeybee cufflinks and set them side by side on the little desk. Symmetry was not the least pleasure. He unpacked the bundle of canvases and unrolled them on the bed. His paintbrushes and tins of pigment, which had been rolled into the
canvases, he set aside. The canvases were stiff with the still-life paintings of his prewar days. He studied the old efforts with dismay: the beloved objects of his mind's eye deformed by his idiot hand. He despised them.

  At the center of each painting was his father's military cap, somehow salvaged from the shipwreck; the gold, honeybee cufflinks he had inherited from his mother's father; and a bowl of fruit—apples or mangoes or clementines or bananas—whatever he could bring to mind, the fruit being the variable he had permitted himself, the thing that required him to close his eyes and draw upon a reservoir of private thought. He heard a floorboard creek behind the strange door and froze . . . silence.

  Ben flipped one of the old paintings over on the desk and sat down to face the blank canvas. He arranged the cufflinks carefully on the brim of his father's military cap. He took a pencil from the satchel. He tried to enter the orchard of his mind—Lemons? Apples? Plums? He should start with something that made him feel capable. Apples? He closed his eyes. The pencil rested in his hand, and soon he was wandering aimlessly through his thoughts. He imagined strolling along the rows of fruit trees in a beautifully tailored pale suit. He could see the shapes of women hurrying down parallel rows, women hidden by the thick green branches of vague trees. Ben tried to part the veil of leaves to see them better. Soon he was in pursuit, ignoring the slow-growing fruit along the boughs, until his body interrupted him with some complaint, and he noticed the tree leaves rustling outside and the ivy pressing against the sealed window of his room, and something important, circling his thoughts, remained remote. He dropped the pencil on the canvas, disgusted with his incapacity—he must not put off all that must be done.

  Ben stretched out on the hard, narrow bed. It was only his first day in the house—he could easily launch himself in the morning without shame. He rested his head against the faint bleach smell of his sleeve and fell asleep in the heat. He dreamed he was lying on his back in the park, his black suit fading to pale gray in the sun, his eyes open and staring as the shadows of men and women walking past brushed over him like the blades of a fan.

  When he woke it was dark, and the windowpanes shook slightly in their frames, as a light wind preceded a summer rain. He could hear the rain start against the windowpanes. The hall light shone under his door, and he could hear footsteps in the hall, doors opening and closing. He could hear men's voices—low, loud, pedantic, jocular, earnest, threatening. Bachelors. Sporting, gregarious, capable bachelors! Ben turned to the wall and pressed his hands over his ears, making an oath to reform in the morning.

  * * * *

  Meek

  In the middle of the night, three men shook me awake. The park was cast in milky light, moonlight fused with the pale gold light from the old park lamps, the air was cool and clean. The men stood shoulder to shoulder. Behind them, clouds drifted like ghostly ships across a black and tranquil sea.

  What do we have here?

  A policeman, I said thickly, my brain larded with sleep. Officer Meeks!

  The three men chuckled, then an awkward silence. They stood over me. I saw that one of the men had only a thumb and ring finger on his right hand. It seemed to me that they were hesitating, unsure of how to proceed now that the universe had granted them something so far in excess of their dreams: a policeman.

  They stood around me, one shuffled his feet, another spat at the ground.

  Officer Meeks, repeated one of the men, to amuse the others.

  Yes, I said, pretending to be bored. But some part of me was glad that they were there. There's the kind of loneliness that's a genuine fortress, and there's the kind of loneliness that wants anyone—one never knows which kind one has until it's too late. The man missing the fingers knelt beside me and smacked me across the face, and I heard a soft thump, my head striking the base of the Captain's statue.

  The smallest of the men carried a metal bucket and a paintbrush with a long wooden handle and black bristles. Crab-hand and the third man (he wore a dark, rumpled suit and said nothing) pinned me against the grass, their knees digging into my shoulders. Crab-hand's disconcerting grip took hold of wrist. I couldn't see the faces of the men as they leaned over me, blocking the moonlight, becoming silhouettes bearing strong smells, chemical and bodily. I struggled for the sake of theater, until I thought we were all satisfied, and then I stared into the black river of the air, watched clouds drifting like majestic ships overhead. The milky light dissipated again, and the air turned cold. I could hear the faint sound of the brush scraping along the coarse material of my coat. I pretended that a lioness was licking my lapels, my chest, and the length of my body with her great rough tongue. (A mother is not shamed by any part of her son.) I could feel the pressure of the brush on the most vulnerable parts of my body. I could hear the laughter of the men, and then the asthmatic hacking of the man in the dark suit. He wheezed and spat, and Crab-hand tightened his awkward grip painfully on my wrist. I watched the sky fill up again with soft, white light, siphoning through the treetops. The strong smell of the paint, acrid and chemical, made me feel faint.

  After a while, I sensed that Crab-hand was kicking me in the side, and the other two men were laughing, until the third man launched another round of coughing, and we all watched in silence until he backed away and pulled himself together.

  Remember your place, said Crab-hand and spat at my face.

  Remember my place? I said as coolly as I could. (Simple repetition is usually one's best defense.)

  Crab-hand raised his horrible hand to hit me again, but then we all heard voices and laughter, mirthless and bristling with violence, the sound of our brothers, the Brothers of Mercy. The criminals ran. I, for one, seemed to be paralyzed. I could neither sit up nor see clearly, and then the voices dissipated and disappeared, and I was alone again.

  I'm an officer of the law! I shouted at nothing, and the wind blew hushingly through the leaves. Don't shush me, I said. I'm not a boy.

  I reached out in the darkness, and I laid my hand over the lush little hillock where my mother lay. Bedge and I had buried her there once, and there she had stayed.

  The next morning, I crossed the park to the police station. I had done my best to scrape the lewd paint from my trousers and my jacket, but the ghostly outline of what they had done was only more suggestive for having been distorted, and it turned heads. To anyone who smirked or commented, I shot back, I'll remind you that I am a policeman.

  I waited patiently for Bedge in the front room of the station. He emerged from a back room drying his hands on a small white cloth. His jacket was off, and his sleeves were rolled past his elbows.

  Meeks.

  Bedge, I need to speak to you privately.

  We're all your brothers, Bedge replied, in keeping with tradition, but he walked over and stood close so that I would not have to shout in front of the others.

  I need a gun, I said.

  Bedge shook his head disapprovingly and told me to follow. He walked behind his desk. I stood at attention before him. Things were becoming more regular by the second.

  I need a gun, I said again.

  You're upset—have you forgotten?

  Forgotten what?

  Today's your birthday.

  Is it? (What a pleasant surprise.)

  You'd forgotten, said Bedge smiling fondly, and he opened his desk drawer and pulled out an apple, polishing it on his sleeve before handing it to me. I dug my teeth savagely into the apple, forgetting everything else. I was starving.

  Bedge was silent for a moment before adding, I remember that your mother always gave you apples on your birthday.

  Then I had to stop chewing and could only shake my head, the pulp of the half-chewed apple lodged in my throat. I craned my neck and stared into the rafters of the police station, trying desperately to master the wave of grief that was trying to swallow my brain.

  Yes, I finally managed. She knew how much I loved apples.

  A rookie who was filing papers in the cabinet behind Bedge's desk said, S
on of the apple woman loves apples, but Bedge silenced him with a wave of his hand. This wasn't the first time I'd heard my mother identified as such, and as always, my mind was seized by a beautiful, mercantile vision of my mother, energetic and upright beside a portable stove in the park, her thick, dark hair filling with the steam of apples cooking in one of our two copper pots—everyone loves a steamed apple filled with butter and brown sugar, and I could see my mother consoling the inconsolable, young and old, in the steam of crisp, sweet apples each fall.

  We're waiting for a new shipment of guns, said Bedge, pulling me from my daydream. Maybe next summer we can get you a gun.

  Can I use yours until then?

  Certainly not, said Bedge and tapped his holstered pistol lightly with his thumb. A nervous habit, very in the ordinary, but a gesture nonetheless that filled me with some trepidation. He said, Why don't you file a formal request now, and that way, we can issue you a gun as soon as they come in.

  Good, I said, I formally request a firearm immediately. I watched his restless fingers drumming the side of his pistol. Bedge sighed heavily again, reached into his desk drawer, and withdrew a stack of forms. Interdepartmental Requisition Form 7898, he said. I forgot the nervous hand and holstered gun instantly.

  But I'm a police officer, I said incredulously.

  We spend our lives filling out forms, Meeks. Bedge settled into an old wooden office chair with metal wheels. He rolled to a filing cabinet against the wall and kicked it with the toe of his boot. To a policeman, he said, anything not written never happened.

  I tried to settle into this new arrangement of the facts, to remove all emotional signals from the surface of my face. Bedge, I said, I am an officer of the law, and I was attacked.

  Why didn't you say so? Who attacked you?

  A coughing man, a man with a crab's hand, a man in a dirty suit. A wave of cold-hearted rookie laughter passed through the station.