The Black Brook

by Tom Drury

  “This is where it becomes interesting,” said Lonnie. “Roman and Linda happened to live next door to some people named Gilbert and Evelyn Hanover.”

  “Yes,” said Paul. “Them I met.”

  “Where? She’s still alive, you know.”

  “At Loom and Alice’s wedding. Do you know them?”

  “We know of them.”

  “I was the best man.”

  “Loom thinks highly of himself.”

  Paul tried to remember where they were in the story. “But you’re saying Gilbert called the police about the music.”

  “Well, we don’t know that,” said Lonnie.

  “Who else, though,” said Carrie.

  “The real trouble, if you ask me, began when Gilbert decided to paint Linda.”

  “Well, clearly that was it,” said Carrie. “And that’s a delicate phrase for what he wanted to do with Linda. He just wanted to get her in his house.”

  Lonnie poured oil into a frying pan and set the pan on the stove. “It was about paint, and it was also about fucking,” he said. “I mean, he did paint her. The portrait hangs in the Saberians Guild, which you can go see.”

  Carrie chopped garlic with a rapid clatter of the knife. “That could be anybody with hips and knockers.”

  “It’s blurry and violent,” said Lonnie. “Gilbert made no claim to realism. But all that summer Gilbert and Linda would be up on the sleeping porch, painting away.”

  “When you say ‘that summer,’” said Paul.

  “That she killed herself,” said Lonnie.

  “If she did,” said Carrie.

  “Come on,” said Lonnie. “There was a note.”

  “A letter to her daughter.”

  Lonnie gathered the garlic on the knife blade and put it in the hot oil. “Who could hardly walk, let alone read.”

  They soon sat down to plates of linguine with garlic and tomatoes. Lonnie uncorked a bottle of red wine and filled three blue tumblers halfway to the top. Carrie tore a loaf of French bread and passed around the pieces.

  “So you’re saying it was a suicide, and you’re saying it wasn’t a suicide,” said Paul.

  “People considered it as such,” said Lonnie.

  “Agreed,” said Carrie. “And what I’m saying is there is no way to know.”

  “What reason would she have?”

  “That she was sad,” said Lonnie. “That she had always been kind of sad. That she was married to Roman. That summer ended, the painting was done.”

  “And they canned her at Adelphic School,” said Carrie.

  “Right, that’s the other thing.”

  “Which Evelyn had a hand in,” said Carrie.

  “Very possibly,” said Lonnie.

  “Gilbert had embarrassed her, but she couldn’t get rid of him, so that only left Linda.”

  “And all this time you were, what, ‘disciples’ of Roman?”

  “More his friends,” said Lonnie. “He didn’t really have disciples per se until after the . . . well, and you don’t know about this either, I guess, or do you? About the duel.”

  “The duel,” said Paul. “No.”

  Carrie poured wine into Paul’s glass. “After Linda died, Roman got all fixated on having a duel with Gilbert. Isn’t that right?”

  Lonnie speared pasta with his fork. “He changed his mind at the last minute, but, yeah, there’s no denying he issued the challenge. ‘The satisfaction of a gentleman.’”

  “I don’t remember him changing his mind,” said Carrie.

  “When the pistols were handed out,” said Lonnie. “You don’t remember Roman crying? And then we had to give him whiskey from a flask?”

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  “I am right,” said Lonnie. “I gave him the whiskey because I was his second. I held the pistols. Roman shot first and missed, and then Gilbert got him in the leg.”

  “Where was this?”

  “Up at the windmill,” said Carrie. “Linda Tallis was dead, and they should have left it at that. They’d done enough damage. But Roman had to keep pushing and pushing.”

  “Did it make the newspaper?”

  Lonnie shook his head with a weary smile.

  “They hushed it up,” said Carrie.

  Paul washed the supper dishes and Lonnie dried, and then they drove over to the cottage. Loom’s dogs trotted around in the weeds with heads held high. They had figured out a way through the invisible fence. Their jaws snapped mechanically in the dark. Once in the house, Paul pulled down the ladder and they brought the statue down into the living room.

  “That’s Linda,” said Carrie. “God almighty.”

  “But you haven’t seen this?” said Paul.

  Lonnie knelt to touch the wooden hand that supported the candle. “Gloves,” he said.

  “What about them?”

  “Gloves,” said Carrie.

  Lonnie took a chair at the trestle table. “The thing you have to remember about that time is how fast everything happened for Roman. His wife died, he found out she’d been sleeping with Gilbert —”

  “He knew that,” said Carrie. “Everyone did.”

  “Let’s say that it was dramatically underscored,” said Lonnie. “And then Gilbert ups and puts a bullet in his leg. It was all just bing bing bing. And finally the state came and took the daughter away because they thought Roman was unfit.”

  “He was unfit, if you ask me,” said Carrie. “The state was on to something there.”

  “He let Kim get grubby,” said Lonnie. “And then there was the way she walked. But it almost killed him, and in fact he went out into the woods to die, but instead of dying he had the glove vision. He dreamed of a giant glove that would fit over the five people and protect them.”

  “Which five?” said Paul.

  “Well, let’s see,” said Lonnie. “He was one, obviously, and Linda was the second, and Kim, and — and — how many have I said?”

  “Three,” said Paul.

  Lonnie counted on his fingers. “Maybe there weren’t five . . . because Gilbert would not have been one . . .”

  “Maybe it was you and me,” said Carrie.

  “Or maybe the thumb was empty,” said Lonnie. “It matters not. Roman came back from the woods and explained what he had seen. And kids of that time — and I fault myself as much as anyone — were searching for ideas with such a passion that they didn’t have to be especially good ideas. If you had an idea and you seemed convinced, that’s about all it took. I don’t know how old you are, but —”

  “I just turned forty,” said Paul.

  “You would have missed it,” said Carrie.

  “But I mean it,” said Lonnie. “People would flock to any new theory. I can remember looking out these windows and seeing nothing but tents and barbecue grills all the way to the water. We called ourselves the Glove Club. Roman would speak on Wednesdays and Sundays. I’m sure that what he said, that his remarks, would seem naive by today’s standards, because the country has changed. But I knew people who came here from New Mexico. They stayed through winters they could not believe.”

  “How long did this go on?”

  “Well, let’s see.” He propped his elbows on his knees and his chin on his fists. “Two years?”

  “More or less,” said Carrie.

  “Eventually some Gurdjieff types moved into Ashland and they were super-aggressive, and the Glove Club lost a lot of members,” said Lonnie. “Roman retired to Florida. He wanted to give me this house. But the place gave me the creeps with everyone gone. Still does, really. I could see why Linda might have felt isolated.”

  “We were criticized for glossing over Linda,” said Carrie.

  “Criticized by whom?” said Paul.

&nbs
p; “Mostly self-criticism.”

  “We did not gloss her over,” said Lonnie. “That was the problem with that group. We should have glossed over a lot more than we did. Linda was gone. Roman was here. I’m sure her life could not have been fun at times. Once, I remember, Roman hit me so hard with an open hand that I went right down on the floor.”

  Carrie said, “Why, honey?”

  “I don’t remember,” said Lonnie. “Probably I had been using his tools and put them back in the wrong place.”

  “Superman, you can be a real prick sometimes,” said Carrie.

  “What’s that?” Paul said.

  “A punch line.”

  “But not at the time, you didn’t think that of him,” said Lonnie. “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “People think the philosophy back then was all love and tranquility, but they forget,” said Carrie, “There was a lot of coldness. People sleeping with everybody left and right. Faithfulness was a thing of the past.”

  “The glove protects the fingers but keeps them from touching,” said Lonnie. “Really, Roman was lucky they didn’t try to put him away. In town, when anybody saw him coming they would cross the street.”

  “Did he collect stamps?” said Paul.

  “Not that I know of,” said Lonnie.

  “There’s an album upstairs, why I ask.”

  “That was probably Linda’s,” said Lonnie. “The little girl liked stamps for some reason. I’m just remembering. That Kim loved stamps.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “A foster home?” said Lonnie. “A group home? Wherever they go.”

  Carrie got up and put her hand on the statue’s shoulder. “Let’s head out,” she said. “I feel like going home and watching some TV.”

  “What’s on?” said Lonnie.

  “PBS has that special on the history of the banjo.”

  They left, and Paul sat wondering what would have become of the story if some snoopy bastard such as himself had not come along to track it down. Then he went down to the workshop for a crowbar. Based on his limited understanding of construction, he did not think that the house would fall if he removed the half-wall in the living room.

  He took the crowbar in both hands and broke through the plaster. Strips of horizontal lath banded the space behind it, and Paul found that by hooking the bar under the lath and pulling sharply, he could spring the strips from the studs with sudden jolts that cracked the wall wide open. Shards of plaster bearing the striped imprint of lath crashed around his feet. Dust fogged the room. He knotted a red bandanna at the back of his neck so that its inverted triangle covered his mouth and nose like a bandit’s disguise. It thrilled him how little there was to a wall. He imagined taking the house down strip by strip and piece by piece until the events that had gone on within it could float up through the crown of trees and into the blue-black air at the edge of the world.

  While Paul was watching the eleven o’clock news he heard a knock at the door. It was the man who had run the raffle at Hanrahan’s, months before. The wooden dollhouse stood beside him on the porch.

  “Loom Hanover won this,” he said, “but I don’t find them home. Can I leave it with you?”

  17

  Paul’s assignment for the next day was to try out some device that the highway department had brought to the Civic Center to persuade people to wear seat belts. Leaving the cottage, he saw the dollhouse and decided to take it over to Loom and Alice’s.

  The house was heavier than it looked and wired with tiny lights such that an electrical cord kept falling and tangling around his legs as he made his way across the meadow and through the grove.

  Alice came to the front door wearing a white T-shirt and a long towel tied at the waist.

  “I thought you’d be at work,” said Paul.

  “They don’t need me till later,” she said. “I’m ironing my dress.”

  “Loom won this dollhouse. He said he wanted to donate it to the March of Dimes.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know, I didn’t get it.”

  “Bring it in,” said Alice. “The kids will like it.”

  She had set up her ironing board in the kitchen. Ornette Coleman played on the sound system. Alice glided the iron over a black dress. On the floor, the Labs gagged, first one and then the other, as if holding a conversation.

  “I’m glad I caught you in,” said Paul.

  Alice smiled shyly and pressed a button on the iron that steamed the dress. “I’ve been wondering when you would.”

  “And it’s good we can talk about it,” said Paul.

  “We’re talking about it this moment.”

  “Not that we necessarily act on it.”

  “That’s why we talk about it,” said Alice. “So we don’t act on it.”

  “It’s nature. It’s not something you control.”

  “Nature is a riot.”

  “It’s a stitch,” said Paul.

  Alice bore down with the prow of the iron. Ornette Coleman played the saxophone like someone applying sandpaper to a ray of light.

  She took her dress by the shoulders and swept it away from the ironing board. “There, all ironed,” she said.

  “Maybe we should dance,” said Paul.

  “I make my own hours.”

  The knot of the towel pressed against his hip as they moved to the music. Her damp hair brushed his face. Holding her hand felt very good. It was hard to believe that holding a hand could have so much meaning after all this time.

  They went to the bedroom. The bed was old and had spiraling wooden posts. They got undressed and under a bedspread with a compass pattern as a cold and cloudy light filtered through trees and windows. He was ready, she was ready, and then he wasn’t ready, and then he was far from ready.

  “I’m apprehensive,” he said.

  “Me too.”

  “I’m listening for cars.”

  But that wasn’t all. He was afraid of Alice herself, set back by the evident unity of her life, which he had admired for years and years.

  He dressed and apologized. She apologized too. Their apologies went back and forth and they both wanted the same thing, which was for him to be out of the house and far away.

  The Civic Center was a large steel barn between Ashland and Damascus. Inside, a man from the highway department tended a trailer-mounted device called the Convincer. A caged cockpit with a black vinyl seat and shoulder harness stood at the top of steeply slanted metal rails.

  “Have you had many customers?” said Paul.

  “Some,” said the man. “A lot of them had the spit knocked right out of their mouths.”

  Paul climbed a metal ladder into the cage and fastened the seat belt and shoulder harness. The Home Show was coming up, and he could see refrigerators in the distance.

  “Are you ready up there?” said the man. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. It’s a lot worse than anyone expects.”

  “Let’s go,” said Paul.

  “Do you have a heart condition?”

  “Heart’s fine.”

  “Any pens or pencils in your pocket?”

  Paul shook his head with his mouth clamped shut to keep the spit inside.

  The man from the highway department gripped a red-­handled lever and drew it back. The cage screamed down the rails and slammed into a metal wall. Paul’s mind left him momentarily. He couldn’t remember what day it was or why he had come. Nothing hurt especially, but everything seemed to shake. He staggered down from the contraption and heard the ratcheting sound of the chain drawing the cage back up.

  “That’s the equivalent of five miles an hour,” said the man. “So just imagine if it were thirty-five or, you know, eighty.”

  “I know
,” said Paul. “Can I go again?”

  The next time Paul and Alice were alone was on a Sunday in December. A drinking session the night before had produced a hazy plan in which Paul, Loom, and Alice would drive up to Vermont in Loom and Alice’s station wagon to pick up the radio that had intrigued Paul. But an emergency arose on Sunday morning and Loom would have to fly down to Buenos Aires, where the construction of a bearing factory for Ashland Fastener and Binder had been stopped due to a shipment of faulty reenforcement rods from Pennsylvania. The rods were coated in epoxy, but in transit the epoxy had chipped off and the building officials in Buenos Aires were refusing to approve their use, while the project manager insisted the chips and dents would do nothing to undermine the stability of the concrete. It was a standoff.

  Loom flew to JFK in a Cessna operating out of the airfield in Ashland, and Paul and Alice departed for Vermont in the wood-paneled station wagon. Faith and Chester were staying with a friend who, according to Alice, looked like Patti Smith, and all her children looked like Patti Smith.

  “I like Patti Smith,” said Paul.

  “So do I,” said Alice. “Why ‘Summer Cannibals’ did not become a hit is beyond my understanding. It was the perfect beach song.”

  The winter sun swept like spokes across the windshield. It had snowed days before, and the snow lay in crested banks along the highway. Paul and Alice were both hung over and a little unwound.

  The store in Vermont sold vintage clothing and radios. Soft white slips dangled on ribbon straps above flesh-colored Bakelite radios. It was one of those fussy antique stores with hostile warnings posted every few yards.

  WOULD YOU TAKE A TEN PERCENT PAY CUT?

  THEN WHY ASK ME TO

  DON’T TOUCH IT UNLESS YOU MEAN BUSINESS

  The consumer who has decided to buy something he does not remotely need might have one of two extreme reactions on arriving at some later date to make the purchase. Either the item in question will seem shabby and overpriced, and the trip itself a fool’s errand bordering on the fraudulent, or the item will seem even finer and more ingenious than the consumer had remembered it being. Paul’s reaction to the radio fell into the second category. The oak cabinet gleamed, the round tuner seemed as wittily deceitful as a false panel in an old house, and the marine band, whatever it might bring in, struck Paul as an especially exhilarating band. He pictured himself and Alice in the radio’s green glow, listening to a clipped and suspenseful report of an icy sea rescue in which not everyone would be saved. The correspondent’s voice in this daydream was British, for some reason. Alice would tug anxiously on the strap of a thin, soft garment like the ones hanging from pegs in the antique store.