Something in the Shadows

by Packer, Vin

  “If he’s going to pass out,” said Maggie, “I’d rather he stayed the night on the couch. He could have an accident.”

  “Don’t worry about their kind, Mag. They get home every time!”

  Lou was looking up from one to the other as though he were a spectator at a tennis game, watching the ball dancing between the pair, and he was quiet because it occurred to him that while they argued, he might pour himself another. The Burden had the same thought, apparently, because the next thing he did was pick up the brandy bottle and take it into the kitchen.

  Maggie said, “Lou, do you want me to call Janice?”

  “What for?”

  “I’m worried about your getting home.”

  “Do you think I’m drunk? I came here absolutely sober. I came here to settle something with Joseph.”

  “What did you want to settle, Lou?”

  He knew that the Burden was purposely lingering in the kitchen, out of sight but within earshot. If Lou could convince Maggie he was all right, she might make the Burden bring back the bottle.

  So Lou plunged. “I want to know what connection Joe has with the Tondleys.”

  “Who?”

  “The Tondley’s. They’re a farm family near Mechanicsville.”

  “I’ve never heard of them, Lou.” “And Joe?”

  “He doesn’t know anyone who lives out this way. We both came out here without knowing a soul.”

  “Who suggested the move?”

  “Lou, really — ”

  “Did Joseph?”

  “I think he did. He got this grant from the Pennsylvania — ”

  “Never mind that! That’s what he says! Did he know Freddy Tondley?”

  “Lou, Lou, you’re really talking about something I don’t know one damn thing about! I can’t — ”

  The Burden’s voice interrupted her. He was standing in the entranceway, between the kitchen and the living room. “I think we’ve had just about enough, Doctor Hart!”

  “Freddy Tondley was in the Marines!” Lou shouted at Maggie. “Was Joseph ever in the Marines?”

  Maggie Meaker began to laugh.

  2

  “Joseph in the Marines! Jo-seph!” … Well, let her laugh. And didn’t Amos Fenton sound authoritative though, with his “we’ve had just about enough.” … Joseph stood behind the door to the downstairs, on the bottom step, listening.

  Some time after Maggie had closed the door between the upstairs and the downstairs, he had fallen asleep. He had been sitting up in his chair and a violent drowsiness had overtaken him. Then there was another dream of Ishmael, another dream re-enactment of some random moment in the cat’s life; this one, the time Ishmael had suffered with the ingrown toenail. Joseph had taken him in the carrier to Dr. MacKellar. That was all, simple and meaningless. Yet when Joseph had awakened from the dream, he had felt tears come to his eyes. He had gone into the bathroom to wash his face, and it was then, on his way back, passing the upstairs landing, that he had heard the third voice — Louis'.

  Joseph had crept down in his stockinged feet. They were all talking about the water-line on the River Road, after Hurricane Diane. Joseph could not figure out how Louis had ever suddenly appeared there, until later on in the conversation he caught the thickness in Louis’ speech. Louis was there drunk, to apologize at last, was that it? He had thought so; he had nearly come out from his hiding place when Louis had made the remark about settling something with him; but then Louis had changed the subject abruptly. What did the Tondleys have to do with Joseph?

  On an impulse, Joseph gave the door a slight push.

  Then he said, “Maggie’s very tired, Doctor. You heard Amos say so yourself. She shouldn’t laugh so hard.”

  Fenton came across to him and said out of the side of his mouth, “Look, Meaker, how about helping me give this guy the heave-ho? He’s stinking!”

  Joseph stepped down and into the living room, facing Louis.

  “Why should I know Tondley?”

  “You know his name! I thought so!”

  “I was listening. That’s how I know his name.”

  Maggie said, “Joseph, have you been eavesdropping?”

  “Freddy Tondley!” Louis was shouting, “Conqueror of Iwo Jima, hero of Taejon, caught in an electric saw in Mechanicsville, P.A. How about it, Joe? He a pal of yours? Was he?”

  “I never had a pal, Louis. Not even a dog named Pal. My cat’s name was Ishmael. That means ‘wanderer.’ One night he wandered into the headlights of a car. Right here on Old Ferry Road, Louis.”

  He saw Louis’ eyes, the same glary look there he had seen the night Louis had come to dinner; glary and somehow dead-looking too, fixed to nothing, but moving in their sockets as though they could see what was in front of them. It disgusted Joseph; at the same time it made him slightly fearful. They were like the eyes of someone gone soft in the head.

  Maggie sounded angry. “Just say it right out, Joseph, damn you! Don’t beat about the bush!”

  And Joseph saw that Maggie’s eyes were that way too; she had been drinking brandy all evening down here with Fenton. Joseph looked more closely at Amos Fenton. His eyes were like agates, cold and hard. Joseph realized it was fury he saw written in Amos’ eyes.

  Was everyone out of control? Joseph felt a shiver run from his back to his neck. Louis was crossing the room, coming toward him slowly.

  Maggie said, “Never mind, shut up, Joseph, don’t say anything!”

  “Have you got anything more to say to me today, Joseph? Or did that little book say everything?” Louis was standing so close to Joseph that Joseph could feel his breath on his cheeks.

  Joseph said, “It’s you who should say something to me, isn’t it?”

  “Was Freddy Tondley your friend?”

  “I don’t even know him.”

  “Do you think I murdered him?”

  Joseph had no chance to answer. At the same time Louis asked that question, Maggie said something to Amos Fenton; the next thing Joseph saw was Fenton’s hairy arms grabbing Louis from behind.

  “I want you out of here,” Fenton said. “Now!”

  A small smile tipped Louis’ lips. He said to Joseph, “Do you want me to kill your wife’s lover too? Is that it, Joe?”

  Then Fenton socked Louis, and Louis socked Fenton back, and Maggie began screaming, “Not in here! Not in the house!”

  Joseph turned and started across to the staircase. His last look was at Amos Fenton, red in the face, a repugnant leer snarling his features into a confusion of ugliness, while he grunted in the effort of punching Louis Hart’s nose.

  Joseph thought to himself, there goes Amos Fenton. That’s a fellow with real character — and he went upstairs, the house coming down with the noise.

  Chapter Eleven

  On Saturday morning, Amos Fenton had a black eye, and a sudden recollection of something he had to attend to in New York, immediately. He was full of saccharine apologies about having to cut short his week-end and Maggie received them with all the seriousness of a civilian in war-time, confronted with a soldier’s recall to active duty. Joseph watched the scene impassively, for as long as he could stand to; then he went up to his study and read a dissertation on gruttafoos until Fenton’s car pulled out of the drive.

  When he was sure that Maggie was occupied with the breakfast dishes, Joseph sneaked downstairs and went out by the barn to bury the pheasant. He had told no one about having the poor dead animal; would there be any point in it? The new December ground was hard, but Joseph punctured it with the pitchfork, finally, and made the bird’s grave beside Ishmael’s. He was glad the bird’s remains would rest intact under the dirt, glad he had saved the bird from having its feathers picked, its head and legs chopped off, its insides pulled out, and what remained cooked up for the prongs of its killer’s fork. Joseph resisted the temptation to save one of the beautiful feathers; it belonged with the whole beauty of the animal; it was a part of the animal.

  Joseph would have liked to paint th
e bird before he had buried it. He thought of going into the house for his drawing pad and sketching it before he covered it over with dirt; but the thought seemed as cruel as the thought of eating the pheasant. It was dead; let its loveliness be lost to the world now; let the world receive no gratification from this slaughtering.

  “Where were you?” Maggie said when Joseph returned to the house.

  She was making a pot of fresh coffee, using Risestaver’s, one of A. & F.'s accounts for which she had written the copy. For coffee that cries flavour, use Risestaver!

  “Out walking around,” said Joseph.

  “Walking around with a pitchfork?”

  “What did you ask for, if you saw me?”

  Maggie said, “For all I know you were digging up the cat to send parcel post to poor Lou Hart.”

  Joseph got a cup down from the sideboard. He hated the coffee. (“What do I crave for? Risestaver!”) He liked Martinson’s in the blue can, but Maggie always said Martinson’s was not putting any money in her pocket, so why should she put any in theirs!

  “Well, what were you doing out there with a pitchfork?” said Maggie.

  “Burying a corpse,” Joseph said.

  “Oh, ha, ha, and ha, ha! Aren’t we funny this morning!”

  “I guess it’s a carry-over from last night,” said Joseph.

  “I was wondering when you’d start on that!”

  “On what?” Joseph saw the coffee start to boil; began timing it, since Maggie never let it boil a full twenty minutes, as he liked. (“Want a lifesaver? Have some Risestaver!”)

  “For one thing,” said Maggie, “I think it is perfectly awful that you had to give Lou Hart a book like that, instead of coming right out and telling him you knew he killed Ishmael!”

  “He didn’t even apologize.”

  “He was drunk! He was not in his right mind, Joseph! I told you last night, that Lou Hart was out of his head last night! Why else would he say that absolute nonsense about Amos and me?”

  “I can’t imagine.” (“I’ll be your slave for Risestaver!”) “Well, think for yourself, please. What was all that about the Tondleys? Who the hell are the Tondleys, or this Freddy Tondley? He didn’t know what he was talking about!”

  “Maybe he murdered someone by that name.”

  “I’m getting very tired of all this talk about killing and burying a corpse and murder. I am! I mean, if I hadn’t been analyzed, I wouldn’t mind all this talk, but I just happen to know that it’s one big cover-up for hostility! And I don’t like it one single bit, Joseph!”

  “Tell Louis, not me.”

  “You’re goading him into talking that way! Now, Joseph, you have to face the goddam fact that Lou Hart killed a cat! Not a person! A cat!”

  “I’m facing that fact.”

  “Oh? Are you? I suppose you’d rather he’d killed a person? A friend?”

  “He wouldn’t have the courage to kill anyone who could fight back.”

  “Just drop it, Joseph! Just drop it! I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “All right.”

  “We just won’t talk about it.”

  “Fine.”

  “That’s your way. Just keep it all inside of you. Isn’t that your way, Joseph?”

  “Yes, I think that’s my way.”

  “Think? Think? You’re probably standing there right now brooding about what Lou Hart said with regard to Amos and me! Instead of talking it over with me, you’re probably standing there right now making a mountain out of a molehill!”

  “I wasn’t giving it any thought at all,” Joseph said. This morning, before he had read the dissertation on gruttafoos, he had looked into the Varda file for the photograph she had sent from Venezuela. For a few minutes he had studied it, the face of each one, with the names printed underneath: Varda, George, Aniko, Katricka. He had taken his thumb and put it across the faces of George, Aniko and Katricka, and there was Varda alone, looking back at him. (“Am I dear to you? Dear is the shadow, reflection of us — ”) On Varda’s shoulder there was the hand of George, which he could not cover with his thumb, without covering her.

  “You pretend you don’t care, Joseph, that’s your trouble! If you could only admit that you care! You can’t even admit it to yourself!”

  “I thought we were going to drop it?”

  “You’d like to, wouldn’t you? Never face up to anything, Joseph — that way you’ll always be safe! Don’t drink, because you might give yourself away! Don’t smoke, it might relax you, and you daren’t let down your guard! And whatever you do, don’t live in the present, because it’s so much less demanding back in the past with Varnish!”

  “I don’t know what Varda has to do with anything.”

  “I don’t either, but don’t think I don’t know you sit around up there reading over her old letters! She’s a communist besides!”

  “Was,” said Joseph.

  “You’re always carrying on as though you were Mahatma Gandhi, with your non-violence and conscientious objectoring, and who was your big heart-throb? Some communist!”

  “The coffee’s done,” said Joseph (“Won’t you stay for Risestaver?”)

  “Someone who believes in bloody revolutions!”

  “I said the coffee is done, Maggie.”

  “And I said she’s a communist! And Joseph,” Maggie said, waving a spoon at him like a finger pointing naughty, “don’t think you would have fallen for her if she hadn’t been one! You can’t admit your aggressions or your hostilities to yourself! That’s why you get someone who admits hers all over the place. Like me! Then you can sit around and pet the cat, and good old Maggie will let off >enough steam for both of us!”

  “The phone’s ringing,” said Joseph.

  Maggie held the spoon under his nose, wagging it like a hopped up metronome. “Oh, you could use some analysis, Joseph! If it wouldn’t do anything else for you, it might give you the gumption to answer the phone in your own home, instead of telling me about it!”

  2

  Saturday noon he was sober. He woke up at The Washington Crossing Motel, outside Trenton, New Jersey. Across the room the television was playing. He must have pulled in here late last night, but it could just as easily have been early this morning. The Late Show sometimes lasted until two or three in the morning.

  His last recollection was of the bar at Danboro, of going in there and ordering a drink, of Alfred White wiping glasses by the cash register, under the framed print of Bruegel’s “The Return of the Hunters.” After that? Nothing.

  His best guess was that he had called Janice. There had been a quarrel. He had decided not to go home. That was the usual pattern. Then he would drive across to New Jersey, where he was not known, pick some out-of-the-way motel, register under another name and sleep it off.

  There was a bruise on his jaw, and one on his nose. They were not painful and he had not noticed them until he had looked in the bathroom mirror. A fight or a fall? He examined his clothes but found no clue, nothing torn or soiled. Lou Hart was bored with analysing the reasons for these bouts; he had stopped doing that long ago. Guilt, in any recognizable form, was also not a part of these experiences, nor was self-reproach. He no longer strained to remember the details of the blackout period; it was a waste of time. When this happened to him, he just got on with it. It seemed neither pleasurable nor painful — though some of the past bruises had been physically painful — but oddly enough, this happening gave him something nothing else could: a purpose. For as long as it lasted, his energy was concentrated on a single objective: drinking. There was no alternative; by now he knew that, consequently, no indecision nor any back-and-forth reasoning. Like any other state of emergency, the commitment was only to the exigency.

  In the shower he thought about Meaker coming to his office and leaving the book. He had dumped it in the wastebasket without a second’s thought, save for the horrific impact of the title’s implication. He sensed Meaker’s meaning without thinking about it; he poured his first drink
before he wondered how Meaker figured in the matter. His second drink did not tell him, nor his third. That was the start of things then — that had triggered this bout. Lou Hart knew that even before Meaker had arrived, he had been spoiling for this anyway. It had been a long time, and perhaps too long. Whatever it was anyone wanted to call it — escape? some sort of self-punishment? plain old alcoholism? — it had not ended last night; it had begun. Lou Hart knew that. When he had shaved and dressed, he would drive to a package store and get a couple of fifths; stop at a delicatessen and buy some food. Then call his answering service, cancel the rest of the day’s appointments, have them call Janice. The doctor is detained in New Jersey. Janice knew how to translate that message; more than likely, so did the answering service by now.

  Outside it was a grey damp day, not too cold for December. He noticed with some sense of satisfaction that his car was parked at a proper angle in front of his cabin, and that the windows were rolled up and the door locked. His keys were in his right pocket of his overcoat, thirty dollars in cash in the left. Another relief; he would not have to write a cheque; he would not have to worry that the name he signed on the books might not tally with his credentials. His licence plate said he was a doctor. Doctor who, was anyone’s guess.

  At the office, he explained that he was staying over. He paid for another night in advance, and was on his way out the door when the woman at the desk said, “Do you want the maid to clean up your cabin right away, Dr. Tondley?”

  His shock at hearing her call him “Tondley” left him dumb and blank-faced. He stood staring at her.

  “I said, do you want the maid to make up your room right away? She usually does it at three, but if you’re coming back before — ”

  “Yes,” he said, “right away.” Then he said, “Did you say Tondley or Tonley?” He walked back to the desk. He wanted a look at the card he had filled out last night. She held it in her hands and he could not make out the writing.

  “Tondley. T-O-N-D-L-E-Y.”

  “Let me see?” he said.

  She handed him the card. His writing was large and uneven, the way it always was when he was “in.” He had signed Duncan Tondley. Above it, on the top of the card, she had typewritten the name.