Herbert Rowbarge

by Natalie Babbitt

  “Well, that’s nice,” says Louisa hastily, hoping to avoid a full report. “I mean, nice to have so many of your children around.”

  “Yeah, well,” says Fawn, and leaves the response, whatever it might have been, hanging forever unfinished as she scours away at a big enameled roasting pan. “Mr. Rowbarge gone back over to the park?”

  “No,” says Louisa. “As a matter of fact, he went to bed. He said he was feeling tired.”

  “Tired!” Fawn exclaims. “I should think so! At his age, he oughta be rockin’ in the sun with his memories’steada push push push the way he does.”

  “I know,” says Louisa. “We’re kind of worried about him.”

  “Ain’t like him to go to bed directly he’s had his dinner,” Fawn observes.

  “No,” says Louisa. “I was going to call Babe and see if she wanted to go to the movies, but I hate to leave him.”

  “The movies!” says Fawn. “You two sure do like to waste time. What’s playin’?”

  “It’s called He Ran All the Way,” says Louisa. “John Garfield’s in it.”

  Fawn curls her lip. “Sounds like a loser to me,” she says.

  Louisa sighs. “Well, I don’t want to leave Daddy anyway. Not when he isn’t feeling well.”

  “That’s right,” says Fawn. “Get outa the way while I mop up the counters. I gotta get on home.”

  Louisa goes to the living room and stares out the window. The light is fading, but now, with the trees in leaf, sunsets reflected in the lake beyond the road are hidden from view. There is nothing to look at through the glass but a neighbor’s cat, a gray tom, who is crossing the lawn with something small, limp, and furry dangling from his jaws. Louisa says, “Oh, dear,” and raps on the window with her knuckles. The cat pauses, looking toward the house, and then, with princely indifference, glides on and disappears under the shrubbery.

  At the same time Fawn comes down the hall, her pocketbook under her arm, and says, “Was that you knockin’?”

  “Yes,” says Louisa. “That terrible cat from down the road—he’s killed something again. It’s a wonder there’s a chipmunk or a field mouse left anywhere around.”

  “That’s the way they do,” says Fawn. “Can’t change it.”

  “I know,” says Louisa sadly.

  “Cheer up,” says Fawn. “You ain’t a chipmunk.” And then she says, “What’s the matter? You look kinda mossy.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” says Louisa, embarrassed, though she is grateful, too, for this attention. Fawn can be gentle and motherly on rare occasions, making of the slim ten years between their ages a span that is at once far wider and more bridgeable, and Louisa finds it soothing, hopes for it, even. “I guess I’ve got spring fever,” she says. “I just wish … something would happen. Nothing ever happens.”

  Fawn says, “Go down and hang around the road. Maybe some lowlife’ll jump ya from the bushes.”

  “Good grief, Fawn,” says Louisa, laughing. “I don’t want that kind of excitement.”

  “Oh, no?” says Fawn cryptically. “Well, I gotta go.” She tucks her pocketbook firmly between her knees, and taking from the hall closet an aged jacket of red and white sateen with Mussel Point Marauders spelled out in felt letters on the back, she shrugs into it. “Why doncha ring up your sister, get her to come play cards over here or somethin’?” she suggests over her shoulder, zipping up the jacket. She zips with care, for the jacket is a treasured relic from the glory days of her youngest son, Sam, a basketball star in high school fifteen years before.

  “Well,” says Louisa, “I would, but she’s probably tired out. Aunt Opal had bridge over there this afternoon, and Babe spent all day getting ready.”

  “Oh,” says Fawn, retrieving the pocketbook. “Had enough cards for one day, huh.”

  “Yes, probably so. And anyway, I’m just too restless to sit still.”

  Fawn says, reasonably, “You was gonna sit still in a movie house.”

  “That’s different,” says Louisa.

  Fawn gives it up. “Well,” she says briskly, “I got things to do. See ya tomorrow.” And she is gone down the hall and out the kitchen door.

  Louisa drops down on the sofa. The living room glows with the dim golden light that defines May evenings so sweetly, while outside, birdsong soars and trembles from the trees along the road. “I wish …” she says to herself, but cannot finish the thought. Her head fills with visions from movies she has seen where heroines have loved, lost, triumphed, died, been swept away on horseback or stowed away on ships. The Sea Wolf, starring John Garfield. “We saw that on our thirty-fourth birthday,” she thinks, and then, as scenes from the movie wash across her memory, she murmurs, “Oh, I wish I was Ida Lupino!” Then, sprawled on the cushions of the sofa, she drowses in the growing dark and dreams of things happening, formless but thrilling things, where she is Ida and John is John, and the sea is all around them, sweeping them away.

  September 1941

  Herbert Rowbarge walked alone up Lake Street in the cool autumn dark. It was good to be out in the quiet of the town after all that babble at dinner, good to have the birthday party over with at last, his duty done. For Opal had said, “Surely you’re not going to disappoint the girls and just do nothing!”

  “They’re hardly girls anymore,” he had answered testily. “They’re full-grown women, Opal.”

  “Well, so what if they are?” she had demanded. “Since when did a full-grown woman not want a birthday party? And anyway, they’ll always seem like girls to me.”

  “Well, they’re not,” he had said, “though I grant you they act like it. They’re going to be thirty-six years old.”

  “Thirty-four, Herbert,” said Opal. “Good grief, you really take the cake.”

  “Oh!” he had said. “Thirty-four! Well. That’s different. Why, they’ve got years of childhood left. Forgive me—I didn’t realize.”

  But Opal was immune to his sarcasm. “You can give them a dinner at the Inn,” she had said firmly. “Just for the three of you, and Stuart, Walter, and me. No point getting all the Festeens involved.”

  And it had been all right, he supposed, except for the talk about war. Opal and Stuart argued all the time these days about war, and it was boring, a waste of time. For once, Stuart was right—even that idiot Roosevelt wasn’t so dumb as to get us involved all over again. But aside from that, the dinner had been all right. The steaks were overdone, but the Inn had produced a nice cake with candles, and the twins had been happy. He had given them a generous check—though Opal had frowned and said, “One check? You’ve got two separate daughters, you know”—and Opal and Stuart had given them matching white sweaters of some fuzzy sort of stuff. And Walter—Walter had given each of them a bookend. That Walter! He was something. The bookends were very handsome—heavy brass, and expensive—but in the shape of two sheep, and they were wrapped one for each. It was, on the surface of it, a nice present, but it was funny, too. Subtle. Especially in light of the fuzzy sweaters. The girls hadn’t caught it, of course. They’d pronounced the sheep “darling.” Herbert shook his head. That Walter! And then Babe and Louisa had gone off in the Lincoln to a movie in Bell Fountain. He had refused to go along, and had refused, too, a lift from the Looses back to the house. He wanted to walk, he told Opal; he needed the exercise.

  But it wasn’t that at all. What he needed was to go, alone, to the park and see how things were. He and Walter had closed it for the season a week ago, but that was just it—he and Walter had closed it. Walter was doing a first-rate job, but he was always there. Herbert wanted to have it to himself for a while. But he hadn’t said so at dinner. It sounded kind of silly. Still, he had stowed a flashlight in his overcoat pocket, and had looked forward all day to this solitary visit.

  There was almost no one about on Lake Street. The souvenir stands were boarded up, the dance hall dark, the park behind its high board fence a pool of silence. Herbert knew that once he was inside he could bring it all back in an instant to the b
laze of light and music that defined it all summer. All he had to do was throw the levers in the powerhouse. But he didn’t want to. He liked it like this, dreaming in a sort of hibernation. It made him feel protective, and paternal.

  He went past the padlocked main gates and around the corner, following the fence along the edge of the empty parking lot. And then, coming to the work gate, he took a bunch of keys from his pocket, let himself in, and locked the gate again behind him. Good. Charlie, the night watchman, wasn’t anywhere in sight. But there was a single red bulb set high on a pole near the gate and Herbert switched it on. It was a signal light, to let the watchman know that he was there; a precaution, and a wise one, for Charlie carried a pistol.

  Against the pale night sky, Herbert’s great machines loomed shadowy and motionless around him, their steel frames glinting, their various cars and controls bedded down for the winter in heavy canvas shrouds. Shutters on game booths were bolted into place, the pavilion bare of benches and tables, the lake beyond it black and slick and still. The ticket booths were containers of a darker dark, each a Cyclops with its round eye of glass, each eye with a blacker pupil where the glass was cut away to take in money and dispense little passports of cardboard.

  His heart lifting, Herbert moved among his sleeping monsters quietly toward the center of the park, where the boardwalk divided to curve around the wide circle occupied by the merry-go-round. Here there were permanent benches of concrete and wood arranged so that people could keep an eye on the children as they rode, and Herbert sat down on one, drawing his overcoat closer around him in a sudden rise of wind. He stayed for a long time looking at the merry-go-round, not thinking of anything at all, conscious only of warm, almost physical pleasure.

  The animals were wrapped in canvas, but Herbert knew exactly where the lions were. All around the edge of the roof were carved wooden cupids playing instruments, and the one above the lions, as if to celebrate their presence, was blowing a long gold horn. It was directly in front of him. “Tan-ta-rah,” he whispered, and flushed at once, looking quickly around to see if the watchman was near. But he was still alone. He stood up, feeling foolish but happy, and went on in the dark toward the front of the park.

  At the Penny Arcade he paused and looked in at the banks of games, dim in the feeble glow of a work light hung from a central rafter. The Arcade was not yet boarded up, for a man was coming in the morning to repair a few machines lamed by the summer’s exertions. Herbert didn’t like the Arcade. It was—unbeautiful. But people expected there to be one, and it had paid for itself more than twenty times over since its installation. He stood there frowning at it just the same, and then his eye fell on the polished glass dome of the mechanical gypsy fortune-teller.

  She was gazing at him through the glass, her head tilted to one side, her long-fingered hands poised over a row of tarot cards laid out on the narrow shelf behind which she must sit forever. She looked surprisingly real with her eyes turned on him, her painted lips parted, the gold coins hanging from her headdress and ears the faintest sparkle in the gloom of her enclosure. Herbert took a nickel from his pocket and, crossing over to her, dropped the nickel into the slot and pulled a waiting knob. Abruptly the gypsy began to move. Her hands jerked back and forth over the cards, her head turned from side to side, the gold coins trembling. Then it was over. She gazed at him again, motionless, and, looking down, he pulled out the square of white cardboard that presented itself from a slot of its own, and tried to decipher the words printed on it. But for this the darkness was too thick. He took the flashlight from his pocket and switched it on, focusing its bright circle on the card, and read: The loss which is unknown is no loss at all.

  He stared at the words, his contentment swept away by a flood of desolation. Against it, he said aloud, roughly, “Where does Walter get this stuff?” And then, sensing a movement, he raised his head to the face of the fortune-teller and saw, instead, reflected in the glass, his own face, grotesque in the underlighting of the flashlight in his hand. At once he felt the dreaded twinkling down his spine. He dropped the fortune card and, fumbling with the flashlight, managed at last to switch it off. The dark returned in a rush, his reflection vanished. The eyes of the mechanical gypsy gazed again into his. He wanted, suddenly, to smash the glass dome, to wrench the gypsy from her moorings. Instead, he said to himself, “You’re a fool.” He squared his shoulders and returned the flashlight to his pocket, thinking, “Better go on home now.” He turned and left the Arcade and headed back the way he had come.

  Again, by the merry-go-round, he stopped, but could not regain his pleasure in it. He longed to unwrap the shrouded lions, to stroke their manes. They could always ease these freakish moods that rose so abruptly to plague him. But how could he explain such a thing to the watchman? Why, Charlie would think he was crazy. And then the thought rephrased itself: Charlie would find out he was crazy. He stood quite still, annoyed with himself, sharply aware of the darkness and the silence.

  What would it be like, he wondered, to be really crazy? For he wasn’t, of course. Not yet, anyway. If you were really crazy, you would lose your self; your brain, the lighted part, would slip away, slowly, under the dark part. You would feel it slipping, maybe. Try to clutch at it. But be unable to hold on. Or maybe you wouldn’t feel it slipping. Maybe it would simply go. Not like a lunar eclipse, gradual, inexorable. More like a spill of ink, a great and total blot. Or a fall, with the snap of something breaking, into a hole without a bottom. And then—but he couldn’t quite imagine what would happen next, except that the dark part would be in charge, as it seemed to be in dreams. Maybe it would be nice. Relaxing. Some dreams were nice. But some were horrible. Some sent you rising fast to the surface in a sweat, your heart booming like a drum. Except, if you were crazy, you’d never find the surface.

  He was roused from these speculations by the watchman, a big, grim-faced man of about his own age, a retired Bell Fountain policeman. “Evenin’, Mr. Rowbarge, sir,” said the watchman. “Glad you’re here. Found a coupla boards bashed out of the fence back by the beach. Don’t know when it happened. Seen anything suspicious?”

  “No,” said Herbert.

  “Well, I’m lookin’ extra careful,” said the watchman. “Somebody mighta got in. You goin’ home now?”

  “In a few minutes,” said Herbert.

  “Well, if you see anything, don’t sing out. Come and get me. I’ll be up doin’ the buildings in front.”

  “All right,” said Herbert. “Good night, Charlie.”

  The watchman disappeared and Herbert moved on down the boardwalk. He walked firmly, feeling better, and was nearly to the work gate when all at once a roll of thunder shook the sky, and as if a hose had been trained on the park, it began to rain—hard rain, cold and driving. Turning up his collar, he wheeled about, looking for shelter, and saw nearby the ticket booth that stood by the shrouded Bullet. He ran to it, groping in his pocket for his keys, saw that its little door was ajar, and, pulling it open, ducked inside. He yanked it shut behind him, turned, fumbling for the stool he knew should be there, and tripped against something large and soft. At the same moment a hoarse voice cried plaintively from the floor, “Hey, watch wha’cher doin’!”

  Herbert stiffened and, as well as he could in the limited space, moved back, flattening himself against the door. “Who are you?” he said, finding his voice. “What do you think you’re doing in “here?” He reached into his pocket, brought out the flashlight, and, switching it on, turned the beam on the figure at his feet. But he saw only a bundle of dark clothing, arms wrapped around the head, the knees drawn up. “How’d you get in here, anyway?” he said unsteadily. He reached behind him with his free hand to open the door, found the knob and turned it, but he had slammed it too hard. It was jammed.

  “Shut that durn thing off,” the voice demanded.

  “I certainly will not,” said Herbert. “Get up from there.”

  “Now jus’ a minute,” said the voice. “I wuz here firs’, y’know.
Who the hell are you, tellin’ me what t’do?” The flashlight was abruptly, powerfully, snatched from Herbert’s grasp, the beam turned back on its owner. There was a moment of silence then, while Herbert, eyes squeezed shut, pushed at the door behind his back. At last the voice said, “Uh-oh. If it ain’t Schwimmbeck. Didn’ figure on ya follerin’ me this far.”

  Schwimmbeck? Herbert turned his head away from the glare and said, “My name isn’t Schwimmbeck,” and added, “Give me that flashlight.”

  “No, don’t think so,” said the voice. “Might come in handy.” The light switched off suddenly and the booth went black, much blacker, it seemed, than before, and smaller, tighter, full of breathing. At last the voice, utterly disembodied, said, “Lissen, if ya follered me all the way down from Sandusky, ya mus’ be hurtin’ for that twenny. Jeez, I’m real sorry, Schwimmbeck, but I drunk it all up.”

  “What?” said Herbert, his heart pounding. “What?”

  “Jus’ you and me shut up in here,” said the voice. “Rainin’ like bejeezus, no one else around, might as well have a little talk.” It sighed, and then turned plaintive again. “It ain’t as if ya couldn’ spare a twenny, big shot like you. Maybe if I’d ast ya, you’da give it to me, huh, Schwimmbeck. Sure you would—like hell. Tha’s how you big shots stay big, ain’t it? Don’t never let go a nuthin’.”

  “What in God’s name are you talking about?” said Herbert. “My name isn’t Schwimmbeck.” Alarmed, and a little dizzy, he pushed hard at the door, but it stuck firm. “My God,” he thought wildly, “I’m trapped in here with … something terrible!” There was a bumping sound and suddenly he felt a heavy body, upright, leaning against him, and smelled sour breath on his face. “Get away from me!” he cried. “Who are you?”

  At first there was no answer—just the breath on his face and the hard rattle of rain on the thin roof of the booth, the sheeting of rain down the sides of the booth, closing him in. And then the voice, close to his ear, said, “Man t’ man, Schwimmbeck, ya gotta admit I did my job, kep’ your damn movie house all swep’ out, worked my tail off. Only took a twenny.” It laughed loosely, directly in his ear. “Lissen, Schwimmbeck, you got a brother? I do. Ain’t seen’im in a coon’s age. Never was no good, jus’ a lousy bum. Had a twenny once, he took it offa me slick as a whistle. Cut ‘im up with a butcher knife.” The voice laughed again, its breath foul on Herbert’s cheek. “Got a butcher knife on ya, Schwimmbeck? Won’t do ya no good,’cause I ain’t got yer damn twenny anyways. Drunk it all up.”