River of Heaven

by Lee Martin

  I keep my voice calm. I try to understand what’s happening here, if indeed it’s anything at all. “Cal,” I say. “Your gun.”

  He looks down at his hand as if he’s forgotten what it holds. “Jesus, I’m sorry, Sammy. It’s just these people. They’ve got me on edge.”

  “They’re nothing that concerns you.” I whistle for Stump, and he comes to me. “It’s all about Stump, folks just coming to get a look at his ship.”

  “That ship,” Cal says with just a hint of disgust.

  I can’t stop myself. I tell him this is my home, and if I want to build a doghouse in the shape of a sailing ship I can. And I can have people stop by to see it, can invite them into my house even, offer them coffee and a place to rest awhile. I’m on a roll and I keep going.

  “You were talking to Herbert Zwilling,” I say. “I heard you when I came in the door. You said you’d take care of things. I don’t know what that’s all about, but I don’t like the sound of it.” I rub my hand over my head. “See? You’ve got me all worked up.”

  “You’ve worked yourself up. Looks like you and Arthur have been watching too many detective shows.” He puts his hand on my back. “Jesus, Sammy. Let’s sit down. Let’s relax.”

  We sit on the couch, and he tells me Herbert Zwilling, in addition to owning the grain elevator and feed supply in Edon, is a collector, a man who scours the country for one-of-a-kind items. Cal was a finder for him. He went out and found the things Herbert Zwilling had an eye for. Their arrangement started when he learned that Cal was from Mt. Gilead. Zwilling had heard about a man there, a blind man who made a gold-plated Coca-Cola glass. Only one like it in the world.

  “That’s what I’m supposed to take care of,” Cal says. “Zwilling wants me to see if I can hunt down that glass while I’m here, or at least find out something about where it might be.”

  It spooks me, hearing Cal talk about that gold-plated Coca-Cola glass, the one I found in the box of junk I bought at that blind man’s auction. It’s such a coincidence I hardly know whether to believe what Cal is telling me. I sit on the couch, aware that I’m in my own house, but it’s as if I’m watching from a long way back, further even than the day of that auction and even farther back than the day I first read about that glass in the Daily Mail. That piece in It’s Us, that glass, that auction. How in the world do they all add up to this moment now with Cal? Who would have ever thought that one contained the other? I can’t find the words to say it, this feeling I have that if there’s a God he’s somehow alive in the world, somehow all around us and threaded through the smallest things, the little pieces of time we don’t give a second thought until a moment like this—a moment when I have the oddest feeling that what’s about to happen between Cal and me was written somewhere a long way back and has been waiting patiently for us to step inside it.

  “That glass,” I say. “That Coca-Cola glass. It’s in my basement.”

  As soon as I say it, I feel time speed up. I’m aware that Cal is speaking, yammering on and on about what a coincidence this is and won’t Herbert Zwilling be pleased, and who would have thought it in a million years, and I know we’re getting up from the couch and moving through the kitchen to the basement door and on down the stairs, Stump galumping along behind us, but I’m really not aware of my body, of the steps I take, until I move toward a shelf in the basement and I find the cardboard box I’m looking for.

  I’ve wrapped the Coca-Cola glass in butcher paper and hidden it away in this box. It seems a silly thing to do now that I’m unwrapping the glass and showing it to Cal. Think about it. A blind man makes this one-of-a-kind, and then he dies and there’s no one to give a hoot about that glass so it ends up in a box of this-and-that at his auction where a man who lives alone and doesn’t know if he still has a brother alive on this earth buys it, brings it home, wraps it up, and hides it in his basement in this box. What sense does it make? This beautiful glass. I hold it out to Cal. The gold plating sparkles in the light. The slim pedestal widens toward the top, and across the glass in red letters are the words COCA-COLA, in flowing script. “Here it is,” I say, and just like that, without a second thought, I hand it over.

  “Well, that’s something,” Cal says. “That’s just what the doctor ordered.” He asks me how I’ve come to own it, and I tell him about the auction. “Imagine that,” he says. “A glass like this just tossed away. It’s a good thing you found it, Sammy.” He winks at me. “Zwilling’s sure going to be surprised.” He holds up the glass as if he’s toasting his friend. “He’ll pay you a pretty dollar for this.”

  “What makes you think I’ll sell it?”

  Cal looks at me as if he’s never considered the chance that I won’t. He looks at me like a man who’s not used to people saying no to him.

  “You just had it stuffed away in this box,” he says.

  I take the glass back from him. “That’s no sign it doesn’t mean something to me.”

  “Sammy, don’t be a knucklehead. What good is it to you?”

  I wrap the butcher paper around the glass, and as I do, I think of the blind man scheming inside his head, figuring out exactly how to do it, gold-plate this glass. I think of the first time he held it in his hand, how he must have run his fingers over it, maybe even lifted it to his nose and breathed in the scent of that gold, pressed it to his cheek, felt the coolness and the raised edges of those etched letters. Surely, he traced them over and over, writing the words again and again with his finger, and surely he was happy. “You tell your friend if he wants to do business, he’ll have to talk to me. Call him up right now if you want. Let me see what he has to say.”

  “Zwilling? No, you don’t call Zwilling. When Herbert Zwilling wants to talk, he gets in touch with you.”

  Cal makes it clear that there’s nothing more to say on the subject, and it feels strange to come out of this fantastic story about the Coca-Cola glass. I don’t know what to say. I remember, then, that I haven’t told Cal about what happened at the police annex. “You’re not going to believe this, Cal, but they’ve still got the clothes that Dewey was wearing that night at the tracks. You remember that concho belt?”

  “I remember,” Cal says. “Just like it was yesterday. How could I ever forget?”

  “And Duncan’s read the coroner’s inquest.”

  “The inquest said it was a suicide, didn’t it?”

  “Yes, but Duncan’s starting to think otherwise.”

  “Tell him about Arthur, Sammy. Arthur and that night. Give him something else to think about.”

  “Leave Arthur out of this,” I say. “He’s had enough trouble. I don’t care if I ever see that boy again if you want to know the truth. I hope he’s done with me.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” Cal says. “Sounds like he’s got his teeth sunk into a bone and he doesn’t aim to stop gnawing until he bites it in two.”

  ZWILLING DOESN’T CALL. FRIDAY GOES BY, AND BY THE END of the day it starts to feel like Cal and I never had that conversation about him. We never went down in the basement and found that Coca-Cola glass, and the next thing I know it’s Saturday, Christmas Eve.

  My mail has an envelope addressed in what might possibly be the most beautiful handwriting I’ve ever seen. Mr. Samuel Brady. The envelope is red, and the ink is gold. The return address is written across the envelope’s flap: 1515 N. Silver, an address I don’t recognize.

  My first thought is, a Christmas card, but who do I know who would send me such a card? Not Cal, who would have no reason to put a card in the mail when he could just hand it to me. Not Arthur, who would do the same.

  Cal says I shouldn’t open the envelope. It could have anthrax inside.

  “Anthrax?” I say, stupefied with the thought. “Who in the world would do a thing like that?”

  “You never know, Sammy.” He drinks the last of his morning coffee. “You just never know.”

  I put Cal’s silly talk out of my head and study the envelope again. A woman’s handwriting like
that of the girls in school who wrote what the teachers always called “a pretty hand.” I envied those girls who could make the act of forming letters seem like love. Even when they wrote with chalk on the board, they could do it. They could make me feel a squiggle in my heart. Each stroke and dip and loop and tail enchanted me. At night, those days after Dewey died, I tried to imitate the graceful movement of those girls’ hands, but I could never get it right. Every word I tried—even my own name—looked ugly to me.

  “Throw it in the trash,” says Cal. “That’s what I’d do. Or better yet, take it out back and bury it.”

  I can feel the gold ink on the envelope; my name has never sparkled like this, never seemed so pure and wonderful, so…well, forgive me…so golden. I work my finger up under the flap. “Anthrax?” I say. “Cal, really.”

  “It could happen like that,” he says. “Sammy, please.”

  But I open the envelope before he can stop me. Inside is an invitation to a special holiday gathering of the Seasoned Chefs at the Cabbage Rose Bed and Breakfast, hosted by Miss Vera Moon. Regrets Only, 395-2845.

  A New Year’s Eve Murder Mystery Dinner, one of those party games where the guests assume identities and become suspects and sleuths. This particular evening will have a gangster motif: The Case of John Dillinger’s Disappeared Doily. The invitation explains that someone has made off with the doily from Dillinger’s favorite chair, a doily he crocheted with his own hands. I’ve been summoned to Very Vera’s Vice and Vamp Valhalla to get to the bottom of this despicable crime. Happy Mickey Finn: that’s the character I’m supposed to play. A speakeasy piano player known for slipping knockout drops in people’s drinks.

  It’s the name, of course, that spooks me. Finn, and that Happy doesn’t help either. I hear in it more than a dab of irony, convinced, as I am, that Vera must surely understand that I’m not happy at all.

  For an instant, it feels like she’s speaking to me in code. I know, I know, she seems to be saying. I know everything about you. Then I decide this is just the world playing its devilish trick with coincidence. The sort of thing you wouldn’t believe if you read it in a book.

  “It’s an invitation.” I hold the card open so Cal can see. “An invitation to a party,” I tell him. “No anthrax.”

  “Not this time,” he says. Then he goes down the hall to his bedroom, and he closes the door.

  I phone Vera right away, and I tell her it won’t do. It won’t do at all for me to attend this party. “I’m afraid I’m a stick in the mud,” I tell her.

  “Oh, don’t be silly,” she says. “It’s just a holiday party, a gathering of friends, a little make-believe to spice up the night. For kicks, for laughs, for a hoot. You know, a whodunit.”

  This, you see, is the problem. So much of my life I’ve had this dread that somewhere, sometime, a finger will point in my direction, a voice will say, “Aha!”

  Never would it happen that way. At least that’s what I used to think before Duncan took me into that police annex. Now I have this feeling inside, this old worry. On Thursday when I was doing the most ordinary things—shopping for shoelaces at Wal-Mart, paying for gasoline at the Amoco, depositing my Social Security check at the Trust Bank—in an instant I could see myself for what I really am, a fraud. Someone would hold a door open for me, smile and say good morning, and I’d hear myself answer with a good morning of my own, and I’d swear the voice didn’t come from me, a phony, who had no right to be moving among those kind and friendly folks. I saw a man in Wal-Mart do a trick for a child he didn’t know, that one where it looks like he pulls a quarter out of her ear—even Leonard Mink knew that one—just so the girl might stop fussing and her mother could get on with her shopping. I heard a woman say to the bank teller, “Now those are pretty earrings.” And I wondered what it would be like to be so in love with your life that you could reach out to strangers that way.

  “Ducky, you really can’t decline,” Vera says. Stump has somehow pulled an empty can of duck and potato from the trash and is nosing the can across the kitchen floor. I watch him, admiring his persistence, while at the same time trying to pay attention to what Vera is saying. “You’re a crucial ingredient to the mystery. Without you, ducky, who will be our Happy Mickey Finn?”

  “I daresay you’ve miscast me. Unless you’re thinking in terms of knockout drops. I’m afraid I’m a bit of a snooze when it comes to parties.”

  Stump has shoved the can into a corner by the pantry, and there he settles down to his sniffing and licking, his rump up in the air, his tail wagging.

  “You’re shy,” Vera says. “What a sweet boy. I could see that the first night you came to our cooking class. Maybe this is just what you need, a chance to be someone new.”

  “Oh, but don’t you see?” I ask her. “I’m an old dog. It’s too late for new tricks. Anyway you try to cook it, I’m the same old me.”

  “You just need a little zest. A little Very Vera.”

  I can see what Arthur means about her voice and how on the radio it must seem like she’s talking right to him. Ducky, she says. Sweet boy. Her voice is like the pretty hand the girls wrote in school. Her words are all dips and glides and loops and tails. It’s clear why once upon a time Cal fell in love with her, and why even now he might be wondering whether it’s too late for something to happen for the two of them. “Sam,” she says. “Sam, trust me. This is Vera talking. I know what’s best.”

  “You’re right,” I say, though I intended to keep this conversation short, just my polite thanks for the invitation and my regrets on not being able to accept. “I’m a little shy,” I tell her. “I wouldn’t know how to act like someone else.”

  “It’s all style. Ducky, it’s all pizzazz. It starts with a costume. What will we need? A bowler hat, some sleeve garters, a pair of spats? I’ll help with that. Are you free today? I’ll come by after lunch.”

  Stump has given up on the can. He sits at my feet now, a look of expectation in his eyes. “I’m sorry,” I say to Vera. “I just can’t. My brother is still visiting.”

  Her voice gets even brighter. “Cal? Why, I guess you’ll just have to bring that boy along. The more the merrier, right?”

  “I can’t.”

  “But you must,” she says. “You’re right here on my list. Arthur has already accepted for you.”

  I turn to my kitchen window and see Arthur and Maddie in his driveway. He’s holding a snake of Christmas tree tinsel, twisted and bundled up in a knot. She’s waving a fistful of icicles, those silvery strands some people like to drape on their trees. His breath comes out in a white puff of vapor when he speaks. She stamps her foot, throws the fistful of icicles at him, and then stomps off down the street.

  “He had no right to do that,” I say to Vera. “No right to speak for me.”

  “He’s just trying to be a friend, Sam. If you don’t like it, I guess you’ll have to take that up with him.”

  Which I do.

  I find him still in his driveway, a single Christmas tree icicle snagged on his ear. “Icicles,” he says, with disgust. He swats at his ear with the hand that still holds the tinsel bundle. “Why in hell’s bells would anyone want icicles and tinsel?” Finally, he throws the tinsel to the ground. “She just wants to fight, Sammy. She’s always boiling for a fight, and over the dumbest things. I can barely say her name. ‘Maddie,’ I say, and she snaps at me. ‘Leave me alone,’ she says. ‘Just leave me alone.’ I ought to toss her in the brig.”

  “Maybe she’s got reason.” I pick up the tinsel bundle and start untangling it, hating myself as I do, because I’ve marched out here for the purpose of telling Arthur to mind his own business, only to find myself now offering him this favor. “Your mother throws you out in the snow, and you’re barefoot? I imagine you carry that with you a while. How would you react to someone always trying to call the shots? She’ll be hurting a long time from something you can’t ever really know. Did you ever think about that? Ease up, Arthur. You’re not at sea. She’s not one of y
our sailors.”

  He yanks the tinsel out of my hand. “Are you trying to tell me how to handle my own granddaughter? What could you possibly know about what it is to have a family?”

  Here it is, as glaring as the sunshine on the snow: exactly what Arthur thinks of me, an old bachelor who has no way of knowing how to love someone. Snow melt drips from Arthur’s roof into his gutters; I hear a puny trickle drip down the drainpipe.

  “I’m trying to tell you.” My throat closes off, and my words choke in my throat. “Damn it, Arthur.” I start again, this time with more force. “I’m trying to say I don’t like it that you told Vera I’d come to her party. I’m a grown man. I can make my own decisions.”

  “Piss poor ones,” he says. “Look at you.” He jerks his arm toward my house, and the tinsel furls out and hits me in the face.

  “You and your dog,” he says, “and a brother you haven’t seen for God knows how long.”

  That’s the worst thing he could say to me, to make it plain that for years the only living thing I’ve had in this world to care about and to care about me is a stump-legged basset hound.

  “Looks to me like you don’t have any room to talk about family,” I say. “When’s the last time you spoke to your son?”

  Arthur’s bluster retreats. He wads the tinsel up into his fist. “I didn’t mean to hit you like that.” He gets shy, and I stop myself from going on, storming at him like Maddie. I could tell him he’s an old poop who’s too full of himself, tell him he’s so lonely without Bess all he can do is try to force himself into other people’s lives. I could tell him to leave me alone, but I don’t have the heart, and when he says, “I’m sorry,” I’ve already turned away from him, already started back to my house. “A party,” he calls after me. “A murder mystery. We’ll have some laughs. Come on, Sammy. It’ll be fun.”

  CAL DOESN’T COME OUT OF HIS BEDROOM FOR LUNCH. TWELVE o’clock goes by and then twelve-thirty, and, even though I’m hungry, I don’t make a move to put any food on the table. I realize this has become what I expect from him, his cooking. I keep waiting for him to come into the kitchen to put together a soup or a sandwich and then the two of us will sit at the table and eat as if we’ve had this ease all our lives.