by Lee Martin
“Is everything all right?” Duncan asks. “Mr. Brady, do you need a ride?”
“My dog,” I say. I can’t tell them the whole story, the one about Cal and Zwilling and Mora Grove’s warning, so I tell them the one fact I wish I could bury in the snow, cover it over and all the tracks that lead to it, and have the life back I had before Cal arrived. “Stump,” I say, and an ache comes into my throat. “He’s gone.”
16
DUNCAN DRIVES ME HOME, AND HE SAYS NOT TO WORRY. Surely Cal will be back soon with Stump. “Why did he take off like that, anyway?”
“I don’t know,” I tell Duncan, and Maddie doesn’t say a word about what I shouted to Cal, It’s time. She sits on the far edge of the backseat, as far away as she can get from me, her hands in her coat pocket, her shoulders hunched so her hood comes up around her face.
“Cal’s always been in the middle of something,” Nancy says. “I remember that about him. I remember one time when he punched Grinny between the eyes and put him on the ground. Right in front of the Verlene Café. In broad daylight, no less.”
“Try not to worry too much about it, Mr. Brady,” Duncan says. He glances at me in the rearview mirror, and I take stock of his pointed, buzz-cut head. His eyeglasses are slipped down on his thin nose, and I wish I could reach out and gently push them back in place. I get it, then, the truth of him, that he tries his best to hide. He’s been an oddball all his life, a clumsy, gawky kid, and now every time he writes an It’s Us profile on someone with an eccentric talent or hobby—people like me with Stump’s ship, and Vera with her dollhouse collection—he’s thumbing his nose at all the people who ever made fun of him, a boy named after a cake mix. His talent is with the words it takes to turn all of us oddballs into the sorts of folks everyone would love to have as their neighbors. His good heart overwhelms me, and I feel guilty about keeping things from him when it comes to the truth about Dewey. On this night of sadness, I’m thankful for Duncan’s optimism. “Maybe your brother just went on back to your house. Mr. Brady, I bet he’s there right now.”
OF COURSE, HE ISN’T. MADDIE AND I GO INTO MY HOUSE, where the lights are still blazing but there’s no Cal, no Stump. Maddie picks up the quilt she left in a tangle on the couch. It seems as if there’s nothing to say between us. Any word will lead back to the fact that she left that gate open, and now Stump’s gone.
I tell her the story of the New Year’s Eve party and how her grandfather, when he thought Duncan was in trouble, came to the rescue. “He was right there,” I say, “ready to do what he could.” I tell her what a good sport he was after the real story came out and everyone knew Duncan’s collapse had been staged. “Your grandfather can roll with the punches,” I say. “Whatever you need, he’s going to do his best to help you out.”
I help her fold the quilt. We fold it in half lengthwise, then turn it flat. I carry my end to her and she takes it from me, hugging the quilt to her chest.
“You want me to leave, don’t you?” Her voice is shaking. “I left the gate open and now you want me to go back to the Pope.”
I have to steel myself in order to do what I know is right. “You left that gate open,” I say, and she lets the quilt drop from her fingers and slide to the floor.
SO SHE GOES BACK TO ARTHUR, AND I STAY UP MOST OF THE night, unable to sleep. I empty my pockets to change from my Happy Mickey Finn costume into my own clothes, and I find the slip of paper on which Nancy wrote her address. I lay it on the library table and anchor it with the Brulatour Courtyard paperweight. Once I’m changed, I lie on the couch where the pillow still smells of Maddie’s vanilla scent. I put the quilt over me, and sometime toward morning I finally doze off.
When I wake, the sunlight is coming into my eyes, and the telephone is ringing.
It’s Arthur calling. “You home?” he says. I can look out my kitchen window and see him at his. I give him a little wave. “Have you eaten lunch yet?” he asks. “Hold on. I’m on my way over.”
In a tick, he’s here, and Maddie is with him. She carries a casserole dish: Arthur’s specialty, andouille jambalaya. I can smell its spice as soon as I open the back door and the two of them step inside my kitchen.
“I made a sweet potato and apple salad.” Arthur pops the lid off a Tupperware bowl and moves it back and forth beneath my nose. I smell the tang of citrus juice and the spike of garlic. “Vera should be here any minute.”
“Vera?”
“She’s bringing Cajun crawfish cornbread,” Maddie says, already setting the casserole dish in the oven and turning it on low heat to keep it warm.
I catch no hint of mockery in her voice, nor any anger with me because I made her go back to Arthur. If anything, she seems comfortable. She wipes her hands on a dish towel and then opens the cupboard and takes down four plates. She sets the table and finds the silverware.
Arthur puts the lid back on the Tupperware bowl and sets it in the refrigerator. “You hadn’t ought to be alone, Sammy.” If he harbors any grudge because Maddie once chose to live with me, he doesn’t show it. He speaks with a gentle voice. “Not now,” he says. “Not at a time like this. Trust me, Sammy. I know what it is to lose someone you love. You and Stump had years together. I know what he meant to you. Now we’ll have a good meal, just the four of us. We’ll eat, and we’ll be together.”
Sometimes, I’m learning, that’s what it takes—just the nearness of people—to make you feel there may be a good reason for all we suffer. Maybe for moments like this when Vera breezes through the door and I smell her flowery cologne, and she hugs me, not a quick, how-do-you-do hug, but a true embrace. She holds me to her as if right now I’m the most precious thing in the world.
“Sam,” she says, “I’ve brought bread.”
So we sit around this table, and as we eat, I’m thankful to Arthur and Maddie and Vera for knowing what I need.
Vera says to Maddie, “I’ll take you shopping tomorrow. We’ll go to Déjà New.”
“That vintage clothing store, right?” Maddie smoothes her napkin over her lap.
Arthur rolls his eyes at me. “Girl talk.”
It delights me, this chit-chat that’s a sign of life going on—this and the fact that something about Stump’s disappearance has made Maddie open her heart to Vera. Maddie will be starting school here in a few days—a new kid in the middle of the year—and she’ll need friends, a little advice from time to time, the sort of commiseration Arthur won’t be the best equipped to offer. It’s good, then, that she’s started to make room for Vera, who is as close to a mother as she may have for some time.
“You’re such a pretty girl,” Vera says.
“Really?” Maddie smiles.
“Oh definitely. You’re a knockout.”
We finish our meal, but no one makes a move to get up from the table. None of us wants to break the spell, the belief that we can get beyond the sadness of Stump and Cal being gone, but of course, that fact isn’t far from our minds. In our silence, it works itself up through the good food and conversation we’ve just now put an end to.
Then Arthur, unable to keep quiet any longer, says, “So your brother’s ducked out again.” It’s clear that Arthur takes some degree of pleasure in saying this. I imagine he still remembers how the girls went crazy over Cal when he was a young buck, and most of the boys in Mt. Gilead wished they could be him. Old feelings die hard, and I imagine Arthur’s still smarting from the way Vera took so easily to Cal that night at the Seasoned Chefs. “Doesn’t surprise me a bit.”
“What do you mean by that?” I say.
“He doesn’t spend too much time in port. That’s your brother, the kind to leave and not think about how he might hurt someone else. Isn’t that right, Vera? Just the way he walked out on you back when you were starting out.”
I know now that sometime, maybe the night Arthur was looking for Maddie, Vera told him the story of her and Cal and how there was a time when she swore she loved him. Then he went away from her, and now here she is, a widow s
tuck with the company of men like Arthur and me.
She stands up from the table and starts clearing dishes. “When Cal showed up that night at the Seasoned Chefs, I thought it might lead to something.” She lets her hand trail over Maddie’s back. “See how foolish your heart can be no matter how old you get?”
Arthur turns his palms up. “Now he’s run out, just like he did then. This is what I’m saying.”
I feel an anger rising in me, one born not only from the indignation I feel to hear Arthur so smugly cast suspicion on Cal, but also from the fact I can’t deny, the horrible feeling I have that perhaps Cal has more to answer for than he’s let on.
“Maybe we’re all guilty of something,” I say to Arthur. “Maybe it’s like that.”
“Not me,” says Arthur. “I sleep good at night.”
I could go on. I could say more, but there’s danger in words. They can lead us to places we’d rather not go.
“Do you, Arthur?” I finally say.
“Like a baby,” he says, but I see the way he braces himself with his hands flat on the table, like he’d spring up and run away if he could. I see that, and I see his head tip back just the slightest bit and the skin around his eyes crinkle as if he just felt the worst pain behind them, and I know he’s lying. I know he lies awake in the night, thinking about Bess, wishing that she were there with him, playing over in his head, perhaps, all the things he might have done wrong in his life, the things he has to pay for now by being alone.
“Gents,” Vera says. “Is this really the time for this kind of talk?”
Arthur and I shut our yaps, and we help tidy up the kitchen. We sit in the living room, with the television on, and Vera says she hopes we have a short winter. I feel an ache for summer and its long light. I let myself dream that Stump will come back, and in a few months’ time, we’ll be taking our evening walks, the sun brimming red on the horizon. He’ll sniff at the air, tip his face up to me, and give me that look that says there’s nowhere in the world he’d rather be, and this time, these days of winter, will be far behind us.
We all sit in my living room until dusk starts to fall, and Vera and Arthur and Maddie have to get back to their own lives. Vera kisses my cheek as she leaves. Arthur pats me on the shoulder. Maddie gives me a hug and says, “I’m sorry.”
“I know you are,” I say, and she hugs me again. Then I’m alone.
IN THE EVENING, NEARLY TEN O’CLOCK, I HEAR A TIMID TAPPING at my back door: “Shave and a Haircut.” I turn on the hall light and then I go to open the door. Arthur steps inside, and he says to me, “You know I saw him that night. The night that Dewey died. I saw Cal. He was heading down the tracks.”
I close the door behind me. I turn around to face him, my hands on my hips. I take a deep breath, and then I say it: “I know you did. I saw you off in the woods. You were following Dewey, weren’t you? It was because of what I said that night in front of the pool hall.”
For a good while, Arthur doesn’t speak. He glances behind him into the living room, as if he’s making sure there’s no one eavesdropping on us. “That was a long time ago, Sammy.” His voice, hushed, is full of embarrassment. “I was just a kid,” he says, as if that fact alone can absolve him.
“Like I said,” I tell him. “Maybe we’re all guilty of something.”
He sits at the table, and bows his head. He tugs on the hem of the tablecloth, straightening its edge. I wait until he works up the nerve to lift his head and look at me. Then he says, “You’re right. It started that night in front of the pool hall. I was there with Ollie Scaggs and Wendell Black.” The names align themselves with the boys I remember: Ollie, who wore a white T-shirt; Wendell with a pencil behind his ear. “Dewey was walking by,” Arthur says, “and you called him a queer. That got us going, Ollie and Wendell and me, and one night we got him in my car and drove down into Lukin Township. We parked back up one of those oil lease roads, and Ollie took Dewey’s face in his hands, and he said, ‘Boys, look at that pretty mouth. You ever seen a mouth as pretty as that?’ We undid our blue jeans, and, well, do I have to say more? Am I making myself plain? We showed Dewey exactly what he was.”
I take a chair across the table from Arthur, a sick feeling rising in my chest, knowing for certain now the torment I brought to Dewey at the end of his life. It happened sometimes, just the way Arthur said. Boys in our town—boys who weren’t “like that”—made another boy take them in his mouth, and then threatened to beat him if he ever breathed a word.
“Dewey said he’d tell,” Arthur says, “and I believed him. I couldn’t have that happen, Sammy. I was already in love with Bess then.” Here, he closes his eyes tight, and he swallows hard. “Jesus, Sammy. What if she’d found out?” He opens his eyes and looks right at me. “So when I saw him going down the tracks, I followed along there in the woods, thinking I had my chance to get him off by himself and show him what would happen if he ever told. Then I saw Cal, and I saw you. That’s the way it was, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” I tell him, and in my mind I travel back over the years to that April evening. “That’s the way it was. There we were, you and me and Cal and Dewey, the four of us at the tracks.”
17
MY BACK DOOR OPENS, THEN, AND A MAN I KNOW IS HERBERT Zwilling walks into my house. I remember the beefy face from the photograph on CNN during the hostage crisis. That face is red now, red with cold and the rage he’s carried with him from Ohio. He’s sweating, and he runs his hand over his forehead up through his flattop haircut.
“Where is he?” he says. “Where’s Cal Brady?”
I get up from the table and turn on the overhead light. Herbert Zwilling blinks his eyes. Then he stomps through the kitchen to the hallway. He flips on the light and goes down to the bedrooms. I hear him opening the closet doors.
“Sammy?” Arthur says. “You know this guy?”
“Cal,” I say, and that’s all I can get out because then Herbert Zwilling is back in the kitchen, and now he’s pointing a gun at me. A handgun with a steel-blue barrel and a chrome grip. He motions for me to join him.
“Both of you,” he says, meaning Arthur, of course.
What choice do we have? When we’re in the hallway, Herbert Zwilling steps up close to me, the way I imagine Cal crowded Leonard Mink the day he popped that Ruger Single Six up under his chin.
“Tell me,” Herbert Zwilling says, and I know that what Cal has claimed is the truth: This man wants him dead.
“He’s gone.” I do my best to keep my voice steady. “He took my dog,” I say, and right away I know how ridiculous that sounds.
“I don’t give a good goddamn about your dog.” Herbert Zwilling sticks the barrel of the gun into my ear. I know it’s a fool thing to do, but I try to move away from it. I stumble into the living room, and he comes with me, grinding that gun barrel into my ear, until I bump up against the library table, and he says, “What kind of an idiot are you? Don’t you know you don’t mean anything to me?”
It’s true. I know that. I’m nothing to this man, nor is Arthur, who’s taken a few steps into the living room and stands now, bent over, his hands on his knees. “Jesus,” he says.
A prayer, I think. One word before the slaughter begins.
I stand still, and finally Herbert Zwilling says again, his voice calm this time, “I want to know where your brother is.”
We could stand here a while longer with the truth unsaid. If I had any thought in the world where Cal might be, I’d have been after him in an instant.
But what’s the use? Even with the barrel in my ear, I hear the hammer on that gun ratchet back. Herbert Zwilling starts counting—“One, two, three”—and I understand, without him having to tell me, that he’s giving me till ten to tell him what he’s convinced I know.
I glance down and see that the paper with Nancy Finn’s address on it has worked its way out from under the Brulatour Courtyard paperweight. I know this is where Cal has said he’ll go if trouble comes, so I try to cover the paper with
my hand. Herbert Zwilling jerks it away. He picks up the paper and studies it.
“All right.” He motions toward the door with his gun. “Both of you,” he says. “Let’s go.”
WE GO OUT INTO THE NIGHT, AND JUST AS WE STEP THROUGH my gate, Maddie comes out the side door of Arthur’s house. She’s in a long, white nightgown that falls to her ankles—a nightgown, I imagine, that belonged to Bess. Her feet are bare, and I think of the first time I saw her sitting on the deck of Stump’s ship, saw her naked shins and worried over her out there in the cold. Now here she comes, barefoot, through the snow, as if it isn’t snow at all, but puffs of clouds she glides over, the high clouds just below the golden light of heaven.
I watch her, my tongue gone dead in my mouth. That’s how taken I am by the sight of her, ghostly in the night, that white gown billowing and falling with each step she takes through the snow.
I won’t speak for Arthur or Herbert Zwilling, but me? I’m thinking there must be a land—yes, I’ll call it heaven; you call it whatever you’d like—where the dead are never cold, never want for love, never look back and regret their time among the living or call us to answer for the wrongs we did them. They leave that reckoning to us, and when the time comes for us to join them, they open their arms, the way Maddie now lifts her slender arms toward Herbert Zwilling. I can tell she’s sleepwalking. She’s coming directly toward him and the gun he holds, as if nothing in the world can hurt her, or as if everything already has.
If I ever stand with Dewey in paradise—I have to believe this—he’ll put his arms around me. “Sammy, sweetheart,” he’ll say. And that’ll be that.
But for now, I’m here on this cold night, heaven far beyond the stars above me, and I see the situation for what it is: a young girl not knowing she’s walking straight toward disaster.