The Off Season

by The Off Season (epub)

  “I own a sweet ear,” the cop said, “and a thirsty feeling this night. Would that Janie ran a tab.”

  “It will be my pleasure,” August Starling said. “You miscreants shall be rewarded with gold.” He fumbled for his purse, tipped the two cops. The three men stood before the steps of the Starling House. “And now I enter my new house. My dear wife—”

  “Will be coming from Boston,” the morose cop said. “Sweet dreams.” He shuffled away, followed by a thirsty Irishman.

  “Now it starts,” Kune whispered to Joel-Andrew. “If we creep downstairs and hide in the library, you can watch through a stained glass window. Some of these old houses are so fancy, they have stained glass in the doors between rooms. Keep that cat on a tight rein.”

  As they descended Joel-Andrew could hear only snatches of Kune’s whispers. “. . . the farmer’s wife . . . went to the trading company to price yard goods . . . Starling overdosed her with knockout drops . . . hid her in the coffin . . .”

  “Murder.”

  “You bet it was murder,” Kune whispered, “or maybe an accident. Maybe he only figured to knock her out.”

  “He really is insane,” Joel-Andrew said. “The Lord must pity him, and so must we. That poor woman.”

  “He wasn’t insane when he caused the murder of Chinese and sailors. That man saw at least thirty people under the sea or underground.”

  “He is very young,” Joel-Andrew said. “I don’t offer that as an excuse.”

  “He’s as old as you are,” Kune explained. “He’s one of those fellows who never look like they age.”

  Obed’s tail rattled. He purred in Italian argot. Ahead, disappearing into a pantry, a flashy and aristocratic white cat looked like a wanton spirit.

  Joel-Andrew reached to reassure Obed. Obed went airborne, taking eighteen curving steps in a leap that—at one point—had him running along the wall; claw prints in wallpaper.

  “I forgot about that house cat,” Kune whispered. “Now we’ve bought a batch of trouble.”

  “He is a highly disciplined cat,” Joel-Andrew explained. “He’ll come to his senses.” They entered the library.

  The doors to the drawing room stood like little twin towers. Stained glass windows sat formed in reds and blues and purples; but with enough yellow glass, and enough clear etched glass, to allow the two men to see.

  August Starling knelt before the coffin in an attitude of prayer. His lithe frame drooped, so his tailored wool suit seemed looking for a coat hanger. His arms raised against the coffin, his folded hands a steeple. Low sobs. A whisper: “Will you sometimes remember my trembling lips breathed / ‘A life’s dying blessing on thee’?”His steepled hands trembled in soft light cast by an oil lamp with a cranberry shade. Red light and dark shadow filled the room. Pure white wallpaper held streaks of red, pink, auburn; streaks of dusk, darkness, black. Louder sobs shook him. “Sainted presence,” he murmured, “immaculate soul.”

  “He’s flying,” Joel-Andrew whispered. “I’ve seen it before. He’s somewhere out around Mars. It’s acid does it.”

  “It’s 1888,” Kune whispered, “so it isn’t acid. It’s romance.”

  I think I see yet,

  Her sweet mouth in a pet,

  All puckered up with anger and persimmon;

  I tried to moralize—

  She scorned me with those eyes—

  Those eyes that made her peerless among women

  “Good God,” said Kune, “he’s having a domestic quarrel. He’s going for the whole nut.”

  “Blessed wife,” August Starling murmured. He stood and slowly twisted brass handles to unseal the coffin. Two cats, a white shadow and a gray shadow entered the room from a door off the pantry. Obed rattled his tail and did back flips. Joel-Andrew thought the white house cat a beauty. Obed’s white whisker twitched. He still purred in Italian, but now the Italian was operatic. The white cat was obviously experienced. She had Obed acting like a blind pup in a sausage factory.

  As August Starling raised the coffin lid, the face of a young woman appeared, blue eyes staring in disbelief. The corpse wore her Sunday’s best, going-to-town dress, a high-necked gown made of glossy blue stuff. Her remarkable eyes picked up the gown’s reflection. Her eyes seemed momentarily alive.

  Joel-Andrew started to open the doors. Kune stopped him. “There is nothing you can do,” Kune whispered. “She’s already dead. He’s already insane.”

  “The Lord can do something,” Joel-Andrew whispered. He found himself in a low-key wrestling match with Kune.

  “That is the man you brought back to town,” Kune whispered. “You are going to have to do something about it, but don’t do it now. You’ll blow Point Vestal to flinders if you play footsie with history.”

  Obed now sang in French, a light and giddy passage; perhaps from La belle Helene. Obed swept in a fine ballroom dance on his back legs. The white cat, born even before Fred Astaire, watched with grudging admiration.

  August Starling bent over the coffin, snuffling and weeping. He raised one of the corpse’s slender hands. The hand was work worn; a hand that canned garden sass, tussled with broody hens, shook out feather beds—a farmwoman’s hand—now motionless. August Starling held the hand. With his other he drew forth a linen handkerchief. He wiped the woman’s brow, whispered, blew his nose.

  “It was a problem the Victorians had with all their weeping,” Kune explained. “They never knew what to do with the snot.” Kune’s voice sounded bitter, angry, sad. “We got to remember,” he said, “this is all history. This happened at least fifty-five years before either of us was born.”

  “It is happening now.”

  “Yes it is,” Kune admitted. “Indeed it is.”

  Obed closed in. He gave the white cat a little lick behind the ear. The white cat purred.

  Some Deity see in stars, some in the moon,

  Some azure skies adore, or rising sun;

  But I, more infidel than these—or wise—

  Worship alone thy orient eyes.

  “Worship alone thy orient eyes,” Kune repeated after August Starling. “What in the name of all that’s wonderful is he talking about? He’s acting like she’s Chinese.”

  August Starling snuffled. He raised the slender, work-worn hand to his lips. His kiss held for a long time. Red and auburn shadows flickered as draft passed through the great house. The eyes of the corpse lighted, dulled, lighted. Starling’s free hand went to the corpse’s hair and smoothed it. His hand stroked her cheek. His tears fell on the rail of the ebony coffin, and the coffin turned glossy beneath red light.

  Obed was making it. Obed was finally in. A celebratory yowl rose through the echoing house, and a cacophony of purrs sounded like the well-rounded notes of Caruso. Shadows of flipping tails wrote an ancient story on the walls. Obed looked only a little troubled, but it was obvious he had connected with a cutie pie who might be too hot to handle.

  “Preacher man,” Kune said, “what more do you know of hell than this?”

  “Lots more,” Joel-Andrew told him, sad beyond even his own belief. “I’ve never seen necrophilia before, but I’ve seen the Haight.”

  August Starling closed his eyes, reached for the corpse’s left hand, and, deftly as a card dealer, removed the plain wedding ring. With his eyes still closed, he fumbled delicately, hands atremble, and hid the ring by inserting it between two buttons of the bodice. He opened his eyes, smiled, reached for his vest pocket. He drew forth a small box with an elegant and matching set of rings; the engagement ring a large diamond, the wedding band diamond studded. Red shadows and pink shadows flickered. August Starling knelt before the coffin and began to propose.

  “He’s got it bollixed beyond belief,” Kune whispered. “First he thinks he’s married, now he’s getting around to the proposal.”

  “It is satanic,” Joel-Andrew supposed. “Like the upside­down cross, a reversal of symbols. The power of evil has him in thrall.”

  Obed was down to his last shot. He b
egan to look hunted. He checked the room for exits. The white cat remained optimistic. The white cat was really getting into it.

  August Starling placed the rings on the slender hand, kissed the rings. Lamplight lowered, dulled, and across the white walls shadows moved. Shadows were dancing figures not quite human.

  “O Lord,” Joel-Andrew prayed, “have mercy on each and all of us.” Shadows moved with certainty; the darkness grew. The eyes of the corpse darkened.

  Voices of men and women came distantly. People walked in the street.

  “It won’t be much longer,” Kune whispered. “This is where he’s interrupted. Folks come from Wednesday prayer meeting. They drop by to congratulate him on his new house.”

  Obed looked peeled. He lay flat, paws in the air, a goofy smirk on his face. His tail stretched along the floor like a used­up windshield wiper.

  August Starling wound the handle of an Austrian music box. As the box tinkled, shadows on the wall assumed hellish shapes. Starling turned back to the corpse.

  “This is the part I’ve never understood,” Kune whispered.

  A brief flash of exaltation stood in Starling’s eyes as he bent over the coffin. Then he reached to lift the corpse. Starling gasped.

  The white cat now licked Obed behind the ear. She tried to help Obed get it back up. Supine and operatic Obed twitched the tip of his tail, moaned.

  Joel-Andrew could swear that the corpse actually moved. Either that, or August Starling was stronger than he looked. The corpse seemed to flow from the coffin, although the head drooped, the arms dangled. The music box tinkled, and August Starling began to dance as he clasped the corpse.

  “We’ve got maybe one minute,” Kune whispered. “The moment you hear a scream, rush into the room, grab your cat, and head for the servants’ entrance. Hard to tell what will come from this night’s work.”

  “Where will we go,” Joel-Andrew asked.

  “Back to 1973. Back to Janie’s Tavern, to Samuel and Bev, and to Frank, who runs the tavern. Back to the future, because maybe you don’t need a drink—but I do.”

  “Perhaps a little white wine,” Joel-Andrew murmured.

  Footsteps on the front porch announced the arrival of the church party. A door opened. A woman’s voice tinkled. “Surprise, surprise, August!” the voice said. “There are beautiful thoughts in the daydreams of life / When youth and ambition join hands for strife . . .” Then the voice choked and a high scream rose through the massive halls of the Starling House.

  Chapter 11

  Bev and Samuel usually arrive first for our meetings at The Fisherman’s Café in this auctorial autumn. They meet at the top of the 307-step staircase. Samuel strides from his echoing old house on Jackson Street, Bev from her house on Blaine. They meet with a morning murmur, a touch of hands, and descend through mist. Behind them—or ahead sometimes—they hear Kune’s muffled footsteps. On some fantastic mornings they hear Joel-Andrew’s violin, the music thin and faraway; as though Joel-Andrew stands on the beach and plays the sun up.

  Bev and Samuel’s great friendship is of such long standing that it no longer amounts to gossip, even if it is cut with private grief. Samuel is a Methodist, Bev a Unitarian; and as anybody with a lick of sense knows, such a combination would never, never work.

  They age in a town where only the old are valued, although it is not a town of the old. We wait for kids to age and assume their proper place. People here have seen generations become bearded. They have seen Seattle become youthful, pop mescaline, grow zits.

  “Ours is a town,” Bev explains, “where people cannot have an ‘identity crisis.’ The identity crisis is a modem luxury.’’ She says this sort of thing to confuse Frank.

  Perhaps she is correct. Not many people move here from Seattle, and when they do they change. Women stop having abortions and begin having babies. Men stop getting divorced while hungering for “meaningful relationships.” The men and women buy worn Victorian houses and restore them. They dicker for five acres of timberland outside of town as a real estate investment. The only one who ever moved here and did not change was Joel-Andrew.

  “I should have understood about Joel-Andrew that first night in 1973,” Frank says, “back when Joel-Andrew and Kune came to the tavern after leaving the Starling House. But I was excited. The Loyal Order of Beagles pulled an upset over the Grand Army of the Republic.” Frank looks a bit shy. “I try not to take sides in the pool tournaments,” he admits with a blush, “but the Beagles look so cute in their little doggie hats with the red velvet tongues.”

  This morning the doughnuts are tawny yellow with speckles of light chocolate, like freckles on a Chinaman. We sit listening to the lap of waves on the rocky beach behind The Fisherman’s Café. Mikey Daniels’s milk truck piddles past.

  “I should have known,” Frank mourns, “because Joel-Andrew was almost in a state of shock. When prophets get that way, they either lay plans or call on the Lord. Then Maggie started talking to Joel-Andrew and Kune. Maggie hadn’t said a dozen words in over twenty years. Suddenly she’s a chatterbox.”

  “Was Maggie still drinking as much?” Collette asks with concern. Collette’s grandfather is the Irish cop who saw August Starling home, the cop who got pickled and kept in the storeroom of Janie’s Tavern.

  “Maggie has always been a lady.” Frank’s tone closes the subject. Frank shoots his cuffs, raises his mustache cup, crooks his pinkie, and sips tea.

  “And hummingbirds don’t whistle,” Collette says, “’cause hummingbirds have got sip-yips.”

  “Joel-Andrew had seen some of the town,” Samuel sighs.

  “But he met few people. It’s sad he had to see everybody all at once.”

  “And at their worst,” Bev says. “He handled it well.”

  “If only he had not spent time in the Haight,” Collette says. “His slang and his sandals made folks suspicious.”

  “We’d better be getting on with this,” Bev suggests. “Although all of us were there on pool-tournament night, Frank was first.”

  “For a while,” Frank remembers dreamily, “even Janie showed up.” He lowers his eyes and feigns modesty. “She complimented me on how well the tavern has been maintained in this century.”

  “Let’s pick up Kune and Joel-Andrew when they left the Starling House,” Collette says. “They left right after Starling danced with that poor woman.’’ Collette shudders, looks slightly pale and un-lrish. She squares her shoulders. “This is the way it must have been.”

  Kune and Joel-Andrew emerged from the servants’ entrance of the Starling House into a town that seemed unchanged, although it was about to change drastically. They stepped from 1888 to 1973, and the only differences were electric light and the ghostly shadow of a prowling 1939 LaSalle police car. Joel-Andrew carried Obed, all thirteen pounds minus a shot wad. Obed had a story to tell his male grandchildren, and that was fortunate. From in back of the Starling House, a white cat with a gray tail tip streaked, followed by a gray cat with a white tail tip. One of the cats had a leaning toward languages. It wailed in virulent Japanese. The other had a talent for seduction.

  “You’ve changed the feline history of Point Vestal,” Kune said to Obed. “Let this be a lesson.’’

  Obed feebly flipped his tail. He smirked like a scoundrel.

  “I’d make him walk,” Kune said to Joel-Andrew. “Don’t pamper a sinner.”

  “Stop for a moment,” Joel-Andrew said. He put Obed down. Obed resembled a folded pizza. “We’ve just seen murder and madness.” Joel-Andrew’s voice filled with concern for Kune. “And you worry about the sins of a cat. Whenever something serious happens, you change the subject.”

  Kune’s yellow eyes glazed with grief. His eyes shone lumi­nous, owllike; his eyes beyond weeping, his soul wept dry.

  “It’s how we do it here,” he said. “For that matter, it’s how they do it in Seattle.”

  “It’s how they do it in San Francisco,” Joel-Andrew admitted. “But you’d be surprised how easy i
t is to be both tough and honest.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Kune told him, “but I’ll tell you this much. The reason I walk is because there’s nothing better to do.” Kune’s smile was bitter as herbal medicine.

  Joel-Andrew spotted the evasion. Joel-Andrew had brought acceptance of the Lord to pimps, automobile salesmen, TV newscasters and radio preachers. He had changed lives of call girls, collection agents, telephone solicitors, and people who peddled bankcards, angel dust, and motor scooters. He privately gave himself three days, four days at the outside, before Kune accepted the Lord’s grace.

  “After all,” Kune said, “can you honestly say that even drug dealers don’t do some good? Certain people are better off stoned.”

  Joel-Andrew had heard the argument too often on street corners and in upstairs rooms. “Perhaps you’ve had only a pinch of experience,” he suggested to Kune.

  “I was a doctor,” Kune said. “Don’t talk to me about experience.” From the octagonal tower of The Parsonage, a single bell clanked a sarcastic comment. “No matter what a doctor does,” Kune said, “everybody dies. August Starling is only another disease.”

  “I honestly don’t know what Starling is,” Joel-Andrew said. “He does not resemble the usual run of psychopaths.”

  “There are such things as comic diseases,” Kune said. “Take my word.”

  “We’ll get a glass of white wine.” Joel-Andrew was filled with optimism. Kune was only a smidgen away from being hogtied in heavenly bands. A man did not get as bitter as Kune unless he had ideals.

  “We’ll work out this business with our unhappy Victorian friend.” Joel-Andrew walked toward the 307-step staircase. “Shall we push you back through the servants’ entrance?” he asked Obed. Obed struggled to his feet, snerkeled, and walked.

  “Something most unusual is happening,” Kune told Joel-Andrew as they reached the bottom of the steps. “There’s more traffic than I’ve ever seen.”

  Murmurs, mutters, hushed little explosions of gossip sounded in the mist. A school bus passed filled with old people, silver haired and dressed as if for church. Three-toned cars passed, and a couple of Model As. A Hupmobile and a Terraplane cruised after them. The murmurs, the cars, the bus headed for Janie’s Tavern.