Season of the Witch

by James Leo Herlihy

  His behavior scared me, but in a way it was a magnificent surprise. I’d heard such fabulous things about him that I’d been expecting some kind of a saint, and of course I didn’t expect to like him at all. I was afraid on the surface he’d be a real goody-two-shoes, peaceful and wise and sensible, but underneath there’d be this terrible flaw that only I could see, and I’d have to go around pretending I didn’t.

  But it’s not like that at all. If he’s a perfect person—and I have a hunch he is—it’s not because he’s flawless but because he doesn’t hide his flaws. He digs himself. Cary Colorado turned to me the minute the explosion was over and said, “Isn’t he great? He lets it all hang out!”

  Roy and I weren’t here for the worst of it. We’d gone to Bleecker Street to get some fresh dill and watercress for dinner. This is Sally’s night in the kitchen, but since Peter was expected back, the whole house has been pitching in to make a sort of welcome feast. I wasn’t sure he’d be able to appreciate it, with his father just freshly buried this morning, but it was Doris’s idea and she probably knows what he’d like better than anyone else. Anyway, he was supposed to come flying in to JFK at four P.M., so with the traffic and all we expected him about five-thirty. Somehow he got in earlier though, and Roy and I missed his arrival. I had to piece the story together from bits and scraps people told me later, mostly Jeanette and Doris. They were here for the entire movie.

  Apparently the actual arrival scene was very high. Peter wasn’t at all depressed. He even felt good about his father being dead.

  The old man had been a rabbi. His voice must have been stupendous. He had a big reputation as a cantor and was always being asked to do his thing in other people’s synagogues for special occasions. He was also super-orthodox, so Peter’s childhood was full of hassles because he didn’t dig the synagogue all that much. There had been a long strain between the two of them that ended in an uneasy truce a couple of years ago, but the deathbed scene was completely harmonious. The old man held out against taking morphine until the very last. Peter sat by the bed for days and days. He didn’t even go to bed in all that time, just nodded off once in a while in the chair, and then he’d wake up with the old man clutching his hand. Finally they had to give him injections because his mind started to go and nobody could stand to watch the suffering.

  Anyway, Peter came home in high spirits and full of love, and right in the middle of all the excitement the doorbell rang.

  It was three young men asking for Archie Fiesta. Nobody’d ever seen them before. Archie was out, so they asked if they could wait for him. They looked like sharpies from Newark or somewhere, but they weren’t unfriendly or anything, so they were allowed to wait.

  Peter and Doris went up to the attic. Peter wanted to unpack and lie down before dinner. While they were up there, Doris started to show him all the things Roy and Jeanette had done to improve the place, but Peter didn’t seem to be listening. Doris asked if anything was bothering him. He said yes, those young men downstairs. So he got up and went right down to the big room in his stocking feet.

  Doris had a feeling something was going to happen, so she followed him down. The three strangers didn’t stand up when Peter came in the door. He stood there and looked them over for a minute, and then he said, “I get the impression you guys are interested in scoring.” The three guys looked at each other, then one of them said he guessed it was cool, and another one spoke up and said yes, they’d been told they could score some crystals from Archie. Peter said, “Well, that’s not the case. In fact, Archie’s moving out of here this afternoon, so you might as well leave.” At this point he was still very calm, and when they left, he turned to Nyoom and Cary, who had come in to see what was happening, and asked very quietly if they’d help him get Archie’s things together.

  Just as they were starting up the stairs, they heard some footsteps. And there was Archie, on the lower landing, looking up.

  Peter said, “Did you see your friends on the street?”

  Archie said, “Yeah, I did.”

  “Did you tell them to wait while you came up and got the stuff?”

  “What stuff? I haven’t got anything.” Everyone knew Archie was lying. Peter included. He said, “Oh, I see. It was just a misunderstanding, huh? Come on up here, Archie. Let’s talk it over.”

  Archie said, “How was your trip?”

  “How was my trip? You want to know how my trip was?”

  Now they were both standing on the landing outside the Big Room. Peter gave Archie a push and said, “Get the fuck up those stairs.”

  Archie said, “What’s the matter, Peter? What’s happening?”

  “You, shitheel, you’re what’s happening. You’re leading the way to your stash. It’s in your room, isn’t it?”

  “I haven’t got anything in my room. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  They were on the second landing now, and Peter slapped Archie hard across the face. He said, “Go get it. Fast.”

  Archie went to his bedroom and lifted up the mattress. There was a little brown bag hidden under it. Peter reached in and pulled out a handful of small tinfoil squares. Then he dropped them all back into the bag, except one. He unfolded it and found about a quarter of a teaspoon of white powder.

  Peter said, “What is this? Methedrine? Heroin? What is it?”

  “Meth,” Archie said.

  “How long have you been dealing out of my house, motherfucker?”

  “Never. I never dealt out of here, I swear. I was just going to deal this one batch. That’s all I was going to do. Honest, Peter, I’m telling the truth.”

  “Get out.”

  Then Peter started pushing Archie down the stairs.

  At this point Roy and I came in the street door downstairs. I was opening the door for Roy, because his arms were full of groceries, and when I opened it I saw Archie sort of falling toward us and this wild man shoving him from behind and raving like a lunatic. He kept saying, “Faster, faster! You’re not moving fast enough. Move faster, you little prick, move faster.”

  When Peter saw us, he held Archie by the shoulders from behind. I suppose he thought Roy and I were two more speed customers. “Who are you two?” he said. “Who are you?”

  Roy couldn’t get his mouth together at all.

  I said, “I’m Gloria. I mean Witch!” And felt foolish for correcting myself.

  Doris called down from the top of the stairs, “They’re ours, Peter. Those two belong to us.”

  “All right, but stand aside!” he said. “I’m taking out the trash!”

  Then he pushed Archie out the door and out onto the sidewalk and followed him out, hollering all the way. Archie ran over to a lamppost and sort of hid behind it. And when Peter stopped hollering at him for a second, he said, “Can I have my stuff?”

  Peter still had the brown bag in his hand. I hadn’t yet been told what was in it, and couldn’t even imagine. Peter acted like it was poison. He dropped it on the sidewalk and started to grind it with his foot. But he was only wearing socks, so after a few seconds he gave up and came back toward the house. Roy and I got out of his way. He walked right past us and up the stairs.

  Roy looked at me and said, “Hey, that was Peter, wasn’t it?”

  “I guess so.”

  Archie was down on his hands and knees, gathering up the contents of his brown bag.

  Roy said, “Archie, what’s happening?”

  Archie was crying. “I just blew my scene, man. He threw me out.”

  “He found your crystals, huh?”

  Things were happening so fast I couldn’t get it all together immediately. But later I realized what was in the bag. And not only that—Roy knew. This fact kept hitting me all through dinner.

  (But I’m getting ahead of the story.)

  Roy went over to Archie and said, “Please don’t cry, man, please.”

  Archie said, “I’m not crying!” But he was. And then he started to run. He was running so fast nobody could have
caught him. Especially not Roy, with grocery bags in both arms.

  Now I’m going to record what was happening in the house while Roy and I were downstairs on the sidewalk with Archie. Doris told me this part:

  Peter came up the stairs. Doris was waiting for him on the first landing. She said she didn’t have any plan, she didn’t know what to do. She was just being there for him. So Peter came up to the landing and looked at her. Then he looked down the stairs, and back at Doris again. She said his expression was so strange and distant she was actually frightened for him.

  He went into the Big Room walking like a stick man and everybody was standing around looking at him. A couple of them tried to smile, but his mood was so queer, no one knew what to say or do. Then he looked at Doris again and said, “What did I do just now? What happened?” His voice was quiet, but he still wasn’t himself. “Tell me,” he said. “What happened here just now?”

  Doris said, “Well, Peter, you put Archie out of the house.”

  “I threw him out, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, you did. We have a family agreement against hard drugs in this house. And against dealing of any kind. Archie broke them both. He broke our family agreements. And you put him out of the house.”

  I’m not absolutely certain, but I think this is the moment Roy and I walked in on. Because when we did, Peter looked past us both without even seeing us. He went to the landing and looked up and down and up and down, and he kept saying, “Oh, Christ. Oh, Jesus. Oh, Christ. What did I do to the boy? What did I do to him?”

  He ran down the stairs and out onto the sidewalk, calling after Archie. But Archie had been running, and so of course he was gone by then.

  Peter came back up the stairs and looked at us for a minute. He was like a person waking up from a nightmare. He said, “I’m sorry, I guess I just don’t know what I’m doing.” And then he went up to the attic. Doris followed him up, but she came down a minute later and told us he wanted to be alone for a while, and we were to call him when dinner was ready.

  I asked her if he was all right.

  She said, “I think so. He’s watching the seven o’clock news and that’s a good sign. Peter’s a news freak, you know.” She told me that even in California when his father was dying, he left the sickroom every evening to watch the Huntley-Brinkley report in the hospital lounge. “He says this is the only world he’s got, so he has to keep an eye on it, no matter what.”

  I just went down to see about dinner. It’s almost ready. The table looks beautiful. The whole place does. Nyoom brought some of Will’s plants from the greenhouse on the roof and arranged them in corners and on window sills. Cary built a fire. We still don’t need one, but it makes the whole room glow.

  I’m awfully excited about the evening coming up. Peter’s presence in the house has changed everything. Even with all this disturbing Archie-drama fresh in everyone’s mind, we’re all feeling about twice as high as usual. Roy’s in the bathroom putting Clearasil on his pimples, and I noticed he’s wearing his special-occasion shirt, the blue madras Delano gave him.

  I suppose I’d better stop now. My hair could stand a brushing.

  Hours later, about 1:30 a.m.

  I’m alone in the Big Room, wide awake, full of new thoughts and feelings. The ashes are still warm in the fireplace, and there are a few live coals left. I’m writing by candlelight, sitting at this great long wooden table. Typewriters make too much racket at night, so I’m doing this by hand. I love the silence of New York nights. It’s a kind of roaring silence that you feel everyone in town is contributing to even in their sleep. When you’re awake at these hours ( as I often am, writing or thinking or just lying in bed next to Roy) you can actually feel all the foghorn tooters on the river and all the ambulance drivers and truckers and cops and burglars and whores keeping you company. It’s nice. It’s also a little creepy. But I like it.

  All evening I’ve been getting flashes of some other time, some earlier century. I don’t know which one though. All pre-20th centuries seem pretty much alike to me—I suppose because none of them had electricity. Tonight the only light we used was firelight and people light, and I’m still feeling the tremendous glow of all that’s taken place here in the past few hours.

  At dinnertime we were all seated at this table when Peter came in.

  He stood at his place at the head of the table for a minute, and then he said, “What about somebody else sitting here tonight?” Nobody responded. Nyoom was sitting at about the middle place on the left side of the table. Peter said, “Hey, Nyoom, what about you? Will you swap with me?”

  Nyoom seemed delighted to have been singled out. He rose with a self-important frown and gave up his seat to Peter, then went to the head of the table and sat down. Now I was sitting across from Peter, and Roy was right next to him. Doris, who was at the opposite end, said, “Well! That’s nice, to shuffle things up once in a while. Sally, why don’t you switch with me tonight.”

  Sally made a happy little game of it. She switched places with Doris, and that put Doris right across from Peter, and next to me.

  Food was passed, and when everybody’s plates were filled, Sally Sunflower extended her hands and said, “Zap time!” We made a chain of hands around the table, and everyone closed his eyes. Then the current started flowing through us. It was the strongest hand-chain Zap I’d ever experienced. At one point I took a peek at Roy to see how he was digging it. He had his fingers wrapped tight around Peter’s right hand and Jeanette’s left and I could see he was really impressed with the voltage coming through. His face was completely slack and his eyelids were fluttering.

  The first Zap is always for Will.

  Then Doris said, “Let’s send a Zap to Peter’s father.”

  After a few seconds Sally said, “My ex-grandmother in Las Vegas broke her foot.”

  The whole thing was getting so heavy I didn’t want to waste it. I started thinking of all the people I knew who could use a Zap—my father in Staten Island, Edward the world’s greatest cosmetician, Sara the Ghost—and just as I was about to open my mouth, I heard Roy’s voice. When I think of it now, I’m amazed at how strong and clear it was, because what he said must have taken guts, and it caused a good-sized shock wave to travel around the table.

  He said, “Shouldn’t we send a Zap to Archie Fiesta?”

  Peter said, “Yes!”

  A few seconds later, as if on some inaudible signal, Zap time was over and everyone was busy eating and talking. I don’t know what I expected Peter’s mood to be now, but he seemed gentle and open and full of life. Doris told him Roy and I were sleeping in Will’s place under the stairs. He wanted to know if it was comfortable enough, and both Roy and I started raving at once about how perfect it was. Then he asked us where we were from, and whether or not our parents knew where we were. Roy looked at me, so I just told the truth: that they knew we were in New York, but we hadn’t given them an address.

  Then he looked at Roy and Roy looked back, terrified. He seemed to be steeling himself for a terrible blow. Maybe he thought he was going to get thrown down the stairs for looking young.

  But Peter wasn’t even thinking about that. He said, “That white paint between the rafters up there fills the whole place with light. I can’t get over the difference. Was that your idea?”

  “It was Jeanette’s,” Roy said. “She picked the color.”

  Jeanette was pleased. “Roy swings a mean brush,” she said.

  Peter said, “I could tell it was a professional job. No big globs of drippage, no spilling over. What’d you do, use masking tape?”

  “No, I was just careful.”

  “You must have a steady hand.”

  “I guess I do have a pretty steady hand. Because I’d never painted anything before or anything.”

  Peter said, “Did you enjoy it?”

  “I did, I really did. I just got behind it and dug it. That’s the way I am. I get right behind a thing, whatever I’m doing, and I make myself dig it. Did yo
u notice the skylight in the hall?”

  “Did I notice it? I noticed it first thing. Did you do that?”

  “I thought it’d be better to let the light in. So I just took out the wood and put in some glass. It doesn’t leak either. I tested it. I went up on the roof and threw water at it really hard, like a bad rain would do, and not a drop went inside. So it won’t leak or anything either.”

  “I lack the patience for a job like that,” Peter said. “A craftsman has to have patience. What does your father do?”

  “He’s a psychoanalyst.”

  “That’s what I used to do, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know, but you quit, right?”

  “Right. Is your father any good?”

  Roy shrugged. “He gets a hundred dollars an hour. Sometimes a hundred and fifty.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “You mean is he really good?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know how to tell.”

  “What would be your guess?”

  “I wouldn’t go to him if I was freakin’ out.”

  “Why not?”

  “If you want the truth, I think he’s sort of an asshole. I mean that respectfully.” Everybody laughed—except Peter. Then Roy continued, “I mean, I’m not sure he listens. No. He listens all right. But he listens too fast. He thinks he knows what you’re telling him before you get it all out. And so what happens is you never get it all out. And so he’s telling you what to do and all, but he still doesn’t really know what’s happening. Only I guess he’s different with his patients. I don’t know how he is with them. I just know how he is with me.”

  “Have you spent a lot of time with him?”

  “Yeah. Every other Sunday he’d stay home in the afternoon and we’d talk. He’d ask questions and all, and I’d answer him, sort of.”

  “Didn’t you see him every day?”

  “Not as a rule. He had all these patients from early in the morning till late at night. Saturdays, too, and once in a while on Sunday. But most Sundays he spent at the yacht club, except when we had our appointments.”