Lee

by Tito Perdue

  LEE

  A NOVEL BY TITO PERDUE

  THE OVERLOOK PRESS

  Woodstock & New York

  This edition first published in the United States in 2007 by The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.

  Woodstock & New York

  Copyright © 1991 by Tito Perdue

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

  The epigraph by George Grote on the facing page refers to one of the Kings of ancient Sparta who went hopelessly insane in old age, from Grote’s ten-volume history of Greece

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Perdue, Tito.

  Lee: a novel / by Tito Perdue, p. cm.

  I. Title.

  ISBN-10 1-58567-872-4/ ISBN-13 978-1-58567-872-3

  Table Of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  His habitual violence of character became aggravated into decided insanity, insomuch that he struck with his stick whomsoever he met.

  —GROTE

  One

  THERE WERE HILLS BEHIND HIM (smoke coming off the summits) and fields of a yellowness that made him moan out loud—so must have felt the first man, seeing he was alone upon the world. He could foretell all: billions upon billions of years in a place with seasons, and hills that were sometimes here and sometimes there, and billions more still until Time had had enough.

  He liked to walk for perhaps an hour, with long stops between, and then to come upon a high place with a view of the rueful beauty of earth and all that had taken place upon it. Sometimes, it was good: a plot turning back to weed, a ruined barn with vertebrae sticking out. Watching closely, he would begin to piece together in imagination the love affair, notorious in its day, that had perhaps worked itself out where he was standing, and perhaps was working itself out still.

  He pushed on. Lately, he had taken to using a stick that, with his satchel and tattered clothes, had a way of making dogs burst into song. His ankles were worn down to a thinness. Moreover, he looked excessively sly.

  He knew what he knew, and it was this that kept him away from cities. Not that there were any great settlements along his route! On the contrary, he had been traveling all day amid nothing but ruined fields and barns. Now, in truth, he began to have that feeling the first man surely felt, namely, that it was his part to keep moving, that he was alone, that very probably the world with all its smoke and mountains extended on in perpetuity forever.

  He had felt that same feeling seventy years ago; now, suddenly, he popped up over a hill and there it was. He had seen it before, this town. It pleased him that it was no larger than it was, that there had even, perhaps, been some erosion about the western edge where the poverty had dwelt. He spied a tumbledown house and, next to it, another, bending slowly to earth. Knowing what he knew, he could bring up an entire block and look it over in detail. But his desire was to plunge forward and begin at once reintroducing himself to everyone whom he had known. They might organize a celebration! No, they were dead, most of them (science said so), or at any rate old now beyond all recognition.

  He waited for night. The town itself was green this hour, the same green shadows he remembered and same yellow moon (his own special star) with holes in it. Life seemed extinct, save for one grainy light in a window where someone, old no doubt, was even now sitting in a barren room and gazing into nothing. He did so love it, the method of night in small towns with history’s survivors. And now he saw that which he had not seen in thirty years—a neon sign, sputtering and feeble and near to going out. He had not imagined it, there had been such an epoch. Moreover, he had been inside that very shop one time.

  He heard the sound of his own footfall, something to muse upon. Ahead was a narrow building with a clock that looked down most ruefully upon one who had turned up again after so much time, dressed in the way that he was. He remembered there had been a bakery next door, but it was now turned into a realtor’s office, around which, however, some of the divine odor seemed still to linger. In former times he used to fly down this hill on his bicycle, but now it seemed the merest rising, hardly enough to weary an old man on the upward climb.

  In fact all things were smaller, less, more level, littler. Every decade of his life had seen the demise of something that once . . . And now he felt that he was a stranger on shore while the town itself had taken ship and was bobbing out to sea.

  He turned, keeping one eye at all times on the display of paper-thin clouds and dangling moon. In this district the homes had high-peaked roofs of the kind he remembered, and one of them so old-fashioned that it had either a vane or actual cock posturing on the gable. He saw frosted windows from the Genteel Age. Lee halted. By his reckoning he was drawing near to the place, and yet he was reluctant to go up and check the address. Suddenly, he leapt—a train two miles away shrieked wretchedly with the sound that knows when it is the last of its species left on earth.

  He spied a porch with a chest on it, and going up to it, he verified that the chest was his own. This house had three stories, not two, and a roof that was yet higher and steeper and more baleful than the others. This pleased him, as did the scent of new paint applied solicitously over rotted wood. First he set foot in the yard; then he ran around to the rear of the building in profound shadow. All these tenants were unconscious or dreaming; all lights were dimmed.

  He returned to the front porch, took out an envelope and key, and tried the lock, which opened easily. His first impression was of an immense room, so large he could flail his arms around while striking nothing. He remained still, adapting to it, then he finally edged to the stairs that lay under deep carpet. His own room was on the top floor, and there was a corridor that tapered down so narrowly as to give him trouble with his bag. The apartment was his, paid for fully, and yet he found himself tapping politely lest he blunder in upon someone who might have set up happily in his absence. Instead, it was empty, empty and stark and with but a few odds and ends of old furniture that looked more of European origin than of this place where he was. Also, he saw a mirror, grayed and with a scum on it, showing the opposite wall.

  Certainly it had some of the qualities of death—that of sitting in a strange new place, recently painted, where a long line of insignificant people had been dwelling before him. “One soul in two bodies,” and now one was gone. It was for this that he must have at least two rooms—for saying that she was just around the corner.

  Two

  HE WOKE IN A SMEAR OF LIGHT; then, seeing that the ceiling was far above and unfamiliar, he forced himself down again. In the next apartment someone was speaking in a low, serious voice. Also, he heard the sound of a cup clashing in a saucer. He could not have said whether he were asleep or waking, only that the sun, which was orange and had spots on it, seemed trapped within the window frame.

  He rose painfully and made a quick tour of the rooms, both of them quite bare. The mirror, the same that just hours ago had been deep and green, was now a mere bland sheet. He saw that the bureau was missi
ng a leg. In its place stood a common jar with lid, which he marked down at once as a hiding place for small things. The other room had shelves in it, floor to ceiling in fact, space enough for the better part of his books, and this cheered him. Moreover, the view here looked down into the western district with its shacks and slum, while on the other side, he could see out for miles over a countryside in which, even as he watched, a long line of cattle was moving out to feed.

  He shaved slowly, almost falling asleep at it. In younger days he had enjoyed dressing poorly for the effect of it, now he was grateful for any little remediation that clothing could bestow. He had a hat, yesterday’s suit, also two good shoes in glossy condition. And he had money, the proceeds from sale of his last seventy-five acres. He liked a full wallet, liked to take two or three of the larger bills and hide them on his person where no one would dream to search.

  It was fine weather outside, sweet with a blue sky. On the front porch the chest of books remained to be taken upstairs. He went two blocks, and the homes became more and more familiar to him. Only yesterday he had been traveling in the forest, now he was within inches of where he had spent his childhood. Suddenly, that moment, a tiny dog on vestigial legs, a sorry representative of a once-great race, came yapping asthmatically at him; Lee was shocked. In his day such a thing would have never dared to taunt a full-grown man of maturity and ask to go on surviving. He sought for a stone and found it, but then he opted not to stoop for it and have to fight his way back to standing position.

  He saw the chimney first, and knew then the house existed still. His own room came into view, or rather the window where he used to spend so much time in nervous vigils. Formerly, there had been a mess of bicycles strewn on the porch, and often as not, his short brother would be standing palely in his baseball cap. Now, Lee could not be sure anyone lived there anymore.

  He moved past, coming to a field that had been filled over and built with houses that were themselves getting old. People had been born, had lived and died, all in the time that he had been away.

  Lee crossed the road and came back, allowing himself, as it were, to be pushed by the breeze and mild weather. He had to admit it: The place had been kept in good condition, perhaps in recognition that it had once housed someone who might almost have been famous. He felt himself softening toward all such small folk of this earth as spent their little time in mowing and sweeping and toddling off to work. Indeed he saw one now—a good man in a hat who, although it was the middle of the morning, had strayed away all unknowingly from home, office, or factory. Lee’s first impulse was to report him to the authorities; his second, to stop and reveal himself as that same boy who used to rouse the neighborhood. Instead, he followed the man to the corner, and then, with the fellow glancing nervously behind, Lee followed all the way to the gate where Alice used to live. Now Lee knew what was missing—the children. Where were they? Inside, all of them, watching television.

  He went on, pursuing the same road out of long-ago habit. In his day these had been places of interest, a twenty-acre slice of woods with tree houses and each with an inhabitant in it; now, from the expression on people’s faces, he might almost have been up North. He passed a youth, cynical-looking, mouth hanging open in a kind of late twentieth-century stupor—he had seen this syndrome before, and now apparently it had spread to Alabama as well. His gorge was rising. Ahead (he almost hated to look inside) was a shop in which a certain merry woman used to sell comestibles. What he saw now was a haughty-looking girl in expensive clothes and jewelry, seated amid a computer array.

  Main Street seemed the same, except that now it looked strangely hollowed out and had only a small amount of traffic. He passed a dress shop, in the window the same rapturous mannequin with spiritual face that he had once caught in the nude. The movie house had been turned into a furniture outlet that had long ago closed down and now was crumbling even as he watched. Before, he had thought it a long distance between this and the drugstore; now, he saw it was but a matter of steps. All things were smaller, all littler. But mostly it was the simplicity he regretted. The world was so much richer, the people so much more knowing, and yet every face he saw seemed coated with something, sleepiness perhaps, together with cases of outright corruption.

  He had one eye upon his own shadow, so gaunt and elongated that it seemed already to belong to the literature of the past. It is true that he took pleasure in making himself as grim as possible. He wore black clothes and glasses that made his eyes goggle; he had sometimes seen people break off in midconversation when viewing him for the first time. At that moment, smiling to himself, he suddenly hit upon a shop that specialized in pipes and tobacco and that had a goodly selection of old-fashioned walking sticks on display. When he set eyes upon them, he couldn’t imagine how he had come through so many years without such a thing for himself.

  He should have known the proprietor would be old and irritable, and so it proved; they looked at each other in great annoyance. The sticks themselves were lined up on one side, a good choice, even if the better part of them were too delicate by far for any usages of his. What he wanted would be gnarled and heavy, stalwart enough for smashing skulls; what he found was a “cane,” so-called, with a head on it. Suddenly, he pulled it out and began slashing wildly about, four or five times, before taking it over to the man who was watching in concern. Looking at him, Lee had the impression this person was stuffed with straw, as it were, and that instead of hair, the straw was running out at the top.

  “Well. I suppose this will have to do.” (Again, he swung wildly.) “Where can a person get some coffee around here?”

  “Coffee? Why, there’s any number of places.”

  “But I’m asking for the nearest place.”

  “There’s lots of them too.”

  “Well I’ll be goddamn, you’re not going to say, is that it?”

  They glared. The man had a defect, a tic, also an opening where some of the straw was sticking out.

  “There’s Perry’s.”

  “Perry’s.”

  “You’ll see it.”

  Lee paid, taking one bill from his vest, letting the man get a good long look at it, and then getting the remainder from his puffy wallet. Outside it was warm. He went on, talking to himself, a full block before he realized he had come away without his “cane” and had to return for it.

  He found Perry’s nowhere, neither here nor on the other side of the road. Instead, a hundred yards on, he came to a restaurant of sorts with tables and umbrellas out front in the French style. There was a crowd of gesticulating sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds all talking at the same time—he wanted to puke. They simply could not sit still. All his life he had wanted to identify what it was the masses most loathed, and then to see that they got it in spades. What he craved now was to force these children into utter motionlessness, days and days and days. To his thinking, nothing proved the weakness of this class of people more than their everlasting need for action, and for each other.

  His drugstore of former times had been turned into a glassed-in office in which three annoyed-looking women of the new type looked back at him impatiently. One indeed seemed made entirely out of lacquer and hairspray. Lee stepped nearer, pressing at the glass. Not for the life of him could he imagine how it felt to be one of these; he did see some little bit of fear beginning to show up in one particular face. Old as he was, he could have thrashed her to death easily with his stick. He knew it and she knew it too. Instead, he grinned, a bad grin that showed his lack of teeth. Next, no doubt about it, she would be phoning the police; Lee decided to leave.

  Already he felt tired; it was one of the things he hated most about old age. He took it as a blessing that an eating place came up at the last minute, before he got mad. Three details struck him: first, there was a bell over the door, a cheery one; next, there hung a ribbon of fly-paper with fifty despairing flies standing shoulder to shoulder on it, and then thirdly, there stood an old-fashioned jukebox with, perhaps, “Mona Lisa”
on it and that possibly, needed only a nickel to play it. Lee went straightway back to the booth that had been saved for him all these years. He had been here before, it seemed to him, ages ago, when Truman was in power. Now there was an old woman behind the counter who looked like someone he had known. He remembered a certain Naomi, famous in her day. She appeared before him now, strangling in flesh and with a face on which the decades had written with more than usual cruelty.

  He pronounced his order, and then, looking at her, he gave her every chance to recognize him for who he was. Useless. She seemed dead, extinct in both eyes. Moreover, now that he could view her at close range, it wasn’t Naomi at all! He found himself wondering whether he could not do a kindness to the real Naomi, who had perhaps gone on to the other world, by being good to the person in front of him.

  “Could I have a cup of coffee, please?”

  She started to write it down.

  “We have waffles.”

  Waffles! He could feel his heart leap. Sixty years and more since he had partaken of waffles in his own hometown. And this time all the syrup he wanted and no one to gainsay it.

  This was better. He enjoyed it here; he was unseen while he watched other people pouring past the window very close by. One was smiling, others talking to themselves. What consumed them were precisely those pettifogs he had finished with already—children, money, jobs—life’s rubbish. As for him, he was free, also old. A boy came by with an obscene moustache on him. He ostensibly whistled, but in fact, he was thinking of women. It was this that mired the world; even Lee too, had needed half a century to clear out his own good head. He saw a woman walking slowly in greatest hauteur, letting off an odor.

  He had planned to go straight back to his room; instead, he found himself taking the path west, into the bad zone where he had never been allowed to travel as a boy. There were not enough years left in him for worrying overly much about safety, and yet, seeing these faces, he was glad he had a cane and glad it was heavy. There was a fat man in an undershirt, and next, a dead cat lying exactly where Lee had seen one sixty years ago. In earlier days the sight of so much poverty had made him indignant, but no more, not now. Now, knowing what he knew, he wanted them poorer and more and more obliged to be working at all hours, otherwise one could not have counted the bestialities they would be performing in their spare time. These were those masses said to be “inert.” Knowing what he knew, he would have been happy were they more inert than they were.