The Deadenders

by Bruce Jones

  He felt himself groping for something to say again. He had to talk for both of them now. “That’s one hell of a view,” he offered finally nodding toward the darkening waters.

  Scroogie glanced back over his shoulder. Then he wheeled his chair around with a grunt, putting his back to the lake, and pointed at a grassy point near a copse of pines maybe a hundred yards or so away and up a little hill.

  “You want to go there?”

  Scroogie nodded.

  Richard got behind the chair, took the handles in his hands and began pushing his friend. It was harder, in the thick grass, than he’d have thought.

  A jay dipped low, caught a fresh current and arrowed effortlessly toward evening clouds again. A cooling, not yet chill wind swept toward them from off the quiet, postcard lake. Richard found himself thinking of jumping bass.

  They reached the crest of the grassy point and Scroogie took the silver rings of his wheel again and turned himself toward the waters. He pointed out at a distant island of tumbled rock and Douglas fir.

  Richard had to look a moment before he spotted the deer. “Beautiful. Wow.”

  Scroogie nodded.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner. I mean that, Scrooge. Everything was happening so face after the novel was published, bookstore signings, and—“

  Scroogie cut him off by taking his hand again, squeezing it once.

  Richard got behind him and placed his hands atop his friend’s shoulders as they faced the lake. “I guess…it’s just the two of us now, huh buddy?”

  Scroogie said nothing and Richard couldn’t see his expression from behind him.

  There was silence again, not entirely uncomfortable, but protracted.

  A loon cried mournfully somewhere, its undulant song ending in the discordant sharpness of a woman’s scream.

  Bullfrogs began a basso chorus near the shoreline, keeping time with the lapping water. A smell of cooked hickory drifted down from the restaurant’s knoll.

  Richard bathed in the beauty and serenity of it all and found himself fighting to actually acknowledge it; he could see it, sense it, but somehow not feel it. He wished now he’d brought Laurie, but she’d visited Scroogie practically every day this last six months and she felt the two of them should be alone together. He and Laurie would be in L.A. this time tomorrow and like all the Topeka memories behind them, this would be just one more. Only the book would recall them with real clarity. Only the book would live on after them, immutable and unassailable. Richard felt a distant pang, realized he’d been thinking not of his novel but of the Gold Book.

  Richard shook himself straight, threw back his shoulders. No, he wouldn’t think of that now, not on so lovely an evening, bidding farewell to a lifelong friend. True, he may have lost two of his other dearest companions, fate sweeping them helplessly from his hands to their separate destines, but he could find solace and yes, even pride, in what remained. He remained, he endured, as did poor, crippled Scroogie, who would not be here at all without his intervention. He had taken a troubled childhood, a frustrating adulthood, a broken marriage and a floundering career and turned them into something many once-deriding critics were now calling The Great American Novel, now comparing, in some corners, to Hemmingway and Capote. He had every right to bathe for a brief moment in the warmth of accomplishment. He’d fought a good fight, and done the best he could do, and by God he’d survived.

  He looked down at the top of Scroogie’s reddish hair, jumped inwardly when he saw the upturned face staring up at him, unsmiling.

  “What is it?” Richard said, the evening breeze at last turning chill, raising small bumps along his forearms. “Are you cold?”

  Scroogie just stared at him.

  Then he pointed past Richard.

  Richard turned, saw nothing. Then something. The copse of Douglas firs behind them, thicker than first imagined, dense, in fact, as Myer’s Woods.

  Richard knew an uneasy dragging. He turned back to Scroogie. “You want to go over there? Into the woods?”

  Scroogie stared at him.

  Richard looked back at the thick woodland, the elongated shadowed tips of the firs curving over the green sward to them, just touching his shoes. “But it’s getting dark, Scrooge.”

  Scroogie gazed at him another moment, then shrugged and turned back to the lake, the squashed tangerine of sun nearly kissing the water’s horizon.

  Richard rubbed at the goose pimples along his arms and repressed an inward shiver. That awkward hole in the conversation closed in around them again.

  “I should really be going, Scrooge. Got an early flight to L.A. tomorrow and still haven’t packed, you know me.”

  Scroogie said nothing.

  He patted the slumped shoulders in the chair, turned away, hesitated. “Scrooge, I’m…sorry. I wish there was something more I could do or say. I’m sorry it turned out this way.” He stared at the thick lawn at this feet. “Sometimes…sometimes it all seems like a dream, doesn’t it? Like something made up. Strange.”

  “Why ‘strange’? You’ve been making up things all your life.”

  Richard almost smiled—then his heart chilled.

  He whirled.

  Scroogie’s chair made a liquid squeak on the lawn as he turned himself toward the other remaining Deadender. There was a bright smile on his face that looked perfectly sunny but in which Richard could find no sun at all.

  “Jesus! Scrooge, Jesus! You can talk!”

  Scroogie shrugged merrily.

  Richard tried to read the other man’s expression but it was growing darker quickly now. “Christ, Scroogie, for how long?”

  Scroogie, still smiling that queer smile, rolled his eyes heavenward. “Mmm…the age of two?”

  Richard stared at him.

  Scroogie smiled back.

  “Jesus, Scroogie. You never…the stroke didn’t…you faked it all along!”

  “You make a lot of references to The Savior in your speech, are you aware of that, Rich?”

  The loon screamed again, so human it sent a thrill of dread through Richard. “Why, Scrooge? Why’d you do it?”

  Scroogie snorted once. “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet, kid,” and he wiggled his left foot.

  “Oh my God…”

  “There you go again.”

  “You can walk? You can? Really?”

  Scroogie heaved a matter-of-fact sigh, shrugged again. “Actually I haven’t tried in so long I’m really not sure. Probably make a valiant shuffle of it, before I fell flat on my fat face.”

  Richard couldn’t seem to feel the end of his own extremities, like the night breeze was creeping up them toward his heart. “Scroogie. Why?”

  Another indifferent shrug. “I don’t know, protective coloring?”

  From what? Richard started, but suddenly wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

  “Terrific book, by the way. I never got to…tell you. Very inventive. Loved the title. Promises To Keep. Robert Frost, my hero. I guess you learned something from me after all…”

  “Does Sally know? I mean, have you told anyone besides—“

  “No. Not the doctors and nurses, certainly. Though the physical therapist looks at me askance at times--you know, like he’s got this theory that it’s all psychosomatic. I just grin pleasantly at him.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Richard, have you been ‘born again’ or something?”

  “I just can’t believe it. Why would you want to stay here in a—“

  “In an upscale nursing home with incredible cuisine and pro-rated golf courses, a postcard lake, saunas so hot the attending nurses have to wear bikinis, and no pressures at all from the outside world? Why do you ask, Rich? Going to write a book?”

  Richard stared at him.

  “The question isn’t ‘why’, Rich-O. The question is ‘if.’ As in, will you go on paying the absurdly high bill once you leave for L.A.?”

  Richard stared at him.

  Scroogie chuckled without grinning. “Gee. First
time I ever saw it—Richard Denning speechless. Caught you off guard at last, huh? Never thought I’d see the day.”

  “Me either.”

  “Well, it doesn’t work for everybody, the pampered life. What, for instance, you’re asking yourself, do I do all day when even the delicious food and the pampering Miss Courtner—that’s the name of my blonde nurse with the great ass—and the gorgeous lake vista become boring? Well, I read. I read a lot, Rich. I read everything. And I have to give it to you there, kid, there was a whole world I was missing. How’d you get started reading, anyway? Oh yeah, your old man’s basement library. Well, you had the right idea. And the right imagination, of course. It does take an imagination, right, Rich?”

  “Some, I suppose.”

  “Don’t be modest. Oh, and talent too, of course! I wasn’t downplaying your talent. You were the talented one. Of the four of us, you were the dreamer, the story-teller.”

  Richard was pretty sure he saw the white teeth of a smile, but it was almost completely dark now. “That’s great, Scrooge. What kind of stuff do you read?”

  “Poetry, mostly. The classics. Keats, Yeats, Frost…”

  Richard rubbed at his arms.

  “Cold?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Yeah, great title, that book of yours. What do you suppose it means, by the way?”

  “Sorry--?”

  “The title of your book, the Frost poem you took it from, ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.’ Your title’s from the last stanza. ‘The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep…and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.’ What’s that all about, do you think?”

  Richard stuck his hands in his pockets to keep them warm. “You’re the Frost expert, Scroogie.”

  Scroogie made a scoffing sound. “Oh, come on, give yourself some credit! You picked the title for your book—you must have had something in mind! You must have read up on the poem. It was one of Frost’s own favorites! ‘My best bid for remembrance’ he said.”

  “Yes. In a letter to Louis Untermeyer.”

  “See? You know more than you’re telling! So what’s your take on the poem?”

  “Some scholars think it’s a metaphor for death.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think scholars make metaphors of everything.” He tossed his shoulders once. “On the other hand, Frost was always writing about dark woods and trees. Right?”

  “Know what I think?”

  “What.”

  “I think Frost’s metaphor was the woods themselves. The world of the woods, if you will.”

  Richard regarded him with surprised interest. “Oh? Go on.”

  “I think what he’d say is that a world offering perfect quiet and solitude exists side by side with the world of people and social obligation. Both worlds have claims on the poet. It’s the dichotomy of Frost’s obligations both to the woods and to a world of ‘promises’ that give the poem its power. Shall I go on?”

  Richard looked at him doubtfully, but Scroogie smiled back. Richard cleared his throat. “Please…”

  “Frost realizes that the woods belong to someone in the village—a small village like Topeka, maybe—that they’re owned by the world of men. But at the same time they’re his woods because of what they mean to him from an emotional standpoint.”

  “That’s very intuitive, Scrooge.”

  “You think it sounds right, Rich?”

  Richard watched him a moment. “It sounds like you’re quoting somebody…”

  Scroogie barked a laugh. “Ha! Got me! The South Atlantic Quarterly. Specifically the Winter 1959 issue featuring an essay by John T. Ogilvie.”

  “I’m impressed, Scrooge.”

  “Yeah, well, when you hide away from reality like me, there’s little else to do but read, right?”

  “It’s changed you. Even your pattern of speech. Very composed.”

  “You think? You know, Frost himself admitted, “There is nothing more composing than composition.’ But about that poem. Have you ever read Richard Poirier’s take on it?”

  “No,” Richard said.

  “Poirier believes it’s a poem concerned with ownership and of someone who can’t be or doesn’t choose to be very emphatic even about owning himself. Interesting, huh?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “He’s in danger of losing himself, and his language by the end of the third stanza begins to carry a kind of seductive luxuriousness like nothing else preceding it.”

  “For instance?”

  “’Easy wind and downy flake…lovely, dark and deep.’—those lines. Frost’s opening question about who owns the woods becomes more a question of whether the woods ‘own’ him. The poem is absent of any man ‘to exactly himself.’”

  “Indeed. And how’s that?”

  Scroogie leaned forward in his chair, clearly anxious to share this long-considered information, delighted to. “It’s that sort of…drowsy repetition of rhymes in the last stanza. It makes us feel we’re not at all sure this man will be able to keep his promises. But the real issue…”

  “Yes--?”

  “The real issue is whether or not he will be able to keep his life. Don’t you think, Rich?”

  A fish jumped somewhere. Richard looked away a moment. The lake was now a black blur. “Poets use repetition of rhyme a lot, to make a point.”

  “’Ah,” Scroogie interrupted, “but is a repeated word a true rhyme? Or is the resolution excessive? Maybe a sign of forced closure? None of this is resolved, Rich, if you read it closely.”

  Richard folded his arms to his chest against the breeze. “Well. You have done your homework.”

  Scroogie made a dismissive gesture at the air.

  “May I ask where all this is heading, ‘Professor’ Scroogie?”

  And in perfect imitation: “’May I ask where this is heading, Professor Scroogie?’” The man in the wheelchair laughed. “Christ, Rich, why so fruggin’ formal? Look, I’m only saying the same things John Ogilvie and Clint Stevens said. If there’s any generalization to be made about Frost it’s that his characters are almost always of two minds. That contrast between his speaker’s public obligations and his own private will.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning the speaker is ‘half in love with easeful death.’ Even the poem is an interior monologue, the speaker never really looks inward. Never once! He focuses on recreating in his imagination the whole sense of his surroundings. In fact,” and Scroogie leaned forward again, “he seems more aware of his surroundings than of the inner workings of his own mind!”

  Richard felt a shift in the air, a coolness not of the lake wind. “What are you saying, Scrooge?”

  “I’m not saying it, Clint Stevens is saying it. It’s simply that the speaker of the poem hints, by implication, that the outer wilderness corresponds to his inner one. His mind remains as inscrutable as those dark woods he’s so obsessed with!”

  “The poem never indicates he’s obsessed!”

  “No?” Scroogie gripped the silver wheels of his chair, moved himself forward a foot; Richard backed up reflexively. “It’s right there in the final refrain, Richard! His outward journey becomes a symbol for his inner journey! It’s underscored by his obsession with his perception of his surroundings! In other words, by opening his mind to the surrounding woods rather than sealing it off, he becomes what he sees!”

  Richard found himself hissing furiously. “What’s your fucking point?”

  Scroogie appraised him in apparent shock. “My point? You still don’t know?” He bent at the waist and jerked a slender volume from his jacket pocket. “From Clint Stevens, and I quote: ‘Richard Poirier has remarked that “woods” is mentioned four times in the poem. “I” is mentioned five times. These two realities, the subjective and the objective, are merged over the course of the poem. While the speaker focuses almost exclusively on the physical fact of his surroundings, he is at the same time articulating his
own mental landscape, which seems ever-intent ‘to fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget.’” Scroogie slammed the book closed. “End quote.”

  Richard shot forward and grabbed both armrests of the wheelchair, holding Scroogie in place. “I admitted I forgot! Is that what this is all about, my forgetting? I freely admitted moments of forgetfulness, even inaccuracies! It’s right there in the book, as complete and truthful as I could possibly make it!”

  The look in Scroogie’s eyes made Richard pull back slowly. He stepped back a foot, twisted his ankle, nearly fell, then slowly regained his balance in the thick grass. He stared down at his oldest, dearest friend, thankful he could no longer see Scroogie’s face clearly in the gathering gloom.

  But which ‘gathering gloom’ Bucko—yours or the nightly surroundings?

  He couldn’t see Scroogie’s face but he could hear his voice well enough; it was hardly above a sibilant whisper, but there was venom in it. “The book is not complete, ole-Deadender-friend-for-life, and at the most it’s filled with half-truths. Shall I tell you the real truth of that afternoon? What really happened in that long-ago woods of our childhood? Or will you run away now, secure behind the frustrated lies of your writer’s imagination?”

  Richard could hear his own labored breathing. Could feel the first patina of sweat sweeping his brow. Yet he’d exerted almost no energy at all. No outward energy.

  He got his thumping chest under control and nodded defiance. “Tell me, then. Tell me your vaunted version, oh wise one, of what really happened!”

  Scroogie sat silently.

  “Well, go on! Tell me! I want to know! Tell me!”

  Richard heard the liquid squeak again and knew Scroogie was turning himself toward the opaque expanse of lake. He thought that he heard a thin rasp of drawn breath, shaky, as if long bottled thoughts were finally being set free. His voice was gentle in the breeze; Richard had to step closer to hear.

  “Try to picture it, Rich. I mean, picture how it really was that day. Can you do that?”

  “I believe I can.”

  Scroogie said nothing for a time, then just when Richard was beginning to think he wasn’t going to tell it after all, he finally spoke. “My birthday. We were all there in the dark woods, all the Deadenders. All there and prepared to go forward with the thing. The…ceremony. Only we couldn’t decide on where to bury the damn Pyx, remember? We had the cigar box, had the shovel, each boy had his private wishes, but there at the very last we got into an argument about the location. And you know why, Rich?”