Giovanni's Gift

by Bradford Morrow

  Noah paused as Henry undid the latch that held the yard gate to the fence post and swung the gate aside, a movement that set clanging the cluster of sheep bells attached to the rounded gate newel.

  —A mask, you say.

  —Well—

  —I guess it’s one of those things where you had to be there.

  Henry said nothing as Noah walked into the grassy yard still damp from the night shower. Now he wished Edmé were here to buffer Noah Daiches. But after having made her call to Noah, she had gone into town, to buy supplies while the sheriff was up at Ash Creek, so that Henry wouldn’t be by himself, though of course this was not something she would ever tell her husband. The two men crossed the yard, along the ground floor of the house, passed the double doors that led into the cellar, and climbed the craggy stone stairs which were excavated into the steep bank at the northern end of the yard.

  —I’m assuming, telling from what Edmé said, it was up here, then? Noah asked, as they mounted the wide cool stone steps.

  Henry said, —Let’s go.

  One after the other, for the trail was not as wide as a bridle path, they scaled the sheer slope, Henry first, although Noah knew the way well, had known it for years. There were many trails that would take a hiker up away from the house and back into the endless rugged woods, but this one was used most. If you stayed with the trail along the quasi-perpendicular gorge, overgrown with thicket on either narrow side, the strait path eventually descended until it paralleled the wild creek, with its clutter of monumental boulders and many virginal deep pools holding grayling and trout. Farther up was superior hunting: elk, bear, and mule deer. The two of them had in the past forged their way miles upstream into settings so elementary, so rigorous and fierce and sacrosanct, so uncivilized, as to seem brutal, even though it was they who’d carried weaponry and entered the inhuman forest with the intent of killing. After what had happened back in there several years ago now, maybe not quite that long, Noah hadn’t been back up to walk this trail with Henry, and were the truth to be known, Henry didn’t trek far up there much anymore himself, though once it had easily been his favorite part of the world. What before he had loved in it—its primitive shadowy floor caped so deep in pine needles that when you walked on it you were buoyed by its sponginess; its trees that died never by the hand of a chainsawer but by lightning or simply felled by rot from old age; its sudden inexplicable meadows paved by thick grasses and decorated with mountain flowers, columbine and tiny rock-blossoms—he now found foreboding, though he would never admit this to Edmé, let alone Noah. He could hardly admit it to himself. For one flickering instant, his imagination connected that earlier tragedy—well, not a tragedy really, was it, but a personal disaster for him, and of course the ultimate personal catacylsm for his oldest friend—with these present disturbances. Less connected them than vaguely considered them at the same time, over the course of a dozen paces up this first rise. The death of Giovanni Trentas and the presence of a masked hangman surely had no connection other than place. And even regarding place, if one were to think about it, the terrain higher up, beyond where he’d encountered the kid last night, up where he had found Trentas, or what remained of Giovanni Trentas, might as well have been on a different world compared to the gracious banks, meadows, knolls down here at the mouth of the gorge, so dissimilar were they. Thus, the twelfth step taken, these discrete ideas proceeded in opposite directions, having never truly formulated as more than physically contiguous. As they dispersed from his thoughts, Henry slowed and turned to see that Noah had paused below him, had hands on hips, and was talking.

  —What are you, deaf, man? Couldn’t you hear me?

  Henry said, —What?

  —Damn it, Noah said. —I was telling you to hold your horses.

  —You’re getting soft, Daiches, Henry said.

  —Listen. Who called who for help?

  —At least I can walk up a hill, man. You sit too much.

  Neither smiled; it was the genus of humor that involved neither laughs nor smiles and was premised on mild diminishments that were leveled one man at another.

  Henry looked down past Noah and admired the way the morning light was reflected off the roof of the house. Bright as a mirror it glittered, just the converse of this back gable, which was sunk in profound shadow. He liked the many various angles and pitches of the roof, and how the graceful column of blue and gray stones rose from the foundation along the back wall to form the chimney, rising above the peak, and could remember with satisfaction how he managed to build that chimney and the enormous hearth inside, one stone at a time, cut from his own crude quarry on the other side of the creek. He never grew tired of admiring that house, and the other structures, too, which was something he could not say about all the buildings he had designed and seen built here and there in the world. Nor did he tire of what he saw out beyond the collection of buildings, green and gray-brown bluffs and the snaking tangle of trees hugging the creek as it meandered the valley, which widened and gradually flattened out, while spreading downward and on toward the great valley beyond, and the farther range even beyond that, some hundred miles away.

  —All right, let’s go, said Noah, who had begun again to climb.

  Within the quarter hour they’d arrived at the clearing that had been the scene of Henry’s encounter. The hasty indentation in the ground, where the trespasser had made his fire, shed flecks of white ash into the air as a faint breeze stirred. Having looked around the circumference of the fire site for prints, Noah walked the perimeter of the clearing, hands in his pockets, eyes on the ground. No prints: whoever it was, was good. Or else it had rained just hard enough to wash away any evidence. Henry dragged a crooked stick through the fire pit, probing for coals, hoping Noah wouldn’t look too carefully at the ashes where minuscule bits of the cloth mannequin lay unburnt.

  —Which way d’you say he took off?

  Henry raised the stick and pointed at a breach in the shroud of foliage centering the west margin of the clearing.

  —You follow him?

  —No, said Henry.

  —Well, I’m going to take a look.

  Noah strolled over to the breach and entered the forest on the far side. Time passed, then from some way in, he called back to Henry. Henry dropped his stick beside the pit and followed the voice.

  Crouched beside an object on the ground, Noah asked, —This yours? when Henry reached him. The shoe, a man’s, but smaller than would fit either Henry or Noah, seemed pathetic beneath a stand of prematurely turned quaking aspen. Its buckle iridesced and the leather was stiff, as if it had been exposed to weather through many seasons. Not only did it look utterly foreign in this diffident and fluctuating shade, but its style was strangely anachronistic. Hurled languidly out of the human universe, it ended up here, collecting rainwater and fallen leaves, useful to no one, though once, somewhere, its leather had been tanned, measured, sewn, fitted, and the finished object placed in a nice shop window, where it was admired and bought. No doubt its owner had polished it back in the days when it was worn. Henry, who made it a habit to avoid the empty sentiment of such philosophical wayfaring, caught himself considering the shoe a perfect analogue for human endeavor, then snapped out of it, glancing into Noah’s eyes, which were frankly staring into his.

  —I don’t think so, Henry said, remembering suddenly there’d been a question asked of him.

  —You sure?

  Henry said, —No, of course it’s not mine.

  —Does it look like what the guy was wearing last night?

  —I don’t think so, but I couldn’t say for sure.

  —How’d it get up here?

  —You tell me.

  The search became cursory and oddly reluctant after this absurd discovery, both having arrived at the same thought that they were not accomplishing much. No more words were exchanged, so that as they wandered about, purpose diffused and some edgy haze of defeat clouding any ability to observe, the only sounds they heard were of their
own rubber-soled boots breaking fallen branches underfoot, the dead measure of breezes hissing in the high boughs above them, and the piercing random lament of some distant mourning dove. Without agreeing to give up, at least not verbally, they circled back toward the house from over west, down a gradual series of meadows that in Henry’s father’s day had been used for cattle and sheep, through ruined drystone ingresses whose single pole gates had long ago decomposed into mulch, having found aside from the pile of warm ash no trace of any trespasser. Noah considered the discovery of the forlorn single shoe to be barely of enough interest to warrant carrying the thing back down with them. He did, though, hoisting it aloft to one side of him at the end of a stick, carrying it as you would the diseased remains of a dead animal, like a rabid squirrel, say, depilated by rot and stiffened by rigor mortis.

  Noah agreed to black coffee at the long kitchen table. Edmé had not returned yet. They spoke of other things, what was going on in town, of mutual friends, who was not healthy and who was. And afterward, Noah left, walking himself down to his car at the old steel horsegate, the shoe in a paper sack.

  —We’ll just see how it goes, Noah’d said.

  And Henry had nodded, wishing for all the world, once again, that he and Edmé hadn’t divulged to Noah or anyone else—now the neighbor whose telephone Edmé had used might know, too—what had happened. He should have foreseen that nothing worthwhile would have come of a visit from Noah. Not because Noah was unwilling to investigate—he had come, hadn’t he? and promptly. But rather because he knew himself well enough to recognize it wasn’t in his nature, nor even possibly in his best interest, to accept help. He decided, if that kid, whoever he was, whatever he wanted, was brazen enough to turn up here again, it would be far easier for Henry to shoot him than ever make another search of the premises with Noah.

  He was overreacting, sure, but couldn’t help himself. From the kitchen window he observed Noah backing his car until it faced the rutted lane that would take him down along the creek for several miles, where it widened, fed by uproarious tributaries, and became a deepening river, even as the dirt lane widened into a road and intersected a county highway to town.

  The car quickly disappeared into scrims of greenery. It was early afternoon. He took a tomato from the windowsill, I imagine, where Edmé had laid out a row of them to ripen in the sun. After rinsing the dirt off its bright-red skin, under the cold column of spring water from the tap, he wrenched off the pliant stem and bit into it. The tomato tasted rich and sweet and earthy. At once, his mood lightened. He walked down the stairs, across the foreyard, and past the rows of squash, beans, carrots, peas, in the kitchen garden, through a paddock of waist-high grass that led to the rocky beach of the creek. In spring, when it had warmed enough to melt the high snows, these copious stones were burnished in cold water. By August the creek had receded, leaving a treacherous beach for the walker to negotiate. Henry knew which stones would hold his weight without rocking and which wouldn’t. He crossed the creek not on the narrow footbridge but by leaping from rock to rock, and climbed the path on the far shore. There were two Henrys who lived at Ash Creek, he thought, as he finished the tomato, which he’d eaten like an apple. The primitive, juvenile, rustic Henry who lived in the tiny rivalries of youth and who moments ago could contemplate the pure barbarism of such a violent response to the boy who taunted him. And then there was the Henry he was more accustomed to, the Henry who had matured, he supposed—and this was the Henry who walked toward the glass and cedar studio that rose into view.

  Here it was that he worked for several hours a day, continuing to draw buildings for his megalopolis, his Taliesen of sorts, the Utopian city that obsessed him, more and more fanciful structures that would go into his supercity which would very probably never be built. Here he sat down to gaze out at the wild waters of the creek and reflect on what Giovanni’s shoe—for he had come to believe that this was what Noah Daiches had discovered up on the hill, the shoe that the intruder had waved over his head the previous night before he lit out into the woods—could possibly imply. That is, what it could mean beyond the fact it disproved for once and all that the left foot of his friend’s corpse had not been removed by some poor famished animal come upon the body and taken it for a lucky gift of nature. The shoe had not been there a week earlier, when last he had hiked through that nearby stretch of woods. It was a problem for both Henrys to contemplate.

  Twenty-three hours was how long it took for me to arrive at this sleepy little bus depot bathed in the dusty light of dawn. Delays and circling and connections and sitting and more sitting, all the usual tedium of travel. Hours of marching beside others under the anemic fluorescents of airport terminals, with eyes too weary to see. Hours of overhearing monotonous exhausted voices of fellow travelers in concourse after concourse. Moments of temporary resurrection as I washed my face, somewhere, during a layover. And then back into the demimonde of voyagers.

  When I arrived finally at the last of these airports, a vast sprawl of runways carved into the high plains, I decided against any more flying. I still had quite some distance to cover, but it was better accomplished without leaving the earth. The bus departed the city, followed the highway up into the foothills and then into the mountains as the sun went down, so that we were soon shrouded in a consummate darkness punctuated only by headlights descending the sinuous canyons. The steady lament of the engine lulled me to sleep finally, before we crossed the continental divide, passing through places like Hideaway and Troublesome, so when I stepped down out of the warm interior of the bus and got my first breath of chilly mountain air, I was very awake.

  On my face must have spread the most unguarded smile of boyish recognition. I retrieved my suitcase from the baggage hold and set out to find a cafe that might be open at this early hour, walking through the heart of my favorite childhood town, and as I did, warm euphoria flooded through me. Such a welling of elation, so very present and palpable despite my fatigue—such happiness. These were unexpected passions, which I hadn’t experienced in some time.

  The main street had changed, of course. The proliferation of gift shops implied what I already knew, that I was not returning to the same simple paradisal province I’d known as a child. The old five-and-dime was replaced by a store in whose windows was outdoor gear: designer mountain-climbing equipment; crampons and carabiners and bright-yellow nylon rope; a tooled-leather golf bag filled with fresh irons, wedges, woods; fancy saddles and fly-fishing tackle. Here was a natural foods store, its window papered with handbills advertising nutritional retreats and reflexology seminars, and within were bins of organic nuts and shelves of herbal tinctures. Gentrification had not completely seized the day, but I could see it was beginning to make inroads.

  The bank building, with its corner entrance and its great round clock extended like an inefficient awning above, was, on the other hand, just as it always had been, massive blocks of local granite piled two stories high—still the tallest edifice in town. I passed by its sturdy facade, then entered the cafe next door, sat, ordered coffee, asking for what had been on the brewer longest, in hope of getting something black rather than the usual American transparent brown, coffee miming tea, then settled to consider what next to do.

  Ash Creek was way too far from town for me to walk. I doubted there were cabs here, and the bus wouldn’t take me any closer. In fact, I had no choice but to telephone my aunt and break the news that I’d not abided by her wishes, as she had expressed them when we spoke just yesterday in Rome, and that I had come. I could offer to check into the local hotel, I thought. Though, of course, that wouldn’t make much sense, given I’d come to see Edmé and Henry, and to learn what I could about the night visits. The giddiness I felt at being back in my cherished childhood haunt began to fade.

  As it happens, my apprehension was misplaced. “Grant, how wonderful,” Edmé said. “One of us will be down to pick you up in an hour. Just stay where you are.”

  Whether it was the caffeine from the th
ird oily cup of coffee that rekindled my confidence; or whether it was relief at Edmé’s reaction to my impetuous trip that brought me careening into their solitude, wholly uninvited; or my awareness, however impudent and gauche, that the waitress, whose name was May and whose hair was the fiery orange of the earlier sunrise, had taken notice of me … whether it was any of these things that caused my self-assurance to swell, I don’t know. But I was grateful for this quaint spirit of hope that visited me again as I sat there, for this hope that coursed through me like pure adrenaline.

  My past did not have to dictate my future, I thought. How unique it might be to climb out from under the usual guilt quilt, as Mary used to refer to it: that steadfast melancholy, for want of a better term, that blanketed me day in and out, and had—with the exception of those first giddy months we spent together—for many years. It was what some people refer to as a glimpse, this moment. Here, now, the loyal guilt quilt had lifted, so that I sensed maybe there was something possible for me, that I might start anew, invent someone fresh in this body of mine, here in this place which no one whom I had ever harmed called home. Maybe, I thought, there could be life after Mary. Maybe I could find some way to reassemble all these tangents into some kind of coherent existence.

  Even for the illusion, I was saturated with gratitude. I paid my bill, left a tip on the table, said goodbye to May, and stepped out onto the sidewalk. The clock on the bank read eight. Already, the town was quite alive with people. May, Mary—May’s name was Mary, but shy one crucial, growling letter—it wasn’t long before she and the hope I’d been feeling were gently erased.

  Henry, not Edmé, retrieved me from my muddled musings. “That’s all you brought?” he asked, swinging my leather bag into the back of the car. “That’s it,” and I climbed in beside him, and we took off for Ash Creek.

  “You look well,” my uncle glanced at me sidelong.