by Tom Larsen
“Yes, of course.”
“My nephew is a parish priest. I could have him preside.”
“Aww gee, that would be wonderful. Harry’s Catholic, born and raised.”
“Well, here we are,” Carlos takes her arm and leads her down a stone stairway. The Chamber of Commerce is in an old movie theater; the lobby covered in murals, peasants working the bean fields, leaders in uniforms. They cross the dimly lit basement to a door marked Director. His office is bright and cheerful. French doors open to a small courtyard, sun dappled trellises teem in roses.
“How lovely,” Lena puts her nose to a petal. “I was expecting something more . . .”
“Institutional?”
“Well, hardly so serene. It’s like a backyard paradise. How do you get anything done?”
“You’d be surprised. At times it can be quite frantic.”
Lena peruses the plaques and photos, Santos cutting ribbons, Santos dining with dignitaries, Santos dancing with a stunning brunette.
“Your wife?”
“Aida, yes. Taken three years before her illness.”
“She’s beautiful.”
“Miss. Jalisco Province. 1972. The year we were married.”
Some of Santos in a moustache, ends drooping Zapata-style. Across his desk more pictures of Aida. The younger ones in languorous poses, almond-eyed and swimsuit slim. Poor thing smiling like its forever, Lena offers up a prayer.
“I’m curious, Lena,” Carlos turns from the photos. “When Morales wanted to know about your marriage.”
“Yes?”
“What would you have told him?”
She runs a finger along the desk. “Honestly? I have no idea.”
“If I asked you?”
“Harry was a good man, but . . . I don’t know, for the past few years he hasn’t been himself.”
“Poor health perhaps?”
“No, not physically, but he seemed to lose the spark,” she takes a breath. “My husband was unhappy. It’s hard to explain.”
“But you stayed with him.”
Lena meets his eye. “I could never leave. Harry needed me.”
“You were wrong about your husband’s luck,” Carlos holds her gaze. “He had what every man wants in life, loyalty, devotion, things that are rare in the human condition.”
“You say the nicest things.”
Lena knows she should watch herself here. With all that’s happened it’s easy to forget she’s in mourning. She turns away and moves into the square of sunlight.
“Harry had big ideas when we were younger. He was going to be somebody.”
“What sort of ideas?”
“We were going to travel. Have adventures and see the world. He was in a band then. You know, rock and roll? They were good too, but it didn’t break for them.”
Partly true, at best.
“Sometimes dreams die hard, Lena, especially American dreams.”
“The print shop jobs were supposed to be temporary, and I guess that’s what they turned out to be. He’d work a few years and the place would go under. And he hated the work and the years just kept going by and, well, we never got there. This trip? Mexico? It was the first time either one of us ever left the country.”
“Every marriage has regrets, I know.”
“And then his brother turned into a junkie and Harry had to look after him. And then Gerry got AIDS and, I don’t know, something changed in Harry.”
Carlos pours a pair of brandies and takes one to her.
“But he had you.”
“There’s something else. For the past few months I’m pretty sure he’s been using. You know, drugs?”
“Was it serious?”
“I don’t know. Harry was good at hiding things from me.”
Carlos rests a hand on her shoulder. “Listen Lena, whatever your husband was doing, I’m sure he had good reason.”
“I guess it doesn’t matter anyway. Not now.”
“That’s the best way to look at it,” Santos raises his glass. “Here’s to Harry Watts, a good man gone to a better place.”
***
The remote doesn’t work so Harry has to get up to change the channels. Someone keeps sneezing next door, the other guy, what’s his story? Some sad little peddler with a backwater route coming down with something nasty. Probably stays here whenever he’s in the area. Probably a regular at Eva’s, crazy about the SOS. Harry has the sudden, wild impulse to go chat him up. Just knock on the door and see what makes the peddler tick. He knows he never would, but sitting here watching one bad rerun after another is a hard way to go. He managed to get a few hours sleep but he’s getting hungry again. And it’s raining harder and now it’s dark. Maybe the guy has a car! Of course he has a car, it’s a freaking motor lodge!
He watches the news for the third time. The script, so familiar he could quote whole segments and does. The president mangling syntax, the senator’s lawyers denying allegations, feel good story, behind the scenes report. Then he stops when he realizes Other Guy can hear him. Sixteen rooms and they jam them together. Save the maid a couple of steps.
Okay, Jesus, enough with the television. Semi-darkness, that’s the ticket. Should have bought a bottle, go for the load and sleep it off. Kill the time while events unfold. A couple of days would do the trick. Sleep until he’s sick of it, holed up in the off-season, gloom, doom and nothing to do.
He thinks of StevIe, those dead eyes, then another impulse, truly alarming. Turns his head and looks at the ceiling, let’s his eyes go dead. Stillness, total and complete, limbs lifeless, holds the pose for a minute, then two minutes. The room seems to fill with silence, the traffic in the distance, the thin snip of the digital clock, death stare, the final fixed point. Takes it to the limit, ten minutes, fifteen. Imagines the scene when they finally find him, the old lady, the lazy maid, Sneezy next door.
And then he notices up in a corner, a smudge of something vaguely familiar. When was it? Years ago now, a similar smudge, not on the ceiling but wedged in a windowpane. A crisp Sunday morning on Christian Street, Harry in bed, sizing it up but too sleepy to investigate. Another hour until curiosity got the best of him, then getting up and going over. Not a shadow or a gob of caulk, the shape failing to conform, even at close range. He gave it a poke then jumped back as the damn thing dropped to the floor, red beady eyes, wingspan like the movie logo. Fucking bat! Then scrambling from the room when it sprang up at him, legs tangled in bed sheets, the last of it on hands and knees. And then the best part, swinging the door closed behind him! Shutting Lena in! That sudden squeal and bounce of bedsprings, the suck of air as she ripped it open, that he’d do that, leave her in there! How he choked under pressure, how Lena never spoke of it. Did it open her eyes or was she already resigned to that side of him?
When he finally gets up there’s a sharp stab between his shoulders. He pushes himself to the edge of the bed, rolling this and rotating that. It’s okay, nothing really, his stairwell pratfall weighing in. Harry sits there looking out on the dumpsters, the clunky shape, the stenciled phone number.
Sits there.
He trapped the bat in a colander. It was easy enough. By the time he came to face it the poor thing had flown himself into a heap. Harry slid an album cover underneath and took it outside. Watched from the street as it fluttered up, turned in a circle then bee-lined back to the house. Same thing happened the next night. Harry put him in the car and drove him to Jersey.
If only he could rewind back to that time. Forfeit the years if it came to that, write them off and take it from here, this very morning, everything intact and nobody missing. Push the button and watch the years fly.
Harry turns on the television.
***
They hold the service high on a hillside, just Lena, Santos, Father Esteban and Morales. It’s a fine day with a light sea breeze, little cotton clouds and a single vulture circling overhead.
“Dear Lord in
Heaven,” the priest looks to the vulture. “We pray you will accept the soul of this, our fallen friend and your humble servant, Harry Watts. And while I never got to meet Harry myself, in speaking with Lena, his lifelong companion, I feel I’ve come to know him well. Harry was a good man, Lord. True to his faith and bound by holy tenants of the Father.”
Lena clutches the urn to her waist. She never pictured a sendoff for Harry, but if she had it would go like this. A few more in the mix, maybe, but quiet and dignified.
“Lena told me of a time when Harry played music.” Father looks her way. “The guitar, was it?”
“Drums,” she whispers.
“The drums, that’s right, a time when the message was love, when peace was the credo of the young. Lena told me that on a night when Harry was scheduled to perform his brother fell ill and was rushed to the hospital. On a night, that night, when he might have triumphed, Harry went instead to his bother’s bedside. Stayed with him, gave him comfort. On this night and many like it, Harry proved, beyond doubt, his worth in God’s eyes.”
In fact, Gerry fell through a skylight on a B&E. Of all the stories she’d told the young priest Lena never thought he’d go with that one.
“And we ask you, dear Lord, to have him prepare a place for Lena, and all his friends and family, and for ourselves as well.”
Morales dabs his eyes with a tissue. A laugh carries up from the lowlands and the buzzard starts his downward spiral. The thing Lena can’t figure is why no mention of AIDS in the death certificate. No tumors, no lesions, no sign of the virus. Either Stevie was lying or Harry got it wrong. Or Harry’s lying.
“Lena?” the priest signals for the urn and she hands it over. He removes the lid and closes his eyes. “Dear Lord, we commend to you our brother’s spirit.”
Father hands it back and gestures to the hillside. Lena walks a short way down and shakes out the contents, turning in a circle for the full effect. Instead of scattering, the ashes pour on the ground and she feels them crunching under her shoes.
“Is that alright?” she squints up at them.
“That’s fine,” Santos goes to her. “Now you’ve done your best for your husband and Harry’s where he wanted to be.”
***
He should shave. He really should. What looked okay at thirty comes off Gabby Hayes when it’s gone to gray. Three days he’s been here. Two since he’s stepped out the door, and then only for provisions, beer, the chunk of boloney and loaf of bread he keeps on the outside windowsill. Or did until something got at them last night. Didn’t hear a thing, but when he looked this morning the bag was torn to pieces. Three days watching the tube and nothing about a murder in Mexico. No missing tourist or widow’s arrest. He should take it as a good sign, but for all he knows a dozen tourists disappear every day in Mexico. Could be bodies popping up all over, widows cued up for the firing squad.
Nine days until he hears for sure. Nine days!
He spent Day Two doing battle with the telephone. Not the phone itself, but the urge to use it, couldn’t even risk directory assistance to see if the Mexican cops or hotels were listed. Any call at all would come back to haunt him. He didn’t know how, but neither did half the guys on death row. He soon grew to hate the sight of it, beckoning. Okay, not beckoning, just there, beside the bed, waiting for him to hang himself. Finally he disconnected it, stuffed the phone in the dumpster under an orange mess in Styrofoam. Not that that made any sense, since he knew where it was and could go get it any time. Which he did, more than once, nacho stains on his sweater to prove it. Finally returned the phone to the desk saying it kept him awake. Didn’t say how since he’d gotten no calls, but then again she didn’t ask.
Now it’s time to go and he looks like a guy who wouldn’t need to fly all the way to Mexico to kill somebody. Wouldn’t even have to leave the building. So he shaves, quickly with more than the usual nicks and gouges, then has to wait for the bleeding to stop, watches the end of Oprah while his stomach growls in protest. Oprah with a girl who rescued a family trapped in a car wreck. Four lives saved and she’s not even ten. Talk about getting a leg up in the karma column. Kill a few down the line and she’ll still be in the black.
Time to go, but where? The plan never had a Catskills agenda. In his head it was always just a block of time to be gotten through, like the movies, with clocks spinning and calendar pages tearing away. What he did with it hardly mattered. It was all about what Lena did.
But it matters now. Now he has to go. Right now while he still can, before Oprah and the dumpsters and the thing up in the ceiling and the guy next door suck the heart right out of him.
***
Halfway into town he spots the car rental. Harry’s got Gerry’s license and credit card, kept them valid for the unforeseeable. They might balk at the photo, but then they might not. So he walks in, goes through the motions and drives off in a brand new Caddy. The sporty model, fully loaded, and just like that he’s human again. A new car, that’s the ticket. Nothing pulls it together like a brand new ride. Takes the Rip Van Winkle Bridge across the Hudson and just drives. Winding roads, postcard country. Stops at a diner in Athens and gorges himself on hotcakes and coffee, watches out the window as the sun breaks through. On the way out of town he passes an old hotel facing out on the river. The Stewart House, Food and Lodging. It’s the “Lodging” that does it for him.
“Can I help you?” the sweet young thing at the desk wants to know.
“Yes, I’d like a room for the night.”
“Well, we have four singles and the Meryl Streep suite.”
“Meryl Streep?”
“Ever see the movie Ironweed?”
In fact Harry has, a grim little gem about depression derelicts. The scene where Meryl sings had him sobbing into his shirtsleeve. Everything Meryl did made Harry blubber.
“You don’t mean?”
“Yep!” she beams. “Shot it right here.”
“Nooo!”
“The death scene? Where she finally scrapes enough money to rent a room? That’s the room.”
“I’ll take it.”
“It’s got a great view and we keep it furnished like it was in the movie.”
“The same bed?”
“I don’t know about that,” she pokes her chin with a finger. “Say, that’s an idea.”
“A marketing goldmine, if you ask me,” Harry chuckles. “Share a bed with Meryl Streep.”
She laughs. “I like it. You in advertising?”
“Not me. I’m retired.”
“Wow. On a road trip or something?”
“Yep, always wanted to check out the area.”
“Well then, you’ve come to the right place. One night you say?”
“Maybe longer, depends on how it goes.”
She signs him in and hands him a key. And such a key, solid iron with gap teeth and a ring on the end, like whatever it opens will change everything. Meryl’s is a corner suite, big and airy, wainscoting, brass sconces, floorboards creaky underfoot. At first Harry couldn’t recall the death scene from Ironweed but the rooms bring it back to him, Meryl at the end of her rope, Jack, the bastard, running out on her. Right goddamn here!
He leans out the window and takes in a lungful of air. Just south of town the river makes a turn and he sees an old lighthouse midway to the bridge. There’s an intersection right below him with a strip of businesses running along the bank, a gauntlet of gaslights, an old time bandstand in the square, small town down to the barber pole and the dog sleeping in the street. He shoots a wave to a shopkeeper on the corner. If he’d come here to begin with he wouldn’t be in the shape he’s in.
Kim and Uri own the place. Kim, the chef is blond and boyish, flushed from the kitchen and the cooking sherry. It’s Uri who runs things, ponytail bouncing as she flits from floor to floor. Once again, Harry’s one of a weekend pair, Jenks is the other, freshly widowed and up for the foliage. This he learns from Uri on his way out for a ride
around.
“They used to come every autumn,” she hugs an armload of folded linens. “Last year we had a party for them. It was their fiftieth anniversary, can you imagine?”
“I’m afraid I can,” Harry tells her. “My wife and I are halfway there.”
“No kidding. Where is she?”
“Out of the country I’m afraid.”
“Too bad, the fall is the best time up here. Seems a shame to see it alone.”
“Yes, well,” he twinkles an eye. “It was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.”
Still feels the tingle an hour later climbing the cutbacks to Hunter’s Mountain, human contact just when you need it, that and the weather. It’s what threw him coming in, the fuck-up at the airport, the bus-ride from hell and the weather! Christ it was depressing. Hudson in the rain, shades of gray, steam ribbons rising off the mountains. So not what he expected it’s a wonder he survived it. Everything’s good now. The caddy purrs like a kitten. Sun shining, sky scrubbed clean and the foliage! Hadn’t even noticed until today. Flame reds and yellows layered in gold. The fucking wonder of it! Wood smoke, winter coming and just last week he was sitting on the beach.
And then Stevie’s face floats into the picture. A bit fuzzy after a week, the shape of it mostly, then Lena in some Mexican standoff, crying in a cell while the other female prisoners gather. It takes all Harry’s got to shove these thoughts aside where they circle at the edges refusing to fade.
On the way back he stops at a stand for a jug of cider. The old man makes his change, cackling at the scene across the way. Harry turns to a big house set off the road on a yard size square of blacktop.
“I get such a kick out of it,” Old-timer chuckles. “Fella hired a crew of landscapers but the deer gobbled up everything they planted. Dropped a bundle, he did. Even had ‘em fence the yard in, for all the good that did. Finally just paved the whole thing over. Funniest damn thing you ever seen.”
Harry stands there scratching his head. “Does look pretty silly. I guess in the end you do what it takes.”