The Axman Cometh

by John Farris

  By now he can smell food, meat sizzling on an outdoor grill; and the band has temporarily called it quits. He hears the clear ringing of a cook's triangle, a couple of cheers, laughter, someone speaking, unintelligibly to him, into a microphone. There is an amplified, ear-splitting screech, groans, more laughter. He goes up the front walk, separated from the lawn on either side by saw-toothed diagonals of half-buried brick, and up the front steps to the porch. Now he can see through the screen door down the center hall to the back of the house—which, at this moment, with the burgers and hot dogs ready for consumption in the back yard beneath glowing pastel paper moons, appears to be totally empty. He sets down the heavy peppermint-striped package with red-and- white curlicues of ribbon on it and reaches for the screen-door handle. A couple of boys appear at the back of the hallway, jostling each other, making for the stairs at the front of the house, and he steps aside; but if they notice him they pay no attention.

  "I'm first!"

  "I'm first!"

  "Why don't you go do it in the yard?"

  "Why don't you?"

  They battle each other up the stairs for possession of the bathroom. When he can hear but not see them, he opens the screen door and walks inside with his surprise package. There will be people in and out all evening to use the toilet; and probably arrangements have been made with the neighbors as well. It doesn't matter. He needs only a few minutes.

  He looks to his left, into a living room that has a trey ceiling, a fireplace with a raised-marble hearth and a Victorian mantel enameled white. There are no windows on the fireplace wall. To his right is the staircase with a center strip of shoddy plum-colored carpet. At the foot of the staircase are sliding walnut doors partly open; inside there is a small lamplit parlor with windows on the front and side, shades half-drawn and covered with lace curtains. He glances up the stairs; apparently both boys have gone into the bathroom and shut the door. He can't hear them. Good thick heavy doors in this house. But he doesn't like the glass in the front door. Maybe there will be a back stairway, the house appears to be large enough.

  He goes down the hall, which is darkly wainscotted, also in walnut, and opens a door under the staircase. Closet, filled with winter coats, umbrellas, a couple of snow shovels: the pungency of wool, rubber boots, mothballs. Four more steps to a door directly in front of him, the hall doglegging right to the

  kitchen. He opens the door. Darkness; a damp, strong whiff of cellar. No need to go down.

  He shuts the door, walks into the kitchen. There is a rectangular breakfast table right in the middle of the scuffed linoleum floor. Yellow-and-white checkerboard oilcloth on the table with a lazy Susan. Six ladder-back chairs with cane bottoms around the table. Noisy refrigerator, the enamel badly chipped. Fat water-filled jars on top, each containing a potato that has produced vines in a jungly scatter. He hears the faint downfall of a flushed toilet, hears the boys coming and goes to the sink, runs water, washes his hard, capable hands: he can never get them too clean. The boys pass through the kitchen; he watches their reflections in the semidark glass of the windows over the sink. One of them can't hike his zipper all the way up.

  Beyond the porch, which is screened, he can see much of a big backyard filled with people, picnic tables illuminated by Japanese lanterns strung between several trees. The smoky lighting is uneven, with depths to the yard as black as night should be. A temporary dance floor has been laid for the teenagers. There is a long buffet flanked by portable gas grills. The buffet consists of plain fare: platters heaped with buns, bowls of potato salad and relishes, half-gallon jars of mayonnaise and mustard, pitchers of drinks that sparkle in the light. He thinks he recognizes Dabney Hill but can't locate Shannon, even though he lingers in the kitchen for a longer time than is necessary, or wise.

  Opposite the sink, a walk-in pantry, crammed with Ball jars that hold big globes of tomatoes, green- and butterbeans, cut squash, rhubarb. Next to the pantry is a door that sticks, but he perseveres and finally gets it open. The back staircase he has hoped for, obviously almost never used, judging from the gray dust on the risers.

  He doesn't use this staircase, not wanting to leave footprints. Instead he picks up his heavy package and returns to the front of the house, takes the steps quickly to the second floor. A bathroom, four bedrooms. Four-poster bed in one of the front bedrooms, a sewing-machine alcove, photos on one wall beside a mirror-topped bureau: naval vessels, young sailors in dungarees showing off for the camera, others in battle dress at their stations and all business. A photo of an unidentified aircraft, perhaps Japanese, trailing smoke and inclined at a deep fatal angle toward the brilliant surface of a tropical sea. Another of a group of islands that are little more than barren rockpiles. A reunion photo: jowls, bellies, grins, highball glasses. The centerpiece, large as a magazine cover, is a copy of the famous photograph of the raising of the American flag on Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi.

  Shannon's room is next door, across the hall. Dozens of watercolors brighten the dour mauve wallpaper. She has done several pencil and charcoal studies of Elvis Presley, Ricky Nelson, Fabian. There is a portrait of a likeable-looking boy with batwing ears who might be her brother Chap. Various other teenagers, older relatives or neighbors are represented.

  Hoary old stuffed animals tumble against each other at the foot of the bed on the frilly pink chenille spread. The bed is also strewn with articles of clothing, as if she couldn't make up her mind what to put on for Dab's birthday. Her vanity has the usual stuff from Kresge's cosmetics counter. The lipstick is uncapped. So is the nail polish. The styling brush with its gleaning of fine blonde hairs lies on the floor. Her frayed sneakers are under the vanity. So is a Cross-Your-Heart bra. There's a discarded box of tampons in the wicker wastebasket next to the vanity. Shannon is having her period. He digs deeper into the trash, past tissues that have blotted her lips, notepaper on which she has penned drafts of a birthday tribute to her father, and comes up with a used tampon wrapped in a Kleenex. Judging from the heavy flow, she is at the beginning, not the end, of her menses. The horror, the fascination, of women. His excitement is profound. He begins to sense the music. Nothing very definite yet: three notes, then a fourth. D, C-sharp—what else? Never mind, it will grow, the design will emerge.

  Someone else has come up the stairs to use the bathroom. The man in Shannon's bedroom has a keen sense of smell, and he detects a cigar. Whoever the newcomer is, he doesn't bother to close the bathroom door all the way while he's peeing. After he's finished he stands in the hall outside the bathroom for a time, clearing his throat, blowing his nose, talking to himself in an undertone before trudging downstairs to rejoin the party.

  The man in Shannon's room takes another slow look around, then goes down the hall to the other two bedrooms. Unmade bed, damp towels on the floor of one, a crudely crafted bookcase filled with trophies or mementoes: Little League, Pop Warner football, high-school basketball and football. The remainder of the shelf space is taken up by repair manuals for motorcycles, automobiles and trucks. There is a strong smell of cologne or after-shave in the room. His girlfriend in a sugary, blurred-focus studio portrait on his dresser. Short, curly, erythristic hair, long upswept eyelashes, full, parted lips. Allen Ray keeps his condoms (lubricated, reservoir tips) in a cigar box with his cufflinks, tie clasps, a lock of that red hair and a twenty-dollar Saint-Gaudens gold piece. The other bedroom is twice as messy. Stacks of 45-RPM records on a student desk, a half-eaten cupcake in its wrapper sitting on a windowsill, dirty laundry and a catcher's mitt on the seat of the only chair. A bent bicycle wheel and a hula hoop lean against one wall. The only photograph in the room is that of a golden retriever, muzzle thrust affectionately against the cheek of a grimacing, much younger Chap. Copies of Mad magazine; horror comic books. Also a paperback edition of Moby Dick and a New Standard Revised Version of the Bible, many scraps of paper serving as bookmarks. A report card beside the Bible that shows zero absences and straight A's for the school year. Chapman Hill is, or was, a seventh
grader. Under the pillows of his bed is a battered, faded stuffed rabbit in calico overalls wrapped in a T-shirt. Both ears have been reattached clumsily with different-colored thread, a beginner's stitches.

  The windows of Chap's room are open, the shades down to within six inches of the sill. He has a limited perspective on the party outside. There is a tentative swelling of voices, then all join in singing "Happy Birthday," the lead guitarist of the rock-and-roll band mercilessly twanging chords. The drummer comes in with a long roll at the end, and a final clashing of cymbals: ".. . tooooo youuuuuuu!" Cheers.

  "Speech! Speech!"

  There is someone else in the hall outside Chap's bedroom. He cracks the door an inch and looks out. A youth with a ducktail wearing a Harley-Davidson T-shirt gestures to a girl in wheat jeans who stands on the riser just below the top of the stairs. She shakes her head, a little curl falling out of the stiffness of her beehive onto her forehead. He reaches for her, grasps her by the wrist, and pulls her into the bathroom with him. Locks the door.

  He has at least a couple of minutes; no one else is on the stairs. The voice of Dabney Hill booms through the house.

  "I guess the only time I've been more surprised is when I woke up the morning after my wedding night, and Ernestine says to me—

  But he is interrupted by Ernestine's sink-unclogging laugh, followed by her admonition: "If you tell that one, Dab, the next time we all get together will be at your surprise funeral!"

  Passing by the closed bathroom door, mindful of some give and squeak in the floorboards there, he hears the boy groaning inside, and the girl says breathlessly, "Let me lick it, Clifton, that'll for sure make it go in easier." Down the hall to the front of the house again. There is a parched rubber plant on a brass stand beneath the window. Next to the master bedroom is the door to the attic. He opens it. Dabney Hill is saying, "—but to be serious for just a minute, if I may, I feel truly blessed to have so many good friends, who have taken the trouble to come by tonight and help old Poop-Deck Pappy celebrate his fiftieth birthday, and I'm looking forward to seeing each and every one of you back here again when the one with the two big zeros rolls around." Applause. He pauses on the stairs; the attic is dark and warm and reeks of stale, settled-in cigar smoke. He takes out his pocket flashlight and searches the risers, looking for obstacles in his way. Then he climbs the stairs to the attic floor, checking the beams for headroom, which is adequate when he removes his rancher's straw.

  No windows overlook the backyard, although the wall has been cut to allow for a half-ton air-conditioning unit Enough light penetrates the grime on the panes of the two small dormer windows on the front of the house so that after a couple of minutes he no longer needs the thin beam of the flashlight to get around without bumping into things: a child's rocking horse and playpen, a mounted deerhead ravaged by moths, a wardrobe filled with out-of-style clothing, twenty boxes of old books, papers, keepsakes, letters, Christmas ribbon and wrapping and ornaments. A gnomelike Santa Claus with a cottony beard and a red-lipped grin. A couple of dolls and doll furniture, a stack of children's board games. An old navy footlocker and seaman's bag, some trunks and other items of luggage.

  Dab is saying, "Now I think my daughter has a few words before we get on with the cake-cutting, so all you kids with sweet tooth’s just settle down, and that goes for you too, Pearl Blaney—-"

  The attic is unpartitioned. There is the housing of a ceiling fan positioned above the second-floor hallway, a toilet and a sink in the open where Dab has put down some carpeting and made a space for himself, a clubroom of sorts: the centerpiece is an octagonal poker table with the green baize in pretty good shape, a little gray in spots from rubbed- in cigar and cigarette ash. Stacks of chips and decks of cards in the center, glass ashtrays of various shapes and colors all around. Dab has hung a fluorescent fixture low over the table. There is a standing lamp behind an armchair with the fabric worn down to the stuffing in places, a footstool, a little table which holds a humidor and a green glass ashtray the size of a dinner plate, overflowing with ashes and cigar ends. Dab has been forbidden to smoke his cigars downstairs, the man in the attic assumes. Dab has an old pewter spittoon beside the chair. There's half a roll of toilet paper, some Ex-Lax and a sliver of pink soap on the little shelf above the washbasin, which has a big rust-stained blot on the finely cracked porcelain; all of the bowl looks like a bloodshot eye.

  For reading matter Dab has stocked mostly hardware catalogues and trade journals, a few copies of sportsmen's magazines, the kind featuring photographs of men with heavy armament posing beside downed grizzly bears the size of King Kong. If Dab is a hunter and fisherman, where does he keep his firearms? That may be a matter of concern. He hasn't seen a gun cabinet anywhere. But he didn't look in the closets in the master bedroom, and he hasn't been to the cellar yet. He will do both before the night is over.

  Interspersed between the pages of Field and Stream and Outdoor Life he finds evidence that Dab's interest in sex is still alive and breathing: a couple of nudist magazines with hale, hearty, bushy people enjoying the sun, and a more explicit, obviously well- thumbed little magazine with captions in Danish or Swedish: a buxom woman pushing her breasts into another woman's face, a man with tattoos, a blacksnake whip and a horse- sized cock lording it over a supine nude; two slightly flabby youths having anal intercourse. Something else Dab isn't permitted downstairs, but who knows the extent of Ernestine's desires, willingness, ability?

  Shannon is saying, "For all those nights you were patient with me when I just couldn't memorize the multiplication tables, for all my faults you've overlooked, for all the times I didn't take the time to say, 'I love you, daddy . . Her youthful voice in the gloom of the attic is a thrilling presence, melodious and as suspenseful as a lingering, rising horn call to a supernal, perfect E-sharp; he is inspired, assured that his finest work to date will be done before he leaves 298 West Homestead.

  But now he must settle down, find a place for himself. Wait, invisibly, a ghostlike presence in their newly haunted house.

  There is some cobwebby space behind the wardrobe, which, he finds, can be moved to make a little more space; and the wardrobe is far enough from the corner which Dab visits so that he will go undiscovered as long as he chooses. He casts around with his small light and finds a straw broom with a broken handle, uses that to sweep out, meticulously, behind the wardrobe, after first tying on a surgical mask to filter the dust. Dust is murder on his sinuses. There are some old drapes in a carton which he spreads on the floor he has cleaned, a couple of cushions left behind when a piece of furniture went to the Goodwill. A makeshift but comfortable arrangement. The attic floor, of course, makes enough noise when he walks around to be heard in the bedrooms; but it's an old house and a windy season, and they have lived in the house for so long they will be deaf to almost any familiar sound it makes at night: floorboards creaking, the branches of a tree rubbing against a gutter or roof. Probably the last thing they would think of is a guest in the attic, in the cellar, in their closets beside their beds with his razorsharp—

  Not yet. It is not time to think of this.

  "Dab, we love you so much!" Shannon cries out, her voice breaking, and he is touched, almost as deeply as if he himself is the one for whom she has composed this tribute.

  Behind the wardrobe he unwraps the package, which contains a toolbag. First he takes out a camp lantern with a nine-volt battery that affords plenty of light in this limited space. The door to the attic scrapes on the sill as it is opened, so anyone coming up will give him warning to shut the light and crouch unmoving in his darkness for as long as necessary. Next he ties on a fresh surgical mask before removing other items purchased recently, before he had a new family in mind. After only a few days in Emerson, and after a few minutes with the irresistible Shannon, his choice seemed inevitable. Ordained. There are five in her house, always the number he seeks. The Cobb family of Briarwood, Missouri, had a pert daughter just Shannon's age. Timmie Cobb. He remembers her no
w with fondness, for the score they composed together is still his favorite, although, like all the other pieces he's been working on, it is as yet unperformed. There is time for that, he reminds himself. He is a young man, still growing in his art. What matters now is the vital, the daring act of composition, doing the groundwork, tapping deeply the streams of inspiration that families like the Cobbs, the Crismons, the Hanyards have provided.

  Out of his toolbag comes a mechanic's one-piece coverall, a hard hat, polycarbonate safety goggles, driving gloves to protect his hands from blisters. A four-pound hammer with one blunt and one tapered, cold-forged chisel end. Nippers. A new hickory ax handle to replace the one that was broken during his last home visit. He is never without at least one spare ax handle. His kit also contains two double-bitted ax heads, the curved, sharp edges protected by tough leather scabbards. And duct tape, cement nails, used but not worn clothesline, the fishing line he has found to be more reliable than ordinary baling wire. The husky Hanyard boy, cheating on the finale, somehow broke the wire that bound his wrists and, weakened as he was by loss of blood and handicapped by having no feet, still almost managed to crawl out of the house alive. As it was his work was botched, the ballet score had to be discarded. His disappointment left him in desperate shape for a while. This happened in Iowa. Crestview, Iowa, where neighbor trusted neighbor and no one bothered to lock their doors or windows. He has assumed, on his drives through town, that Emerson is that sort of place, too. He's found it very friendly so far. He feels very much at home here.

  Now he takes time out to review all of his movements of the last twenty minutes, when he arrived on West Homestead Avenue. He hates mistakes. The discarded surgical mask? Right there in the pocket of the tool bag. He has total recall of every step he's ever taken in each of the four houses he's visited to date. A fat memory book to browse through. But it hasn't been all fun. There are always surprises to deal with. And he can't face the prospect of another botched, useless score.