by James Tate
Then I notice he has gone inside and is standing at his side window looking at me and my beautiful grill through binoculars. His wife is standing beside him and he hands the glasses over to her. The smell of the smoking ribs is ambrosia to my head and I’m swimming in there very happily.
I turn the ribs and slap some more sauce on. I can see Morgan pacing back and forth behind his window, running his hand through his hair, shaking his head.
Finally he comes out and opens the door to his shed beneath his porch. He’s in there for three or four minutes. I’m mainly thinking about how long to cook the ribs and how great they’re going to taste. This is the first vacation we’ve been on in several years. Morgan locks the shed and circles his cottage several times. Then he goes back into the house and I can hear his voice nearly breaking.
Maureen comes out with her drink in her hand. “How much longer?” she asks.
“Twenty-five minutes,” I tell her.
And that’s when Morgan came flying down his steps. He was trying not to run, not to trip and fall, not to make a fool of himself. He was really a decent looking guy, probably sells insurance or something. Maybe a banker.
“Excuse me,” he stammers, visibly straining to control his emotions. “Excuse me, but . . . but isn’t that . . . If I’m not mistaken, sir, but . . .”
“Take it easy, Jack,” I say to him, in my most comforting tone. “Slow down or you’ll bust your precious mechanism.”
“Now wait a minute,” he says, gaining strength. “I believe you are . . . I am certain that this is my grill that you are now employing to roast your meat.”
His ability to speak the King’s English was temporarily out-of-order.
Maureen was cool, serene. She gazed at me with pride and the utmost confidence.
“Chill out, pal,” I replied. “This is my barbecue grill as sure as the stars are in heaven. I bought it in East Longmeadow at a True-Value store exactly two months and, let’s see, three days ago. Paid $129.95 for it, on sale.” I paused to let the incontestable verity of my claim sink in. “However,” I went on, “you are welcome to admire its craftsmanship and sculpturesque design.”
Maureen was smiling proudly. I looked out toward the sea and added, “That’s some view we’ve got. Come here often?”
“You can’t get away with this! You won’t get away with this.” Morgan was actually shaking his finger at me and quaking.
“A drink would calm you down,” Maureen said in her best nurse’s voice. “Can I fix you something? A gin and tonic always soothes my nerves when I’m upset over some little nothing.”
“This is an outrage,” cried Morgan. “What kind of people are you!”
“Well,” Maureen began, “I’m mostly Irish, but mother claims I have one-sixteenth Cree Indian in me as well. And Jeff is mostly British with some German blood in there somewhere.” I love this woman, especially the one-sixteenth Cree part of her. “And what about yourself, Mr., eh, is it Morgan?”
“You’ll hear from me. That’s a promise. Common thieves, that’s what you are.”
“Now there’s no reason to be rude,” Maureen replied. “Grilling a good slab of pork ribs and watching the sunset isn’t a crime, Mr. Morgan. I’m sorry if some misfortune has come your way. Perhaps you need some medical attention, something’s out of kilter. I’m sure there’s a doctor on the island. I could call . . .”
“Now if you’ll pardon us, Mr. Morgan, I have some ribs to finish. Honey, would you mind freshening up my drink?”
Morgan now looks like an insane man, one of those derelicts one finds increasingly walking the streets of big cities talking to themselves. Of course, some of those once held respectable jobs and had families. I don’t know what happens to them, something snaps, and they no longer share our experience of the daily world. I can have pity for them but they also frighten me. They’re a reminder that it could happen to anyone, including yourself.
“Jeff,” Maureen says to me, “I think those babies are about done.”
TV
The President of the United States was on the television flapping his wings. He looked like a rooster about to mount a hen who can’t stand him. I was looking through my neighbor’s window, checking to see if he was still alive. His son had once dropped by my house and asked if I would do this about once a month. Apparently he wasn’t on speaking terms with his father, but was more than a little interested in his television set. The old man kept a parakeet, but from what I could see it lacked most of the traditional feathers. I had been looking in on him for about three years and had never seen more than his feet stretched out in front of the stuffed chair from which he watched the soaps and the game shows and whatever else. I was given a number to call if I suspected the end had come.
It was such an undemanding, routine chore to perform that I hadn’t really given much thought to the old man, but this one day I was suddenly moved by what I took to be the inert vacuousness of his existence. And his only son never visits to break the tedium or calls to ask if he needs anything. Soon I was hatching a notion that I would pay the old man a visit, maybe try to be, if not his surrogate son, at least something of a friend. Even if all we do is watch some TV together, it would let him know that someone is thinking of him.
I went back home and fixed us a couple of sandwiches, fished out a couple of cans of beer and sodas from the fridge, looked around for what else might perk up his day, some magazines and newspapers, some peppermints. I was a little nervous about this mercy mission, but was committed to following through, perhaps as a down-payment on some future kindness shown to me in my old age.
With my brown sack of offerings clutched at my breast in one arm, I pounded on his door. There was no answer. I pounded again, still no answer. I tried the door. It was locked. I put down my bag and went around the house trying all the windows. They too were locked. I went back to my house and dialed the son’s number. His answering machine said, “I can’t come to the phone right now, but if you’ll leave your name and number I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.” At the beep I froze, thinking, “This is no way to break the news of the death of someone’s parent,” and then I thought, “What the hell, this guy will jump for joy, as if he’d won the lottery,” and I spoke into the mouthpiece quickly, “Your daddy’s bought the farm. You’d better get over here as soon as possible.” I hung up and just sat there feeling desolate. I should never have gotten involved in this sordid mess.
Hours went by and no one came. A cloud of gloom sat on my head for the rest of the day and long into the night. I was paralyzed, waiting for the son to show up, wondering if I should call the police.
The next day was Monday and I called in sick to work, I told my boss I had a fever and an upset stomach, must be the flu. A few minutes later I threw up in the sink and then I was so dizzy I had to lie down. I thought to myself, “What if he’s been dead for a year, or two years?” And then my mind leapt and thought, “I wonder how much time he has left on his picture-tube warranty?” And I was disgusted with myself for stooping to the low level of the greedy and uncaring son.
Around noon my girlfriend called. She had tried to call me at work and they told her I was home sick.
“Well, I wasn’t sick when I called in sick, but then I got sick,” I explained to her.
“Why did you call in sick if you weren’t sick?” she asked, quite fairly.
“Just come over and I’ll explain it all to you,” I said. Then added, “There’s a dead man in the house next door and I don’t know what to do about it.”
She arrived about 20 minutes later and I felt better right away. She made me some soup and we sat there talking and smoking cigarettes for awhile.
“The son has got to be some kind of monster,” she said.
“I’ve never even seen the old man,” I said.
“Let’s just dial 911 and get this over with. You can’t skip work another day just to keep this death vigil.”
“I know you’re right, but I just can�
�t believe the son doesn’t care enough to respond at all to his own father’s death.” Sheila was getting too depressed to keep my depression company.
I leaned over and kissed her. It was meant to be just a comforting kind of kiss, but she responded with pent-up ardor, and the next thing you know we were rolling around on the sofa and then on the floor. She undressed me first, struggling with my jeans and briefs, and then I helped her with her bra and panties, and we made wild love right there on the living room carpet for the next hour or so. I had never known her to be so free and passionate.
“That was beautiful,” I said finally.
“The best,” she said. “We should do this more often.”
I knew what she was thinking: that having a dead person next door reminded one of how good and precious life can be.
As we were getting dressed I noticed someone poking around the old man’s house. Sure enough, it was the son at last. He was eating one of the sandwiches I had left on the back stair. What gall! That’s it, I thought, I’m going to confront him.
“That’s my sandwich he’s eating,” I said to Sheila. “Can you imagine?”
I ran out the door without waiting for Sheila to finish dressing. “Why didn’t you come sooner?” I yelled. “God knows how long he’s been dead.”
“I was on a fishing trip,” he said matter-of-factly. “I didn’t get your message until an hour ago. Nice babe, by the way.”
“What do you mean by that?” I said.
“I went to your place right away. I couldn’t help seeing.”
“You what?”
“I could see that you were busy and I just waited until you were finished. You got yourself a real go-getter with that one.”
I was incredulous. His father’s in there rotting and he’s got nothing better to do than window-peep, and then has the gall to tell me.
“Listen, buddy, you’re one sick-o character, and I don’t want to hear what you think of my girlfriend. The question is, what are you going to do about your father?”
“If he’s dead as you say,” he paused to take another bite out of my sandwich, “I suppose I’ll have him cremated or something. If he’s not, I’ll just spit in his eye and be gone.”
“It’s none of my business but if you don’t mind telling me what the hell have you got against the poor guy. I mean, you haven’t visited him once in the three years I’ve been looking in on him, as far as I know.”
“Well, for one thing, he killed my mother. And, for a second thing, he killed my older brother.” Sheila was standing beside me now.
“Why didn’t he go to prison?” she asked.
I felt nauseous again and went over to the sack and brought a couple of beers back. I handed one to the son and he cracked it open without so much as a “thanks.”
“His lawyer proved it was self-defense. They were trying to kill him in his sleep and it was him or them.”
“And where were you when all this was taking place?” Sheila was going to get all this information out of him. That’s how she worked.
“I was fishing at the time. I just love to fish, always have.”
“And what about the television?” I followed up. “Why do you want that TV so badly?”
“It’s just something to have,” he said.
He was staring at his beer, in a quiet mood suddenly, and I took the opportunity to look him over, from his shoes to his haircut.
“Sounds like a pretty rough life,” I said, maybe intruding where I had no right to go.
“Fishing makes me forget a lot. That’s why I go fishing every chance I get.”
“But why did they want to kill him?” Sheila asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I suppose it started when he killed our dog.”
“And why did he kill your dog?” Sheila asked.
“The dog ate his slippers or something.”
“Was he always mean to you? Did he hit you a lot?”
“Not really,” he said. “He just liked to watch television in peace with his slippers on.” He was still staring at his beer bottle and scratching, almost absentmindedly, some bites he had on his neck. Bites he no doubt sustained while fishing and forgetting his older brother and his mother and his dog and his father.
“You want some dinner?” I asked. “Sheila and I were going to make up lasagna.”
He seemed to be thinking about the meaning of “lasagna” for a few long moments.
“That would be great,” he said.
I knew he had seen Sheila and me making love just a short time ago, but that seemed like a small thing, like something you would see on TV when real life was tired of you. And the father could wait a bit longer. And, besides, he had wanted his peace above all else. It’s amazing what some people will do for a little peace. I guess sometimes “peace” can be the dirtiest word in the English language. “Lasagna,” on the other hand, is a very beautiful word.
CLOUD OF DUST
After several abortions and half a dozen car wrecks, Claire declared she was taking charge of her life. A week later she ran away with an ex-con named Lonnie. Between them they had thirty-two dollars and no friends. Lonnie took amphetamines and drank beer all the way to Texas. He slapped Claire every time she asked him to slow down.
“I don’t need you to tell me how to drive, bitch.”
“I’m sorry.” Lonnie ran over an armadillo and Claire squealed.
“What did I tell you, bitch? You’d have me run off the side of the road to spare a fucking armadillo?”
“I’m sorry, I’ve never seen an armadillo before, I just wished you could have avoided it.”
“You’re really something else, you know that? A fucking armadillo. They’re pests down here. Get used to it.”
Lonnie was driving ninety miles per hour, and Claire could barely see the landscape. She didn’t know what she expected to find in this new beginning, but nothing had gone right in her life for years. She was still young, though, and men still made passes at her when she went to bars alone. She had an older brother, but she barely knew where he lived. And her mother thought she was a whore, or so she thought. She hadn’t seen her father since she was a little girl. And she hated school the one time she tried it.
“Where are we going to spend the night?” she asked Lonnie as softly as she could.
“You ask too many questions, bitch. We’ll stop when I fucking feel like stopping.”
Lonnie was darkly handsome, like some of the hoods she had known from a distance when she was still in high school. His menace was a message to the world: Don’t tread on me. Claire identified with his anger, though she had never hurt anyone, with the possible exception of her mother, who, she figured, more than deserved to be hurt. Why, she couldn’t say.
Lonnie had a gun under the driver’s seat. Claire knew he was capable of using it. For Lonnie, other people’s lives were not real, they were the straight world which he rejected and despised. The nine-to-five people with their yearly raises and their tidy lawns never got anywhere but older and deeper in debt. He’d show them, the assholes. They thought he was scum, he’d show them.
“Can’t we stop for a hamburger soon?” Claire asked.
“You bitches, all you want is food and restrooms. Jesus.”
“I didn’t have any breakfast, Lonnie. I haven’t eaten since last night.”
“There’s some Fritos on the floor in the back, eat them.”
Claire hadn’t said goodbye to her mother. Her mother had no idea where she was, probably wouldn’t figure out that she had left town for a couple of days. Then what? Claire thought. The police, sure, she would panic and call the police, her little baby has disappeared. What a worrier she was, that woman. Wants to know where her daughter is all the time as if she was a kid still. Always trying to put her on some kind of guilt trip.
When they finally did pull into a drive-in, Claire ordered a foot-long chili-dog and some onion rings. She saw Lonnie check on the gun, and she thought, Christ, not over a lousy three
dollars, Lonnie. But then he went up to the counter and fished the money out of his pockets. She watched him pay the girl, the way he eyed her and joked with her. And she thought to herself. I’m already the old lady and I’ve only been with him one night. They were really in the middle of nowhere, just scrub cactus and sagebrush and no wind and 103º in the shade.
“The girl said there were some cabins for rent another ten miles up the road,” Lonnie said when he got back in the car.
“But then what are we going to do?”
“Christ, bitch, how would I know? Get a job, maybe.”
“What would be around here?”
“Don’t talk so much, okay? You’re getting on my nerves.”
“It’s the pills. I wish you wouldn’t take any more.”
“Hey, what I do is nobody’s business but my own, understand?”
He started the engine and spun gravel as he tore out of the parking lot. The girl behind the counter didn’t act surprised. She had seen it all before. They come passing through, running away from something. They want a cabin, a job, some onion-rings. She knew someday she’d just drop her apron and get right in the front seat with a good looking one, stir up a cloud of dust and be gone.
DREAMS OF A ROBOT DANCING BEE
Lately, it seems, my family is obsessed with food, with not having enough of it. We have lived comfortably for years in a middle-class suburb, and now our thoughts have turned to starvation and death, of withering away and disappearing while all around us thrive and multiply.
Jenny, my wife, won a turkey at a raffle last week and it was as though the execution of our family had been temporarily stayed. The kids too acted as though it were the most special gift from God, beyond what they had hoped for in this life. I had to feign happiness for in my heart I knew what it meant: Jenny was the hunter now.