Face on the Wall

by Jane Langton

  Charlene’s father looked for a price. It was nowhere to be seen.

  “Lord Fish, Lord Fish!” cried the fisherman, screaming above the tempest, as the towering waves washed over his foundering boat. “My wife has another request.”

  For a moment the enchanted fish did not appear above the churning sea. When at last he thrust up his great head he glowered at the fisherman and said, “Your wife rules the world. What more can she ask of met?”

  “Oh, Lord Fish, forgive me, but she wants to be pope! She wants to sit on the throne of St. Peter!”

  The sea foamed, the sky split with lightning and thunder. The fish hissed his answer, “So it shall be. Your wife is mistress of the Holy See.”

  Chapter 45

  Build it up with wood and clay,

  Wood and clay, wood and clay!

  Build it up with wood and clay,

  My fair lady!

  Mother Goose rhyme

  Next morning the Boston Globe had a color shot of the protesters defying Ted Hawk’s enormous demolition machine. In addition, the local TV news ran the story.

  Bob Gast was disgusted with the publicity those people were managing to whip up. It was all on the side of Anna Swann. She was supposed to be some kind of heroine for defying his eviction order. He had to keep reminding himself that the law was on his side, not hers. He wrote a huffy letter to the Globe, making this point, but of course the damage was done.

  Nervously he flipped through the Yellow Pages again, and began calling other wrecking contractors. The first three had read about the confrontation and wanted no part of it. The fourth demolition expert seemed ignorant about the whole thing. Apparently he never read the paper or watched the news on TV.

  “I’ll pay you overtime if you’ll do it late at night,” said Bob Gast.

  But late at night or not, Flimnap O’Dougherty was alerted by the shuddering noise of the hydraulic lift and the scream of the chain, as the big machine with its grappling jaw descended from the low-bed trailer. He bounced out of bed in his gypsy caravan, which was hidden in a leafy thicket deep in the woods. Seizing his telephone, he made a call, then raced down the hill. He found Annie standing at her door pulling on her coat, her hair flowing over her nightgown in a tangle.

  Behind Flimnap, Annie could see the glaring headlights of the big excavator wobble up and down as it headed around the corner, plowing headlong through a blossoming viburnum bush. Frantically she turned back into the house. “I’ll call Uncle Homer. He was going to get a restraining order.”

  “I called him already,” said Flimnap. “He’s calling Minnie Peck. They’re all coming.”

  A pale face swam up in the dark. It was Bob Gast. “She’s got to get out,” he said angrily to Flimnap, flourishing his copy of the eviction notice as another set of headlights floundered up the driveway.

  “Excuse me,” said Flimnap dreamily, reaching out in the dark. “I think you’ve got something in your ear.” He held it up delicately between finger and thumb. It was an egg.

  “What’s he doing with an egg in his ear?” said Homer Kelly, looming up beside him, sounding puzzled, trailed by his wife Mary.

  “The injunction, Uncle Homer,” cried Annie, as the racket of the huge machine grew louder and its headlights sent a ray streaking through the house, “have you got the injunction?”

  “You mean this thing?” Homer extracted a folded paper from his pocket and showed it to Bob Gast. He showed it to Flimnap. He showed it to the wrecking contractor.

  It was a contest between two pieces of paper. Homer’s paper won.

  “That’ll be thirty-two hundred for our trouble,” said the contractor, handing Gast another piece of paper, while Minnie Peck’s friends tumbled out of cars. The installation artist was there, Henry Coombs, along with his wife Lily, who made pretty pictures with dried flowers. They were joined by poet Henrietta Willsey and potter Perry Chestnut. Minnie had also summoned Wally Feather, the’ plaster-cast man, and Trudy Tuck, who made ornamental candles. All of them gathered around Gast and Homer and Mary and Annie, and grinned and made rude remarks. Trudy took more pictures.

  Nearly insane with anger and frustration, Bob Gast scrawled another check, steam fizzing out of his pen, and abandoned the field. Annie invited her supporters in for a drink.

  They were triumphant, noisy with the spirit of the barricades. Mary Kelly was excited too, but she couldn’t help hearing a note of hysteria in Annie’s loud laugh. “To Annie!” shouted Homer, raising his glass. “Long may she wave!” And in no time at all he had guzzled down three whiskeys, while his wife looked on indulgently and reminded herself to take the wheel when the party was over.

  Before long Annie had imbibed at least two whiskeys herself. She was leaping from sofa to sofa. Homer beamed at her, then glanced up at her insane and wonderful wall. Nutty the girl might be, but you had to give her credit for achieving something truly amazing.

  When the party broke up, Homer too was standing on one of the sofas, making oracular pronouncements. Mary cut him short and stuffed him into his coat and took him home.

  Trudy Tuck wasn’t ready to go to bed. She extracted the film from her camera, held it high, and exclaimed loudly, “I’ll take it to the Globe right now.”

  “But Trudy, it’s three in the morning,” cried Annie.

  “I don’t care what time it is. So long, everybody.” Trudy’s coat swirled dramatically as she made a rush for the door.

  “That’s Trudy all over,” said Minnie Peck jealously. “The swashbuckling gesture. Hey, could somebody drive me home” She looked around for Flimnap. “Where’s O’Dougherty?”

  “He was here a minute ago,” said Annie, looking around too.

  “We’ll take you,” said Henry Coombs. “You’re right on our way.” Henry put down his glass and glanced up at the splendid images on Annie’s wall. He had seen them before, at her house-warming party. They had all seen them before. But now the wall was much more complete. Annie’s painted storytellers stood in a stately row. They were at once homely and imposing. Behind them their stories romped all over the landscape: Huck and Jim drifting down the Mississippi on their raft, the old witch threatening Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella on her way to the ball, and the emperor in his underwear. The background shimmered with detail.

  Annie’s friends put on their coats and looked at the wall, admiring it, making suggestions and criticizing—Henry and Lily Coombs, Wally Feather, Minnie Peck, Henrietta Willsey, and Perry Chestnut. Novelist Albert Flood looked at it too, and weaver Lindsay Jiggs, who had driven up too late to see the action. But whether they found fault with her wall or not, whether they approved of Annie’s sense of design and choice of subject matter, it represented something they all believed in, something endangered by the might and majesty of the law. Somehow or other it must be saved.

  Chapter 46

  Wood and clay will wash away,

  Wash away, wash away!

  Wood and clay will wash away,

  My fair lady!

  Mother Goose rhyme

  But of course Robert Gast eventually found another willing company in the Yellow Pages—Quincy Contractors, Wrecking Demolition Specialists, Serving All New England, Interior Exterior Demolition, 24-Hour Emergency Service, Buildings, Tanks, Towers, Chimneys, Heavy Industrial & Civil Dismantling, Disposal of Debris, Licensed, Bonded, Insured.

  Quincy Contractors didn’t give a damn about protesters. “We’ll mow ’em down,” said the contractor in charge. “Just joking, of course.” But there was a surly undertone in his voice, as though he wasn’t joking at all.

  Homer tried and failed to get another injunction. “Sorry,” said the judge. “The man’s got a deed. He owns the entire building. He has a perfect right to knock it down if he wants to.” Privately he admitted to Homer that Gast was scum, but unfortunately there was no way the law could stop him. “Just go on shaming him before the world,” he suggested kindly. “I don’t know what else you can do.”

  Once again Annie’s
supporters answered the summons, along with a lot of strangers who wanted to be part of the best story of the day and see themselves on the evening news. Homer was there too, although he protested to Mary that her niece’s problems were taking too much of his time.

  “Oh, Homer, for heaven’s sake,” said Mary. “We can’t abandon her now.”

  This time the pugnacious president of the demolition company meant business. Following his beckoning finger, the operator of the huge grappling machine floundered around Annie’s house to the south side. A small crowd of newspeople and photographers trailed after him, along with a horde of Annie’s friends, relatives, and camp followers.

  Things looked bad. The driver of the machine had a thick bull neck and an expressionless face. Homer suspected he would flatten anything in his path if the boss gave the order—a herd of sheep, a flock of children. His giant grappling machine lurched and swiveled across Annie’s lawn, leaving deep gouges in the grass. When he pulled a handle in front of his knees, the Caterpillar track on the left side churned around, its heavy plates driven by a roller and a chain of sprocket-driven wheels. The excavator with its massive toothed jaw careened in a quarter-circle until it faced the four tall windows on the south side of Annie’s house.

  For a moment the operator sat unmoving in the shimmying seat. The sun shone straight into the house from halfway up the sky, illuminating Aesop’s sandaled feet, Charles Dodgson’s small black boots, and Little Red Riding Hood in the jaws of the wolf. Annie herself was nowhere to be seen.

  The sun shone on something else, a large wooden object. “What the hell is that?” said Robert Gast.

  “It’s O’Dougherty’s,” said Mary Kelly. “It’s the roof from the back of his truck. Annie’s inside it.”

  “Oh my God.” Bob Gast shook his head in disbelief. The preposterous presence of a crazy piece of a ridiculous truck inside his deranged tenant’s living room was just another surrealistic detail in what had become a continuing nightmare. Gast’s stomach was in a constant state of convulsion. His hair fell out in handfuls. This morning his wife had stared at him and voiced her shock. “I never thought I’d be married to a man who was completely bald.”

  Roberta was upset too. She refused to stay and watch the destruction. She hurried out to her car and drove off to work. Only Charlene was in top form. “They’ll wreck it today, won’t they, Daddy I want to see!”

  The decisive moment had arrived. With his heart in his mouth, Bob Gast shouted, “Go ahead, get on with it.”

  At once the bull-necked driver released his brake and opened the throttle and began wallowing forward.

  “Come on, you guys,” cried Trudy Tuck. She ran across the churned-up grass and took a defiant posture in front of Annie’s windows.

  “Oh, God,” said Homer, as Mary jerked his arm and ran after Trudy.

  Minnie Peck came too, along with all the other protesters, forty-three supporters of artists’ rights, beauty, creative genius, and revolution, as well as a number of people in favor of any sort of excitement, while television cameramen and Globe photographers had a field day. Annie’s friends lined up in a crowd before the house, facing the great reaching arm and jaw of the machine. They shouted and shook their fists and waggled their signs. Behind the oncoming juggernaut Mary Kelly caught a glimpse of a white-faced Robert Gast and his awestruck little daughter. Unnoticed at one side, the president of Quincy Contractors nodded his head and crooked his finger.

  The driver saw the nod, he saw the encouraging finger. Relentlessly he ground forward, refusing to slacken speed. The threatening jaw on the end of the machine’s long arm wobbled to within six feet of Minnie Peck before she screamed and fled. The others scrambled after her.

  Window glass shattered. Posts and beams collapsed. Bookcases crumpled. A thousand books tumbled to the floor. The edge of the roof gave way with a shriek of ripped-out nails, and part of the ceiling fell in a shower of plaster.

  There were screams and boos from the sidelines. Annie’s dream house, the glorious room she had designed with her own hands, her beautiful high windows and perfect kitchen, her perfect, perfect house—it was all being shattered and destroyed by the great dragon teeth of the wrecking machine, as it opened its jaw and crushed and tore and turned and came back for more.

  Annie couldn’t bear it. Sobbing, she cowered under the wooden roof of Flimnap’s truck, wondering why in the hell he wasn’t there. He had known the crisis was coming, he had prepared for the worst, he had unscrewed the roof of his gypsy caravan and dismantled Annie’s scaffolding, and then he had reassembled the pieces, making a shelter against the collapse of the roof, a barricade in front of her painted wall. And then, once again, he had vanished. Oh, where the hell are you, Flimnap?

  The dozer driver’s red face stared down impassively at the wrecked south side of Annie’s house, and then he pulled on his stick to swing the grapple to the right.

  “Christ,” muttered Homer. Galloping across the ruined grass, he mounted the high step of the cab and yelled at the driver, “Look, give her time to move out.” Stumbling down again, he shouted at Bob Gast, “Come on, we’ll move the furniture out. Give us a little time.”

  “Well, for Christ’s sake, you’ve had all the time in the world.” Gast jerked his head at the machine. “Five hundred dollars an hour, this thing is costing me. You want to pay for it? Be my guest.”

  “We’ll manage,” said Homer curtly. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Well, okay, then.” Bob looked at the wrecking contractor, who nodded at the operator. The heavy throbbing of the engine died away and the machine fell silent. The driver took off his hard hat and heaved himself out of the cab. Glowering, Gast disappeared, tugging behind him a reluctant Charlene.

  The cause was lost. Annie’s friends looked at each other mournfully. “Come on,” said Mary. “Let’s take everything out the front door.”

  Annie didn’t like it. When Mary and Homer stumbled around the wreckage and looked in at her under Flimnap’s roof, she grasped Mary’s hand and whispered, “Never mind about the furniture. Let him knock down everything. Everything except my wall. I don’t give a damn about the rest. Let him do his worst. I’m not leaving. He’ll have to kill me before he knocks down my wall.” Her eyes were glittering, her hair was wild.

  Mary knelt beside her and put her arms around her. Homer was exhausted. But he knew perfectly well that Annie’s resistance wasn’t mere surface flamboyance like Trudy Tuck’s. She spoke from a granite core. She meant what she said. Gast’s hired machine would crush her under its tracks before she would abandon her wall. He pleaded with her: “Oh, come on, Annie. We might as well save what we can.”

  “Listen, Annie,” said Mary craftily, “that highboy belonged to your great-great-grandfather, and you know what? He was my ancestor too. You’ve got to save it. And what about Eddy Gast’s pictures? You can’t let anything happen to them.”

  “Oh, all right,” said Annie, her voice thick with tears. “Well, okay. Just keep those cameras out of here.” She kicked at a heap of fallen books, and began picking them up. “There are a lot of empty boxes in the laundry.”

  Everybody helped. Even the rubberneckers lent a hand, lugging out carton after carton while Mary barred the door against inquisitive gate-crashers with cameras. Let Annie’s house stay private, at least for the few moments it continued to exist.

  The driveway was soon littered with her possessions. “What about the fridge?” said Henry Coombs. “It’d be a shame to let it go to waste.”

  “It’s on little wheels,” said Annie. Desperately she grasped one side while Henry took the other. Rocking the refrigerator this way and that, they pulled it out from the wall.

  Perry Chestnut unearthed a Phillips screwdriver, and like a good sport he got to work on the dishwasher. “It’s just a matter of a few screws, and then you pull out the hose.”

  “Annie, what about all these jars of paint?” said Henrietta Willsey.

  At this Annie broke down. “No,
no, don’t take them away. I need them. I’m nearly done. I’ve got to finish. I’ve got to finish my wall.”

  Chapter 47

  Build it up with gold and silver,

  Gold and silver, gold and silver!

  Build it up with gold and silver,

  My fair lady!

  Gold and silver I’ve not got,

  I’ve not got, I’ve not got!

  Gold and silver I’ve not got,

  My fair lady!

  Mother Goose rhyme

  It was only a pause in the storm. The grappling machine was still parked on the south side of the house, its long arm folded back on itself, its jaw resting on the ground, its three upper teeth meshed with the two below.

  The operator of the machine had taken himself off. He sat on the stone wall with his feet dangling among thorny canes of blackberry. When he jerked on the pull-top of his can of beer, it fizzed out and frothed all over his lap, and he said, “Mierda.”

  Robert Gast showed up to complain that somebody might have the courtesy to hire a moving van. “You’ve got the entire driveway cluttered up with furniture. What the hell are you going to do with all this stuff?”

  They were down to the rugs and the contents of Annie’s linen cupboard. Henry and Lily Coombs picked up the last of her books and blew on them to remove the plaster dust. People sat yawning in the sunlight on Annie’s upholstered chairs. A television cameraman wandered around lazily, recording the scene. He was waiting for real action, the collapse of the house. Of course it wouldn’t be like the fall of an entire high-rise building, with thousands of tons of steel and concrete gently descending in slow motion, but in a milder way it would have the same charm—order followed by chaos.