The End of Vandalism

by Tom Drury

  “Now, watch,” she said to the dog. “See what this lady’s doing? Look at the TV. She’s taking the real pearls and leaving the fake ones.”

  • • •

  The next day was Saturday. Louise stood in front of her mother’s deep freeze, down in the basement beside the stairs. Louise had a headache, and wore an ugly, shabby sweater. She kept bumping a coat rack bearing the little coats once worn by herself and her sister June.

  “Why me?” said Louise. “Just curious.”

  “If I have you do it,” said Mary, who was sitting on the basement steps drinking sherry, “it shows the importance I attach to it. Also, it gives you the chance to make some lasting friends.”

  “Can I have some of that sherry?” said Louise.

  “It’s all gone, sorry,” said Mary.

  “I have lots of friends,” said Louise, who seemed to be drawn by the presence of the little wool coats into the tone of voice of an eight-year-old.

  “Take some to Dan Norman,” said Mary. “You like him.”

  Louise considered this remark. She and Dan had been brought together by the breakup of Louise’s marriage, and now that it was good and broken up, they had not seen each other in a while. “He’s never home,” said Louise.

  Mary nodded. “You think you hold office, when in fact the office holds you,” she said.

  Louise loaded her arms with white packages. “How many goddamned deer you got in here?” she said.

  Mary stood. “I realize it’s a lot,” she said. “Don’t feel compelled to take it all at once. Get that little Coleman and put some in there with some ice. That’s what I got it out for. And don’t forget to smile. It takes less muscle effort to smile than it does to frown.”

  “When my face is completely relaxed, people still think I’m frowning,” said Louise.

  “You have a beautiful face,” said Mary. “An angel’s face.”

  “Even you must admit my forehead is on the large side,” said Louise.

  “I’ve never believed that stuff about your forehead,” said Mary.

  • • •

  Louise delivered venison to three people before bailing out of the task, and even those people—Nan Jewell, Jack White, and Henry Hamilton—lived more or less on her way home.

  Nan Jewell had the southernmost of the Three Sisters, the big blue houses on Park Street in Grafton where the various members of the Jewell family lived. Nan was a rich and restless widow who held people to such a high standard that they usually fell short. When Louise arrived, the old lady was practicing the line of attack she would follow in church the next morning. She always thought people were taking negligent procedural shortcuts.

  “They’re not posting the hymns anymore and I would like to hear someone tell me why,” she said. “They’ve always done it and now, lo and behold, they’re not doing it. What about the people with arthritis? What about the people who need a little time to find the right page? Are they not welcome in our church? And another thing while I’m thinking about it. I don’t know who’s slicing the Communion bread lately, but they’ve got a lot to learn about what is meant by a wafer. I don’t think a Jewell would cut Communion bread in this haphazard way. I don’t think a Montrose would. Nor a Robeshaw, a Mason, a Kellson, a Carr.”

  “Boy, I know it,” said Louise. But that was just what you said to Nan unless you wanted to be trapped with her all day. The fact was, Louise didn’t know anyone named Kellson.

  From Nan’s house it was out in the country to Jack White’s farm on the Margo-Chesley road. Jack White was the father of Johnny White.

  Louise found Jack in his horse barn with the veterinarian Roman Baker. Jack had five Belgian horses, named Tony, Mack, Molly, Polly, and Pegasus. They were enormous animals with jaws like anvils. Louise started to tell Jack about the venison, but he said it would be a minute before he could concentrate on whatever it was she had to say. The problem was that some of his horses were walking backward.

  “When did this start?” said Roman Baker. His face was narrow, his hair thick, his eyes widely spaced. He’d been working with horses a long time. “Change their diet recently? Might there be something spooking them?”

  “Not that I know of,” said Jack White. “But there again, I’ve been gone.” He put his boot up on the rail and crossed his forearms on his knee, like someone in a fertilizer commercial. “Just yesterday got back from Reno. Spent five days in Tahoe and three days in Reno. That Tahoe is some of the prettiest country there is, and I saw Juliet Prowse in Reno. What a pair of legs on that lady. What a radiant complexion. Anyway, my son Johnny was watching the place for me while I was gone, and when I asked him, he said as far as he had noticed, the horses were not walking backward. I said, ‘You mean to stand there and tell me if a horse was walking backward you wouldn’t notice it?’ He said he might not. Well, the boy has personal problems, and that’s no secret. As I always tell him, ‘Johnny, you missed the boat.’ I say, ‘Johnny, see that little speck on the horizon? That right there is the boat.’”

  “I saw him up at Walleye Lake last spring,” said Louise. “We had a talk. He seemed very friendly.”

  Jack White dusted off the sleeve of his shirt. “He always liked you,” he said. “And it’s too bad he didn’t marry somebody of your caliber, instead of that nut he did marry. Although it’s certainly hard to put more than a tiny fraction of the blame on her.”

  Roman Baker took a silver penlight and examined Tony’s ears. “You got anything unusual growing in the field?” he said.

  Jack stood, adjusted his belt. “Boy, I sure don’t think so,” he said.

  “Have you checked the fencerows?” said Roman.

  “Sure,” said Jack. “Well, no. Not really.”

  “It could be in the fencerows,” said Roman.

  “Let’s do it right now,” said Jack.

  They took a pickup out in the bumpy pasture. Jack drove, following the fences, Roman Baker occupied the passenger seat, and Louise sat on the tailgate, weeds sweeping against her ankles. The southwest corner of the field was thick with dark green growth. The truck came to a stop. Roman got out and walked to the fence, where he crushed some spade-shaped leaves between his palms and raised his hands to his face.

  “This has to go,” he shouted. He filled his arms with weeds and pulled them from the ground. “All this,” he said. “Everything from here on down.”

  Jack stepped out of the cab. “What’s he saying?”

  “He says it all has to go,” said Louise.

  Henry Hamilton’s farm was just up the road from Louise’s place. The milkweed that had once been properly confined to the ditches along the road had come up the driveway into the yard, and at this time of year the air was thick with flying seeds. The fences needed work, and pigs seemed to come and go as they pleased. Driving in, Louise saw one come out from behind a propane tank and tear through the long grass to the grove.

  Henry’s house was dimly lit and warm and smelled of boiled cabbage or boiled greens of some kind. But it wasn’t as if he had just boiled the greens—it was as if they had been boiling for years. On the kitchen table he had spread the comics from the Sunday paper and was carving a jack-o’-lantern. Mossy seeds spilled over the newspaper.

  “These kids from The Family Circus don’t have any sense,” he said.

  “I agree,” said Louise. “There is a pig out.”

  “I’ve been after that guy for two days,” said Henry. He turned the pumpkin toward Louise. “Do you think this looks like Tiny?”

  “Kind of,” said Louise. “The mouth does.”

  “I haven’t seen him in the longest time,” said Henry.

  “Well, you know we’re divorced,” said Louise.

  Henry put down his knife. “I didn’t know that,” he said.

  “Henry,” said Louise. “You remember. You notarized my statement.”

  Henry thought for a moment. “O.K. That’s right. So I did.”

  He resumed work on the pumpkin. “I try to get o
ne of these out every year. Sometimes I see a fair amount of children. Other times, the night goes by and I don’t see anyone. One year I made divinity and I’ll be goddamned if one person showed up.”

  “It doesn’t look like Tiny anymore,” said Louise.

  She was right. There had been something subtle that was now gone.

  Henry shrugged. An old Moorman’s Feed clock ticked like time itself. “How does divorce suit you?” he said.

  “It’s all right,” said Louise. “I don’t have to cook anything I don’t want to eat. That’s a plus.”

  “Hey, my new tractor came in,” said Henry.

  “Good for you,” said Louise.

  They went out to see it. It was a large red tractor, and the wheels were already caked with dried mud. Henry let Louise climb up and drive it around the yard.

  “She’s a beauty,” said Louise. “You’re going to love this cab.”

  “I had to sell my oil well to get it, but I think it’s going to be worth it,” said Henry.

  “I didn’t know you had an oil well,” said Louise.

  “I had an oil well in Oklahoma,” said Henry.

  Louise went out with the girls that night. This had been planned weeks ago. Perry Kleeborg had suggested it. He had accused her of moping around to the point where it was affecting her performance. He received a business magazine called Means of Production free in the mail, and evidently he’d been reading it.

  “Oh, my performance,” said Louise. “You must excuse my performance.”

  “You ought to go out with the girls,” said Kleeborg. “Do something to relax your mind a little bit.”

  Louise pressed wet contact sheets to the wall. “I don’t know any girls,” she said.

  “I have Five Hundred Club every Thursday,” said Kleeborg. “I know it’s helped me. Do you play five hundred?”

  “I’ve never understood the concept of trump,” said Louise. “I like slapjack.”

  “Not really a club-type game,” said Kleeborg.

  “No,” said Louise.

  “Do you bowl?” said Kleeborg.

  “I have bowled,” said Louise.

  “Well, you ought to do something,” said Kleeborg.

  Not long after this, as it happened, the chairman of the county board of supervisors had his picture taken at the Kleeborg studio. His name was Russell Ford, and his skin was bad, and he seemed to think that if he got just the right pictures, it would somehow make his skin better. Removing scars and bumps from a photograph is not hard, but Russell was after something elusive, and Louise eventually had to take the photographs to Big Chief Printing in Morrisville to have them touched up. The airbrushers there were two women named Pansy Gansevoort and Diane Scheviss. They roomed together in an A-frame on the south shore of Walleye Lake, and were somewhere in the lost years between twenty-seven and thirty-two. The three women had some laughs over Russell’s homely features, and decided to get together one Saturday night.

  Louise found Pansy and Diane in the Hi-Hat Lounge on Route 29 in Morrisville. It seemed they had already been drinking hard among the Halloween decorations. Pansy’s face was a high red, and Diane had broken a glass. If alcohol, for Louise, was like a slow train through hills and scenic lowlands, for Pansy and Diane it seemed more like an elevator after the cable had snapped.

  Louise tried to impose some order. The table at which they sat was a video game pitting a giant bat against a humorous figure representing the player. Louise suggested they try this, and they did, but without success. The stream of quarters required was more or less continuous, and no sooner would they get the little person moving than the bat would sweep in, ending the game. Louise said, “I don’t even get the object.”

  “I guess stay away from the bat,” said Diane.

  At this, Pansy drank off some vodka and began to talk. “My boyfriend used to slap me,” she said. “No reason necessary. He would slap me for good things or bad things, in sickness and in health. He would slap me to improve his luck. Then he slapped me in front of my mother, and she pushed him down the stairs.”

  “All right, Pearl!” said Diane.

  “So he stopped slapping me,” said Pansy, “and started burning me with the cigarette. I missed the slapping at first, until I got used to the cigarette. Then he stopped smoking. They outlawed smoking at work, and he said if he couldn’t smoke at work, it would be easier all around if he didn’t smoke at home either. He tried a pipe for a while, but it wasn’t like the cigarette. Finally he moved out. I miss him, I miss all the terrible shit he did.”

  Diane rocked the weeping Pansy. “I know you do, babe,” she said.

  “Why?” said Louise.

  Pansy wiped her eyes with a cocktail napkin. “He’s going through changes,” she said. “He’s deeply troubled. Are we ready for a round?”

  Louise laid ten dollars on the table and got up to use the bathroom. She washed her hands and looked at herself in the mirror. She felt as if she had strayed far from the people she understood. On the other hand, she lived within twelve miles of where she was born.

  Dan Norman was on the ten o’clock news. Shannon Key had interviewed him for Channel 4 out of Morrisville. She was asking about the baby who had turned up at the Hy-Vee in Margo.

  “Are you interviewing suspects?” Shannon asked.

  “No,” said Dan. “We’re not even sure there was a crime. So suspects, no, that would be overstating it.”

  “Are you interviewing anyone?”

  Dan gave this consideration. He looked into the camera by mistake and became somewhat rattled. “Well, yeah,” he said. “I mean, of course.”

  “Channel 4 has learned that forty yards of green corduroy were stolen from Not Just Fabric in Margo, on or about the same day the baby was found,” said Shannon Key.

  “We know all about that,” said Dan. “We don’t think there is any connection.”

  “When do you expect results?”

  “I don’t know if you’ve ever watched a spider making a web,” said Dan. “But I have, Shannon, and it takes a long time and a lot of going back and forth. And even when this web is done, somebody might come along and destroy it just by their hat brushing against it. Know what I mean?”

  Louise picked up the phone and dialed Dan’s number. She did not expect him to be home, and the phone rang in that neutral way it does when no one is going to answer. But he did.

  “A spider?” she said. “What the hell is that all about?”

  “It’s a metaphor,” said Dan.

  “Would you like to come over for a beer?” said Louise.

  “I better not right now,” said Dan. “Apparently there’s been an accident up at the Sugar Beet. I’m picking up things on the radio.”

  “What kind of things?” said Louise.

  “Things about an accident,” said Dan. “Tell you what. How about you coming over here? I shouldn’t have to go out, but I had better stick by the radio awhile.”

  “O.K.”

  “I don’t have any wine and I don’t have any vodka.”

  “I have those.”

  It should not have surprised Louise that Dan was gone by the time she got there. A manila envelope was stuck in the doorframe, and in the envelope was a note saying the key was under the rock. The path from the door to the driveway was lined with white-painted rocks, and Louise could not find any key. She checked under several rocks, and with the last one she broke a pane of glass above the doorknob.

  Louise let herself in and put on some lights. She swept up the broken glass and dumped it in a wastebasket. Looking for a corkscrew, she found instead a letter from Dan’s Aunt Mona, who was scheduled for exploratory surgery on the eighteenth of November but beyond that had little to say. Louise poured wine and carried a snack tray into the living room.

  One of those bankers who had stolen all the depositors’ money was on TV. This one had purchased a boat, a plane, and a cattle ranch in Kenya with a partner. He was speaking to a room crammed with Harvard University stud
ents. They were practically hanging from the rafters. It was a seminar on the educational channel.

  “I did some things I’m not very proud of,” said the man. “Basically they fall into two categories—financial errors and screwing people over. Whatever I wanted I could easily have by snapping my fingers. Oh, I was a bad character.”

  The students asked critical questions but seemed at the same time to be taking notes so perhaps they could pull the same shit someday. And certain things about the banker reminded Louise of Tiny, such as the way he ran his hand over his face when asked a hard question, and the self-centeredness of him: I did this, I did that, always I. This was Tiny through and through. She changed the channel and watched the Saladmaster man bashing frying pans together.

  Louise then went out and got her overnight case from the car. She showered, washed her hair, brushed her teeth, and put on a cotton nightgown. She pulled the blankets off Dan’s bed and went out to sleep on the davenport. Later, when Dan came home, she sat up from a dream and said, “Just put her in a bucket.”

  “It’s all right,” said Dan. He was in the kitchen washing his hands.

  Louise swept the hair from her eyes. “I was dreaming,” she said.

  “What about?”

  “I was at the circus. They made me be a clown,” said Louise. “It was awful. What time is it?”

  Dan looked at his watch without pausing in the washing of his hands. Louise felt like a scientist, observing his habits. “Two-thirty,” he said.

  “I had to break the window,” said Louise.

  “Yeah, I was so careful to write a note, I forgot to leave the key,” said Dan. He shut off the faucet and dried his hands slowly on a dishtowel.

  “Well, was there an accident?” said Louise.

  Dan came into the living room. “A guy hit a tree.”

  “How is he?” said Louise.

  Dan sat down in a low chair with a bottle of beer. The chair was close. Louise could have touched Dan’s forearm with her foot, except her foot was under a blanket. “Well, not very good,” he said.

  Louise nodded and listened. Grafton can be very quiet in the middle of the night. “What’s it doing outside?” she said.