Fathoms (Collected Writings)

by Jack Cady

  Play Like I'm Sheriff

  Sunset lay behind the tall buildings like red and yellow smoke. The cloud cover was high. Shadows of the buildings fell across the circle that was the business center of downtown Indianapolis. The towering monument to war dead was bizarre against the darkening horizon. On it figures writhed in frozen agony, except when they caught the corner of his eye. Then they seemed to move, reflecting his own pain.

  About the circle a thousand people hurried. The winter cold was nondirectional as the circle enclosed the wind and channeled it here and there. The temperature was nearly freezing. Lights in store windows began to glow with attraction and importance. Everywhere there was movement.

  He stood before a store window, a young man of slight build with uncut black hair, looking at coats. There was tension about his eyes. Occasionally his mouth moved. Muttering. Then his face would tense under a surge of mental pressure.

  The mannequins in the window smiled; tiny female smiles dubbed on faces above plaster breasts and too-narrow legs. Some of the coats were gaily colored. Others were black with fur collars. Some were fur. The wind hailed against his thin work jacket but he was not cold. He was accustomed to weather much harder than the kind blowing.

  There was no question in his mind that he was a little insane. He sobbed. Not because he was insane, but because his wife had not ever had a nice coat. Only a few times had she had really nice dresses. He felt a deep and very personal shame. She had come so far with him. He sobbed, trying to divert his thoughts and remembering that he had read that madness was never admitted. He wondered if anyone else had ever admitted it to themselves. He thought of the man who would be his wife’s new husband and wondered if he would buy her fine clothes.

  Farther down the street he believed there might be another store. He walked slowly, looking. Unhappiness depressed his body so that he walked with a slight stoop. Before he found another store a girl idled along beside him, walking slowly, just fast enough.

  “Hello,” she said, and smiled a little cleaver of a smile. He was taken by the look of her, but in his mind there was no inventory. He was conscious only of a female image. It was very general. Light and dark hair mixed. A slim girl with a pretty face. He was fooled at first, vaguely wondering if she were lost and wanted direction. The word direction sang in his head and caused him to smile.

  “Hello,” he told her. He walked at the same pace. She fell in beside him. It seemed almost as if they were going somewhere. As if there was a place to go and something that must be done when they arrived.

  She was silent for a little while. “Do you know,” she said finally, “I’ve come from home with practically no money. I could stand a drink. Or a sandwich.” Her voice had started softly. It ended strained.

  He looked at her. “Come on. It’s cold here.”

  In the half light of the bar she seemed younger and more unhappy. He took time to look, surveying her across the table while he felt in his pocket for the fifteen dollars that must buy restaurant food and bus fare to work for the next four days. He found himself wanting to go home, reacting familiarly with despair as he realized for some thousandth time that it was impossible.

  As always with women he was shy. Now he did not know how to tell her. He did not want to miscall her and edged around it. “I’m pretty broke, myself,” he told her. “Will be all this week.”

  She did not leave. She did not seem disturbed about the money. “I’ll pay for the drinks. The money part wasn’t true. I have some.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  She suddenly seemed smaller. Almost like a child. “Talk,” she said. Her voice was also smaller. She looked at him as if she were lost. “Talking to. There’s lonesome in the wind. I walked to the bus station, and there was lonesome in the crowd. Like something evil hovering . . . I haven’t talked to anyone for more than a week.”

  Her voice, as much as what she said, told him. He looked directly at her. “You’re crazy, too. You’ve found a good ear. A good voice.”

  “Yes, crazy. I just want to know that someone cares. Cares just something. Want you to know. Want me to know.” She hesitated. “You are so unhappy. Look so unhappy. I wouldn’t have been able to speak otherwise.”

  “Maybe no one does care. You said it. There’s lonesome all over.”

  She watched him. Her coat hanging beside the booth was new.

  “Norma,” he said. “Norma Marie.”

  “It isn’t, but I know what you mean.”

  A crowd of couples came through the doorway. They were laughing. He watched them then looked at her. “What do they know?” he asked.

  “How to pretend,” she said. “I don’t really like to drink. Let’s go.”

  They walked a long way off the circle to a parking lot. The wind pressed at the back of his legs. The girl wore no hat. Her hair was blowing.

  The car was good but not new. She drove it for a long time out of the center of town. He wondered if he was supposed to make love to her, then wondered if he could. Instead of touching her he lit a cigarette and passed it. His hand was trembling.

  “No,” she said, taking the cigarette. “I don’t think so. At least not now.” She smiled at him and he felt ashamed, felt himself withdrawing into recollections of another time which held more shame. “I’ll do better,” he told his wife under his breath. The girl touched his hand.

  “Talk,” she told him. “Talk away at the lonesome first. Maybe that’s all it will be.”

  “Do you tell me or do I tell you?”

  “I don’t know.” She drove slowly for several minutes. He watched the streets and then the sky where the clouds seemed to be lowering. There was no light except along the streets.

  She turned a corner. He realized suddenly that she was also nervous, more than she had been. “My house is down this block,” she told him. “I have a whole house.”

  “You don’t even know my name.”

  “I think it’s Johnnie. If it isn’t, lie to me.”

  “You guessed right,” he lied. “But I haven’t been called that in years.” He thought it sounded authentic.

  “You lie good,” she told him.

  “Only to myself.”

  The house was a tall white frame. The driveway and porch were dark. She parked the car at the back of the drive.

  “My grandmother’s house,” she told him. “Then mother’s. Then mine. Any sound will be grandma trying to get out of the attic.” She laughed faintly.

  “You mean haunted?” He watched her, wondering at her nervousness and at himself. The pressure of his hurt, the tension in his mind, was not relaxed but was relaxing. He quickly pulled the hurt to him because it was his and familiar. “Haunted?” He wondered if she were not worse than himself.

  “Sure. Ghosts get as lonesome as people.” She tried to smile and it did not work. “At least, I think they must.” She stared through the windshield at the sky. “I think it will snow.”

  She turned to him, the tension seeming to break a little with controlled excitement. “I pretend a lot. Since I was little . . . . Well, for a while I didn’t pretend. Yes, I did. But now I pretend a lot. Like when you were little you know, and you said ‘Let’s play like I’m the sheriff and you don’t know I’m here and you come around that corner.’ . . . ”

  “I remember.”

  “All right. Now, I’ll play like Norma and you play like Johnnie and we’ll go into our house and I’ll fix dinner. And while I fix dinner you can sit in the kitchen and talk. And be friendly. And good, and tell me how well I’m doing, because . . . .” She turned to him. Her eyes held tears that she would not allow to come. “Because he never did, you know.”

  “But, you pretended.” He could not help interest.

  “Of course. Didn’t you?”

  The question alarmed him. He sat watching the sky through the windshield and was quiet for a long time. Finally he turned toward her. “Yes, but I called it lying to myself.”

  “It is. Do you like the real
way better?”

  “No.” The longing for something that could not be came back hard. He felt it, then fought it, surprising himself. “All right. Pretend.” He opened the door on his side and she watched him. He got out, walked in front of the car and around to open the door for her. When she got out it was with a smile that he believed, and not a muscular gesture. “You never did that before,” she whispered.

  “I will now,” he told her. “I will show you more care now, but I’m sorry for before.”

  “Don’t be sorry.” She took his hand and they walked around the old house. “People should use their front doors,” she told him, “it makes them more important.”

  The house looked like a museum. The furniture was of mixed periods. He recognized some as old and valuable. There was antique glassware sitting about. The rooms were ordered and neat.

  “We are the fourth generation in this house,” she said. “It’s always good to think that.”

  “I don’t know much about my family,” he said truthfully.

  “I know,” she told him, “but that’s not important. As long as we’re proud of us.”

  He took her coat, holding it and looking about.

  “Thank you,” she said. “The closet under the front stairway will do.” She moved from him, through a series of rooms to the back of the house. He hung the coat and his jacket in the closet, which was empty except for an old trench coat. He looked at the coat, thinking it long enough to fit him but made for a heavier man. Then he walked through the rooms where she had gone. He found her working at the counter in the kitchen. The kitchen was modern, contradicting the rest of the house. He stood, not quite knowing what was expected of him. “Can I help you?”

  “No,” she smiled. “Just sit with me.” Her movements at the counter seemed natural and nearly familiar. She looked at him seriously, then hesitated. “I’m glad to have you home.” Her voice was faint, but it seemed clearly determined.

  He was surprised, then remembered. “I’m glad to be home.”

  There was a different kind of worry on her face. “I was afraid. Well, you like Charlotte too well. I wish she were married.”

  He looked at her. “Not that well. A friend.”

  “Too well, and she’s awfully crude.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I wish she would move. Tough. Very hard.”

  “She’s been gone since you left, and I thought.”

  “Of course. But, here I am.”

  “Sometimes. Oh, I’m sorry. Sometimes you’re hard and I don’t understand.”

  He was startled and then defensive about being charged with something he could never be. “I’ll not be that, not anymore. I’m different now, you know. I’ve stopped losing my temper.” He wondered if he were saying right. The girl had her back turned, working rapidly. Then she turned to face him. Her face held shame.

  “I’m sorry about something, too. I was going to kill myself if I didn’t find you tonight. You’d been gone so long.”

  He was startled. “How long has it been?”

  “Nearly five months. Your mother called last night and said you were on the coast. She wanted the rings back. She wasn’t kind.” She turned back to work. “How did you get home so soon?”

  “I flew.” He did not understand his action, but he rose and walked to her. He touched her shoulder.

  “Sometimes,” she said, “you used to touch me here.” She placed his hand in her hair. “It’d be all right if you muss it.” He touched gently under and about her hair.

  “Thank you,” she said, then turned to him with a pretended smile because the hurt was deep in her eyes. “Now go,” she told him, “or go hungry.”

  ‘’I’d rather go hungry.”

  Her hands shook over the bowl. “Thank you again,” she said. He returned to his chair. “Kill yourself?” He wondered, thinking that she was even more troubled than himself. Then he denied it out of an obscure loyalty to his own trouble. He wondered if there were not more complications than he could handle, and he wondered that he cared.

  “My grandmother was so happy,” she said. “This fine house, fine husband and nice children. But my mother was not. So I locked her in the attic.”

  “Your mother?”

  “No. You know when we buried her. But grandma died when I was little. I helped carry her things to the attic. They told me . . . . I don’t know. Whatever you tell children. But she has lived in the attic ever since. But I locked the door. Against losing her, you know.”

  “But, kill yourself?”

  “By going to sleep. In a special way. Someday, and that day was tonight, I think, it would have come on so very lonesome. With you gone. With you gone. And only people to talk to who wanted to buzz at you. Friends, you know.” Her back was still turned. He watched her tense, then clench her hands and he heard the bitterness in her voice. Then her hands relaxed a bit. Her voice was low and strained. Worse, he thought, than it had been.

  “When no one cares. What to do?”

  “What were you going to do?” He was surprised at the softness of his voice.

  “Get the key and unlock the door. Then I was going up the steps. Very narrow. Very straight. And I’d go quietly and catch her asleep. And I’d say ‘Grandma, grandma,’ and she would come, like when I was little . . . . I had a dog once, remember I told you, but he died. That dog loved me. I played with him when I was a little girl. And grandma loved me—and, she’d touch me and hold me and make me like a little girl again, because, because . . . .” Her speech stumbled and the tensions moved to tears and heavy weeping. “Because I’m so damn lousy—at being a woman.”

  He moved to her quickly around the counter and held her while she wept. She was tense in his arms. Her body seemed slim nearly to thinness. He was confused. Wondering who. Wondering what was her name.

  “Norma,” he said, and held her closer.

  She raised her head to look at him while still weeping. “Do you want me? Will you want me? I’ll do so very badly.” She lowered her head. “But I’ll try. Because I’m crazy now. I’ll be lots better crazy.”

  “Wait,” he told her. “Come now, calm down.” He felt nearly afraid. “Come, sit down.” He moved to try to lead her to a chair.

  “No,” she told him. “It’s all right. It will be all right.” She moved back toward him. He smoothed her hair as he held her. They stood for several minutes until her weeping subsided. Then she turned and left, to come back with a handkerchief. She was trying to smile.

  “I took my vacation to find you. The whole two weeks.”

  The continued pretense made him angry. He reacted in a way familiar to him and became very quiet. It occurred to him that she needed him more than he needed her. It was a strange and warm feeling to be needed. Then it occurred to him that he might be lying to himself again.

  “I changed jobs.” He paused. “The other wasn’t that good anyway.” A rush of misgiving overcame him. He had surprised himself by having been taken by the pretense. “I wanted to do better.”

  “Better?”

  “Not right away.” He heard shame in his voice. “In a little while you get raised.”

  “Don’t worry about money. Oh, please, not now. Don’t worry.” She turned to the window then turned back with a tiny laugh.

  “See,” she told him, “I was right. It’s snowing.”

  He stood and went to the window. The snow was light and carried by the wind. “A light fall,” he said.

  “It will get heavier.” She was placing silver and dishes on the table. “I just have wine.” Her voice was apologetic.

  “Just a little,” he told her. She looked up quickly.

  “The table looks so pretty,” he said.

  “Thank you.”

  “And the house looks nice.”

  “I kept it for when you came. Now we’ll eat before it’s cold.”

  The meal went well. They ate quickly. She seemed more at ease to him. Once or twice the unfamiliarity of his surroundings surprised him. Or he lo
oked at the girl and recoiled at the pretense. When that happened memories of his wife and memories of his loss and aimlessness came back. His mind would try to recede each time into the trouble. Instead, he would speak.

  “When I was little,” he told her, “we’d watch a snow like this. Kid hungry, you know. If it were early in the year, like tonight, Dad would watch for a while. If it got heavy he’d get the sleds out of the barn. We’d polish the runners.”

  “Great Grandfather died on a night like this,” she told him. “When I was very little. I mostly remembered the snow. I’ve always loved it. Like a fresh beginning in the morning.”

  “You’ve always lived here?”

  “Always here.” She looked at him reproachfully, maintaining the pretense. “I didn’t know you ever lived on a farm. You should have known about Great Grandfather.”

  “Yes.”

  She smiled, then stood to clear the table. “But I’ll tell you something the cousins never told you. He didn’t come to Indiana because of the oil wells. He left Philadelphia in front of a shotgun.”

  “Girl?”

  “The family skeleton. No, that’s not kind to say. Because the girl died soon after. I don’t know how.”

  He helped to clear the table while she placed dishes in the sink. “He was an old rip, I guess. But I’ve always loved the snow.”

  While she ran water in the sink he moved to help her. She turned, surprised, but said nothing. They worked together quietly. He stacked the dry dishes on the counter. When the work was done she began putting them away.

  “Do you know,” she said, “I’m so tired. I seem to get tired quicker, lately.”

  He watched her. Unsure. “I figured it out because I’m the same way. Every minute you’re awake you’re tensed up, burning energy. I sleep a lot.”

  “Good,” she said. “Come with me.” She took his hand and they walked slowly through the house to ascend the front stairway. At the top of the stairs she hesitated. He stood beside her, moving away a short distance. He did not hold her hand.