Spirit of the Place (9781101617021)

by Shem, Samuel

  Nelda Jo took Orville’s arm as they marched up the slope to the clubhouse. She was a little taller than him, and he felt her lithe hip a little above his hip and the rolling of her breast a little above his heart and he felt a little less bad about blowing the putt.

  In the shower Orville wondered why he hadn’t called Schooner for cheating. It was just a friendly match, so what difference did it make? It had been comforting, in a way, to see Henry’s flaw so clearly. Like seeing that Henry and Ollie North and Beef, despite their “Secret Ops” with Central American sleuths and U.S. Marines with computers in the White House basement, had failed to locate Miranda and Cray—Orville stopped, stock-still, realizing that during the round he hadn’t felt a single wave of grief. Golf had been a four-hour anesthetic. Maybe that’s the secret of life: Play More Golf. Could the Milton Plotkins and Solomon Roses of the world be right after all?

  They’d all hung out at the clubhouse for a while eating peanuts and pretzels and drinking cold beer in sweating mugs. Henry, a candidate for Congress and a TV personality, was constantly interrupted by his fans. He handled each graciously, in a way that never really took him out of touch with his home foursome.

  Then they segued into an impromptu dinner at the Schooners’. The Filipino man grilled steaks and the woman served potato salad and corn on the cob from out in the county and a robust Burgundy and generous slices of homemade and still-warm apple pie à la mode with Stewart’s vanilla ice cream melting around it, served on the porch. Soon they were sailing, high on alcohol and sugar and screened from the Columbian mosquitoes and frantic cloudy moths and listening to the chirp of crickets in the cooling summer night.

  “Gettin’ shot off the deck of an aircraft carrier,” Henry said, with a twinkly smile, “is the greatest thing you can do in your life—with your clothes on!” He winked at Orville and laughed. Camel in mouth, Heineken in fist, Orville laughed too.

  “Can we quote you on that, Your Grossness?” Nelda Jo asked.

  “If you do, honeybunch, I’ll deny it.”

  “I’m going out, Mom,” said Junior, coming onto the screened porch.

  “Dressed like that?” Nelda Jo asked. Junior’s cuboid body was in ragged jean shorts and a T-shirt boasting DRUNK GIRLS THINK I’M CUTE, and his blond-white hair was cut boot-camp short, showing an astonishing field of zits on his forehead. His right hand was bandaged, crudely, from knuckles to wrist.

  “Yeah. See you later.” He was halfway gone when a high-pitched whistle cut the air. He turned. “Yeah, Dad?”

  “You be home before midnight, y’hear?”

  “Da-aad!”

  “It’s a curfew, son. Use it or lose it.”

  “You never had one.”

  “I’d be a lot better man if I had,” Henry said. “Just ask Dr. Rose.”

  “This is true.”

  “It’s ’cause we love you, Juney,” said Nelda Jo. “Church tomorrow too.”

  “Shit,” he said and ran out.

  “Get ready for it, Penny dear,” Nelda Jo said, “it’s comin’ to your home right soon.”

  “You kiddin’? Amy’s a terror already. Thank God for all-girls’ overnight camp.”

  Orville was surprised. Amy a terror? Has Penny gone totally psychotic?

  “Tomcattin’ around with that Scomparza girl,” Henry said, “Americo’s daughter. Need I say more? When I’m elected I’m introducin’ a bill that would make it okay for parents to kill and eat their teenagers.”

  “Aw, c’mon, Great One,” said Nelda Jo. “He’s in love.”

  “He ain’t in love,” Henry said. “He’s in heat. I’m worried about that one. He’s turning into a hellion and—hey, look!” They followed his index finger to the TV. “I’ve been waitin’ to see this! Check it out.”

  The TV had been rolling away on mute while they sat there. Henry flicked up the volume. On the screen now, as opposed to the frenetic sitcoms and shoot-em-ups and harsh bright commercials, was a scene of a peaceful countryside dotted with bright yellow flowers and a cozy white farmhouse in the background. The camera panned to an aerial view of the majestic Grand Canyon, and then to gorgeous children dressed not like Junior but like gorgeous children frolicking in flowery fields, and then to old folks still in love walking hand in hand, and then to strong young black folks all neat and clean and muscular and smiley playing basketball, and then to grimy but proud factory hands at work, and then to a man in a space vehicle. And as these scenes unfolded against a background of music that effortlessly combined hymns and marches and lullabies and waltzes and gospels and symphonies and all somehow blending to a stirring rendition of America the Beautiful, the narrator, with a voice of your Grandpa Ed or your dad on a good day or, Orville thought, of an old-time Wise and Reassuring Physician, said, soothingly:

  It’s morning in America. This is America, spring of ’84 . . . And this is America . . . And this is America . . . And this . . . And this . . . And this, too, is America. There’s a new man for America. A veteran. A patriot. His name is Henry Schooner. VOTE AMERICA. VOTE SCHOONER.

  And there he was. Henry and his family right out there on the front lawn throwing a bright white baseball back and forth.

  The four of them sat speechless, awed at the video perfection, the way it tugged on your heartstrings with just the right tension. To vote against Schooner was to vote against not only America but against Morning in America, maybe even against Morning itself, and against all those nice people and songs and Grandpa Ed.

  “Great ad!” Penny said. “Perfect!”

  “Amazing, Henry,” Orville seconded, wondering where the hell he’d gotten the money.

  “Thank you. Doesn’t my wife look incredible?”

  “Henry, honey—” Nelda Jo said.

  “And I don’t just mean in the ad. Lookit her. This is one beautiful woman, eh?”

  Penny said yes she was and that she’d give anything to have that body, and Orville said he would, too—everybody laughed at this—but what Orville was thinking was something he’d learned as a doctor: When someone calls attention in public to how beautiful their wife is, the marriage is in trouble, especially in the sexual arena. Henry wasn’t getting any. Neither was Nelda Jo. Maybe he should “drop in.”

  “Cost an arm and a leg,” Henry went on.

  “Nelda Jo?” Orville asked, realizing he must be more drunk than normal.

  “What a wit the guy’s got! Haha!” Henry seemed to think this was one of the funniest things he’d ever heard and had to wipe tears away from his eyes to go on. “They tol’ me in Washington that I gotta go hard now for name refugnition. Name refuni . . . refu-fuckin’nition, am I wrong?”

  Everyone agreed that this was a fine strategy since name recognition was important. Just look at General Motors, General Electric, General Foods, General Worth.

  For some reason he found himself following Henry out of the den. On the way out Orville lost his balance and bumped into the massive old wooden breakfront. It wobbled ominously. As a doctor he was attuned to accidents waiting to happen and made a note to tell Henry again to get it trued up, but then he was going down into the basement, thinking, What’s with America now—with all these Generals? Whatever happened to Specifics? Besides Bill and me, aren’t there any Specifics anymore?

  The basement was the neatest, cleanest basement Orville had ever seen. No clutter, no dirt. On a workbench under a fluorescent light were dozens of small boxes and plastic bottles of black stuff and a serious and severe chrome machine with a hand-pull lever with a Day-Glo orange handle for a real man’s fist, a machine that looked like what a wine aficionado would use to uncork his treasured bottles. The boxes contained shell casings, all shiny brass. The plastic bottles held gunpowder. The wine press was a way to tamp the gunpowder into the shells in the comfort and privacy of your home. Henry made his own bullets.

  “Hit a squirrel with that mother
,” Henry said, “all you see is a puff of fur. Hit a deer, motherfucker’s done for.”

  He showed Orville how to make good bullets. Orville said they looked like good nice bullets. Then he showed Orville his guns. They were locked in a freestanding safe like you’d see in a small bank, which Henry said could withstand anything but “nucular attack.” Orville said they were nice guns and a nice safe but he was all of a sudden trapped in a déjà vu. Being in a basement with Schooner, no matter how neat and clean, brought back a memory of being in another basement somewhere else a long time ago, maybe the Lutheran Church basement for Boy Scouts with Henry and the nascent pedophile Len Date. The basement where Len and Henry demanded that Orville pull down his pants so they could “see what a Jew-dick looks like.”

  Now, listening to Henry go on about guns and how you can, with the right equipment, hit a man a mile away but you have to take into account the lift and fall of the speeding bullet due to gravity, Orville recalled the terror. How he would sit in class trying to figure a route home to avoid Henry’s chasings and beatings. How his childhood, aside from the concrete boredom, was a childhood of terror. Boredom and terror.

  “You terrorized me, Henry,” Orville said now. Henry stared at him, puzzled. “When we were kids. You terrorized me and I’ll never forget it.”

  “Me?” His astonishment flew out on a strong scent of toasted oats.

  “Don’t deny it.”

  “Gimmee some specid . . . specid . . . specidics.”

  They were both loaded, talking through ether. Wobbly of stance and glance, they stared at each other, trying to get a bead on each other. Orville had the fantasy that Schooner was about to stuff him into the safe and lock it. And then another fantasy that he and Henry were about to cha-cha.

  “Besides, ole buddy, your mom never told me any of that.”

  “You think I’d tell her? You said you’d kill me if I ever told anyone. I’ll never forget it. Never.”

  “’Course not, old sport. Y’never forget what you imagine, nopenope. But to forgive! There’s the rub! Christian charity—hell, Jewish charity, too. Judeo-Christian, it’s the greatest! Our damn ticket to Gott im Himmel, baby! Ordnance! People change. We both believe in human betterment. We’re buddies, now, am I wrong?”

  “Just ’cause I’m . . . I’m . . . despert.”

  “Miranda’s great and that kid, too, but tellya something—once you get hooked, even to a gal like Nelda Jo, you’re dead. It does cost an arm’n a leg, am I wrong?”

  “No, you’re not exactly wrong, Henry, but—”

  “Am I wrong?”

  “No, you’re—”

  “You’re free, I’m not. Get out of this shit hole town while you can. Go fuck your damn way across Italy, Sicily even, the world. Like I did in the navy. Take the cash, hop a jet, and make something bigger out of your life. Look. You got talent I don’t, smarts I don’t, and freedom I don’t. You’ll have almost a million for Chrissakes! Go live well. Hell, go out there and do some good!”

  Orville was astonished at this hint of nobility from Henry. But there was a double meaning to “do some good”—it could mean public service, but as a boy in Columbia it was slang for “getting laid.” His beeper went off. Ten past ten on a Saturday night. Columbians were mutilating each other and he was responsible. He turned to leave.

  “Hey,” Henry said, stopping him. “I never said any of this.”

  “Any of what?” Henry’s dark eyes seemed shallow, brackish.

  “Any of what I said. If it leaks, I deny. I never said what I said.”

  “Not even that?” Henry looked stupefied. “And you never did what you did?” Orville asked. Henry still looked stupefied. Orville left for the hospital.

  Later that night, at home again, he discovered another postcard, with a photo of some kind of savage—an aborigine.

  Howdy, Doc,

  Thanks for the cash. Trip not fun but great. Food terrible, Aussies worse. Babs bowels bad. Wolfy and Kenni stole her ruby too. Starbusol not working too good in Outback. Headed for the Amazon and points south. Say hi to Our Little Miracle Amy.

  Yr frnd, Bill

  No word of his coming back, Orville thought, going up to bed. In the bathroom he stared at himself naked in the mirror and was appalled. His hair seemed thinner, his face fatter. He was wearing thick glasses because the contacts hurt his eyes. But for his sunburnt arms, head, and neck, he was a fish-belly white. Because of his lack of exercise, and his compulsive eating and drinking like a native Columbian, he was fattening. Yes, there’s a definite beer belly down there, if not a paunch. This, despite his upping his smoking. Camels, like Bill.

  With alarm he realized that in eleven months he had gone a significant way down the road to looking Starbuckian—somewhere in the two-ten range already and unfit.

  Staring at his image he tried to conjure up a vision of himself finally free of Columbia. Yes, make a mental picture, a life raft to get you through the next five weeks.

  Nothing came.

  Even more alarmed, he realized he had no vision of the future. Just this fat guy, almost forty, in the mirror. That’s all.

  Shouts outside. He went to the window. The shouts were coming from the Schooners’. The porch light and the lamp in the study were still on. A fierce argument filled with curses. One voice was Henry’s, the other was younger. Neither was giving in. Orville glanced at his watch. Almost two. Junior must have come home way past his curfew. He and Henry were really going at it, screaming at each other. And then, as if a knife blade had severed the rage between the fighters, there was silence.

  The front door slammed shut and the lights went out. Whatever had been happening was back in the realm of never having happened once again. Schoonerland.

  · 26 ·

  “Buon compleanno!”

  “Celestina?”

  “Orvillo!”

  “Orvillo?”

  “Celestina! Buon compleanno e tanti auguri! Happy birthday and best wishes!”

  “Grazie,” he said, trying to wake up, checking the clock: 5:10 A.M. “Grazie, but it’s not my birthday.”

  “July 24 is your birthday. We celebrated it last year, remember?”

  “How could I forget. I mean, the toes.”

  “I am fainting with the memory.”

  He yawned. “It’s not my birthday. She lied to me, my mother. Had the birth certificate changed. I was born thirteen days later, on August the 6th. Exactly a year before they dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima, she dropped me.”

  Silence.

  “Don’t hang up, please!”

  “No, no,” she said. “No. And is she still flying around?”

  “More than ever. Big, fat, and floaty—like an overfed hummingbird.”

  “Magnifico! And you have benefited by this gift now for sure, caro?”

  “‘Caro’?” He was stunned.

  “Sì, sì. You are my love. I love you crazy!”

  “Well . . . um . . . what about the Swiss banker with the elephant?”

  “Half the elephant. It was a tax thing. Non sincero. Swiss cheese.” She fell silent. He heard her breathing. Somehow it was sexy. “Orvillo, I am sorry.” Her voice was sad, calm. “So sorry for what I did to you.”

  “You hurt me terribly.”

  “I know. I was a fool. I did not realize what I had until I destroyed it.” He heard her get choked up. Tearfully, she went on, “I hate myself for what I did.”

  He was touched. She seemed sincere. “You sound different.”

  “I am, caro. I am changed by my mistakes. In this year I have grown up. Jesus, what I have done?” She broke down, crying into the phone.

  “Wait, hold on,” he said, amazed at all this. Had she really changed?

  “Can you ever forgive me?”

  He hesitated. “If you’re for real, maybe. Barely maybe.
”

  “I am, I am, but it will take time to heal the past, no?”

  Again he considered this. Finally he said, “If at all, a lot of time.”

  “Bene. And for now, we have only the now. There is only the present moment. Like with your dead and flying mother. Are you healing with her in the now? Is she turning out to be your greatest gift?”

  “Gift? It’s been hell. A horrible year. A lot of pain.”

  “I am so sorry for the part of the pain I caused, my love.”

  This is astonishing, he thought. She sounds for real. Grown-up, almost. “You really have changed.”

  “Sì, sì. No longer the New Age lightweight, searching for a spiritual shortcut. Now I am focused, on rock-solid Buddhism. This—your pain, our pain—this is the First Noble Truth.”

  “Yeah, but it hurts! What do I do?”

  “Do nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “As much nothing as possible, dear one. Sit in silence and follow your breath and when the pain comes? Do not lift a finger—not even the pinkie finger. Do so much nothing that the pain shifts to sorrow.”

  “You don’t understand—I am in sorrow and I can’t stand it.”

  “You are in pain. Psychological suffering. Sit there in silence, caro, and breathe. Sit there in the present, sit there in a ruthless encounter with the self, the past, the facts.”

  “And then?”

  “And then the pain and suffering will turn to sorrow.”

  “And?”

  “The sorrow moves. Sorrow always moves.”

  “And what happens when the sorrow moves?”

  “Healing. The healing essenza of the movement of sorrow. You find what you have never lost.”

  She said this all quite matter-of-factly, as something she merely understood, without any of the flightiness he’d heard from her before. It now sounded grounded, truth lived. Almost despite himself he found himself focusing intensely on her, on it, tightening his grip on the phone, like a man going under tightens his grip on a lifeline. Whether she was still wacky or not, here was information that might help.