I’d like to go to the park just to walk and in the quiet think, but it’s freezing and getting dark and I’m a little afraid to after what I’ve heard and read in the news what happens in there.
I go back to the hotel and watch TV in the lounge. The people there are so noisy and such a bunch of sad old rummies who make me feel sad that I rent my own set, carry it up, turn it on, off, in ten minutes I can tell that all late afternoon television, in the lounge or anywheres, is just too dumb and phony for me. But what does a person do when he has nothing to do and plenty of time to do it in? I lie on the bed and play with myself just to again do something and maybe get off a bit of tension and see the cemetery letter on the dresser while I’m doing this and think that I still haven’t sent the check for the gravesite’s maintenance yet. And then that I haven’t been out there for years because I couldn’t find the time to and that might be a good spot to forget all my bar problems and such till I suddenly in the quiet there solve them.
I call the cemetery and get directions because I forgot them after all these years. “It’s late,” person I speak to says, “but you can make it if you catch the next train and grab a cab at the station.”
I put on my warmest clothes and boots and catch that train. It doesn’t move for a half-hour after departure time and then goes unusually slow for even a suburban train, getting to the station an hour later than it was expected and a few minutes before the cemetery’s supposed to close.
I get a cab at the station and the driver starts taking me a different way. “Where you going?” I say. “I remember the ride and unless all the roads have changed since or they’ve moved the cemetery, then at that light back there you should’ve made a left instead of a right, because I know it’s not down this drive.”
“You said Saint Athemus, correct? So this is the quickest most direct way there.”
“I told you Pearlwood, loud and clear—Pearlwood, so don’t give me it you didn’t hear.”
“I didn’t. You claiming I did? I didn’t. I distinctly heard you say Athemus. But you don’t like the way I drive or a man can’t make a simple mistake with you, which mine only might’ve been but I swear wasn’t, then what do you want me to do?”
“To be absolutely fair, deduct a half-dollar off the meter and I’ll be satisfied.”
“And have it come from my pocket? Because that’s what my boss will want. He’ll say I was cheating him.”
“I’ll write a note for you that you weren’t.”
“He won’t take notes. He’ll say I could’ve signed anyone’s name to it and he could be right.”
“I’ll put on it my phone number and address.”
“For the fifty cents owed him you think he’ll phone you on what could be a dollar call? Just tell me you’ll pay the full fare that’s on the meter or I’ll have to let you off here.”
“You leave me out here wherever the hell we are and I’ll tear the back of your cab apart.”
“Try and I’ll lock you in and call Cab Control who’ll call the cops.”
He presses a button on the steering wheel and all the door locks snap down another notch. I try pulling up my lock but can’t. There’s a steel screen between us and I say through it “Okay okay, no more complaints. Get to Pearlwood fast as you can and I’ll pay.”
“Now you’re talking sense.”
He turns the cab around and drives to Pearlwood and stops at the cemetery gate and says through the screen “Eight dollars.”
“Meter reads four-fifty.”
“I have to ride back and have no customers here because your cemetery’s closed. And I don’t feel like waiting for you, even if you wanted me to, at the dollar-every-three-minutes time. For one reason, you might leave through one of the side ways if you got in and for another, I know you’re not giving a tip. So the eight or I take you back to the station and let you off after you pay the four-fifty plus whatever the new reading is from here to there.”
I put a ten in the screen tray and he gives me two dollars change and presses the button that releases the locks. I get out.
“Piece of advice,” he says.
“I’ll give you.”
“No listen, see that phonebooth there? When you call a Meyermeg cab to get back, don’t ask for Nate’s.”
“Bastard,” I yell. He waves and drives away. Never should’ve yelled anything like that in front of here. About death I’m a bit superstitious and make the religious sign with my fingers over my chest and then think that’s ridiculous and rub it off and ring the bell on the cemetery gate. Voice on an intercom above the bell says “Cemetery closed for the day.”
“Please, I’ve come a long way.”
“Sorry, closed, good day.”
“Look, I haven’t seen my parents or sister in years and I can get out here just about never.”
“Next time come earlier.”
“Next time I will, that’s a promise, but this time give me a break.”
“I shouldn’t but could.”
“Yes?”
“That’s it. I shouldn’t but could.”
“So what’ll it take?”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying can we talk straight?”
“Anyone with you?”
“You can’t see through that camera thing on top of the gate?”
“It’s dark behind you. People can lie in shadows and what I’m seeing you through is a cheap set.”
“Nobody’s with me.”
“Then we can talk, but be circumspect.”
“Will a five or ten dollar cash contribution get me in for a half hour?”
“Contribution to the cemetery.”
“Cemetery.”
“Fifteen minutes total is all I can spare you once we reach your plot. You don’t know where it is, I can be of service in another way, as I’ve this direction book to help.”
“It’s in one of the rows to the right off a driveway. I can’t miss it as it’s in a meadow almost by itself.”
“Others have gone up all around it.”
“Louise and Lester Fleet then. And my sister, with the same last name, and our grandparents, Dondon, in adjacent graves.”
“All I need. E-F-Fl-Fleet. Agnes. Lester and spouse. Corelated: Beatrice and Daryl Dondon the third. Row 141, section 7S. Wait for me.”
Drives down, gets out of his car, says hello and sticks his mitted hand through the gate. I shake it. “That’s fine, pleasure’s all mine. But the you-know-what.”
“I’m not sure anymore I can.”
“Don’t try to haggle with me, Fleet. The ten-dollar cemetery donation or I ride back and you won’t see me again today.”
“Please, let me go over with you what I’ve gone through to get here and why.”
“Not interested.”
“Don’t be such a hard guy.”
“Also no time for talk.”
“Then just let me in. I don’t want to hand over money and it’s cost me enough just to come out. And it’s my cemetery. My grandfather also reserved space for me here and my wife and kids if I had them.”
“You need cash then? Sell your extra plots. There’ll be no end to takers. This is a relatively close space to the city, so you’ll get plenty for them—ten times what your grandfather paid.”
“I don’t want to. I still could get married someday and have a kid or already my wife’s. And this is holy ground. At least sacred to me with my family in there, so don’t make me have to report you.”
“You threatening? I’ll deny and backfire on you. I’ll say you went crazy when you came late and I wouldn’t let you in. I’m old and trusted here. Just as I thought you could be trusted—dragging me down here, you son of, and you didn’t act that type over the TV screen—so they’ll believe me as they know people in grief have tried everything with us day and night and also the owners never heard my doing anything wrong. Not that I ever have or am doing anything wrong now. A contribution to the nondenominational cemetery chapel I’m t
rying to collect for them they certainly won’t frown upon.”
“It’s a bribe for yourself you want, no contribution.”
“Whose bribe? You pushed me and I refused. God, if I had the legal right or my earlier age and strength I’d force you to pay to the cemetery the car gas down here and my wage consumed and maybe for me my medical bills for the temperature I’ll probably get standing here and charges. Courtroom charges I’d be using to sue you for breach of everything and filthy slander,” and he gets in the car and drives up the hill.
I shake the gate, ring the bell. Maybe someone else is in the office. Nobody answers. I shake, pound the gate with a stone, stay on the bell, still no one answers. I’ve had it to here with these bastards, had it and shake a fist at the camera and go right along the fence looking for another entrance, but in my five-minute walk through the shin-high snow there is none. I start climbing the iron bar fence. Screw him, I’ll get in my own way, but it’s slippery with ice and I slide down. I start climbing another less slippery spot but stop halfway up. It’s night so how would I find our gravesite? Piled up snow, maybe the graves and stones grown over as well, even with the good moon I got, probably surrounded as he suggested by a thousand headstones by now when before they were alone, and getting back over might even be tougher.
I look through the fence and think I see their headstones in the distance and start to cry. This would be about where they are, same size and rounded on top, each with an inscription on them about something to do with “rest, peace” and “love.” Little obelisk for my sister I can’t see to the left of them, but it might be some kind of optical illusion stopping me, or knocked down.
I stay there, forehead against the fence, say my own prayer and let their five faces pass through my head, then walk back to the front gate and yell at the intercom “Hey you—caretaker. Next time you come outside the grounds you’re going to get one of these here, but with a brick in it for your evil nose,” and I make and throw a snowball at the camera and hit a tree way off and get on my knees to make some more. Brick wasn’t a serious threat. And why my making these balls for? Police will be called and I got what I mostly came out here for, didn’t I? and that’s to never let these thieves get to me where I let up or start to beg and I also saw or think I did my sister and folks and spoke a few words to them and thought.
I go to the phonebooth in front and am about to call the cab company when I hear sirens. I run across the road, feign going right, in the dark go left and hide behind a bush about fifty feet from the gate. Police come, look around, ring the bell and caretaker drives down and points in the opposite direction I ran and they shine their flashlights there and then write on a clipboard and he signs it and they go.
He drives up the hill. I wait a while. Moon’s bright, with a kindly round face almost upsidedown, and the caws of some big bird or another jumping from tree to tree I’m under. I’d like to get even with the caretaker in some way but a threat. Like prying apart the intercom and camera and have him explain it to the owners. But that in the long run would end up hurting me more than him in cemetery costs and I guess they’re also there to protect the graves. Maybe an anonymous letter about his bribery to the owners, but I drop the idea for now and walk along the drive for about a mile toward the train station till I come to a phonebooth in front of the next cemetery. Meyermeg’s number is on the phonebooth wall and I call and tell the dispatcher “Send my old friend Nate to pick me and my wife up at Pearlwood. We were inside visiting too long and didn’t know the place had closed.”
I see Nate pass me as I walk toward town. In the dark I spit at him and would like to tell him a thing or two, but don’t want to get caught by the police through his two-way. Then I see him driving back alone and I’m so cold I want to hail him just for the ride and no words, but he’ll know the phone trick before was me so I hold back.
I walk the next few miles to town, in a cafe have a coffee and soup and rub my frozen limbs back to life, call a different cab company and because I don’t want to be seen by the police where they might be waiting for me at the train station, I tell the driver to take me to the next town’s station further out on the island where I have to meet my oldest son. He does, says “Want me to wait?” and I say “No thanks, my wife’s coming by car from the other way, “and get the train back to the city and subway to my hotel.
“Phone message for you,” the nightclerk says.
“Beautiful grave day,” it says.
“Listen,” I say. “Anyone calls for me like this or any kind, hang up.”
“No can do. It could be the cops, Narcotics, parole officers or the like, just for examples, so city regulations say I have to pass every phone and letter message on to the guest.”
“If I gave you a fiver you wouldn’t, right?”
“As I had to have told you before: that’s how I survive here, not that I ever got a dime for doing that. If there’s anything guests want it’s their messages.”
“Well these for me are just a crock to rattle me, I don’t want them anymore, and I’m not giving you a five to do anything again but get me a bottle of scotch if I haven’t for some dumb reason thought of getting it myself from my bar or before the stores close. But if you do give me another note like this I’m going to rip it to little bits and throw it all over you and your desk, understand?”
“I got ears.”
“Just answer if you understand me.”
“That’s what I meant about my ears. I hear. They’re clean, every day dewaxed. So sure, but what are you getting so testy all of a sudden for? I was only carrying out the law to its littlest letters, but now I know better with you. By the way—”
“No.”
“Not scotch but perhaps—”
“I know not scotch and what ‘perhaps’ and I don’t want it.”
“But you look cold. And she’s got a touch of the flu herself, or had, though nothing bad to pass any bug on to you, so she stayed in bed most of the day and by now should be real toasty. Or maybe you’re thinking of getting her direct over the phone and not through me.”
“No and goodnight.”
“If not Helena then, there’s another cute girl in the hotel. Blonde, almost as young, but a lot taller and bosomier and with legs that could wrap around a chaise lounge. If you want—”
Elevator door closes and I ride up and go to my room. I’d like a few drinks to warm me and help me get to sleep but want to be up early tomorrow and without a hangover and extra sharp. So I drink plenty of tap water and exercise, warmups, few situps, running in place, and turn on the TV and immediately start yawning, no doubt mostly from all that road walking before and clumping through cemetery snow.
Next morning I go to the Administrative Tribunal office downtown, show the clerk my summons for a hearing later this week and say “I’d like very much to have it pushed up to today.”
“Sorry, we’ve a full workload as it is. If we pushed you up, everyone would want to be pushed up and then we’d be working way over overtime which we don’t get paid an extra cent for, so you can see the impossibility of such a move.”
“I’m not interested in everyone. Because do you see everyone who has a hearing with you later this week in the room now?”
“Don’t you raise your voice to me.”
“Then give me a sensible answer why you can’t push me up;”
“And don’t order me to answer you.”
“I’m not ordering, I’m asking. But since you are a civil servant supposedly paid to serve citizens like me and I’m a paying taxpayer—”
“And don’t give me that outdated fallacious line of argument either. Because thirty-five percent of the city’s labor force are paid public servants in one form or another like also state and federal. And we pay as much if not more taxes than most workers and have to put up with the same city machinery, but unlike all the noncivil workers, most of us get no unemployment insurance if we’re laid off.”
“You get other compensation.”
> “Abuse, yes, if you like it.”
“You get other things. Continual raises for even the ones who don’t deserve them. Free subway rides for policemen and stuff and everyone a good pension plan. But how’d we get into this, and I know you’re just doing your job. But it does seem, job or not and which should be part of it I’d think, that if someone in my predicament whether I’m a city worker or not makes a reasonable demand from one, then that demand ought to be thought on if not granted if it’s not too unreasonable to grant to, which mine isn’t. Because you have to get cancellations all the time for your hearings, don’t you?”
“If you mean your taking over one of those cancellations, yes, we get several daily, but we take them into consideration when we speak about our full workload each day. It’s analogous to the airlines who intentionally, with the consent of the agency regulating them, overbook their flights by fifteen percent because they know a quarter to more reservations and even confirmed tickets will at the last minute—”
I see a well-dressed woman in a suit and briefcase having the door marked “Hearing Room” held open for her by a guard and I say “Who’s that lady there? Someone in the tribunal? The judge?”
“We don’t have judges. She’s today’s hearing examiner, which might as well be the judge and jury so far as you’re concerned, for her word’s fact and law.”
“Ma’am?” I shout to the door.
“Please, she has her own full workload—she has to prepare.”
Examiner’s stopped by the door and is looking at me. I run over to her.
“Ma’am? Hearing examiner? My name’s Shaney Fleet. I know you’re tied up but I own a bar and grill that’s been closed. Here, look at this please and see if I don’t rate something fairer—an earlier hearing today if you can make it,” and I open the summons to show her.
“I am extremely busy, Mr. Fleet. Any dealings with the tribunal, see the clerk there.”
“I’ve seen her. She’s been very nice but I can’t wait any more days. Each is a dollar for me—many. I’ve no savings. I owe rent—home and bar—you can’t imagine the bills. You shouldn’t’ve shut me down if you have to put so many days between the shutdown and trial.”
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