John the Posthumous

by Schwartz, Jason

  I prefer steel wool and turpentine for certain stains.

  On the stairs: Axminster, six years old.

  I stand on the landing—in an attitude of embarrassment—and then retreat to our room.

  On the floor of the bedchamber or the corridor or the inner parlor—in Thornton, during the war—the father dressed the daughters for their coffins.

  Church oak, burning, recalls the sound of a stricken man. Or, by other accounts, the sound of a burning animal or a coffin bell.

  I clean the ceilings with rags—remnants of bedsheets, for the most part, and sleeves torn from white shirts—or with a wire brush.

  In the guest room: Wilton broadloom, cut pile. A wooden pistol—in the form of a horse—sits in the far corner. Perhaps these are carpet beetles vanishing beneath the cabinet.

  I count footsteps in the hallway.

  In the country house—outside Lawton or Marion—they measured the dimensions of a body in repose, a body in distress, a body in agony, and marked the floor accordingly.

  Some Colonial floor plans trace the progress of the body—or, put a different way, the path of the wife from room to room to room, and then down the stairs, and from the stairs to the door.

  Sounds in the house: foyer and front hallway. I list them from left to right. I open and close all the drawers. The rain, the sound of the rain—this makes me afraid. The lock, I like to think—and now the teeth of the key; the latch—is rather less sad than the man standing on the porch, his umbrella a bit too red. But we prefer the wind, in any case, early in the morning—do we not? And the commotion in the trees, the curtains in May and June.

  Were she to return: I imagine the sound as a narrow column, as a metal box, as a border of cloth.

  Sounds in the house: front room and side hallway. Were you to adopt a posture of repose, supine on the brown chaise, say, at five o’clock in the afternoon, the door—across from the brickwork and the vitrine—might offer of itself one small corner and three curious noises. Or the contours of some other report—a hammer in an attic, and now an animal in a yard—were you to find yourself just west of the end table and just east of the fire screen, at eight o’clock in the evening, having fallen to your knees.

  In our room: the curtains displayed faint stripes, a herringbone pattern, and a formation of birds—doomed, by the look of them.

  The stain at the hem was an unseemly green.

  Is it true that the Rowan bride—in a stone house, one hundred years ago—named her rooms for former suitors?

  The deacons—in Eaton and Marion, but sometimes in Harrow as well—would arrange the shades in various ways, indicating contagion, danger, alarm, and so on. Whereas the strangler would hide behind the curtains, or within them, before crossing to the bedroom door.

  In the hallway: the blinds made frightening sounds at night. They were wooden—maple, I expect, or elm. But dark brown is all I can recall.

  The cord wound around a brass cleat.

  The curtain and rod, the shade and ring—perhaps such figures are taken, in one tradition or another, as emblems of betrayal.

  The wives—in Putnam and Whitebriar, and in Newbury and Bratton and Pike Fork—would open the drapes just so, and for only a moment, or two, or for an hour in the afternoon, and then close them, indicating a day of the week, a time of day, a location.

  In the child’s room: one curtain split lengthwise, along a pleat or a crease. The other, I gather, caught in the window and tore.

  They were replaced with shutters, painted white.

  Iron screens, detailed with human forms, their faces turned away—these were placed in the window frames of convent sickrooms and hospital morgues.

  The daughters—in Thornton, during the war—would tie the curtains back, disclosing a skull on the windowsill. The maids took the curtains down in due course, carried them to the bed, addressed them with shears and a brush, and then set them atop the daughters’ coffins.

  Shadows in the house: bedrooms, master and guest. The first, on a curtain, a white curtain, suggests a ripsaw. Or, more sensibly, a crooked hand. The pine tree is the culprit, I take it, in conjunction with the wind. Or some aspect of the ladder—which will fall, in any case, before long. The second, on a bed, slants rather handsomely—until the door closes.

  My form on the wall: it now assumes a more gruesome shape.

  Shadows in the house: child’s room. Were you to cross from the door at eight o’clock in the morning, in fall, the dormer window, to your left, might appear entirely black, at least for a moment. Were you to cross from the door at noon, however, and pause at the wardrobe, the shadows might contrive to remove from view one column, several trees—oak trees, I believe—and the name of the road.

  The wagon at the hanging: this is no longer on the wall. And now we have the rats and the ants and the way the door sticks, even in winter. That makes up a day. But what about those nights when the shade is made to produce a sound like this one? All those lovely worries in the hallway, and the wire on the platter. As the hour passes. Or wears on, to be precise, until the lights go out.

  The colors may recall the walls of your childhood room.

  Wall hornets, in cathedrals, would conceal murals and the like—and were, on occasion, mistaken for inscriptions. But elsewhere, in a brown house, years later, there were only rows of coats in an entrance hall.

  I touch it five times, the line on the wall—just west of the sconce and just east of the door. On the other side of which, yes, one’s wife stands in her nighttime attire.

  In the photographs from that year: you can see the son at the window, but never the daughter.

  I count again the number of nails, up and down. The banister flatters the paneling, as the molding flatters the frame. The wallpaper has a dark border, the vines disguising the animals.

  In castles, perhaps, bones were stacked to build walls—atop which you might see crosses, painted black to resemble those figurines once stationed at table in place of departed fathers.

  A sledgehammer and a crowbar will do quite nicely in removing a bedroom wall.

  The clock atop the lowboy: this has a skeleton dial. The mirror cuts the door in two. Do you imagine someone in the house? And now one anchor follows another, a little drawing on a shelf. Or a knife and a knife, and then a ruined hat. But this is foolish of me. I know that—I do. Take away the shade, after all, and we have nine panes, the socket, the channel, and the stop.

  II.

  As a child, as a boy: I was distracted, shall we say, by several forms on a wall. There were squares, a series of them, in four colors, maybe five. I imagined these to be houses, naturally, or rooms, a plain arrangement of rooms, the doors just out of view.

  Or, on occasion, pillars in a row. Or a pillar, a long hallway, a staircase. The last, I grant you, may require some elaboration. I was small and still. It was winter. One line was brown, very brown. After an hour, or two, at six o’clock, or seven, my father would carry me out.

  The sound was terribly bright, I thought. Though I suppose I was alone with this notion. He made shapes in the air with his hand—spot under spot. The next room was blue. My nightshirt was white—the color, perhaps, of your own childhood attire.

  Or black, rather, and at nine o’clock. I was frightened, as you will gather from the timbre of my voice. I would find her crying—at the back door, and at the staircase. Touch your finger to the hem of your trousers or skirt—that is another sound altogether, is it not?

  The finial was dull, or chipped, or missing—I can no longer recall. And the banister, the style of it—this is of little consequence now. I should note, instead, my height at age eight. And that the objects sat on the landing at a bit of a slant, and then fell down.

  III.

  The first story begins with the woman, or with the two of them, the man and the woman, in a town, a house afire at the end of a road. Or with a family in another town, far from this one. The widow is sometimes called a relict. The blind son is Edward or William or J
ohn. The father is always the father. There he is, crossing the lawn. How I wish we could save him before morning. The second story begins in the maid’s chambers, but concludes in the sitting room. A child—the son—is decapitated by a portrait. His mother’s, in one version—a fairy tale. A soldier’s, in another—a romance.

  In Matthew, the house is a dead bird or a box of thorns. But parables are not always the same as lies. Your dictionary calls them stories, but these we can see behind the child. All right—let us put it a different way. The man returns in the morning. He stands at the window. The woman departs in the afternoon.

  In the third story, the child lights a candle on the anniversary of his mother’s death. But the candle topples during the night, and the flame finds the drapery, one corner and then the next, traveling now with considerable haste to the edge of the rug, which catches, naturally, carrying the flame to the wall, to the door, to the foyer, and then up the stairs and along the hallway to a room—where a pair of shoes burns first, and then the nightstand, and the blanket and bedsheet, and the father asleep in the bed.

  Animals, yard and road, 1848: fall. The birds ignore the birdhouse, a few pipes and a wire. Mauled house cat, north side. Three carriage accidents, south side. Field, 1871: fall. A man drowns ten rabbits in a stream. Town, 1887: fall. They cry a porcelain lion on a wooden platform, hickory or deal.

  Were you to gather the blanket this way, and set it on a chair, in winter, in the sewing room or the sitting room—horses on the wall; a wolf on a shelf—or in one of the rooms named for a color—late in the afternoon, the light terrifically dim—it might conjure, finally, the form of your boyhood dog.

  Animals in the walls, child’s room, 1952: summer. The parakeets shriek for three days. Master bedroom, 1954: summer. The rats run from east to west, late at night, behind the headboard—walnut; a bend at the center; six feet across—and back again, from west to east, returning to the attic early in the morning.

  New Street, 1858. Daniel Anderson: merchant (suit of clothes, burnt). Charles Barnett: gentleman (brick house, two horses). James Berger: surgeon (“My son kills moths under the awnings”). William Brown: caretaker (“It was my greatest unhappiness”). John Cole: unknown. Samuel Cole: unknown. Theodore Cole: unknown. Nathan Dixon: gentleman (frame house, horse and carriage). Herman Fine: trimmer (drawing of a city bridge, ball-peen hammer). Francis Hoffman: cordwainer (irregular pulse, weak heart). Edward Hunter: clerk (“My brothers fell that morning from the widow’s walk”). Aaron Jackson: gentleman (“My father wore the horns”). Jacob Leach: watchmaker (hives, stitch, anemia, fever). Walter Moore: shut-in (house and lot, horse and carriage). Alexander Morton: slater (doll’s head, hollow). William Munson: unknown. Thomas Nelson: unknown. John Nicholas: gentleman (“We were married in every town”). Bartholomew Ott: merchant (“I once received letters like these”). Richard Pollard: coffinmaker (catalog of animals, red umbrella). Isaac Rice: driver (jaundice, palsy, blindness, stroke). Arthur Ritter: clergyman (cabinet of English linen, revolver). George Sexton: lawyer (house and lot, two horses and carriage). Timothy Skinner: tailor (chestnut secretary, burnt). Timothy Skinner, Jr.: unknown. Edward Todd: constable (“Charlotte won my heart”). Peter Turnbull: dyer (“If only I had hastened home”). Frederick Twitchell: clerk (lesions, bleeding, pleurisy, seizure). John Wilton: gentleman (two place-settings, garden spade).

  Household calamities, 1863: spring and summer. An attic collapses under cannon fire. Lightning destroys a porch awning, a Dutch door, a wedding trellis. A cyclone destroys eight chimneys and a balcony. (Mr. Porter, the lodger, removes to the cellar with a fowling piece, a flannel hat, a crate of dirt, and a pasteboard face.)

  How to survive a household fire, 1905: crawl to the door. Or remain in place. Or hang a white bedsheet from the window—and cry out your wife’s name. Family disaster plan, 1926: three pages, in triplicate. Or four diagrams with broken lines. Or a map of the town, evacuation route in blue thread.

  Household accidents, 1957: fall and winter. They carry the father to an empty room, loosen his collar and necktie, cover the wound. An icicle finds the child’s left eye—and then the right. Collapsed ladder, soldier. Four poisonings, boys. Stove fires, various. (Mrs. Gray, the neighbor, drives an automobile onto the lawn, and then onto the walk, and then into the front room.)

  Portrait of Albert Post, 1864. A man in a uniform stands before a field tent. Second Lieutenant, 45th Regiment, Pennsylvania Infantry. (He dies eight years later.) Execution of the Bridegroom, 1868. A man in a tailcoat stands before a house. The door is thought to recall a hood or shroud, the windows—shuttered—crosses or closed eyes, and the steeples at the roofline a pair of horns. (The church burns to the ground in a subsequent painting.) Execution of a Jew, 1873. A man hangs—upside down, arms in chains—between two dogs. The beam is far darker than the posts, which are far darker than the cart. (The second panel depicts a row of houses on a road.)

  One year passes for the family, and now another, town by town, door by door, room by room, despite the color of the bedclothes, and despite the objects, hers or his, or theirs—an old knife in a pail, if you like, and a wooden animal on a platter—beside the bed.

  Diorama, 1959. An automobile, a felled tree, a visitor at the door. (He is without a proper hat or a suitable coat.) The house is brown, with yellow trim. There are ten rooms, a cellar, and an attic. The father, in a near corner—returning to, or retiring from, the foyer. (“I had hoped to fail more grandly.”) The son hides behind the shed. (It can be sad in a yard, can it not?) Firewood and a scythe, a dog on the porch. There are chalk drawings on the cellar floor. A stranger, in a hallway chair—a mousetrap and a teakettle at his feet. (“I wore the room poorly.”) The mother, evidently preparing to cry, turns away. (And what does she see?) There are three windows across, and open curtains. Wires, a lamppost, the daughter on the walk. (She carries an uncomely valise.) The street ends at a red fence.

  IV.

  Whereupon: I would repair from the landing to the hallway—it was rather narrow; a garment of some sort comes to mind, woolen, in the company of another object, a larger one, something copper or brass—at the end of which stood my bedroom door.

  They believed me enamored of the color red, which may explain the blanket and the wallpaper and the lampshade, if not the configuration of items—mangled animals, at least as the shadows had it—on the windowsill.

  Did you see, on certain evenings, your brother’s face in the drapery? I would divide the ceiling at the wire, and then list all the letters in the names. I would find the seam in the carpet, and then subtract from ten, from seven, from five. But at what hour? The closet door, in this inventory, was a matter of no account.

  How unfortunate, furthermore, the condition of the trinkets, shattered with a hammer—and the bedsheets, on the top shelf, ripped from end to end. I would disarrange the articles with great address, holding each one to my throat. The slant of light, I think, permits mention of the partition. Eightpenny nails lined the bottom shelf.

  In the photograph, I was the child on the right, beside a stray mark, a mistake at the edge of the frame. I should like to recount, at this point, before I fall ill, or am overtaken by distraction or melancholy, how we lost the house—but I can no longer remember the story.

  V.

  The gun room has two doors, or three—compare the first, if you please, with the father’s body—and a table painted gray. The parlor wallpaper, from afar, through the garden window, or as it appears in a photograph, torn out one afternoon from this book or that, or from the family album, and then marked in a number of places—with X’s, unless these are crosses—seems to display a row of green lions and black hatchets, or perhaps a formation of brown towers around a blue lake.

  The conduct book describes a wooden house on a creek, all the doors and windows nailed shut. The household almanac describes a stone house, a cottage, the blind son in bed. The marriage manual describes a Colonial house, where the maid prepares a room for Mrs. Hand, a friend
from town.

  The bedrooms—four small disappointments, according to the father—display photographs in chrome frames, or silver ones, and collections of broken objects. The dining room has a drop-leaf table—a spoon clicks against the man’s tooth; the woman chokes to death on a pheasant bone—and a sideboard with a false drawer. The powder room takes its name from an eighteenth-century chamber—but here the wig is covered with blood, and falls to the floor. The hidden room—off the front hallway, or beyond the rear staircase, or behind the pantry wall—has a trapdoor, from which hangs a ladder to the cellar.

  In the cellar: a pull saw and a hasp, a jack plane, a wrecking bar, and a claw hammer. A tin contains a cap screw and a razor blade. A jar contains the remains of a carpet beetle.

  I dismantle the chairs and place all the parts in a crate. I station the broom beside the garden spade.

  The killer in the cellar, in folklore, is discovered by a mute child. The prisoner in the cellar survives a fire or a storm—but is later mauled by wolves.

  There were fleas last year, and squirrels the year before that.

  The foundation plan of the Burrows house, on Market Street, in Durham, Pennsylvania—built 1875; sold 1878; destroyed, by flood, 1914—indicates, upper right, a furnace room, divided in two, and a disappearing staircase.

  In the attic: a stump doll, a child’s rifle, a wig on a wooden peg. Grandmother’s hat-stands—the initials in cursive—are set out on a metal ledge. A suitcase contains five nightdresses and a carriage bolt.

  There is a mark on the doorpost, in pencil, forty-one inches from the floor.

  Mannikins—Mary Casket and John Coffin—would hang from the rafters in Colonial attics. Dollhouses, in Victorian attics, were sometimes arranged to form foreign towns—and, it turns out, to capture bats.

  I place the poison in each corner. I find the bodies behind the door—that morning or afternoon, or by the end of the week.

  The cross section of the Grimes house, on Oak Road, in Thornton, Pennsylvania—built 1906; sold 1938; torn down 1939—indicates, among other things, an attic door, ajar, and blackout at a ridge vent.