“It’s nice ofyou to do this,”Kate says.She looks surprisingly fresh and composed, considering she usually requires nine or ten hours ofsleep and is operating on four at the most.
“I’m so glad to have the chance.Is Lorraine still around?”He doesn’t even know why he’s asked, he’s simply lofting the ball back to Kate’s side ofthe net.
“She fled the countryside for the safety ofthe city.I looked out the window at six o’clock and there was a taxi in the driveway, and then I saw her running for it.I guess she was trying to make the six-twenty.”
She rakes her fingers through Ruby’s hair, untangling it, but keeps her eyes fixed on Daniel.
He gets Ruby out ofthere as quickly as decently possible—he cannot shake the idea that Kate has engineered this whole thing as a way offur-ther implicating him in the life ofhis old family, and since he cannot fathom that there is the slightest possibility ofhis being drawn back into the old domesticities, it seems more humane to be briefand even a lit-tle remote.He makes only minimal eye contact with Kate as she hands him Ruby’s insulated snack bag, made ofbright scarlet fabric with aVel-cro flap.Yet when he has Ruby strapped into the child seat in the back of his car—he has kept the clunky gray-and-beige thing there despite his changed circumstances—he feels an unexpected swoon ofloneliness and nostalgia.Buckling the straps ofthe seat recalls those mornings that now seem a lifetime ago when he began every day with Ruby, and the plea-sures ofthose drives to My LittleWooden Shoe, when her sweet physi-cal presence filled the car, and her little piping voice was like birdsong, and for ten minutes he could see the world through her unjaded eyes, ten minutes when the trees were goblins, the crows were looking directly at her, the sky was a zoo, and the grammar school a shining city on the hill.
“How’s everything going back there?”he asks.He reaches back to pat her but misjudges her position and touches nothing but air.
“Fine,”she says.She catches his fingers and squeezes them affectionately.
Oh I wish, I wish, I wish,he thinks, though he could not say for certain what he wishes for.To be back with Kate? He does not believe that is the case.To have Ruby somehow belong to him? It’s out ofthe question.Yet there is something he longs for, something he has lost, and then, in a lit-tle flare ofself-knowledge he knows what it is.The privilege ofhis own comfort.He has lost his easy life.He has lost Kate’s house, her conver-sation, her soft, beautiful hair—he can barely believe he is thinking this, but then:there it is.He has lost Ruby, he has lost sleep, he has lost his energy, he has lost his sense ofhumor, he has lost his sight in one eye, he has lost ifnot his mind then at the very least his untroubled mind.And he has given it all away for something that seems to be slipping through his fingers.
When they are close to My LittleWooden Shoe, the familiar feeling ofanticipation comes back to him, a pure and wild animal eagerness.Iris could very well be pulling into the parking lot at this very moment.It’s fifteen minutes past eight o’clock.He knows she has a nine o’clock sem-inar at the college.The nurse who helps look after Hampton on the morning shift sometimes brings Nelson to day care, but Iris tries to do it herselfwhenever possible, and now, beneath a low, soft, blue-and-gray early summer sky, Daniel speeds the last mile ofthe way.
Her car is there, its doors dappled with mud.Hurriedly, Daniel takes Ruby out ofthe car seat and carries her across the parking lot, the peb-bles crunching eagerly beneath his feet.
Before he and Ruby reach the door, Iris comes out in what appears to be a great rush.She is wearing a maroon skirt and jacket, black high-heeled shoes.She looks hurried but hopeless.Nelson is beside her, try-ing to keep pace.Then Iris sees Daniel, with Ruby in his arms.Daniel’s first thought is that Iris will somehow misconstrue this, will think that he has spent the night at Kate’s house, or is in some aspect ofreconciliation.
But Iris, in fact, does not seem to be speculating about anything.
“Mrs.Davis just called the school,”she says, moving right past Daniel.“She has to leave in fifteen minutes and there’s no one home to look after Hampton.”
“Oh no,”Daniel says, following after her.“What happened to Mrs.Davis?”
“What difference does it make? I have to get home.He’s sleeping, he won’t be up until noon, at the earliest.But he can’t be in an emptyhouse.”
Daniel places Ruby on the ground and she and Nelson begin talking, smiling, and gesturing, like old friends in their mid-forties.
“You’re all dressed up,”Daniel says.“Are you supposed to be somewhere?”
“Yes.”She gestures helplessly, a mixture oftemper and surrender.
“I’ve got a meeting with my advisor.I don’t know what I’m going to do.
Fucking Mrs.Davis!”She doesn’t bother to lower her voice.“And now this one…”She waves in Nelson’s direction.“He’s insisting on coming home, too.May as well.No sense putting him in day care ifI’m going to be stuck in the house no matter what.”She reaches toward Nelson, pulls him close to her, caresses his face, his head.For a moment he luxuriates in his mother’s love, but then, suddenly, he squirms away from her.
“I thought all those people were there,”Daniel says.
”They’re gone, they left early this morning.Who can stand it?”
“I can look after him.He’s sleeping.He won’t know.I’ll just bethere.”
“You can’t do that,”Iris says.
”How long do you need?”
“An hour and a half, two at the most.No, I can’t.It’s too strange.”
“It’s okay.Don’t forget.”He smiles.“I have almost no career.All I have to do is make a couple ofcalls, I can do that from your house.”He is about to say,It’s the least I can do,but he stops himself.Iris is looking at him intently;it takes him a moment to realize why:she is trying to de-cide under what rules ofconduct it would be permissible to have Daniel looking after Hampton, even ifit’s only ninety minutes, even ifHamp-ton will never know, even ifthere are the emergency phone numbers Scotch-taped onto the wall next to every phone in the house, even ifthis will never ever happen again.
“You’re not going to see him, you know,”she says.“Not unless you go upstairs and watch him sleep.And, Daniel, I don’t want you to do that.
I forbid you, I really do, I forbid you to do that.”
“I won’t.I wouldn’t.I’m trying to help you here, Iris.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Okay, then?”he says.
”Okay.”
“Good, then that’s it.”He is wringing his hands, trying not to touch her.
”I really appreciate it.You don’t have to do anything, all you have to do is be there.”
“You better hurry.”
“Thank you.”She is surprised how formal this sounds.She clears her throat.“I really appreciate it.”
“I’m glad to help.I’ll bring Ruby, okay?”As soon as he says it, he wishes he hadn’t, but he doesn’t want to complicate matters by taking it back.Besides, Ruby will take care ofNelson, which Daniel cannot really manage.And Kate will never know.
I love you,Iris mouths.
He presses his hand to his heart, as ifhe has been stabbed.
”Ruby?”he says.“Would you like to go to Nelson’s for the first part ofthe morning?”
Iris doesn’t have time to drive back to her house, she doesn’t even have time to transfer Nelson’s car seat to Daniel’s car, and she certainly has no time to jolly Nelson out ofhis annoyance that he is not going to be spending the morning with his mother after all.Daniel makes his way to Juniper Street with the kids in his backseat, Ruby snugly strapped in, while Nelson, as ifto announce his policy oftotal noncooperation with Daniel, refuses to keep his seat belt on.Each time Daniel glances into the rearview mirror, he sees Nelson glowering at him, and before long the boy’s antipathy becomes so wounding and, frankly, so irritating that Daniel feels it might be an appropriate act ofdiscipline to slam his foot on the brake and send the boy pitching forward.
Mrs.Davis, a thin, tired-loo
king fifty-year-old black woman, is waiting nervously by the front door.She is so fretful that she doesn’t even in-quire as to why Daniel is coming there to look after Hampton, though she has never seen Daniel before.Perhaps his being with Nelson proves his legitimacy.She gives Daniel no instructions, nor does she offer any explanations or apologies.In fact, all she says is a quick hello to Nelson, and“Now I’m really late”to Daniel, and then she puts a tan ski jacket over her uniform, though it is at least seventy degrees outside.
“Mrs.Davis!”Daniel calls out, when she is nearly out the door.“Wait!”
She turns toward him with a practiced, opaque expression, unapproachable.“Yes,”she says in a tone that says no.
He doesn’t know exactly what to say, but he is suddenly afraid to be in charge.“Is there anything I need to know here?”
“When’s Mrs.Welles coming home?”Mrs.Davis asks.
”In about an hour and a half.”
“That man ain’t going nowhere in the next ninety minutes,”she says, moving past Daniel and out onto the porch.An old FordTaurus is at the curb, with an immense kid ofabout eighteen at the wheel, wearing a sleeveless shirt.The car rattles as it idles, inky exhaust pours out ofthe tailpipe.Daniel stands on the porch and watches Mrs.Davis hurry to-ward the waiting car—had it been there all along?The driver starts to get out but she waves him back in;she goes to the passenger side and lets herselfin, and a moment later theTaurus pulls away with an unmuf-fledroar.
Daniel goes back into the house and as soon as he is inside he can tell by the quality ofthe silence that the children are no longer there.He goes to the kitchen and looks into the backyard.An olive-green tent has been pitched between two hemlocks;Nelson is standing next to the flap while Ruby crawls in, and then he crawls in himself.Daniel wonders for a moment whether he ought to go out and show the flag ofadult super-vision, but then he thinks it would be pointless.
He wanders through the house, looking for a spot where he can unobtrusively sit while the time passes.What had seemed at first like a fa-vor he was capable ofdoing for Iris seems now perilous, foolish, and strange.The entire success ofthe gesture hinges on Hampton staying asleep, and though Daniel is still enough ofan optimist to believe that Hampton will not awaken before Iris’s return, now that he is in the house—with its signs ofsuffering everywhere, a cane in the corner, a table filled with amber medicine bottles, brightly colored plastic baskets filled with laundry, piles ofblankets for the frequent house guests, the loving family who come when they can to share the burden ofHampton’s affliction—now that he is breathing the Lysol-tinged heat ofthis airless, sunny room, Daniel realizes not only that he is perched on the precipice ofdisaster but that he has been on this increasingly exhausting edge for months now.
He sits on the sofa facing the empty fireplace.Next to it is a large wicker basket filled with mail.Idly, Daniel looks in and sees that it is all for Hampton.Daniel scoops his hand into the pile, lets them fall;it’s like a write-in campaign, an appeal to the governor for neurological clemency.Free the Hampton One, let him come back to renew his sub-scriptions, make his donations, place his order, balance his checking ac-counts, look after his investments, go to Bermuda.
Scarecrow comes waddling down the stairs, roused from her spot next to Hampton’s bed.She seems to have aged years in the past six months.Her rump is massive now, her gait slow and uncertain, her brown eye is alert, but her blue eye, once keen and electric, is now milky and opaque.She moves toward Daniel, lowers her snout, and pushes the top ofher head against his legs.He strokes her silky ears, and she emits a deep, mellow groan ofpleasure.
“Oh, Scarecrow, Scarecrow, what in the world are we going to do?”
Daniel says, in that plaintive murmur people sink into when they are opening their heart to an animal.The old shepherd raises her snout, looks up and her tongue unfurls from her mouth, lands on Daniel’s chin, and then sweeps up over his lips.“What are we going to do, Scarecrow? What’s going to happen to us? It’s pretty messed up, isn’t it, Scarecrow? How did everything get to be so broken?”
Daniel slumps back in the chair, continues to pet the dog.He closes his eyes and is about to sink into sleep when he is startled and revived by the sound offootsteps directly overhead.Hampton is awake, awake and moving.His first impulse is to hide;he stands up and his legs tremble for want offlight, his good eye looks for the quickest way out ofthe room.
He tries to calm himself by thinking that perhaps it is someone other than Hampton upstairs, or even ifit is Hampton, then he may not be coming down—he is going to get a drink ofwater, or take a leak, or maybe he has heard the children in the backyard and he is going to a win-dow to gaze out at them.But no:this is merely a story Daniel is telling himself, a little explanatory fable that will allow him to believe that the worst is not about to happen.
Now the footsteps are on the stairs, coming down, and Daniel has not run, he has not hidden.He sits down.He will seem less threatening, less intrusive, seated.He crosses his legs, left to right, then right to left, and then leaves them uncrossed, the knees slightly parted, his clammy hands folded between them.He ransacks his mind for something to say, an ex-planation for why he is here, an apology, a bit ofsmall talk, and then he remembers what should have been impossible to forget—Hampton cannot understand a word, not spoken or written, and all Hampton him-selfcan say is that single stunned syllable:da.Da Da Da.
How strange, then, to finally see him, this strong, beautiful man whose throat was pierced by a rocket, this ruined prince who has lost everything.He is dressed in copper-colored pajamas, with white piping around the pockets and down the leg.The top buttons ofhis shirt are open, the scar just below theAdam’s apple looks like a wad ofchewed-up gum, and someone has spread talcum powder on his throat all the way down to the chest.He is freshly shaved but his eyeglasses have been snapped in two and then repaired with tape á la Ferguson Richmond.It seems unthinkable that Hampton would be wearing broken glasses, it is, for the moment, the saddest thing in the world.Sadder than his slack mouth, the corner ofwhich is yanked down and to the side, sadder than his dull, unblinking eyes, sadder than the cologne Mrs.Davis has splashed on him, and sadder, even, than the fact that he is wearing his wristwatch, with its lizard-skin band and nineteen jewels, its expensive Swiss ner-voussystem, its mini-clocks at the bottom giving the time in London and Tokyo.
“Hello, Hampton,”Daniel says.He knows he cannot be understood, yet he can’t simply stand there and say nothing.And even ifthe words are gibberish to Hampton, even ifto his bombed-out brain the sounds Daniel makes are no more decipherable than the chattering ofa monkey, perhaps the context will do, the logic ofthe moment, the gesturing hand, the smiling mouth, the deferential little bow.
“Da,”Hampton whispers.He shuffles forward a step.He hasn’t noticed that Scarecrow is underfoot now and on his second step he catches the dog’s paw beneath his foot.She lets out a high, piercing yelp.Hamp-ton is startled.His eyes widen, his mouth opens—his expressions are guileless and large.His personality, no longer projected through the scrim oflanguage, has now an intolerable purity.He looks down at the dog and smiles.At first it seems to Daniel that there is some cruelty here, but then Hampton pats the dog’s head with a wooden herky-jerky move-ment, and Daniel realizes that the smile was one ofrecognition:Scare-crow’s cry has made more sense to Hampton than Daniel’s hello.
When he has comforted Scarecrow, made his amends, Hampton straightens up again, looks at Daniel, taking him in in a long, silent gaze.
Daniel feels he must somehow communicate, but the only sign language he can think ofis gestures ofsupplication.He folds his hands, low-ers his head, and sorrowfully shakes his head.Yet even this does not seem enough—what could be? He wants Hampton to be restored.Short of that, he wants to be forgiven, he wants Hampton to give that to him, to lift him offthe hook and set him free, to place an exonerating hand on Daniel’s shoulder and admit to the idea—submit to it, ifthat’s what it takes—that what happened in those woods was a fluke
and had nothing to do with Daniel and Iris.Daniel will not allow himself to beg for mercy, he will not try to urge Hampton to see that the two ofthem are simply men who have been caught in the Rube Goldberg machinery oflife.
Then, for no particular reason, he has a fleeting thought:Ruby.How long have those two been out there?A halfhour? More?
But the thought evaporates because Hampton is crying.He is drumming his long fingers against his head—shaved by Mrs.Davis, nicked here and there, the cuts left to dry in the air—and he is shaking his head, more vociferously than a simple no, he is shaking it to clear it, to dispel some merciless, obliterating beast that lives within, eating his words.
Tears as thick as glycerine streak down his cheeks, and his mouth is twisted into a scowl ofgrief.Daniel’s heart, in a convulsion ofempathy, leaps, as ifto its own annihilation.
Inside Nelson’s tent, the sunlight, filtered through the nylon, is pale green.The unmoving air smells ofdirt, candy, and child.Nelson and Ruby sit on two beige bath towels that serve as the floor in Nelson’s hide-away.Between them is a Styrofoam cooler that Nelson uses as a recepta-cle for his playhouse provisions.The lid is offand he is showing Ruby his treasures one by one, some ofthem his, some ofthem appropriated.A bottle ofElmer’s glue, a manicure set in a leather case, a half-eaten PowerBar, an eyecup, a flashlight, several batteries, loose kitchen matches, a hand puppet ofsome kind ofAmerican Indian princess, a block ofbaking chocolate, and a gun, given to Hampton by his own father for the safety ofthe house, stored and then halfforgotten in the drawer ofhis night table, on hand in case a robber should enter the house, or some vicious white kids looking for a little racial adventure, a gun sneaked out ofthe house by Nelson several days ago, which has gone unmissed, a pistol that has seen its better days, the front sight chipped, the blacking on the trigger guard and the barrel peeling off, but with an aroma Nelson finds entrancing, narcotic, a mixture ofold steel and oil.
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