Halfway Down the Stairs

by Gary A Braunbeck

  Rudy looks at her, at the other customers in the diner and then speaks; his voice is a fragile, sad, frightened thing: “I think I might’ve done something terrible tonight, Lorena. I didn’t mean to, but ...” He looks at her with eyes so full of mute pleading that Lorena feels her throat tighten. She can’t remember if she’s ever seen a man so lonely.

  “What is it, Rudy? You can tell me.”

  “I don’t know,” he whispers. “I—I kinda really like you—why do you think this is always the first place I stop when I leave on a run and the last place I stop on the way back?”

  Lorena feels herself blush a little. “I figured you was just the shy type.”

  “Your opinion of me means a lot, and I … I don’t want that ruined.”

  Lorena puts the coffee pot back on the burner and tells the cook and the other waitress that she’s taking her fifteen-minute break. She picks up Rudy’s coffee cup and half-eaten sandwich and gestures for him to follow her over to one of the far empty booths.

  Once they’re situated and sitting across from one another, Lorena sits back, folds her arms across her chest, and says, “Okay, Rudy, here it is: I like you, too, and I think a lot of you, think you’re an okay guy. I done things that I ain’t really proud of, either, so I try not to judge anybody. So, c’mon—out with it.”

  Rudy doesn’t look at her as he begins talking. Even when describing the worst of it, he never makes eye contact. Lorena has to lean forward and turn her good ear in his direction in order to make out the words. It’s hard for her to pay attention to his story at one point because she’s stunned by the tears that are forming in his eyes. But she listens, and feels sick.

  Rudy finishes his story, sips at his now-cold coffee, and finally looks at her. Something in him touches her, and she moves over to sit beside him, using a paper napkin to wipe his face.

  “Rudy, you gotta listen to me, hon, okay? If it hadn’t been you, it woulda been somebody else. Sounds to me like they was pretty determined.”

  “But, Christ, Lorena, I- I ….” He takes hold of her hand. “Am I a bad man?”

  “No, you’re not. A bad man wouldn’t be feeling the way you are.” She then cups his face in both of her hands. “You listen to this, Rudy, and you listen good.

  “Yes ….”

  * * *

  “Dude, I’m serious—you gotta hear what I got on my digital voice recorder last night.”

  “Oh, for the love of—look, I’m begging you, find a woman, download porn, start collecting Precious Moments figurines—something else, all right? This goddamn ghost-chasing of yours is wearing really thin. You’re out there alone in the middle of the night and—hell, I worry about you, okay?”

  “Please? Just listen, and I swear if you think it’s bullshit, if you still think it’s a waste of my time and money, I’ll drop it, okay?”

  “Fine. Let’s hear it.”

  Click. Hiss. Where have you been? I’ve missed you. Hiss. Hiss. (Very softly, sounds of distant traffic nearly obscuring the words) Dance with me? Click.

  “Well?”

  “…Jesus.”

  * * *

  The O’Henry Ballroom is crowded that night, the orchestra in rare form as they play “You Came Along” and “Love in Bloom” and “(I Can’t Imagine) Me Without You” (one of her favorite new songs), but her escort for the evening has had far too much to drink and is getting somewhat fresh. She reaches behind her and grabs his left hand, pulling it up to the small of her back where it’s supposed to be, and hopes that he understands. He doesn’t, and soon his hands are slipping again, touching her in the most inappropriate of ways, and at last she breaks away and slaps his face.

  “Please stop doing that!”

  He glares at her, rubbing his check. Around them several couples have stopped dancing and are staring at them.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean,” he says.

  She looks around at the staring faces and feels herself turning red. She realizes then that she should have stayed home and listened to The Shadow with her parents. That new actor, Orson Welles, oh, his voice! Instead, she was here, being made a spectacle of because her escort was a drunkard and a masher.

  “I wish for you to take me home now, if you please.”

  He steps toward her, gripping her shoulders. When he speaks, his words are thick and slurred. “I am not going to take you anywhere … ‘cept back to our table. Let’s have another drink an' settle down.”

  She tries to free herself of his grip but he’s quite strong. Finally, she stomps on his right foot. He cries out, releases her, and stumbles backward.

  “You will take me home now!”

  “I will most certainly not. If you wish to go, then go! Have a nice walk.” With that, he turns away and stumbles through the dancers until he disappears somewhere in the throng of swaying bodies. Fighting back tears of humiliation and anger, she twirls around and walks off the dance floor toward the doors. Her face is puffy, red, and tear-streaked. Maybe the cold air will help.

  She pushes open the doors and glides out into the harsh winter night. Less than a mile. She has strong legs, a dancer’s legs, and knows that she can make it. Yes, she’ll be freezing by the time she comes through the front door, but her mother and father will be there. Warm cocoa, perhaps some soup. Father’s heavy coat and a place by the fire. Soft music on the radio. Is Gershwin Presents on tonight? (She hopes so).

  Crossing her arms across her midsection, she takes an icy breath and moves out toward the road, her white dress blending into the swirling snow.

  * * *

  The State Police find the car in the spring, after the first thaw. It’s on its roof far off to the side of Archer Avenue, not far from Resurrection Cemetery, at the bottom of the incline where the winter snow always piles high to hide the carcasses of animals that crawl into the foliage to die, the litter tossed by teenagers as they drive too fast around the bend, and even—sometimes—the bodies of vagrants who curl up with newspaper blankets in the shadows thinking they’ll be on their way in the morning, after they’ve rested.

  The entire driver’s side of the car is smashed in, the door and part of the front missing.

  “Looks like the damn thing got hit with a wrecking ball,” remarks one of the officers.

  His partner shakes his head. “Never had a chance. At least the license plate is still attached.”

  The officers call in it in. They are instructed to make a search of the immediate area which turns up nothing.

  * * *

  The old man wakes at four in the morning and lies there staring at the ceiling. He hates the way the patterns in the plaster form an endless overlapping series of swirls. They look too much like snow caught in the merciless winter winds coming at a windshield late at night, an endless assault of white that not even the windshield wipers can fight against. White … so much white.

  He sits up, swings his legs over the side of the bed, and presses his feet against the cold floor. Looking over his shoulder, he stares at the half of the bed where his wife used to sleep. Dear Henrietta, now six years in the grave. She would know what to say, how to rub his shoulders just so, relaxing him, whispering It’s all right, honey, it’s all in the past, you know it was an accident … But she’s gone, and the children are grown with kids of their own. Sure, they call and visit often, he has pinochle with the guys at the Eagles on Thursdays, but he’s going to be eighty-nine next birthday—a “spry” eighty-nine, as his children and grandchildren always remind him—but on nights like this, nights that have become more and more frequent the past few months, he wakes at some god-awful hour and is all too aware of his aches, his pains, the little snaps and crackles made by his bones when he moves, the silence of the house and the world outside … and he wishes that silence would extend to his conscience. Shouldn’t he have started becoming absent-minded by now? An old fart who can’t remember if the underwear goes on before the pants. Too bad an old man can’t choose what to forget.

 
He shuffles over to the window, pulling back the curtain. It’s beginning to snow; not much at the moment, just a few light flurries, but if the Weather Channel is right, this part of the Midwest is going to be under a good nine inches in the next forty-eight hours. He wonders if the snow will be as heavy and merciless as it was on that night. He looks back to the empty place in the bed. “I can’t live with it anymore, my dear girl. I have to go back.” For a moment he imagines Henrietta sitting there, the covers pulled up around her shoulders—she always did chill easily in winter—smiling at him, a smile tinged with sadness at the edges, and finally he imagines her wonderful voice as she says: You do what you need to, honey. You deserve some peace. “Thank you,” he whispers to the emptiness. He looks out the window again. “I left a big part of me on Archer Avenue back in ’37. I remember Bing Crosby was singing ‘Black Moonlight’ when I started to go around that bend. I remember all the snow—God, there was so much snow against the windshield. The wipers couldn't keep up.

  “I should’ve slowed down, or pulled off to the side and waited for it to clear up. Lord, I was driving Mom and Dad’s Imperial! Chrysler used to make their cars like tanks back then. I could have waited it out. I was just a kid, you know? I shouldn’t’ve …” His voice fades away as he hears another voice—not that of his wife—whisper from the memory of a dream: There you are. I see you at night.

  He wanders over to the bookshelf and takes from it an old edition of Hesse’s Narcissus and Goldmund, one of his favorite novels. He sits on the edge of the bed on Henrietta’s side and leafs through the pages, stopping to read a favorite paragraph here, a memorable dialogue exchange there, all the while shaking his head. He looks at his late wife’s pillow. “I don’t know why, my dear girl, but I just suddenly thought of the two of them—Narcissus and Goldmund, how they became friends and the different paths their lives took, Narcissus remaining at the monastery of Mariabronn to become its Abbot John, while Goldmund set off to live the life of an adventurer and artist.

  “I was always moved by the final chapters—I don’t know if I ever told you this, so pardon me if I’m repeating myself—but there you have Goldmund, who’s squandered and prostituted his artistic talents, led a life of self-indulgence and debauchery, only to wind up waiting to be hanged as a thief. And like the deus ex machina I suspect it was intended to be, along comes Narcissus to help him escape and bring him back to Mariabronn where Goldmund, sick and dying, is forgiven by Narcissus. Knowing his time is short, Goldmund sets about creating his last genuine work of art, a Madonna fashioned after the image of Lydia, his one true love, whose heart and spirit he had broken. He finds forgiveness in his heart for himself, my dear girl, because he uses all of his love and regret and guilt to perfectly fashion the Madonna’s image. And when Goldmund at last sees Lydia’s face again, he knows that he is forgiven, and so can die at peace with himself.” He closes the book with a loud snap. “That’s probably about as close to sentimentality as Hesse ever came.

  “It seems to me now, my dear girl, that unlike fiction, one has to fashion one’s own deus ex machina if forgiveness is to be found."

  He rises from the bed, his hand pushing against Henrietta’s pillow, then replaces the book on the shelf and begins preparations for his trip.

  * * *

  “I got more than just that on here. I talked to a guy who’s seen her.”

  “Let’s hear that, too, then.”

  Click. Hiss. The sound of muffled voices and the ting! of silverware. A louder voice calls “Order up!” A waitress yells, “Hold your horses! I only got two legs, you know!” Hiss. The sound of a man clearing his throat. Then: “Is that thing on?”

  “It sure is.”

  “Huh. Don’t look like no tape recorder I ever seen.”

  “It doesn’t use tape—it’s a digital recorder.”

  “You don’t say? Well, I’ll be. Makes you wonder what they’ll come up with next.”

  “So … you said that you met her one night?”

  “Oh, I sure did! Told the story many times. Was even on TV once.”

  “Would you mind telling it again now?”

  “Not at all. Nice of you to not think I’m some kinda kook.”

  “I believe the stories. So, please …”

  * * *

  As the winch pulls taught and the tow truck begins moving the demolished car up the incline, the State Police detective looks at the man standing next to him and says: “Mind if I ask you another question?”

  The other man shakes his head and wipes something from one of his eyes. “I don’t know what else I can tell you but, okay.”

  “Do you have any idea what he was doing all the way out here? I mean, a man his age had to’ve known that driving from Ohio to here in the middle of winter was risky. I just can’t help but think he was really determined to do something or see someone. Do you have any ideas?”

  The other man shakes his head once again. “I swear to you, I don’t have the slightest clue.”

  Something in the man’s voice makes it clear to the detective that he’s lying. The detective begins to speak, thinks better of it, and stands in silence. No reason to push the poor guy. The detective thinks, Does anything good ever last in this pitiful world? Then decides he’d rather not know the answer.

  * * *

  She’s made it as far as the bend in Archer Avenue when she hears the sound of a car, but the wind makes it impossible to tell from which direction the vehicle is approaching. She decides it doesn’t matter. She can barely feel her feet or hands. Even if the car is going in the opposite direction, no one with a soul and an ounce of compassion would leave her out in the cold, not on this night.

  She moves toward the middle of the road and begins looking both in front of and behind her, then begins waving her arms. Soon, she sees the glow of headlights coming around the bend straight toward her. Oh, how wonderful! They are going in her direction. She opens her mouth to shout at the driver and steps to the side, away from the oncoming vehicle, but a sudden gust of wind causes her to lose her balance and her white shoes slip on a patch of black ice and she gasps, spins, and stumbles into the path of the car.

  * * *

  “Sis? It’s Joseph. Listen, I’m over at Dad’s house and—what?”

  “I said, do you know what time it is?”

  “Yes, and I’m sorry, but I’ve been trying to call Dad for the last three days and haven’t gotten an answer.”

  “Oh, God. Is he all right?”

  “He’s not even here! The car’s gone. He left an envelope for us with a bunch of stuff in it—a copy of his will, his bank book, his stock certificates, the deed to the house—he made it out to you—and … and there’s a letter.”

  “What’s it say?”

  “No, not over the phone. Can you come over? I called the police and I have to wait here.”

  “I’ll be there in an hour. Are you okay?”

  “Hell, no. But thanks for asking.”

  “Where do you suppose he could’ve gone?”

  “When you get here. I’ll tell you everything when you get here.”

  * * *

  The driver of the semi doesn’t see the parked car until he’s right on top of it, and by then there’s no time to hit the brakes or swerve, not on this road and not with all the black ice. The front of his truck slams into the car and pushes it along the road for several yards, sparks flying, shattered glass spitting up against his windshield, before finally smashing into a snowman in the middle of the road, splattering it all over before the car at last dislodges and rolls down the incline by the side of the road.

  The driver beats his steering wheel and screams a torrent of profanities, but does not stop. The snow and wind are coming in almost full-force now, and if he’s late with this delivery, it’s his ass.

  Stupid asshole should’ve known better than to park there in this weather, anyway, he thinks. What kind of nutcase leaves their car and goes to build a fucking snowman in the middle of the road?
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br />   A few miles later, the driver notices the blood in a few of the larger, icy clumps of snow that have lodged up against the center of the windshield, in that no man's land the wipers can never quite reach.

  Oh, God, please … please, no.

  He eases off to the side of the road and parks the semi, then grabs a flashlight from under the seat, opens the door, stands on the running board, and shines the light onto the hood.

  Blood and hair. There is blood and hair in the clumps of ice and snow. He shakes his head. No, it was just a snowman, that’s all. Snowmen don’t bleed. It must’ve been a bird. Yeah, that’s it. He must have hit a bird and not noticed.

  Birds don’t have hair, whispers something in the back of his conscience, where the light doesn’t quite reach.

  “No,” Rudy says out loud. “No. It was a bird. Snowmen don’t bleed.” And that helps. Not a lot, but some. So he drives on, his hands shaking, knowing that it couldn’t have been a bird but telling himself it was, anyway, over and over, knowing full well that this is going to haunt him for the rest of his life.

  * * *

  “—well, she was a sweet thing, no denying that. Long blonde hair and the prettiest face. She kind of reminded me of my youngest daughter. Anyway, she was at the Willowbrook—used to the O’Henry years ago, until the new owners bought it and decided things needed to be, you know, updated and such.

  “She come over and asked me for a dance and I figured, why not, she was awful courteous—not like the girls these days—and we had ourselves a nice little dance. Oh, you should’ve seen how she was dressed! Long white dress, real fancy-like, and shoes to match. I know this sounds corny as hell, but she looked like some of them paintings you see of angels.