The Critical List

by Wenke, John;

  Where a stand of evergreens darkened the day, I pointed to a round three-footer.

  “How about that one?” I said. Z-Man stopped, and I set the wheelbarrow down. “I have a big plastic pot in the garage. It’ll fit perfect. I can set it up in your living room. I’ll even plant it for you in the spring.”

  “That’s too small. I got one picked out already. Up here.”

  The tree he wanted was six feet tall and full bellied.

  “It’s too big.”

  “It’s perfect. Marge has decorations from some of her marriages.”

  Marge was forty-something and had three bad marriages to show for it. She was also mother to two grown girls, loose in the world, probably hanging on somewhere near the end of the road.

  “I’ll dig no more than fifteen minutes. If I don’t get around the root-ball by then, I’m taking one of those three-foot jobs. If Marge doesn’t like it, she can eat my shorts.”

  Z-Man bent over and whooped, cranking his torso back up in one strained motion, his face a gasping spasm of laughter. “I’d pay to see that! Soak ’em in beer and she’d eat n’em right off your butt.”

  He whooped some more. It was getting on my nerves, so I shook my head and fell to work. After raking the leaves and exposing the ground, I was surprised at how easily the loamy soil found its way into mounds of tumbling stone and flint-like shale that might have been arrowheads. It didn’t take long, and I grabbed the trunk and wobbled the tree. I got down into a three by four ditch, shoved the spade clear under the roots, and lifted the tree straight up. With the roots concentrated in a mass and most of the dirt knocked off, I slow-danced the sucker right into the wheelbarrow. I looked for Z-Man, who was five feet behind me, kicking a mess of leaves into a pile.

  “Hey, Z, you’re gonna have to walk alongside and hold the top of the tree. Otherwise, I won’t be able to work the han—” I stopped, shocked by what I saw, a white human hand visible through the leaves.

  “God help us! So that’s it!”

  “What’s it?” he squealed. He pointed to the sky and screamed, “Look at that bird! It’s a frigging white heron.”

  I was out of the ditch. I brushed away the leaves. In seconds, Marge’s stone-set face, eyes clamped shut, seemed a twisted mask. Brown crumpled leaves stuck to her frizzled gray hair.

  “You killed her and wanted me to bury her.”

  “That’s not it!” His hands were clawing his hard white collar like it was choking him. He was looking into the trees. “You’re just digging a hole. You’re digging up a Christmas tree.”

  “I’m taking you into custody.”

  “You ain’t a cop.”

  “Sure I am. All I did was turn in my badge.”

  “Look, Tom, I can’t be doing time. I’d be prison-bitched from here to the moon.”

  “Are you even sure she’s dead? You can’t always be sure they’re dead.”

  He didn’t answer. I walked over and knelt down. I put the back of my right fingers to her cheek. It was ivory cold. Marble. I stood up.

  “Tom, listen to me. I didn’t do it.”

  “They all say that.”

  “I didn’t, but if you don’t believe me, the Smokey Bear cats sure as hell won’t. I’m trying to save my ass! She was drunked up this morning and started doing me with a baseball bat. I was jumping around like some kind of monkey. She chased me to the kitchen and slipped on this beer slick and smashed the back of her head on the handle of the refrigerator. Right on the point of it. Then she didn’t move. I pumped her chest and blew in her mouth, but she stayed there. I couldn’t find no pulse. I figured the cops’d say I did it, so I piggy-backed her out here. I’d have dug a hole myself but carrying her did something to my neck. I can’t even bend over.”

  “You should’ve called 911.”

  “She was gone, and nobody would believe I didn’t whomp her behind her head.”

  Z-Man was making his way around me, the limp all gone, and backing toward the path. I moved toward him, hoping I wouldn’t have to run him down and tackle him.

  “When the police get the facts, they won’t even charge you. Do it this way and you’re acting like a guilty man.”

  “Woooooo!” he shouted. He held both hands to his cheeks, turned, and bolted down the path.

  Behind me leaves were swashing. I looked to find Marge sitting up, her head wobbling. Her eyes were little open slits and her mouth was sagging like a crooked oval.

  “Tell that bum—come back—here! Who are you?”

  “It’s me. Tom Clark. From next door. You know me.”

  I walked over, knelt on one knee, hooked my hand under her arms and pulled. She was a stack of stones, tumbling and inert. She lay back on the leaves, both hands on her head.

  “What happened, Marge? What happened at the house?”

  “What—am I doing here? My head—hurts. He drank—all my beer. I—blacked out. Where—am I?”

  “He says you hit your head on the refrigerator.”

  “What we—doing here?”

  “Do you remember?”

  “That our new tree? Where is—the bum?”

  “Yeah, that’s your tree. I dug it up. Did he hit you?”

  “I’m gonna—beat the stuffing out—of that—no good bum. He drank all my—beer.”

  “I need to get you to an ambulance.”

  “We’re—in the woods. Did I—black out?”

  Maybe Marge fell. Maybe her head needed bashing. These domestic disturbances were never anything but hell. When I was a cop, I often thought that a lot of the citizens I was sworn to protect were more trouble than the career criminals who preyed on them.

  “You did. You passed out when I was digging up the tree. You had too much beer.”

  By the time I talked to the paramedics, I’d have Marge’s story all patched up. I’d have to tell Z-Man what happened.

  “Lucky I brought the wheelbarrow, Marge. I’ll take you back in it. I’ll go to my house and call you an ambulance. Maybe Eric ran ahead to call one himself.”

  “I’ll kill—that bum. He needs to get—the tree up.”

  I rolled the wheelbarrow over, got behind her, and lifted. I buckled under her weight, but I managed to tilt her on her heels, spin her to the side, and get her big behind into the bed of the wheelbarrow.

  “I’m taking you for a little ride.”

  “I need—a beer. Hair of—the dog. But we ain’t got no dog.”

  “You’re going to the emergency room. I think you got a concussion. Maybe a fractured skull.”

  “What’s that?”

  She pointed to the wobbled tree.

  “Your tree. While I was digging it up, you fell backwards and smashed your head on a pointed rock. You were too drunk to stand.”

  “Oh. Is it—Christmas yet? I love—Christmas. The Savior—coming.”

  “In three days.”

  “I told him—last week. Get—a tree. Silver bells. Put an angel—on top!”

  “I’ll come back later, after work. I’ll get the tree and set it up. Lucy and I will help Eric decorate it. But now we gotta get going. You need to see a doctor and I have to get to the post office.” I was pushing my load up the forest path. The back of her head was a bloody mash of leaves and gray hair. “You’ll probably be in the hospital for a little while, but with some luck, he’ll bring you home for Christmas.”

  A Good Samaritan Will Stop

  Mavis Martin slips the cordless to her left ear. “Got to go. He’s here.”

  His shiny gold Toyota Avalon stops in the middle of the curved street. He sticks his hand out the window and uses his whole arm to fan the air forward.

  “Three times he’s come to pick me up, and three times he’s driven past the driveway. I mean, is that a sign of something?”

  A FedEx truck creeps around the Avalon f
ollowed by a farting motorcycle.

  “I think you’re on edge,” her sister Eleanor says, “because you never clarified the plans. You should’ve just told him up-front you only reserved one room.”

  “It’s not just a room. It’s a suite. Three hundred a night. Convention rates and it isn’t even the season. Not that money matters.”

  “Worst case scenario: you get the award. He’s there to see it. He’s standing next to you, this trophy TV guy. Then you get back to the room, and he winds up sleeping on the couch.”

  Out the window, the Avalon backs down the street but stops as a school bus grunts, screeches, and lumbers past. With the way clear, the car lurches across the road and humps into the driveway, barely missing the tall blooming lilac. In the breeze, the violet cones jostle like pompoms.

  “The whole thing could be embarrassing. I mean, what if he thinks I’m forward?”

  “You’re thinking like a nun. You’ve been married. He’s been married. Just be straight. Pretend you’re in a movie. You got the condoms, and he has a choice.”

  Charles stops his car on the far side of the blacktop. The bright April sun dabs the hood, washes the windshield, and skitters off the roof. The trunk lid pops. After closing the living room curtain, Mavis retreats up the creaking hardwood steps. She plops on her bed and sinks into a mound of pillows. On the ceiling, little lines of light quiver, intersect, and separate.

  “He’s only ever pecked me on the lips and that was only when he was leaving. He’ll take my hand but only if we’re crossing a street. How do I read this? I knew how to read Allen. If he had five beers, he wanted sex. Six beers, he fell asleep. But it’s different, too, because Charles isn’t divorced. His wife’s dead.”

  Eleanor isn’t listening. She’s screaming at her ten and twelve-year-old sons for wrestling in the living room, their turbines spinning out of control after three days of snowbound incarceration. With Dover, Delaware pulsing to the teasing niceties of spring, Mavis is trying to picture the frayed, blasted tundra of suburban Duluth. Eleanor’s breath stabs Mavis’ ear.

  “They cracked one of the coffee table legs right in half.”

  Waiting for the doorbell to ring, Mavis squeezes her eyes shut; backyard fir trees bend and swish among whirling gusts and rippling snowdrifts.

  “They were rolling around like monkeys. Laughing and jabbering. I smacked both of them. I don’t give an ‘f’ how big they are. Why couldn’t I have had girls?”

  Through the open upstairs window, Mavis hears the car door slam. Leaping up and hustling to the window, she sees Charles sauntering to his open trunk in shiny white slacks and crisp blue Oxford shirt. Under his arm, he carries a matching white jacket. He lifts out a suitcase and a garment bag.

  “I had girls,” Mavis says, a picture flashing of Marci and Toni sunning on the University of South Carolina campus. “Girls aren’t any better. If you can hear the boys, you at least have some idea what they’re doing. When my girls were growing up, they were sneaky. They’re still sneaky. We were sneaky.”

  Charles leaves his bags in the driveway and walks up the winding flagstone path. He’s early fifty-something, but even with the graying brownish hair, he carries the trim look of Robert Redford youthfulness. At forty-two, Mavis has been dyeing her hair for five years but otherwise keeping it together, only slightly losing out to the slumps of gravity: falling arches, sagging breasts, settling jowls.

  Charles climbs the front porch steps. Mavis pulls away from the window.

  “He’s about to ring the bell. I’ll let you know what happens. I’m just nervous as hell.”

  “Lighten up. He wouldn’t be there if he didn’t want to be. A power player in his position can get it any time he wants.”

  The doorbell burbles.

  “It’s not about sex. I’m worried that he doesn’t find me attractive, that he sees me as a one of those awful companions. I’ve only asked him places. He’s never asked me anywhere.”

  The bell rings again.

  “Eleanor, let me go. I’ll call you Sunday.”

  After poking the kill switch, Mavis cracks down the steps and drops the phone on the foyer settee. The chimes burble a third time, giving the kind of perky sound you might hear at the beginning of a funny movie about everyday life in heaven.

  In the glass, Charles sees his bleached-out ghostly face. Perhaps she’s bustling upstairs or in the back locking up or maybe just making him wait like Meg used to do—a balance of power thing. He glances away from the door and eyes his escape route, the curving flagstone walk crowded by pink and white azaleas.

  Locks clatter and the door swings wide. Mavis pushes open the full-glassed storm door, smiling.

  “Sorry for the hold up. I was on the phone with my sister. They’re having a blizzard, and her kids are going crazy.”

  “She’s in Minnesota, right? The one with two boys.”

  “That’s Eleanor, freezing on the edge of beautiful Lake Hypothermia.”

  Charles crosses into the foyer and pats Mavis on the upper left arm. He’s very happy to see her. He also wishes he hadn’t come. He’s looking forward to this weekend away, even as he longs to be hunched at his desk, preparing to launch his trustworthy face into homes, bars, limousines, and conversion vans, taking his viewers on a packaged tour of the day’s doings, a cavalcade of sound bites, feel-good fluff, and odd tragedies from near and far—like the baby boy from Franklin, Delaware who yesterday sank through the earth and drowned in a decayed septic tank or last week’s shark attack in Pensacola, Florida. The shark bit off a boy’s arm, and his uncle wrestled the monster to the beach. A few bullets to the head and they got the arm back. But in two hours and ten minutes Sally Feeney, the weekend anchor, will sign on and announce, “Charles Conroy has the night off.” Then Sally will get to tell about the latest mujahideen attack in Kabul—a U. S. soldier shot in the head while waiting in line to buy a soft drink. These stories are always the same: everything is calm until everything explodes.

  “I have to feed the cat, check the doors, grab my bags, and we’re off.”

  “Can I help you with anything?”

  “No, I’m fine. I’ll only be a minute.”

  She disappears through a set of bi-fold doors.

  Meg’s voice tickles inside his ears. This foyer is super gauche. Green marble tile. Velvet couch. Fake stucco walls. All those knickknacks. You put this kind of junk in the house, it means you’re trying to prove something. There’s a good reason we always went austere.

  I wouldn’t worry about it, Meg. I couldn’t live here. Cats make me itch. Her living room’s like a fancy funeral parlor. A lot of dark wood and leather furniture.

  But what would she do to our house?

  I don’t think it’ll get that far.

  Then what are you even doing here?

  It’s a getaway weekend. It’s Rehoboth Beach and cocktail parties. She’s getting an award. I’ll applaud on cue. Beyond that, I don’t know. I’m allowed to look. She’s a good person. You’ve been gone three years.

  I’m never gone.

  From the kitchen, Charles hears the rattle of a cat food bag, a chorus of meows—three cats!—and the pinging rush of pebbly pellets filling large plastic bowls.

  “Mavis! I just remembered. I’m supposed to remind you to leave the downstairs toilet seat up.”

  “Thanks. Poopie sometimes turns over the water.”

  Already his nose is getting stuffy.

  The door is open. Just walk out.

  I can’t. I just got here.

  Something light—a feather—seems to graze his ear. He grabs for it and looks into his open palm. There’s nothing there.

  Mavis bursts through the doors and clicks into the foyer, dragging a large suitcase on wheels. She lets a garment bag slip to the floor and dumps a leather briefcase on the settee.

  “I wanted to make a qu
ick start, but here I am, running late.”

  “There’s no rush. Even if we take our time, we’ll be in Rehoboth before five.”

  You can be home in fifteen minutes.

  Meg! Shhh.

  “Good,” Mavis says. “We can relax a little bit. Cocktails are at six and dinner’s at seven. The speeches and stuff come later. I think I’m overdressed for the ride.”

  Mavis fingers the collar of her black linen jacket.

  She’d be better off wearing light slacks and a dark shirt instead of this black pants suit and mauve shirt. She’s been a doughty schoolmarm so long that when it’s finally time to dress she doesn’t know how.

  “You’re not overdressed at all. You look fine, stylish, in fact.”

  “Well, I’m nervous is what is it. What if I make a fool out of myself?”

  She reaches for the garment bag, but Charles beats her to it. He tucks her briefcase under his arm.

  “You can pull the suitcase.” He hates wheeled luggage. “And stop worrying. You won’t make a fool of yourself.”

  Fool. Fool. Fool. Fool. Fool.

  Stop it, Meg. You’ll make me laugh.

  “All those people looking at me. What do I know about making a speech?”

  “If you’re nervous about it, I can drive.”

  “You can’t drive. You said you’d read my speech and let me know how it is.”

  Fishing for compliments. Pathetic.

  “Relax. I’m sure your speech’ll be great. If you want, I can read while we drive. No problem. Two eyes, two hands, two feet. I’m always doing two things at once.”

  As Charles flips page after page of her triple-spaced script, Mavis tries to keep her white-knuckled grip from splitting the wheel into pieces. The traffic cluster of Dover’s capitol district has twisted her stomach into knots. She can’t wait to get beyond the last few strip malls of south Dover, a seemingly endless spew of dry cleaners, body shops, dollar stores, fast food joints, and pizza parlors. She runs a yellow light and gets to the cyclone fence enclosing Dover Air Force base. Two hundred yards away, a cargo plane with a belly the size of a football field creeps along a runway. Mavis’s chest tightens. She imagines a terrorist’s bomb transforming the C-130 into a radiating fireball that hurdles their way and turns the blacktop, the fence, her Chevy Tahoe, WXDR’s popular newscaster, the state of Delaware’s Principal of the Year, her speech, and the whole weekend into a billowing cloud of noxious black smoke.