by Frank Conroy
“Coffee and apple pie.”
“Who’s this, your relief?” she asked, nodding at me. Mother and Alison were asleep in the car.
“That’s right,” said Jean.
“What’s your pleasure, honey?”
“Cherry pie and a glass of milk.”
We watched her walk to the end of the counter. Her white uniform was spotless.
We ate silently, slightly stunned at being out of the car. The pie was bad, sweet and gelatinous inside and soggy outside. Jean ordered more coffee to stay awake. A truck driver dropped some coins in the juke box.
“There it is again,” I said.
“Look at the build on that guy.” Jean was watching the truck driver, an immense fellow with shoulders twice as wide as his own. “I wouldn’t mix with him,” he said unnecessarily. A slight man, Jean had never, as far as I knew, mixed with anybody. But as a boxing fan he knew the language and enjoyed salting his speech with an occasional fight reference. It took me years to discover the surprising fact that Jean was somewhat self-conscious about his body. He thought he was too thin, and despite his height had the touchiness of a small man. He saw all forms of beauty dimly, but most particularly his own. The delicacy and grace of form that had been the delight of so many women went unrecognized by the owner. If he’d had the discipline he would have ruined himself by working out with bar bells.
The waitress returned. “There’s a shower and stuff in the back if you want.”
Jean looked up. “No. I guess the coffee will keep me awake. Thanks.”
Outside, we walked through the hot black air toward the car. Gravel crackled under our feet. “Good-looking woman,” Jean said.
“The waitress? But she only had one eye!”
Half to himself, his voice fading as we went around opposite sides of the car, he said, “If the rest of her is real it doesn’t make too much difference about the eye.”
Jean started the motor and worked the tall, floor-mounted gear shift. We rolled onto the highway and the diner fell behind us, bars of light drifting slowly around the interior of the car, waning, angling into nothing. In the darkness we heard the wind, the humming of the engine, the steady creaking and rumbling of the old chassis as we gathered speed, rushing back into a trance. Alison leaned forward and asked sleepily, “Where are we?”
“Nowhere,” I said. “Virginia. Go back to sleep.”
“I feel like I’ve been on this trip all my life,” she said, sinking back under her blanket.
4
White Days and Red Nights
JEAN and my mother had weekend jobs as wardens at the Southbury Training School, a Connecticut state institution for the feeble-minded. Every Friday afternoon we drove out deep in the hills to an old cabin they had bought for a few hundred dollars on the installment plan.
The first dirt road was always plowed for the milk truck, but never the second, and in the snow you could see the tracks of wagon wheels and two narrow trails where the horses had walked. A mile down the road was the Greens’ farm. Every morning they hauled milk to the pick-up station, a full silent load up to the hill, and then back, the empty returns from the previous day clanging raucously behind the horses as if in melancholic celebration. No one else ever used the road. If it was passable we drove to the cabin, if not, we walked, single file, in the horses’ tracks, our arms full of food.
Every Friday the cheap padlock was opened, every Friday I stepped inside. A room so dim my blood turned gray, so cold I knew no human heart had ever beaten there—every line, every article of furniture, every scrap of paper on the floor, every burned-out match in a saucer filling me with desolation, depopulating me. A single room, twelve feet by eighteen. A double bed, a bureau, a round table to eat on, and against the wall a counter with a kerosene cooker. In the exact center of the room, a potbellied coal stove. All these objects had been watched by me in a state of advanced terror, watched so many long nights that even in the daytime they seemed to be whispering bad messages.
My mother would make a quick meal out of cans. Corned-beef hash or chili. Conversation was usually sparse.
“I have a good cottage tonight.”
“I can’t remember where I am. We’d better stop at the administration building.”
Outside, the lead-gray afternoon slipped almost imperceptibly into twilight. Very gradually the earth moved toward night and as I sat eating I noted every darkening shadow. Jean sipped his coffee and lighted a Pall Mall. My mother arranged the kerosene lamp so she could see to do the dishes.
“Frank, get me some water.”
Through the door and into the twilight, the bucket against my thigh. There was a path beaten through the snow, a dark line curving through the drifts to the well. The low sky was empty, uniformly leaden. Stands of trees spread pools of darkness, as if night came up from their sunken roots. At the well I tied a rope to the handle of the bucket and dropped it into the darkness upside down, holding the line. The trick was not to hit the sides. I heard a muffled splash. Leaning over the deep hole, with the faintest hint of warmer air rising against my face, I hauled the bucket hand over hand until it rose suddenly into view, the dim sky shimmering within like some luminous oil. Back to the house with the water. Absolute silence except for the sounds of my own movement, absolute stillness except for a wavering line of smoke from the stovepipe.
While Mother did the dishes Jean and I sat at the table. He sipped at his second cup of coffee. I fished a dime out of my pocket. “Could you get me a couple of Baby Ruth bars?”
Jean sucked his teeth and reached for a wooden pick. “The stuff is poison. It rots your teeth.”
“Oh Jean, I know. It won’t take you a second. There’s a stand in the administration building.”
“You’re so finicky about food and you go and eat that stuff. Can you imagine the crap in those mass-produced candy bars? Dead roaches and mouse shit and somebody’s nose-pickings.”
“Jean, for heaven’s sake!” My mother laughed.
“Well, he won’t touch a piece of perfectly good meat and then he’ll eat that junk.”
“It’ll only take you a second.” I pushed the dime across the table.
“I know the trouble with you. You’re too lazy to chew your food. You wash everything down with milk.” He glanced at the coin, his eyes flicking away. “All right. If you want to kill yourself. Keep the dime.” He finished his coffee and cigarette slowly, savoring the mixed flavors and the moment of rest. Since he’d stopped using the holder his smoking style had changed. He’d take a quick drag, blow out about a third of the smoke immediately, inhale the rest, and let it come out as he talked. I often made it a point to sit in such a way that a strong light source behind him showed up the smoke. It was amazing how long it came out, a fine, almost invisible blue stream, phrase after phrase, changing direction smoothly as he clipped off the words. For some reason I admired this phenomenon tremendously. I could sit watching for hours.
Jean pushed back his chair and stood up, stretching his arms and yawning exaggeratedly. Even this he did gracefully. Like a cat, he was incapable of making an awkward move. Looking out the window he sucked his teeth noisily. “Well,” he said slowly, “the lions and tigers seem to be under control tonight.”
I felt my face flush and quickly turned away. It was a complicated moment. My fear of staying alone in the house had been totally ignored for weeks. For Jean to mention it at all was somehow promising, and I was grateful despite the unfairness of his phrasing. He knew of course that it wasn’t lions and tigers I was afraid of—by using that image he was attempting to simplify my fear into the realm of childishness (which he could then ignore in good conscience) as well as to shame me out of it. Jean was telling me, with a smile, that my behavior was irrational and therefore he could do nothing to help me, something I would never have expected in any case. I knew perfectly well that no one could help me. The only possible solution would have been for me to stay in the city on weekends with Alison, but that battle had been l
ost. Jean and Mother wanted me with them. Not because they felt they had to look after me but because I was useful. I drew the water. I tended the fire so the house would be warm in the morning when they returned.
“We’d better go,” Mother said, lifting the last dripping dish from the plastic basin. “Frank, you dry the dishes and put them away.”
I watched their preparations with a sense of remoteness. It was as if they were already gone. Mother dried her hands carefully and put on her heavy coat. Jean bent over the row of paperback books and pulled out an Erskine Caldwell. “I won’t be able to read tonight but I’ll take it anyway.”
“All right?” Mother asked. They stood for a last moment, waiting, making sure they hadn’t forgotten anything, sensing in each other the precise moment to leave. Then they were through the door and away. I followed a few moments later, stepping in their footprints to the road. I watched them walk into the darkness underneath the trees. My mother turned at the top of a rise and called back to me over the snow. “Don’t forget to set the alarm!” She hurried to catch up with Jean. As they moved down the hill it was as if they sank deeper and deeper into the snow. Dimly I could make out the top halves of their bodies, then only their shoulders, their heads, and they were gone.
I went back to the house. After an initial surge of panic my mind turned itself off. Thinking was dangerous. By not thinking I attained a kind of inner invisibility. I knew that fear attracted evil, that the uncontrolled sound of my own mind would in some way delineate me to the forces threatening me, as the thrashing of a fish in shallow water draws the gull. I tried to keep still, but every now and then the fear escalated up into consciousness and my mind would stir, readjusting itself like the body of a man trying to sleep in an uncomfortable position. In those moments I felt most vulnerable, my eyes widening and my ears straining to catch the sound of approaching danger.
I dried the dishes slowly and put them away, attempting to do the whole job without making a sound. Occasionally a floorboard creaked under my weight, sending a long, lingering charge up my spine, a white thrill at once delicious and ominous. I approached the stove nervously. The coal rattled and the cast-iron grate invariably banged loudly despite my precautions. I had to do it quickly, holding my breath, or I wouldn’t do it at all. Once finished I checked the window latches. There was nothing to be done about the door; it couldn’t be locked from the inside and mother refused to lock it from the outside because of the danger of my getting trapped in a fire.
By the yellow light of the kerosene lamp I sat on the edge of the bed and removed my shoes, placing them carefully on the floor. The Big Ben alarm clock ticked off the seconds on a shelf above my head, and every now and then a puff of coal gas popped in the stove as the fuel shifted. I got under the covers fully clothed and surveyed the stillness of the room, trying to slow my breathing. For an hour or more I lay motionless in a self-induced trance, my eyes open but seldom moving, my ears listening to the sounds of the house and the faint, inexplicable, continuous noises from outside. (In this state my ears seemed rather far away. I was burrowed somewhere deep in my skull, my ears advance outposts sending back reports to headquarters.) As I remember it the trance must have been close to the real thing. It was an attempt to reach an equipoise of fear, a state in which the incoming fear signals balanced with some internal process of dissimulation. At best it worked only temporarily, since fear held a slight edge. But for an hour or two I avoided what I hated most, the great noisy swings up and down. The panic and the hilarity.
At the first flashing thought of the Southbury Training School I sat up and took a book from the shelf. Escaped inmates were rare, and supposedly harmless, but I knew that a runaway had ripped the teats from one of the Greens’ cows with a penknife, and that another had strangled four cats in a barnyard. I read quickly, skimming the pages for action and dialogue while most of my mind stood on guard. Book after book came down from the shelf, piling up on the bed beside me as I waited for sleep. I knew that if I left the lamp on I would stay awake most of the night, so when the pages began to go out of focus I set the alarm clock, cupped my hand over the mouth of the lamp chimney and blew myself into darkness.
Being sleepy and being scared do not cancel each other out. After hours of waiting the mind insists and slips under itself into unconsciousness. The sleeping body remains tense, the limbs bent as if poised for flight, adrenalin oozing steadily into the blood. Every few minutes the mind awakens, listens, and goes back to sleep. Fantastic dreams attempt to absorb the terror, explaining away the inexplicable with lunatic logic, twisting thought to a mad, private vision so that sleep can go on for another few seconds.
I wake up in the dark, a giant hand squeezing my heart. All around me a tremendous noise is splitting the air, exploding like a continuous chain of fireworks. The alarm clock! My God, the clock! Ringing all this time, calling, calling, bringing everything evil. I reach out and shut it off. The vibrations die out under my fingers and I listen to the silence, wondering if anything has approached under the cover of the ringing bell. (Remember a children’s game called Giant Steps?)
I sit up cautiously. My body freezes. Rising before me over the foot of the bed is a bright, glowing, cherry-red circle in the darkness, a floating globe pulsating with energy, wavering in the air like the incandescent heart of some dissected monster, dripping sparks and blood. I throw myself backward against the wall behind the bed. Books tumble around me from the shelves, an ashtray falls and smashes on the floor. My hands go out, palms extended, towards the floating apparition, my voice whispering “Please ...” Impossibly a voice answers, a big voice from all around me. “FRANK! FRANK!” My knees give out and I fall off the bed to the floor. I can feel the pieces of broken ashtray under my hands.
From the corner of my eye I see the red circle. I keep quite still, and the circle doesn’t move. If I turn my head I seem to sense a corresponding movement, but I can’t be sure. In the blackness there is nothing to relate to. Step by step I begin to understand. My body grows calmer and it’s as if a series of veils were being whisked away from my eyes. I see clearly that the circle is only the red-hot bottom of the stove—a glowing bowl, its surface rippling with color changes from draughts of cool air. The last veil lifts and reveals an image of magic beauty, a sudden miracle in the night. I fall asleep watching it, my shoulder against the bed.
Hours later the cold wakes me and I climb up under the covers. When dawn comes my limbs relax. I can tell when dawn has come even though I’m asleep.
I woke up when the wagon went by, creaking like a ship, passing close, just on the other side of the wall by my head. Chip would be driving, I knew, with Toad in back watching the cans. They never spoke as they went by. Sometimes Chip would murmur to the horses, “Haw, gee-aw.” The traces rang quietly and the tall iron-rimmed wheels splintered rocks under the snow.
It was hard to get out of bed. The air was cold. Water froze in the bucket and the windows were coated with ice. The light was gray, exactly the same quality as the twilight of the night before, devoid of meaning. I cleaned out the stove, laid paper, a few sticks of kindling and some coal, splashed kerosene over everything, and struck a match. With a great whoosh the stove filled with flames. My teeth chattering, I rushed back under the covers. I fell asleep waiting to get warm.
When Jean and my mother came through the door I woke up. They seemed tremendously alive, bustling with energy, their voices strangely loud.
“It’s freezing in here. What happened to the fire?” I sat up in bed. The fire had gone out, or more likely had never caught after the kerosene had burned.
“You forgot to set the alarm,” my mother said.
“No I didn’t.”
She knelt and relit the fire. Jean stood in the open doorway, knocking snow off his galoshes. He closed the door and sat on the edge of the bed, bending over to open the buckles. “My God, it’s cold. We should have stayed in Florida.”
“I vote for that,” I said.
“Just
get your ass out of that bed.” He rubbed his stocking feet and twisted up his face. “How about some coffee?”
“Just a second,” my mother said, still fussing with the stove.
Jean stood up and undid his belt. “Okay. Let’s go.” He waited till I was out of bed, took off his trousers, and climbed in. The heavy black and red flannel shirt he wore in cold weather was left on, buttoned tight over his narrow chest. He ran a finger over his mustache and waited for his cup of coffee.
Mother made it for him while I fixed myself a bowl of cornflakes.
“It’s not very much to ask to keep the stove going,” my mother said. “I never ask you to do anything.”
I ate my cornflakes. The stove was beginning to give off a little heat and I pulled my chair closer, arranging it so my back was to the bed. I heard Mother undressing, and then the creak of the rusty springs as she got in beside Jean. From that moment on I was supposed to keep quiet so they could sleep.
There was no place else to go. Outside the land was hidden under two and a half feet of snow. The wind was sharp and bitter (I found out later that locals considered it the worst winter in forty years) and in any case I didn’t have the proper clothes. Even indoors, sitting in the chair with the stove going, I kept a blanket wrapped around me Indian style. The time dragged slowly. There was nothing to do. I tried to save the few books for nighttime, when my need of them was greater. I drew things with a pencil—objects in the room, my hand, imaginary scenes—but I was no good and quickly lost interest. Usually I simply sat in the chair for six or seven hours. Jean snored softly, but after the first hour or so I stopped hearing it.
Midway through the morning I remembered the candy bars. Certain Jean had forgotten them, I looked anyway, getting up from the chair carefully, tiptoeing to his clothes and searching through the pockets. Nothing. I watched him in bed, his face gray with sleep, his open mouth twitching at the top of each gentle snore. My mother turned to the wall. Jean closed his mouth and rolled over. The room was absolutely silent. I went back to the chair.