In the Walled City

by Stewart O'Nan

  Walking back from the bus, he stopped at the Odd Lot to pick up some steel wool. It was a cheap store, piled to the ceiling with flimsy knotted pine and overpriced hardware from Taiwan that other stores couldn’t sell. The local contractors drove the twenty miles to the Pergament in Bohemia; here were only men like himself, husbands looking for a length of downspout or tube of caulking to keep the house together until the next crisis, whatever the cost. They stalked the aisles searching for one item, and when they found it strode to the checkout, paid in cash, and were out the door, in the car, and away. Carter knew the routine; he liked working with his hands. When the screen door came apart or the tiles in the shower stall began dropping, he would hop in the Valiant before Diane had a chance to call the problem to his attention and streak to the Pergament. He never remembered to ask for a receipt, but he did good work, and only the rare landlord argued.

  Carter was not familiar with the Odd Lot, and wandered through the aisles trying to discover some logic in the arrangement of pyramids of lacquer, baskets of flashlight batteries, and bins of drywall nails. All of it seemed to be on sale, each price jotted in the white center of the same fluorescent red explosion. He found a stretch of paint cans, above it a wall of brushes and rollers, but no scrapers or sandpaper, no steel wool. The woman at the counter said she didn’t remember any. Considering it a dead issue, she picked a microphone from its wall mount, and her voice burst godlike from the ceiling: “Fred, front, Fred.”

  Fred took him back to the paint cans and gave up. “We should be seeing some next week,” he said, doubtful.

  The two lawn chairs Mr. Katz and Manny were in the other day sat on the front lawn, getting rained on. Carter took his beer inside and set it on the stairs, went back out, folded the chairs and hauled them in, one in each hand.

  The dresser was waiting for him when he opened the door. He took off his coat by the closet, careful not to drip on the raw wood. He tried to drink his beer by the window, looking out on the matted patch the kids adapted to whatever they were playing, but the dresser lurked behind him, and he moved to the kitchen. He ate some questionable leftover chicken and, gathering himself for tomorrow —sunny, the weather said —buried himself under the covers and dreamed of the Pergament’s bright aisles.

  It was eighty the next morning; green shoots and tiny flowers fringed the gray mounds. Home owners showed up in pickups and rental trucks, dropped off their attic or basement clutter, then spun and dug their rear wheels into the loose dust. Far below at the base of the fill, a line of trucks formed at the scales, running along the access road, out the entrance, and down the county road in both directions. Carter and Lorena worked through break. It was the kind of day Carter loved. He unzipped his jumpsuit to the waist, peeled off the top and his T-shirt, and drove bare-chested, the sweat streaming down his arms. The sun climbed, then seemed to linger, high, and the afternoon flew. Even the crushed gulls couldn’t stop him whistling.

  At the Pergament he didn’t bother with a cart. The automatic doors welcomed him, and he strode to the paint aisle, scanned the bins, and found what he needed. He did a quick double check to make sure he was getting the best price, reread the label to make sure there was no mistake, and, sure of the rightness of the future and the goodness of humanity, strode toward the congested checkout. He chose the shortest line, and after browsing the display of ChapStick and correction fluid and pine tree air fresheners, peeked over at the other customers.

  In the next lane a pudgy, balding man about his age had a baby facing him in his cart. With her huge blue eyes and chubby face, the baby looked like Jessie. It took Carter a second, struggling with the notion that all babies are cute, all babies in their newness look a little alike, to realize it was, in fact, his daughter.

  The man looked past him, through him. His hair was brittle and frizzy around the bald spot, and he was wearing a neon tie-dyed T-shirt far too bright and tight for someone his age. Carter picked a Mickey Mouse night-light off the rack and pretended to scrutinize it. Mickey was dressed as a sorcerer, his cape and pointed hat emblazoned with moons and Saturns. The man had a few days gray growth of beard, and his face was subtly tinged yellow. The cart was empty; Jessie held the only thing they were going to buy —a molded, hard plastic ball for a Delta washerless faucet.

  “Here we go,” the man said, and pushed the cart up to the cashier.

  “Is that all you want, honey?” the cashier asked, bending to Jessie and reading the code so she wouldn’t have to take the package from her.

  Carter’s cashier —a stork of a boy with glasses and desperate acne —seemed to be having trouble. He stood staring at the register, a red telephone receiver jammed to his ear. Pinned to his apron was a button that said: Please Be Patient, I’m New.

  The register in the next lane clicked and chimed and kicked out its drawer. The man paid, smiling, and rolled Carter’s daughter away. Before they made the automatic doors, the man stopped before a tier of red-topped gumball machines, slipped a quarter out of his jeans and squatted, and, with Jessie directing, bought her something encased in a two-piece transparent plastic ball. She was still struggling to get it open when they disappeared outside.

  Carter looked at the night-light, shook it in his hand as if deciding whether to toss it away, then slid it back on its peg.

  After a turkey TV dinner, he worked fitfully, often stopping to sit on the couch with his arms crossed, sawdust itchy on his skin. His knee hurt; it was going to rain tomorrow. Mr. Katz and Manny were out on the lawn, the kids playing kick-the-can with his empty Hi-C, and Carter thought he could make up any lost time tomorrow. He turned his lights off and went out.

  “How goes it, Romeo?” Mr. Katz asked. He and Manny were trading a hand telescope, looking up at the stars. The telescope was a cheap tin souvenir from Boston with stylized pictures of Plymouth Plantation and the USS Constitution printed on the body. Carter waited his turn.

  “I think I see one,” Manny said. “Is there one with a car?”

  “Tell Carter about the shooting star we saw.”

  Manny leaned over to give Carter the telescope and his chair nearly tipped sideways. Carter couldn’t smell anything, but the old man’s eyes were in trouble. They’d been drinking, probably for some time, Carter thought. He drew the telescope to its length and looked up into the black. It actually worked —the stars jumped closer.

  “What we saw was a meteor,” Manny said, “that’s what a shooting star is. And for those of you who don’t know, this is the season for meteor showers.”

  “Who the hell doesn’t know that?” Mr. Katz said. “You’d have to be a know-nothing not to know that.”

  “So I suppose you know where the largest recorded meteor landed?”

  “Yonkers.”

  “Siberia,” Manny said, “and it had so much radiation on it, no one could live there. They’re still not living there, that’s how bad it is.”

  “What?” said Mr. Katz, “what are you telling me here?”

  “God’s honest truth,” Manny said. “Turned all the plants into cannibals.”

  “Carter, tell Manny here he missed his medication.”

  “Siberia,” Carter said, still looking up, the eyepiece cold on his socket.

  “Yeah,” Manny said.

  “Sure,” Carter said. “Who’d want to live there anyway?”

  “Siberians,” Mr. Katz said. “You wouldn’t be talking like that to a roomful of Siberians.”

  “You’re right,” Carter said, “I wouldn’t.”

  “Trade,” Manny said, and jabbed a pint of blackberry brandy at him, spilling some. Carter tilted it back; in the distance, the Hi-C can clattered over the parking lot. “Oily Oily Olsen Free-O!” a girl called. Carter tipped the bottle back again.

  “Keep it moving,” Mr. Katz said.

  “I’ll get the next one,” said Carter.

  He paid for it the next morning, gloriously bright. His knee no longer ached, and he wanted to think a storm had skirted the island, pas
sed roaring over the night sea. Lorena knew he was hurting, and let him rest when traffic was light. It was easily ninety; the flowers dried up and rotted like everything else. He drank soda from the machine, sat sweating in his cab, daubing his face with his balled shirt. On the bus, he took a chill from the air-conditioning, which the long walk down the shimmering Floyd melted out of him. He opened his door and stood there on the threshold, parched and wrung, before the unfinished gift.

  He called, half expecting a man to answer.

  “Carter,” she said, disappointed, annoyed, “what is it?”

  “Is this guy living with you?”

  “That is none of your business,” she said, “and I’m not going to discuss it with you —and not over the phone.”

  “You’re sleeping with him, aren’t you?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said, and kicked the dresser so hard it rocked back. His toe felt broken, but he clung to the phone. “He fixed your faucet, he’s living with you.”

  “Are you all right?” Diane asked.

  “I’m fine!” Carter shouted, and slammed the receiver down before he began to sob outright.

  The phone rang but he wouldn’t pick it up. Later, he heard Mr. Katz and Manny in the hall. His lights were off; they’d think he was out. He moved from the couch to his bed and closed the bedroom door so he wouldn’t have to see the dresser.

  Maybe it was Friday, maybe it was the coming summer —the promise of ease, the luxury of sun —but the next morning, walking to the bus, Carter could not help but thrill to the lucky wood-chuck skittering across all four lanes into the green ditch. His toe was not broken, only stoved, and she had called back, hadn’t she? Sunday wasn’t far. He hummed on the bus.

  Rain walked in after lunch. He and Lorena were gabbing on the blower —she was going on a fishing charter tomorrow with his father —when she stopped and said, “Ten o’clock high.” Far off, black and low, a shoal of clouds rolled shadows over the bay. His speaker crackled, the wind sent trash scattering like leaves, and rain pelted the dust.

  “Sunday,” he said. “All I need is a ride over; I can take the bus back myself.”

  “So what should I say to him?” Lorena asked. “Can I say you said hi?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “What else?”

  “I don’t care,” Carter said. “Tell him he was right and I was wrong.”

  “Seriously.”

  “Seriously,” Carter said.

  It was still pouring when Carter stepped off the bus. He had not brought an umbrella and got home soaked. He hung his clothes over the tub, put on his old laundromat uniform, ripped open the bag of steel wool, and went to work.

  Mr. Katz and Manny stopped by a few minutes before dark and invited him out.

  “I would but I’ve got to get this done.”

  “It’s for his wife.”

  “I didn’t know,” Manny said.

  “That’s red oak,” Mr. Katz said, and sat down on the couch.

  “Black cherry,” Manny said, sitting next to him.

  “Next thing you’ll be telling me it’s cream soda.”

  “You guys want to help?” Carter asked.

  “No,” Mr. Katz said.

  “You’re doing fine by yourself,” Manny said.

  They left when he pried open the stain.

  Saturday he put on a second coat, shellacked it once around dinner and again at midnight, and Sunday morning, with the help of Manny and Mr. Katz, he was standing beside the dresser in the parking lot when Lorena pulled up. The sky was high and bright, the beach traffic heavy early. It was the kind of Sunday, Carter thought, when you could believe in God as long as you didn’t have to go to church. He wrapped the dresser in the army blanket and all four of them eased it into the trunk, upside down. They made a ceremony of seeing him off, as if he were on a suicide mission.

  “Your father said he might give you a call,” Lorena said on the way over.

  “That would be good.”

  They kept to the right lane; other cars bombed by.

  “He gives you a lot of credit, more than you think.”

  “Okay,” Carter said.

  In the foyer of his old place, he thanked Lorena and she wished him luck. He rang the bell under their mailbox. The dresser suddenly seemed small and fussy, and he thought the whole thing was a mistake —like the guy giving him the finger from the speeding car, not fate but coincidence.

  The door clicked and buzzed, and Carter opened it and wedged a folded Chinese take-out flyer under it. He lifted the dresser, knees bent, hunched around the one end as if catching it, and maneuvered it through the door, sacrificing his hands rather than nick the wood. Inside, he put it down to close the door, then carried it halfway down the hall to the elevator. When he got the dresser to her door, he took a minute to catch his breath and comb his hair. He sniffed the good white shirt he had on, plucking the shoulder and holding it to his nose, then squared himself and the dresser with the door and knocked.

  Diane had begun to frown automatically when she saw the dresser. She stepped out into the hall to look at it. “What is this?”

  “It’s a dresser,” he said. “For you, or for Jessie when she’s big enough.”

  “It’s beautiful,” she said, unsure, as if that might give him some advantage.

  “It’s yours. I found it at work and cleaned it up a little. I thought you might like it.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, I just thought. Should I take it inside?”

  They each took an end. She had them put it down in the living room, where Jessie was in her high chair, eating sliced bananas and watching cartoons. Carter tousled her fine hair —stiff with breakfast —and kissed her on the forehead.

  “Let’s go out,” he said, “I feel like going out.”

  “As long as we’re back by two,” Diane said.

  “What’s at two?” he asked, then said, “Sure, we’ll be back by two. Let’s go to the boardwalk or the park, somewhere nice where we can enjoy this nice day.”

  “You pay for gas?”

  “I get to drive?”

  “Sure,” she said, “knock yourself out.”

  “This is going to be great.”

  He hadn’t driven a car in months. He put the window down and let his hair whip his face. They went to Eisenhower Park and he bought a kite. They flew it over the duck pond, letting Jessie feel the pull; then they went to Jones Beach and ate soft ice cream on the boardwalk and walked down to the surf in their good shoes. Diane held off telling him it was time to get back, and when she did she seemed sorry. He parked the Valiant and kissed them both good-bye, then went off to the bus stop, drunk with the sun and the sea.

  The glow stayed with him on the bus, through the lush suburbs and potato fields, the day still promising. He bought two quarts and with his buddy the clerk weighed the odds of the Yanks getting out of the cellar.

  Mr. Katz and Manny were waiting for him. They rose from their chairs and shook his hand and patted him on the back.

  “You’ll be out of here in a month,” Mr. Katz said. “You’ll forget us like we never existed.”

  “It’s good,” Manny said, punchy after two cups, “I wish you all the luck in the world, kid.”

  Carter let them have the second quart and went in to get some dinner. He was holding the fridge open, trying to decide if he should go out to celebrate, when the phone rang.

  “I can’t accept it,” Diane said. “It’s too expensive for a gift.”

  “It’s yours.”

  “You’ve got to take it back.”

  “Is he there?” Carter said. “Because that’s a gift, that’s a gift to you and Jessie and has nothing to do with him.”

  “Cart, just take it back. I shouldn’t have accepted it in the first place.”

  “That bald piece of shit. It’s yours now, and I am not taking it back.”

  “Why do you have to be like this?” she said. �
�Why do you have to make everything so goddamn difficult?”

  “It’s not me, it’s him.”

  “Are you going to take it back? It’s a beautiful piece of furniture, and I’m grateful, but I can’t accept it. Really, Carter, I can’t.”

  “No,” Carter said.

  When Lorena asked him how things went, he said all right. It was a so-so day, a Monday, Carter didn’t care. He took it out on the Cat, slamming deep into the mounds of trash, waves breaking over the cab.

  “I’m sorry,” Lorena said.

  “Yeah, well,” Carter said. “I was an idiot.”

  At lunch Vernon took them out back of the trailer. The dresser had come in on a white-item truck from Bay Shore. Vernon had spotted it before the driver could tip his load. Lorena inspected the damage. The top was scratched, one of the legs out of joint, but otherwise it was fine.

  “I don’t want to fix it,” Carter said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I already fixed it once.”

  “So?” she said.

  He picked up one end of it. After a second she picked up the other. They carried it around the trailer and set it down in front of his Cat. He climbed into the cab, fired up and pulled forward, reducing the dresser to a nest of splinters sticking out from under the tread.

  He jumped down to look.

  “Now you’re happy,” Lorena said.

  “Now I’m happy,” he said.

  “Why don’t you take a half-day?” said Vernon.

  “And do what?” Carter climbed up on the tread.

  “Go on, I’ll punch you out.”

  “He’s all right,” Lorena said.

  It was another bright day, a good day to work. He turned off his radio and took every truck he could. By quitting time, Carter had satisfied his first rush of hatred. Disbelief set in momentarily, but with each run at the rotting trash, Carter knocked it back. He was looking forward to getting drunk tonight, and when Lorena offered him a ride home, he weighed dealing with the people on the bus against making the walk to the Dairy Barn round-trip. They found their lunch buckets and punched out together. Outside, the dresser lay squashed where he’d rolled over it.