In the Walled City

by Stewart O'Nan

  “Miss May, ma’am?”

  She whipped off the cloth. Mr. Lawson was standing in the doorway, smiling like an idiot, a V of dirt and sweat darkening his shirt.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “I’m all done with the sprinkling, the whole thing. Can I take my break now?”

  “You can take your lunch, if you remember to make it a short one. We have a lot of work to do.”

  “I don’t see a whole lot of people out there.”

  “Believe me, there will be. Holidays are always busy.”

  “It wasn’t busy Memorial Day.”

  “There is a big difference between Memorial Day and July 4th, Mr. Lawson. Everyone celebrates July 4th. Have you once in your life seen people setting off fireworks on Memorial Day?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “I didn’t think so. Now after lunch I want you to paint the signs on the range. You should be able to see the numbers, but if you have any trouble, come and ask me. Now go.”

  Lawson went back to the barn and changed his shirt. He took a half-gallon of milk from a listing Coca-Cola machine, poured himself a cup, and added a drop of brandy. On Wednesday Mr. Bottsie had brought him some olive loaf, but the bread from two Wednesdays ago had green spots, and the more he cut away with his pocketknife, the nastier it got. He tossed the bread into the lower loft. He got into the GTO, set his cap on the red leather dash, revved the engine, and turned on the air-conditioning. He laid his head against the headrest and let the glycol-chilled air dry his neck.

  He did not mind Mrs. May talking to him like that. Some people had funny ways of saying thank you. You could never tell what people were like by what they said, or even what they did. Like Danny that one time. He was just mad at having to go. They were arguing when there was nothing to argue about; when the man said go, you went. Danny never meant to say what he said, they were just arguing. And no matter what he said later, when they didn’t talk and acted like they weren’t blood, in the end he went. In the end there had been something between them that wouldn’t let him not go. Lawson drained his milk and killed the engine.

  He pulled himself up the ladder. The tarp over the roost was undisturbed, the pigeons quiet. He sat on a hay bale, looking up through the dim, dusty light at the broken window. The bales in the upper loft were stacked in rows like steps. The top row was shy of the window a good ten feet.

  On his way up, a rung snapped off in his hand. He fell a quick distance and landed across two bales, stunned but uninjured. He pressed a hand to the small of his back, waggled his arms and legs to make sure. Determined, he hugged the ladder, testing each rung as he went.

  The twine on the bales cut into his palms. The hay was rotten and sweet-smelling, and he could not lift it. Thinking of Mrs. May, he climbed down, found a can of white and a can of black latex and two crusty brushes and walked around the barn to the range.

  If there was anything worse for arthritis than painting, Lawson didn’t know what it was; on the other hand, he was close enough to the barn to keep an eye on the window and far enough away to see the whole sky. He worked sideways, slapping the white on without looking. Flitting swallows made his heart stop and tingle. Grasshoppers sprang in the timothy, distracting him, one falling in the open can.

  The signs were taking too long. By the third, his arms were white and sticky and beginning to itch. The sun was directly overhead, there were two signs to go, and he hadn’t even started the numbers. He pried the black open, mixed it with a dead branch and began painting the first sign, the 100. Thick and fresh, the white coat hid the originals. His new 1 came out streaked and gray near the bottom. “Mr. Lawson,” he said, imitating her, “that is the piss-poorest paint job I’ve seen in my entire life.”

  By the time he finished the white, the first sign was tacky. He remixed the black and went over the 1. It took.

  As he was adding the first 0, a rabbit burst from a tuft beside him and scampered across the meadow, zigzagging, its ears pinned back. Lawson shielded his eyes. The hawk was wheeling high over the woods, flapping once then gliding, drifting in a long, slow arc. The rabbit splashed through the creek and up the bank, slipped under a strand of barbed wire, and bounded into the woods. As if shot, the hawk dove into the trees. Lawson dropped his brush in the can and ran for the barn.

  He came back with the BB gun and waited for the hawk, aiming just above the treetops, steadying the barrel on the sign. After a long five minutes, he lowered the gun, leaned it against the back of the sign, and, crouching so the hawk wouldn’t see him, peeking over the top every so often, painted two more 0’s.

  Checking on him from the clubhouse window, Mrs. May saw him paint the extra 0 and threw her washcloth on the floor. “What is his problem?” she yelled over the Firecracker 400, which she was watching on her portable. She stepped outside and made sure no one was teeing off or putting on the front nine, went back in, and said into the mike: “Mr. Lawson.” He turned toward the clubhouse and waved, a brush in his hand. “One hundred, Mr. Lawson, not one thousand, one hundred.” He turned to the sign, turned back, and waved.

  “The man is obviously trying to drive me insane,” she said to a baby in a radial tire. When the race came back on, Richard Petty’s son Kyle was leading. He looked like his father except his hair wasn’t as greasy. She popped another soda and watched until Darrel Waltrip took the lead. Mr. May had always hated Darrel Waltrip. She switched to the Pirate game, but they were beating the Mets too badly, and the only other thing on was golf. She clicked the set off. You didn’t watch golf, you played it. Maybe that was the problem, everyone was home watching golf.

  Around three the man and his son came in and bought two cans of soda, then sat at the picnic table, changing their spikes and totting up their scores. Mrs. May offered them a wicker bowl of pretzels and asked them how they did.

  “So-so,” the man said.

  “Tell her about your drive on fourteen,” the boy said.

  “A nice one?”

  “I think the ground being hard helped it out a little.”

  “It was three hundred, easy.”

  “You notice I still ended up bogeying the thing,” the man said. “Have you tried putting these greens lately? They’re like glass.”

  “They were kinda fast,” the boy admitted.

  “It’s the drought,” Mrs. May explained. “We water twice a day, and it just soaks right in. Next time you come it should be in better shape.”

  “I don’t know,” the man said, “we only came over because we couldn’t get a tee time at the Lake Club —and we belong there! I swear, they treat the tourists better than their own members.”

  “We’re open all week,” Mrs. May said, “except Wednesdays.”

  “I’ll remember that,” the man said, and stood up. The boy stood, chugged his soda and folded the scorecard into his back pocket, and they hauled their bags to the station wagon.

  “Drive safe now,” Mrs. May said, “and come back soon.” When the wagon was safely away, throwing up dust, she said, “Lake Club, the nerve.”

  She scanned the front nine for the foursomes. One was on the seventh green. A fat man in a dark T-shirt too small for him was swinging the pin like a drum major. Another was pitching beer cans to him. “God help me,” she said, “this is what I have to put up with.” She went into the clubhouse and turned on the Firecracker 400. Darrel Waltrip now had a lap on the field. She checked on Mr. Lawson. He was up to 200. The beer-drinkers were teeing off on eight. She waited until the fat man was into his backswing before calling over the PA: “Mr. Lawson. Very nice.”

  Lawson waved and kept painting. “See there?” he said, “and you say she doesn’t appreciate you.”

  Though his elbow was beginning to stiffen, he hurried through the fifth sign. He was getting too close to the woods. If the hawk broke, it would be past him before he could get a shot off. Even if he did, would a BB kill it?

  A BB could kill a pigeon, he knew that. That was the whole reason for buying Martin Lut
her King and the others. He had given Danny the gun for Christmas and the next day found two pigeons in the snow behind their building. They were frozen, and he could hardly tell they’d been shot; only a spot of black blood showed on each breast. He brought them inside and showed them to the boy. The boy denied it. “Hold them,” he said, “hold them in your hands.” The boy shook. “Look at me. What would your mother say if she could see you like this? Would your mother like what she was seeing?” The boy began to sob, and Lawson realized he had gone too far. He snatched the birds from the boy and threw them in the kitchen trash, which only made the boy cry more. He was not meant to be a parent. He never knew what to do. But in this case —and maybe only in this one case in all of their years as father and son —Lawson had come up with the right answer. In his last letter, seven years almost to the day, halfway across the world, Danny had asked about his birthday birds.

  But would a BB kill a hawk? Lawson put down his brush and picked up the gun. There were white fingerprints on the stock and the trigger. He remembered a term from his own hitch in the infantry —muzzle velocity. The higher the muzzle velocity, the harder the bullet hit. His elbow burning, he cocked the lever as many times as he could, fighting the rising air pressure. He’d put a BB right through the son of a bitch.

  He cut a notch in the top of the 100 yard marker with his pocketknife, fit the barrel in it, and waited. The paint made him dizzy. A film of sweat warmed his hands. He wiped them on his cap, then put the cap on backwards. His pinky began to sting, his elbow throbbed. He flexed his right arm until it went numb.

  Could it have gotten past him? There were those few seconds when he was in the barn, getting the gun. Or maybe it left. Maybe it had killed the rabbit and called it a day.

  After a while he decided to call Mr. Bottsie. Maybe the old man had forgotten to set Martin Luther King free. Lawson leaned the gun against the sign and walked across the meadow backwards. At the tee he began to run for the clubhouse.

  “It’s real important,” he told Mrs. May, bending his cap in his hands. She must have had one of her headaches because the TV was off. “It won’t take a minute, I promise.”

  “I want those signs done by the end of the day.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Mr. Bottsie answered on the third ring, “Bottsie’s Pet Store, this here’s Bottsie speaking.”

  “Mr. Bottsie —”

  “—closed right now, but if you got something sick you can come down and bang on the door. Anything else, come by during the week nine-to-five or if you’re lucky, Saturday. If you want to leave a message, go ahead. I can’t promise you anything.” A beep beeped.

  “Mr. Bottsie, there’s a hawk up here. Whatever you do, don’t send Martin.” He read the phone number off the dial and just before the beep beeped again, added, “This is me, Lawson.” He hung up and looked out the window. The sky over the woods was clear and deepening.

  “Mr. Lawson,” Mrs. May said to his back.

  “Huh?” he asked, giving her a blank look. She didn’t smell anything, but he was probably half in the bag by now.

  “The signs, Mr. Lawson, the signs.”

  “Oh yeah,” he said, and walked out the door.

  He had left his baseball cap on the counter. “Idiot,” she said. She heard laughter outside. The beer drinkers, all eight of them, were stumbling across the second fairway, headed straight for her. She slid a pencil through the plastic snap band of the cap, carried it outside, and dropped it on the picnic table.

  When they leaned their bags against the side of the clubhouse, empty cans clinked. They plopped down at the picnic table. One man laid his head down on his crossed arms, another put on Mr. Lawson’s cap. Two others were soaking wet. “Bud OK?” a wide, tanned man in a black mesh jersey asked the rest of the group. He had hairy shoulders. He stood and repeated the order to Mrs. May, swaying.

  “I’m afraid all we have is soda,” she said.

  “You don’t have any beer?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  The man with his head on the table looked up and said, “What do you mean you don’t have any beers?” He got up and came around the table, balancing against it with a hand. He was skinny and wore a Steelers T-shirt and red swim trunks and his eyes were almost closed. “No beers? What kind of place are you running here?”

  “Joey, take it easy,” the hairy man said, taking the skinny man’s arm. The others laughed.

  The skinny man sloughed his hand off. “Hey, all I want’s a beer. I been out here four stinking hours and now I can’t even get a beer?”

  “She’s got pop; have a pop.”

  “I don’t want a goddamn pop.”

  “You don’t have to pitch a fit, for Chrissake.”

  “Who’s pitching a fit?”

  “Gee, let me guess. Who usually pitches a fit when he loses?”

  The skinny man hit the hairy man in the face, and they fell to the ground, swinging. Mrs. May leapt backwards and clutched the doorframe.

  The other men wrestled the two apart and held them facing each other. They both looked surprised. “What the fuck was that for?” the hairy man shouted. He touched his face and looked at his hand. “You coulda broke my nose!”

  They glared at each other, then at the men holding them. Gradually the others let go. Still, nobody moved or said anything.

  Finally the skinny man said, “You all right?”

  “I’ll live,” the hairy man said. He wiped his teeth on the back of his hand.

  “C’mon,” someone said, “let’s get out of here and get some beers.”

  “Yeah,” the skinny man said, “this place sucks. Whaddya say, John?”

  Everyone looked to the hairy man. “OK,” he said, “but you’re buying, you ugly fuck.”

  They made them shake, everyone laughed, and shouting and pounding each other on the back, showing each other how the first punch had landed, they shambled to their cars, two big Dodges, slammed the trunks and doors, and roared away in a cloud of dust.

  Mrs. May was still clinging to the doorframe. Where was Mr. Lawson? She could have been killed. He was no help at all. She felt her throat and then her pulse. She slumped into the chair behind the counter and pressed her hand to her heart.

  When it was quiet again, she called her son.

  “Yeah?” he answered. He practically shouted.

  “Dear, it’s your mother. The most terrible thing just happened. These men came and drank beer and had this awful fight on the patio. There were eight of them, and they —”

  “Mom, I can’t talk right now. If this is going to be a long story, you’ll have to call me tomorrow.”

  “Are you listening to me? They were drunk. They could have destroyed the place. There was no one to stop them. I can’t go on like this by myself, I can’t.”

  There was silence.

  “Jonathan, I need someone to help me. Mr. Lawson is not enough. I need you here.”

  “Mother.” He paused. “Mother, you know that’s not realistic.”

  “I don’t care if it’s realistic. I can’t do it anymore, don’t you understand, I can’t do it. Your father is gone and I’m all by myself. I’m doing the best I can but I don’t think I’ll be able to much longer. Please, honey, please. Your mother needs your help.”

  “Calm down,” he said, “you’re getting hysterical.”

  “I am not hysterical,” she shouted, and feeling tears coming on, rapped her knuckles hard against the counter. “I am not hysterical,” she repeated calmly, “I am simply worried about what is going to happen to this place. I know you don’t like talking about it, but, Jonathan, we really do have to talk.”

  “We’ll talk, all right? But right now I’ve got corn boiling over, Alicia’s kid is screaming her head off, I’m the only one here, and fifteen people are going to walk through the door any minute.”

  “I’m your mother.”

  “I know you are and I love you, but I’ve got to hang up now. I’ll call you tomorrow.” The
line clicked.

  “Jonathan!”

  She did not cry. She sat down at the picnic table with a fresh soda and lit a Carlton. The course was empty, a vast brown waste shimmering in the heat. She let the smoke drift from her lips, then blew it away. There would be more people tomorrow. It was still July 4th weekend. It was the drought and the traffic, that was all. She would have Mr. Lawson turn on the sprinklers before supper.

  As she turned the corner of the barn, she saw the half-painted 300 sign and swore. She shouted into the barn. He was gone. “That’s it,” she said, “no more.” On her way back to the clubhouse, she spilled her soda on her blouse.

  Martin Luther King cleared the treetops edging fourteen. He flapped and rose, then dipped, coasting, his wings held against him. Lawson ran down the eleventh fairway toward him, waving the gun over his head.

  “Mr. Lawson!” a voice boomed from the sky. He stopped and looked back. “Mr. Lawson, I want to see you —now!” Her last word echoed. Beyond the range, as if summoned, the hawk lifted out of the woods.

  By the time Martin saw it, it was too late. He darted for the front nine, flapping madly, but he was too slow. Lawson held the stock to his cheek, following the hawk, which climbed out of range, high above Martin, stalled —suspended black against the sky, its wingtips like fingers —and dove. The two birds were directly above Lawson. He waited as long as he could, making sure, before firing his one shot.

  Mrs. May spotted him kneeling in the rough beside the access road. Swinging her arms, her fists balled, she crossed the parking lot and advanced on him. When she was in range, she screamed at his bent back, “Why are you doing this to me?”

  He did not turn to face her.

  “You’re killing me, that’s what you’re doing, you are killing me. Why are you doing this to me? Why?”

  She walked around him. He held one of his birds to his chest, a big, fat pigeon, squeezing it with both hands like a rosary. His shirt was soaked with blood, and his face shone with tears. His nose was running; his eyes were wide.