William Gaddis
Carpenter's Gothic
1
The bird, a pigeon was it? or a dove (she'd found there were doves here) flew through the air, its colour lost in what light remained. It might have been the wad of rag she'd taken it for at first glance, flung at the smallest of the boys out there wiping mud from his cheek where it hit him, catching it up by a wing to fling it back where one of them now with a broken branch for a bat hit it high over a bough caught and flung back and hit again into a swirl of leaves, into a puddle from rain the night before, a kind of battered shuttlecock moulting in a flurry at each blow, hit into the yellow dead end sign on the corner opposite the house where they'd end up that time of day.
When the telephone rang she'd already turned away, catching breath, and going for it in the kitchen she looked up to the clock: not yet five. Had it stopped? The day was gone with the sun dropped behind the mountain, or what passed for one here rising up from the river. — Hello? she said, — who…? Oh yes no, no he's not here he's… No I'm not, no. No, I'm… Well I'm not his wife no, I just told you. My name is Booth, I don't even know him. We've just… Well if you'll just let me finish! We've just rented his house here, I don't know where Mister McCandless is I've never even met him. We got a card from him from Argentina that's all, Rio? Isn't that Argentina? No it was just a card, just something about the furnace here it was just a postcard. I'm sorry I can't help you, there's somebody at the… No I have to go goodbye, there's spmebody at the door…
Somebody hunched down, peering in where she'd stood staring out there a minute before, a line straight through from the kitchen past the newel to the front door fitted with glass, shuddering open. — Wait! she was up, — wait stop, who…
— Bibb?
— Oh. You frightened me.
He was inside now, urging the door closed behind him with his weight against it, bearing up her embrace there without returning it. — Sorry, I didn't…
— I didn't know who you were out there. Pushing open the door you looked so big I didn't, how did you get here?
— Coming down 9W in a…
— No but how did you find it?
— Adolph. Adolph said you'd…
— Adolph sent you? Is something wrong?
— No relax Bibb, relax. What's the matter anyhow.
— I'm just, I've just been nervous. I've just been very nervous that's all and when I saw you out there I, when you say Adolph sent you I thought something's wrong. Because something's usually wrong.
— Bibbs I didn't say that. I didn't say Adolph sent me… He thrust his legs out from the chair across the hearth from her where she'd come down to the edge of the frayed love seat, knees drawn tight and her hands caught together at her chin, pressed there. — When I saw him last week he told me where you'd moved, I didn't know what you'd…
— Well how could you know how could we tell you! How could you know where we'd moved you never, we never know where you are nobody knows. You just show up like this with your, your boots look at your boots they're falling apart look at your, that hole in your knee you don't even have a jacket, you…
— Oh Bibb, Bibbs…
— And it's cold!
— Well Bibbs Jesus, you think I don't know it's cold? I've been on the road sixteen hours. I'm driving this moving van down from Plattsburgh with no heater, I had to cut it out when the cooling system went. Twice, the whole fucking thing broke down twice and it just broke down again right up here, up on 9W. I saw the sign and remembered this is where Adolph said you moved to so I walked down here. That's all.
— You look tired Billy, she said in a voice near a whisper. — You look so tired… and her own hands fell away.
— You kidding? Tired, I mean that fucking truck you wouldn't…
— I wish you wouldn't smoke.
He threw them, match and cigarette together, at the cold grate, came forward on a torn knee to pick them up where they'd hit the firescreen. — You got a beer?
— I'll look I don't think so, Paul doesn't…
— Where is he? I saw the car I thought he'd be here.
— It's broken, he had to take the bus in this morning. He hates it, Billy…? She was up, calling from the kitchen — Billy? She looked up to the clock, — he'll be here any minute I just don't want…
— I know what you don't want! He was up talking loud to walls, to the balustrade mounting from the newel at the door, to furniture — Bibb?
— There's no beer, I'm making tea if you…
— You just want me gone before Paul shows up, right? And he was across the room pulling open a door under the stairs on the cellar dark below, jamming it closed and opening another and stepping in without a light, standing over the bowl there. — Bibb? from the opened door. — Can you lend me twenty?
The cup rattled on the saucer, passing. — Oh I should have told you. This one stops up, I should have told you to use the upstairs…
— Too late now… he came out tugging his zipper, — can you lend me twenty Bibb? I was going to get paid when I got the van down there but…
— But what about it, the van. You just left it?
— The hell with it.
— But you can't just leave it there, up there right in the middle of the…
— You kidding? The alternator's shot, you think I'm going to sit up there all night with it? Send that heap out on the road they can come haul it in.
— But who? Whose is it, what are you doing driving somebody's moving van down from…
— Like what do you think I was doing, Bibb? I was trying to make seventy five bucks, what do you think I was doing.
— But you said you just saw Adolph, I thought you…
— Oh come on Bibb, Adolph…? He was down in the chair again, one hand cracking knuckles on the fist of the other. — Adolph wouldn't give me the sweat…
— I wish you wouldn't do that.
— What, about Adolph? He…
— With your knuckles, you know it makes me nervous.
His shrug dropped him deeper into the chair, one hand seized in the other. — Sit there in his paneled office I have to listen to every fucking nickel he's accountable for to the trust, the estate, the lawsuits the nursing home bills his duty to conserve the assets I mean shit, Bibbs. No wonder the old man made Adolph his executor. He sits there guarding the estate with one hand, dealing out this lousy trust with the other him and the bank, Sneddiger down at the bank. Ask one of them for a nickel he says the other one might not approve this expenditure, I mean that's the way the old man set it up. Just to keep us…
— Oh I know it, I know…
— Just to…
— Well it's almost done, isn't it? It's almost done, by next spring you'll…
— That's the trust Bibb, that's just the trust that's what I mean. That's how he set it up, just to keep us out of the estate, by the time we get there there won't be one anyhow. Twenty three lawsuits Adolph says, they've got twenty three lawsuits by stockholders against the company and the estate trying to get back what the old man handed out in those payoffs. The estate is using every resource at its disposal in dealing with these cases says Adolph, every resource that's Adolph. That's him and Grimes and all of them do you think they want to settle it? Every resource do you think they give a shit if they win it or lose it they just want to keep things going, adjournments postponements appeals they charge the estate every time they pick up the fucking telephone they're talking to each other, like they're all sitting in each other's laps picking each other's noses two hundred dollars an hour every one of them Bibb, they're talking to each other.
— But what dif…
— I mean every time I go in there Adolph has to remind me how they smoothed the way for the old man's retirement when he could have gone to prison instead. I mean why didn't he. He should have gone so should Paul, so should…
— Billy please, I don't want to go over it again, just go over it and go over it Paul just did what he was told, it was all going on long before he went there anyway. What was Paul supposed to do, they even said it wasn't against the law didn't they? Even the papers, when the…