“Check came in on time, I see.”
“Day late.”
“Not a dollar short too, I hope.’’
Sammy’s features drew together in what was obviously a laugh. His shoulders heaved. There was little sound to the laugh, and tears came out his eyes. After a moment he leaned forward to put the empty glass on the bar. The bartender had a replacement waiting. Sammy drank it almost at a gulp and put it on the bar beside the first. Shifting weight onto his right haunch, he tugged free a wallet.
The bartender waved away his effort. “This one’s on me.”
“You sure?”
“Sure I’m sure.”
“Thanks, bud. ’Preciate it.”
“Take care, friend.”
Sailor Sammy tacked the wheelchair around and, puffing on his panpipe, started backwards towards the door.
“Wet his whistle,” Randy said to the bartender as he came back from opening the door.
“He did that all right. Get you another?”
“Why the hell not.”
I nodded.
He brought them.
“Boy comes in every week, sometimes Monday, sometimes Tuesday. Has two beers like you just seen. Flat downs them, then he’s gone. Don’t have any idea what this check is he’s always talking about-welfare, some kinda government thing-but he flat won’t come in till it gets there. Not that I’ve ever taken his money.”
“You know him?” Randy asked.
“Not really. Lives in a garage out behind someone’s house, I think. Maybe up Fannin Street way, just off Pioneer? Somewhere in there.”
“What happened to him?” Randy asked.
The bartender shrugged, shoulders rising momentarily from a tier of low-end vodkas and gins to one of call Scotches and subsiding.
“You’ve done a mitzvah,” I said.
The bartender looked at me as Randy grinned. ’Round those parts, those days, Judaism was as exotic as artichokes. I may as well have brought up Masonic rites, alchemy, the pleasures of goat cheese.
Doors from the lobby again swung open, this time to admit a party of office workers, six of them, in ill-fitting dresses and suitcoats with something of the oxbow about them, stiff plastic ties, costume jewelry, run-over shoes thick with bottled polish. From the back table where they settled, quickly their presence spilled out into the room, taking it over. As though in stop-time, suddenly the table was awash with empty bottles and glasses, cigarette packets, purses, ashtrays.
On TV, wrestlers Sputnik Malone and Billy Daniels took elaborate turns throwing one another about the ring. Memphis wrestling had been big for years and still drew huge crowds. It was televised locally; during the week, stars like Malone and Daniels toured the mid-South, wrestling in high-school gymnasiums, American Legion posts and Catholic clubs.
Sitting there, I noticed that while good paneling sheathed the walls and carpets shrouded floors, such refinements ended at the bar itself, undeveloped country with bare floors behind, sketchy shelves, squares of wood nailed to cabinets and drawers for pull handles. Bare wires hung from holes in the ceiling.
A basket of cheese cubes, cut-up pickles and bologna, all of them speared with toothpicks, appeared before us. I glanced over at the office workers’ table. Three baskets there. Another half-dozen set out. Remains of the limb of a sizeable tree here in the room with us. Slivered. Julienned.
“Gentlemen?” the bartender asked.
Randy doubled him: “One for the road?”
I glanced at my watch-just as though I had somewhere to go.
“Sure.”
For a time then, silently, we worked at the new drinks. Wrestling gave way to a local talent show, all but one of the contestants female and a fair divide among singers, baton twirlers and those offering dramatic recitations. The male tap-danced.
“You don’t trust me,” Randy said.
Falling back on the facile and hating myself for it: “I’m not sure you trust yourself.”
“Two different things, though, aren’t they?” His eyes found my face in the mirror behind the bar. “I love you, man. You know that.”
I nodded.
I took that thought home with me and, half an hour later, soaking in a tub of hot water, nodded again. Country music drifted in softly from the bedroom, voices from next door came to visit through thin walls, and from the street through open windows, traffic swooshed and hooted beyond. In silent toast I held up my glass and watched the bathroom’s light turn gold. I drank then, eyes shut, eyes behind which, perhaps in their own quiet way growing impatient, dreams waited.
Grace be with us all, who are so alone and lost.
Chapter Twenty-one
Grace is tough game to bring down. Sputnik Malone or Plato, either would be hard put to pin it. Most of us are lucky if we so much as catch a glimpse of the thing our whole lives-its back, maybe, as it hurries away through the crowd. I remembered the prodigy Raymond Radiguet. In three days’ time I will be shot to death by the soldiers of God.
Val had brought Carl Hazelwood’s notebook back to us two days before. Nothing much of forensic interest, she said. Techs had what they needed, manufacturer, item, batch numbers, all that, they’d be following up. Our own files contained photocopies of notebook pages, and I’d been through them a dozen times at least. We all had. But something about having in my hands the actual, much-abused, saddle-worn artifact drew me to it, and I sank in again. Not that anything had changed. Not that I had new information, new understanding or insight. Or the paltriest clue as to what might be going on.
It was one of those huge five-subject notebooks, sections divided by heavy inserts, doubled coils of wire at the spine. Two lines of obsessively neat script ran right up to page edge on either side betwreen scored blue lines. A thousand words per page, at least. Most early entries had faded away, now only blurred cuneiform, ranks of diminutive Rorschachs, make of it what you will or can. Elsewhere ink had given up the ghost entirely, dissolving into pools of wash, like watercolor.
Dad told me the stew was good. I had it waiting when he got home. We talked a little bit afterward, then It Came from Outer Space was on TV. When dad came in I was wiping up spills off the floor with one of his shirts. It was dirty already so I don’t understand why he got so mad. Maybe I ought to put more celery in next time. He looks like my uncle, sure he does, but he’s not. That’s from the movie.
I was sitting outside this morning and a cat came up to me, orange all over, even its eyes. It came up and rubbed against the step where I was, kind of half falling down, but every time I tried to touch it it ran off. Then a minute or two later it’d come back. I pinched off a piece of bologna and held it out. Mr. Cat liked that. He’d dodge in and grab hold, then go off under some bushes to eat. Mr. Cat ate most of a sandwich that way Finished off the bread myself.
Found a cache of magazines in the basement in a box under some empty suitcases. Since the top of the box was filled with old newspapers I almost didn’t look any further, but there they were underneath. A stack of Popular Mechanics, two years of Scientific Americans, a bunch of Astoundings and Fantastics crumbling at the bottom. Guess bugs must like those. One of the Popular Mechanics had a piece on building your own electric car, diagrams, specs, the whole works, even where you could order parts. Read most of a story by Fredric Brown, but the last two pages were missing.
Wrote a long letter to Sydney. I really miss her. I’d copy it down here, but my hand hurts. Anyway, it’s already in the mail and gone. I looked up Minnesota in the encyclopedia. They put electric blankets inside their car hoods. There are lakes everywhere. Cissie says she checked and where Sydney went is a good place. They’ll take good care of her there, Cissie says. Someone will read your letter to her. I hope she remembers me. It’s been a long time. You do understand, don’t you, Cissie said. She just got so she needed more taking care of than her mom and dad and her family could handle. Sure I did. I watched it happen. I even remember wondering if that could happen to me, if maybe someday I’d get like that, get lost the way Sydney did and have to go away.