“Don’t you have an answer? You shit, Miles. Everybody’s forgotten about that house by now. Alison was never going to find out. In a little while, the goddam thing was going to fall over anyhow. She’d never know. Then you come along and tell her it was my ‘dream house,’ huh? Then she can get one of the drunken bums in Arden to tell her all about it, can’t she? I suppose you wanted to get her to laugh at me, just the way you and your cousin used to do.”
“It was a mistake, Duane. I’m sorry. I thought she knew already.”
“Bullshit, Miles, bull shit. My dream house, isn’t that what you called it? You wanted to make her laugh at me. You wanted to humiliate me. I should pound you into the ground.”
“Maybe you should,” I said. “But if you’re not going to, then listen to me. It was an accident. I thought it was something everybody knew.”
“Yeah, that makes me feel real good. I should break you up.”
“If you want a fight, give it a try. But I’m apologizing to you.”
“You can’t apologize for that, Miles. I want you to stay away from my daughter, hear that? Stay away from her, Miles.”
He might not ever have noticed the furniture around us if I hadn’t thumped his hand into the couch. Pure furious astonishment replaced the rage in his face.
“Now what the hell are you doing?” he screamed.
“I’m putting back the old furniture,” I said, my heart sinking and the foolishness of my entire project momentarily clear. “When I go you can change it all back again I have to do it, Duane.”
“You’re putting back — nothing’s good enough for you, is it. Miles? You have to spoil everything you touch. You know, I think you’re crazy, Miles. And I’m not the only one around here who thinks so. I think you’re dangerous. You oughta be locked up. Pastor Bertilsson was right about you.” He flicked the flashlight on again and shone it into my eyes. “We’re quits. Miles I’m not gonna throw you off the place, I’m not gonna pound the crap out of you, but I’m sure as hell gonna keep my eye on you. You can’t get away with squat from now on without my knowing it.”
The light came off my face and played on the few items of furniture still dotted around the lawn. “Goddam you, you’re out of your skull. Somebody ought to put you away.” For a moment I thought that he probably was right. He turned away without bothering to look at me. After he had stomped or six feet away, I got the flashlight treatment again, but this time he was unable to hold it steadily on my face. “And remember, Miles,” he called. “You stay away from my kid. Just keep off of her.”
It was too much like Auntie Rinn. I wrestled the other couch over to the abyss and savagely pushed it down. It crashed satisfactorily into the one already at the bottom. I thought I heard wood breaking. I kicked the doors over and shut. It took me another half hour to get the old furniture inside the old house. I just let it sit where I dropped it. Then I opened a bottle and took it upstairs.
Five
__________
All my life I have been engaged in Sisyphean and hopeless tasks, and given the ache and flutter in my muscles, it may not be odd that I dreamed of pushing my grandmother uphill in a wheelchair through an obscure territory. We were surrounded by brilliant light. My grandmother was surprisingly heavy. I felt great dread. The smell of woodsmoke burned my nostrils. I had committed a murder, a robbery, something, and forces were closing in. They were vague as yet, but they knew about me and they would find me.
— Talk to Rinn, my grandmother said.
She repeated — Talk to Rinn.
And again — Talk to Rinn.
I ceased pushing the wheelchair. My muscles could no longer bear the strain; we seemed to have been going uphill for hours. I placed my hand on her head and bent over. Gramma, I said — I’m tired. I need help. I’m afraid. The woodsmoke smell swarmed up, occupying the spaces within my skull.
When she turned her face to me it was black and rotten.
I heard three bare, cynical handclaps.
My screams woke me up — think of that, a man alone in a white bedroom, screaming on his bed! A man alone, pursued only by himself. My body seemed heavy and incapable of motion. My mouth burned and my head felt stuffed with oily rags. Result of abuse of magic substance. I gently swung my legs out of bed and sat up bowing my back and holding my forehead in my palms. I touched the place where my hairline used to be, now smooth and oily skin instead of soft hair. My foot encountered the upright bottle, I risked a glance. It was more than half empty. Evidence of mortality lay all about me. I stood on long sensationless legs Except for the boots, I still wore Sunday’s clothes, now smudged and crusted with dirt from the root cellar. I could taste my screams.
The stairs were navigable as long as I planted my hands on the close walls.
The furniture at first startled me. It was the wrong furniture in the wrong places. Then I remembered the scene of the previous night. Duane and the flashlight stitching, into my face. That too seemed to have the quality of drunkenness. Effects can leak backward and forward in time, staining otherwise innocent events. I sat heavily on the old couch. I feared that I could fall straight through it into another dimension. On Sunday I had told myself that I knew the precise, proper location of all my grandmother’s things. Now I saw that was an illusion. I would have to experiment until the room clicked shut like a tumbler in a lock, itself again at last.
The bathroom. Hot water. Drinking water. I pushed off the couch and avoided the haphazard furniture and came into the kitchen.
Alison Updahl was leaning against the Counter, chewing something. She wore a T shirt (yellow) and jeans (brown). Her feet were bare, and I could feel the chill of the floor as if it were penetrating my own feet.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but it’s too early for company.”
She finally finished chewing, and swallowed. “I have to see you,” she said. Her eyes were large.
I turned away, aware of the presence of a complication I was in no condition to handle. On the table was an untouchable plate of congealed scrambled eggs and shriveled bacon.
“Mrs. Sunderson made that for you, I guess. She took one look in the other room and said she would clean in there after you decided how you wanted the furniture. And she said you busted that old sea chest. She said that was a valuable antique. Her family has one like it and a man from Minneapolis said it was worth two hundred dollars.”
“Please, Alison.” I ventured another look at her. Beneath the tight yellow shirt her large breasts hung heavily, comfortably. They looked like Claes Oldenburg torpedoes. Her feet, surprisingly, were small, white, slightly puffy, beautiful. “I’m too wrecked to go public.”
“I came for two reasons. The first is, I know I did a stupid thing by talking to Daddy about that house. He really blew up. Zack warned me, but I went right ahead and asked him anyhow. That was stupid, all right. What’s the matter with you, anyhow? Are you hung over? And why are you putting all that old furniture and stuff back upstairs?” She was speaking very quickly.
“I’m working on a project.”
That stumped her. I sat down at the table and shoved the cold food away before I could smell it.
“You don’t have to worry about Daddy. He’s real mad, but he doesn’t know I’m here. He’s out in the new fields. That’s way down the road. He doesn’t know about lots of things I do.”
I finally saw that she was being very chatty — too chatty.
The telephone began to shrill. “Shit,” I said, and weakly stood. When I plucked the earpiece off the box, I waited for the caller to say something. Silence. “Who is it?” I got no response. “Hello, hello.” I heard a noise like wings, like the whuffle of a fan, like beating air. The room was cold. I slammed the earpiece down on the metal hook.