So what I intended doing was a repetition of my mime of thievery: I was going to surreptitiously pocket goods and then drop the ten dollars at the cash register on the way out. Temptation struck first in household novelties, where I saw a corkscrew on a table. Next to it lay a rank of clasp knives. I hovered over the table, ignoring a dozen opportunities for palming the corkscrew and one of the knives. The whole business suddenly seemed labored and stupid.
Revulsion for the charade made me turn away. I was too old for these tricks, I could not allow myself to be so foolishly self-indulgent. But still I suffered. I went upstairs where the books were kept.
Slowly I revolved the rack: you will not steal again, I said to myself, you will not even pretend to steal. Romantic novels with jacket pictures of girls running from castles predominated. I could see no more copies of The Enchanted Dream. Finding even one had been fantastic luck. With feigned idleness I scanned the spines side-view. Still nothing.
And then I saw a natural second choice. There, crammed in one of the bottom divisions, was a novel written by Lamont Withers, who had been the gabbiest, most annoying member of my Joyce seminar at Columbia and now taught at Bennington — A Vision of Fish, an experimental novel disguised by its jacket drawing of two embracing androgynies as a romance. I extracted the book and examined the back of the cover. “A sensitive tour de force… Cleveland Plain Dealer. Stunning, witty advance… Library Journal. Withers is the coming man… Saturday Review.” My facial muscles contracted; it was even worse than Maccabee. Temptation reared up, and I nearly tucked the book between arm and elbow. But I would not give in to this gluttony; I could not be ruled by the responses of twenty years past. I gripped the book in my hand. I went down the stairs. At the cash register, an orderly man, I paid for the book and accepted my change.
Breathing hard, flushed of face, at peace, I sat in my car. Not stealing was so much a better feeling than stealing, or mime-stealing. Not stealing, as I had in fact known for years, was the only way to shop. I felt like an alcoholic who has just turned down a drink. It was still too early to see Polar Bears, so I touched the folded letter in my pocket and decided to go — where else? — to Freebo’s, to celebrate. In the midst of death and breakdown, a successful mission.
As I walked across the street, a sharp atom neatly bisected my back between the shoulder blades. I heard a stone clatter on the surface of the road. Stupidly, I watched it roll and come to rest before I looked at the sidewall. People were there, still simulating that sleepy smalltown bustle, walking from Zumgo’s to the Coast To Coast Store, looking in the bread-filled windows of Myer’s bakery. They seemed to be avoiding looking at me, avoiding even looking in my direction. A second later I saw the men who had probably thrown the stone. Five or burly middle-aged men, two or three in dungarees and the others in shabby business suits, stood in front of the Angler’s Bar. These men were watching me, a general smile flickering between them. I could not stare them down — it was like the Plainview diner. I recognized none of them. When I turned away, a second stone flew past my head. Another struck my right leg.
Friends of Duane’s, I thought, and then realized I was wrong. If they were merely that, they would be laughing. This businesslike silence was more ominous than stone-throwing. I looked over my shoulder: they still stood, bunched together and hands in pockets, before the dark bar window. They were watching me. I fled into Freebo’s.
“Who are those men?” I asked him. He came hurriedly down the bar, wiping his hands on a rag.
“You look a little shook up, Mr. Teagarden,” he said.
“Tell me who those men are. I want their names.”
I saw the drinkers at the bar, two thin old men, pick up their glasses and move quietly off.
“What men, Mr. Teagarden?”
“The ones across the street, standing in front of a bar.”
“You mean the Angler’s. Gee, I don’t see anybody there, Mr. Teagarden, I’m sorry.”
I went up to the long narrow window overlooking the street and stood beside him. The men had vanished. A woman with her hair in curlers pushed a baby carriage in the direction of the bakery.
“They were just there,” I insisted. “Five, maybe six, a couple of farmers and a few others. They threw rocks at me.”
“I dunno, Mr. Teagarden, it could have been some kind of accident.”
I glared at him.
“Let me get you a drink on the house,” he said. He turned away and put a shot glass beneath one of the upended bottles. “There. Put that inside you.” Meekly, I drank it in one gulp. “You see, we’re still all upset around here, Mr. Teagarden. It was probably because they didn’t know who you were.”
“It was probably because they did know who I am,” I said. “Friendly town, isn’t it? Don’t answer, just get me another drink. I have to see Polar Bears, Galen I mean, in a little while but I’m going to stay in here until everybody goes home.”
He blinked. “Whatever you say.”
I drank whiskies, taking my time over them. Several hours passed. Then I had a cup of coffee, and after that another drink. The other men in the bar regarded me surreptitiously, shifting their eyes toward the mirror when I raised my glass or leaned on the bar. After an unendurable time of this, I took Withers’ book out of my jacket pocket and began to read it on the bar. I switched from whiskey to beer and remembered that I’d had nothing to eat.
“Do you have sandwiches in here?”
“I’ll get one for you, Mr. Teagarden. And another cup of coffee?”
“And a cup of coffee and another beer.”
Withers’ book was unreadable. It was unbearably trivial. I began to tear out pages. If you find a pattern, you should stick to it. Now the other men in the bar no longer bothered to conceal their stares. I recognized in myself the buzzing frontal lobes of intoxication. “Do you have a wastebasket, Freebo?” I asked.
He held up a green plastic bucket. “Is that another one you wrote?”
“No, I never wrote anything worth publishing,” I said. I pitched the ripped pages into the green bucket. The men were staring at me as they would at a circus ape.
“You’re shook up, Mr. Teagarden,” Freebo said. “See, it won’t help any. You’ve had a few too many, Mr. Teagarden, and you’re kinda upset. I think you ought to go out in the fresh air for a little bit. You’re all paid up in here, see, and I can’t serve you any more. You oughta go home and have a rest.” He was walking me toward the front of the bar, talking in a low, calming voice.
“I want to buy a record player,” I said. “Can I do that now or is it too late?”
“I think the stores just closed, Mr. Teagarden.”
“I’ll do it tomorrow. Now I have to see Polar Bears Galen Hovre.”
“That’s a good idea.” The door closed behind me. I was standing alone on a deserted Main Street; the sky and the light were darkening, though it would not be dusk for at least two hours. I realized that I had spent most of the day in the bar. Signs on the bakery and department store doors read CLOSED. I glanced at the Angler’s Bar, which seemed from the outside to be as empty as Freebo’s. A single car went past in the direction of the courthouse. Once again, I could hear the beating of pigeons’ wings, circling way up above.
At that moment the town seemed haunted. The Midwest is the place for ghosts, I realized, the truest place for them; they could throng up these wide empty Main Streets and populate the fields. I could almost feel them around me.