“What’s up, Doug?”
“My foot.” I made a face. Lester stared back at me, at my black eye and bloody shirtfront, at my rug-burned hand and arm. I explained to him, “I was hurrying to get a pork chop and I fell.”
“That’s too bad, Doug. Here, sit down. Let me give you a hand. There’s nothing worse than a carpet burn. You should put vitamin E on that. Wow, that’s one nice purple shiner around that eye. I guess you won’t be playing against the Episcopal Ministers this Sunday.”
This had not occurred to me. How convenient. “Probably not. The ankle feels like it’s swelling.”
“Roll down your sock and let’s take a look. Hmn. It doesn’t appear to be swollen. Does this hurt?”
“Ow!” I said, convincingly I hoped. Lester pressed the ankle at several points, and each time I exclaimed dramatically, “Easy!” or “Don’t!” or “Hurts!”
“You should apply ice to that,” he advised. “You want to elevate it, too, for drainage. I’m personally not in favor of bandaging. I believe the joint heals more strongly if it’s allowed to rotate.”
“I agree.” My chair was comfortable. I rested my foot on an ottoman. Electric light reflected dimly off windowpanes; as our chandeliers swayed in the wind, light played and the glass seemed to sparkle and glow. The fact that the windows were exceedingly dirty no doubt had something to do with this pleasing, nighttime effect. Snow blew in and shallow puddles dripped from the sills. A few bats flew loops around the chandelier ropes. I looked up for the smoking face, but it was no longer present. Certainly Father would reappear, eventually, and I would see him and hear him speak. It was getting late, but there was, I felt, plenty of time for everything. I was happy to be sitting, and I hoped Lester would volunteer to fetch ice for my foot. I have always felt that Lester is one of the nicest and most compassionate of all people. I said to him, “Ice would be just the thing.”
“Why don’t you stay here and relax and I’ll bring some from the bar, Doug.”
“Would you, Lester? You’re kind,” I said, working my way to the real point. “Lester, I hate to be a bother, but if you’re going to the bar — since you’re going anyway? — I wonder if you might bring back a short whiskey? Straight up? While you’re at it?”
“It’s unwise to drink when you’re injured, Doug. Alcohol is an anesthetic. You don’t want to dull this pain too much, because you’re going to be moving around on that ankle and you’ll want to feel what hurts and what doesn’t. That way you won’t wreck it permanently.”
What nonsense. I felt like shouting at him. What was the man thinking? I wasn’t a child! I was an adult and could fend for myself.
I whimpered, “Just a taste, Lester. Please?”
“Well.”
“Please?”
He went, then. Thank God. Lester is friendly to a fault and this makes him a pest. It wasn’t as if I were literally suffering. So many among us were. I heaved in a deep breath and relaxed in my overstuffed armchair, surveyed the room strewn with the fallen, waited for whiskey. In certain respects I was, I suppose, suffering. My arm hurt and my head where Hiram had kicked it was throbbing; the eye was closing up; if Lester made it back, I could use the ice on the hematoma. This wasn’t the first time I’d been kicked in the head by one of my brothers. Once, in a fit of sadness and longing, I had dropped to the floor and nuzzled a pair of brand-new steel-toed work boots. Those hurt.
Temperatures were plummeting in the red library. The fire in our fireplace burned brightly but without effect. I shivered. Water splashed from the ceiling’s leaks. Snow amassed in drifts on the windowsills. It was a blizzard. I gathered my sport coat snugly around me. The coat’s pockets were spilling over, spilling over with the used hypodermic needles, the stoppered vials, and Barry’s stethoscope. Having these objects, I felt prepared for the balance of our evening, come what may. It happened that several books rested on a three-legged table beside my chair. Imagine my delight at discovering among these volumes our long-lost — misshelved, presumably — copy of A. C. Fox-Davies’s oversize A Complete Guide to Heraldry, a work notable not only for its splendid illuminated crests going back to the twelfth century, but for the rare zeal of this author’s loving exegesis of the modern quest to establish family and rank in a world so often indifferent to lineage. Here was a book I’d loved as a boy. Unfortunately, exposure to moisture had bloated and fused its pages, and try as I might, I was unable to tug apart its leather covers or open it to a clean page. Someone must have left A Complete Guide to Heraldry beneath a drip or beside an unclosed window. How could anyone treat a work of this beauty and importance with such disregard? What I am trying to say is that even though this is a library—a better-than-average private library holding diverse collections (our Restoration Poems and Plays, our Patriotic Songs, etc.), all worth, probably, loads of money, that is if they were properly cataloged instead of casually abandoned in piles with sweating cocktail glasses leaving rings — as I was saying, even though the red library is a first-rate private repository, our books are invariably taken down and handled with carelessness approaching contempt. It is difficult for me not to abhor my beloved brothers whenever I come across their examples of common destructiveness. On these occasions when the sight of waterlogged novels, cigarette-branded tables, coffee-stained pillow shams, and frayed draperies puts me in mind of death, I like nothing better than a solitary stroll through the dark and dusty stacks.
How the time passes in those enchanted corridors filled with forgotten treasures.
But tonight as on all nights following dinner the stacks were inhabited by certain men who, having excused themselves and left the table, retire, for a while, from company and disappear into the library’s unlit districts. There, hidden by shadows, they lean against shelves or walk from aisle to aisle. If you look hard, you can see them aimlessly, furtively skulking, their hands sunk deeply into pockets, eyes peering down at the floor until one fellow brushes past another and each looks up briefly. This is an odd business, and slightly menacing, my brothers’ surreptitious, intrafamilial, homosexual cruising. It’s not that I disapprove, entirely. But why do it here, in a domestic setting? Reclining in my tattered armchair, I could hear boots’ soles scuffing the floorboards. I could hear, from deep in the stacks, murmurs and quiet, hushed coughs.
Clearly it was later in the evening than I had thought. Even Gunner the Doberman seemed edgy. Over to my chair he came with his gnawed bone.
“Hello, boy.”
Gunner stared at me with his dog’s eyes. Up close, he seemed gigantic. His coat shimmered and he had little or no fat on his body. That bone hung in his mouth.
“Sit?” I said.
Gunner’s teeth glistened. Instead of sitting he came closer. He stood beside my chair. He stuck his nose over one chair arm, as if he were maybe thinking of dropping the pork-chop bone in my lap. But that wasn’t what he was thinking. He kept possession of his bone. It was pitted and scarred from his teeth.
“There’s a nice dog.” I slowly, hesitantly raised my hand to pet Gunner’s head. He growled through wet incisors clenched around the bone. Quickly I removed my hand. Gunner stared hungrily at my shirtfront, and I imagined he scented Maxwell’s blood there. I could smell the dog’s horrible breath. Fear of animals is atavistic, and humans presume that animals perceive this fear. I presumed this about Gunner. There was no one nearby who could rescue me; I was alone in my chair; I had nothing with which to shield myself except A. C. Fox-Davies’s A Complete Guide to Heraldry.