"I've had it for years. Now I want you to have it. Who knows if I'll ever see you folks again? What the hell. Who cares. Big deal."
You're giving me the car? I don't want the car. It's a terrible car."
"In your whole life as a man in today's world, have you ever owned a firearm?"
"No," I said.
"I figured. I said to myself here's the last man in America who doesn't own the means to defend himself."
He reached into a hole in the rear seat, coming out with a small dark object. He held it in the palm of his right hand.
"Take it, Jack."
"What is it?"
"Heft it around. Get the feel. It's loaded."
He passed it to me. Stupidly I said again, "What is it?" There was something unreal about the experience of holding a gun. I kept staring at it, wondering what Vernon 's motive might be. Was he Death's dark messenger after all? A loaded weapon. How quickly it worked a change in me, numbing my hand even as I sat staring at the thing, not wishing to give it a name. Did Vernon mean to provoke thought, provide my life with a fresh design, a scheme, a shapeliness? I wanted to give it back.
"It's a little bitty thing but it shoots real bullets, which is all a man in your position can rightly ask of a firearm. Don't worry, Jack. It can't be traced."
"Why would anyone want to trace it?"
"I feel like if you give someone a loaded gun, you ought to supply the particulars. This here is a 25-caliber Zumwalt automatic. German-made. It doesn't have the stopping power of a heavy-barreled weapon but you're not going out there to face down a rhino, are you?"
"That's the point. What am I going out there to face down? Why do I need this thing?"
"Don't call it a thing. Respect it, Jack. It's a well-designed weapon. Practical, lightweight, easy to conceal. Get to know your handgun. It's only a question of time as to when you'll want to use it."
"When will I want to use it?"
"Do we live on the same planet? What century is this? Look how easy I got into your backyard. I pry open a window and I'm in the house. I could have been a professional burglar, an escaped con, one of those drifters with a skimpy beard. A wandering killer type that follows the sun. A weekend mass murderer with an office job. Take your choice."
"Maybe you need a gun where you live. Take it back. We don't want it."
"I got myself a combat magnum parked near my bed. I hate to tell you what mischief it can cause with the placement of a man's features."
He gave me a canny look. I resumed staring at the gun. It occurred to me that this was the ultimate device for determining one's competence in the world. I bounced it in the palm of my hand, sniffed the steely muzzle. What does it mean to a person, beyond his sense of competence and well-being and personal worth, to carry a lethal weapon, to handle it well, be ready and willing to use it? A concealed lethal weapon. It was a secret, it was a second life, a second self, a dream, a spell, a plot, a delirium.
German-made.
"Don't tell Babette. She'd get real put out if she knew you were harboring a firearm."
"I don't want it, Vern. Take it back."
"Don't put it just anywhere neither. A kid gets ahold of it, you have an immediate situation. Be smart. Think about where to put it so it'll be right there at the time. Figure out your field of fire beforehand. If you have an intruder situation, where will he enter, how will he approach the valuables? If you have a mental, where is he going to come at you from? Mentals are unpredictable because they don't know themselves what they're doing. They approach from wherever, from a tree limb, a branch. Think about putting jagged glass on your window ledges. Learn dropping to the floor fast."
"We don't want guns in our little town."
"Be smart for once in your life," he told me in the dark car. "It's not what you want that matters."
Early the next day a crew came to fix the street. Vernon was out there at once, watching them jackhammer and haul the asphalt, staying close to them as they leveled the smoking pitch. When the workmen left, his visit seemed to end, collapsed into its own lading momentum. We began to see a blank space where Vernon stood. He regarded us from a prudent distance, as if we were strangers with secret resentments. An indefinable fatigue collected around our efforts to converse.
Out on the sidewalk, Babette held him and wept. For his departure he'd shaved, washed the car, put a blue bandanna around his neck. She could not seem to get enough of crying. She looked into his face and cried. She cried embracing him. She gave him a Styrofoam hamper full of sandwiches, chicken and coffee, and she cried as he set it down amid the gouged-out seat stuffing and slashed upholstery.
''She's a good girl," he told me grimly.
In the driver's seat he ran his fingers through his ducktail, checking himself in the rearview mirror. Then he coughed a while, giving us one more episode of lashing phlegm. Babette wept anew. We leaned toward the window on the passenger's side, watching him hunch around into his driving posture, setting himself casually between the door and the seat, his left arm hanging out the window.
"Don't worry about me," he said. "The little limp means nothing. People my age limp. A limp is a natural thing at a certain age. Forget the cough. It's healthy to cough. You move the stuff around. The stuff can't harm you as long as it doesn't settle in one spot and stay there for years. So the cough's all right. So is the insomnia. The insomnia's all right. What do I gain by sleeping? You reach an age when every minute of sleep is one less minute to do useful things. To cough or limp. Never mind the women. The women are all right. We rent a cassette and have some sex. It pumps blood to the heart. Forget the cigarettes. I like to tell myself I'm getting away with something. Let the Mormons quit smoking. They'll die of something just as bad. The money's no problem. I'm all set incomewise. Zero pensions, zero savings, zero stocks and bonds. So you don't have to worry about that. That's all taken care of. Never mind the teeth. The teeth are all right. The looser they are, the more you can wobble them with your tongue. It gives the tongue something to do. Don't worry about the shakes. Everybody gets the shakes now and then. It's only the left hand anyway. The way to enjoy the shakes is pretend it's somebody else's hand. Never mind the sudden and unexplained weight loss. There's no point eating what you can't see. Don't worry about the eyes. The eyes can't get any worse than they are now. Forget the mind completely. The mind goes before the body. That's the way it's supposed to be. So don't worry about the mind. The mind is all right. Worry about the car. The steering's all awry. The brakes were recalled three times. The hood shoots up on pothole terrain."
Deadpan. Babette thought this last part was funny. The part about the car. I stood there amazed, watching her walk in little circles of hilarity, weak-kneed, shambling, all her fears and defenses adrift in the sly history of his voice.
34
The time of spiders arrived. Spiders in high corners of rooms. Cocoons wrapped in spiderwork. Silvery dancing strands that seemed the pure play of light, light as evanescent news, ideas borne on light. The voice upstairs said: "Now watch this. Joanie is trying to snap Ralph's patella with a bushido stun kick. She makes contact, he crumples, she runs."
Denise passed word to Babette that Steffie was routinely examining her chest for lumps. Babette told me.
Murray and I extended the range of our contemplative walks. In town one day he went into small embarrassed raptures over diagonal parking. There was a charm and a native sense to the rows of slanted vehicles. This form of parking was an indispensable part of the American townscape, even when the cars were foreign-made. The arrangement was not only practical but avoided confrontation, the sexual assault motif of front-to-back parking in teeming city streets.
Murray says it is possible to be homesick for a place even when you are there.