by Dennis Must
“Listen. The fucker says it’s all a joke. Even you. Says you’re doomed just like me. And I’m a prick coward ’cause I know it . . .”
His shoe ground the cigarette into the gravel.
“I ask you, do you get it?”
“Yeah, yeah . . . I get it,” he said.
We headed back toward the eatery in town.
“Westley?”
“Yeah.”
“Whatta you gonna do?”
“We got a date.”
“Who?”
“The voice ’n’ me.”
Jeremiah stopped walking.
“We’re to meet on the bridge one Sunday morning at daybreak. Then I’ll know.”
“Know what?”
“That the water’s bitter cold . . . or I’m no longer a ninety-pound weakling.”
But he wasn’t responding to my forced attempt at downplaying what I’d revealed, for it had clearly upset him.
“Look, you and I are going to get out of here, Jeremiah.” I put my arm around him.
“You promise?”
“Yeah . . . and you know why?”
“Why?”
“’Cause ain’t none of this shit for real!” I spun around, gesturing to the town. “It’s all man-made, every last goddamn bit of it except the moon, the stars, and the fucking grass. You ’n’ me, Jeremiah, we ain’t doomed like your calvary man across there—look at the poor bastard. The stores across the street—look inside them, too, brother. Mannequins standing around, all dressed up like dandies. And the Episcopal church across the Diamond—clink your offering in its silver trays. For what? Up on the North Hill inside our big red schoolhouse, what do they bore us with every day? Illusions, Jeremiah!
“Who ever said any of it was for real?”
I didn’t cross the Washington Street Bridge after work. By the time I arrived home, there was only a light on in the basement. Mother was in the cellar ironing our shirts. Jeremiah and Father had gone out. I wrapped my week’s pay and the remainder of my savings in an elastic and stuffed the bills into the toe of one of Father’s wingtips in his closet. When he found it, he’d be in the money. I walked down and kissed her good night. My softball mitt, and darkroom chemicals, trays, and photographic paper, all lying on the workbench behind her. They belong to Jeremiah now, I thought.
“Westley,” she called up to me at the landing. “Is everything OK?”
“Why?”
“Saturday night? Home this early and going to bed?”
“We were busy at the florist shop today. I’m fine, Ma. See you in the morning.”
I studied the United States presidents on our wallpaper, the large and small fissures in the plaster ceiling to which I’d given mythical river names. A bookcase containing the set of Encyclopedia Americana that a crony had sold to my father in a saloon one Saturday afternoon sat in the corner like an unused parlor piano.
For years he bragged to anybody who would listen that Jeremiah and I could look up anything we ever wanted to know. That all the mysteries of the universe sat at the bottom of our bed.
Waiting.
Before daybreak, while the others were still asleep, I crept out of the house. Washington Street looked like a tired movie set awaiting a new script—not a car or a pedestrian in sight. The houses of worship wouldn’t sound their summoning bells until 9:00 a.m. Workers had recently blasted rust off the bridge’s steel members, then primed these spots bright orange. The lesions contrasted garishly with its weathered coats of aluminum and chalked graffiti.
Entering the trestle, I felt I was negotiating a skeletal, industrial-age vault. Muffled pigeon cooing merged with the sounds of the river rushing against the span’s supports. The chromium daylight illuminated a canister of lilies with powdery mustard-colored stamens I’d placed in the Lutz Florist window the night before. Large river rats nested in the shop’s cutting shaft, a steamy warmth luring them deeper inside the fermenting womb.
I waited for a signal.
Where in Christ’s name was he?
Man and boy mannequins in Summers Haberdashery’s foyer, attired in wide-brimmed fedoras and pistachio-green suits, mocked my apprehension, while Sydney Pearlman, who wore bright fuchsia stockings, scurried to his store.
Downstream, ochre smokestacks towered above cavernous mill buildings. The nascent sun ignited the refinery’s casement windows etched with decades of a rust bath. These shafts of light hung like diaphanous scrims from the steel rafters at contrasting planes, then periodically shimmered, flying up, as if they were the garments of an unseen Hephaestus.
Was I alone? Was he not going to show?
No young men this day waiting to dive for coins tossed by the bridge passersby, and I bent over the parapet as far as I could without tumbling headlong . . . Only darkness and washing noises there.
“HELLO!”
My call reverberated under the bridge to oblivion, “Oh, oh, oh, oh.”
Had I called his bluff?
“HELLO!” Again the dark gallery under this massive iron cranium with orange spots on its bones answered, “Oh, oh, oh, oh.”
Finally, I turned to leave the bridge, when . . .
Damn close, prick. I never miss an appointment.
“Perhaps you’ve got too many,” I said.
Let’s cut the shit and get it over with.
“I have one question.”
Yes?
“Your name?”
The pigeons burst skyward, creating a deafening ruckus up inside the cranial arches of the bridge.
You don’t know?
“No.”
Westley, it said.
“Westley?”
Yes. Westley Mueller.
“But wait . . .”
I thought you’d figured it out.
“There can’t be two of us,” I said.
There won’t be, it replied.
It was then I visualized Jeremiah, shaking his head at me from across the bridge and mouthing “no.”
I turned.
Where are you going?
“Home.”
Oh no, you made a promise.
“You got it,” I replied.
I crossed the street in front of Hebron Dry Goods.
What do you mean, ‘You got it’?
“Westleymueller!” I began laughing, running up alongside the Neshannock.
Hey, you fucker! Come back here. Coward!
“What’d you say your name is?” I cried.
Westley Mueller, he replied unapologetically.
“That’s what I thought you said. YOU’RE THE PRICK COWARD, Westley!”
I ran back to the bridge and stood at its center. The fire-orange sun had bled out of the water below. It looked icy blue, with a pale saffron light washing the storied brick and multiwindowed City Rescue Mission.
“Jump, you motherfucker, or are you the coward?” I cried.
No answer.
“I don’t hear you moving. Cat got your tongue?”
The pigeons exploded out of their nests, swooping through the grids on toward town. Only the water below chortled.
“WHERE ARE YOU, WESTLEY MUELLER?”
No. You are Westley. I am not Westley.
“Then who are you?”
It answered again: I am not Westley. But its voice kept getting weaker, as if it’d begun to walk away from me.
“Wait!” I cried.
I am not Westley. I am not Westley.
“If you are not Westley, then who? Let’s settle this once and for all.”
The voice no longer answered.
In Pearlman’s window, Sydney Pearlman stood in fuchsia stocking feet, arranging gladioli in the body of the Maytag washer. As I passed, he pressed his bulbous, milky-red lips against the plate-glass window, mouthing “Westley. Westley.” Overhead in the Chronicle’s vestibule, the pigeons cooed gutturally inside a medieval brass lantern.
“Where are you, Westley?” I cried once more.
Crossing the street, I walked briskly back
toward the bridge, pretending I no longer saw Sydney. Inside Lutz’s doorway—a black Chinese lacquered showcase with burnished frond-shaped hardware. Orchids and cymbidiums rising out of narrow-necked goblets glowed eerily in its fluorescent light.
Did the voice wish to speak once again?
Inside the bridge, I cried out, “Well, are you in here, coward?”
But newly washed automobiles rolled under the girders, heading toward the houses of worship. I glanced over the parapet. The river now calm, lucent. The midmorning sun cast shafts of radiant light down through the Washington Street Bridge’s riveted frame. Soon it and the primer-orange spots would be painted a bright aluminum—in time for Easter, perhaps.
Back up the hill alongside the Neshannock, several times I summoned Westley without a response. The name didn’t fit you any better than it did me, I reasoned, laughing at the top of my lungs while sprinting home as rapidly as a man’s legs could carry him.
Recalling that period, I had to acknowledge that despite my braggadocio, I alone hadn’t outfoxed the voice terrorizing me. Jeremiah and I had. It was his presence on the bridge that morning that saved me. He was someone to live for.
CHAPTER THREE
A NORMAL MAN’S DAUGHTER
As time passed, I cryptically imagined us as the Chang and Eng brothers of our town, the most famous of the conjoined twins. And I fantasized that he and I, like that pair, lived together for the remainder of our lives alongside our wives and many children.
I could never let him know that, of course. And even when he began spending more time away from the house, I understood his need to break away from passing all our free time together. Also, he revered Papa for making a life for himself.
“Why should he be prisoner to Momma’s demons?” he’d ask.
He’d borrow Papa’s shoes when he dressed up to go out.
I can’t say that I was at all surprised when one night he confided that he had a crush on a classmate of his, the only daughter of the most prominent undertaker in our town, who lived in a fine estate in the community where the Normal Men resided. And it wasn’t long before he announced the mortician had taken “a shine” to him, offering him a Saturday job washing all the funeral cars at Slade Hyde.
Since I had delivered floral arrangements to Hebron’s mortuaries, I was quite familiar with that one. Service people had to enter through the rear, past the hearse, flower car, and limousines. The shade of Slade Hyde’s 1930s Chrysler and Packard fleet was deep indigo. Set off from them was an exquisite hearse with elaborate carved mahogany paneling around and under the oblong windows of its viewing compartment.
“That’s the one I want,” Jeremiah exclaimed, referring to the Packard Phaeton V12 hearse. “Christ, she’s a beauty.”
But it was his unmitigated bravado that unsettled me. He honestly believed that it was just a matter of time before he would be residing in that grand residence and have access to all those antique automobiles, plus one of the loveliest young women in town.
Long after he’d fallen asleep, I’d lie awake, worrying about his fate.
JEREMIAH FALLS FOR A NORMAL MAN’S DAUGHTER
Jeremiah had acquired a penchant for exploring the unknown. Scaring the shit out of people, throwing himself into the teeth of danger, and then, after the show, when everybody went home—he’d crawl back out.
When he told me he was seeing Judith Hyde, I wasn’t surprised. Judith’s father owned the most prominent mortuary in town, and that summer it wasn’t uncommon to hear her pull up in our driveway in her indigo-blue convertible, looking for Jeremiah. I’d go out to speak with her when he was sleeping or not around. I complained to him about it, saying he should be more considerate.
He thought it was funny. “Who are you afraid of, Westley?”
“Nobody.”
“You got to learn how to treat a woman.”
“From you?”
“You can’t be afraid of them.”
“I’m not afraid of women.”
“The real ones, you are,” he said. “The kind that chew your balls off, huh? Not Jeremiah Mueller. I grab their headlights and yank them right to me. Laugh in their faces. That’s when they bend. That’s how to treat Mr. Taps, too.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Remember when you found Mama bent over the canning stove in the cellar? Mr. Taps smells like a woman.”
“You’re full of shit, Jeremiah.”
“Do you think men hang themselves ’cause they want to die?”
His impish grin curled up, revealing a splinter of teeth. “Huh-uh. They do it because they smell cunt.”
“You saying death smells like a woman?”
“Under the armpits. Between the legs.”
“You got a big imagination, too.”
“Mr. Taps smells just like a broad.” Jeremiah’s face was one of intense resolve.
“Sure,” I said, half mocking.
Judith phoned after nine o’clock that Saturday evening. “Has he left the house yet?” “Tell her I’m leaving now,” Jeremiah answered, and rolled back to sleep. She called at nine thirty, then ten. “Westley, lie for Chrissake!” He jumped up both times, switched off the overhead light, and fell back into our bed.
“Jeremiah’s sleeping, isn’t he, Westley?” It was after eleven.
I didn’t answer.
“Well, you don’t have to protect him any longer. Tell him not to bother showing up.”
Minutes later he came down the stairs, fully dressed to go out.
“She’s pissed, Jeremiah.”
“They bore you to tears when they aren’t,” he said.
It was Mrs. Hyde who phoned at 2:00 a.m. Pap wasn’t home. Mother hollered up the stairs, “Jeremiah’s in some kind of trouble, Westley.” Mother handed me the phone. Judith was on the line.
Jeremiah had taken her out the Old Wilmington Road for a ride. She was angry because of his apathy. “Always late, Westley,” as she put it. “I’m tired of it. Sometimes even missing our date.”
“Where is he?” I asked.
“You know the ravine behind Cringle’s farm? Down in there somewhere.”
“What do you mean?”
“He got hot over something I said. Stepped on the accelerator, began double- and triple-shifting—taking the country roads at high speed. I wanted out, but he kept accusing me.”
“Of what?”
“What else? What causes you men to go nuts?”
“Who is it, Judith?”
“Your brother asked me what I was doing Sunday evening. ‘You and I aren’t doing anything,’ I tell him. ‘I’ve got a date.’ That’s when he throttled it.”
“Is he hurt?”
“I don’t know. We’re heading straight down Cliff Road when he stiffens and jams on the brakes. The car fishtails. He opens his door and Johnny Weissmullers into the gorge.”
“Not a drop of water runs through that canyon, Judith. Did you go looking for him?”
I heard the whoosh of her cigarette lighter.
“You considered that he might be lying down in that ravine dead?”
“Jeremiah Mueller, dead?” She laughed. “Fat chance—and when he does come up out of that ravine, tell him Mama and me decided I won’t be seeing him again. He’s not to phone me up either.”
We didn’t know much about psychiatrists then. Only mental institutions like neighboring Dixmont employed them. Jeremiah began staying up in our room and refused to come downstairs.
“You sure I can’t fix you something to eat?” Mother asked.
He wanted nothing to do with me either, but lay up in the bedroom plotting—we weren’t certain what. Pap sat on the side of the bed to speak with him.
“How you feeling, son?”
“Did she call?” Jeremiah asked.
When no one answered, he never looked up.
Then Judith’s mother phoned again because Jeremiah had shown up, parking himself on their porch.
Mother twisted a paper napkin
over in her fingers. “Oh, Mrs. Hyde,” Mother sighed.
Jeremiah had pressed his face right up against their screen door until Judith yelled, “Get off the damn porch!” and slammed the door.
“Not my nature to be sharing a woman . . . but I apologize,” Jeremiah said, and walked down off the steps, opened his car door, waved . . . then pulled his necktie taut behind his neck and jerked his head out of his collar like he was hanging himself.
“All the neighbors watching, Mrs. Mueller, and he just kept bawling out her name.”
I could only wait for what I knew was soon to occur. Mother, Papa, and I knew he was planning on his next dramatic move. We feared that it might be his final act.
The worrying over Jeremiah’s mental well-being had become a catalyst for bringing our parents together in a way I’d never experienced. Papa began hanging around the house after work. It was not unusual to see the two of them sitting quietly in the living room together, or on the front porch swing conversing.
Mother had ceased padding to the hallway window after dark to play the glass harmonium.
THIS SIDE OF THE MAGNOLIA TREES
“Jesus stands outside our bedroom door,” Jeremiah said.
When the lights in the house were extinguished and everybody was in bed, he’d crawl out of ours and place his ear to the door.
“What are you listening for?” I asked
“The circus man.”
“The circus man?”
“They pounded nails into his hands and feet, didn’t they? He’s some courageous dude. I want to hear his breathing.”
There were nights we heard nothing. Then we did.
“Come here, Westley,” he whispered. “Hurry!”
I slipped out of bed and put my head beside his against our wooden door. Heavy breathing. Then a kind of low moaning.
“Christ,” he whispered. “He’s reliving the event. They’re pounding him to the cross. Oh, can’t you just see it?”
Then we heard, “Yes . . . sweet Jesus, yes.”
“But it sounds like Mama,” I protested.
