Sandhill Street: The Loss of Gentleness

by Rob Summers

Chapter 5 The Bon Voyage

  Mr. Dignity—a tall, handsome man in his early thirties—and his lovely wife Obscurity were just leaving Grace House for the Bon Voyage when a Humvee pulled up at the curb. The vehicle was all white with a large, italic letter ‘H’ on the door. Out of it stepped a slim, young military officer in dress whites, ribbons on his chest and gold braid on his cap. He met them on the sidewalk.

  “Lieutenant Justice of the Heavenite navy, sir,” he said crisply to Dignity. He handed him an envelope. “This is an invitation to the Navy Ball, extended to everyone in Grace House. Date to be announced later. Our Captain sends you his regards and hopes you’ll be able to attend. No RSVP necessary, sir.”

  Dignity was surprised and pleased, but a little puzzled.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant, but, uh, where will this ball be held? The City government isn’t likely to allow one of the public halls to be used for a Heavenite celebration.”

  Justice smiled, looking both handsome and roguish. “The place will also be announced later, sir, because the Captain would like for it to be a surprise. But if it was to be a public hall, we could pretty much get what we want, what with confiscation powers and all. Only I think it’s hard to find a place big enough in the City. Will you and the lady be coming?”

  “Certainly,” Obscurity answered. “Tell the Captain that we’re honored.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. And ma’am, the invitation also requests that you and your band would play after dinner. I sure hope you’ll give us the pleasure.”

  Obscurity looked up at her husband in happy amusement, for the Outlaws got very few gigs.

  “I guess I could dust off the guitar.”

  “We’ll all be looking forward to it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to make another stop.”

  As the Lieutenant went back to his Humvee, Dignity looked at his wife with pursed lips. “But you’re not going to wear that earring when you sing? Not in front of the Heavenite Navy?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with it!”

  “OK, maybe not to you. A lot of people would think you’re advocating drugs.”

  “So let them.”

  “Or death.”

  “I am advocating death.”

  Dignity did not always understand his wife, but he trusted her, so he decided to let it go. “So how come they don’t have a date picked out yet?”

  She shrugged. “I think among Heavenites that isn’t unusual. Remember that we’ve already accepted their invitation to the King’s wedding feast, and we don’t know when that will be either.”

  “Yeah, we’ve been told it could be years yet. I just wish Mom and Dad hadn’t ignored their wedding invitations. I found them in the back of a drawer here a few weeks ago, yellowed with age. I think they’ve forgotten about them.”

  Teenager Goodness Orchard answered the Dreads’ bell to find a handsome young navy officer on the doorstep. He grinned at her with undisguised appreciation.

  “Good evening, miss. I’m Lieutenant Justice, and I have an invitation for the Dread family to the Heavenite Navy Ball.”

  “They’re not here,” she said, accepting the envelope. “I’m baby-sitting their kids. Are you sure this is right? They’re not Heavenites, you know.”

  “The admiralty confirms it,” he said somewhat pompously. “This is one of just two houses in this city that are receiving invitations.”

  “Then wouldn’t the other one be my house?” she said, “Grace House just down the street?”

  His smile widened. “Miss, if you live in Grace House, then you’re invited. I’d be very pleased to see you at the ball.”

  Goodness was suddenly a little shy. She was Heaven born but had spent most of her life in the City, so she had had little contact with Heavenites from other families. She had always had to be so careful around the City boys, but with this guy, a Heavenite like herself, it could be different.

  “Thank you,” she said, “I’ll see you there. I’m Goodness Orchard.”

  “Pleased to meet you. And if it’s not too bold, miss, on the night of the ball may I have the first dance with you?”

  She took a half step back.

  “The first dance? I—well, yes, Lieutenant. That would be fine.”

  “See you then,” he said, touching his cap.

  She closed the door and found Grovel and Snivel standing behind her and staring at her.

  “Golly!” she said, not so much to them as to herself. “You just never know who will come to the door!”

  But the kids were not very interested in Lieutenant Justice. They had just come back from spreading Wittily’s poem copies around the neighborhood and wanted to show Goodness one and chant some of the bouncy lines out loud to her.

  Since before the pyramids, City folk had observed the event of a house’s collapse with a special ceremony called a Bon Voyage. It was a time, perhaps, of some sadness, but also a time of hope: hope that, as the City authorities assured, all would be well for the ruin’s former inhabitants in whatever new place they were taken to. One might think that City people would be diligent in informing themselves precisely about this destination, but for one reason or another they were not. It was partly due to training, for they were taught from childhood to consider the subject as rightly and unalterably mysterious. But it was also due to anxiety. Being forcibly shipped off to who-knows-where may be painted as a good thing, may be dutifully accepted as a good thing, but is usually thought of as a far better thing for someone else than for one’s self, and not altogether the sort of thing one hastens to look further into. Every house in the City would go down eventually, so the result, whether good or bad, would be known to each inhabitant soon enough.

  The Sluggards’ Bon Voyage was held, as was usual with these events, in a public hall located not far from the site of the fallen house. The traditional Bon Voyage colors of purple and yellow (purple for parting and yellow for hope) were on display both inside and outside in the form of banners, flowers, and balloons. The hall slowly filled while a hired band played “Peaceful, Peaceful Valley”; and at precisely 7 p.m. Pastor Hypocrisy rose to deliver the commemorative speech, while behind him ran a projected slideshow of pictures of Sluggard House and its departed inhabitants.

  “Who has ever seen the fair land of Relocation?” Hypocrisy said in manly tones. His expression was courageous and his eyes not quite dry. “I haven’t, and neither have you. No one in this City has. But we among the faithful believe in what the eye has not yet seen.”

  Far to the rear of the hall sat Guiles Leasing, his rotund little self dressed in his best suit and his family gathered around him. His drooping moustache ends seemed to express his sense of loss, and though he scarcely had spoken ten words to the Sluggards in a year, for the moment he believed it was loss. He wanted to feel a bit shaken, perhaps to shed a few tears. He wished that other matters had not come between him and the full experience of the Bon Voyage, spoiling his palate for the event. But other matters were afoot, no denying it, and his eyes were both dry and anxious. He repeatedly scanned the double door entrance from the foyer, watching for Mr. Power, hoping that he would appear and equally hoping that he would not.

  “We believe,” Hypocrisy was saying, “in the generous and judicious plans of the City administrators, who take thought for those who no longer dwell under a roof. We believe that our friends, our dear, parted friends the Sluggards—Lag, Diva, Slothette, Muddy, Nap…” (He lingered over each name as he read them from his notes.) “…that they have now arrived at a quiet, happy place, the proper reward for their good lives here. Yes, we will miss them; but we cannot, we do not, begrudge them their reward. Let us consider Lag, a true family man…”

  Guiles noticed that Mr. Power had now come in and that the big, gray-headed man was standing not far from him and looking around with his usual expression of dour suspicion. He considered nervously whether he should approach Power, but found that the great man soon cam
e to him.

  “The foyer,” Power said to him in a low voice, and Guiles left his chair and followed him out.

  Just beyond the open hall doors were several plainclothes policemen, Power’s usual retinue, who now formed a casual appearing but impassible barrier, preventing anyone else from approaching Power and Leasing.

  “That was a solid tip you gave me, Leasing,” Power began abruptly. “I’ve had my eyes and ears in your neighborhood since you called, and people are talking about the story those kids have been telling.”

  Guiles smiled up at Power with what he hoped was easy familiarity. He was, he reflected, a member of Power’s country club and ought to be at ease with him. But instead he felt like a quivering schoolboy toadying up to the class bully.

  “Right, but that’s not my daughter’s story, not Prevarica’s,” he said.

  “You already told me that on the phone. Catch up with the present, bub.”

  Leasing laughed exaggeratedly at this. He liked to try to pass off Power’s rudeness as friendly banter.

  “I just wanted you to know,” Guiles said, “that if anybody, one of the boys, said Prevarica saw anything, well, that’s totally false.”

  “Catch up, I said!” Power answered in a muted roar. “Your kid saw zilch, that’s understood. Now we’ve got to get the neighborhood calmed down, and it’s going to take more than a flowery little speech by Hypocrisy to bring that off. That story about cops wearing masks, now that could be useful. You’ve got to keep spreading it. Push it.”

  “Of course, but you see, my daughter has already said that she didn’t see anything at all.”

  “Well, now she saw masks. Push it. She saw masks. Then about the Dread girl…what the hell is she up to?”

  Guiles didn’t know what this referred to. “She’s the one who said it must have been masks.”

  “Yeah, well don’t give her a medal yet. I got a call on the way over here from one of my boys staking out your street. Dread’s brats are handing out copies of something the oldest girl wrote. It’s a, uh—poem.” Power forced out the word as if referring to something too emotional and effeminate to be named. Perhaps he had never used the word before. “That’s what it is, and it’s about your daughter, the one that we’re counting on. It calls her a liar. We can’t have that. Sounds like the Heavenites may have gotten to her, to, uh…what’s her name?”

  “Wittily.”

  “Yeah, her. But we’ll take care of the Dreads, don’t you worry about it. Their boy will say he saw masks, and their girl will soon be saying that your girl is as honest as a judge. Then Truth’s kid will just have to shut up.” Mr. Power paused and wrinkled his forehead. “What is it with the Dreads? Aren’t they reliable? Have you seen any sign they’re slipping?”

  Guiles hadn’t and said so, but he added that they were using as a babysitter the Heavenite teenager Goodness.

  “There! That’s exactly how it starts. Give them an inch, give them an inch! I may just have to talk to Mammonette about this. She’s getting Conformity locked into a business deal that should permanently settle any issues of his loyalty, and just in time too.”

  Guiles’ eyebrows raised. He hadn’t heard about this, but only that neighbor Dread’s printing firm was struggling.

  “One more thing,” Power said. “You have any idea why a Heavenite military vehicle was seen on Sandhill Street this evening? It stopped at Grace House and at Dread House.”

  Guiles was surprised. “That isn’t even legal, is it? They can’t have any military presence in the City.”

  Power looked at him with cold annoyance. “Just answer the question.”

  “No idea. I know nothing about it.”

  “Well, you’d damned well better not know much about it,” Power said grimly.

  Guiles found himself laughing again, not knowing how else to respond.

  “We’re going to take care of Grace House too,” Power added in a low voice. “It’s been on the agenda for way too long. I owe old Grace one in the kisser. You think you can help with that?”

  Guiles said yes emphatically. He had had all he could take of his cousin Dignity and that crowd of Heavenites he kept in his house. They were a blot on the neighborhood, the priggish do-gooders—always pointing up, by their very existence, the faults of others. Expecting, for example, that everyone should live within a budget. Guiles himself had no intention of living within a budget, not as long as he could borrow from the Mammons, which he did heavily.

  “Let’s bury ’em,” he said.

  “Damn straight. We’re going to work out the details later, but for now I want you to take the lead in shutting them out, snubbing them. The message is, they’ve told one too many lies about the City administration. They’ve stirred up trouble. Feelings are hurt. And I want the whole neighborhood in on this, so talk to your neighbors. If possible, we’ll even get Dignity’s parents to shun him. Those Heavenites are going to feel what it’s like to lose City favor.”

  “Oblivia and I are with you,” Guiles said.

  “Good, and if there’s any rough stuff, I’ll keep you out of it.”

  Guiles’ eyes widened. “Right.”

  Power laid a heavy hand on the little man’s round shoulder. “You’re doing a good job, Leasing. Keep it up and we’ll put that City seal on your house before long. Now get back in there and look sad.”

  Guiles did as he was told.

  “…to say a fond goodby to them, one that they perhaps cannot hear with their ears but may hear with their hearts…”

  Sitting in the third row, Dignity tried to keep from wincing at Hypocrisy’s language. As a convert to Heaven who had opened his house to Grace, Dignity had an exact knowledge of what really happens in Relocation. He took no pleasure in all this talk about the assured peace of the Sluggards in some vague place. Even if the Wiz hadn’t seen the very demons that dragged them off, wasn’t it clear enough to everyone who had known them that the Sluggards had been thoroughly worldly? Had the Heavenly King made any promises to them?

  He felt sure that his wife Obscurity, his second cousin Reason, and Reason’s husband Truth, all seated to the right of him, were feeling the same inner resistance. But everyone else in the room undoubtedly felt assured by Hypocrisy’s cadenced phrases. Dignity’s parents, for example. Neglect and Folly had arrived in town just in time to come straight to the hall, and now were seated to his left, looking suitably impressed. Folly was even weeping happily. How he wished they would take this house collapse really seriously, use their minds about it! But though he had sometimes tried Bible teachings on his parents, particularly when he had been a new convert, he had gotten nowhere. They invariably agreed with everything, declared themselves warm believers, and went on ignoring their own darkened minds and hearts.

  The Pastor was finishing up with a prayer, and before long announced that all could stand, inviting them to remain and socialize afterward. Dignity followed his father and mother into an aisle where the older man paused, nodding his head a little with an expression that seemed to say, ‘That was done so rightly, so very rightly.’

  “I’m glad you could make it, Dad,” he said, as the others of their party gathered around them.

  “Wouldn’t have missed it,” said Neglect while tugging nervously at his suit jacket lapel. (He had been too long without a smoke.) “The Pastor said it to a ‘T.’ Couldn’t have put it better. It’ll happen to us all someday. I guess the old place isn’t as sturdy as it once was, eh?”

  Dignity knew he was referring to Grace House. Neglect and Folly were wealthy enough to spend most of each year away on the world travels that they loved, but still considered Grace House to be their home. They had never comprehended the change that had taken place when Pride House had become Grace House. Both still hoped the presence of the Heavenites there was just a foolish phase of their son’s, though after twelve years, undoubtedly a long one. In the meantime, they avoided ca
lling the house by either name. They applied the same solution to Dignity. He was no longer Pride or Dignity but just ‘son.’

  “No, the roof line gets a little more crooked every year,” Dignity agreed with his father.

  “Well, they’re not built to last forever. Let’s be thankful for Relocation when the time comes.”

  “We’re not going to be Relocated,” Dignity said without pausing to consider. “We’re Heavenites and will go to Heaven instead.”

  Neglect only hesitated for a moment. “Well, that’s just what I mean. A better place. Where the Sluggards are now.”

  Dignity shook his head sadly.

  “What?” Neglect said sharply.

  “Dad, it’s two different places. Lag Sluggard had nothing going with the Heavenly Embassy. All he had was whatever the City has worked out for him.” He hesitated, then finished the thought. “I’m afraid that’s pretty grim.”

  Folly had been fumbling with something in her purse but now stepped forward with a reddened face and gave her son a look of warning. “The Sluggards are living as well now as they ever did,” she said with firmness. “What have we taught you since you were a child?”

  Reason, who had been following the conversation closely, decided to answer for her cousin. Now that the moment of confrontation had come, she found that she was not so afraid of it as she had anticipated. It might even feel good to finally stop dodging around and pretending to agree with nonsense. At any rate, she had a ready answer for Folly’s question, for she had come to live with Neglect and Folly at the age of twelve.

  “Folly, you taught us that when a house falls, that’s the end, and anything else beyond that is a mystery,” she said. “That’s not right, but it’s what you said. But since you seem to have changed your view, may I point out that the Sluggard’s corner is just an empty lot now? Do you think the City is going to build a new house for them somewhere?”

  Folly nodded firmly.

  “Do you think they’re able?” Reason said. “Has the City ever been able to build a replacement house for anyone?”

  “Out there in a better place, you bet they do,” Folly asserted. “The Sluggards are living as well now as they ever did. What have we taught you since you were a child?”

  “And what did Pastor Hypocrisy just say?” Neglect seconded. “Don’t tell me you don’t believe him, son. You believe in your own pastor.”

  Neglect should have known that Dignity had not been part of Hypocrisy’s congregation for over a decade, but he never was able to remember this from one visit to the next.

  Dignity shook his head again. “Dad, I keep hoping that someday you’ll understand.”

  “So when the old house goes down,” Neglect said, “you’re saying we all are going to go to where this Heavenly King runs things?”

  “No, Dad, not all of us. You remember how some people in the house had to leave when Grace took over, and even now Miss Worry has no promise that she’ll get to go with us to Heaven. It’s really up to you whether you…” Dignity stopped, suddenly aware that he was getting offensively personal.

  “What are you implying about your mother and me?” Neglect said angrily. “You go off to Heaven and we don’t? Is that it?”

  “That can’t be,” Folly said. “You can’t be saying that. What have we taught you since you were a child?”

  Dignity looked down at Reason, who blushed and turned to Truth. Neglect found himself looking into the face of the black preacher, whom he intensely disliked.

  “Mr. Neglect,” Truth said, “who is going to save you from the sentence of Hell?”

  Love Orchard answered a phone in Grace House.

  “Love, it’s Goodness. I’m over here at the Dreads’, you know, and I just wanted to know if we got an invitation to a navy ball.”

  While holding little Favor on her lap, Love assured her younger sister that they had.

  “That Lieutenant Justice brought an invitation over here for the Dreads too. Did you know?”

  This was perplexing to the sisters, and they speculated for a few minutes as to how it had come about. The Heavenite authorities could hardly have made a mistake, and yet the Dreads seemed as solidly committed to the City as any family in the neighborhood. To them such an invitation would be an embarrassment, and worse than an embarrassment—definitely not a thrill.

  Though Love could not enlighten her about this, Goodness was not much concerned and soon came to the real point of her call. “Anyway, the Lieutenant asked to dance with me at the ball. I said I would. Is that all right?”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  “Well, I thought it was OK. And Love, this could be good for you too. There’s sure to be lots of officers there.”

  Goodness was trying to be nice. Love appreciated that her young sister did not simply say that, at age thirty, she was pressing toward spinsterhood.

  “Now you know I’m waiting to find my man after we all go home to Heaven,” she answered with cheer.

  “I know you always say that, but what if he came to you? We’ve got to start thinking about dresses.”

  “Well, that’s the odd thing,” Love replied, for she had seen the invitation. “The Captain is going to send us what we need to wear for the evening. Leave it to our people to do it up right. Uh, Goodness, by the way, have the Dread kids been spreading around a poem? Blessing and Favor brought in something that, well, is kind of funny but not at all the sort of thing that…” She paused, not knowing how to say how much she had enjoyed it.

  “Yes, I’ve seen it,” Goodness said. “That Wittily is merciless, isn’t she? It’s scathing.”

  Other people at the Bon Voyage had moved away from the arguing group of relatives, which made Reason feel even more self-conscious.

  “Well, if we’re no longer welcome in the house I gave you, and that you gave away,” Neglect thundered at Dignity, “then we’ll just settle ourselves elsewhere.” He puffed on the cigarette he had lighted.

  “That’s not at all what I mean, Dad,” Dignity said.

  “You’ve allowed everyone else and his brother to live there,” said Neglect, glancing at Truth. “But we aren’t good enough, I guess. We’re dirty sinners. Well, we’ve got other relatives who won’t turn their noses up at us. Your cousin Guiles is hospitable and won’t treat us like this. He has told me time and again that his house is ours whenever we want to stay there.”

  “No, not there!” Reason said in alarm, and everyone turned to look at her.

  “And why not?” said Folly.

  The little woman felt intensely uncomfortable. “Leasing house isn’t safe, you must know that. They lost the roof in that storm years ago. It’s a partial ruin.”

  Neglect looked angrier still. “I can’t believe that you would be tactless enough to say that. What does that have to do with anything? Do you suppose I think any the less of Guiles and Oblivia because of that?”

  “No, of course not. No one does. They couldn’t help it.”

  “Then what’s your point?” Neglect pressed.

  She paused, registering the sheer craziness of the question. “That the house will collapse, of course! They’ve never had the roof fixed and the place could go down while you’re in there. They’re doomed to Relocation, and if you’re among the occupants, then you’d have to go with them.”

  Neglect answered with slow, thick syllables. “Guiles—has told me—that his house is good for decades. The inspectors say so.”

  “Your pardon, Mr. Neglect,” Truth put in, “but the inspectors just shake their heads over that place. They keep telling him to have a new roof put on, and that might buy him a few more years, but he spends his money on other things. It’s a wonder Leasing house has lasted this long.”

  “So now Guiles is a liar? Do you have any idea what it would do to him if he heard you? He’s a sensitive man.” Neglect turned to Dignity. “Son, don’t expect us at home. We’
re going to the Leasings.”

  As he and Folly stalked out, Dignity followed, trying to reason with them, but both parents were pretending not to hear.

  Following more slowly, Reason, Truth, and Obscurity paused near the door to read a sign placed on an easel. It was Mammon and Gavel’s notice of an auction to be held the following evening in this same hall. From long practice, the City demolition teams had learned to extract much of the personal property from collapsed homes, and accordingly they were about to sell the possessions they had taken from the ruin of Sluggard House.

  Several others were reading the sign.

  “I wonder if Diva’s china cabinet came through all right?” one woman remarked to another. “It was on the first floor, and they say there was less damage down there.”

  “Probably scratched up,” said the other woman, who Reason recognized as Mrs. Hypocrisy, the pastor’s wife. “Bid on the clothing and linens. They’re always a good bet to come through undamaged. I got my husband some of his best suits that way.”

  “Thanks, I’ll remember that. But you’re coming too, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, of course. We need new curtains for the dining room.”

  The three Heavenites exchanged strained glances and walked on. When they were outside in the chill evening and Reason had thrust her hands into her coat pockets, her fingers touched something unfamiliar. She pulled out Grace’s abominometer. Starting to put it back in her pocket, she paused to take another look. It now read 81.

  An hour later Dignity was at home with his wife Obscurity, talking with her about the argument with his parents and trying to calm down, when his cell phone rang.

  “What is this about?” Guiles Leasing demanded angrily and without introduction. “Do you think I can’t take proper care of Neglect and Folly? What are you saying about my house? Who do you think you are?”

  Taken aback, Dignity straightened up in his chair and answered the last and easiest question.

  “Their son,” he said.

  “What do you want to know about my house?” Guiles shot back. “Do you want to see papers proving that it’s sound?”

  “Well, I understand the inspectors don’t have anything good to say about it,” he replied, thinking of Truth’s words.

  Guiles paused awkwardly and changed the subject. “Do you have any idea how upset your parents are? I’ve never seen your mother so angry. She used words I’ve never heard her use before.”

  Dignity cringed inside at this, but he answered, “Better upset than Relocated, Guiles.”

  Guiles was brought up short again, but continued in a moment with the same furious edge. “We are going to have that roof fixed within the next month. I’m in touch with the builders. What do you say to that?”

  Dignity wished to say nothing, for he knew Guiles was such a spendthrift that he would never have the ready money and such a fool that he would never concern himself about the danger except at rare moments of confrontation such as this.

  “That’s fine if you actually do it,” he said. “But what I say is that this conversation isn’t doing either of us any good. What we need is for all of us, my family and yours, to sit down together and talk. Good grief, I’m not your enemy, Guiles, and surely you want Mom and Dad to be staying here at Christmas, the same as usual. How about if we all get together over the weekend and discuss this calmly?”

  “No, we will not,” Guiles said firmly. “Goodby.”