by Walter Blum
“When did all this happen?”
“Almost a week ago. Where have you been?”
3
In the Bell Tower, he felt safe. Up here amid the purple wall hangings, the velvet sofa and easy chairs; the lights that dimmed whenever a love song was played; soft carpets, splashing fountains, windows from floor to ceiling like portholes looking down on Canelius and the valley beyond, as far as the misty mountains to the west; here in this sanctuary, where he could hide behind the microphone and spin fantasies out of straw, he felt safe.
Now and then, though, a voice from the outside world climbed the stones of the tower and knocked on the glass. Simon’s disappearance was one of these.
The way Simon vanished from the earth affected him more deeply than he would have imagined. Although they barely knew each other, there was something about the big, blustery man’s presence that touched him, as it did everyone at the station. His absence opened a hole down which something bright and laughing tumbled, never to be seen again. Adam felt a strange kind of emptiness, as though he’d lost his moorings. He needed someone to talk to about the turmoil that was churning his life into an indigestible bouillabaisse.
The obvious person was Larry. There was something about Larry that made him easy to relate to, and he was almost always available. His duties extended far beyond that of program director. When Hunter Baines, the ruddy-faced, bespectacled owner and manager of WCAN, was off searching for new worlds to conquer—which happened often—it was Larry who held down the fort, hired people, fired them, changed formats when necessary and saw that things ran smoothly.
Larry also hosted a hillbilly show called Kellin in Canelius, which listeners seemed to enjoy because of the contrast between Larry’s slightly sophisticated, unidentifiable accent and the country drawls of the performers he interviewed and bandied wisecracks with. The show drew a good share of the audience at that time of day.
But Larry was going through a difficult patch. A painful divorce that had been grinding along for more than six months seemed to have etched extra lines on his long, balding head and gave him the look of a wounded stallion. There were times when Adam suspected Larry of playing his marital woes for sympathy, but it was impossible to dislike the man. He had soft blue eyes and a sweet, cultured way about him. He even dressed the part, wearing a shirt and tie every day to work and, in cold weather, a vest. His vocabulary was impeccable—it was almost as though he had an invisible dictionary hanging over his head.
It was Larry who, early on, had taken him down to the section the locals derisively referred to as “Jigtown.” The visit wasn’t meant to be condescending; Larry felt his young friend needed an education in that other world hiding behind the smug facade that was Canelius. They drove slowly without stopping, Adam staring at the dilapidated, unpainted wooden houses, the cracked windows, the streets that were little more than dusty strips without pavements, without even a sidewalk. Larry offered no commentary. None was needed.
More typically, the two men would meet for an afternoon snack at the B&B Café. The place was an old-fashioned malt shop a couple of blocks up from the Jefferson Davis Hotel. It was the kind of place that boasted a counter and booths and a jukebox playing the latest from Perry Como and Rosemary Clooney and Frank Sinatra and the Ames Brothers. For a modest tab you could idle and schmooze and waste the hours to your heart’s content. By three o’clock, the B&B was virtually empty. It was the halfway point for both of them—Larry winding up his day, Adam about to begin.
One Sunday afternoon, Sunday being Adam’s day off, the two of them drove to Forest Glen, which had a state teacher’s college and a movie theater that catered to the student crowd. The road was lined with tobacco fields, stretching to the horizon. Farther away were the misty blue foothills, which you could only see from the top of a tall building. Canelius was considered by its residents to be part of the “new South,” but there was something very old about it, something that Adam with his innocent 23 years and his liberal Northern upbringing found difficult to understand.
In sedate, proper Canelius, teenagers were expected to dance the foxtrot and women over fifty almost invariably wore skirts, not slacks. There was no drive-in theater, and the Strand on Graham Avenue downtown rarely showed anything but Hollywood films. People flocked to The Moon is Blue, a comedy considered pretty “hot stuff,” although the local censors had whacked away huge amounts of footage, excised lines of dialogue and pasted the rest together like plastic balls on a Christmas tree. If the picture was hot stuff, it was cold jam by the time Adam got around to seeing it.
Not so in Forest Glen. There was a state college nearby, and at the Glen Theater the big attraction were the imports. Films were shown with subtitles and they were seldom cut. It seemed not to matter—after all, how many people knew the difference, since the film was in a foreign language?
From Canelius, you could get to Forest Glen in forty minutes on the main highway going east. They set off in Larry’s car, with Larry behind the wheel, had chow mein in a Chinese restaurant, passed the time in a park until the sun went down, then joined the line for tickets.
The picture they’d chosen was called Naked Night. It had been directed by a Swedish filmmaker Adam never heard of, a man by the name of Ingmar Bergman. In the United States, Bergman was just beginning to be known. Larry didn’t know what the picture was about, but the title sounded racy. You could always count on Europeans, even Swedes, to throw in a bit of titillation, something unavailable in Canelius. To their disappointment, the picture turned out to be gloomy and slow-moving. The story had to do with long Swedish winters and a traveling circus. The subtitles were difficult to read, and the one nude scene was brief and out of focus.
The gloomy mood haunted him all the way back in the car. The movie’s sexual coldness was like a knife in the heart. In the darkness, Adam could hear Larry’s sweet, clear voice talking about Nancy, the wife from whom he was separated. He had never met Nancy, but she sounded like a decent sort. Larry had drawn up an agenda of grievances, mostly having to do with her apparent aversion to sex. She didn’t like to touch him, he said. She rarely kissed him. When the lights went out, she would roll over in bed and pretend to be asleep. Adam felt uncomfortable listening to the intimate details of another man’s love life. It was the first time he had heard so much of it in such painful detail.
The last thing he wanted was to take sides, but it’s not easy riding with someone in the dark for almost an hour without putting in your own two cents. According to Larry, the last thing he wanted was a divorce, but there seemed to be no way of avoiding it.
“Have you tried a marriage counselor?” Adam asked.
“Nancy won’t hear of it. She says whatever’s wrong, a marriage counselor is not going to cure it.”
“What do you think went wrong?”
“I don’t know. You try so hard to be a good husband, and in the end you fall on your face. You know there are temptations out there, and if you give in and let yourself be seduced you’ll be accused of cheating. But it’s so hard, Adam.”
“Like sitting shivah for a marriage,” Adam said.
“What’s that?”
Adam smiled. It was good to know that Larry’s store of knowledge was not all encompassing.
“We have a custom when someone dies,” he said. “The mourners gather and bring food, and everyone sits around comforting the family of the person who’s passed on.”
“That’s a Jewish custom?” Larry asked.
“Yes.”
“Funny thing,” Larry said. “I didn’t know you were Jewish.”
Somehow, they never got around to talking about Simon, and Adam realized that it would be pointless to mention Susan. His friend was too consumed by his own miseries, the breakup of a marriage that could not be restored. Their lives were running on parallel tracks, but headed in the opposite direction.
Only once more in the next few weeks did they find time for a social occasion. It was Larry’s birthday, and to Adam�
��s surprise he insisted on taking his young colleague for a fashionable lunch.
The Palm Room of the Jefferson Davis Hotel was probably the swankiest place in Canelius. The restaurant was less noted for its cuisine than for a kind of oppressive respectability, but the kitchen did make a pretty fair club sandwich. They had been there about fifteen minutes, and the waiter was just bringing their orders, when a middle-aged couple came through the door and were shown to a table against the window. Adam tried not to be obvious about it, but the two were so dark, and there was something definitely foreign about them, that it was hard not to notice.
“Indian?” Adam wondered.
Larry glanced in their direction. “From India, yes,” he agreed. “You can tell by the red mark over the woman’s nose.”
“Indians do that?”
“So I’m told.”
“They could almost be Negroes.”
“Not in this hotel, and not in the Palm Room,” Larry said.
“You think some day…?” Adam wondered.
“I doubt it,” Larry said.
Adam felt a chill go through him. Fifty years ago, he thought, that could have been me. Fifty years ago my ancestors would have been on the outside, looking through the plate glass windows into the Palm Room and wondering what it must be like to have waiters in tuxedos serve you a fancy club sandwich on fine china, pour wine into cut crystal glasses, take your credit card. And now here he was, having lunch in the Palm Room and no one said a word against his being there.
No, Larry’s point was well taken. The Palm Room would never let a Negro pass through its doors. Hell would have to freeze over before something like that occurred.
They broke up after lunch, Larry hurrying back to the station to meet a couple of preachers who wanted the same Sunday hour for their service broadcasts. Adam, with a little time on his hands, decided to walk down to Max Goldman’s store. He knew that he was taking a chance, that it was always possible Susan might show up at the store, and that would mean fumbling for words and tripping over his feet and generally making a fool of himself, but if he didn’t take the initiative, someone at the station would call it to his attention.
Fortunately, the store was almost empty. Max was just finishing up with a customer, a gaunt, testy black woman of indeterminate years with whom he had clearly had dealings in the past. Adam stood nearby, anxious not to appear as though he were eavesdropping. He was beginning to absorb some of the Southern approach to race. Blacks were, of course, still relegated to separate drinking fountains and excluded from lunch counters and the front of public transportation, at least here in the South, but when it came to being customers in stores like Goldman Brothers, they were universally welcome, business being business, after all.
Unfortunately, Miss Peabody wasn’t your average customer. She could be more irritating than most, and color had nothing to do with it. Miss Peabody today was bent on buying a large, plush easy chair for her niece, who was recently married, but it had to be in naugahyde, which the store didn’t stock. Max was clearly turned off by naugahyde—fake leather, that’s how he saw it— but it was popular among young marrieds and he was willing to put it on special order, if he could only get Miss Peabody to commit herself. But the old lady kept changing her mind, and it took every bit of skill at his command to ease her into a decision, something no one on the floor seemed capable of.
“Ah dunno,” the customer hesitated.
“Miss Peabody,” Max said in his usual butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-your mouth voice. Although he spoke without a Southern drawl, his manner fooled many people thinking he had one hidden up the sleeves of his starched white-on-white shirt. It was a trick of the eye rather than the ear. He kept his voice low, let his eyelids droop and modulated his tone. Sometimes with people like Miss Peabody, though, it was necessary to adopt a sterner tone.
“Miss Peabody, you are a lovely woman. You are a valued customer, but you are also the most exasperating woman I have ever met.”
“I just want what’s right for my niece,” the old lady snapped.
“I know, Miss Peabody.”
“She gotta have the best if she gonna be a married lady. You wouldn’t want her to have nothing but the best, would you, Mr. Goldman?”
“No, I suppose not,” Max sighed.
But naugahyde. Max Goldman’s face fell. There had to be something better than that, his expression said. In the end, he managed to talk her into a nice cloth version of the chair, got out his invoice book and was about to fill it in when word came down from his secretary, Verna, that he had a phone call. Goldman nodded and told the secretary he would take the call in his office. To a young man named Bernard who came up behind them, he waved an absent hand.
“Would you show Adam around?” he asked. “I won’t be long.”
With an agility that belied his years, he darted through the crowded showroom and up a flight of stairs leading to the balcony. The setup reminded Adam vaguely of a prison facility, although not quite so grim. Goldman’s office was on the balcony, and from here he could step out and keep an eye on the showroom, watching for important customers and checking what pieces they might be looking at. Adam knew little about furniture, but he guessed the big-ticket items—a two-piece sofa set, perhaps, or a dinette table with four chairs—would most interest the store’s proprietor.
Bernard Silverman, he later learned, was the most reliable and promising of the three salesmen on Goldman’s payroll. He had pink cheeks, soft thick fingers and jet black, curly hair that needed no combing. His eyes were wide and his bland, chubby face reflected an innocence that many customers came to take for honesty. There was talk that, should Goldman retire or move on to bigger things, Bernard was next in line to run the store. He was smart and personable. He came from a good family, knew the merchandise and he was Jewish. What more could a person want?
“Are you thinking of furnishing an apartment?” he said.
“Why do you ask?” Adam said.
“Well, I think we could get you a good discount on a bedroom set,” Bernard informed him.
Remembering what Goldman had once said about his brother’s discount selling habits, Adam wondered if this was indeed the store’s policy. He let Bernard guide him through a maze of chairs and tables and beds and lamps that seemed to have been haphazardly but shrewdly arranged around the store. After a while, however, it became clear that whatever had drawn Goldman away wouldn’t return him within a reasonable length of time. Bernard had virtually exhausted his inventory of the stock, and Adam realized he hadn’t pulled a single record or even planned the subject for tonight’s show.
“I’ll come back when things are not so busy,” he said, gesturing in the direction of the balcony, where Bernard’s boss was hidden. He took Bernard’s business card, slipped it in his pocket and stepped out into the street.
4
Sunday was Mrs. Warren’s day. From early morning until almost eleven, when it was time to leave for church, she sat in the living room overflowing the big, flowered easy chair beside the radio, the imitation leather Bible open on her lap, the sad tinted portrait of Jesus on the wall behind her, absorbing the message of one preacher after another.
Reverend Deventer came first, an angry man who spoke in organ tones about sin, of which he had no end of knowledge. Dr. Chalmers Starbuck, who followed, was less dramatic but easier to listen to, more avuncular. He shared the latest reports on the Communist menace, whose black teeth were eating into every household and every schoolroom and every statehouse in the land, “even as I speak.”
After that came Arlen Rodenbaugh, who claimed to have intimate knowledge of the pestilence whose name could not be pronounced on the radio, but began with an S and ended with an X, its poison susceptible only to the love of Jesus.
But it was Elton Garrison, a fiery Pentecostal of no known denomination, who most captured Mrs. Warren’s imagination. When the Reverend Garrison came on, the radio’s volume went up. Fire and brimstone poured from the speaker. The
wrath of God was called down on every sinner who failed to heed the signs of Armageddon and the final days that lurked just over the horizon. Mrs. Warren was positive that her boarder was one of those scheduled to be struck down when the lightning flashed and the earth opened up to swallow nonbelievers into the pit.
“You must have heard what he said,” she declared one morning, planting her ample presence before him so he could not escape. Her voice was trembling. “It’s all there in scripture. `Let us not sleep as others do but watch and be sober.’ ” Her hand smote the Bible. “Thessalonians 5:4-6.”
“Thessalonians?” Adam frowned. He was going to say “what the hell,” but held his tongue, knowing how Mrs. Warren felt about blasphemy. “Who are they?” he asked.
“It’s not a who. It’s scripture, Adam! Don’t you know that? Listen to what the good book says, Adam. It’s not too late. There’s good news, Adam, if you have faith in Jesus. He’ll protect you. The reason He shed His blood for mankind is so He could promise eternal life. You want that, don’t you?”
“To live forever?”
“Of course, of course. Eternal life, Adam. Eternal life.” He could see the vein in her neck throbbing. “Please. Listen to me, Adam. You want His protection, don’t you?”
“Whose protection?”
“Jesus’ protection,” she shouted.
“Against what?” he asked.
“Against the Antichrist.”
“I’m not sure if I know what that is.”
She fought to contain her impatience. “It’s all written down. The Antichrist, the man who will come among us and perform miracles, and we’ll be deceived. Even our leaders will be deceived. Reverend Garrison says peace and prosperity will reign for three and a half years, in fulfillment of the prophecies, and then all hell will break loose. The Antichrist will sever ties with the false church and set himself up as God, and those who follow him will be doomed, but those who are born again will be with Jesus during this period, and they’ll return with Him to fight the final Battle of Armageddon.”
