The New City

by Stephen Amidon

  Sunday passed in a sluggish, half-conscious haze. He called home in the late morning. Once again, Ardelia didn’t want to have anything to do with him, though this time she gave him a few seconds before consigning him to staticky oblivion. He took the opportunity to weakly threaten to come home anyway. She said that if he did she would call Austin and have him write her up an injunction barring him from the house. Woo-ten knew she was serious. Ardelia Wilson did not make idle threats.

  So he spent another day driving aimlessly around the city. Since it was Sunday there was nothing for him to do. He bought a three-pack of Hanes underpants, a cheap shirt and some stuff for the bathroom. God knew how long it would be until he’d be able to get at his own stuff. At the lake he noticed that the cleanup crew had left yet another flyblown pile of dead fish by the damaged pier. He clocked nearly a hundred miles that day, stopping occasionally for a Coke or a hamburger he could barely swallow. As he drove his anger at himself increased, an inner odometer ticking over mile after mile of stinging guilt and futile contrition. He didn’t know which was worse, the sin itself or the pride in believing that forgiveness would follow inevitably upon being caught. Only now did he begin to understand what joyless things his visits to 27 had been. Thinking back, all he could remember was the pungent smell of food, those velveteen sheets and the slack-jawed expression on that child’s face.

  Of course, Alice had written the note. He’d seen through her futile attempt at subterfuge the moment Ardelia handed it to him. She had no friends, at least none who would go to the trouble of sending a letter. She had panicked when he said that it would have to end. Somewhere in her addled brain she’d thought that precipitating a crisis would drive him to her. Several times during that long Sunday he found himself tempted to swing by and let her know exactly what she’d done to him. The pain she’d caused his family. But he knew he would not go. And it wasn’t only because the situation had been caused by his own weakness and arrogance. Beneath that was the truly frightening suspicion that once he crossed her threshold it might not be all that easy to walk back out again.

  His bad luck continued Monday morning, when he arrived at Newton Plaza to find his offices flooded. Not just his own personal suite, but the whole fifth floor. Barnaby’s supposedly fail-safe sprinkler system had managed to go off sometime in the early morning, leaving the carpets waterlogged and the desks covered with useless wads of blueprint. So the better part of Wooten’s day was spent in the maddening pursuit of alternative space for his people and efforts to salvage what he could from the mess. At least now he had an excuse for not calling Savage. What, after all, was he supposed to say to the man? That he had no answer yet because his wife had thrown him out of the house? It was hardly the start to a new job in which the happy Wooten family was supposed to figure prominently.

  Austin came down in late morning to survey the damage. Wooten must have been showing the stress because Swope took him aside and asked if he was all right. He was tempted to blurt out the whole sad story of his infidelity right there. But the thought of shaming himself in front of Austin stilled his tongue. Instead, he mumbled something about it having been a long day. He tried to call Ardelia after that, finally getting her in the early evening. Although she once again refused to see him, Wooten thought he could detect a softening in her tone.

  Maybe tomorrow, he thought.

  He arrived back at Motel 6 dead on his feet, barely having the energy to remove his steel-tipped boots before collapsing onto the sagging mattress. Not even the hunger gnawing at his guts could keep him awake. He felt like he’d been asleep for days when the phone woke him, though a quick glance at his watch told him it had been less than half an hour. He yanked the receiver from its nest, thinking it might be Ardelia. But whoever was on the other end of the line refused to talk, maintaining a stony silence that sounded more profound than a simple prank. For some reason Wooten had the impression the caller was close by. Sleep was hard to achieve after that. He finally drifted off around two. Once again, the phone woke him. The same silent caller. Wooten threw on his clothes and stormed to the front desk. The woman’s shrug asked what he expected for $9.99 a night. Wooten told her not to put through any more calls unless the party identified herself as Ardelia Wooten. Back in his room he began to wonder if these events might be something other than bad luck. It was all becoming too much of a coincidence. Maybe it was the work of someone out to get back at him. For a while he tried to compose a list of suspects. Men he’d fired. Vota. Alice herself. But that couldn’t be. No one knew he was out here except his wife. And she would never torment him. Not anonymously.

  So it was on the back of four nearly sleepless nights that he arrived at his temporary basement office on Tuesday morning to find a stack of urgent messages. Half were from Savage, the rest from Joe Vota. Knowing he still had no answer for the EarthWorks CEO, Wooten concentrated on the site foreman. By the look of it, there was something seriously wrong at the Underhill HUD. He drove up there straight away, wondering why the hell Vota was still on the job. Swope was supposed to have fired him ten days ago. He arrived to find the entire crew gathered around the just-poured basketball court. The workers watched him approach with the bland, assessing eyes of union men. A few whispered among themselves. Vota stepped forward, his face creased with false concern. He spread his hands and gestured with his gristled chin toward the cement before Wooten could ask what was going on.

  Two words had been written in the dried blond stone. The width and texture of the lines suggested they had been made with the bit of cracked cinder-block sticking up from the far edge of the court like a shark’s fin. There were no footprints around—whoever had written this had been careful to obliterate them. The letters were neat and perfectly squared. Four feet tall. Visible from a good distance.

  WOOTEN NIGGER

  The faces of the men were stonily unreadable. Wooten looked back at Vota, who watched him with a guarded expression. Maybe it was him who’d been dogging Wooten these past few days.

  “Who did this?” Wooten asked.

  He immediately regretted the question, knowing it gave Vota the upper hand.

  “Jeez, Earl, I don’t know. We just showed up and here it was.”

  “Just like that, huh?”

  “You think we did it?” Vota asked, a trace of outrage now in his voice.

  “Did you?”

  Something changed in Vota’s expression. That pretense of friendliness vanished.

  “What, you think I’d pull a stunt like this?”

  “Sounds about your speed, Joe. Yeah.”

  Vota snorted.

  “Come on, Earl. I wouldn’t call anyone a nigger.”

  The way he said the word was what did it. Speaking it while pretending not to. Wooten lost it. After four sleepless nights and four long days carrying around his guilt and shame like a bad fever, he snapped. Before he understood what was happening his hands were on Vota’s weathered denim lapels. The wattled fat of the man’s throat brushed against his knuckles.

  “Who you calling nigger?” Wooten asked, his voice quietly furious.

  When Vota didn’t answer he jerked up on those collars, lifting the man right off the ground. The workers moved in and pulled at Wooten’s arms and shoulders. Vota’s eyes had begun to bulge. Sputtering noises rattled at the bottom of his throat. The men began pulling harder.

  Suddenly, as thoughtlessly as he’d grabbed him, Wooten let the man go. The anger had passed. Vota’s feet dropped to the ground. He staggered backward a few steps. There was a shift in his expression. Contempt replaced the fear.

  The men released Wooten. Everybody waited.

  “You saw that,” Vota said, his eyes firmly fixed on Wooten. “Man put his hands on me. I didn’t call him shit. You guys are my witnesses. All of you.”

  “Look, Joe,” Wooten said.

  Everyone waited out the ten long seconds it took Wooten to realize there was nothing to say. After one last look at the graffiti, he turned and strode back to his
Ranchero.

  “People gonna hear about this,” Vota called after him. “Don’t think they won’t.”

  After that, Wooten knew he had to go home. One more night away from home and he’d be lost. He delayed his return as long as he could, finding work to do until nearly dusk. There was plenty. Another gaslight had exploded, this one way out in Thunder Hill, in a yet-to-be-occupied Gettysburg. The electrician who discovered it knew the drill—no authorities had been called. Wooten got there in fifteen minutes. As he worked the stopcock he knew there was nothing left to do but drive up to Mystic Hills. He didn’t call—that would only give Ardelia the chance to say no. If she wanted to summon the sheriff when he got there, fine. If he kept on going like this he’d probably end up in their hands anyway. He had to act to stop this freefall. The things happening to him were more than luck or coincidence. He’d brought this down on himself. Although not normally a superstitious man, Wooten knew there was a point beyond which you transgressed only at your own peril. And he’d crossed that line. He had to get back over on the right side of it before something seriously bad happened.

  He decided to walk in without knocking. Enough was enough. He turned the knob and stepped into the front hall, avoiding Big House’s permanent, searching stare.

  “Hello?” he called out, his usually percussive voice sounding small and timid.

  He waited for the twins to come charging out of the den or Joel to slouch down the steps. But there was only silence. She’s left you, he thought. Packed up the kids and gone back to St. Louis. He walked toward the lit kitchen, stopping dead in his tracks when he saw Ardelia seated at the head of the big table. She stared evenly at him. He’d worried she might be as much of a wreck as him, but here she was dressed up in her vice principal’s finest, a tan pants suit with the Liberty scarf her brother had brought back from London. She wore makeup and her hair was perfect. A cup of herbal tea rested on the table, wisps of steam curving through the air in front of her. He could see the coldness in her eyes.

  “Where is everybody?” he asked, his voice sounding bereft as it echoed through the copper pots and exhaust hoods.

  “I just put the twins to bed. Joel is in his room cutting a tragic figure. Lucky me—I get Hamlet and Lothario under one roof. Maybe I should go back to teaching English.”

  The remark stung all the deeper because he knew it would be the first of many. He took a deep breath and perched on a stool at the island, leaving a good ten feet of tile between them.

  “Ardelia …”

  “Have you seen her?”

  “No,” he said. “I swear to you.”

  She knew he was telling the truth. Just as she would have known on Friday if he’d tried to lie. She waited. He realized he didn’t know what he wanted to say. Four days on his own and he’d come up with precisely nothing.

  “It’s been a bad few days,” he said.

  There was no forgiveness in her eyes, no effort to understand. He’d betrayed her. She didn’t want to hear about the quality of his days.

  “I’m sorry, Ardelia,” he continued.

  She nodded once. Accepting the statement as fact and nothing more.

  “So what do you want to do?” she asked.

  “I think I should move back in here.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t think it’s good, my being away. For Joel and the girls.”

  She looked down at the steaming cup, considering this.

  “If that’s your reason, then yes, you may move back in.”

  “I don’t know what else to say,” he said after a long moment.

  “Well, I suggest you think of something, Earl. Because until you do, this is going to be between us.”

  He looked helplessly around the kitchen.

  “I just … when I was there it was like I forgot who I was.”

  “Who you were,” she echoed.

  “Who I’d made myself into. It’s hard to … I just needed a place where there wasn’t all this pressure.”

  She took in their house, their entire life, with a taut gesture of her left hand.

  “Is that what this is for you? Pressure? Is that what I am?”

  “Yes,” he said after a while. “Not only, but yes.”

  He thought his answer might send her into further fury. But it seemed to have the opposite effect, calming the growing storm that threatened to drive him back to that wretched motel.

  “We all put pressure on each other,” she said. “That’s the only way we can make it in this world.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “It would be the easiest thing in the world for us not to put pressure on each other. To stay back in St. Louis or move down to Powdertown. We could live that life in our sleep, Earl. But that wasn’t the path we chose. We decided to do this.”

  “I know.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short. Don’t you dare. Because when you sell yourself short you sell me short as well. All of us. I don’t know what you got up to down there and I don’t want to know. That woman …”

  She took a deep, controlling breath.

  “I’m sure she has a story and I suppose in different circumstances my heart might even bleed a bit if I heard it. But when I looked into her eyes I could only see one thing. You, selling yourself short. And taking us down with you.”

  She stood. She looked very beautiful to him now. He wanted to hold her, and by holding her to put all this far away from them. But he knew that it was too early for that. Way too early.

  “You are welcome to stay in the guest room for the time being. If you feel you have to explain this to the children, you can tell them you have an infection you don’t want me to catch.”

  Wooten winced at her words. Any sense that this situation might be reaching a rapid conclusion vanished.

  “I don’t know where we’re going to end up with this, Earl. I really don’t. I’ll keep up appearances for the children’s sake but I refuse to deny my feelings.”

  “No one’s asking you to do that.”

  She stared at him for a moment.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked.

  “Well, yes,” he said.

  “Good.”

  She left the kitchen without another word.

  He sat on the stool for a while, feeling a sudden release of deep relief. The worst of it was over. Yes, there would be hard times ahead. Ardelia was a proud woman. There would be no rush to forgiveness on her part. That infection remark proved that. But still, he was back in the house. That was the main thing.

  After a few minutes he followed her upstairs. The door to his room was shut. He knew better than to try to open it. Instead, he went down to see the whispering twins, whose joy at the sight of him proved a tonic for everything bad that had happened since Friday night. He read them six Dr. Seuss books to make up for the nights he’d missed. After they finally nodded off he came back into the hall, pausing at Joel’s door. A bass line thudded too loud within. Normally, Wooten would have told him to turn it down, but tonight he let the music play. He didn’t want to have to face Joel tonight. At the end of the hall his pajamas and toothbrush rested in a neat pile outside his bedroom door. Wooten picked them up, then checked his watch. Eight-thirty. Fair’s fair, he thought. He called good night through the door. There was no answer.

  Downstairs, he made himself two ham sandwiches, eating them at the sink so he wouldn’t have to clean up. At least his appetite was returning. After he was done he locked up the house, starting in the dining room, then moving through to the sunken den and the study, finally checking on the French doors in the living room and the kitchen’s sliding-glass door. He wound up in the guest room, his quarters for the foreseeable future if Ardelia’s attitude was anything to go by. It was at the back of the house, between the kitchen and the laundry room. Wooten had jokingly located it here so Ardelia’s relatives would be as far away as possible while staying under the same roof. He slipped into his pajamas and switched on the old black and white they kept down her
e, then established himself on the unsatisfactory mattress of the hideaway bed to watch a movie about white boys who were drafted to go to Vietnam. It was set in boot camp, where they had all sorts of trouble with their drill sergeants. The movie made him think about John Truax. Whatever anger he still held toward the man from last Sunday’s confrontation vanished altogether with the thought about him fighting in that ridiculous war. It was a shame, Austin firing him like that. Especially since he seemed to have given Vota a second chance. Maybe once things settled down he’d have a word with his friend. See if they might not be able to extend the poor guy a helping hand.

  During a commercial break, Wooten thought he heard a noise near the front of the house. A footfall, a softly closed door. But when he went to check there was nothing. He crept to the top of the steps. Light seeped from beneath Joel’s door. He was tempted to go see his son and try to explain to him what was going on. But memories of their last disastrous conversation dissuaded him. First things first. Make it up with Ardelia, then start working on Joel. He headed back downstairs, once again avoiding Big House’s gaze as he passed his portrait.

  The news was on when he got back to the guest room. Senator Sam banging his gavel, his eyebrows wriggling like angry caterpillars stapled to his forehead. The weatherman announced that tomorrow would be another fine day. The Orioles won again, Cuellar this time. Commercials came on. Wooten knew he should go to sleep now but was too keyed up to close his eyes. Besides, Richard Pryor was guesting on Carson. He decided to take advantage of this opportunity—Ardelia couldn’t stand the man. One last guilty pleasure. As he waited for the show to begin he thought about the family sleeping soundly above him. It was going to be all right now. Everything would sort itself out. Ardelia and Joel, they’d come around. It was just a question of time. Tomorrow he’d tell his wife about the job. She might give him some grief, though in the end she’d see it was the right thing to do. And then he could finally make that long-delayed call to Savage. But that was for tomorrow. For now, the main thing was that he was home.