Mr. Halperin looked away, his head bent, his hands held out, palms up. “I have heard such theories before, in Germany,” he said.
“You’re talking about people, Mr. Halperin. I’m talking about deer.…”
“So there’s a difference?” the tailor said, and abruptly turned away.
I had never heard such beautiful theories, but in the town of Leah, where hunting is part of life, where school is for girls when deer season opens on the first of November and the paper mill is closed, we never thought too much about killing deer. You got a deer, and he was yours. From the wild flash and flag of him, the noise of his canny rush for escape, he changed. He became your own, to touch, to show, and finally to eat. I retreated to my coatrack hideaway, gloating over Mr. Brown’s victorious argument. I went to the fitting mirrors and practiced him, ignoring my pointy profile.
Mr. Halperin didn’t speak about hunting again, but if anything, his demonstrative affection for Mr. Brown increased. The swoops to measure him, the constant cornerings and contacts, began to tell. Once I saw Mr. Brown avoid him—saw him turn and go back to the basement when he saw that Mr. Halperin was waiting for him by the shoe-fitting chairs. The tailor would come up often and put his hand on Mr. Brown’s shoulder—a shoulder held rigid. Finally Mr. Brown turned to him, and said, in a clear, cold voice, “Don’t lean on me, Mr. Halperin.”
The tailor jumped back, his hand still in the air at the height of Mr. Brown’s shoulder. “What? What?” he asked.
Mr. Brown ignored him, and continued to wait on Bessie, who was stolidly buying a pair of shoes—her impersonal foot caress at the hands of Mr. Brown.
At the foot of the stairs the tailor turned around. His eyes were wet again, and he smiled a twisty little smile. “So!” he said to me. “So we know! When didn’t it? Look! He waits on that fat pig who has the soul of a garbage can, the mouth like a hemorrhoid!” He shook his head. “Ah, he is so just like! So cold!”
When he had the time he still worked on Mr. Brown’s suit, still made the necessary measurements—but formally now, with prior permission. Most of the time he sat in his little room, firing off bursts of stitches, waiting to cuss me out.
…Until that morning in November. Leah Town Square was sere, hardened by a morning frost; the tall elms were creaky in the cold sunlight, and I was hardened and hopeless at the beginning of another endless Saturday. I crossed the green but dying grass, passed the empty benches that would soon be taken in. It was the first day of hunting season and I must wear a necktie and white shirt, hear the sporadic shots echoing down from the dark hills of Leah. The deer, jumped by hunters, would be moving nervously through the quiet spruce, leaping past the bright beeches into darkness. And I must wait on people who didn’t care enough—who didn’t care at all.
From a distance I had seen Bessie and Mr. Brown standing in front of Trotevale’s, but the frosty wind made my eyes water, and I kept them down, not bothering to wonder why the two didn’t go straight inside on a cold morning. As I came nearer I saw that Bessie was in a state of unrest. Something jiggled the mass, made her stamp her precious feet and open and shut her soundless mouth. Mr. Brown stood next to her, and they both peered in through the big window to the right of the front door. When I came up to them it was a terrible and delicious shock to me, too: the big window was only half there. Slabs and splinters of glass glittered upon the sidewalk; wide sheets of it and millions of jagged darts of it had crushed Mr. Hummington’s window display of ties and hats.
“Something moving around in there!” Bessie whined. Through the unnatural hole we heard bumpings from the rear, thumps and breaking glass.
The rest of the clerks and Mr. Halperin had come by the time Mr. Hummington arrived at a run, his key foremost. “Late! Late!” he explained, as if his lateness were something so odd it must be proclaimed. Then he saw the broken window, and with military precision he stabbed the Yale lock with his key and overran it, nearly shattering the glass of the door with his forehead. We cautiously followed him inside—all except Bessie, who remained outside uttering complaining little squeaks.
The glass case that had contained men’s jewelry—tiepins and cufflinks of coated brass, little arrows meant to look as if they pierced your necktie, springlike instruments to skewer collars down, personalized buckles and their heaps of interchangeable letters in plastic mother-of-pearl—this case was smashed and trampled, and shoddy brightwork spewed down the aisle. Stray neckties were everywhere, brightly coiling and dangling like tropical snakes in a zoo. The coatracks at the rear were all tipped over, and piles of blue and brown material lay heaped in rows, a plowed field sown with buttons.
We advanced, Mr. Hummington in the lead, silent except for the crunch of glass beneath our feet. No sound came from the dark areas at the rear of the store, and we all had the feeling of being watched.
“Got to call Mr. Trotevale,” Mr. Hummington whispered.
“We ought to get out of here,” Randall Perkins suggested. Though far in the rear, he had armed himself with or was merely carrying an empty tie rack. Bessie had moved through the door and scared us badly by screaming, “Are you all right?”
Mr. Hummington turned wrathfully, but before he could say anything the ominous presence we had all been conscious of, the author of this terrible derangement, rose before us, gathered itself before Mr. Hummington: a great buck with bone-white antlers, thick neck, and deep, wild eyes. Mr. Hummington must have been close enough to feel the sharp explosions of wind from the buck’s black nostrils.
With his hands slack at his sides and his mouth open, Mr. Hummington stared. All his famous energy had left him, drawn out at a look as awed sighs were drawn from us. The buck’s brawny neck trembled with inhuman energy, his black eyes struck away what little nerve we had. In the sudden presence of his fierce strength we were all at once aware of our weakness. The coward’s swift insight froze our shy bodies. I, for one, knew in my belly the force of those bony antlers, the power of those sharp hoofs. And the awesome dignity of the huge animal was not dispelled at all by the cheap neckties that flapped from his antlers, gaudy but unfunny: they might have been our own dangling guts.
After the long moment of fear, the deer rose on its hind legs to turn in the narrow aisle. Mr. Hummington fell solidly to the floor and scuttled, with swimming motions, back toward us on the slippery plastic. His head thumped against my shin, and he looked up, without his glasses, astounded at my unmoving presence. His eyes were metallic little beads deep under his forehead. None of the rest of us had run because the deer had—one smooth leap had taken him directly into the banister of the basement stairs. He took the heavy wood downstairs with him as easily as if it had been a spiderweb across a trail. From the basement we heard a clatter and a thump, then nothing. We had been hearing, but not caring about, Bessie’s screams for help. She stood blocking the front door, importuning the town of Leah and the police. Eventually both came.
With the deer more or less safely in the basement, Mr. Hummington took charge. Bessie was led to the elevator and installed in her office on the balcony, Mr. Halperin was sent to his shop, and the rest of us were directed to begin cleaning up. The shoe department hadn’t been damaged, and we didn’t miss Mr. Brown. While we were sweeping up the jewelry he had been in the basement.
“He’s back in the corner by the work shirts,” Mr. Brown said. “I’m afraid he’ll hurt himself.”
“Hurt himself! Hurt himself!” Mr. Hummington said.
“He may break a leg if we scare him too badly.”
“He may break his goddam neck! Look at this place! Look at the hoof marks in my new floor! Look at the glass!” Mr. Hummington yelled.
Mr. Brown looked gravely down at him, a certain amount of contempt detectable in his calmness. Mr. Hummington turned away.
“What’s Mr. Trotevale going to say? We can’t get any new glass until Monday, and he has the shingles again. We’ll have to borrow a mattress box from the furniture store and put it over the hole and it�
��ll look just goddam awful!” Some of this was private moan.
People had begun to gather on the sidewalk, and they stood two deep, staring in, steaming the good window so that they had to keep wiping to see. They all seemed to be waving at us. The front door had been locked, but this didn’t stop Chief Atmon, who jumped crushingly through the broken window, scattering hats and glass over the floor I’d just swept.
“Where is he?” Atmon yelled, his big hands held open and forward like a wrestler’s.
“He’s down in the basement and he’s as big as a horse,” Mr. Hummington said.
“Hah!”
“He’s bigger’n you, Harold,” Mr . Hummington said.
“You’re not going to wrestle him out of there.”
At mon looked questioningly at Mr. Brown.
“Three hundred pounds. Ten points,” Mr. Brown said.
“Wow!” Atmon’s hand dropped tentatively to the butt of his big revolver. On his face was an expression of fierce anticipation.
“Goddam, Harold! You shoot him and you’ll ruin half the work clothes. Blood all over the place!” Mr. Hummington cried. “ You can’t do that! All those chinos! You can’t do it!”
“I can drop him in his tracks. One shot. No splatter. Right in the goddam boiler room.”
“No! No! You’ve got to lasso him. Tie him up!”
“I ain’t no cowboy,” Atmon said. “What about you, Brown?”
“You might tie him up, but by the time you do he’ll have wrecked everything down there, and hurt himself,” Mr. Brown said.
“Shoot him!” Atmon said. “Only thing to do.”
“Why don’t we just let him go?” Mr. Brown said.
An immediate, wondering silence. We all looked at Mr. Brown as if at a stranger, and from that point on he lost force; he seemed to fade before our eyes, and the more he said, the less his opinion counted. Aside from considerations of retribution for the damage done to the store, and especially the damage done to our equilibrium, the idea was impossible. The deer would have to come back upstairs and leave the store at street level. Then he would have to find his way back to the woods, a matter of a half-mile in the best direction. Such gaunt majesty as his would be too alone, too terrible upon the quiet streets of Leah. He’d be sure to get into more trouble somewhere along the line.
“He got in here by himself,” Mr. Brown said. “If he isn’t driven crazy he might be able to find his way back where he belongs.”
“He don’t belong here” Mr. Hummington said.
“Belongs in my freezer-locker, that’s where he belongs,
” Chief Atmon said.
“Listen,” Mr. Brown said, “he isn’t stupid. He’s big and he’s old, and you don’t get that way by being stupid.”
“So who says he was?” Atmon said.
“He just doesn’t belong here. You can’t shoot him here. It’s too strange for him. Out in the woods he’d make us all look like fools.”
“So who says he wouldn’t? Only he ain’t out in the woods, by God!” Atmon said, grinning. “He ain’t out in the woods.”
“Why’d he have to come to town, anyway?” Mr. Hummington asked plaintively.
“I’ll tell you why,” Mr. Brown said. “Because so many brave hunters were out with jack lights last night. I never heard so many shots in the middle of the night. It’s a wonder everybody in this town hasn’t got his deer all tagged and hung up already. Somebody stampeded this buck. It’s not his fault he ran into town.”
“So whose fault is it? It ain’t mine, but I got to get him out of here,” Atmon said.
“How about the game warden?” Mr. Hummington asked hopefully.
“He’s out with his thermometer testing to find them deer was jacked last night,” Atmon said. “Who could find him?”
Chief Atmon had been edging impatiently toward the basement stairs; Mr. Hummington, who wanted a promise of no bloodshed, was backing away in front. Mr. Brown walked back to his shoe department, turned, and stood motionless, watching.
And at that moment, without having to look behind him, Mr. Hummington knew. With barely a creak of stairs the buck appeared, whole and majestic. Quick as a squirrel on a tree, Mr. Hummington scrambled around in back of the Chief of Police. Tall and proud, the buck stood over us all, his head high, the magnificent rack of antlers gleaming. He looked from one side of the store to the other, seeming to calculate a mighty leap that would easily clear our heads. His muzzle was dark, yet a silvery fringe of white hairs showed his age. His neck was as thick as a man’s waist—a trunk of rigid muscle to carry great antlers. He held our eyes again—held them absolutely—an invincible magnetism in that wild beauty.
Atmon himself was struck silent for a long time. Then he had his Colt in his hand, and we all heard three cold clicks as he pulled back the long hammer.
“MURDERER!”
For a moment I thought this tearing sound was the expected shot, and then in the shocked silence after this astounding word we saw the tailor on the balcony, his squat legs spread, his stubby hands gripping the rail. His face was black with blood, his eyes burned down upon the startled Chief of Police.
“MURDERER! MURDERER! Mr. Brown! Do you see what he is doing? What are you doing about it?”
Like the buck itself, Mr. Brown did not move during this outburst. He stood quietly by his wall of shoe boxes, his eyes still, as if he were blind, or in hiding.
The tailor watched him for a second, and then began to stamp his feet, to shriek in German, the words torn by great sobs and sneezes as he hit his disintegrated face with his fists.
The deer took this moment to make his try for freedom, catching us all with our eyes upon the bawling tailor. Chief Atmon’s reaction was swift, and had been predicted. He fired, stunning us all, breaking the buck’s long back in midair as he made his first arching leap toward the front of the store. He came down upon rigid forelegs, his hindquarters useless, and slid to the feet of Mr. Brown.
“Got him!” Chief Atmon yelled triumphantly. It had been a tremendous, classic shot from a handgun, yet we were silent, still. The buck still lived. Propped upon his forelegs, his rack still held high, he looked straight at Chief Atmon, waiting. Mr. Brown watched too. “I got him! I got him! I got him!”
“Not quite in the boiler room,” Mr. Brown said quietly.
“God damn you! I got him, so shut your lousy mouth!”
Chief Atmon screamed. A long sigh from the rest of us, and Chief Atmon whirled around. He seemed to look right at me. This is what I am good at, his eyes implored. And wasn’t that a beautiful shot?
The deer’s calm eyes were black and deep. His nostrils flared at each even breath. His rump lay broken behind him, the long, silky-haired legs splayed across the shiny plastic squares. Atmon came up, his revolver cocked.
“Get the hell out of the way. I’m going to finish him off.” Mr. Brown moved away, carefully, quietly. The deer glanced at him once and then turned to watch Chief Atmon and the black gun that was pointed at his neck. He didn’t try to move, but held his head as high as the good forelegs could hold it, waiting, breathing steadily, his ears erect and still as if he meant to hear, as well as see, the final explosion.…Which came. Chief Atmon was right: there was very little blood from either wound. The big slug broke the buck’s neck and killed him. With a little sigh he dropped his head. An antler rang against the wall and he was very little quieter than he had been alive. His eyes were open, still luminous—but not so deep: those dark wells had silted up.
In the terrible vacuum of Chief Atmon’s victory we watched Mr. Brown pace down the squares toward the cloak rack. Each foot precise upon a square, he hit no cracks. His handsome face was as unchangeable as if it were made of wax—the stern, expressionless mourning of waxwork nobility upon a tumbrel. He would look at none of us: whether it was disdain, or the wily ploy of a camouflaged animal afraid its eyes might shine, I didn’t know. At the cloak rack he unhurriedly put on his coat and hat, then as proudly, or as carefully casual
in the face of danger, he turned around and walked out.
The tailor’s long wail of mourning grew above us, its waves and intensifications strangely formal and rhythmical, as if it were a rite of sorrow perfected by the legions of the bereaved.
Bessie, her heavy face no longer under the protection of her habit of determination, stood at the rail and wept.
Later in the morning, when Mr. Hummington’s energy had restored the order of our existence, I found myself with a pair of pants in my hand, making the usual climb to the tailor’s shop.
The bursts of his sewing machine were as abrupt as always, and this time he heard my step upon the stairs and turned toward me, dropping a stiff lapel upon his table.
“He is gone?” he asked, gray eyes popping miserably from the brown lids. And without waiting for my reply he asked again, “He is gone?”
“He didn’t even say goodbye,” I said, echoing in the words of Mr. Hummington a disapproval I didn’t feel.
“Goodbye?” the tailor yelled, bringing his fist down upon the rubber bulb of his chalk marker. “Goodbye?”
A cloud of blue dust rose above the scarred table. Blue chalk hung between us like a mist, and the tailor’s eyes began to fill with rage and tears. I backed toward the stairs, feeling for the carved railing, a solid thing to follow back.
“Did you want him to say goodbye? Are you still foolish? Do you cry because of this?” the tailor demanded, bringing his fist down on the table so hard the lapel jumped.
Leah, New Hampshire Page 15
