The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch, Volume 1

by Daniel Kraus

  I halted my futile march in Times Square. The place was throttled with cars and fungal with umbrellas. Here I claimed a random corner and peered through the rain at awesome signs shouting about everything from Squibb’s Dental Cream to the Ziegfeld Follies. When a taxi blew by, everyone on my curb stepped back in a single motion: the shy stenographer in the checked wool skirt, the tussled university student holding a textbook over his head, the laborer in a grease-stained jumpsuit, the dead teenager. I realized that this metropolis might as well be a necropolis, as its residents were as faceless as stones in a graveyard and just as private regarding their states of decay.

  The unexpected relief of anonymity pounded me harder than the rain. In this city I could exist completely unnoticed. Was that not the ideal situation for a being such as myself? I was eager to put this opportune revelation to the test, but first there was the matter of the giant cache of liquor stashed near Battery Park. I cheeked some rain and spit it out in a happy fountain. Well, I had a plan for that as well!

  Four blocks east I stomped until I came upon Grand Central Terminal. There, inside the vast, echoing rotunda, I found a pay phone and, with nervous fingers, inserted the required silver. The hello-girl had a clipped, businesslike tone; no doubt she hoped for each call to be a simple A-B connection rather than an exhausting investigation. She had rolled snake eyes that day, for I was in need of assistance, possibly a lot of it, in locating the only person on Earth I knew who had, at one point, been right here in New York City. Call it a hunch, but I did not believe that he’d repaired to the hushed plains of the Midwest.

  “Ahoy-hoy,” greeted I. “I need to find a man by the name of Burt Churchwell.”

  V.

  SEVEN WARLESS YEARS HAD PASSED since Armistice. Gizmos like the pop-up toaster and the hair dryer had been invented to rescue women from domestic doldrums, and, thus freed, they’d fought for, and won, the right to do that silliest of things—vote. Men, deprived of nations to destroy, contrived a succession of absurd challenges: the scaling of Everest, the disinterring of old King Tut, the masteries of polo, yachting, fencing, and all the other inscrutable hooey of the Paris Olympics.

  Seven years had frayed my sleek nation into a million wild briars and yet, when entering that busy Manhattan diner, I thought that I understood how much had changed.

  “Merry Christmas, you’re a sight for sore eyes.”

  My heart, dead as it was, squeezed, as if my ribs had made a fist.

  Burt Churchwell, my once-best friend, rose from a padded booth and, when he offered me his hand, wobbled upon a bad leg. By instinct, his other hand reached for the walking stick against the wall. A cane? A limp? I focused on the white-blond hair and cleft chin, for everything else was wrong. Church looked to have lost a foot of height, and what of those oak-tree shoulders? They curled now into a guarded hunch. His torso, honed on the gridiron along perfect Charles Atlas flexures, paunched inside a striped sweater. And his face—that keen, clear, strident balefire—was seamed with shrapnel’s errata as sure as if he’d slept on a tennis racquet.

  My years spent imagining how he might look had prepared me for even worse. There was no getting around it, though: the man was hard to look at. If one human being deserved to remain forever young, forever unscathed, it was Church, and I outraged at Gød’s latest sucker punch.

  Church’s hand still waited. It was a worrisome thing to behold; what if I felt in his grip none of the camaraderie we’d once shared? I gave it the quickest bob before dropping into the opposite seat. Our conversational ease had been left behind in France and we were bashful.

  He gestured at his plate of meatloaf.

  “I told the girl you wouldn’t be eating.” He tapped his scarred temple. “No rations for Private Finch, right?”

  Spellbinding though the tablecloth pattern was, I lifted my eyes to meet this stranger’s eager gaze. His ice-blue eyes, at least, showed a familiar melt, despite being sunk inside purple chasms and trapped behind eyeglasses. Egad—eyeglasses? On Church? It might as well have been a condemned man’s blindfold. How do two people like us, wondered I, begin to speak of the level of terrors we’d seen?

  It was easy: one does not speak of them at all.

  “You,” said I, “are not in Iowa.”

  “No sir. Once you’re used to the big city, you can’t go back to them cornfields.”

  Men like him—good men—made awful liars.

  “You have been here all the while, then?” asked I. “Doing what?”

  He shrugged. His sweater was frowsy. Dirt encircled his neck.

  “This and that. How about you? Where the heck you been?”

  It was my turn to be imprecise.

  “Here and there. Odd jobs, that sort of thing.”

  “Sure. Yeah. Right.”

  Silence joined us like a third diner. Church rediscovered his meatloaf and went at it with knife and fork, but his chewing of it seemed a forced endeavor. He swallowed like it hurt; it hurt me, as well, and I rushed to rescue the poor guy from his social suffering. The condiment of nostalgia was closest and I grabbed for it.

  “Your Theory of Seventeen—you remember it?”

  Church smiled at his plate. Oddly, the right side of his face did not crinkle.

  “How many you down to?” asked he.

  Likely he knew nothing of the nest of Huns I’d slaughtered; certainly he knew nothing of John Quincy and Mother Mash, the latest two numbers I’d been forced to add to the cumbersome total.

  “I’m afraid,” said I, “that I am up.”

  He messed with his food and sighed. Again, the right side of his face did not move.

  “Don’t hold any stock by it. I didn’t know what I was saying back then. I mean, I was a kid, right?” He peeked over the top of his glasses. “I guess you still are.”

  If only I could tell him otherwise. In a handful of years Church would be double my age. Prove to me, Dearest Reader, that there is a monster more unrelenting than time and I shall slay that monster and bring you its head on a pike.

  In keeping with the meal’s short history of artless questions, I asked another.

  “You did not go home to Lillian Eve Johnson?”

  Church fumbled his fork and it clattered. He gestured at his scarred face with his knife.

  “You think any girl deserves to live with this? Jesus, Finch, come on.” He glared at the world beyond of our streetside window, the tainted mud filthing the pure snow. “This here’s the only place for me.”

  So Church, too, had recognized New York City as a trench through which a careful soldier might crawl unnoticed. I leaned forward, keen to tell him that I understood. Before I could, he wiped at his moist eyes and readjusted his glasses and the most appalling thing happened—the entire right side of his face adjusted too.

  Burt Churchwell was wearing a prosthetic cheek. It was the size and contour of a chicken cutlet, molded to replace the bone missing from his upper lip all the way to his right eye. It bestowed upon the right half of his face absolute tranquility, a vivid contrast to the quaking emotions of the left half. The glasses, I realized, had no relation to eyesight but rather held the apparatus in place.

  It is possible that, once upon a dream, the prosthetic had been dapper. But the years had rubbed it to a golden sheen and textured it with its own craters and scrapes. Worse, a line of shadow marked where it no longer fit snugly against his face. It was pitiable, Reader, little more convincing than the gent who pastes three strands of hair across a naked dome. Oh, my handsome blond knight! Why had Gød forsaken him?

  He tapped a fingernail against the false cheek. It gonged.

  “Galvanized copper. Nine ounces, one-thirty-second of an inch thick.”

  “You’d never notice it.”

  “Don’t feed me that baloney. They painted it with this enamel, right? It matched my skin pretty good at first, but heck—we fo
ught that war in the sun, you know? Now I’m all pale but this thing is brown as an Italian. Plus I gotta shave all the time or it looks uneven.”

  “Are those eyelashes . . . ?”

  He ran a gentle fingertip through his right-side lower lashes.

  “Real hair. Not mine, though.”

  “Whose?”

  “It could be a Jerry, right? One of them who trapped us in that pocket. Ah, heck. I guess who really cares anymore.”

  “Right. Of course.”

  “It’s over now. The whole dang thing is over.”

  The waitress came by and asked if Church was done with the half-eaten meatloaf. This time my eyes were open to the interaction. The girl did not look at Church’s rearranged face, nor did Church look at hers. It was a jig of avoidance at which both had developed skill. Only when she was gone did Church watch the waggle of her cutely packaged backside. His hand, in need of something to fondle, found the salt shaker and rubbed it as if it were a charm capable of taking him back to a former life.

  “In Europe they had these blue park benches where soldiers were supposed to sit if their faces were messed up, so when people walked by they had time to, you know, prepare themselves. They don’t got no blue benches here. You never know what’s going to happen.”

  “I am sorry,” said I, “that I did not come to see you.”

  He offered a half-grin, defense against his unresponsive right cheek.

  “It doesn’t matter. I didn’t want you there. But I tell you, little buddy—I’m glad you’re here now.”

  We looked anywhere but at each other, as males do when unutterables are uttered.

  “Hey, I bet the doctor who did me could do a real number on your”—here he lowered his voice—“your leg.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said I. “I have become quite adept at packing it.”

  The comment was bleak enough to make him laugh. Out of sheer surprise, I laughed too. Tears had again mobilized at the edge of his eyelids, though these were happy ones—you could tell by the quality of shine. Back when I had been alive and capable of crying, I’d never been able to make such fine distinctions.

  “So.” He clapped hands still big enough to crush a football. “You called about moving some boxes? Anything I can do, you don’t have to ask twice. I got an honorable discharge the week I landed. I got nothing but time, Private.”

  Having just endured several painful pins of truth, I, the Astonishing Mr. Stick, endured a few more, presenting to Church an abridged narrative of how I’d come into possession of thirty crates of A-1 moonshine yet hadn’t the means to bring it to the big-city bootlegger for whom it’d been allocated. Church rubbed his powerful chin.

  “You say it’s well hid?”

  “As well as an entire automobile can be.”

  “Maybe we’ll rent a truck. I don’t have the bankroll at the moment, but I’ll get there. You and me together—we’ll get it done soon, I promise.”

  I nodded. “Soon, then.”

  He stuck his hand across the table and this time I shook it with assurance. He signaled our girl for the check.

  “Hey, Private. You think you and me could grab one of those crates right now? Battery Park ain’t but twenty, thirty blocks from Chinatown. That’s where I live. It’d be easy as pie to sell it there. Truth is, I’ve got this landlord about to kick my butt to the street. I could really use a little cash right now.”

  The bodies of John Quincy and Mother Mash twirled on their lynching ropes in my mind’s eye; my mind’s ear, if such a thing exists, heard the sobbing of the aggrieved Harold. Every single cent of Dog Bowl Debbie profits belonged to them, I knew that. But this man asking for a favor was my friend.

  “Yes, of course,” said I.

  “Aw, great. You’re saving my neck here. I’m behind in rent like you wouldn’t believe. Two crates might be better, actually. You think you can spare two? This guy’s charging me three bucks a week, a whole arm and a leg.”

  I swallowed, a silly human habit.

  “Sure,” said I. “Anything you need.”

  VI.

  AND I’D THOUGHT THE SALEM apartment I’d shared with Merle had been vile! Church’s fifth-floor flat was a suffocating sty of moldering brick, tortured floorboards, ceiling cockroaches, and mice that took their time trundling beneath furniture at the turning on of each electric lamp. Stronger in smell than the single toilet shared by six units was the constant, wafting aroma of eccentric dishes like chop suey, chow mein, and pu pu platter. The unwelcome sound, meanwhile, was the Chinese language coming through the walls like Maxim fire.

  I moved in right away.

  I had nowhere else to go, so why not? Church had been spot on about selling the Dog Bowl Debbie. Cane and limp notwithstanding, he was still strong, and we’d lugged two crates across the south side of the city, stationed ourselves in the alley behind Foon’s Occidental Restaurant, and sold it by the bottle in under an hour. Even after Church stopped by his landlord’s unit to pay off the previous month’s rent, a stack of cash remained in our possession. Church fanned the bills and made a rhapsodical announcement.

  “Little buddy, you and me are hitting the town!”

  What of the balance of his tardy rent? My, how I despised being the cautious one!

  “Should we really?” asked I. “I did just arrive.”

  “Aw, come on! We’ve got a reunion to celebrate!”

  “And celebrate we shall. But only—”

  “Dang it, Private, this is a direct order!”

  The Marines had trained me to obey ranking soldiers. So it happened that I found myself opposite Church in New York’s grimiest kitchen as he flung my arms to and fro to teach me a distressing but evidently important dance called the Charleston. Church, that oversized lunk, kneed countertops and elbowed cabinets as he jigged in place, flailing his arms side to side in the manner of an epileptic ape.

  Rodentia aside, we were alone, and still the degradation was unbearable. He kept at it until balls of sweat raced down his face, clocking faster times on the false cheek than the real one. When this former leader of men paused from his swaying serenade, he said that the best speakeasies required the sort of tuxedos we did not own—not yet, he stressed—but that still left thousands of places we could talk our way into with any halfway decent suits.

  “Alas,” said I with relief, “I own no such garment.”

  “You know old Church has you covered! I’ve got two. Little bit stained, little bit torn. But these clubs are dark.”

  “Look here. You are twice my size. No item of yours will fit.”

  “You’re in luck, Private, that’s the fashion now—baggy!”

  You see how my best efforts were rebuked? We danced, if that is what we must call those kitchen-floor convulsions, for the better part an hour. While the sun sank from the bitsy porthole above the stove, Church taught me a slow two-step. He did not seem to register the abnormality of our man-to-man embrace, but hummed along to a private song, perhaps dreaming of Lilly Eve, while we moved in lullaby rhythm, my cold cheek resting aside one of even colder copper.

  Church shambled without the aid of his cane, yet maintained a spirit of bonhomie as he led me through Manhattan, down an unlit lane, through an unmarked entryway, and up to a black door with a cut-out window, behind which sat a rotweiler of a man masticating a double-decker sandwich. Church recited the password with obvious relish.

  “Salesmanship.”

  The man chewed, narrowed his eyes.

  Church tried again: “Salesmanship.”

  The man jerked his chin at me.

  “How old is the kid?”

  Church looked bewildered and crooked a thumb at me.

  “Him?”

  “No, the little green man on your shoulder. This kid looks like he should be wearing short pants. I can’t be letting in juveniles.”
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br />   “I’ll have you know that you’re talking about a United States Marine, a soldier who took wounds at Belleau Wood, Soissons, Saint-Mihiel, Blanc Mont—”

  “Oh, Christ, another trench tale. Fine, get in, just shut up already.”

  We paid the entrance fee. The man eyed Church’s golden cheek as we passed.

  Down a tar-black hallway we plunged, feeling our way toward the noise, until we pushed open a door that cracked the muffled darkness into a kaleidoscope of sound and color. Radiant teardrop-shaped bulbs winked along every border and gusset of the floors, walls, bar, and ceiling—a magical grid through which scuttled an impossible number of roaring men and women. Bartenders in black vests lifted into the crowd steins sloshing with foam and delicate glasses bobbing with cherries. Women drank—right there in public, alongside men!—and each sex clawed to the other with an orgiastic disregard for decency. I was struck stupid until I felt Church clapping my back.

  “You ain’t seen nothing yet, Private.”

  Smoke blown from a hundred cigarettes formed a chimerical curtain. It parted and we were in the middle of the seethe, the rims of men’s hats fencing our own, female arm flesh swabbing sweet perspiration upon our jackets. The squabble was overpowered by a capering music that rose and fell, rose and fell from the end of the room. Church cut a path into a beehive of sweaty dancers who jerked about in incoherent sequence. Again he had to rouse me from a stupor; he planted me onto a tiny metal stool at a tinier table.

  He pointed at the stage and I turned to find ten musicians in matching black tie pound away at an unprecedented volume and pace. Horns shouted, then shout-shouted, then shout-shout-shout-shouted in pealing unison, while a saxophonist made cat-in-heat moans that writhed to the rafters. The stage was held down on either side by a burly male drummer and a turbaned female pianist, both of whom grimaced at each other with a sexual strain. Oh, and perhaps I should mention—though every last patron of the speakeasy was white, the musicians, down to the lissome lady massaging the ivories, were black.