High as the Horses' Bridles: A Novel

by Scott Cheshire

  The vacuum stopped. I went back inside.

  “My father’s not answering the phone.”

  He gave me a curt nod.

  “I talked to him before, doesn’t sound good. Sarah said he sounds pretty bad. He was a little loopy.”

  “How loopy?” He was wrapping the cord around the vacuum neck.

  “He said my mom was there.”

  “Where? There?”

  My phone rang. “Dad?”

  He sounded far away: “Why is my phone ringing so much?” Almost like he was on speakerphone and actually walking away from the phone while we talked. “I’m trying to sleep.”

  “I wanted to see how you’re doing. I told you before I’d call.”

  “When?”

  “Before. This morning.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” He was yelling now.

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “Well, you’re alive.”

  “Yes! I’m alive! Are you satisfied? I’m going to bed.”

  “It’s like two o’clock. That’s like four o’clock your time.”

  “I’m tired.” He hung up.

  I looked at Amad, shrugged my shoulder.

  I went back in the storeroom, and I wanted a cigarette because now I was feeling anxious and I’d forgotten to smoke one outside. Plus there was no smoking in the storeroom, one of Amad’s many rules. I’d smoke later on with another cup of coffee, but a hot cup of coffee. Planning cigarettes was almost always as pleasurable as smoking them. I’d never given real thought to who was taking care of my father at home since Mom died. Who was cooking? Was the man having hot meals? Then again, a burrito could be just as good cold. I organized and moved things. I swept. I picked up broken glass from things that fell from the top shelves and broke around me while I was cleaning up—we’d been on to something, after all, with those yellow lines—and before you know it Amad was standing in the doorway eating an apple, and saying “You’re hired.”

  “I’m being serious,” he said. “This inspires me. So clean!” He ran his finger along a shelf, held it up to the light, and even from where I was standing I could see the filthy smudge.

  “Getting there,” I said.

  “Yes. And I’m going home now.” He put out his hand. I shook it, exaggeratedly, like, You got a deal there, mister. I wiped what smudge came with it on my jeans.

  “You close shop?” he asked me.

  “It’s been a long time.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll close shop,” I said, feeling very proud.

  He waved as he walked away, and closed the door behind him.

  I walked home along the water, and had my cigarette with a hot black coffee I got at the corner gas station. The smoke climbed up, the color of the moon’s silver swirls. Obviously I had to go see Dad. As soon as possible. Maybe tomorrow. Tomorrow? Or was that too soon? But if I went tomorrow, it meant no dinner with Sarah … Which was an easy decision, yes, but also it felt important. I needed to recognize it. And then I looked out at the dark water and could’ve sworn I saw someone coming out of the ocean. A shadow of someone, probably just had a night swim, but then he bled away in the night.

  I blinked my eyes, shook my head.

  Dad was getting old, and I knew what comes next, what always comes next, and I wondered why I was smoking so much when I hardly liked the taste anymore. Plus dinner probably wouldn’t have happened anyway. She and I were dead, long dead, and shamefully, forgive me, but a dying and not-quite-dead-yet part of me also used to sometimes stand by that water and watch the sun drop below the waterline at sunset, and I’d wish the great reddening ball would quash out, get doused, fall purple and cooling toward the bottom of the ocean. Take us all down with it. I put out my cigarette in the sand. I was getting morbid, and maudlin, and decided that what I really needed was to just get laid.

  There was so much sand, and the ocean was rolling in and rolling out, and the waves were playing and toppling like animals wrestling. Water roiling and boiling in the dark. And then it happened again. I saw someone coming from the water. But this time it was two men, looking like two black liquid things walking from the water, except they stayed where they were, and were sort of suspended. One of the drilling rigs miles away on the water let out a booming signal, and it spooked me, so I took off running; then I stopped. I turned back and there they were, natural as night, two figures forming there in front of me. They were made of the water, and the dark light, and the night air. Just as fast, they disappeared. They rose up again from underwater, and then bled away in the darkness. It was all a trick of the light, or the no-light. I was tired, and I was seeing things, a grown man running from ghosts on a cool and lovely summer evening by the water. Things would be better in the morning.

  EAST

  3

  SATURDAY MORNING, QUEENS

  The long PINNNGGG of a doorbell rudely pealed through the fog in my brain. My face all pressed up against the armrest of the couch, Dad’s knees slowly went by. At some point in the night I’d apparently wrapped myself in the sheet. Cats were resting on my back. The doorbell pinged again. I wanted a tremendous orange juice. Voices in the front hall, feet shuffling, and then blurry sounds coming from the kitchen …

  “Have a good day, Mr. Laudermilk.”

  Dad shouted: “It’s a good morning, Junior, so let’s take advantage!” The front door closed. “I made us some coffee!”

  My face was mashed against the armrest and it felt just right until the part of my brain in charge of such things suddenly woke. The whole face hurt, pressure on every pore and wrinkle. I turned over, cats darting from the sofa. I stretched with a loud groan, causing an animal chain reaction where, beside the table, two fat cats, one first, then another, bowed up like stuffed feline stoles, stretching their spines. They yawned and fell back asleep.

  I pulled aside the draping a bit, squinting at the outside day, and watched a deliveryman drop two garbage bags on the curb before hopping into a brown double-parked truck. Still in the head-melt of sleep, I saw an empty wine bottle on the table, a shallow bowl littered with cigarette stubs, and my phone, open, dead. The thought of smoking made me nauseated. I walked toward the kitchen and became aware, and weirdly okay with the fact, that I, too, was now walking barefoot, instinctively avoiding the cat turds and everything else. Dad was framed by a beige window shade behind him. He was wearing his loincloth and a white T-shirt. A large box lay on the table.

  I pointed to the window shade. “Why not let some day in here?”

  “Days are finished, Junior.”

  He was drinking coffee from an oversized mug emblazoned with a screaming image of Max Headroom. He sipped, Max all glaring teeth and white plastic shades. I had to look away.

  He said, “I love a cup of coffee in the morning. One cup.”

  “Who was your visitor?”

  “Delivery.”

  A haze and muffle between my ears.

  “You found the wine.” He pointed to yet another empty bottle on the counter.

  “Jesus. Sorry.”

  “No, it’s good. I’m glad.”

  “I’ll be fine. I’m fine. What?” I was a palm-sized man climbing my own insides like a cave.

  “What I say?”

  “I thought you said something,” I said.

  “Not me,” he said. “And I gotta say I’m glad you’re not feeling so hot.”

  Another Max Headroom mug sat beside the coffeemaker. It was already filled with coffee. “That’s a terrible thing to say.” I picked it up. My right palm was pulsing; I switched hands and took a sip.

  “Means you’re no professional, which makes me glad. Never was either, myself. You hungry?”

  “There is no food in this house.”

  “Bread and butter, Junior. Food of the gods.” He looked toward the counter where the bread, the butter semiwrapped in waxy paper, and a knife lay. A pallid still life.

  He stood, took the knife in his hand, and cut.

  “What’s in th
e box?”

  He smiled like, Wouldn’t you like to know, and handed me a buttered slice.

  “You’re not eating?” I said.

  “Hours before my time.” Knife still in hand, he walked to the box, bare feet hardly lifting from the floor.

  “The old man keeps me in suspense. So when do you eat, exactly?”

  “Ha!” He cut the tape and pulled back the flap. Styrofoam popcorn popped from the box. “I’m running low,” he said, and pulled from inside a ridiculously large pack of Post-it Notes. More popcorn packing fell across the table like champagne from a glass. “There’s more,” he said eagerly. He pulled out a pack of two toothbrushes. “I’m glad you’re here, Junior.” A three-pack of toothpaste, and a carton of dry cat food.

  “Me, too.”

  “Good.”

  The coffee was burning its way into my belly, a slight spike in my bloodstream. I went all different directions inside. The coffeepot was empty.

  “I need more.”

  He pointed to a green Thermos by the sink.

  “Good thing I don’t take milk.”

  “Milk’s for babies.”

  I pulled at the loaf of bread. Balled up a piece and put it in my mouth.

  “Eat all you want,” he said.

  He pulled two large loaves of bread from the box. He placed them on the counter, felt around inside the box, and pushed it aside. He pulled a chair from under the table, and there a second box lay, long and flat. He cut the clear tape seam and took from the box something wrapped in bubble wrap. Foam kernels on its surface; he wiped them away to the floor. He placed the object on the table and began to undo the bubbling, cutting it away with his knife. He took from the bubble wrap a thing, I don’t know what, and held it up for me to see.

  “See?”

  It looked like a shield. “Is it a shield?”

  “It is.” He walked to the other end of the kitchen, by the back door, and held it to the wall. A small, decorative shield, an ornamental thing, not very elaborate. It couldn’t haven been very heavy. The day before, he’d struggled with the fridge.

  “What’s it for?”

  He ignored me and began feeling along the wall, all around the wooden cross, the plate painted with a Star of David. “Looking for a nail,” he said.

  I put down the mug and started over, but he stopped me with his palm. “Drink your coffee. Leave me be. I’m fine.” He found one, pulled at the nail, and hung the shield from it. “Not the right kind, but she’ll do.”

  I sipped my coffee. “The royal family crest?”

  He wiped the surface clean.

  He turned around and came closer, he was slow, but then he was standing right in front of me. Staring into my eyes. His face was so old. Too old-looking for his age.

  “Do you believe in anything at all anymore?”

  I rubbed my eyes, my temples.

  He said, “Part of what makes people stop is because they think He’s invisible. Think we don’t know what He looks like. He’s not invisible.”

  “It’s a bit early for me.…”

  “Right there in black and white, and the world looks everywhere but smack in front of their faces!” He placed his hand on the left side of his chest. “It’s in our hearts! Telescopes looking over Mars and the moon. Microscopes looking in our blood…” He walked back to the table, across from me, and smiled like a man with a secret.

  I said, “You know the heart is actually dead center in the middle of the chest.” I pressed my finger there. “And not to the left.”

  “I know damn well where the heart is.”

  A shower or a cold bath would be perfect.

  “Because this is where it feels.” He prompted me to touch my own chest. “See?” He came closer again. “It feels like your heart’s right here.” He put his hand on my chest.

  “Okay.”

  “Now hold on to your coffee mug, because what I’m gonna say next.”

  I couldn’t help but love him talking like this. This was Dad, this I recognized. Maybe he was feeling better?

  “The Psalmist sayeth, Junior, and I say it thus. Psalm 84:11.” He turned and looked to the wall. “‘For your Lord God is a shield.’” He looked back at me. “In black and white.”

  There wasn’t much sun coming through the windows, but enough, and it made my eyes pulse. I stepped back into the dark hall. “I’m listening. God is a shield. But I think actually the scripture says he’s a sun and a shield.”

  He shuffled into the dining room, looking like he might fall over at any moment. “The Hebrews used leather,” he said, “and animal fat for shields. Painted red with blood.” He paused. “Who wants something like that in the kitchen?” He threw up his hands, like, What are you gonna do.

  I coughed into my hand. The tip of my thumb itched. There was a small puncture, and it was sore. I shook my head.

  He looked at the only bare wall in the dining room; no pictures, no shelves. It seemed naked. “Some were bronze, a circle. But this is no circle. You saw.” He sat down.

  I needed more butter. “How are you feeling? You sleep okay?”

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  “I was thinking last night.”

  “Good, sit.” He tapped the chair beside him. “Look at you. I almost forgot what you look like. How’s business? How many stores?”

  I sat. “The stores are fine. Listen. I think we should see a doctor. Just to talk.”

  It wasn’t quite a look of condescension, but his face definitely said, You don’t know what you’re talking about.

  He said, “I saw your mother last night. And let’s just say she disagrees.”

  “Ah! You dreamt of her, you mean.”

  “Of course.” He looked at me sideways. “Sometimes I find her in the day.” He stood. “I try to keep moving, keep the blood flowing.…” He padded into the dining room, and I wondered from where he got his loincloth, what websites he happened onto looking for a “modern loincloth.”

  “Dad.”

  “Yup.”

  “I need you to tell me.” I followed him to the couch.

  “What?”

  “Tell me you’re eating. I need you to tell me you’re eating.”

  “Not hungry. Empty, fit as a fiddle.”

  “I mean are you eating at all.”

  He sat, pulled the lamp chain. “It’s complicated.”

  “Talk.”

  He showed me his hand. “Stay there. I’m fine, and you’re there.”

  “Talk.”

  He peered over the computer screen. “I promise I’m happy you’re here.”

  “And I’m happy you’re happy.”

  “We’re okay, you and I.”

  “We are.”

  He hid behind the screen. “I take bread and wine on Sundays.”

  He showed me his hand again. “There are rules. And fasting is one of the rules.”

  Things were clearly not better. He was not better. And I saw how silly I’d been thinking that we’d wake up and everything would be fine. A soft lip of light lined the edge of the curtains. He said, “Sometimes I find your mother in the day. I go to sleep and I find her.”

  Ten o’clock in the morning, I was going through my things. Clearing some personal space for me around the sofa, trying not to get overly worried. What exactly should I do next about Dad? I decided on a shower. I would think in there. Plus Dad was in the bathroom again, the red light flaring from under the door. He said he’d been up since five.

  I went to the second floor, and took each step up slowly.

  Upstairs, the dark hallway was free of clutter and the four doors were closed and the long thick carpet runner lay on the slatted floor like a dead paisley tongue. No windows. The hall was dark and damp, and it smelled of soft wet wood, of mold, but there was also a welcome comfort in the stink.

  The first door on the left led to the upstairs bathroom.

  There was a shallow pool of browning water in the tub and a floating, speckled mass of bug. Dead flecks
of fly and mosquito and gnat made a dark freckling shadow on the surface. A gauzy light came in through the clouded glass. No shower curtain or door, and a mass of moist towels lay on the floor. I opened the window, pulled away the drain stopper, and the water gurgled in a spinning fall. I turned on the light.

  In the linen closet, I found sheets and pillowcases, washcloths and bath towels squarely folded and placed in flush columns on the wallpapered shelves. I was afraid to look at the toilet, but it was actually in pretty good shape. I turned on the shower and twisted the spray nozzle toward the wall so I wouldn’t make too much of a mess. I gathered all the towels into one damp sop, stuffed them into a yellow pillowcase. The shower ran rivery lines along the grout between the tiles, and washed away what bug waste it could. The shower still running, I stepped back into the hall.

  The second door was mine, or used to be mine, and this seemed way too easy, entering the room that used to be my room. I opened the door and saw light sluicing in ribbons through the louvered blinds and painting the wall with pale stripes. I saw the bedspread neatly tucked under the mattress, and I was sure this had to be my handiwork from twenty years prior. Impossible. I saw the empty closet. Clear tape in ripped fragments stuck to the walls and to the ghosts of Star Wars posters. Water bugs lay flat on their backs at the foot of a bed leg. A sticky mix of dust and oils skimmed the carpet like a hairpiece. I went back into the hall.

  The next room was a large walk-in closet. And I often imagined, as a kid, that a demon lived among the board games on the highest shelf, and it could fit a small child in its mouth. This probably came from secretly watching Poltergeist, a definite no-no in the Laudermilk home, and from the subsequent nightmares of sinister closets opening up like demonic maws. I remembered telling my mother about the closet and she scolded me, said that was what I got for watching devil movies. She left me in the closet until I cried out for her. Then she came in, and we stood there in the dark holding hands. She said anytime you’re scared call on me, or your Heavenly Father, and nothing bad can happen.