The Paper Grail

by James P. Blaylock

  Uncle Roy winked at Howard. “The boy did it,” he said, jamming the crushed beer can under his chair cushion and nodding at the half-drunk beer, then winking at Howard. Howard caught on and picked it up just as Aunt Edith pulled the door shut, looking bright-eyed at him. Surreptitiously Uncle Roy shoved the six-pack across the floor with his foot so that it sat next to Howard’s chair, and at the same time he took the carton out of his wife’s arms so that she could rush at Howard and hug him. “Look at you!” she said, thrusting Howard away and standing back in order to do just that. He set the beer down.

  “You’re a long, tall drink of water, aren’t you? How tall?”

  “Six three,” Howard said.

  “I can remember when you were like this.” She held her hand out, waist-high, and shook her head. “You should put on a little weight, though. You were always thin.”

  “If you ate my cooking you’d be thin, too,” Howard said.

  Uncle Roy went into the kitchen and laid the box of groceries down on a Formica table. Then, dutifully, he set about putting things away.

  “There’s more in the car,” she said to him, giving Howard another quick hug. “We’re letting Howard cook, Roy. Maybe he can thin us both down.”

  “Let me get the stuff in the car,” Howard said, wanting to help. He went out into the front yard again, past where the crusts lay in the weeds now, and found the family station wagon in the driveway. There were two more cartons of groceries in the back, and he set one of them awkwardly on top of the other.

  He noticed several books of food stamps slid down along the side of the carton, next to a loaf of bread. So that’s how it is, he thought sadly. He was doubly determined to help out somehow, to solicit Uncle Roy’s help in getting the sketch away from Mr. Jimmers. He would broach the subject that very afternoon. He picked up the boxes, balanced them with one arm, and slammed the cargo door of the wagon, then carried the boxes into the house. Aunt Edith was just then hurrying out the back door, carrying a sandwich on a plate. Howard was certain that she had shut the door quickly, as if in order to hide something.

  Uncle Roy put away the lunch meat and bread and mayonnaise, mopped up the counter with a tea towel, and hung the towel back up from a peg on the wall. “I like to help out in the kitchen,” he said. “Some men don’t like that kind of work, but I don’t mind. Any work is good work, that’s the byword around here. We’ll get help in when things click for me.” He began uncrating more groceries, half pulling out the loaf of bread and then dropping it back down into the box. “What’s that?” he asked suddenly, peering out the window.

  Howard looked out, expecting to see something going on with Aunt Edith. She was gone, though, perhaps out of sight around the side of the house. There was nothing out the window but fir trees, the forest floor overgrown with berries and lemonleaf and poison oak. The pointed leaves of wild iris grew in clumps along the edge of the trees beside a little path that ran out into the woods. For a moment Howard thought he could see his aunt’s red jacket moving along the path, some distance through the trees. He couldn’t be sure, though.

  When he turned back around, Uncle Roy was putting away the bread. The leftover food stamps were gone from the box. One of them, in fact, protruded from where it had been shoved into his uncle’s coat pocket. Howard glanced away, turning on the water in the sink as if he wanted to wash his hands, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Uncle Roy push it down farther into the pocket and then hurriedly shove the balance of the stamps into a kitchen drawer and shut it. “Just dry them on the dish towel.”

  Howard nodded, pulling the towel from its peg. They talked for a time, Howard telling him about his trip north, omitting any mention of the past twenty-four hours. There was no use sounding like a paranoid nut. Uncle Roy listened, nodding his head. He took the towel and began swabbing down cupboards and mopping up spots from the floor. Then, abruptly, he shot a glance out toward the front window, as if he’d just then seen something wonderful or puzzling out there. Howard followed his gaze, not able to help himself even though he suspected he was being hoodwinked again. Uncle Roy headed into the living room, gesturing at Howard, indicating that Howard should follow him along to the door. When he opened it, though, nobody was there. There hadn’t been any knock; Howard was certain of it.

  “Must have been the wind,” Uncle Roy said, and at that moment, as if to prove him right, there was the sound of a door slamming—the same that Howard had heard when he first arrived.

  “Toolshed door.” Uncle Roy stepped outside and down the front-porch steps, continuing around past the side of the house, past the abandoned scaffolding. Tilted against the back side of the garage was a lean-to shed with a plywood door, which wobbled open in the sea wind. It hung there for a moment, as if deciding something, and then banged shut. “Damned latch,” Uncle Roy said, shoving the hasp shut and driving a pointed stick down through it to keep it tight. “This is my current project.” He waved at an immense pile of old weathered lumber, full of nails, as if it had all been pried off the side of dilapidated houses. “Barn lumber. There’s a fortune to be made in it if a man’s got any gumption. Gumption’s the thing, you see, out here. This is like the frontier.”

  “What do you do with it?” Howard asked.

  “Clean it up. Sell it. Yuppies buy it for twice the price of new lumber in order to make new houses look old. It’s all fakery, of course. The only people they fool are each other. Still, it’s good wood. They did a study—concluded that hundred-year-old redwood planks, pulled off a house roof, hadn’t lost more than two percent tensile strength.”

  “Really?” Howard reached down and pulled up the end of one of the boards. A grisly-looking spider darted out, scampering away into the weeds as the board slammed down again. “Beats bulldozing the stuff, doesn’t it?”

  “That’s it,” said Uncle Roy. “Conservation is what it is.

  Recycling. Pull out the nails, trim the ends, stack it up, and wait for the trucks to roll in. I’m just now getting started on it. My back’s been acting up, though, and I’ve had to take it easy.”

  Howard looked at the old dry Bermuda grass, curling up through the heaped wood. Clearly no one had touched it for months, perhaps years. “Maybe I can help you with it. I can pull nails and trim ends easy enough. I’d like to do that.”

  Uncle Roy hesitated, thinking it through, as if he had talked too much and gotten in too deep. “We’ll buy another six-pack and draw up plans,” he said, winking. “Tonight. After four.”

  A telephone rang. “Roy!” came a shout from the kitchen.

  “That’s Edith. Come on.” He hurried past the garage, up onto the back stoop, and into the service porch. There was an old washer and dryer there, vintage twenty years ago, and one of those fold-up doweled-together wooden clotheslines with underwear hanging on it. A door led into the kitchen, where Aunt Edith was just then hanging up the phone.

  “What?” said Uncle Roy. “Who was it?”

  “Syl.”

  “Why did you shout? Did she want to talk to me?”

  “No. She might have, though. I wanted you to be ready at hand.”

  “What did she want? Is she all right?”

  “Heavens, yes, she’s all right. Why shouldn’t she be all right?”

  “Then why on earth did she call? We were just discussing the issue of the barn lumber. Howard’s got an idea for selling it down south. That’s where the housing market is. We were just starting in on it”

  “Dressed like that? Howard’s just arrived. Don’t make him work until he’s had a chance to sit down for a moment. That wood’s been lying there since who knows when. Let it be until after lunch, anyway. Give the boy a breather. Sylvia’s coming for lunch. She’s upset about something, I think.”

  Aunt Edith went on about Sylvia, for a few minutes, about the store and her making things to sell in it. They were dependent on the tourist trade in Mendocino. It was easy for a shop to founder and sink. You got around it by diversifying. Tourists love
d a trinket, and they were certain that the north coast was a haven of creativity. They didn’t want a shirt that they could buy in a mall down south. They wanted whales and wool and driftwood and natural foods.

  “That’s her now,” Uncle Roy said. There was the sound of an engine cutting off out on the street.

  Edith nodded. “She called from right down at the Safeway. She’s picked up some salmon for dinner tonight, in honor of Howard being here. I told her—”

  “Good,” said Uncle Roy, interrupting her. “It’s time we had something high-toned for dinner. I’ll cook it up myself. A little dill weed, a little white wine. Have we got any wine?”

  “No,” Edith said.

  “We’ll remedy that. Always cook with the wine you intend to drink,” he told Howard seriously.

  The front door opened and Sylvia walked in. She might easily have been crying. Howard was suddenly furious, ready to murder someone—Stoat, the dirty pig. He forced a smile, thinking that it would be a disaster to fly off the handle now, even in Sylvia’s defense.

  “What the hell’s wrong?” Uncle Roy asked, seeing the same thing in her face.

  “I don’t think they’re going to renew my lease. I’m going to have to move the shop, probably back off Main Street.”

  “The sons of bitches!” Uncle Roy slammed his fist on the kitchen table.

  “Roy!” Aunt Edith said, glancing at Howard, pretty clearly embarrassed for him.

  “They’re talking about redevelopment along Main,” Sylvia said.

  “What the hell is that, ‘redevelopment’?” Uncle Roy looked disgusted. “Of all the damned things …” he said.

  “That’s when they tear down whatever’s interesting and put up something shabby and new,” Howard put in. “They’re always up to that down in my neighborhood.”

  “Is this certain?” Uncle Roy squinted at her. The look on his face suggested that he read an entire plot into the notion. “Who told you, the old lady?”

  “No, Stoat. This morning. I saw you drive past,” she said to Howard. “I’m kind of glad you didn’t stop, though. I wasn’t in any mood to talk.”

  So Stoat, somehow, had become—what? Her landlord? A landlord’s agent? Guiltily he found that he was wildly relieved. Happy even. This explained the sidewalk conversation. Stoat was a backwoods Simon Legree, twisting his blond mustache.

  Uncle Roy paced up and down, dark looks crossing his face. “They’re moving,” he said.

  “Oh, Roy.” Aunt Edith started putting together sandwiches on the counter.

  Howard wondered what his uncle meant—who was moving? What did the word mean, exactly?

  Roy stopped. Looking hard at Howard, he asked, apropos of nothing at all and in the cryptic manner of Mr. Jimmers, “Are you a man who likes to fish?”

  6

  UNCLE Roy brooded while Sylvia and Edith ate their sandwiches. Looking nervous, as if he had nothing to do with his hands, he got up finally and opened the refrigerator door, staring in at Tupperware containers full of leftovers. He hauled out an open tin can, holding it up and widening his eyes at Howard. “Peach?”

  Howard shook his head. “Still full from breakfast.”

  “Anyone else?” Sylvia and Edith shook their heads. “Don’t mind if I do?” No one minded. Uncle Roy poured milk into the peaches, fishing a clean fork out of the drawer. He waved for Howard to follow him and took the can out into the living room and sat back down in his chair, sipping milky peach syrup out of the open can. Howard could hear Sylvia and Aunt Edith talking between themselves, having cranked the conversation up once the men were out of the room.

  “Slippery little devil,” Uncle Roy said, biting into a peach, eating it off the end of the fork. Howard waited for the subject of the unrenewed lease to surface again, but it didn’t, and he became aware that Uncle Roy was studiously avoiding it. After a couple of minutes Sylvia left, heading back down to Mendocino. Uncle Roy assured her that nothing would happen, that he would work things through. “Don’t worry,” he said to her, but it was unconvincing.

  Then Aunt Edith came in, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief and immediately climbing the stairs. Howard sat there uncomfortably. His uncle had sunk into his chair. He sat now with his head pulled down into the flesh of his neck and chin, as if he had turned into a sort of human pudding. There was more in his face than sorrow or worry. He was thinking hard about something, making plans. He started to speak, but was interrupted almost at once by the sound of footfalls on the front porch and then a heavy knock.

  Uncle Roy shook his head, meaning for Howard to stay in his chair.

  After a moment a woman’s voice spoke from outside, very loud, as if she were shouting through a bullhorn. At first Howard thought it was Sylvia come back, apparently in some sort of rage. “I know you’re in there!” the woman shouted, and then banged on the door again. It was an old woman’s voice, though, loud and thin like the voice of the Witch of the East.

  “Ssh!” Uncle Roy put a finger to his lips. The house was silent for a moment. There was no movement from upstairs.

  “Open this door!” came the voice from the porch, followed by a rapping on the window. “Your car is apparent! Don’t pretend! You’ll find yourself living under the bridge!”

  Howard sat very still. He heard the sound of something scraping on the porch—the rocker being hauled aside—and then someone’s face, just a slice of it, appeared in the window beyond the one-inch gap between the curtains. “I can see the back of your head, Roy Barton!”

  “That’s not me!” shouted Uncle Roy. “I have my lawyer in here! He’s a bulldog when he’s riled up! He’s come up from San Francisco, and he means business. With a capital B!”

  The woman laughed, high and shrill. “Send him out!” she shouted, banging on the window again. Howard saw that Aunt Edith had descended the stairs now, carrying her purse.

  “Put that damned thing away!” Uncle Roy hissed. Then to Howard he said, “Never let them see the color of money. Drives them wild—like the scent of blood to a shark. They won’t rest till they’ve torn your belly out.” He nodded toward the porch. “It’s the landlady.”

  Howard nodded. “Wait here,” he said, getting up and heading for the door.

  Uncle Roy grabbed his pant leg. “Just let her rant,” he said. “She’ll tire out and go away. We’ve got to hold her off until after Halloween. I’m going to make a killing on the haunted house, and then we can pay her.”

  “I see,” Howard said, although actually he didn’t see anything at all. What haunted house? He found that he didn’t have any faith in the notion of his uncle’s making a killing, in haunted houses or otherwise. “Let me deal with her. I’ve handled her sort before.”

  “She’s a bugbear …”

  “Let me at her.”

  “Go to town, then,” Uncle Roy said, letting go of Howard and sitting up a little straighter. “It’s all right,” he said to Aunt Edith, who still hesitated on the stairs. “Howard’s got a line on this woman. He’s just been telling me about it. He’ll settle her hash.”

  Howard smiled and nodded at his aunt, mouthing the words “No problem” and opening the front door.

  On the porch stood a tall thin woman in a red dress. She had the face of a pickle with an aquiline nose, and she glared at him from behind a pair of glasses with swept-back frames dotted with rhinestones. Immediately she tried to push him aside, to rush into the house. Howard forced her back out, weaving across in front of her and pulling the door shut as if he would happily crush her sideways if she didn’t move quickly. She folded her arms, seeming to swell up there on the ruined porch.

  “If you’re a lawyer,” she said, looking him up and down, “I’m a Chinese magistrate.”

  “Mr. Barton is willing to make a partial payment,” he said in a low voice. “I’ve advised him not to let the issue go to court.”

  “Wise,” she said, eyeing him steadily. “A partial payment against what?”

  Howard hesitated. He wasn’t sure
what. Uncle Roy had said that this woman was the landlady, but what did that mean? Did this have something to do with Sylvia’s store, or with the house? It didn’t matter to him, really. “What do you recollect the total to be?”

  “Recollect! There’s a payment of four hundred-odd dollars a month against a principal of forty-two thousand at twelve percent amortized over thirty years. The house is mine, my smarty-pants lawyer, unless he empties his pockets, which he can’t do, because they’re full of moths!”

  “Calm down,” Howard said gently, laying a hand on her arm. “Try to relax.”

  She whirled away, as if his hand were a snake. He smiled benignly, trying to put just the hint of puzzlement into his eyes, as if he were confused and sorry that she’d gotten so carried away. “Breathe regularly,” he advised her, using a soft, clinical psychologist’s voice—the sort of voice designed to drive sane people truly mad.

  He pulled the rocker back over from where she’d shoved it aside, adjusting its position carefully, wondering what the hell to say to her. He gestured at the rocker then, as if she might be anxious to sit down, to take a load off, and he widened his eyes like a happy dentist coercing a child into the tilting chair. Uncle Roy, he could see, was watching through the gap in the curtains now. The curtains moved, parting another couple of inches. His uncle grinned out at him and wiggled his hand in a sort of coy wave, and then whirled his finger around his ear, making the pinwheel sign.

  The woman took another step backward, nearly to the edge of the porch. It was clear that she wouldn’t go anywhere near the chair and wouldn’t settle down, either. Howard’s theatrical patience had worked her into a fury. Her eyebrows were arched and her forehead furrowed, as if she had eaten a slug.

  Then abruptly she caught herself, her face instantly composing. It seemed to have taken an effort, though. “I sent Mr. Barton a notice that I’d no longer accept late payments. I meant what I wrote in that letter. It’s incontestable. The law is the law.”