Who Made Stevie Crye?

by Michael Bishop

  “White-throated capuchin,” Seaton responded. “Capuchins are what you call organ-grinder monkeys, sometimes. You don’t see very many organ-grinders anymore, though. ’Crets has never worked with one.”

  “Only with a typewriter repairman, huh?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Seaton gave a polite laugh. “’Crets likes to watch me fix ’em, but Dad doesn’t like having a monkey around the office. Not one that’s, uh, not related by blood, anyway.” He gave another perfunctory laugh to indicate that this was a standing joke between his father and him.

  So rapidly did the boorish in Seaton’s character alternate with the pathetic that Stevie no longer knew whether to despise or pity him. The sinister aspects of his personality—if you ignored the vague menace embodied by the monkey—had given way to a shallow blandness. ’Crets continued to disturb Stevie, but she no longer feared his master. Owning a white-throated capuchin and riding a big black motorcycle were Seaton’s transparent attempts to distinguish a life devoid of any accomplishment but his mastery of typewriter repair. At twenty-five or twenty-six he was still an adolescent.

  “Okay, kids,” Stevie said, “get off your fannies and set the table. I’m supposed to get some help around here.”

  “Only one plate for ’Crets and me,” Seaton put in as Teddy went for the china and Marella for the silverware. “I don’t want you to have to clean up for two guests, Mrs. Crye.”

  “We can spare an extra plate, Seaton.”

  “No, no. Please don’t do that. Just one.”

  “Does he need a fork?” Marella asked from the utensil drawer.

  “Do you maybe have a cocktail fork?” Seaton asked Marella. “A cocktail fork’s about the right size for ’Crets.”

  Stevie left the stove to help Marella find a cocktail fork in the jumble of the utensil drawer. Maybe ’Crets would also like a silver-inlaid napkin ring, a stem of imported crystal, and a finger bowl. Hey, a finger bowl might not be such a bad idea. She could tip a couple of drops of Lysol into the water while neither Seaton nor the monkey was looking. As it was, she would not feel right about her kitchen again until she had scrubbed it from baseboard to cornice and invited the county sanitarian in for an inspection.

  The meal went well enough. ’Crets preferred his fried-egg sandwiches without bread, a stipulation Seaton had failed to make while Stevie was cooking. Consequently, the bread had to be removed from around the egg and the egg cut up into vaguely lozenge-shaped pieces before the capuchin could begin to eat. Seaton took care of these minor exigencies, transferring the bread slices to a napkin beside their plate (which slices, later on, Seaton ate), and Stevie was surprised by the daintiness with which ’Crets wielded the cocktail fork, spearing each bite of egg, lifting it to his mouth, and licking the fork tines before returning the instrument to his plate. Moreover, he chewed with his mouth closed. In the fastidiousness of this particular he clearly outpointed Teddy.

  “You cook as good as you write,” Seaton said at length, pushing back his chair and daubing at his mouth with a paper napkin.

  “That’s an ambiguous compliment.”

  “Oh, no, ma’am. I liked it. ’Crets did too.”

  “Well, maybe it’ll hold you on your ride back to Columbus.” Not too subtle, but you could hardly accuse Seaton of acute sensitivity. He was unaware of her discomfort (or, worse, indifferent to it), and ’Crets had resumed staring at her from empty-seeming eye sockets.

  “He’s got to check your typewriter before he goes,” Teddy said. “So he doesn’t waste the trip.”

  “That says a lot for my cooking and your company, young man.”

  “You know what I mean, Mom.”

  “My typewriter’s all right.”

  “I’ll be glad to look at it, though. The timing and all. You’ve probably got one or two letters that spin back before they hit, don’t you? That happens to the Exceleriter sometimes.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “You don’t have any letters that strike off-center?”

  “Only the t, Seaton. Sometimes the t doesn’t do quite right. Very seldom, though. It’s not anything to worry about.”

  “That’s the timing. I’ll fix it.”

  “Let him fix it,” Teddy urged her. “He’s already told you it’s free.”

  Marella said, “Never look a gift horse in the mouth, Mama.”

  “I don’t think that’s quite the adage you’re looking for,” Stevie replied. “Try ‘Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.’ ” The steely scrutiny of the capuchin and young Benecke’s low-key eagerness were wearing her down. They had purchased entry by returning her five-dollar tip. What else did they want?

  Then ’Crets ceased staring at her. The animal twisted about on Seaton’s lap, grabbed the front of his fatigue jacket, and looked imploringly up into the young man’s face. Between his tiny pointed teeth ’Crets made a screeching noise. Marella leaned over and stroked his tail.

  “Time for dessert, eh?” Seaton asked. “You want your dessert?”

  Chutzpah enough to choke an army of stand-up comics. Stevie had made no dessert, and she was not about to whip up a banana-cream pie or a pan of cinnamon rolls so that Seaton’s monkey could satisfy his sweet tooth. To paraphrase another unfeeling lady, let him eat Sucrets.

  But instead of looking to Stevie to appease the capuchin, Seaton jostled the monkey back down into his lap, lifted his right forefinger to the animal’s mouth, and allowed ’Crets to suckle the fingertip as if it were a teat or a Popsicle. A moment later, a snaky thread of blood ran down Seaton’s knuckle. He wiped away the blood with his other hand but did not take his finger from the monkey’s mouth. ’Crets kept feeding, his black-ringed eyes closed in a rapturous trance.

  “Ugh!” squealed Marella. “What are you doing?”

  “I cut myself on a typebar yesterday. One of the prongs on the machine’s y was broken. It sliced me good. ’Crets is trying to help me heal it.”

  “By biting the scab off?” Stevie asked, repulsed. “What did you mean by mentioning dessert, then? Was that supposed to be funny?” Maybe so blunt a challenge was rude, but even Teddy’s face had twisted into an involuntary moue of disgust.

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Seaton, stunned by her implied objection. “It was just a joke. Actually, I’ve had this little wound for years.” He still did not pull his finger back. “Sucking it’s something ’Crets likes to do. I don’t mind. It really doesn’t hurt. Makes it feel better, in fact.”

  “I want you to stop it.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Against my better judgment, and beyond my most outlandish dream, I’ve just entertained a monkey in my kitchen, Seaton. Don’t push me any further than that. As a matter of fact, I’m asking you to leave.”

  “You want me to stop?” His wayward gaze had not yet intercepted her unwavering one. Could he really be so dense?

  “That’s what I said. If that’s something you both feel compelled to do—finger fellatio or whatever you call it—please go on back to Columbus to do it. In the privacy of your own monkeyhouse, you can be consenting primates together, till blood poisoning or anemia do ye part. Here, though, you’ve overstepped the permissible.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Crye.” Using his thumb and middle finger, he pushed the capuchin’s head back and extracted his bleeding finger from the creature’s mouth. Then he wiped it ostentatiously on the breast pocket of his fatigues.

  ’Crets turned a stare of steady outrage on Stevie. For the first time since coming inside, she saw the eyes in his deep-set sockets, twin sparks of carnelian hostility. Even after being dumped ten yards behind the line of scrimmage, the Falcon quarterback never shot so damning a look at his departing tacklers. Stevie shivered but held the animal’s gaze.

  Eventually, ’Crets blinked and sprawled out on Seaton’s leg. His posture implied that he had let her win.

  Seaton, however, was chastened. He swung ’Crets from his thigh to his shoulder, stood, and spoke to the empty cut-glass vase on the table. “We�
��ll be going as soon as I’ve fixed that t on your Exceleriter, Mrs. Crye.”

  “That isn’t necessary, Seaton.”

  “Yes, ma’am. It’s the least I can do for eating lunch here. I didn’t mean to gross you out with ’Crets and so on. I’m not around other people all that much. It’s just a kind of habit we’ve got into. It’s a way of showing we like and trust each other. It’s never hurt me any, so far as I can see. In cold weather especially, I sort of feel I owe him. Costa Rica’s a long way off, Mrs. Crye. This keeps him warm.”

  “I don’t think it’s advisable.”

  “No, ma’am, not in front of other people. I just didn’t think.” He tapped the side of his head. “Uh, let’s go look at your machine so ’Crets and I can get moving on home.”

  Although Stevie tried to dissuade him with a studied rekindling of her indignation, she just could not say, “No, I’ll be damned if I’ll let you up there.” She could not put her foot down. She felt sorry for Benecke. Teddy and Marella were on his side, and Stevie belatedly realized that even she wanted him to examine the Exceleriter. If he had somehow messed it up, given it, inadvertently, an autonomy comparable to a human being’s, maybe he could also undo this condition. (Of course the undoing of the typewriter’s maverick talent would leave her in the dark about a number of important matters, and maybe, after all, she did not really want the Exceleriter restored to its previous mechanical rectitude.) Sharing the burden with another person, even if that person was someone as strange as Seaton Benecke, definitely had its attractive aspects. And Seaton would believe where Dr. Elsa had (politely) scoffed.

  “I just don’t want ’Crets to go upstairs with us. House-broken or not, he’s not going to get a chance to prove himself in my study.”

  “We’ll take him back out to the swing set,” Teddy said.

  Is that what you want? Stevie asked herself. Would you rather have Teddy and Marella watching ’Crets than suffer his presence upstairs? He’s a white-cowled vampire, a bloodsucking demon. Even if he beshat your drapes and Oriental rug, you’d be better off keeping him away from the kids. They’ll quickly live down their disappointment, but you’ll never live down an injury to either of them. Never . . .

  “Seaton, there are a lot of dogs around here. In a small town they run loose. That’s the way people do things. If you’ll keep ’Crets close to you, he can come upstairs. He’ll be safer with us than outdoors with just the kids.”

  Stamping her foot, Marella said, “Mama!”

  “Hey, Mom, we can take care of him,” Teddy said.

  “Listen: You remember that stupid Irish setter that came up onto our front porch two years ago and killed your guinea pigs? It pushed in the screen on their cage and dragged them out one after another.”

  “Mom, ’Crets isn’t a guinea pig. Besides, I’m older, and there wasn’t anybody watching the porch that day.”

  But Seaton (Stevie could tell) no longer wished to trust ’Crets’s welfare to her children. She had won—if you could call wresting temporary custody of that obscene beast away from the kids a victory—by resorting to deceit. Although it had taken Teddy and Marella a long time to get over the deaths of their utterly helpless guinea pigs, she had recounted the painful incident solely to prejudice Seaton against leaving the capuchin with them. Well, not solely. She was also exercising caution, playing a frightening maternal hunch.

  “Crap!” said Teddy when he understood what she had done. He went out the kitchen door, slamming it behind him. Marella, imparting a similar emphatic impetus to the door, followed. Good kids, both of them.

  XX

  “This is a writer’s room,” Seaton told ’Crets, upstairs. The monkey was riding his shoulder. “That’s her desk . . .and her typewriter.” The study did not appear to impress the animal. “I’ve never seen walls this color. What do you call it?”

  “Burgundy,” Stevie said.

  “It’s dark. It’s a really dark color.”

  “It’s supposed to make me thoughtful and creative. Same with the curtains and the Oriental rug.”

  “I like it. It’s kind of Edgar Allan Poe-ish. I mean, you could put a raven up there on one of your bookcases.”

  “For want of a bust of Pallas?”

  “I can see you going deep into yourself sitting here, digging down into your mind. A good room for imagining stuff in.”

  “Sort of like a prison cell.”

  “Oh, no, Mrs. Crye. It’s small, but you’re free here. You’re a lot freer than somebody fixing typewriters in a big repair room.”

  “I’m chained to my desk. I’m chained to that typewriter the way an organ-grinder monkey is chained to its hurdy-gurdy.” (’Crets shot Stevie a look. He knew the word monkey.) “I’ve got just enough slack to go around the circle of my customers with my tin cup stretched out. That’s how free I am, Seaton. Your job’s the equal of mine. It may even be better. You get weekends off. I feel guilty when I’m not using them to fill up that tin cup.”

  “Well, I’ll do some work right now.” He took a tiny screwdriver from his fatigue pocket. “It’s Saturday, Mrs. Crye, but I’ll do some work.”

  With ’Crets draped around his neck Seaton bent over the PDE Exceleriter 79 and fiddled with the cables beneath the ribbon carrier. Then he popped off the entire hood and, like a surgeon, peered into the cavity of levers, wheels, and cams composing the machine’s gleaming viscera. Stevie stood behind him and watched him work. What was he doing? Sabotaging the machine further or righting the problem that had enabled it to work by itself?

  “Seaton?”

  “Ma’am.”

  “You did something to my Exceleriter the other day that has me very upset. I think you should know that. You said you were giving it a special twist, and that little twist has turned me upside-down. My best friend thinks I’ve flipped my wig, Seaton, and it’s all I can do to keep from taking out my frustration and fear on the kids. This morning I boiled over and spilled about three gallons of frustration and fear right into their laps. It’s the typewriter. The typewriter’s holding me hostage.”

  “You know how kids are,” Seaton replied without turning around. “You probably had to bring them up short. Just like you did me and ’Crets downstairs. I deserved that, Mrs. Crye, I really did. Besides, kids’re really flexible, they bounce right back from disappointments.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about, Seaton. Whatever you did to my typewriter Wednesday—supposedly to fix it—is fixing me instead. I think you know what I’m talking about. I’ve been keeping up a semiresolute front since my visit to Dr. Elsa yesterday morning, but I’m on the verge of disintegrating. Is that what you wanted to happen?”

  Seaton’s fingers ceased their exploratory surgery on the machine. He unbent his back and faced her. For only the second time in their unconventional relationship he purposely met her eyes. The capuchin scrambled about so that the tip of his white-bearded chin was resting on Seaton’s head. From this precarious perch, the monkey added his unyielding stare to the man’s.

  “You don’t look like you’re disintegrating, Mrs. Crye. You look just fine. Inside, I mean. Down deep.”

  “You’ve got X-ray eyes that let you see inside a person?” Stevie regretted this question. It heightened her uneasiness about Seaton by imputing a dreadful power to him. By sheer dint of will she kept her eyes locked on his and ignored those of the impudent monkey.

  “Clinac-18 eyes,” he said, expressionless.

  “That’s not an X-ray machine. It’s a beam accelerator. What’re you trying to imply?”

  Seaton glanced aside, letting his gaze drift over the pattern in the Oriental rug where she was standing. “You mentioned it in your Ledger article. The Clinac 18. It has a beam that goes deep and disintegrates tumors. I was just . . . well, you know, making a comparison. What do writers call them, those fancy comparisons where you say something is something else?”

  “Metaphors.”

  “That’s right. You said ‘disintegrating’ and then you
said ‘X-ray eyes,’ and I just thought of what you’d written in that cancer article, is all. I was doing a metaphor, Mrs. Crye. I probably didn’t do it right, though, because that stuff was always hard for me. That’s why I’ll never be a writer even though I’ve got stories in my head—spooky stuff, really scary stuff—that I wish I could get out. I really envy writers.”

  “You made my typewriter write by itself, Seaton. Is that some part of you operating the machine?”

  “What did I do, Mrs. Crye?” His brow furrowed.

  “You made the damned Exceleriter write by itself. It types out copy in the middle of the night when I’m not sitting in front of it to do the typing. I think that’s you, Seaton. I think that’s some part of you.”

  Swiveling ’Crets so that the monkey no longer stared at her, Seaton looked back over his shoulder at the typewriter. Then he revolved back toward Stevie, let his gaze drift to the Dearborn space heater, and held almost breathlessly still while ’Crets shinnied down his arm to his hip. Seaton’s brow had not yet unwrinkled. If he was acting, he was extraordinarily good at suggesting an unstable mixture of confusion and embarrassment.

  “Ma’am?”

  “You know what I’m talking about.”

  “I don’t think it was any part of me, Mrs. Crye. This is the first time I’ve ever been in your house.”

  “You had to get inside my house, didn’t you? You had to get upstairs here to see what the place looked like. To measure the impact of your skullduggery. That’s what all this is about, isn’t it?”

  Maybe he was human after all. His pudgy schoolboy cheeks reddened a little, and when he responded to these charges, his voice cracked: “I wanted . . . I wanted to fix the t.” Had his face flushed from discovered guilt or a charitable embarrassment on her behalf? Stevie could not tell. She clenched her fists at her shoulders and abstractedly tapped her knuckles against her collarbones.

  “Then why don’t you go ahead and fix the lousy t?”

  “I was doing that, Mrs. Crye. I’ll finish the job right now.”