“Snowflake was a rabbit. He was Ruthie’s rabbit. That was later. The cat was Snowball, but she wasn’t mine. She lived in the barn.”
“Before my time.”
“Long before,” said Calpurnia. “No, I never wanted a cat. Cats made me feel bad. They still do. I feel sorry for cats. There was a thing, once, at home, I can’t have been more than seven, eight. The cat had kittens. That could have been Snowball, come to think, or a Snowball. We had a whole line of Snowballs. Barn cats. So, we had Mrs. Pierce, from over the hill, helping in the kitchen for some reason that day, and she brought the new kittens in a basket and put them on the porch, outside, asked me did I want to play with them. Well, sure. There were five or six of them, some white, some black. They couldn’t have been more than a couple of days old. They had these round blue eyes, like kittens do, with that surprised, shocked look that kittens have, like granny just broke wind, and they tussled around and rolled themselves into a ball, and crawled into my lap and all up and down of me. We had a fine old time out on the porch. But then the kittens got tired, and I guess so did I, and Mrs. Pierce asked me was I about done playing with them, and I said I was—thinking, you know, that they were mine now and I could play with them whenever I liked. But Mrs. Pierce said, ‘Alright, then, if you’re finished with them.’ And she put the kittens in a feed sack and took and drowned them in the cold spring. Just like that. Tossed the sack over the bank. Those kittens hadn’t any use any more, you see. So she got rid of them. How did she do that? Easy. She killed them. No, a farm’s a cruel place for animals, ask me. You might not think it would be, but it is.”
“For kittens, anyway,” said Eli. “That farm, anyway.”
“For anything,” said Calpurnia. “Any farm. The animals are there to be used. The way Father used to say: they’re tools. You use them up, you get rid of them. That’s unless you eat them. Either way, you kill them.”
“Well, but some you don’t kill, right? You raise them, you care for them, then you sell them. That’s not using them up and getting rid of them.”
“Sure, it is. Somebody else kills them, that’s all. Comes to the same thing, ask me.”
“You’re a bright ray of sunshine today, ain’t you?”
“Sure, I am,” said Calpurnia. “Like always. No: I am. I’m fine. I’m not down today, not any day. But it doesn’t do to be too sentimental about life, is what I’m saying. There are hard things. It doesn’t do to pour syrup over them and make believe they’re griddle cakes. That’s all.”
“Pastor Chet, tell you the same thing, I bet,” said Eli.
“Don’t give me Pastor Chet.”
“I’ll be sure and tell him what a high opinion you have of him.”
“He knows,” said Calpurnia. “And don’t be telling me you spend a lot of time in church, either, his or anybody else’s. I know different.”
“Oh, you do? How?”
“Polly. Polly Jefferson. She goes to Pastor Chet’s chapel. She says she’s never seen you there, not once.”
“So what if she hasn’t? Maybe I go to some other church.”
“No, you do not,” said Calpurnia. “Polly would have seen you.”
“What if I was going to a church she doesn’t go to?”
“There aren’t any,” said Calpurnia. “She goes to all of them. Takes more than one church to hold Polly.”
One of the Hospice housekeeping staff stood in the doorway to the sun porch. “You’re all set,” she told Calpurnia.
“Thank you, dear,” said Calpurnia. To Eli she said, “I know how busy you are. You probably want to get on your way.”
“No,” said Eli. “I’ve got nothing till late afternoon.”
“Well, then, get something,” said Calpurnia. Eli stood.
“Just switch on the TV on your way out, would you?” asked Calpurnia.
“What’s on?”
“Jeopardy.”
“That’s that quiz show,” said Eli. “I had to give up on that one. Lots of the questions, I know the answers, alright, but I have to think for a second. Then somebody else answers. They go too quick for me.”
“Me, too,” said Calpurnia. “I like the boss, though. He’s a gentleman. Plus, I think he’s good looking.”
“He don’t do it for me,” said Eli, and he left Calpurnia with the familiar lilting music coming up in the little room.
7
ELI’S WAY
ASKED FOR IT, THOUGHT TAFT. WALKED RIGHT INTO IT. Give the devil a task, he will perform it. Give the devil a test, he will pass. Devil? What devil? Not much of a devil. A sleight-of-hand man, a tawdry conjuror. Half the taxi drivers in Vegas could no doubt do as well. Still, what about that suddenly healthy kid, that happy billing office at Mass General, that little jerk deleted—simply deleted? What about those bailiffs? Those toads? Place an order, and the devil will fulfill. Send out the invitations, and the devil will attend. Asked for it, alright. Asked for it, and got it.
Disappointing, though. Not what might have been predicted. You expect a certain level of dramaturgy, don’t you? A certain gravity? And, then—nothing. No smoke. No brimstone. No Latin. In the event, crass salesmanship, a squalid businessman. Turns up here like a damned vacuum cleaner agent or, at best, the fellow beside you on a flight, some species of small executive, glib, familiar, able in some small way. Not original. Not serious. And what’s this “Chief?” Chief, this, Chief, that. “You’ve already signed, Chief.” “I like your spirit, Chief.” Chief? No, by no means serious.
A peasant. (“Common,” Mother would say.) Told him so. Can’t imagine passing up the bucks, the fun. Not educated. Well, then, he will be. Let him watch. Let him learn. Let him see how a gentleman sells his soul.
The deal? The closing? The final curtain? The carrying down, down, down? The hot place? Not worried. Why? Simple: not a believer. Heaven, hell, reward, punishment, the soul itself (didn’t Descartes say even your friends and neighbors, even their dogs and cats, as far as anybody knows for sure?). Fiction. Dreams, fairy tales, fables, unworthy of an intelligent adult. You beat the devil, not by superior play, but by ignoring the game. You don’t sell your soul, you mortgage it, but on easy terms. The easiest terms, no terms at all: you borrow gold and pay back air. Less than air. Less than nothing.
One thing, though: Eli. Ought to tell Eli. Feel badly about Eli. Disloyal. Secretive. If Eli were in a fix, he’d tell me, wouldn’t he? Would he? Probably not. But, still, point is: an occasion of sympathy, of comfort, of friendship. A gift. A gift of the self. Incompatible with secrecy.
Secrecy, that’s the destructive thing. Telling Eli? Dangerfield won’t have it, of course. Voids the bargain, didn’t he say? Secretive? He lives in secret. He is a secret. He’s more: he is a secret in himself, and he is the cause that secrecy is in other men. He wouldn’t stand for my telling. Well?
Break the secret, then. Tell Eli. A good man, Eli. Feet on the ground, but no simpleton. Versatile. Turn his hand to anything: work on the roads, heavy equipment, concrete, building, masonry, stonework, even wiring. Eli can take it on. He can scope the business out, hitch his trousers, and put up a decent job—not elegant, but sound and serviceable. I? The other way: could only ever do one thing, and never had any clear idea what that thing was. Rather be like Eli, but like Eli, Eli’s way, you can’t sell your soul to be.
Must tell Eli, but how? “See here, Eli, old sport, sit down—no, there. Good. Drink? Didn’t think so. Um, ah, well, it’s like this, Eli: I’ve made a pact with Satan. I am damned, Eli, lost, fallen, anathema, cast into the outer darkness.” Like that? Wouldn’t believe me. Don’t believe myself.
Ah, here he comes.
Outside the window, in the yard, Eli was taking a chainsaw from his truck. He’d put it on the tailgate and was gassing it. He’d come as he said he would to trim the high tree branch that was hitting the house. In a minute, he was in Taft’s doorway.
“Get that branch,” Eli said.
“Come in, old sport. Have a drink first.”
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Eli stayed where he was. “Great idea,” he said. “Have a couple of drinks, then climb up on a ladder and get started with your chainsaw, see how long you last. Is that an event in the woodchuck rodeo? It should be.”
“Something soft? Glass of water?”
“Maybe after,” said Eli. But he stayed in the door. “I’ve been out at Orson’s,” he said. “I was helping him with his wood. That’s how come I have the saw.”
“How’s Orson?” Taft asked.
“Not too good. He’s got the bank after him. He’s in default, they say.”
“It can’t be. It’s not possible.”
“Sure. That’s what I told him. But it’s complicated. Orson’s note got bought by another bank, and that bank has this fund company—or maybe it’s the company has the bank—that says Orson’s in default.”
“It doesn’t matter which bank owns what, old man. Orson’s paid up. He can prove it. It’s some computer thing.”
“They’ve put him into foreclosure.”
“You’re joking.”
“I’m not, and neither is Orson. The bank told him they’re sending their lawyer up from New York to handle their end. They have a court date. Orson better be there, they say.”
Taft was silent for a moment, sitting at his desk. Eli stood in the doorway. Presently Taft looked up at him.
“When’s he supposed to be in court?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Next week sometime.”
“What’s the name of the bank?”
“Orson didn’t say. A New York bank.”
“I’ll call him. Don’t worry. Nothing will happen. No foreclosure. Orson’s okay.”
“It don’t look to me like he’s okay,” said Eli.
“I tell you that he is. Orson will be fine.”
“How do you know that?”
Taft took in a breath. He let it out. He looked at Eli. “Come on in,” he said.
Eli came into the room. Taft pointed at the visitor’s chair in front of his desk.
“You ask how I know Orson needn’t worry,” said Taft.
Eli nodded.
“Sit down a minute, old sport,” said Taft. “Give me a moment. I’ll tell you how I know. It takes some telling. Oh, shut the door, would you?”
“Why?” asked Eli. “Nobody’s here, are they?”
“Shut it, anyway, old sport,” said Taft.
• • •
Dangerfield rattled the ice in his glass. Taft passed the Sir Walter’s.
A New York lawyer? said Dangerfield. Shouldn’t be a problem, Chief. Of course, you never really enjoy taking them on. It’s like betting against the home team. Can’t be helped. I’ll bring the guys. They need work. They’re bored.
“I’ll be glad to see them,” said Taft.
They’ll be glad to see you, too. They think highly of you. They’ve been missing you, lately. Which brings up a question in my mind.
“A question about what?”
Our contract, Chief. We’re working it through, you know.
“I know.”
We’re moving right along, in fact. Columbus Day? We’re half done, better than. You understand that?
“I understand.”
You understand, but you seem very cool, very untroubled. That surprises me a little. How is that, Chief?
“Maybe I don’t think I have so much to be troubled about.”
Dangerfield clapped his hands. Hah, he said. I knew it. I knew it. I read you like a book, Chiefy-boy. You think you’re immune, don’t you? You think hell’s a fable. You think it’s all trifles and old wives’ tales. I’ve heard it before, Chief. You think you can doubt your way out of our deal. You think you can brain your way out. You think you’re too smart for hell. You’ll go on thinking it until you find out differently. Don’t believe me? Look at me. What am I? What have you seen me do? Have I held up my end, here?
“Yes,” said Taft.
A hundred percent?
“Yes.”
Whatever you asked for? The sick kid, the wife beater, the bullies. Have I not made good on each and every one of them?
“You’ve made good.”
Could you have worked any of those things on your own?
“No.”
No, Chief, you couldn’t. For that you need the Talents. We talked about them. The Talents that I have, as you know, that you have from me, and from me alone. You’ve used them. You’ve seen what they can do. Where do you think I got them? You think hell’s a fable? What are the Talents? What am I? Where did I come from?
“I don’t know,” said Taft.
I think you do, Chief. If you don’t, you’ll find out soon enough.
Dangerfield drained his glass. He set it down on Taft’s desk with a rap. Hell’s no fable, Chief, he said. But from one point of view, it’s no big deal, either. My superior wouldn’t like my saying this, but you know me, Chief: I’m for open dealing, and facts are facts. Hell? It’s simple, really. Hell’s like a DUI. It’s like getting behind the wheel when you’ve had a few. You’ve done that, I bet.
“Maybe once or twice.”
Sure, you have. Everybody does it. You know you shouldn’t, but you do it anyway. You know you can get busted, you know that will mean all kinds of no-fun. Doesn’t matter: you keep risking it. Why? Because you don’t really believe you’ll ever get nailed. You don’t believe it, and don’t believe it—right up to the night when you’re standing in the road in the blue flashers, blowing down that little tube they give you, wondering which of your royally pissed off loved ones to tell the cop to call, and thinking, ‘Fuck me, what a moron.’
Taft nodded.
Do you get what I’m telling you, here, Chief?
“I get it.”
I’m, telling you it will happen, said Dangerfield.
“I know.”
Difference is, with the DUI, you don’t know when. In your case, you do. You know, because it’s in the contract. Columbus Day. Right?
“It’s in the contract,” said Taft.
8
SHOW BUSINESS
YOUNG LUCAS POLK, THEN THIRTEEN, BROKE INTO McKinley’s by knocking down the back door with a sledgehammer. Inside, he used the hammer on one of the coolers and on the deli case. He stole two six-packs of beer, drank one of them there and then, and brought the other out the front. He stole McKinley’s truck, backed it through McKinley’s plate glass window, drove on, sideswiped McKinley’s wife’s Cherokee, made the road at last, and then crashed the truck in a pond five miles out.
The people in the house across the road heard the crash and called the authorities. Fortunately for Lucas, Trooper Amy Madison of the state police chanced to be patrolling in the vicinity. She reached the pond as McKinley’s truck, with Lucas unconscious in the driver’s seat, began to sink. At the water’s edge, Trooper Madison didn’t hesitate. She jumped into the pond and half-waded–half-swam to the truck. She found the driver’s-side window closed, the door jammed immovably shut. Inside the cab, the water had risen to Lucas’s chest.
Trooper Madison drew her service revolver and, holding it by the barrel, she used the butt to smash the window. She reached in to Lucas, cut his seatbelt, and lifted him as much farther out of the water as she could. Then, seizing the half-submerged truck with both hands and bracing her feet against the hood and roof, she threw all her weight and all her strength into pulling open the door. The door bent, then gave. The trooper wrenched it open. She took Lucas’s limp body by the collar, and heaved him out of the truck. She carried him to the bank. By the time the ambulance arrived, Lucas was awake and shivering in a blanket in the rear of Trooper Madison’s cruiser. The trooper herself was beside the road doing deep knee bends to keep her legs loose after their exertion.
Lucas was arrested, his mother was called. The next day it was decided that, owing to his age and lack of any record of misconduct, Lucas wouldn’t be prosecuted, but would instead be supervised by the court as he made restitution for the damage he had caused. He would
not, however, be making restitution to Storekeeper McKinley. McKinley had consented to the plan for Lucas, but he made it clear he wanted nothing further to do with the boy and in fact swore to have the law on him if he ever again set foot on McKinley’s premises. Some other way would have to be found for Lucas to make good.
Eli Adams was Lucas’s mother’s cousin. He talked to her, then he talked to the magistrate. Then he went to see Langdon Taft. Taft had helped Lucas before; and Eli knew Taft had a big house that hadn’t had a fresh coat of paint in at least twenty years. Also, he knew Taft had at one time been a teacher, a fact that suggested to Eli his friend had a level of tolerance for the young. Finally, Eli had recently come to a new appreciation, a new understanding, of certain abilities he found Taft to possess, certain gifts: a gift for persuasion, a gift for resolving difficulties, for helping justice prevail, sometimes roughly, in the obscure affairs of their small community. On behalf of Lucas and his mother, then, Eli went to see Taft.
Alone in the valley, Taft had heard nothing of Lucas’s exploit at McKinley’s. Eli described it, without stressing the drunkenness, theft, and vandalism involved, and told Taft a little about the boy’s situation. An incarcerated father, a desperate, struggling mother, a self-destructive pattern ominously emerging, no friends, no protectors, no oversight—not a bad kid, not at all, a sweet kid, really, and quite bright, but a kid who had taken a long step down a short road. Another time, the authorities (never mind McKinley or his successor) would not go so easy. There needed not to be another time, therefore.
“What’s he doing now?” Taft asked Eli.
“He’s been put into Diversion.”
“Diversion, old sport?”
“Diversion’s when they figure out something for you to do so you don’t go to jail where you belong.”
“Really?” said Taft, “I wish somebody would put me into Diversion. Diversion sounds pretty good.”
“It’s for youthful offenders, though, mostly,” said Eli.
“Pity. Can I give you a small Sir Walter’s?”
“I’m good,” said Eli.
The Devil in the Valley Page 6
