Heading Out to Wonderful

by Robert Goolrick

  “You know there’s no place else I’ll go. You know that.”

  “I’ve been told. And that’s a shame. Every man should have a spiritual life. It has saved me from such . . . degradation. And it could save you, if you need saving, and I’m not making any judgments and I mean no offense . . .”

  “None taken.”

  “But we can’t give you what you need. And I want to explain why.”

  “There’s no need.”

  “But I want to. I want you to know that this is not some unkindness on our part. I need, we need for you to know that. The thing is, we’re grateful. What you’ve done, coming to us, is an act of both bravery and kindness. But you’re not from around here, and there’s things you just don’t, can’t understand.”

  Charlie didn’t say anything. He just called the dog over, and sat with Jackie Robinson at his feet, and he waited. His heart was beating like thunder. He couldn’t say why. It was like being called to the principal’s office for some infraction he didn’t remember committing.

  “We are watched, Mister Beale. Every time we set foot out the door, somebody is looking at everything we do. We are the most watched people on earth. Every step we take, we have to be careful. If we put even one foot wrong, even one of the children, our world could end. And I don’t mean that in an imaginary way. It is a true fact.

  “These people, my people, have no education except what we can provide for ourselves. Not one family owns, or will ever own, the house they live in. They are mostly owned, the houses, by either Mister Glass or those twin sisters you’re so fond of.

  “And we go about our business, and we put up with it. Because there is nothing else we can do. Except believe, Mister Beale, except worship in a broken-down storefront we pay the rent on where we worship in peace, because we know that nobody in this town except us would ever set foot in there. Not even Mister Glass, who owns the place. Not even him, as long as he gets his rent every month. And he does. Every eye in this town is on us, even when we sleep.

  “And we can’t stand it. We hide it, every day, all day, but it is hateful and intolerable. It makes our stomachs hurt. Because the one thing we can’t do, no matter how closely we’re watched, the one thing we can never do is ever look back. Do you understand what I’m saying, Mister Beale?”

  “There’s no need to say any more, Mister Shadwell. I won’t be coming back.”

  “I’m so . . .”

  “No need to be. Tell the people thanks for having me. It meant something.”

  “I hope so, Mister Beale. I hope so.”

  “Tell them for me. Tell them I’ll remember.”

  Then Shadwell, the Reverend Lewis Tobias Shadwell, as he came to be known, got up, and the two men shook hands, and he left, leaving Charlie alone in his cooling house with his quiet dog and no religion.

  No religion except Sylvan Glass.

  That night, lying in bed, he drew a crude portrait of her in his diary. He wasn’t an artist, but he tried to get her face and features down the way he remembered them. So he could look at her on the days of the week that weren’t Wednesday. So he would always have her near, even when he was very, very old.

  And around her head he drew a halo, a perfect circle, and colored it in with gold.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  IT WAS GETTING too cold. Sam couldn’t wait in the truck any more.

  So, on the third Wednesday, when they turned in the drive, and parked around back of the house, out of sight, Charlie came around and helped Sam down from the pickup, leaving Jackie Robinson in the cab. They walked over to the house, and the door opened as soon as they stepped on the porch. There was an awkward moment as Sam looked up at Mrs. Glass, wary about going into a house he didn’t know.

  She was dressed, this time. High-heeled shoes, a navy blue dress with a red rose at the neck, her hair swept up in an impossible tangle of curls and ringlets, like something off a magazine cover. Bright red lips. Scarlet nails. A plastic bracelet on her arm as red as the rose on her neck.

  The kitchen was hot, spotless, and it smelled good. Whatever else Boaty Glass spent all his money on, he didn’t spend it on extravagant things for his house. The floor was plain speckled linoleum, the kitchen table covered in checked oilcloth. There were straight, tall oak farm chairs, just two of them, as though there were never any guests expected; not a crumb on the floor or counter, covered in Formica the color of the inside of an avocado; frilly, frail curtains at the windows, the only touch of grace or care. On the walls, there were pictures of stern old folks in stiff positions, and sad-looking little girls with painted faces and frozen hands, a framed picture postcard of a big grand house with formal gardens and palm trees around it, behind a big, turquoise swimming pool—a souvenir of Hollywood.

  The room opened onto two others, a sitting room filled with drab furniture, and a bright bedroom with an iron bed painted white, plain as dirt, but hung with some kind of filmy curtains all around the head of the bed, tied back with colorful ribbons and bows. Next to the bed was a yellowed photograph, a silver-framed picture of a pretty woman on her wedding day, long ago. A staircase led upstairs, to other rooms and other hallways, just like in Sam’s house. Bedrooms, he guessed.

  Sam knew right away why it smelled good in the kitchen. She’d made cookies. They were piled on a blue willow plate on the kitchen table, next to two short stacks of magazines.

  “Sam, say hello to Mrs. Glass. Be a good boy.”

  “Hello, ma’am.”

  “Hello, Sam,” she said, and he loved the sound of her voice, so young and sweet and fine. As though she had grown up in a beautiful flower garden far away. “I have some things for you.”

  He walked toward the table. “I made cookies with nuts,” she said, “And I got you these.” She picked up one of the stacks. “Look, funny books.”

  “I can’t read yet. I can almost read. My mama and daddy read to me every night.”

  “These you can just look at the pictures and make up your own funny stories, out of your own head. Look. Captain America and Captain Marvel, and, look at this one, this is Donald Duck. He’s bobbing for apples, like at Halloween, but all he got was this big old mean lobster clamped down on his beak. Isn’t that funny?”

  Sam laughed, but he really didn’t understand. He’d never seen a whole funny book, just the covers at the general store. He’d never seen a lobster, either, and he didn’t get the joke. He liked the other little ducks on the cover, wearing witch’s hats and riding broomsticks, dressed up for Halloween. But he was drawn right away to Captain Marvel, Jr, a dark-haired, dark-eyed boy like Sam, but older, about fourteen, dressed in blue and gold, with a red cape and strong arms, the kind of boy Sam wanted to be when he grew up, with a lightning bolt across his chest, standing on top of a chest of gold coins that flew everywhere, surrounded by fierce pirates, a masted ship in the harbor.

  The books his parents read to him were more serious, The Wind in the Willows from his mother, or Mother Goose, and The Hardy Boys from his father. Sometimes his father would read him a wonderful strange book he had had since he was Sam’s age, Poppy Ott’s Pedigreed Pickles. Sam would follow the words on the page with his fingers while they read to him, and sometimes he would carefully pronounce the words, fixing them in his mind. He liked Frank and Joe Hardy, their small-town world filled with gangsters and spies and adventures that never seemed to happen in Brownsburg.

  But these funny books were different, filled with colorful pictures and strange, exotic, dressed-up animals, and men in capes who looked almost like some of the people he knew. Charlie helped him into a chair, and he turned the pages of the thin-papered magazines, excited to see what would happen next.

  “And if you get tired of the comics, you can use these . . .” she showed him a box of crayons and a pad of paper, “. . . and draw us some pretty pictures. Would you like that?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Sam,” Charlie squatted on his haunches by the chair, “Mrs. Glass and I are going to go u
pstairs for a little while, so you be a good boy, and don’t make any noise, and just keep yourself busy and have some cookies. Do you think that’ll be OK?”

  “I think so. What’s a lobster, Beebo?”

  “I’ll tell you later, on the way home. Just be patient. And don’t come in the room.”

  Charlie and Mrs. Glass went up the stairs, and Sam was alone in the kitchen with his picture books and his cookies. He should have been happy, but he wasn’t. He worried about Jackie Robinson in the cold. He didn’t like being left in a strange room where something was going on in another room but he didn’t know what it was. He found it hard to look at the books or eat the cookies.

  It was completely quiet for a little while. Then something like voices, like whispers, came through the floor, but no sounds of feet moving. They must be sitting down, Sam thought, talking very quietly. But what were they talking about? Maybe they were talking about him, and that worried Sam. He’d been polite, he’d laughed at the duck even if he didn’t understand what was so funny, and he chewed on a cookie, trying to figure it out.

  Then the noises began, tiny, soft noises blunted by the thickness of the floor, and all the more mysterious for that. He heard music playing above him, and a woman’s voice singing. It wasn’t hillbilly music. It was some other kind, softer, with other instruments playing.

  Maybe they were dancing. Dancing slow.

  He knew it was part of the secret. And he knew, he felt it in his skin, that he must never tell, about the music, or the funny books with strange pictures his mother wouldn’t approve of, or being left alone in the kitchen with the dog in the car, or about the cookies and the milk. He understood he must never say anything about this whole day. He wasn’t here. They weren’t here, Sam or Charlie or Mrs. Glass. He just knew that.

  He stopped reading or eating. He just sat. He just sat and listened.

  Sometimes it sounded like Charlie and the woman were laughing. Sometimes it sounded like Charlie was in pain, and his heart raced with fear for Beebo. If Beebo got hurt, how would he get home? He heard what must have been shoes dropping on the floor, and more laughing, giggling from her. Then it was really quiet again.

  But only for a little bit. He heard Charlie groan and what sounded almost like a wail from the woman, followed quickly by Charlie’s low voice, different, harder, as he said quickly, “Hush, Sylvan. Hush.” Sam heard that. And then she was quiet as church during prayers, silent as his room when his mother turned out the light at night.

  Maybe they were dead.

  After what seemed like a long time, a door opened, and Charlie came down. He looked different, strange and young and sleepy and excited all at the same time. His shoes were in his hand, and he sat down on the other chair and started putting them on. He wouldn’t look at Sam as he laced them up, and the boy pretended to be reading the books and took a few bites of a cookie.

  They both looked up, and Mrs. Glass was standing in the doorway. She was barefoot, too. She wasn’t wearing her dress any more, just a white, silky slip like his mother wore under her dress. Her face was pale, and all the red was gone from her lips. Her hair was tangled down around her shoulders. She just stood there, in her slip and her bracelet, smoking a cigarette in a short cigarette holder. Her lips looked plump and rounder and pink as a baby’s. She didn’t say anything to anybody, and nobody spoke to her.

  Charlie stood up, tightened his belt, and reached for his coat. “Ready to go, Sam?” His voice was soft and kind, almost like a woman’s. “Get your coat on, we’re leaving.” Charlie kept his eyes on Mrs. Glass the whole time, not even noticing that Sam had never taken his coat off in the first place.

  Sam started to put the few crayons back in the box. Charlie looked around briefly, “Don’t bother with that now. It’s all right. We have to go.”

  They moved to the door. Sam knew he was supposed to leave the funny books on the table. The woman finished her cigarette and moved back into the next room and they heard her going slowly up the staircase. She never even said good-bye.

  In the truck, Charlie held Jackie Robinson to his chest and kissed the top of his head. He put his arm out, gently, and touched Sam’s hair.

  “If they ask why we’re late, just tell them Mr. Potter was late getting to the slaughterhouse with the beef. Okay?”

  “Okay, Beebo.”

  The truck didn’t catch at first, but then it did. They backed up and turned around, and headed down the driveway. Charlie turned onto the road without even looking, but there weren’t any cars on the road, so nobody got hurt.

  There was a scratch on Charlie’s neck, no more than the length of Sam’s little finger, but a drop of blood had hardened on the end just above his shirt collar. His coat was open, as though he couldn’t feel the cold, even though the truck took a while to heat up. Sam shivered and rubbed his hands together. Even after the heat of the kitchen, once he was in the cold of the truck he felt as though he would never ever be warm again.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  HE KNEW IT was all part of the promise he’d made to Charlie, part of the secret. He had to forget. It took an effort every time he sat down with his mother and father, but he could never mention that he had been with Charlie in the Glass house and eaten Mrs. Glass’s cookies and read her funny books and heard what he’d heard, not that he knew exactly what it was.

  But he couldn’t forget. He thought about it all the time. The warm kitchen, the oilcloth, the sounds from upstairs, sounds meaning what? No, he couldn’t forget, and he couldn’t stop being afraid. Afraid for Charlie.

  What if something bad happened, the way Charlie had said it would? What if Charlie died? Who would take care of Jackie?

  At night, after he had said his prayers and his mother had left him alone in the dark, he saw it all in his mind, happening over and over again, and he prayed his own prayer to the same Jesus, that Charlie would not die. If Charlie died, it would be his fault, he knew, because the only thing that could make Charlie die was telling the secret he knew, and knew he could not tell.

  And he wanted to go back, he wanted to go back again and again until he knew it all, until he was sure Charlie was safe. So he woke early on Wednesdays, and waited patiently while his father read the papers to him and Charlie served the customers, then they walked home to a lunch his mother threw together, now that school was back on, and then they walked back to the shop, and everything between his father and Charlie was no different, as though this thing Sam knew was going to happen was not going to happen. Charlie didn’t rush, he just went about his business and sharpened his rosewood-handled knives on the whetstone and the butcher’s steel until the edge was fine as a razor, and then finally he said, “You ready, Sam?” and Sam would answer, as though it wasn’t a big thing when it fact it was everything, “Sure, Beebo,” and they would take Jackie Robinson and get into the truck, which took longer and longer to start in the cold now, and then they would go do the butchering, a thing Charlie did quickly now, still careful, still expert, but quick; then, on the way back, they would pull into her drive and up and behind the house.

  It was always the same, and it was always different. Jackie came in the house with them now, because of the cold. She didn’t wear those red lips, after that first time, but she was always dressed in a beautiful dress, none of them the same, none like anything he’d ever seen before, and there were always cookies and milk, and new funny books, and those magazines with the beautiful women on the covers, wrapped in fur or filmy cloth, always the big eyes, the hopeful, waiting mouth. Sometimes, when the door had shut and Charlie and Mrs. Glass had gone upstairs, Sam stared at these women and then he kissed them softly on their lips, their eyes, their powdered cheeks.

  Sometimes they were gone a long time, and sometimes it was no more than ten minutes. Sometimes there was a lot of noise, and sometimes there was hardly any. Every time Charlie made a sound, Jackie would stop sniffing around the kitchen and freeze, perking up his ears until the sound had passed and Charlie was quiet agai
n.

  Once Charlie came down, shoes in hand, his shirt unbuttoned, and caught Sam kissing the magazine cover. He just laughed and came over, took a look and touched Sam on the head. “That’s Ava Gardner,” he said. “She comes from right down there in North Carolina. All the women down there, in that county, look like Ava Gardner.”

  “They do not,” said Mrs. Glass, standing in the doorway in her white slip, smoking.

  “They sure do,” Charlie said, lacing up his shoes. “I’ve been there, Sylvan. One Ava Gardner after another. They’re part Indian down there. I’ll take you there one day. You’ll see.”

  “Oh, Charlie,” she smiled at him for a long time. “Wouldn’t that be fine? Divine?”

  He looked up from his shoes, stared at her and said, and he wasn’t smiling or laughing any more, “Well, I don’t know about you. But it’d be just fine with me.”

  She stopped smiling.

  “I never been anywhere,” she said.

  “ ‘I’ve never,’ ” he corrected her. “Not ‘I never.’ ”

  “Thank you. It’s true. I’ve never been anywhere, except for that trip to Hollywood, so I guess that’s somewhere. You couldn’t see anything, I just saw their stars on some sidewalk in front of that Chinese theater, and I saw plenty of that railroad car with Boaty. Supposed to be so nice. Supposed to be what I’d always wanted. It wasn’t anything like that. He grunts like a pig, and he sweats all over you. I mean, it wasn’t like it was the first time, but I never knew, until you . . . well, I never knew anything, did I?”

  “You learn quick, girl.”

  “ ‘Quickly,’ you mean.” She laughed. “See? You do it, too.”

  Sam always had to be told the excuse, the reason why it was taking so long at the slaughterhouse, in case they asked. After Charlie had cut up the side, and laid it on a clean white sheet and tied it up in another one, even though there weren’t any flies anymore, he would get in the cab and start the engine and tell Sam what had taken them so long. Flat tire. Potter was late again. Damn truck broke down, but don’t say damn. Sometimes it was over so fast they didn’t even have to make any excuses at all. Besides, they never asked, his parents. They looked worried, but they never asked.