Something in the Shadows

by Packer, Vin

  The Danboro Bar was as warm and crummy as Lou had remembered it from years ago, when he stopped in often on his way from Doylestown to Point Pleasant. Some of it was like old times. Even Alfred White was still bartending, and there were still no stools to sit on at the bar, and the jukebox was five years behind the times, as always. A few men were shooting pool in the back room, and the framed faded print of Bruegel’s “The Return of the Hunters” was in its same place, over the cash register. The ways it was different now, Lou Hart knew, had nothing really to do with the bar, but with what people thought. Every time Lou ordered another, for instance, Alfred simply shrugged and said tartly, “Okay, you’re the boss.” Some of the men waved and hi’d him; others said nothing more than what the sour expressions on their faces said.

  But Lou Hart was “in”; he didn’t care.

  There was one fellow though, Duncan something, from over in Lambertville — Lou and he got to talking. He had come across to hunt, took his vacation every year in the fall, near the end of the small game season. He was an ugly, pock-marked, tubby fellow, but Lou was glad for the company, and they had lapsed into long free and easy talk about women, automobiles, house-buying, sports and marriage. He was a mayonnaise salesman, ex-Marine, and around eleven they were still talking away, about the year 1944 by then, both several sheets in to the wind, and Lou saying, “Sure, and there was a movie called ‘A Guy Named Joe’ that year. Spencer Tracy and Van Johnson.”

  “Yeah, I remember seeing that on ship.”

  “And ‘See Here, Private Hargrove,’ that year,” Lou said, “A great year! My favourite! I remember this song — how’d it go? Ummm — let’s see, ‘I thought I’d call you up this morning because — ’ “ he hummed the rest of the tune and Duncan snapped his fingers and said, “I got it! ‘I Couldn’t Sleep a Wink Last Night.’ Dinah Shore!”

  “Right,” Lou laughed. “That’s the one — then there was ‘Poinciana,’ and there was one called — ”

  Duncan interrupted him suddenly, “If you live on Old Ferry, you live near Tidd’s Woods, huh?”

  “That’s down at the other end.”

  “I was hunting down there. I got a pheasant over in Carversville, then I come to Tidd’s Woods for some squirrel. Parked right by the side, and when I come back to my car, damn pheasant’s gone.”

  “How come?”

  “Search me — I think some guy took it. I mean, there was a guy there when I pulled up. I think he must have swiped it. Some bastard or something, I don’t know!”

  “The next time,” Lou said, “listen, the next time, you park at my place, ‘kay? You leave your car my place. Dr. Louis Hart. It’s right at the other end. We have a lot of migrant workers getting the old corn out this time of year. It’s not safe to leave your car around.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Just leave it behind my house, see? There’s a parking spot, you’ll see it.”

  “Thanks, Doc. I want to get some deer Monday.” “Sure. You do that.”

  “I don’t think it was a migrant worker. This fellow I pulled up in front of wasn’t no migrant worker.”

  “Well, they come up from the South in a bus. Work three, four days this place, three four, the next.”

  After that they discussed Tommy Dorsey, and the year Chuck Klein hit four homers in Shibe Park in a major-league game, and near eleven-thirty they were laughing about the old double-O advertisements for Listerine Tooth Paste, back in ‘41. Offensive breath; offensive-looking teeth: too bad for Davey, he had the double-O!

  The argument began over something silly. Who blew up the U.S. battleship Maine in Havana, 1898? When Duncan banged his fist down on the bar and declared flatly that the United States of America would most certainly not blow up a ship full of its own boys, just to get into a war, Lou Hart said, “Don’t be stupid!” He was bored by that time; he was thinking of taking off. He saw Duncan’s eyes then; Duncan looked out of his head.

  “What did you call me?” Duncan wanted to know.

  “I said, don’t be stupid.”

  One thing led to another then, and in minutes Duncan was telling Lou it was Lou who was stupid; any doctor of medicine who would stand around in some dumpy tavern getting himself soused was stupid, Duncan said, and Duncan said Lou was some doctor of medicine, he just bet, when Lou grabbed him by the collar of his jacket. Lou’s fist connected with Duncan’s nose, and was on its way back to score a second time when Alfred White had him by the arms from behind.

  “Now, get out, Doc! Just clear out!”

  Duncan was standing there nursing his nose with a hurt expression in his eyes.

  “Stay out of here. Is that plain?” Alfred White asked Lou.

  “Yes, it’s plain,” Lou said. He walked across and got his coat, everyone in the place watching him now, with a silence like a fog, smothering the atmosphere. He banged the door shut behind him, and crossed to his car. Parked beside the Benz was a green station wagon: Lou took the flask from the glove compartment of his car, and had a long swallow. When he was corking the flask, he saw Duncan come out of the bar and walk across to him. Lou’s window was down, and Duncan poked his head in.

  “Shake, Doc?”

  Lou shook. He turned his key, began his motor.

  Duncan said, “That’s what my wife always calls me, ‘stupid!’ She had herself a year in some lousy junior college and she thinks she’s Einstein. It’s a sore point.”

  “Sorry,” said Lou.

  “Yeah, we both flew off the handle, Doc. Let’s forget it. Friends?”

  “Sure,” Lou said.

  “I appreciate your offer to let me leave my car at your place, too.”

  “Sure thing,” said Lou Hart. He pulled out and started down towards Gardenville. He glanced at his watch, ten-to-twelve, and he put his foot on the gas pedal. There was a place at the crossroads near Gardenville that stayed open until twelve.

  4

  … is dead and dumb and done.

  Never more to peep again, creep again, leap again,

  Eat or drink or sleep again —

  Oh, what fun!

  Amos Fenton burst into laughter when Maggie finished reading it.

  “But it is sweet of Joseph, isn’t it?” Maggie said, “Come on, Amos, you have to admit that it is sweet of Joseph!”

  The door between the upstairs and the downstairs was not shut.

  Joseph sat in his armchair in his study letting their raucous conversation rape his peace. A letter from the Varda file lay on his lap, a piece of yellowing tissue paper now, but a moment ago words warm and real, plunging him back in time, caressing him:

  “You know well, Joseph, that I love the symbolic language, and your little poem would get directly where it meant to get, to my heart — and awake feelings seldom felt before and dreams and understanding and vows. Above all, a little insight into your dear soul, to which I in my blind selfishness, am so often unjust It is good to imagine that your sweet face, beloved to me, must be in this same moment inclined on that piece of paper — ”

  “Sweet!” Amos Fenton roared, “Hell, he ought to have his head examined! Aw, Maggie, I’m sorry I didn’t mean — ”

  “I know you didn’t.”

  How did she know he didn’t? Joseph wondered. Was it so easy for her to know him? He didn’t even have to finish sentences. He just had to say “I didn’t mean — ” and Maggie would say, “I know you didn’t.” The Flents for Joseph’s ears were across the room on his bookcase. If he got up to get them, would they hear him? Call him downstairs? Or would they let him walk about alone all he wanted to upstairs, as though he were not even there? Which way? Both were awful to imagine, so he stayed in the chair.

  Amos Fenton was saying, “… think that he’s a nice enough guy, but not for you. Maggie, I just don’t get it!”

  “He’s brilliant, Amos. The Pennsylvania Society of Folk Mores has — ”

  Amos did not wait for her to finish. “Brilliant doesn’t warm up the home on cold nights, does it, Mag? Oh, hel
l, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean — ”

  Joseph waited and it came, predictable as the next beat of his heart.

  “I know you didn’t,” Maggie said.

  “This brandy’s got my tongue, I guess,” said Amos Fenton. “Mind you, I don’t disagree with what it’s making it say, but I don’t seem to be able to control it.”

  Joseph heard the sound of a light slap then, followed by Amos Fenton’s voice, very confidential in tone now. “Maggie, just tell me something. Are you happy?”

  Joseph imagined Fenton’s hairy hand resting somewhere on Maggie. It was not exactly jealousy but a twinge of some other sort: injustice? Another affront for the Josephs of the world? Right now were there thousands of Amos Fentons placing their hands on the Joseph wives, with the Josephs mute, and the Amos Fentons counting on the fact that the Josephs were always mute? “Happy?” Maggie said. “I wonder if I know what happiness is.”

  “… and this is what they mean by happiness, Joseph, to feel the blood circulating gayly and self-consciously in my veins, and you the life to my pulse….”

  Amos Fenton said, “Well it’s belonging. It’s when you belong to someone and something. Hell, I think it was Shakespeare who said we’re just a pair of halves apart, but together we’re scissors. You know?”

  No, Joseph said to himself, it was Dickens. It was from Martin Chuzzlewit. “We are two halves of a pair of scissors when apart, Pecksnifi, but together we are something.”

  “Together we’re scissors,” Maggie said, as solemnly as she might have said “The Lord is my shepherd.”

  “Aw, Maggie, Maggie, I wish so much for you.”

  Did he have his arm around her now?

  “You’re sweet, Amos. You’re very sweet.”

  There was a moment’s pause. The next thing Joseph heard was the sound of Maggie’s heels as she crossed the living room. Then: “Joseph is probably sleeping by now,” she said. “Let’s shut the door so we won’t disturb him.”

  Chapter Ten

  He was at that stage, in the zenith of intoxication, when one decides: I am not at all drunk.

  From Gardenville he had called Janice and she had said sarcastically: “Oh, you sound fine! Really in great shape! How do you manage to hold your liquor so well, Lou?” He had hung up on her, deeply insulted, and he had driven along the Plumstead Road thinking that his so-called drinking problem was all in Janice’s head. He drank. He admitted he drank. He laughed, delighted with everything suddenly. He felt so absolutely clear-headed. Moreover, he felt a certain closeness to his Benz; indeed, a camaraderie. He had read once in a psychology journal that paranoids often shut out the world by creating an imaginary one of inanimate objects: an old maid might name her fountain pen or her teapot, an eccentric gentleman might name his bathrobe or his footstool. With a certain whimsy he thought that perhaps he ought not to postpone the naming of his Benz any longer; why not join the ranks, after all; but the thought was striped with a distant sadness, one that did not touch him at the moment, but one that could if he were to give in to it. It had something to do with spoiling his life, with the mess his life was and everyone in it, with the fact the Benz was the only perfect thing he had — perfect, beautiful, functional. Respectable.

  “Respectable,” he said aloud.

  Then he became somewhat taken with the graceful manoeuvring of the car; with the car’s grace, and with his own deft handling of the car. More proof. He was absolutely, incredibly, fantastically sober. When he made the turn onto Old Ferry Road, he looked for lights in the Meaker house, fully expecting to find the place dark. It was after one now. The last thing in the world Lou Hart wanted to do was go home. Go home and have Janice’s baby-talking with Stilt assaulting his ears. It would be much worse tonight, he knew. It was always worse when he was drunk. He corrected himself. When Janice thought he was drunk. That was her punishment for him, now that Tony was gone and they weren’t there to confront him together. Stilt-zun, booboly-boo, tum away fwrom baddy ole smell of liquor, booby!

  • • •

  But there were lights on in the Meaker house. Downstairs, at that.

  If he were drunk, of course, it would be a bad time to settle the matter; but sober, what was wrong with it?

  Nothing.

  He turned in at their drive.

  He got out near the back porch, but the lights were on in the front, in the living room. He decided to try the front doorbell, and he walked along the side lawn, pausing by the first window of the living room. The last thing he expected to see, he saw. There they were necking on their couch. Well, it was a night of mystery, it was, and all the better that they were in a good mood! The other thing that caught his eye was the brandy bottle on the table. He would take it easy with them, be sure they offered him a drink first.

  He pressed the doorbell twice, feeling guilty about the second ring. He knew he wanted the drink more than he wanted to settle anything with them. The drink was important because here was the night half shot and here he was dead sober. Right? Right! Then the porch light went on, and he could see Maggie with her hands cupped around her eyes, peering out of the narrow windows beside the front door. He gave a wave, and called, “It’s me! Lou Hart!”

  He shuffled his feet and clapped his hands together against the cold, and it seemed some minutes before the door opened.

  “Lou?” Maggie said, looking straight at him, still asking, “Lou?”

  He went past her and inside, although she had neither stepped back to let him pass, nor invited him in.

  “Hi, Maggie!” he said. “I was just passing and I saw your lights.”

  He went directly into the living room, holding his hand out to shake with Joe (the drink, first, remember) and instead of Joe, he saw a grey-haired fellow in his shirt sleeves, with a crooked Countess Mara bow tie under an Adam’s apple the size of a tulip bulb. The fellow looked annoyed, particularly as he smiled broadly and said his name. Amos. Lou had wanted to name Tony that, after a favourite professor; but Janice had looked the name up in some baby-naming book and discovered it was Hebrew for “a burden”.

  “Is anything wrong?” Maggie said.

  The Burden was lighting a cigar, standing up, as though he would sit down after Lou left.

  “Where’s Joe?” said Lou.

  “Joseph’s in bed,” Maggie answered. “Oh, you know Joseph!”

  “No, no, I don’t.”

  “Well, I mean, Joseph never stays up late. Early to bed, early to rise — that’s Joseph.”

  “Am I intruding on something very private?”

  That worked. Maggie said, “Oh heavens, no, Lou. Have a drink, if you’d like one. Amos and I work together in the city.” She made no move to get an extra glass from the kitchen. She said, “We were just talking over an account.”

  The Burden said nothing, and still stood. Lou unbuttoned his coat. “I’d like the drink,” he said. “Thanks, Maggie.”

  Maggie left him with the Burden for a moment and the Burden asked him what field of medicine he specialized in, and Lou decided to say he was a proctologist. Well, wasn’t he?

  “I’m afraid you lose me there,” the Burden said.

  Lou wanted to say “Promise?” but he was sober, by God, so he kept up his half. “Diseases of the rectum,” he said.

  The Burden’s face was properly repulsed. “How does a man come to choose that field in particular?”

  “Why not?” Lou said. “He gets piles of satisfaction from it!”

  Maggie was back with a brandy snifter and a nervous smile then; and Lou was disappointed when she poured in a small amount of brandy, and handed it to him saying, “Here’s your nightcap.”

  Then it went along all right for a while with how’s Janice, she’s fine, isn’t it cold, not as bad as some years, and a discussion of Hurricane Diane in 1955, winds up to 75 m.p.h., the River Road to New Hope flooded under, and Lou’s brandy was gone. Lou reached for the bottle since no one was offering a refill, and the Burden said, “Maggie’s very tired, Doctor
. I think we’d better give her a break and call it a night.”

  “Right after this drink,” said Lou.

  “Look, Doctor Hart, I can’t make it much plainer. Maggie’s tired.” He held his hand on the brandy bottle, just below Lou’s hand.

  Maggie said, “I’ll bet Janice is worried about you, Lou.”

  “One for the road,” Lou said, and with a jerk of his arm, he had the brandy bottle out of the Burden’s grasp. He uncapped and poured, while the Burden said, “It’s pretty unfair to Maggie, Doctor. I’d make it fast, if I were you.”

  “Are you always fair to Maggie?” Lou asked him.

  “I try!”

  “How about to Joseph?” Lou said.

  Maggie was on her feet now, rushing over to sit beside Lou. “Now, you’ve probably had quite a night for yourself, Lou. Don’t you worry. Just take your time and then we’ll bundle you off to Jan. I know she’s worried about you.”

  “Did she call up or something?”

  “Well, no, but — ”

  “Then how do you know she’s worried about me? Do I look like a sheep dog?”

  The Burden was clearing his throat for some special pronouncement. Then he stood up again. “Doctor, I’ll help you with your coat.”

  “Sure, well, you just stand there holding it, and when I’m ready, I’ll snap my fingers at you.”

  “Oh, Lou, I hate to see you like this,” from Maggie.

  The Burden was right behind him now. Maggie was telling him please not to be hard on him, and the Burden was saying well, we have to get rid of him right now, don’t we, or he’ll pass out here.