Mudwoman

by Joyce Carol Oates

  “Then, I intended to rent the house. Neighbors have been suggesting that I rent out just a room or two but that doesn’t appeal to me—living with strangers. I wouldn’t inflict myself upon them—you know how I like to stay up late, and watch TV and now my ears aren’t so sharp, the volume has to be turned up high. And my eating habits—since Agatha passed away—are what you’d call improvised.” Konrad paused, peering at M.R. “You should get Agatha’s gloves, if you’re going to pull those spiky weeds, Meredith. You’ll cut your hands.”

  M.R. went into the garage, to find Agatha’s old, soiled gloves.

  There in a corner, her old bicycle—badly rusted, with two flat tires. She’d forgotten the bicycle, totally—with a rush of emotion she recalling now how thrilled she’d felt, such a sense of freedom, liberation, flight—pedaling the bicycle up the Convent Street hill, toward the outskirts of Carthage.

  Sniffing suspiciously Konrad’s dog came trotting after her. Konrad had insisted that Solomon was a “friendly animal”—“if not a very well-trained animal”—but Solomon didn’t seem altogether welcoming of this tall young woman whom his master had greeted with such mysterious effusion.

  When she returned to Agatha’s garden, with Solomon close at her heels, Konrad said loudly, “Solo-mon! Don’t fuss over dear Meredith, you will scare her away. And she has just arrived.”

  The red setter was an older dog, with coarse, lusterless fur and mournful eyes. He’d been a “rescue dog”—county animal control officers had rescued him from an abusive home and, on the eve of his scheduled execution, Konrad had adopted him.

  “It was just after Agatha had passed away. One morning I woke up and there was Agatha instructing me—‘Go to the animal shelter on Platt Road, hurry and bring him home!’ And I said, ‘Him? Who?’—and Agatha said, ‘You’ll know when you see him.’ And so it was, I saw Solomon—and I knew.”

  M.R. laughed. This was Konrad being whimsical—was it?

  In the frayed lawn chair, in baggy khaki shorts exposing his pale, oddly hairless legs, Konrad was determined to entertain. His silvery-white whiskers bristled with static electricity. His eyes were shrewd and intelligent and crinkled at the corners as in a perpetual squint.

  It had always been his way, M.R. recalled. To render experience into navigable anecdotes. To soften the sharp edges of things.

  “Then, I’d fully intended to rent it—I mean, the entire house. And I planned to find a smaller place, an apartment or ‘condo’—on the river perhaps—where other retirees live. So another time I listed the house with McIntosh Realtor, for I felt that I owed them that much, at least—even if it was only a rental. And this very nice young couple was shown the house, and asked intelligent questions about it, and went away and deliberated, and came back, and—and they were set to sign the contract—and I was set to sign—in the Realtor’s office—just last week—and I got cold feet, again. I mean literally!—I said to them, my feet are numb—my fingers are numb—I am numb with horror at the prospect of leaving my house where my wife and I—and our little girl—were so happy. Forgive me, I just can’t do it.” Konrad paused, laughing. Out of his squinting eyes leaked tears that gathered in his bristling beard like little glistening gems. “They thought that I was utterly mad. And I thought, Good! Then maybe they won’t charge me any penalty.”

  M.R. was laughing. “And did they?”

  “Well, yes—they did. And now my name is on every Realtor’s blacklist in Carthage.”

  By the end of her first afternoon in Carthage M.R. had yanked up dozens of spiky weeds and dumped them in a heap on the grass. The sun was hot and beat on her head and Konrad searched for a straw hat for her in the garage, he hadn’t needed to tell her had belonged to Agatha.

  Can I stay with you please. I am so lonely.

  If I could sleep. Sleep!

  For ten hours she slept, a deep dreamless uninterrupted sleep.

  In the room that had been her girlhood room though not in the girl’s bed—for the room had been converted to a guest room, the candy-cane wallpaper replaced by a pale green floral pattern, and the cramped little bed by a double bed—she slept for ten hours and wakened at dawn startled and not knowing at first where she was, and stumbling to use a bathroom, and returning, and sleeping again for two hours until sunshine warmed her face like molten flame and she was smiling in her sleep and there came a voice calling to her—gently, teasingly—“Meredith? Are you going to sleep away the entire day?”

  And that night she could not keep her eyes open past 10:40 P.M.—she and Konrad were watching a movie of the 1940s on a classic-movie channel—and again she slept through the night—ten hours, twelve hours—like one sequestered at the bottom of the sea, gently rocked by the rhythm of the sea.

  Through her time in Carthage, in her old room in the house at 18 Mt. Laurel Street, she would sleep in this way, as she had not slept in many years. And she thought Maybe this was all that I required. Waiting for me here without my knowing.

  “Since Solomon has come into my life I’ve wondered—is a dog an individual in himself, or only in regard to his master? When I am not present, is Solomon a ‘dog,’ or is Solomon simply a wild creature? He has no name—not even a generic name. He simply is. As soon as he sees me—hears me—smells me—he reverts to ‘Solomon, Konrad’s dear companion.’ What Solomon would be in a pack of wild dogs, I wouldn’t want to contemplate.” Konrad laughed, shuddering.

  They were walking above the Black Snake River on a bluff in Friendship Park. The sky was threaded with clouds like vapor. The air was warm and fragrant with honeysuckle. Though from the river, or from a freight yard beside the river, came a faint odor of something like nitrogen.

  Innocently the coarse-haired red setter trotted nearby. M.R. had the feeling that the dog was listening intently to their conversation even as he went about his doggy routine sniffing, lifting his leg, lunging at grasshoppers, trotting blithely on.

  She might have said Don’t be naïve, Daddy! Solomon is subordinate to his pack leader. A dog, or a man.

  She might have said With his wild-dog pack he would tear out our throats. He is no “Solomon”!

  She said: “Solomon adores you, Daddy. You are the one who saved his life. He would give his life for you.”

  Konrad seemed touched to hear this.

  And it was true, too.

  Twice a day they walked Solomon!

  Sometimes three times a day.

  For Solomon was not an indoor sort of dog but bred to hunt, as Konrad wittily said—A hunter mon-gre.

  Nothing so comfortable as routine.

  And in the neighborhood, they were observed: wiry-white-whiskered Konrad Neukirchen in his usual rumpled shorts, parrot green T-shirt with the white letters CARTHAGE VETS CO-OP on the back, very worn Birkenstock sandals, walking with a cane; and beside him a straight-backed younger woman, in loose-fitting slacks, loose-fitting shirt, sandals, crimped-looking hair tied back by a carelessly knotted scarf.

  Evident to any eye A middle-aged daughter, probably unmarried. Visiting her dad.

  Was this—Konrad Neukirchen’s esteemed daughter? The one whose photo used to run in the Carthage paper, on an inside page?

  The daughter who’d left Carthage to become a professor? A university president? Who’d broken poor Agatha’s heart, and had not ever once come to visit her in the final year of her life?

  And the red setter mongrel trotting with them—ahead, behind, to the left, to the right—describing about the conspicuous couple an invisible and protective figure eight of which, absorbed in their intense conversation, they were totally oblivious.

  As an athlete she’d thought If you are going to walk upright at all, you must be straight-backed.

  “And then, I’ve often wondered—is a person a kind of superior animal, or a totally distinct being? Of course”—Konrad spoke hurriedly, to make sure that Meredith understood t
he subtlety of his argument—“I’m familiar with Darwin. All that—‘descent of species.’ ”

  “Yes.”

  “ ‘Yes’—what?”

  “I’m sure that you’re familiar with—‘all that.’ ”

  In fact, M.R. very much doubted that her father, for all his cleverness, and the many eclectic books he’d read through his life, was “familiar” with Darwin.

  To the extent to which he was, in some residual way, imbued with the beliefs of the Society of Friends—very likely, Konrad wasn’t a Darwinian, even to a rudimentary degree.

  She said: “Even Darwin didn’t seem to think that all animals were just—‘animals.’ He may have believed that his own dog possessed some sort of moral core.”

  M.R. spoke slowly like one turning a heavy rock in her hands—was it just a heavy rock, or a mineral containing veins of precious ore? Strange and wonderful to her, she was befriending her father who was both the man she believed she knew, and an intriguing stranger.

  “Well—of course! Each master has a dog who is ‘moral’ in regard to his master—like a compass with no choice but to point north.”

  “Some of my colleagues—at the University—argue that we have no ‘core personalities’ but exist only in contexts.”

  “But not so succinctly put, eh? If they are your colleagues—professors.”

  “It’s a theory of mind. One theory of mind.”

  “And do they believe their theories?”

  “Well—I wouldn’t know. Very few of us know what we ‘believe’—our brains are like the depths of the sea, adrift with all sorts of things—organic, inorganic—‘real’—‘not-real.’ ”

  And here is the failure of philosophy, M.R. supposed. Words were a crude loose net through which all things—all people—all events—flowed, indefinably.

  “I know that I am always who I am—Konrad Neukirchen. I have never not-been Konrad Neukirchen. And I believe that I am a veritable compass of consistency, rationality. Yet—other people!” Konrad stroked at his beard, laughing. “All I can know of other people with certainty is, they are not me.”

  “They are not-you—but they might be identical with you, in certain ways.”

  “Oh, no—I can’t believe that, really. Humankind is wonderfully fickle, changeable—as I am not.”

  “This fickleness has helped us to evolve—to adapt. To survive.”

  “But is survival at any cost worth the cost?”

  “Daddy, you have to survive, to ask such a question! The minimum of life is life itself.”

  She was thinking of the boy who’d tried to hang himself, or had imagined he would hang himself, and die: the verb die had had no context for him, he’d misunderstood.

  And now he was alive—his body had “survived.”

  Sick with guilt she could not bear to think of him.

  Nor could she bear to think of her sister Jewell who’d died a horrible death—locked in a refrigerator by their mother, suffocated by degrees. It would not have been a rapid or a merciful death.

  Five years old! And the other sister, Jedina, two years younger, tossed away like trash too, and yet—by the purest chance, she had not died.

  But only because she’d been rescued—“saved.”

  “The world survives,” Konrad was saying, “because there are ‘saviors.’ We can’t save ourselves, but sometimes—we can save others.”

  M.R. felt a chill, this was uncanny. As if her (adoptive) father had been reading her mind.

  Though more likely, each knew the other’s mind very well. Like these several walks in Carthage—to the Convent Street bridge, and the river; to Friendship Park, and the river; to downtown by way of Spruce Street, and the river; or to downtown by way of Elm Ridge Avenue, the “long way” to the river.

  Each walk was a different and distinct walk in the walkers’ minds, and very likely in Solomon’s mind, yet each had the same destination: the river.

  For the Black Snake River, traversing the city of Carthage, was the very core of the city, its noisy rampaging soul.

  Today they’d walked to the Convent Street bridge. This was the shortest of the walks. In Konrad’s presence M.R. didn’t feel her usual childish dread of crossing the bridge on the pedestrian walkway—though Konrad strode along so oblivious of trucks passing just a few inches from his elbow, M.R. could hardly relax.

  From the bridge, and at shore, men were fishing. Tossing out long, very long lines. Most of the men were dark-skinned, and elderly. It seemed that Konrad knew them—H’lo Dewitt! Hey there Byron!—as they knew Konrad—H’lo Mr. Neu-kitchen!

  Courtly Konrad paused to introduce the men to M.R. Mumbled greetings were exchanged. It was revealed—M.R. asked—that the men were fishing for black bass, catfish, and carp. She wondered if the fishermen were men she’d seen fishing on the river many years ago when she’d been a girl.

  As soon as they’d passed beyond the last of the fishermen M.R. said, like one throwing herself from a height: “Daddy, did you know my m-mother? Or—anything about my—mother?”

  Konrad’s hand stroking his beard froze. Pointedly, he looked away.

  “Your mother! Why, Meredith—what do you mean? Agatha is your mother.”

  M.R. said, pleading: “Daddy, don’t. Don’t do that. Just tell me the truth, please—I am more than forty years old. I am not a girl to be shielded from the facts of my own life.”

  She’d come close to saying, My own ridiculous life.

  Konrad walked on. The fishermen’s path was growing fainter. They’d entered a scrubby no-man’s-land of prickly weeds, flowering thistles and willow-like trees with wood so soft, many of the branches had split. Wielding his cane Konrad was walking away from M.R., even Solomon had to trot to catch up with him.

  M.R. saw with dismay that her father’s face was splotched with emotion. He was frowning, resentful. She felt the injustice of his reaction to her—so like Agatha’s!

  She wondered, does he feel that he must be as unreasonable as my mother, out of fidelity to her?

  Even the most liberal-minded, intelligent, and rational of men behaved spitefully, when his authority was challenged.

  And Andre, too. Believing himself utterly fair-minded, yet thrown into a rage if his will was opposed.

  Konrad whistled and called: “Sol’mon! Hasten! This way.”

  For several minutes they walked single-file along the narrow path, in silence. Konrad and his dog-companion ahead, M.R. behind.

  Was Konrad not going to say anything more?

  Did Konrad intend to leave her in a state of anxious anticipation?

  She thought, wounded I will leave him, tonight. The hell with them both!

  She thought I was never their God-damned “Merry.” What did they want of me!

  It had been their plan to walk to a street that ran parallel with Convent Street and then turn around and come back. It had been their plan to ascend to the street to make a small purchase at a hardware store—M.R. had offered to screw in, more firmly, several kitchen and bathroom fixtures that had become loose—but Konrad seemed to have forgotten.

  With a sudden bright-false smile turning to her, to say:

  “Well, Meredith! It’s a lovely surprise that you’ve come to visit us. I mean—me. Your visits are rare, and precious. And how long do you propose to stay?”

  The casualness of this inquiry was staggering to M.R. Was Konrad suggesting that she leave, soon?

  Hesitantly she said, “I—I’m not sure. I haven’t been—altogether well. . . .” Her voice trailed off. The straight-backed daughter, taken by surprise.

  Of course, Konrad knew that she hadn’t been “well.” It was a pleading sort of redundancy, to tell him this.

  “I was thinking—I mean, I hadn’t exactly been thinking—my future is uncertain—and my present is not”—M.R. laughed, this was so stu
mblingly and so pathetically put, for a Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard—“is not a model of certainty, either. And so I’ve wondered—if I could stay with you for a—a while.”

  “Of course. You need hardly to ask, Meredith.”

  Konrad spoke quickly, in a lowered voice. As if his daughter’s pleading had shamed him.

  She said, flailing about: “I can help you—I mean, I can pay my share, or—whatever. I can help you financially, Daddy. If you need help.”

  Now, had she insulted him? Konrad was staring at a point just past her head, blinking rapidly.

  It was a problematic issue: did Konrad need money? The brick house wasn’t nearly so shabby as some in the neighborhood but the shingled roof needed repair, the front and back steps needed repair, though Konrad claimed to enjoy vacuuming, the rooms were in need of a thorough cleaning, washing, scrubbing; organdy curtains Agatha had sewn thirty years before were still hanging, limp with dust, faded to a bleary no-color, in the living room. Very likely, however, this was a consequence of Konrad’s bachelor indifference, not his financial situation.

  Since her arrival several days before, M.R. had purchased groceries, household supplies. She’d gone shopping at a new mall—a quite adequate mall, with a Shop-Rite and a Home Depot—while Konrad had occupied himself at the Carthage Vets Co-op where, it seemed, he was director “by default”—the “qualified” director, the one who’d managed to channel a fraction of the co-op’s meager funds into his own bank account, had had to resign hurriedly.

  Konrad laughed, regaining his composure: “Oh, my dear—I’m very well off! I thought you must know. Our Carthage city government is so steeped in corruption, it’s a tradition in Beechum County—our government workers have an excellent pension fund, even better than custodians and sanitation workers. Much better than public school teachers and officials, too! And I have Social Security, of course. Agatha never had cause to worry about the financial state of our household, not for a moment, and you have no need, either. I am quite prosperous in my retirement, my dear.”

  M.R. knew, Konrad made out checks to the Veterans Co-op, to the local no-kill animal shelter from which he’d adopted Solomon, and one or two other non-profits including something called “Rotunda”—she’d seen the check lying on a kitchen counter before Konrad had mailed it.