‘“Is this place open for business?” one of the men asked.
‘“Sure,” I said. “I guess.” We hadn’t had actual visitors in a while. “I’ll go fetch my dad.”
‘When Clarence let them in they started looking even more suspicious. There was a perfect carpet of dust covering the surface of the reception desk and a family of spiders had moved into the cubbyholes where the room keys were kept – each one had a cozy little nest to itself.
‘“Are you sure this place is open for business?” one of the men asked Clarence.
‘“It is now,” he said.
‘“What’s our room number?” the other man asked.
‘Clarence handed him the master key. “I’ll tell you what, you go ahead and pick whatever one you like.”
‘That night, we sat out on the porch and listened to the noises coming from next door. We could hear banging and crashing and the sound of feet stomping across the rickety floorboards. Sometimes it’d go quiet for a half-hour or so and then it’d start on up again.
‘First thing the next morning, as soon as it began to get light, there was a loud knock on the front door of number one O’Callaghan Street. When Clarence opened it the two fishermen were standing there, with white faces and bags the size of flour sacks under their eyes.
‘“Jesus,” the first one said. “You never said about the bugs in there. I don’t reckon I know if there were more mosquitoes above me or bedbugs beneath me.”
‘“Or the mice,” said the second one. “I’ve never seen mice that big before. I spent half the night checking my toes were still there.”
‘“Or them bats,” said the first one. “I’ve never seen flocks of bats before.”
‘“Or them squirrels … ” said the second one.
‘“Squirrels?” Clarence said.
‘“I swear there were more of them under my bed than there are living in the woods.”
‘“Squirrels,” said Clarence. “Well, I didn’t know there were squirrels in there. I guess I’ll have to charge extra for them.”
‘It wasn’t so long after that he took the hotel sign down.’
The Pioneer Hotel still wasn’t totally closed for business, though. Clarence kept the bar open in the dining room. You could reach it through a door at the side, Virgil and Dad told me, and it became pretty popular with men who didn’t much mind about their surroundings when they drank. There were a bunch of men working out at the mine by then and most of them weren’t too fussy.
When they remembered Clarence, Virgil and Dad mostly remembered him from this time. Sometimes he let them help out at the bar, carrying bottles of beer over to the men sitting at the long wooden table. The men played cards and talked. Sometimes Clarence joined them for a hand or two. When they got to talking he just listened, mostly. He wasn’t a big talker, so they said.
If Jim or Jake or another of the old-timers was in, they’d tell stories about the early days of Crooked River. They made those days sound like the Wild West – kind of tough and new and free and full of adventures. Virgil and Dad used to hang on every word they said, but Clarence would sort of just drift away – as if there was always something needed fetching or doing – even though a lot of the time he was in those stories. ‘I remember when your dad … ’ the old-timers would tell them. And afterwards Virgil and Dad wouldn’t be able to quite fit what they’d heard with the dad they knew.
There used to be a little path worn into the garden between number one O’Callaghan Street and the pile of boards left over from the Pioneer Hotel. It was still there when I was a kid. The earth was rubbed smooth and the grass hadn’t grown back on it yet. It was made by Clarence walking back and forth every day to the hotel. That’s what he did mostly by then.
And that was how Virgil and Dad saw him, mostly. Not as a Crooked River pioneer in those Wild West times, but just a quiet old man who walked back and forth to the hotel every day and afterwards sat on the porch and played cribbage with Nana.
Virgil and Dad weren’t helping out in the bar two years later on the night Walt Mathison’s uncle came to the hotel; Virgil didn’t hear about that night until one of the evenings on the porch talking to Jim.
‘Walt’s uncle was up visiting from Minneapolis for the week,’ said Jim, ‘and had been fishing out on the floodwaters for a few days. There was only me and Jake there that night. We were playing cards with Clarence when Walt arrived, with his uncle in tow. We introduced ourselves and dealt him in.
‘They just talked fishing the first few hands – Walt’s uncle was real pleased to have caught some big slubes. And then the conversation began to wander.
‘Me and Jake got to remembering the wolf man,’ Jim said. ‘We asked Walt’s uncle if he might have heard about him – him being from Minneapolis and of a similar age and everything. “I’m not so sure I ever did hear of him,” he said. “It’s a big place. And besides, I wasn’t living there back then,” he said. “I was living in Chicago. That’s where I was raised.”
‘He was interested in the story, though, and so we filled him in. And then naturally we went on to the day of the picnic and the circus man from Chicago,’ Jim said. ‘We must have told pretty much the whole story – about the wolf man and the bear, about the man and woman reminiscing about their lost place on the banks of the Danube – before Walt’s uncle’s ears started perking up. “On the Danube?” he said. “A circus, you say?”
‘He said there were lots of circuses in Chicago back in those days. But he remembered going to one in particular. It had a dancing bear and he’d gone to see it. Its owner was a sharp-looking guy from the west side of the city. Or at least that’s where Walt’s uncle thought he was from: he’d heard him talking to some fellows outside his tent before he went in and the man definitely sounded like he was from the west side. He only started sounding different when he was in the tent. He looked different too.
‘He’d changed out of his suit into some kind of colourful silk pyjamas and was wearing a big fur hat. He introduced himself as Ivor in a deep booming foreign voice. He was holding a tambourine. After a few shakes he said he’d like to introduce everybody to one of the wonders of the animal kingdom, a bona fide artist in fur, brought up on the Steppes and rescued from the very palace of the Russian tsar. He’d performed in front of all the greatest lords and ladies of Europe, his name was fabled from the Volga to the Thames, but now it was Chicago’s great good fortune to be able to witness him in the flesh.
‘“May I present,” he boomed, reaching into a cage at the back of the tent draped in a white sheet … “May I present Misha?”
‘There was a piece of rope in his hand and after he gave it a few sharp tugs out came this little black bear. He was wearing a conical hat with a tassel on top and a multicoloured waistcoat. The rope was attached through a hole in his nose. He looked miserable.
‘“Misha,” boomed the man. “Let us show our audience the polka.”
‘With one hand he shook the tambourine and with the other he tugged the rope. The bear let out a sad bellow, stood up, and started shuffling slowly from foot to foot.
‘“And now the Barynya.” He tugged the rope harder and the bear swayed and shuffled a bit faster, as though the floor was made of hot coals.
‘It wasn’t much to look at, Walt’s uncle said. It was pretty much the most miserable bear he’d ever seen. If he hadn’t already paid his nickel he would’ve left.
‘As the performance came to an end, and the bear crawled back into his cage, the man turned to the audience and said with a big wink, “And for those gentlemen in the audience who are aficionados of the dance, might I recommend some of the entertainments provided for your perusal off the midway.” It was the kind of invitation no fifteen-year-old boy needed to hear twice, Walt’s uncle said.
‘Off the midway there were freaks and fortune-tellers and “Exhibiti
ons of the Strange and Miraculous.” And further along, on the very shadiest, shiftiest edges of the circus, where the men had their hats pulled down and their collars pulled up, were tents with smaller signs outside them that you had to crane your neck to read. Cleopatra and the Asp. The Dance of the Seven Veils. Lady Godiva Comes to Town. And there was one in particular that took Walt’s uncle’s eye. Princess Ludovika performs The Blue Danube, it announced.
‘After paying his quarter Walt’s uncle went and stood in the tent. There were a handful of men in front of him, waiting with their hands in their pockets, but he managed to worm his way past them to the front. There was a piece of red string separating the floor from the stage, which was made of wooden boxes pressed together with a big carpet spread across them; the colours and patterns on it had faded and it was worn and threadbare in patches. Above the stage hung a cheap glass chandelier, and behind it, draped across the whole back of the tent, was a panorama painted on canvas.
‘It wasn’t no Leonardo da Vinci, he told us. But it wasn’t half bad. On one side there was a castle, with high walls of white stone and columns and arched windows and doors, and brightly coloured flags hanging from its turrets. And in front of the castle, sweeping across the back of the tent, were deep green lawns, dotted with stately old trees and flower beds and marble fountains full of mermaids. These gardens swept right to the other end of the panorama, where they reached the banks of a painted blue river which meandered away into the distance, towards a rising full moon, before flowing off the edge of the canvas. It wasn’t half bad at all, he said, though some of the flowers had turned a bit brown where someone had spilt beer on them, and there was a piece of hot dog smeared on the tail of one of the mermaids.
‘They waited for a few minutes, the air filling up with tobacco smoke and the smell of beery breath, until finally a thin opening at the side of the tent slowly parted. A hand appeared. A slender white arm. And there she was, Princess Ludovika herself. And she was dressed just like a princess too, Walt’s uncle said. She was wearing a long flowing ball gown, made of satin and lace. It made a soft, swishing sound as she walked over to the other side of the stage, where, without saying a word, she put a record on an old gramophone that was sitting on a table there and began winding it.
‘It was pretty scratchy at first, but soon enough the sound of a waltz started up and Princess Ludovika began to sway and swirl in time with it. She moved in elegant circles around the stage, her arms stretched out before her as if she were holding an invisible partner. Her eyes were half closed like she was all dreamily lost in the music, and from below the stage it looked as if her feet were dancing on the deep green of the castle lawns. She moved so gracefully you hardly noticed her clothes coming off. They just slipped away like petals in a breeze – the satin dress and the petticoats and the corsets, all of them – without her ever missing a step. And she carried on dancing right to the end of the waltz, as if she hadn’t even noticed she was naked. It was only when the record came to a stop that she opened her eyes properly and seemed to notice us all watching her. She reached down then to get hold of her gown and wrapped herself in it. And then, without a word, she slipped back out the side of the tent.
‘As Walt’s uncle finished this story, he smiled to himself. “Ah yes, the Blue Danube,” he’d said. “I certainly remember that.”’
‘And what about Clarence?’ Virgil asked Jim. ‘What was he doing when Walt’s uncle was telling all this?’
‘He just carried on playing his cards,’ Jim said. ‘We were playing rummy but we could’ve been playing poker, the way he kept his face. Not a twitch. Not a flicker. He carried right on till the end of the hand and then stood up slowly and said, “Right, gentlemen, I’m going to have to call it a night, I’m afraid. You can lock up yourselves when you’re done.”’
‘You know that was the night before,’ Virgil said. ‘The night before he – ’
‘I know,’ Jim said. ‘That was the very last time I saw him.’
Virgil told Jim he’d been awake when Clarence came back that night. He was in the kitchen having a glass of milk and watched him walk back across the garden as usual. And as usual he sat down in his chair on the porch and started a hand of cribbage with Nana. He was halfway through counting a hand – two fives and two jacks – when he mentioned to her he’d be heading off fishing in the morning. “It’ll be real early,” he told her. “I’ve got a new spot I want to try. Don’t fuss about getting up yourself,” he said.
Virgil said he didn’t know exactly why he woke up so early the next day himself. But it was barely light when he did, and he just lay there in bed staring out the window, trying to get back to sleep. He could hear someone shuffling quietly about in the kitchen and then the faint click of the porch door, and then he watched Clarence go by below him on the sidewalk, wearing an old black jacket full of holes, his slow, steady steps hardly making a sound, moving through the half-dark of the morning until he reached the corner and turned and disappeared.
‘There was something not quite right,’ Virgil said. ‘And I couldn’t for the life of me put a finger on it at the time. I fell back to sleep and it wasn’t till I woke up again and the sun was properly up that I figured out what it was. He hadn’t been carrying his fishing rod. He hadn’t been carrying anything.
‘And that was the very last time I saw him,’ Virgil said.
They didn’t ever find a body, not a single bone. They had nothing to place into the earth and put a stone over. And so Clarence’s only remains were these last things: his last words and conversations, the last place he’d been seen, the last plans he’d made. Ordinary things you’d take no notice of usually but that somehow got fixed in people’s minds because they were the last, like they were prints made in air and time, just the same as the prints his feet had made in the dirt.
The Lost Highway
George said we should head north. I said we should head east. If we hit the river then it’d be easy enough to find our way back to town – that was our thinking – but neither of us knew for certain what direction the river was in anymore. To be honest, neither of us knew where north or east was neither. The only difference was that George thought he knew.
‘Look at this moss here,’ he’d say, rooting about in the woods. ‘It’s growing much thicker on this side of the trunks. Look at these flowers coming through. Look at the sun. It’s obvious. That way’s north.’ George was really liking this being lost, you could tell. He seemed to have forgotten all about the underground place. He was so excited he was jumping around like a jack.
‘But I reckon that way’s east.’
‘Eli, Eli,’ he said. ‘Who’s seen the most maps of here? Who’s studied them?’
‘I don’t care about no maps. I think it’s east. It felt like we were heading west when we started running.’
‘It felt like we were heading west? How do you feel a direction, Eli? That’s dumb. I remember seeing maps of around here showing a swamp and a creek like this to the south of the shelter.’
‘There’s a hundred swamps and creeks around here,’ I said. ‘There’s hundreds of them. How’d you know for sure it was these ones?’
But it was no use arguing with George. He had an answer for everything. And besides it was getting on and I reckoned any direction was better than none, even if neither of us knew for certain what direction it really was.
We set off into the bush.
‘After a full and frank discussion about their bearings,’ George said, ‘they decided on a northerly course.’
It was pretty tough going at first. The ground was wet and swampy and sometimes our feet would sink through the surface right up to our knees. It wasn’t too warm down there neither. And when we eventually made it onto the higher ground of a ridge, the blowdown was so thick it took us a while to creep our way through it.
When we reached the top of the ridge we stoppe
d to get a view of the land around us. In every direction there were more trees and more swamps and more ridges. The river was nowhere in sight.
By then our clothes were already in a bad way. Both our shirts had tears in them and our shoes and pants were soaking. There was a big scrape on George’s cheek where a branch had hit him. We sat down on a rock for a bit and I stared around us at the trees and swamps and ridges, beginning to feel sorry for myself. But George seemed about as pleased as could be. He was peering in front of him with his hand held up to his forehead to keep the sun out of his eyes.
‘I think our best route is that way,’ he said, pointing ahead. ‘The ground looks easier.’
It all looked alike to me. One swamp seemed pretty much the same as another. They’d all feel as cold and sludgy when I traipsed through them.
But he was right. When we set off again the ground did get easier. George seemed to have a real knack for finding the best way through. He guided us around the swamps and kept to the bottom of the ridges, finding little creeks we could follow without having to whack our way through the bush. We made good progress and when we stopped for a rest he turned to me and said, ‘See. It’s elementary.’ He was smiling. And I couldn’t help smiling myself then.
A couple of hours later, as we were rounding the edge of a small lake, George said he’d spotted a gap in the trees over to our right. I couldn’t see it properly myself, but he insisted it was there so we cut into the bush towards where he said it was. As we got closer I could make out a break in the tops of the taller poplars and white pines, and the trees around us began to thin out. A few feet further on we came to a path. And a foot and a half further, another path.
They were running along beside each other, with bushes and saplings growing in the gap between them. It took us a few seconds to figure it out. They weren’t two paths. They were the tracks of an old road. We’d found the road to Bad Vermilion. We’d found the lost highway.
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