The Delectable Mountains

by Michael Malone

  At home, we grew tense and silent. We woke to the rage of a misanthropic Chanticleer who screamed excerpts of the morning newspaper at us. Maddened by the new evil each new day proclaimed, he lashed a piece of paper through his machine and clanged us to breakfast with its bell. Hidden behind chairs, Maisie and Davy stared at him. Mrs. Thurston stared at him face to forehead as she scrubbed the table around his jumping typewriter, emptied the wastebasket of his balled and ripped sheets, futilely struck him with her looks of indignation. Whenever Spur went to the post office to mail his missiles, she boxed up his typewriter, folded up his cot, tied up his manuscripts, and stacked it all next to the porch door. It had no effect.

  Having packed Spur up one evening after dinner, she joined Wolfenstein and me in the front yard. Our director was hunched on the steps watching his shoes. I was watching Davy tirelessly pull Aunt Esther’s old bear by a string around and around in a small dusty circle. It seemed a fitting symbol of the way things were going.

  Folding ironed napkins into tight square packets as she talked, Mrs. Thurston expressed her dissatisfaction with our present circumstances. “Nathan, Nathan,” she sighed. “The situation in this house.”

  Wolfstein said nothing.

  “The situation in this house,” she repeated, “has simply gone beyond the pale. My dear God, is Leila running a lunatic asylum in her own home? Are we to be made the servants and custodians of a mad fool? Are our ears to be ravaged by such perpetual pandemonium that a person simply cannot hear himself think? Nathan, why hasn’t that man been committed?”

  Wolfstein pressed his fingertips into his eyes. “Why indeed?” he coughed. “I myself am already committed.” He tried to stretch his lips into a grin. Then spitting a cough into his handkerchief, he stood and struggled back up the steps to the house. We watched him go. Jumping up quickly, Mrs. Thurston caught Davy in his circle and slapped the dirt from his pants. “I should just take these babies back with me to Earlsford. That’s the truth, Devin,” she nodded at me.

  Inside the house, the phone began ringing. “I hope,” she said, “I deeply hope that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is telephoning us about that man. The government is just not going to tolerate being addressed that way, in that violent manner, through the United States mail.”

  But the phone call was from Mama, the distance crackling around her voice. “Well, Pooh,” she embarrassed me by saying, when I’d asked her for years not to call me that any more, “I guess you just can’t afford the postage, so I’m sending you some stamped envelopes.”

  “Oh, Mama.”

  “Because we’re funny that way, and we would enjoy hearing from you every year or so.”

  “How—”

  “But I’m not calling to stir up old memories of your happy childhood.”

  “Is everybody okay?”

  “What? Good. I’m glad things are fine.”

  “No. Are YOU O-KAY?”

  “Devin, there’s no sense in trying to talk to me on this damn thing.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “So just listen, and then I’ll put Colum on—he’s right here—and you two can talk.”

  “IS EVERY THING O-KAY?”

  “Yes. We’re all getting along here. Harnley’s finished up marching around in a bog for the army, and Maeve’s gone back to Richmond with the baby. He’s walking again. Of course, Colum’s not, but one recovery a month may be all you get. Now, the reason I’m calling is Fitzgerald. I’m sending a money order and—is he there?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Put him on for a minute.”

  “NO, MA’AM. He’s not here.”

  “No? Well, you two cash the money order and put him on the bus the 31st at the latest, the 31st, send him home. With everything else that poor child is trying to deal with, she doesn’t need an extra person to feed and take care of.”

  “Leila? Fitzgerald’s working for Leila,” I said. “She’s not taking care of him.”

  “And, Devin, I hope you’re being as helpful and supportive as possible. Of course, I know you are. My heart just aches for her. Well, God bless her, she’s had more than her share to bear in her short years. You write to me, and take care of yourself. I love you, Pooh. Give my love to Fitzgerald. And to Leila. Now here’s Colum.”

  “Mama—”

  “She’s off,” Colum said.

  “How’s it going?”

  “Soft life. Sore butt,” he answered. “How’re you?”

  “Hell, I’ve been better. Look, is the wedding still on? What’s happening?”

  “Sorry, kid. The invitations are in the mail. I don’t think they sent you one, but I’ll save you a copy.” I heard a sharp rap, then Colum muttered, “Come on, Mama, he asked me! Devin, she wants to know what your plans are.” I told him to tell her I didn’t know. I might go to graduate school, but I wasn’t sure. She told him to tell me not to get drafted.

  “How is the Rock of Gibraltar?” I asked him.

  “Oh, she’s okay. But, I tell you, ole Eleanor Roosevelt here is going to get us booted out of this apartment too. She’s got a big placard, Mothers Against the War, stuck up in the front yard, and the neighbors don’t like it at all. I give us a month at the most.”

  He passed on some more questions from Mama about my health and diet. Then after we hung up, I walked over to the theater to tell Fitzgerald that he’d been recalled. He was disappointed. When I got there, Leila was going over his candy orders with him. She had on a white linen Mexican shirt embroidered with green leaves that was too short to wear without a skirt. Her legs were bare. Seeing her, a knot of anger tightened my stomach. Since Calhoun Grange, since Spur’s settlement, since her criticism of my sets, I had little desire to be around Leila, but I went ahead and delivered my message. “Mama said to send you her love.”

  “Oh,” she bit her mouth, “I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I wish I could have talked to her. I wish…” She frowned, tore off her list of supplies, and put it in her huge pocketbook. “See you later,” she said.

  “Leila,” Fitzgerald came around to the front of the counter, “hey, listen, Leila, I don’t want to go. Really, I like it here, and there’s not any reason I have to be back there. So couldn’t you call her up and say how I’m not really any trouble and all and ask her to let me stay? Could you?”

  She smiled at Fitzgerald, touched his hand. “Sure. We’ll call her and ask. We can try, can’t we?” Then she put on her sunglasses, called Maisie away from the box office where Margery Dosk was putting makeup on her, and took her out to the Red Bus. She drove away.

  I took a Coke from the freezer. Noting it in his account book, Fitzgerald asked me, “Are you going to leave too?”

  I sat up on the counter, looked at the pictures of the company lining the wall—Mittie’s bordered in black: 1940–1968. “Maybe. Maybe we all should. The whole thing’s going to hell anyhow.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m going over to the bar. See you later.”

  When they called, Mama told Leila that she felt Fitzgerald should get back home, and so he began packing up all his new possessions. There were always new arenas. Maybe, he said, he could put the Earlsford High School Drama Club on a paying basis.

  Before he left, he took a series of souvenir photographs. Me sitting under a tree looking at the creek. Me in my sheriff’s outfit. Sabby Norah frowning at the bobbin of her sewing machine. Pete Barney eating a pizza. Seymour Mink brushing his teeth. Shirtless Ronny and Marlin crushing beer cans. Nathan Wolfstein pouring a drink over his hand. Suzanne Steinitz reading The Rich and the SuperRich with her fist between her legs. Joely and me with Margery Dosk standing on our shoulders. Mrs. Thurston’s finger on the nozzle of her hair-spray can, half her face looking surprised. Davy peeing in the bathtub. Maisie staring at Spur’s leg under the kitchen table. The entire company strung in a row across the con
cession stand, everyone holding up money. The concession stand itself. The main curtain. The front of the theater. The front of the house. The front of the boarding house. The parking lot. The portrait of Leila on the lobby floor.

  On July 31st, a day sullen with humidity after weeks of dry heat that seared the grass brown, a farewell luncheon was given. Verl appeared with gifts for Fitzgerald of indigenous rocks, leaves, newspapers, match covers, ore samples, a Coors beer can. Fitzgerald made a speech. Leila presented him with a special bonus of fifty one-dollar bills for his success in selling refreshments. Everyone cheered her. Fitzgerald made a thank-you speech. Everyone cheered him. Mrs. Thurston offered a smile. Sabby and Margery kissed him. Verl, Joely, Marlin, Seymour, and I carried his baggage to the Red Bus, and Leila drove him away.

  Then Verl walked with me out to the edge of the empty parking lot, where we watched the brown swirl of creek water swell past us. The sky was brown too, full of thick, sluggish clouds. “Where’s your car?” I asked him.

  “Dennis Reed borrowed it. He said he wanted to take a girl to Aspen in a sports car. To impress her. I’ve got his truck over there by the bar…So you’re staying. Kind of thought you’d take off with Fitzgerald. You going to hang in there and show you can take the pace? All the way to the finish line. Sign your name: ‘I, Devin, did not desert.’”

  We sat down on the dry spikes of grass banking the creek. “Desert? What’s deserting got to do with it?” I asked. “That’s not the point. I mean, come on, what is the finish line? Wolfstein’s mildewing in his room. Mittie’s in a damn box. She’s got that jackass Spurgeon machine-gunning the universe at the kitchen table. She’s ordering everybody around. Everybody that’s left. Working them to death. The whole damn place is going to pieces.”

  “You’re free to go, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know. I guess I’ll stay. I don’t know. You think I should?”

  “Stay? Yeah, I think you should.” He stood up, brushing dust from his long thin legs.

  We headed toward Reed’s truck. There was a weird sort of silence in the air. The clouds hung in murky stillness over the roof of the theater; they pressed down from the sky onto the tops of motionless trees. “Jesus, what’s it going to do?” I said.

  Verl reached into the cab of the truck. “Brought your poems back,” he told me, holding out a package. The poems were about Jardin, about the situation. I’d been working on them since I’d been in Floren Park, and each one was in a different verse form.

  “Well, what did you think?” I asked him.

  “I thought they showed a lot of technique,” he said. “Well, you can read my comments. What’s that tie for?” A brightly colored necktie splashed with flowers was wrapped around the notebooks and knotted on top.

  “Oh, I was wearing it the day I introduced Jardin to J.D. You know, a kind of reminder. But listen, I’m not working on the poems now. I’m thinking about writing down all the stuff that’s been happening this summer. Something Gothic. All the funny stuff.”

  “Funny stuff? Like what do you mean?”

  “Oh, you know, like stuff about Wolfstein and—”

  “Wolfstein? What’s funny about Wolfstein?”

  “You know what I mean, Verl—the bugs and drinking and all. And Spurgeon.”

  “Don’t forget Mittie now. Lot of funny stuff there too.” He gave me one of those looks of his.

  Suddenly the tie began to flutter, then to flap against Verl’s hands. Dirt flew up from the lot and stung our eyes. “Hey,” I said, “feel that wind. It’s going to let loose.”

  “No,” Verl said. “Look!” He pointed up into the molasses sky. An amorphous shape like some monstrous bird came down at us, sinking with a shrill piercing noise through the bottom of a yellowish cloud.

  “My God, what is it?”

  “A helicopter,” Verl said. He reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out sunglasses, and put them on.

  As the thing circled down, the huge propellers lashed a whirlpool of wind at us, flattening our clothes against our skins. The wind whipped dust into pellets that burned my eyes shut, and I fell blinded against Verl’s shoulder.

  Slowly, as if weightless, the helicopter touched ground, squatted like a black condor in the middle of the parking lot, its long, thin tail still quivering in the air, dust still storming around it. I held to Verl’s shoulder and followed him forward. The awful noise of the motor died away, the thrashing circle of propellers decelerated into distinct silver blades. The door creaked open, and a ladder descended. We waited. Finally, two thin men came hurrying down the ladder, each wearing a thin gray business suit, a thin blue business shirt, a dark tie. Each with a thin gray briefcase. On either side, they stood at the bottom, turned, ties waving, hair gusting about, and looked up into the hole of the helicopter. A large, thick man emerged, black-suited with a gray silk tie, with white wiry hair crisped close to his head, a straight white mustache, and straight lines of black eyebrows. He stood at the top looking, then put on the dark glasses he carried in his hand, and walked down to where the other two waited.

  I said to Verl. “It’s like in the movies, you know, where Murder Incorporated flies in to wipe out the opposition.”

  The older man strode toward the theater, stared at it sternly, stared at the creek, the bar. Finally he noticed us by the truck. We walked over.

  “Can we help you?” Verl asked.

  “Are you connected with the Red Lagoon Theatre?” he asked in a deep voice used to authority. I thought then it must be the government come to arrest Spurgeon Debson for threats of violence.

  “I am, sir. Are you looking for someone?”

  “Yes. My daughter-in-law. My name is Bruno Stark.”

  Chapter 17

  I Am Sent Away from Home

  “These are two of my employees—Mr. Edgars, Mr. Edmunds,” Mr. Stark added summarily as he swung open the theater door with a steely hand, white wires of hair bristling on his fingers. He didn’t ask who we were. Learning that Leila was then on her way to the Denver bus terminal, Stark told us that he would first inspect the theater, after which he would like to visit with his grandchildren until their mother returned. Everyone nodded. Then Verl, who was going over to the library, said good-bye, while I followed Stark and his employees into the Red Lagoon lobby.

  He stepped across the portrait of Leila and stood quietly in the middle of the room, unwrapping a long black cigar and slowly turning it in his fingers before inserting it between his teeth. Mr. Edgars or Edmunds quickly produced a lighter, which he jerkily snapped on beneath Stark’s cigar. Stark nodded and the lighter disappeared.

  Slowly, he looked around the lobby; it was, I realized with a sharp surge of adrenalin, still littered with the aftermath of Fitzgerald’s farewell picnic. On the concession stand counter, on the floor, on the chairs lay the clutter of crumpled napkins, paper plates soggy with chicken bones and half-chewed biscuits, with Coke bottles, beer bottles, wine bottles—some with cigarette butts floating in the remains. The air smelled of old smoke and stale beer and souring food, all worsened by heat and humidity that sat in the room like crowds of people. Helpless, I watched Stark take it in. Then he walked over to the wall of photographs, studied them sequentially, pausing no longer over the blackbordered picture of his son in the center than over the others.

  Behind his cigar smoke, Stark’s face appeared bland, the dry, smoothly shaven skin sleek, untroubled by the heat, the lips calm beneath his white mustache. He seemed impenetrable, a closed circuit. Mittie had been his only son. But watching him, there was no way to know what he was thinking, why he had come, what he wished to discover.

  In back of him patiently stood Mr. Edgars and Mr. Edmunds, each with both hands clutching his briefcase across his chest. Their hair and collars had wilted, bubbles of sweat popped silently over their noses, but neither moved to wipe them away. After a few minutes, Stark stepped toward the rear do
or of the box office. The two men filed noiselessly after him. He opened the door onto more disorder. Tickets, posters, candy wrappers, a Eugene McCarthy poster, bills, letters, a roll of toilet paper, a yellow truck, a pipe, a T-shirt all jumbled into open drawers; a chair had fallen over onto the desk as if shot from behind. From the wall one of Ronny’s Playboy playmates simpered at her ballooning breasts, her legs curled up by the humidity. Righting the chair, Mr. Stark dusted it with the T-shirt and sat down.

  Suddenly, from inside the theater itself, shrieks of laughter blew out. Staccato chords clapped up and down the piano as a loud falsetto voice began to sing: “Whatever Lola wants, Loollllaaaa gets, and, little man, little Lola wants you.”

  Horrified, I edged my way past Edgars and Edmunds, crossed the lobby, and squeezed through the doors to the theater, shutting them immediately behind me. Fitzgerald’s party was still going on. On the stage, Seymour Mink was drunk. And drunkenness had crushed his usual reticence, for, nude to the waist, with a woman’s blond wig on his head, strings of beads around his neck, a spangled skirt hanging around his hips over his pants, Seymour danced the hula before Ronny Tiorino, who sat bare-chested on the stage floor, vodka from a bottle down his upturned throat. At the piano, Pete Barney was drunk. Seated on the steps of the stage, Marlin Owen and Margery Dosk were drunk.

  Pete slammed out another round of chords as Seymour swerved back into song. Wriggling his hips, he beat Ronny back and forth across the stomach with a huge fan of pink ostrich plumes. “I always get what I aaiiiim for, and your heart and soul is what I caaaammme for.”

  “Kiss me, sugarpants,” Ronny leered at him.

  “Take that, you tewwible, tewwible old monster,” Seymour lisped, with a swipe of the fan at Ronny’s crotch. They all twisted with laughter.

  Rushing to the stage, I tried to beat their noise down with my hands. “Shut up. Shut up,” I whispered. They doubled over with giggles. “Mittie’s father is in the lobby,” I grimaced, pointing in pantomime.