The Off Season

by The Off Season (epub)

  The ground trembled; the fire flicked like the nervous tip of Obed’s tail. A bell clinked, another tinkled, a third bell clonked. From the all-seeing tower, orchestral murmuring swelled like congregated voices from generations of clergy. Obed purred in Latin, but his Latin was indifferent compared to his Greek. The personage of The Parsonage ignored him.

  “That makes sense,” Gerald said to The Parsonage. “If you think that’s the way to go, I’ll buy it.”

  “I didn’t know Gerald could talk to The Parsonage,” Bev whispered from her hiding place on the second floor.

  “Gerald is a small-town cop,” Samuel whispered unhappily. “There is very little a small-town cop does not know.”

  Gerald looked at Starling, Kune, Obed, Joel-Andrew. “You make a matched set,” he told them, “and there’s going to be no bust. I’m turning the four of you over to custody of The Parsonage. Douse the fire; sleep here tonight.”

  “In the basement,” Kune said. “I always sleep in the basement.”

  Gerald looked toward the second-floor window, where Bev and Samuel believed themselves hidden cleverly. “That’s a good idea, because we want to avoid complications.” Gerald removed his cop’s hat, rubbed his forehead. He stared at the second-floor window. “Homecoming week,” he said. “The high school kids are pikers.”

  To which Bev murmured, “Oh dear,” while Samuel gnashed his teeth and said something sounding more like a dockworker than a preacher.

  “When those four get settled in,” Bev said, “I’m going to sneak downstairs and listen.”

  Samuel replied that he could not care less about what went on between misfits.

  “Because,” Bev said, “I think some changes are about to happen in Point Vestal. We ought to gather facts, in case we ever have to testify in court, or write a book, or something of that sort.”

  Chapter 14

  From The Fisherman’s Café on clear days we see an enormous skyline. The 8,000-foot Olympic mountain range rises to the west, the 8,000-foot Cascade range to the east. Dormant volcanoes Mount Adams and Mount Rainier tower above those ranges like ancient gods. Maggie knows all about such things, but these days Maggie speaks only to Kune.

  And, on clear days, it is possible to see straw-yellow haze above suburbs of Seattle, like a road of celestial kitty litter. Seattle is too far off to see, but on the Strait its emissaries cruise back and forth; chubby nuclear subs, slim hunter-killer subs, destroyers, sub tenders, mine layers, aircraft carriers, coal barges, oil rigs built like little palaces. We see presidential and royal yachts, and ships of Panamanian registry carrying corned beef, cocaine, political defectors. Shiploads of Japanese cars, radios, toasters, computer chips, and tape decks pass with well-lubricated efficiency.

  “I’m never sad when fog and rain return,” Frank admits. “When you can’t see Seattle things, you don’t have to think about them.” He stares into the wet and windy street where Mikey Daniels’s milk truck staggers. Today the doughnuts are kelly green with sprinkles of red.

  “Living here makes us simpleminded,” Bev points out. “I know, because I know what went on that night at The Parsonage.”

  “Screech owls,” Samuel says, “spotted owls, barn owls, great northern owls.”

  “August Starling mostly listened, while trying to steal things from The Parsonage,” Bev reports. “He also filled gaps in his information. Joel-Andrew encouraged Kune in the direction the Lord. Obed snoozed. The Parsonage listened. The Parsonage began forming a great camaraderie with Joel-Andrew. Kune kind of spilled his guts. It went like this:

  The ’39 LaSalle disappeared down the hill. Three men and the cat stood beside the campfire, momentarily hesitant. Kune stamped out the fire. “You’ll like this place,” he told Joel-Andrew, as he headed for The Parsonage.

  The basement lay dry, dusty, and warmer than upstairs rooms; certainly warmer than the all-seeing tower that rose toward heaven. The basement seemed like a cove on a stormy coast, or a nest for drunken janitors, fallen women, adventuresome schoolboys.

  August Starling herked, snerked, sneezeled. Dust from old furniture clouded close-fitting air as Kune lit an oil lamp. The lamp illuminated unused rose-back and ribbon-back loveseats, sofas, armchairs, armoires, mirrored hall trees, portraits of preachers, and slop jars.

  “It is awfully nice for Obed,” Joel-Andrew explained. “We’ve been sleeping in barns.” Joel-Andrew unslung his violin, wiped mist and fog from the case and looked inside. Glue had not melted. “Nice for the violin,” he added. “This is a difficult climate for strings.” Joel-Andrew felt pleased. He sat marooned in a small basement with two men who, for all he knew, were sociopathic killers; and with a cat whose Latin was deficient. Compared to Joel-Andrew’s tenure in the Haight, this was a vacation.

  Tiptoeing footsteps sounded above. August Starling gasped, then sought cover behind a Victorian wardrobe. Obed cruised stacks of furniture looking for mice. The footsteps sounded sneaky.

  “It must be Bev,” Kune said. “No one but Bev and Samuel ever come to The Parsonage. It can’t be Samuel because Methodists always canter.” Kune looked into shadows where August Starling’s eyes were spotlights of terror.

  “Uh-huh,” Kune said. “Starling has no experience with ghosts. Most of the ghosts rose after his time.”

  August Starling cowered.

  “Nothing is going to hurt you, dimbo.” Kune’s voice held amused contempt. “Most ghosts are in town, anyway. There might be a ghostly preacher or two rambling around upstairs.”

  “These ghosts,” August Starling squeaked, “perchance some exercised prudent frugality during the course of their worldly span. Perchance in cloistered places they wisely, and in concealment placed certain saved bounty . . .”

  “Starling is set to con some ghosts out of hidden money,” Kune told Joel-Andrew. To Starling, he said, “Forget it, ding­bat. Every hiding place in town got probed during the Great Depression.”

  Joel-Andrew feared for August Starling’s future. Starling might be temporarily afraid of ghosts, but Starling was not so afraid he was unable to cut a deal with one.

  “And speaking of Starling,” Kune added, “something odd is going on. He went to the madhouse in ’88 and died in Seattle in 1922 of madness and alcohol. However, you encountered him driving a buggy back to town in 1893, although it was 1973 for you. He had been doing that for quite a while. We have a mystery.” Kune sat on a loveseat, pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, lit a smoke, and inhaled a nourishing drag. “Here’s to the Surgeon General,” he intoned, “and up the AMA.”

  Joel-Andrew knew there was no mystery. The Lord wanted August Starling alive in Point Vestal, or August Starling would not be alive in Point Vestal. Joel-Andrew figured the Lord wanted to give August Starling a second chance. Kune did not look at mystery, but a miracle. Since Kune could not stand to hear the word “miracle,” Joel-Andrew changed the subject.

  “It’s cozy here,” he murmured, “and it’s pretty cold there.”

  Bev’s footsteps neared the top of the stairs.

  “If it were Samuel, I’d say let him freeze but since it’s Bev . . .” Kune stood. He returned with Bev a little shivery, but looking more like Dorothy Lamour than ever. August Starling skipped from behind the wardrobe. He brushed his vest, adjusted his hair, his tie, his look of innocence. He chirped, “When the soul to new beauty and glory is born / There is life in its waters, and joy in its breeze . . .”

  “Tuck it in your nose,” Kune advised. To Bev, he said “The guy with the tweed underwear is August Starling.”

  “If you’re trying to impress me,” Bev told Kune, “you’ve done it.”

  Upstairs a door slammed. A Methodist cuss echoed and Methodist canter sounded. The ground trembled. The Parsonage settled onto its lot with satisfaction. The Parsonage was like a bouncer rubbing his hands after a particularly gratifying bounce.

  “Oh, dear,” Bev said, “The Parsonage gave Samuel the old heave-ho. It had to happen someday.”

>   “It’s a day for records,” Kune muttered. “First Ollie Jones wins the pool championship . . .”

  “Why has it never asked him to leave before?” Joel-Andrew did not realize that The Parsonage had roosted on the cliffs outside of town, almost as if it were waiting for him. Then The Parsonage appeared on top of the hill when Kune and Joel-Andrew visited the Starling House. Now The Parsonage moved to the outskirts of town when Joel-Andrew walked from Janie’s Tavern to the crossroads.

  “The Parsonage has been through a lot,” Bev said. “I expect it’s finally losing patience.”

  “l don’t worry about August Starling,” Kune said. “He can’t fool with history, he’s stony broke. Sooner or later he’ll do something crooked, and Gerald will throw him in a cell with the ghost of The Sailor.” Kune spoke as if Starling were not present.

  August Starling said nothing. He was entranced with Bev, and with feeling behind pillows of sofas for dropped coins. From a Victorian loveseat he drew forth a one-dollar gold piece. His eyes lighted.

  “That’s worth quite a bit to a collector,” Joel-Andrew said.

  August Starling became feverish, fervorish, and obsessed with feeling. He felt every stick of furniture.

  “I packed a picnic,” Bev told the men. It occurred to Bev that she was alone with three men. Two had killed women, and all three were probably celibate. Bev was not sure what that said about modern society, but she secretly armed herself with a hatpin.

  “Item one and item two,” Kune said mournfully to Bev. “First, you needn’t be afraid. I’m not that kind of killer. Second, why do you hang around with Samuel who is the world’s leading hypocrite?” Kune sounded as tactless as a Holy Roller.

  “I didn’t know you read minds,” Bev said.

  “He’s a diagnostician,” Joel-Andrew explained. “Kune reads emotions, symptoms, situations.” August Starling gave a happy chirp as he discovered a three-cent piece in the stuffings of a morris chair.

  “Item one and item two,” Bev said without friendliness. “First, I hang around with Samuel because he’s a hypocrite only about sex and Presbyterians, which is a better score than any other man in town. Second, just what kind of killer are you?”

  “A fair question.” Joel-Andrew laid his violin aside. August Starling twittered. August Starling might have run press gangs, but he was not used to spending the night with a confessed killer. Obed yawned, stretched, made do with a piece of peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich. Lamplight cast dusty glows about the basement. Bev thought of windswept moors and heaths, of melancholia. Shutters rattled, walls creaked. Bev thought of gothic novels, colonial governors, ivory tusks, shipwrecks and gold.

  “It’s a fair question,” Kune admitted, “and I suppose the truth is only slightly worse than folks imagine.” Kune looked like a small and blotchy melanoma. “Imagine me as a younger man,” he muttered. “Full of ideals. If you are a Point Vestal boy, you’re going to be sort of romantic. It went this way.”

  The road through medical school was rigorous, and Kune, a boy from a hick town, carried no connections. He earned his grades because he could not afford to buy them with gifts of stock certificates or Mercedes-Benzes.

  And yet, he loved the magic of endocrine glands, the nervous system, the structure of cells, the intricate chemistry drawn so systematically on thick and glossy pages of overpriced texts. He loved long and polished hospital corridors, the romance of medicine, illusions. Kune’s yellowish eyes and nimble fingers eagerly dealt with tumors, fractures, samples of naughty blood. He peered up noses, down throats, into ears, vaginas, rectums. He listened to respiratory gasps, hearts whopping ragtime, the RPM of lungs, throats; his eyes watching tell­tale signs of drugs, booze, anxiety, fear, occasional relief. On the day he became a full-fledged doctor, he felt priestly; Kune felt ordained.

  He wielded the Power and the Glory. He wielded miracles. All around him eyes were made to see, kidneys transplanted, hearts, lungs, gizzards. The dying rose from the dead. Given enough spare parts, he could cure anyone of anything. He was a miracle worker—he and his fellows—striding above ranks of the ill like Samaritan Angels. Their stainless steel machines were chariots riding high across the heavens registering brain waves, checking pee samples, flipping surgical lasers. He lost sleep, loving the work, loving the Power and Glory. The Pharmacopoeia was his Bible. He was indifferent to all but the laying on of healing hands.

  The hard fact is, he did everything wrong. He regarded life as sacred. He thought of patients as almost human. He ignored the stock market. Kune walked the hospitals in his great contest to preserve life. He took refresher courses, refused to exploit lab people, janitors, dietitians. He failed to become arrogant, sometimes treating charity cases. He gave no kick­backs, padded no welfare bills. He refused to play golf, and drove a pink ’59 Rambler. He insisted on sterile needles. There was no sin he did not commit.

  Kune became a maverick. His colleagues stopped greeting him in the halls. Patients scorned him. Nurses regarded him as unmarriageable, unbeddable. The AMA decided Kune belonged among naturopaths, herbalists, witch doctors.

  Through it all, he more or less kept his head. When banned from practice in all hospitals, he thought of returning to Point Vestal. The AMA moved rapidly. He was blacklisted in his hometown. On the flip side, though, he met a nurse and fell in love. Her name was Shirley.

  Kune had dreamed of what the practice of medicine could be. The realities of medicine faded back into dreams when he met Shirley. She was compassionate, skilled. The dying loved her until their deaths. Infants added weight, stopped squalling in her presence. Shirley worked as hard at being a nurse as Kune worked at being a doctor.

  In a small and run-down suburb of Seattle, Kune set up a neighborhood practice. Patients who came to his lightly decaying house were Eskimos driven south from the oil fields, blacks driven north from the oil fields, Okies driven west from the oil fields, and Asians driven ying-yang by gunboat diplomacy.

  It was a quiet and rewarding life. The house had two stories and Kune lived on the second. The former living room became the waiting room, with flowered wallpaper, overpriced Salvation Army furniture, and pictures of heroic doctors; the pictures torn from calendars distributed by legalized drug dealers.

  His lab sat beside the toaster in the kitchen. His two examination rooms, one a former bedroom, one a dining room he painted white. He was too absorbed to smell the smells of Seattle, to hear surprised little grunts of people stabbed while walking dark streets, to hear roaring traffic from a nearby freeway. He painted his bedroom rose and misty blue, anticipating carnal knowledge. Loving Shirley.

  She was blond, statuesque, with maternal skills at nursing; small squeals of surprise when nuzzling. Shirley was voluptuous Norwegian, Lutheran, thus confused. She was not innovative but a good learner. When nursing, though, she was the teacher: Kune learned a lighter touch, learned a gentle smile. She taught him to be a better doctor. Kune and Shirley laughed, loved, practiced medicine, went to movies, zoos, bowling alleys. To Kune life could offer little more. In a few years, no doubt, there would be blond children. More medicine, more Shirley, a station wagon.

  Then anguish stepped into the waiting room, quiet as an abashed thirteen-year-old sodomized by police. Shirley developed a little zit between her shoulders.

  Kune rubbed it lovingly with alcohol. They went back to work. On the next day the zit became a large pimple and moved to the lumbar region. More alcohol. The pimple became a boil, moved to the inner wrist. The boil became two boils, then three. It developed symptoms, a harsh cough, wheezing, rapid pulse, diarrhea, cold sweats, dizzy spells, temporary blindness, numbness in toes, fingers, nose. It resembled typhus, plague, infantile paralysis, Legionnaires’ disease, smallpox, premenstrual syndrome. It was all of these and none. Kune was temporarily affrighted. Shirley lay semiconscious. Kune entered the greatest battle of his career.

  He fought symptoms. He diagnosed. He sat beside her rereading medical books, reading journals. He brought her som
e relief, but with each relief the disease changed. It was wanton, capricious. Kune closed his practice to devote every minute to Shirley. The disease went into a final change. It became a wasting affair of the kind beloved by pop medical magazines, quick and dirty researchers, fundraisers. It resembled Parkinson’s, Crohn’s, sullen varieties of cancer.

  Kune called in every marker he owned, and they were few. He placed Shirley in a hospital, and because he was banned, ran tests under a false name. She was probed, X-rayed, transfused, scalpeled of spare parts, fed steroids, antibiotics, aspirin. Kune rifled the racks of home remedies, consulted colleagues. He drove at the disease with desperation, zeal. He fought malaria, psychosomatics, mumps, leprosy. She lost weight, developed tubercular sweats. The shiny machines buzzed, zapped, hiccupped, chuckled over salts, hissed oxygen, Ping­-Ponged lasers.

  He grieved, brought Shirley home; the home where the power of her own skill had healed so many. She lay in the upstairs bedroom—rose and misty blue—and, fresh from the hospital, begged Kune to love her. She was wraithlike, had but three toes, a facelift. Kune pumped away, tears flowing, but the life-making fluid was not life-giving fluid. Shirley lost more weight. From a solid 160, she declined to 85. The case was hopeless.

  Still he fought. Alcohol rubs, massive shots of vitamin C; the Power and the Glory, failing, the miracles failing. Shirley wanted to die.

  Still he fought. Day by weary day, night by weary night, he was, it seemed, inexhaustible. He was pernicious, omnipresent, omnipotent. He was Shirley’s entire world. He owned her, possessed her, pilled her, filled her with shots. He did everything he could, and still she did not die. He longed for rest for her, himself. Still—no matter how hard he worked—he could get her to die.