by Thomas Cater
“Did you find it?” I asked hopefully.
She showed me the markings on the boxes. The one she was looking through was dated 1922. There must have been several thousand cards neatly filed in each box.
“I started in December and I’m working my way back through time,” she said. “It is easier than starting in January,” she said.
I did not understand the logic, but replied, “And more scenic.”
She ignored me and continued thumbing through the cards. I stepped behind the counter to observe her progress. It was remarkable. The cards were in perfect order, day by day, and the handwriting was impeccably clear. Thank God for conscientious room clerks, I thought.
“Here we are,” she said, “August.”
She read each card carefully, holding it in her hand for a moment, as if she were trying to recall the moment she wrote it, and then flipped it over.
“Karl Miller, Harold Estep, Samuel Long, Morgan Smith,” she held one card in her hand a little longer than the other, fingering it, lifting it up to the light, examining it far more carefully. “Yes, this is it, this is the man,” she said.
She gave me the card. I could barely control the tremors. I was shaking worse than Janie. I read the name aloud. “Nicodemus Thanatos.”
The only address on the card was…Washington D.C. The handwriting on all the cards looked the same. “Did you write all the registration cards?” I asked.
She nodded proudly. “I got in the habit of doing it. So many people couldn’t write or spell. I was embarrassed to ask them, so I filled the cards out myself.”
I held the card in my hand trying to feel if anything of Nicodemus’s presence had remained after…what was the date? I read the card again. Aug 24, 1919.
“Can I keep this?” I asked.
Mrs. Abacas looked as if her entire filing system and the hotel was about to collapse.
“Oh, I don’t know…I’ve never allowed anyone to remove a card from the hotel.”
“Just long enough to make a copy?” I pleaded.
She was shaking by my request: anxious, flushed cheeks, heart palpitations and the works. I thought she was going to have a stroke.
“Never mind,” I said. “I think I’ve got it all. You can put it back in the file.”
She stopped trembling, snatched the card from my hand and put it exactly where it belonged.
“Will you need anything else, Mr. Chase?” she asked.
I was glad to see that she had regained control. “No thank you, Mrs. Abacas, that’s all for now, but I might want to talk to Clarence again, if it’s all right with you?”
The color returned to her cheeks and she smiled. “You can find him in front of the TV every day from ten am to 10 pm, and later if there is a football game on.”
I wanted to thank George and his congregation for their assistance, but they had all vanished to their respective rooms. I wanted to visit George in his room, but I figured it would be awhile before he got them settled down. I was developing a curious respect for him. He would have made an excellent top sergeant in the Salvation Army. I knew how hard it was to make rank in that most intriguing of forces, the mercenaries in the battle for control of man’s soul. Perhaps that is what Vandalia needed: a Salvation Army outpost, the new frontier perhaps in the deserted wasteland of the human psyche.
I returned to the van and decided to leave it on the street for the night, give its wounds time to heal. Metering stopped after 6 pm. Providing a man didn’t abuse the law, ticketing seemed to be a lost art.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
In the van, I thumbed through Elinore’s notebooks, always hopeful that something new would catch my eye. Information always aroused new and different questions. I knew now the land was some kind of holding tank for lost souls, but didn’t know why and couldn't explain it. Something was trying to tell me why spirits had fallen victim to the house and land, and their liberation lay in understanding what Elinore had endured.
There were moments of high productivity when she wrote 5-10 pages at a time, and barren periods when she wrote nothing at all. In actual days, the notebooks accounted for little more than a few weeks, but represented years of her life. For more than half of those years, she believed she possessed supernatural powers.
There were a few notebooks, sketchy in content, but may have been written while she was in her teens and twenties. I could not help but believe there were more. Anyone who loved the sound of the inner voice as much as she did had to write often. It was more than a habit with her. She wrote to incarnate moments and events in her life she thought she might someday be able to relive through the eyes of a husband or child.
I kept perusing the pages looking for something revealing or insightful.
‘Samuel says that someday soon I will be able to see more clearly.’ The words went through me like an arrow: “more clearly?” Old Samuel must have kept a spark of hope burning in her youthful bosom all those years. Maybe he wasn’t such a bad guy after all. Why was she calling him Samuel? She never called him father, papa, or dad. Who really understood father-daughter relationships? What made me think he was 'all bad' anyhow, because he walled spirits up in and around his house? He probably didn’t know what he was doing. He too might have been a victim by following the advice of a spiritual counselor. He must have loved her very much to keep that hope of vision alive.
“He’s sent for a doctor…”
Yes, the words were quite clear. Doctor. Were they doing eye operations then, corneal transplants? I was ignorant on all points. I would have to find out. Someone must have known something. Who was the doctor, Grier? I made a note to check out the names of doctors in town and those assigned to the hospital.
I flipped rapidly through the pages, my enthusiasm kindled, looking for the name of a doctor or even a sloppily written Mr., but the notes trailed off and away into mostly faint and indistinct shadows, ghosts of their former selves, indiscernible.
I kept skimming, picking up a word here, a sentence there. In a few places, I found more references to Amy Taylor.
“Amy took me to town on the Fourth of July, everyone was…”
Was what? Drinking, drunk, dunking drowning, downing, dawning, damning…It must have been an eventful fourth and I suspect she stayed out late because…
“The night air was warm and soft during the ride home.”
I felt like writing Elinore a letter. What could I say?
“Dear Elinore; I hope some good times and a little happiness found their way into your life. I hope that Amy could see that you were ready for it, and in just as great a need as anyone else.”
I knew my commiseration wasn’t going to make the slightest difference. She had probably died a maiden at the ripe old age of 70, or thereabouts. I made a note in my chronological table: “July 4, 1919, two years after the United States entered the war in Europe. Elinore Ryder attended a celebration in town. A wonderful time was had by all.”
I wondered what Samuel was working on then? He was probably fighting a losing battle with politicos and war profiteers, no doubt, or looking for some way to hang on to his share of the profits. Wrap it up and hold it tightly in his hands or in his fists, building higher and stronger walls around his home, walls to keep busybodies out and long dead spirits in? Was there a profit in that? Had Samuel struck a bargain with the devil? Had he figured out some way to barter and trade in that most elusive commodity of all, the human soul?
If one stopped to think about it, a wall was a lot like a tightly closed fist. It held things and wouldn’t release them. If Satan held a town in his grip, he could hold it within a wall. How do you get a demon to loosen his grip when he comes in the form of a wall? Joshua fought the battle of Jericho…and the walls came a’ tumbling down. How did he do that?
I closed the notebook again and apologized mentally to Elinore.
“I’m sorry;” I said thoughtlessly. “I just can’t keep my eyes open any more. Your words are starting to dance all over the pages ag
ain.”
With a little luck, I hoped I might be able to put more of the puzzle together while I slept. I was a great believer in dreams serving as unconscious messengers. I have always suspected they were forgotten memories of a lost and troubled past.
For several months, I had nightmares about living in a house that was slowly falling apart. I was unable to make any but superficial repairs. It kept coming apart, especially the plumbing and gas fixtures. One night the house caught fire because of a defective heater in the bedroom. The damage was beyond repair. In the dream, I told Myra, the Polish poet, that we should get rid of it, but she said, ‘No, let’s see if we can save it.’ I said it would only rot from the inside out and it was pointless to hang on, but she insisted. When I awoke, I suddenly realized the house was our marriage and the bedroom was our relationship. I knew then that we would eventually separate.
I thought about the skeleton in Virgil’s car. I wondered if he bothered to store it in a garage or basement. The ring was also a concern. Why didn't I remember it? Who had the damned thing? We passed it around for a few minutes. I had it, then Virgil had it, then George had it, but who took it, or did we put it back on the skeleton?
Damn. I yawned and closed my eyes. I needed sleep. This aimless speculation was leeching the vitamins and minerals from my body. I was going to need a Gatorade cocktail in the morning just to keep every synapse in my nervous system from shorting out.
*
I awakened with an erection that made me wish I had been more attentive to Constance Pennington’s finer qualities. I also felt lethargic and helpless, as if elemental forces were manipulating me.
I concentrated on the integrity of my erection. It was the first in a long time. It was inspiring to consider how much physical longing went into the contemplation of one pretty face. I have never been able to write sonnets about beautiful women, but I have never taken my good fortune for granted.
I was also approaching a time in my life when I felt the need to spend at least twenty minutes in a shower, thoroughly purging all the cracks and crevices in my aging body. Life among constantly abluting Asians had modified my views on personal hygiene.
My van’s refuse tanks were full and I knew I had less than ten gallons of fresh water in reserve. I decided to sponge off in one of the vacant rooms at the Phoenix Hotel. I would offer to pay the Abacases for the water and use of a towel.
I locked up the van and entered the hotel. Mrs. Abacas was polishing antiques. Everything in the lobby was old, complicated and early American. She also had a roomful of primitive furniture, tree limbs and twisted vines in the shapes of beds and benches. I was admiring a strange piece that stood just inside the street entrance. It was the size of a refrigerator with dozens of small drawers.
“What have we here?” I asked.
She stepped back to admire her work.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” she said. “I think it’s a notions cabinet, but a very old one. It may have been in a general store two or three hundred years ago. I’ve been offered a fortune for it, but what would I do with money? We have nothing to spend it on.”
“Do you ever think of traveling?” I asked.
“Leave Vandalia and the hotel?” she said.
I had no idea my suggestion would sound so preposterous. It was a charming hotel, plain on the outside, simple on the inside, clean, but without any discriminating merit, except the antiques. It was an inexpensive inn and home to at least a dozen castaways.
“Has Mr. Thacker gone out?” I asked.
She tilted her head in a roundabout way and rolled her eyes toward the ceiling.
“He usually sleeps much later than this. Is he expecting you?”
“Yes, he’s got something of mine.”
I wasn’t just making conversation, I was sure George had the ring. I climbed the stairs two at a time, too impatient to wait for the elevator. The door to his room was closed, which heightened my anxiety. I tried the doorknob and then proceeded to knock, increasing the volume. George answered; his voice was awash with sleep.
“Open the door,” I said impatiently. “It’s Charlie Case.”
He was still in his underwear. The room had a peculiar transient odor about it. It belonged to no one man or woman, but to the ancient building. It took hundreds of faceless people to create that odor. Lingering in the immediate forefront of the odor was the fragrance of spiked Kool-aid, Christmas cookies and burned out brains.
“Are all the cookies gone?” I asked, hoping that might be the case.
He opened a drawer and removed a decorated tin box.
“Where are you getting these things this time of year?” I asked.
“There’s a little ‘mom and pop’ store around the corner. They were having a sale…”
“A sale on year-old Christmas cookies?”
“Yeah, maybe two or three years old,” he said, nodding and rubbing sleep from his eyes.
I selected a cookie and started nibbling on Santa’s red cap.
“Do you mind if I use your hall bathroom, George? I’m in need of a shower.”
He said it was all right and pointed a few doors down. I am leery of public bathrooms and the assorted germs that mutate therein. Janitors cannot be trusted. The industrious Rufa ants welcome the Xenodusa beetle into their nest to clean the ant shit off the walls. The ants find themselves addicted to the beetle’s aromatic secretions and feed their own larvae to the beetle’s offspring, but not in my house.
“Have you got an extra towel?”
He gave me a towel and a tiny, nameless bar of hotel soap. I thanked him and he crawled back into bed.
“By the way, George, do you still have the ring?”
“What ring?” he asked. I explained. “Not me,” he said. “Don’t you have it?”
My lips compressed and I shook my head.
“No, I don’t have it. Virgil must have it.”
George vanished beneath the covers and I took a long, hot, two-dollar shower. A half-hour later, I felt much better. George was still sleeping when I finished, so I made a change of plans. I went down to the lobby to pay Mrs. Abacas for the use of her bathroom.
She was polishing an oak bookcase that stood nine feet high and must have weighed four hundred pounds.
“Very nice,” I commented.
She agreed with a smile.
“Has it been around long?” I asked.
“Since 1842,” she replied. “My great-grandfather made it.”
I admired the cabinet in silence. The talents people develop when moved by the spirit are inspiring. The WATS of Thailand, the temples of Cambodia and India, they are an endless variety of designs that evolve on a curious Mobius strip of creativity.
“I envy the time, patience and discipline, and whatever else it takes to create that kind of enduring beauty,” I said.
She nourished the wood with polish, smiles, pride and tender loving care.
“Are there any equally valid works of prose in there?” I asked. There are things you will never know about a book by looking at aging covers.
“Just old ones,” she said. “I don’t know if they’re good. I have never read them. I like mysteries. I’ve been writing one for thirty years. Would you like to read it? It’s five hundred thousand words. It may need some editing. They don’t usually run that long, do they?”
“I think not,” I said, “though I’ve read a few that seemed so.”
I quickly reviewed the contents of the bookcase through the woven copper screen over the door. Most of the bindings were threatening to fall apart if anyone touched them. A few were unreadable. There were several old grammar books, a book on Bee Keeping, and “The Basic Principles of Math.”
“I’d like to do a little more browsing when I have the time,” I said, “Maybe even read your novel.”
She seemed to approve, even though there was a worried look in her eyes. I often thought of myself as a competent writer, but I have not reached her astonishing level of producti
vity.
“I do so want it to be my very best effort,” she said.
“I’m sure it is,” I replied, though I could not imagine the reception a script of one-half million words would have on the reading public. It would have to be … I computed the size of her script: five hundred pages were equal to about 150,000 words, or two inches. That would mean her book was nearly a foot thick. I once bought a dictionary for fifty cents from a junkshop that was more than a foot thick. I owned it for nearly five years and set a goal of learning one new word a day.
“Where do you write?” I asked.
“I have an office in the back,” she said. “I do all my composing there. I have a separate box for every 500 pages; 20 chapters to a box, and six boxes so far. It works out perfectly.”
I wanted to know what theme could possibly have kept her enthralled those past thirty years.
“It’s a wonderful story,” she said. “I call it ‘Meade Street’. It is about a young man who rents an old house on Meade Street. You know where that is, don’t you? It’s around the corner, not far from here. He reads a newspaper and discovers the homeowner died mysteriously in the house he built.
“He becomes obsessed with learning why. Research takes him into the lives of every Meade Street family. The history of the town unfolds and the tragic fate of his life defined, as is the young man’s own inevitable demise. Two men, a hundred years apart, destined to share a similar fate. I do hope you can find the time to read it,” she said.
I nodded, feeling grave apprehensions, as if I were already a chapter in her book.
“It might even help you understand more clearly your own destiny,” she said, which seemed an appropriate statement.
“Your book is non-fiction?” I asked.
“It is based on the lives of three generations of those who live on Meade Street.”
“Does it include the Ryders?” I asked.
She tilted her head in thought. “There is some mention of them. They were influential in the lives of many people, but they are not the main theme. It will not provide you with the kind of information you are seeking. As I said, what is important is the destiny the two men shared, even though they are removed from each other by one hundred years.”
