by Ward Just
She traced a line down his cheek. “Oh, McGee. It’s over now.”
He nodded. “Indeed.”
“Let’s go,” she said gently.
“Do you suppose it’s true? That the death of one god is the death of all?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Christ,” he said thickly. “Those years. It was all so crazy”
“McGee,” she said, her forehead against his chest. He stood like a statue, arms at his sides, his eyes faraway. They stood in a dark doorway, as close as they had ever been or ever would be. He had opened to her suddenly and fully, a door swinging on a hinge, and she had passed through. She felt she was fully inside him now. She took him by the arm and they walked into the middle of Fifth Avenue to call a cab. She leaned against him, caressing his stomach; she had never loved him so much. He smiled suddenly and kissed her on the forehead, his lips just brushing her skin. She began to hum, pulling her skirt above her knees, her feet tapping on the asphalt. They were in semidarkness though lights were all around them. The street was empty and sky-scrapers towered above them, soaring into the Manhattan night. He flung his arms wide and she came to him, hanging on his neck with all the strength she had.
Oh, she said, I love you. She began to whisper to him but she couldn’t get the words out. He laughed and swung her around, her skirt flaring. She said, Home now? Right now, he said. Presently a Yellow slid up to them. A weary moonfaced man looked at them holding hands in the middle of Fifth Avenue and grinning. But they behaved correctly climbing into the rear seat. They were correct leaving the cab and correct in the elevator ascending to her apartment. She gave him the key to open her door and noticed then the condition of his hands, raw and torn along the knuckles. There was blood on his shirt. She kissed each knuckle in turn, standing in front of her open door. She would get warm water, iodine, some bandages. But he picked her up instead and carried her into the room. He said to her, We’re never going to talk about that again. Not ever. She said without thinking, All right. But first the warm water and iodine ...
It’s nothing, he said.
Autumn, 1973
THEY MAINTAINED HIM in a cocoon of comforters and placed him by the window, so he could see the big tree and the cornfield. It was a mistake, and instantly recognized as a mistake. The cornfield had been with him nearly all his life and looking at it now his memory was provoked. The future was—limited. So he concentrated now on the past, staring at the oak and the cornfield with bad eyes. The colors and the lines merged and blurred and what he saw resembled a painting; the kind of painting that he had always hated. He saw daubs of color that merged at the horizon, all of it split by the large tree. But one used what one had. That was what he had so he used it, and when McMann and young Bohn came to him with the proposal to buy the cornfield of course he said no. He said no at the end rather than at the beginning because he wanted to hear the details. He’d kept them tied up for a month, looking forward to the meetings; it was something to do, a transaction to occupy his time. They wanted the cornfield for a block of apartments and they had to explain to him about a condominium, what it was and how it worked. “An entirely new concept,” they said, and he had grasped it right away It wasn’t new at all but it was clever and in the end he had said no. McMann and young Bohn were exasperated. He caught the look that passed between them; it was a look that said, Senile Old Fart. They looked at him closely and he knew they were measuring his life span. How long would he last? How long could they afford to wait? At last McMann suggested that he give them an option and set a purchase price, closing to take place after—“in case anything happens to you.” Townsend said, “You mean, when I kick the bucket.” McMann said, “That’s it, Mr. Townsend. In the meantime, you’ve use of the option money.” He’d croaked, “Go to hell.” And the three of them had laughed.
But it wouldn’t’ve made any difference if they’d placed him in a different chair. If he’d been looking front, to the street, it would have been that—that street, those houses, trees between them—provoking his memory He possessed ninety-five years of history now, owned it as one owns a security or a dwelling. The mortgage was paid up, though many of the rooms of this dwelling were dark. He found his mind worked only in bursts. There were times, he thought, when he was no better than a vegetable, a desiccated potato, wrinkled and juiceless. He shifted his eyes then, to the bookcase—he supposed he’d read five thousand books in his life, over and above the law books—and the burgonet. This was the three-combed burgonet, said to be Florentine, crafted in the middle of the sixteenth century. A fine century, the sixteenth; there was much to be said for the autonomy of cities, Venice, Genoa. In the sixteenth century there was adventure and stability, though the world was shifting west; west and north. The movement was always west, whether in the old world or the new. Men followed the sun. The burgonet was doubtless a fake; the Field Museum was unable to authenticate it. But he liked looking at it, this piece of armor, protection for the skull but graceful too. There was a panache at its base ...
He was always tired now. He could feel the spirit draining from him, each day more difficult than the last. “Difficult”—he meant complicated. He could not concentrate on more than one thing at a time. He could feel himself withdraw, as if his brain and soul were contracting; he felt there was distance now between his center and the surface of his skin. It took time for his thoughts to compose themselves and find voice. They seemed to do that on their own motion; there was no way for him to force it. He measured the distance between his brain and his lips in miles. And what he thought and what he said were often different. A sentence would begin with one thought and end with another, somehow acquiring a life of its own as it made its way from the interior of his soul outward to the world. The late afternoon was best, the time of least resistance. He was not apprehensive then and could think and talk with relative speed and security. A glass of Scotch helped; he could feel it in his stomach, radiating upward and outward. In the afternoons he thought about women. He had always been a man of conservative habits; his memory was not a seraglio. He believed in some region of his mind that women were superior of soul, their emotions deeper and more profound. They were capable of inspiration. They gave life! He and Amos, they had never mistreated women. Of course all women were not identical. His own mother was an angel, bless her. One was never entirely secure with women; often they departed without warning. It was not always deliberate. His own mother was merely walking off to town, before the storm. Charles’s Dana had not intended to leave the family for good; it was something that had happened at random. It was necessary sometimes to hold them close or they would fly away somewhere. It was necessary to be very good to them. His memory picked away, meandering back a half century and more. There had been a widow in Dement, that was shortly after the Great War. He laughed suddenly. And the suffragette who’d come to him for legal advice and stayed the night. A political woman, he’d forgotten her name ... Then it came, a source of continual embarrassment. His mind began to spin. His sexual urges were uncontrollable, though his penis never moved. Imagining the most outrageous couplings, working back into his memory and improving on it; but nothing moved. Hot behind the eyes he would wait for Mrs. Haines to leave and then he would give himself over to his thoughts. It was absolutely mandatory that Mrs. Haines leave. He thought her ugly as sin. She reminded him of an awful portrait by that Spaniard Communist: two noses, a hole in her head, almond eyes. His emotion became so strong sometimes he thought he could not stand it. But then it crested and receded like any tide, leaving him weak and morose; he felt himself pitiable. God, he hated being old.
In the late afternoon he was less self-conscious, less aware of his reedy legs and his slow voice and the skin that gathered around his cheeks and neck like a cowl. He was fine when he forgot about his appearance and concentrated on his thoughts, and occasionally he could tell that his visitor was amazed at his lucidity, and could imagine what would be said about him later—“Old Elliott, clear as
a bell yesterday afternoon ...” When he forgot about the small pains, the pains so persistent and ubiquitous that he could not determine their source, they were no longer there. He could become interested in something else and not feel the pains, but it only happened for short distances; when something truly interested him he could turn away from himself and his infirmities. Oh Lord, he thought, what a horror it is to be old and sick with only one emotion ahead of him. Just one experience remaining. His only possession was his memory which he guarded now like a treasure. In the afternoons, sitting in the armchair, listening to Mrs. Haines puttering in the kitchen, he would stare into the cornfield and think about a specific. Then he would try to recall everything about it. At the end his thoughts would become vague and discontinuous, and he’d move a generation in a split second, realizing that he was misremembering; names and faces would blur. He’d try to summon them back but realize that he’d tired himself. His brain would become tired exactly as his body had long ago exhausted itself. He supposed that he had very few virile blood cells remaining. There were only enough for an hour of thought, and everything then lost its color and shape and lapsed into an amorphous gray, disconnected words and images: the paintings he despised. Then he would nap and waken long enough for a light supper, something nutritious. Mrs. Haines was both practical nurse and nutritionist. How wonderful it was to dine on food that was nutritious, vitamins balanced as carefully as the accounts of a corporation. Then Mrs. Haines would wheel him into the parlor, which was now his bedroom. She would undress him and put him to bed. Before sleep came he could hear the television set in the next room, muffled voices and laughter and bursts of music. Mrs. Haines never made a sound herself. She sat silently in front of the television, giving it her undivided attention. If he had a last wish on earth it would be to take a baseball bat to the television screen. He laughed, though no sound came from his lips; well, that was one wish, though not the final wish. He would save the final wish for himself, a positive thought for the night. He fell asleep dreaming about a young girl with yellow hair and slender legs, a girl he had seen once on a stage in a theater on the west side of the city of Chicago.
Mrs. Haines handed him his whiskey and he thanked her. She asked him if there was anything else she could get for him and he shook his head, as he always did. No, nothing else. Then he turned and said that he would like some cheese and crackers. He would like some small snack with his drink. She smiled her nurse’s smile and remarked that we were certainly feeling better, weren’t we, and that was one sure sign, a healthy appetite. A blunt retort came to the edge of his lips but he forced it back. He merely smiled and said, Yes, he was feeling fine today and would feel even better if he could have some cheese and crackers—
“To munch,” she said. “You want a munchie with your cocktail?”
He smiled politely. If he shot her between the eyes would they prosecute him, an old man of ninety-five? The insanity plea would surely prevail and they would never jail a sick man. He could outlast them, take the case to SCOTUS and by the time it reached the docket in Washington he would be dead anyway—
“I can make a cheese dip,” she said.
“I believe,” he said, “there, is a small wedge of Camembert cheese in the icebox and some saltines somewhere.”
“Well, I’ll look,” she said doubtfully
“You can leave the bottle here,” he replied. She looked at him strangely. “Not for me, Mrs. Haines. As you know, a single drink is my limit. It’s for Charles Rising, who is coming by in fifteen minutes and I would not like him to starve to death or die of thirst while he is my guest—”
When she went into the kitchen he poured another finger of Scotch into his glass. It was true, he felt good, better than he had in some time. He could not remember when he felt entirely fit; could not remember how that felt. So it was enough to allow that it was the best he’d felt that week. He’d told Charles to come at fifteen minutes after five; he thought then he would be at his best. He wanted to be entirely alert and responsive because Charles wanted to talk business, and over the telephone he’d sounded subdued.
There were one or two things he had to say to Charles, and now he tried to work the phrases around in his mind. Charles had a low boiling point sometimes and did not take criticism well. But this was important and he felt he had the right to intervene. His fortunes and the fortunes of the Risings had been entwined for more than sixty years; when he spoke to Charles it was like speaking to his own son. No one had more right than he to speak when he saw mischief. It was Marge Reilly who drew his attention to the facts when she came to visit on Monday. He’d missed it himself, it must have been one of the days when he skimmed the I rather than read it. He had to admit that he no longer followed politics with enthusiasm. Most of the men involved were little more than names to him. In the last ten years there had been a revolution in the party, the older men finally dying or retiring to Florida. The county chairman was young enough to be his grandson. None of the new names—none of them—was familiar to him. The new generation had arrived at last, and he did not know who they were or what they stood for.
Marge had begun carefully. “Isn’t it a mess?” He replied that it certainly was, how did it look to her? She said, “They’ll hound him from office.” Then she smiled. “Better sooner than later.” He’d nodded vigorously in agreement, though something in Marge’s voice caused him to listen carefully. She said, “And locally there’s trouble.” He’d given her his full attention then and urged her to tell him what was happening. “What’s wrong?” he asked, and it was then that he noticed she was truly upset, unable to look him in the eye. She’d waited several moments before replying, and then it all came out.
It was the paper. There was a rumor, and it was nowhere denied, that the Intelligencer intended to back Herm Stone for sheriff. And it intended to remain neutral in the state’s attorney’s race and that would be enough, in a bad year (which the year 1974 was bound to be), to elect the Democrat. She said, “Every time you pick up the paper there’s Stone’s picture and a story to go with it. The paper looks like a Democratic paper, a paper supporting the Democratic party. No one can understand it. At the courthouse—” She explained that Charles was apparently not attending to business. He’d been very active in promoting the new industrial park and was not watching what they were putting in the paper. “That editor’s a Democrat, we managed to find that much out.” There was no consultation anymore; she did not feel free to call on Charles. She hadn’t seen him in a year and meantime the paper had become more remote than ever. The trouble, of course, was that the Republican had problems. Even if the paper were neutral there’d be trouble ... He’d looked at her, hating to ask the question; but she understood the look. “It’s Callahan. Callahan’s the Republican, you might remember the father.” He shook his head firmly; he knew no Callahans, had never known a Callahan. “The father had bottle trouble. So does the son.”
“How bad?”
“Bad enough,” she said. “But Elliott, he’s a pretty good sheriff, considering. You know, when he inherited it from Tommy Haight it wasn’t exactly—” She paused, then continued. “And he’s had some tough family trouble. There was a problem with his father’s estate and his wile’s been sick. He’s been trying to bring up his boys and he hasn’t been a great success at it, and he knows it.” Marge Reilly looked down at her hands and smiled. Townsend nodded, thinking that nothing changed very much; bottle trouble, family trouble. She said gently, “You do remember Red’s father, a big hearty guy.”
“He ran a handbook.” Yes, he had known him; not well. He could not place him if he walked into the room.
“Well, Red’s his son and a good man. Just like his father.” She smiled dryly “But he’s not J. Edgar Hoover in the law-enforcement department, no doubt about that. But darn it, this is Dement, it isn’t as if we need Mr. Hoover—”
“I know him now,” Townsend said. “The son. I remember old Callahan took him to the cornroast, the last one that A
mos and I gave. That’s twenty years ago. He wanted to introduce him around, and did. Wanted him to go into the game, politics.”
“Yes,” she said. “And everyone liked him, Red.” She hesitated, frowning. “But the paper, I don’t understand it and none of us understand it. I know it’s because Charles isn’t paying any attention to the business, and with Mitch gone there’s no one member of the family who cares, and will pay attention to what’s going on. A few of us wanted to get together with Charles last week and he said he couldn’t see us until after the holidays and, my goodness, the primary’s only ninety days after that—” She sighed. “I’m sure that it’s just that he doesn’t see it, you know, understand, Elliott, for the first time ever we might have a Democratic sheriff. It just doesn’t make any sense.”
He said, “You want me to talk to him then.”
“Yes, sir,” she said crisply. Then she said, “I want you to do what you think would be best. Be right. You know him better than anybody. What do you think?” Townsend could feel himself weakening, the tiredness working its way up his body; he hated it. She said, “It might help, but I don’t want you to do anything that’s awkward for you.” She looked at him, as if trying to calculate in her own mind how much she could say “A few of the boys have wanted me to come before now. But I’ve put them off. I thought we could work it out ourselves. Well, we can’t and time’s flying and I’ve come to you for help. It’s not the first time and it won’t be the last.”
He smiled thickly, momentarily overcome with emotion. He said, “It’s not awkward. Marge. And I think after I talk with him, you should talk with him too. You’ve got a personal relationship, have had for years. He’s reasonable, and my God the last thing he wants is to see anything alien in Dement. He doesn’t want to see that.” He could feel the fatigue move up his legs. “What’s Stone like?”
