by Ward Just
HE STOOD on the porch a moment, breathing deeply. The old man’s house was stuffy and smelled of the sickroom, though it contained something of his life, too; his ninety-five years. At the end he had collapsed, poor old guy; but he had been sharp when he needed to be and that was what counted. He. understood, bless him; perhaps he was the only one who would. Charles sucked air, wanting the smell of sickness out of his nostrils and off his clothes. The cold night air bit into his cheeks, and he stood motionless a moment, listening to the traffic on the interstate a mile away; the roar of heavy trucks was distinct. The damp street with its looming Victorian houses was empty and dark, except for the lights of the supermarket at the corner. Television sets flickered behind heavy drawn curtains and somewhere a dog barked. An epoch ago he stood on this porch with his father and then was into the air, on high, his father’s big hands around his waist, then tucked into the crook of his arm, legs straddling the big stomach; his father’s stubble scratched him and lie could smell his cigary breath and clothing, and hear the beating of his heart. His arms went around his farther’s neck and held, it seemed to him an eternity ... Charles lit a cigarette and slowly descended the old wooden steps to his own car and drove away
The hospital was on the other side of Dement. Charles drove recklessly as he always did, jumping lights and barely pausing at stop signs. Downtown was entirely deserted and he drove by the office, wondering if he should stop and ask for messages; he’d asked Dana to wire him via the Associated Press. But he’d given the night deskman Townsend’s telephone number and there had been no call. He paused; the guard was watching television in the lobby, the day’s paper sprawled across his knees. Charles accelerated up Blake Street toward the courthouse, turned and sped to the hospital. He waved at a cruising patrol car, and the officer waved back.
She was in the intensive-care wing of the hospital, but the doctor agreed to let him come and go as he wished. Charles took the elevator to the second floor and walked down the brightly lit corridor to the nurses’ station. One of them went with him to Lee’s room, peeked in, and motioned him inside. He removed his hat and coat and sat in the armchair by the window Lee was motionless in the bed, an intravenous solution dripping into her arm and an array of vials on her bedside table. He was sitting in semidarkness but did not care. He fetched the ashtray from the bureau and put it beside him on the floor. Then he stretched his legs and sat looking at his wife in the bed. The nurse was concerned. She said she could bring a cot into the room, it was no trouble. She said, You look all in. He nodded and thanked her and said he would sit awhile and if he wanted a cot he’d call. The nurse smiled and left.
He was looking at Lee, then he wasn’t looking. The door to the corridor was slightly ajar, casting a yellow arrow of light across the floor. He moved the toe of his shoe to the arrow’s point and sat staring at it. There were no sounds other than a vague electrical hum. He prayed, his lips moving silently in the darkness. He knew no formal prayers so he said whatever came into his mind, fragments of Scripture that he had heard at weddings and funerals. He recited the Lord’s Prayer in its entirety. He did not want his wife to stiffer but he did not want her to die, either. There seemed to be no middle ground, according to the information he was given. So he prayed for repose, hers and his own; he prayed for peace and an absence of pain, and then he prayed for a miracle. He moved his shoe as if to erase the arrow’s bright point, still staring at her as if hypnotized. He closed his eyes and felt an enormous burden lifted from him; it was as if heavy hands had released his heart. He wanted only to do the right thing, and prayed that he was. It did not occur to him to ask for guidance. He asked instead for sanction. He would talk to her about it and perhaps she could supply some answer or reassurance. They had been married for more than half their lifetimes and understood each other accordingly
Lee?
She did not move, though he thought he heard her sigh, and he could scarcely see her head on the pillow. He leaned forward, his hands clasped between his knees, his feet crossed at the ankles. He began by describing the conversation with Elliott Townsend. How it had begun and how it proceeded and finally ended with the old man falling asleep in the middle of a sentence, his eyes beginning to glaze and then turn inward and finally close altogether. It had hurt him so; he wanted to believe that Dad would live forever, that they could live forever together, if only through the shadows of memory. But I was very patient, more patient than I felt, and I explained everything to him. What I didn’t explain because I didn’t know how was that really everything was different now, the town has changed along with the people. Elliott hasn’t been out of that house in a year, he’d be amazed at the changes even in a year. A supermarket at the corner and stop-lights. Strange when you think about it how much difference it makes when one structure comes down and another goes up. It changes your perspective and attitude, and the way you think about things. It changes your line of sight. He doesn’t know about the town now. It isn’t Amos’s anymore and very soon it won’t be mine, either. It hasn’t been his for a very long time. it could have been Frank’s but Frank was killed in the war. But nobody wants to hear about that because it happened twenty-two years ago.
Lee, listen.
I have called Dana and expect all answer very soon. I tried to call on the telephone but she was out. We can expect her tonight or tomorrow at the latest, depending on the connections. I know she’ll come right away, it’s just a question of getting the message to her. She’s a good girl, she’s always been good as gold. Elliott wanted me to make her my successor at the I. Call you imagine that? Dana. who’s been away for so many years. To mistaken plan even if Dana wanted the I, which of course she doesn’t. Nobody seems to, except outsiders. So Elliott and I went though that and I proposed finally that the Dowses buy it. And he agreed, like that. So negotiations will begin by the end of the week and if we’re lucky we’ll be out of there before the hold-days. I can’t imagine us living without the I but the burden has become unbearable. You understand that, don’t you? Dows will do a good job, I know he will. The boy reminds me a little bit of Frankie, he’s thirty years old and an expert in computers. That’s the way the business is going, computers. There was a time for editors like my dad and a time for businessmen like me and now it’s—the computer people. That’s what young Dows is, he’s sharp as a tack and only thirty. And if you think he isn’t smart, listen to this. He told me how he managed to avoid Vietnam and it was very simple. He just went to school! One school after another and they excused him until he was finally too old for the draft. Isn’t that incredible? Frankie could have done it, but perhaps the laws were different then; and of course he ten-listed. I told young Dows, Thank God. That war was even more stupid than Korea, I guess, though young Dows is alive and Frankie is dead. What sense is there in any of that?
He lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke in a thin thread toward the door, where it dispersed. The odor of tobacco was reassuring to him and he sat silently a moment, smoking.
Lee?
I have had my differences with old Dows, as you know. But I like his son, though his son is not “ikeable” if you see what I mean. What I will do is provide an orderly transition. That is my assignment. It seems to me that it’s always been my assignment, one way or another. I’ve filled an interregnum. And it has made us rich, I could never have imagined how rich. This piece of prairie is just lucky. The I has prospered, Dows is going to howl when I tell him how much he’ll have to pay But it’s a bargain at almost any price because what you’re selling is the future, and the future is unlimited. The town and the paper are going to grow to infinity, nothing will stop them. And when it happens, it’ll be out of our hands; we’ll be spectators ... I wanted to keep it in the family, and I would have done anything to achieve that. You understand, don’t you? There wasn’t a way to do it that would ensure its survival. You see, that’s the only important thing with a family business like the I. A real family business. That it survives and survives intact. The business is
more important than the family that owns it, and you protect it as you would protect one of your own. Whatever they do to it, they can’t destroy it entirely. Some part of the family will continue in the newspaper, in exactly the same way that Jefferson or Lincoln is part of the presidency. The only visible reminder will be my father’s name at the top of the masthead, Founder. That’s in the contract, though I don’t know if they’ll accept it. I expect that they will. it won’t cost them anything to accept it, my guess is that young Dows will read over that provision without a moment’s thought.
Mr. Rising?
The door stood ajar now, the nurse silhouetted in it. She bent forward, her hands on her hips. She asked him something, to which he shook his head.
She said, Please. Get some rest.
He nodded and thanked her and said he would in a moment. He explained that he’d had a very long day today and would have a long day tomorrow.
She nodded doubtfully. I’ll check back, she said.
Yes, he replied. Do that.
She disappeared, closing the door all the way. He was completely in darkness now, only the glowing end of his cigarette for light. He bent forward at the waist, rocking on his elbows, and smiled into the darkness. Old Dows. Old Dows saw what his boy could do and put on his hat one day and announced his retirement, and went to live in Florida. He left his boy with complete operating authority, and he had the confidence to do it; and the boy had the good sense to follow the father. Now he spent most of his time playing golf and chasing women in Florida, and his boy ran the business for him. Not a bad old age, Charles thought. Not the worst way to end one’s days, Charles said.
No, it was a terrible way. It was murderous.
He began to pray again, the words confused in his mind. He was disoriented in the darkness, uncertain where his wife’s bed was. He prayed for the family for Lee and for Dana and finally for himself. He prayed that they would—could—be together at last, all of them in the house where the children grew up. it would be strange without the I to talk about over the dinner table at night. He longed to return home and find Dana in her room, listening to her blues music. She used to listen to blues by the hour, as a young girl. Listen to blues and talk on the telephone. If the three of them could be together again, if only for a few months ... a year, perhaps. It was where they all belonged, Dement. All the sights familiar to them were still there; go out of town ten miles and nothing had changed. Nothing had changed anyway, the spirit was the same. He stubbed out his cigarette and rose, staggering slightly as he gained his feet, He moved forward, his hands in front of him, and stumbled into the bureau; something crashed to the floor. He was exhausted; the nurse was right. He fumbled along the wall until he came to the door and switched on the overhead light. Then he moved to the bedside of his wife and stood looking at her. There was no movement anywhere. He put his hand in hers but withdrew it at once. Her hand was cold as ice. He felt the chill himself and pulled his suit coat around him. Then he kissed his wife on the forehead, knowing now that she was gone. She and the I were both gone, and he would follow shortly. That was the way he had worked it out, a logical progression. He stood beside her bed for many minutes before he called the nurse, who hurried in to search for Lee Rising’s pulse and heartbeat. After a moment the nurse relaxed and took her fingers away from Lee’s wrist. She touched Charles’s arm and smiled and said it was all right. He looked so worn and old, his arm soft to her touch. His wife was still alive. Really, she said, there had been no change at all. Charles closed his eyes and said aloud, Thank God.
2.
THE PASTURE rolled down to the sea in waves, long gentle slopes that ended in a sharp drop to the beach. A footpath wound down through high grass, a lazy traverse moving back on itself through boulders and bunches of wild flowers. Back of the pasture the hills rose a thousand feet, and the clouds boiled over them like steam from a caldron, disappearing when they met the sea air. Above the gray shore and the sea beyond the sky was milky blue.
The beach was deserted always, except on Sundays when people came from church to sit on the sand in their black clothes and feel the heat of the sun. The men shed their suit coats and sat in collarless white shirts and talked among themselves while children chased each other at the edge of the water. There were always one or two old people in each group. The vastness of the beach dwarfed the people: they sat on tawny blankets in groups of six and seven, eating lunch and laughing.
The beach was two miles long, and as wide as any beach Dana had ever seen. At either end the sea cut into the hills, sculpturing the rocks into ragged peaks and long ridged tables. When the sea was calm and the tide switched, the water fluttered back in inch-high wavelets. When it switched again, a few fishermen would come back with it, sculling their dories with slow swings of a single oar. The beach was austere, without ornament of any kind, and despite that an intimate place. She had a game, one of many, calculating the speed of the tide, not in time but in distance, the advance of one wave over another. She’d place small sticks in the sand as measuring rods and watch the water wash beyond them and carry them away The tide brought bottles and these Myles placed on a shelf and used as targets. They were whiskey bottles, washed clean by the sea. Propped against a rock, they made hard targets for a man pitching stones.
She’d brought two pints of beer to the water’s edge and he uncapped them and handed one to her. They walked hand in hand on the soft sand. Two small boats were floating back on the tide and she watched them move, slow as turtles. He was holding her hand very tightly, and now she leaned against him, nestling the back of her head in his neck. He put his arms around her and hugged her; she smelled fresher than the sea. They clung together, watching the boats drift in from the open water. Then they were sitting and facing each other on the rock, her hands on his cheeks, feeling the roughness of his skin; it seemed as rugged as the corduroy coat he wore. She was urging him. without thinking. He touched her face and her neck, then kissed her lightly for a long minute, their lips barely touching.
“You’re scandalizing the neighborhood.” she murmured.
He looked up, over her shoulder, moving a lock of hair with his nose. “They’re paying no attention.” He saluted the figures in black with the pint bottle, and drank.
“They’re fools, then,” she said.
“They know all about us.”
“And are not interested?”
He shook his head. “They were, that first day you in the bikini—”
“But not anymore?”
“There’s a local scandal to occupy them now. They don’t want to worry about us, outsiders after all.” He stood up and put his arm around her and they walked up the beach. He put the two bottles of beer in his pocket and carried the picnic basket with his free hand. In a moment a nine-year-old girl joined them, dashing over the sand in an awkward run. They turned to meet her and the man picked her up and swung her over his shoulder in a cascade of laughter. Dana stood to one side, watching them—her daughter so tiny and slender, Myles so big and rough in his heavy clothes and bushy hair. The little girl moved in between them as they continued up the beach.
They ate slowly, watching the sea. Then the little girl began to fuss. They joked with her a minute and the man tried to roughhouse, but Cathy was adamant: no jokes, no roughhouse, she wanted to go home, now. She said finally, “I have to go to the bathroom.” Dana turned to him with an apologetic smile and a shrug. She would take her back to the house, play with her a little, maybe read her a story; then put her down for a nap, if she’d go. Dana smiled and winked at him. “Back in a while,” she said. He watched her run to catch up with the nine-year-old, who was moving away from them up the beach. She put her arm around Cathy’s shoulder and said something to her and the little girl slid closer to her and soon they were walking in step up the beach, unmistakably mother and daughter. He watched them enviously until they were out of sight over a dune, and then he finished the beer and closed his eyes.
Myles awakened slowly, his
face fuzzy on the beach towel. He had been dreaming of his apartment in Paris, preparing for a party. He was laying out the food and drink and then the doorbell rang. When he opened the door there were a dozen people outside; all of them were vaguely familiar. He stood at the door, tongue-tied. They all pushed past him to get to the bar and he was left holding the door. Then he woke up. He lit a cigarette, lying on his stomach. The beach was deserted, and when he looked at his watch he discovered that he’d been asleep for an hour. He looked over his shoulder but Dana was nowhere in sight. He stood up, trying to remember the identities of the guests in his dream; one of them was his university English teacher, a poet now dead. He walked to the water’s edge and tested it with his toe. Cold, as he knew it would be. The memory of the dream faded; he never remembered them for more than five minutes. He touched his toes and jogged in place for a moment, feeling very good after his nap. The sun was still warm and he thought that perhaps the time had come for a swim. Baptism by iceberg: it would be very cold; but it would also be an event, a promise kept. Dana had dared and double-dared and now he would accept the challenge; too bad she was not present to witness it. He walked back to the towel and began to shed clothing, jacket, trousers, shirt, socks. He wore no shorts. Naked, he stood shivering in the sun, feeling a salty breeze on his back. Then he dropped his watch and sprinted for the water. He hit the stones in a dozen strides, stumbled once, and flat-dove into the surf, his body hitting the water with an echoing slap! He floated out to sea on his back, dazed, watching the gulls above him, then turning and scrubbing himself in the water, its coldness burning his warm skin. He whooped and struck out to sea in a fast crawl. Buoyant, he porpoised, dipping below the heavy surface and staying there until forced up like a cork. The waves were gentle. He rode them for a yard or two, then watched them go at eye level, moving beyond him. The sun was warm on his face but the cold salt water tightened and freshened his body. His breath came in gasps as he counted strokes, one two three four. Then he turned to face the shore and saw her standing, arms folded, her head cocked to one side. Seeing him, she waved and laughed, gripping her hands above her like a prizefighter. He bolted for shore, his body surging at the sight of her. She stepped back as he broke from the water, coming at her on the run, head down. Running along the waterline she easily outdistanced him and they both began to laugh at the absurd sight of naked Myles and Dana, fully clothed. Finally he tackled her after a zigzag chase up the beach, brought her down panting and laughing—My God, she said, you’re freezing, She began to massage his back, lying on top of him, pummeling him with her hands. He said, You lose the dare. His skin began to warm under her touch. She took off her sweater and towelled him with it, until he suddenly turned on his back and took her face in his two hands and kissed her. She floated into him, light as air, loving the taste of him, salty and beery . . . Then he began to shiver with cold. Come on, she said finally, we’ll walk up the beach a ways. He kept her there another moment, then released her and she ran to get his clothes.
