by Richard Ford
A police cruiser, our lone Negro officer at the wheel, finally passes slowly by, on the lookout for the Clio Street bombers. He waves perfunctorily and continues on. He is now their neighbor.
“Look, when we get all our shit moved in, we’ll get you over here for a meal,” Joe says, turning loose Phyllis’s hand and trussing a short proprietary arm even more closely about her rounded shoulders. It is obvious she’s informed him of her newest medical sorrows, which may be why he came around to renting, which may be why she told him. Another reality check.
“That’s a meal I’m happy to wait for,” I say, wiping a driblet of sweat off my neck, feeling the touchy spot where I was struck by a baseball in a far-off city. I have expected Joe to bring up the lease-purchase concept at least once, but he hasn’t. Possibly he still harbors subconscious suspicions I’m a homosexual, which makes him standoffish.
I take a guarded look up at the old brick-veneer facade and curtained windows at #44, where there is no movement though I know surveillance is ongoing, and where I feel for an uneasy moment certain my $450 is being held hostage to the McLeods’ ingrown convictions regarding privacy and soleness, having nothing to do with financial distress, lost jobs or embarrassment (which I would know how to cope with). I am, in fact, less concerned for my money than with the prospect of my own life’s happy continuance with this problem unresolved. And yet I’m capable of making more of anything than I should, and I might just as well take a more complex approach to the unknown—such as never asking them for another goddamned nickel and seeing what effect that produces over time. Today, after all, is not only the fourth, but the Fourth. And as with the stolid, unpromising, unlikable Markhams, real independence must sometimes be shoved down your throat.
On a street we cannot see, a car alarm (possibly the same one as before) sets off loudly, and at hectic intervals, bwoop-bwip, bwoop-bwip, just as the bells at St. Leo’s begin tolling ten. It makes for a minor cacophony: thirteen clocks striking at the same second. Joe and Phyllis smile and shake their heads, look around at the heavens as if they were breaking open and this was the only signal they would hear. Though they have decided to try being happy, are in a firm acceptance mode and would agree at this moment to like anything. It must be said, at last, that I admire them.
I take a parting glimpse at Myrlene Beavers’s, where the silver bars of her walker are visible behind the screen. She is watching too, phone in her quaverous grip, alert to fresh outrage. “Who are these people? What do they hope to achieve? If only Tom were alive to take care of it.”
I’m shaking Joe Markham’s hand almost without knowing it. It is good to leave now, as I have done the best I can by everyone. What more can you do for wayward strangers than to shelter them?
Itake a morning’s ride up into town now, bent on nothing special—a drive-by of my hot-dog stand on the Green, a pass of the parade’s staging grounds for a sniff of the holiday aromas, a cruise (like a tourist’s) down my own street to inspect the site of Homo haddamus pithecarius, whose appearance, irrespective of provenance—M or F, human or ape, freedman or slave—I have a certain natural interest in. Who of us, after all, would be buried minus the hope of being returned someday to the air and light, to the curious, the tentative and even affectionate regard of our fellow uprights? None of us, I grant you, would mind a second appraisal with the benefit of some time having passed.
I in fact enjoy such a yearly drive through town, end to end, without my usual purposes to spur me (a property-line check, a roof and foundation write-up, an eleventh-hour visit before a closing), just a drive to take a look but not to touch or feel or be involved. Such a tour embodies its own quiet participation, since there is sovereign civic good in being a bystander, a watcher, one of those whom civic substance and display are meant to serve—the public.
Seminary Street has a measly, uncrowded, preparade staticness to it all around. The town’s new bunting is swagged on our three stoplights, the sidewalk flags not flying but lank. Citizens on the sidewalks all seem at yawing loose ends, their faces wide and uncommunicative as they stop to watch the parade crew blocking the curbs with sawhorses for the bands and floats that will follow, as if (they seem to say) this should be a usual Monday, one should be getting other things done and started. Skinny neighborhood boys I don’t recognize slalom the hot middle stripes on skateboards, their arms floating out for balance, while at the Virtual Profusion and the former Benetton and Laura Ashley (now in new personas as Foot Locker and The Gap) clerks are shoving sale tables back to their storefronts, preparing to wait in the cool indoors for crowds that may finally come.
It is an odd holiday, to be sure—one a man or woman could easily grow abstracted about, its practical importance to the task of holding back wild and dark misrule never altogether clear or provable; as though independence were only private and too crucial to celebrate with others; as though we should all just get on with being independent, given that it is after all the normal, commonsensical human condition, to be taken for granted unless opposed or thwarted, in which case unreserved, even absurd measures should be taken to restore or reimagine it (as I’ve tried to do with my son but that he has accomplished alone). Best maybe just to pass the day as the original signers did and as I prefer to do, in a country-like setting near to home, alone with your thoughts, your fears, your hopes, your “moments of reason” for what new world lies fearsomely ahead.
I cruise now out toward the big unfinished Shop Rite at the eastern verge of town, where Haddam borders on woodsy Haddam Township, past the Shalom Temple, the defunct Jap car dealer and the Magyar Bank, up old Route 27 toward New Brunswick. The Shop Rite was scheduled to be up and going by New Year’s, but its satellite businesses (a TCBY, a Color Tile and a Pet Depot) began dragging their feet after the stock market dip and the resultant “chill” in the local climate, so that all work is at present on hold. I, in fact, wouldn’t be sad or consider myself an antidevelopment traitor to see the whole shebang fold its tents and leave the business to our merchants in town; turn the land into a people’s park or a public vegetable garden; make friends in a new way. (Such things, of course, never happen.)
Out on the wide parking lot, fairly baking in the heat, waits most of our parade, its constituents wandering about in unparade-like disorder: a colonial fife-and-drum band from De Tocqueville Academy; a regiment of coonskin-cap regulars in buckskins, accompanied by several burly men in Mother Hubbards and combat boots (dressed to show independence can be won at the cost of looking ridiculous). Here is a brigade of beefy, wired-up wheelchair vets in American-flag shirts, doing weaves and wheelies while passing basketballs (others simply sit smoking and talking in the sunshine). Waiting, too, is another Mustang regatta, a female clown troupe, some local car dealers in good-guy cowboy hats, ready to chauffeur our elected officials (not yet arrived) in the backs of new convertibles, while a passel of political ingenues are all set to ride behind on a flatbed truck, wearing oversize baby diapers and convict clothes. A swank silver bus parked all by itself under the shadeless Shop Rite sign contains the Fruehlingheisen Banjo and Saxophone Band from Dover, Delaware, most of whose members have postponed coming out. And last but not least, two Chevy bigfoots, one red, one blue, sit mid-lot, ready to rumble down Seminary at parade’s end, their tiny cabs like teacups above their giant cleated wheels. (Later on there’re plans for them to crush some Japanese cars out at the Revolutionary War Battlefield.) All that’s lacking, in my view, are harem guards, who would make Paul Bascombe happy.
From where I stop out on the shoulder for a look, nothing yet seems inspired or up to parade pitch. Several tissue-paper floats are not yet manned or hitched up. The centerpiece Haddam High band has not appeared. And marshals in hot swallowtail coats and tricorne hats are hiking around with walkie-talkies and clipboards, conferring with parade captains and gazing at their watches. All in fact seems timeless and desultory, most of the participants standing alone in the sun in their costumes, looking off much as the fanta
sy ballplayers did in Cooperstown yesterday, and much, I’m sure, for the same reasons: they’re bored, or else full of longing for something they can’t quite name.
I decide to make a fast swerve through the lot entrance, avoid the whole parade assemblage and continue back out onto 27 toward town, satisfied that I’ve glimpsed behind the parade’s façade and not been the least disappointed. Even the smallest public rigmarole is a pain in the ass, its true importance measurable not in the final effect but by how willing we are to leave our usual selves behind and by how much colossal bullshit and anarchy we’re willing to put up with in a worthwhile cause. I always like it better when clowns seem to try to be happy.
Unexpectedly, though, just as I make my turn around and through the Shop Rite entrance, bent on escape, a man—one of the swallowtail marshals in a hat, red sash and high-buttoned shoes, who’s been consulting a clipboard while talking to one of the young men wearing diapers—starts hurriedly toward my moving car. He waves his clipboard as if he knows me and has an aim, means to share a holiday greeting or message, perhaps even get me in on the fun as someone’s substitute. (He may have noticed my LICK BUSH sticker and thinks I’m in the mood for high jinks.) Only I’m in another mood, perfectly good but one I’m happy to keep to myself, and so continue swerving without acknowledging him, right back onto 27. There’s no telling, after all, who he might be: someone with a lengthy realty complaint, or possibly Mr. Fred Koeppel of Griggstown, who “needs” to discuss a negotiated commission on his house, which’ll sell itself anyway (so let it). Or possibly (and this happens with too great a frequency) he’s somebody from my former married days who happened to be in the Yale Club just yesterday morning and saw Ann and wants to report she looks “great,” “super,” “dynamite”—one of those. But I’m not interested. Independence Day, at least for the daylight hours, confers upon us the opportunity to act as independently as we know how. And my determination, this day, is to stay free of suspicious greetings.
I drive back in on sunny and fast-emptying Seminary, where the actual civic razzmatazz still seems a good hour off—past the closed PO, the closed Frenchy’s Gulf, the nearly empty August Inn, the Coffee Spot, around the Square, past the Press Box Bar, the closed Lauren-Schwindell office, Garden State S&L, the somnolent Institute itself and the always officially open but actually profoundly closed First Presbyterian, where the WELCOME sign out front says, Happy Birthday, America! * 5K Race * HE Can Help You At The Finish Line!
Though farther on and across from Village Hall on Haddam Green there is action, with plenty of citizens already arrived in musing good spirits. A red-and-white-striped carnival marquee has been put up in the open middle sward, with our newly refurbished Victorian bandstand shining whitely in the elms and beeches and crawling with kids. Many Haddamites are simply out here strolling around as they might on some lane in County Antrim, though wearing frilly pastel dresses, seersuckers, white bucks, boaters and pink parasols, and looking—many of them—like self-conscious extras in a Fifties movie about the South. Out-of-place country-yokel music is blaring from a little glass-sided trailer owned by the station where I read Doctor Zhivago to the blind, and the police and fire departments have their free exhibits of flameproof suits, bomb-defusing shields and sniper rifles set up side by side under the big tent. The CYO has just begun its continuous volleyball game, the hospital its free blood pressure testing, the Lions and AA their joint free-coffee canteen, while the Young Democrats and Young Republicans are in the process of hosing down a mudhole for their annual tug-of-war. Otherwise, various village businesses, with their employees turned out in white aprons and red bow ties, have joined forces behind long slug-bucket grills to hawk meatless leanburgers, while some costumed Pennsylvania Dutch dancers perform folk didoes on a portable dance floor to music only they can hear. Later on, a dog show is planned.
Off to the left, across from the lawn of Village Hall, where seven years ago I achieved the profound and unwelcome independence of divorce, my silver “Firecracker Weenie Firecracker” cart sits in the warm witch hazel shade, attracting a small, dedicated crowd including Uncle Sam and two other Clio Street bombers, a few of my neighbors, plus Ed McSweeny in a business suit and a briefcase and Shax Murphy wearing a pair of pink go-to-hell pants, a bright-green blazer and running shoes—and looking, despite his Harvard background, like nothing so much as a realtor. Wardell and Everick’s gleaming onyx faces are visible back inside the trailer under the awning. Dressed in silly waiters’ tunics and paper caps, they are dispensing free Polish dogs and waxed-paper root beer mugs and occasionally rattling the “Clair Devane Fund” canisters Vonda has made up in our office. I have tried now on three occasions to sound out the two of them about Clair, whom they adored and treated like a rambunctious niece. But they have avoided me each time. And I’ve realized, as a consequence, that what I probably wanted was not to hear words about Clair at all but to hear something life-affirming and flattering about myself, and they are merely wise to me and have chosen not to let me get started. (Though it’s also possible that they’ve been stung to silence now by the two days when they were held by the police, treated harshly and then released without comment or ceremony—deemed, after all and as they are, entirely innocent.)
And yet, all is as I’ve expected and modestly planned it: no great shakes, but no small shakes either—a fine achievement for a day such at this, following a day such as that.
I pull unnoticed to the curb on the east edge of the Green, just at Cromwell Lane, let down my window to the music and crowd hum and heat, and simply sit and watch: millers and strollers, oldsters and lovers, singles and families with kids, everyone out for a morning’s smiley look-see, then an amble up Seminary for the parade, before hearkening to the day’s remains with a practical eye. There is the easeful feeling that the 4th is a day one can leave to chance; though as the hours slide toward dark it will still seem best to find oneself at home. Possibly it’s too close to Flag Day, which itself is too close to Memorial Day, which is already too damn close to Father’s Day. Too much even well-motivated celebration can pose problems.
I of course think of Paul, cased in gauze and bandages in not-so-faraway Connecticut, who would find something funny to say at the day’s innocent expense: “You know you’re an American when you …” (get socked in the eye). “They laughed at me in America when I …” (barked like a Pomeranian). “Americans never, or almost never …” (see their fathers every day).
Surprisingly, I have not thought of him at length since early dawn, when I woke up in a gray light and cold from a dream in which, on a lawn like the Deerslayer’s, he was dragged to earth by a dog that looked like old Keester and torn bloody, while I stood on the porch nuzzling and whispering with an indistinct woman wearing a bikini and a chef’s hat, whom I couldn’t break away from to offer help. It is a dream with no mystery—like most dreams—and merely punctuates our puny efforts to gain dominion over our unbrave natures in behalf of advancing toward what we deem to be right. (The complex dilemma of independence is not so simple a matter, which is why we fight to be known by how hard we try rather than by how completely we succeed.)
Though where Paul is concerned I’ve only just begun trying. And while I don’t subscribe to the “crash-bam” theory of human improvement, which says you must knock good sense into your head and bad sense out, yesterday may have cleared our air and accounts and opened, along with wounds, an unexpected window for hope to go free. A last in some ways, but a first in others. “The soul becomes,” as the great man said, by which he meant, I think, slowly.
Last night, when I stopped in the moon-shot river village of Long Eddy, New York, a TOWN MEETING TONITE sign had been posted in both directions. “Reagan Cabinet Minister to Explain Things and Answer Questions” was their important agenda, there on the banks of the Delaware, where just below town single fishermen in ghostly silhouette stood in the darkly glittering stream, their rods and lines flicking and arcing through the hot swarms of insects.
At a pay phone on a closed-up filling station wall, I made a brief reconnaissance call down to Karl Bemish, to learn if the menacing “Mexicans” had had their fates sealed at the business end of Karl’s alley sweeper. (Not, I prayed.)
“Oh well, jeez, hell no, Franky. Those guys,” Karl said merrily from his cockpit behind the pop-stand window. It was nine. “The cops got them three skunks. They went to knock over a Hillcrest Farms over in New Hope. But the guy runnin’ it was a cop himself. And he came out the front blazin’ with an AK-47. Shot out the glass, all the tires, penetrated the engine block, cracked the frame, shot all three of ‘em in the course. None of them died, though, which is sort of a shame. Did it standing right on the sidewalk. I guess you need to be a cop to run a small business these days.”
“Boy,” I said, “boy-oh-boy.” Across silent, deserted Highway 97, all the windows in the belfried town hall were blazing and plenty of cars and pickups sat parked out front. I wondered who the “Reagan Minister” might’ve been—possibly someone on his way to prison and a Christian conversion.
“I bet you’re having a bang-up time, aren’t you, with your kid?” Mugs were clanking in the background. I could hear muffled, satisfied voices of late-night customers as Karl opened and shut the window slide and the cash register dinged. Good emanations, all.
“We had some problems,” I said, feeling numbed by the day’s menu of sad events, plus the driving, plus my skull and all my bones beginning to ache.
“Ahh, you prolly got your expectations jacked up too high,” Karl said, preoccupied yet annoying. “It’s like armies moving on their bellies. It’s slow going.”
