Long Made Short

by Stephen Dixon

  It was still there. “I don’t want to put my head near its heart or beak, for those things can bite. No wonder I hit it. Look at its size.” “Kick it,” she said, walking over. “You mean nudge it with my foot. Okay. But if it jumps it’s going to startle me.” He touched it with the tip of his shoe, then jabbed it. The crow moved but didn’t seem alive. “Think it’s alive but just pretending?” he said. “I wouldn’t doubt it—Seriously,” she said, “I don’t think so. I think it got that heart attack or the cerebral equal of one—a flying stroke or something winged animals get only when they’re flying, and not particularly when people below are shooting their fingers at them, but that’s all. Your bang-bang and its fatal heart failure or stroke are only coincidental, one chance in a million, and it came up today.” “I hope so. Because I wouldn’t want to personally kill anything living like that. But come on, crow,” he said to the bird, “move, move, get up, fly or walk away. Do your messy garbage-bag biting and picking, your squawking, keeping us up when we want to take afternoon naps or sleep late. Do what the hell you’re supposed to and don’t make me feel bad, because the one-in-a-million coincidence I can’t prove.”

  The crow began fidgeting, stood up—they backed away—flapped its wings, seemed to be testing its feet out on the ground, flapped some more, tried to fly, looked at them, walked backward away from them a few feet, flapped harder while it walked frontward even farther away from them and took off, flew a few inches off the ground several yards, then up to the sky. He pointed his finger at it, held his wrist while he got a bead on it. She said “Don’t chance it; not today. Maybe you did kill it and then your little entreaty before brought it back to life, and you won’t be so fortunate the next time.” He said “Just a test to prove my supernatural or whatever-you-want-to-call-them powers—powers I never had that I know of but am now naturally curious to see if I do—Hold it. Steady, steady. I’ve got it. Bang-bang. And bang, just in case.” The crow flew on, settled in a tree. “Maybe I missed.” “Or you wounded it,” she said. “Well, I’m not going to find out. In fact, no more games or tests like that. In fact, I’m throwing away my gun,” and flicked his hand to the side. They heard a clump in the grass about ten feet away in the direction he’d flicked to. “You believe that?” “It must be a rabbit or squirrel,” she said, “or a mouse.” “Probably a mouse.” “But then again, who knows? Though we should try to find out.”

  She went over to where they’d heard the clump. Nothing moved. “Maybe it’s already gone,” she said. “Or it could have been something that just went down a hole, didn’t need to go through the grass. But we won’t tell anybody about all this, okay?” “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s a good story to tell, raises lots of interesting questions, puts what you didn’t think you thought right out there, right? And we’re having dinner with the Chamberlains later and they’re so dull that they’re wonderful to shock, so why not?” “It might be somewhat off-putting to them. They’ll think we’re getting loony and they’ll tell people, and then everyone will think we’ve become peculiar.” “Let them,” he said. “If they don’t like it, let them ostracize us too. Then we won’t have to return the dinner invitation to the Chamberlains and all our other dull neighbors who sort of force us to socialize more than we like. Let the whole town know, for all I care. It’ll give us more time to ourselves and what we really like to do. Like reading, for God’s sake. I’m going in to read. Like a good cup of hot tea, or a drink?” “I’ll make it for you,” she said. “No, it was my suggestion, and what I want to do, and you put up and will probably still have to put up with all my antics today, so I’ll make it for you.”

  A crow in the tree that their crow flew in crowed. “It doesn’t necessarily have to be the one you shot at,” she said. “That’s a favorite resting and gabbing place of theirs,” he said. “In fact—I just figured it out—I bet it’s nesting there, or protecting a nest of another crow there. That’s why it swooped down on us. Because I’ve never seen one so aggressive, except with dogs and cats.” “It could be sick,” she said, “distemper, or whatever crows get.” “No, it looked too healthy on the ground. Children, wonderful, just what we need around here, more crows. But I like the idea of an animal protecting its young or soon-to-be young or someone else’s.” A crow crowed from the tree. “See, it agrees with me. We won’t tell the Chamberlains this part, because it’s getting too silly. But this, yes,” and he aimed his finger at the tree and said “Bang-bang-bang, bang-bang, bang, bang, bang-bang,” moving his finger around to different places in the tree. He imagined several crows dropping out. “Ah, wonderful, a longer sleep tomorrow morning, maybe even after that a caw-free afternoon nap. Actually, I’m glad I didn’t hit any. Some of them might have been young. Let’s go in before we truly get silly.” “Did we shut off the cellar light?” she said. “I don’t remember. I’ll see you inside. Put up the water, or take out the ice tray,” and he headed for the cellar. A crow crowed from the tree. “That a boy,” he said, “or that a girl. Whatever you are, crow, crow.” What I’d like to know, he thought, peering into the cellar and seeing it was dark, is why I didn’t hear her breathing or feel her neck pulse or her heartbeat when I checked. The pulse, even in the neck, can be a little difficult to find, and I was nervous. Even her heartbeat, but her breath? He flipped the cellar doors closed with his feet. They made a loud double bang, and she yelled from kitchen window “What’s that?” “Just closing things up,” he said, “and the light was out. You do it? Because I don’t remember I did,” and he went inside.

  VOICES, THOUGHTS

  Gordon hears voices in his head again today. They tell him don’t go out, stay in, don’t bother to make lunch, have a snack, say something nice to your wife next time you see her, don’t be a fake, make sure to give your kids a kiss when you pick them up and ask them what they did, where’re you going? what’re you doing? stay put, get up, run in place a bit, don’t budge, read, nap, think about things, think about Louise.

  He thinks about Louise. She was very young when he first knew her, they both were, three, four, five years old. They played together for years. Her house, his. She once let him see her with her panties down. People said they were like husband and wife sometimes. That they were sure to marry each other when they grew up. “Do you want to?” they asked and he said yes. “Do you want to?” they asked her and she said “I don’t know, I think so, it’s not something you can just say, maybe yes.” He took her to his basement. That was one of the places they played. He said he’d give her something, he forgets what, no doubt something he thought valuable and which she would too, and she said “Don’t tell, don’t ever tell or I’ll never play with you again,” and showed, let his eyes stay on it for a few seconds from a few feet away, and when he stuck his hand out to touch, he wasn’t going to go further, he didn’t know there was anything further, she said “Don’t be a pig,” and pulled her panties up and dropped her dress over them. They continued to play together a few more years, but less and then much less. She had her girl friends, he had his friends, all boys. He last saw her when she was around ten. They’d been going to different schools for a couple of years, she to a parochial one, he to a public. She moved off the block. He didn’t know she had till she was gone. That was it, never saw or heard from her or anything about her again.

  Think about Willy. His wife passes and says “Really none of my business, but aren’t you going to move from that chair today?” and he says “It’s Sunday, day of resting, and kids are out, so what’s the difference? Besides, I’m thinking,” and she says “Of what?” and he says “Just thinking; I don’t want to break it, so I’ll tell you later.” Willy was his best friend for years. Soon after he first met Willy, Gordon said if he wanted he’d teach him how to box. Gordon thought himself a pretty good boxer. An uncle had given him two pairs of gloves and a mouthpiece and he used to practice in front of his mirror in his undershorts and sometimes punch his pillow across the room. They went to the basement and put the gloves on—he f
orgets how they were able to tie the last glove; probably Gordon, feeling he had the advantage, left one of his gloves untied and the one he was able to tie he did with one hand and his teeth—and he showed him how to jab, punch, feint, dance, block a punch, keep the face and neck covered, what going below the belt meant, and after a while Willy said “No more, I give up, my face hurts, I’ll never get the hang of it.” A few months later Willy asked for a rematch and Gordon thought this was a good chance to try out the fancy footwork and bolo punch he saw in a movie newsreel of a recent champion middleweight fight, and they went to the basement and Willy outboxed him from the start. Willy hurt his nose—he was about two inches taller and ten pounds heavier and had a much longer reach than him and was now wearing his own mouthpiece—made his lips bleed, punched him silly and danced around and ducked in a way that Gordon, after the first of what were going to be three two-minute rounds, ended up swinging wildly and a couple of times landing on the floor. He never said to Willy “You beat me good, how the hell you learn all that so fast and where’d you get the mouthpiece?” He just stepped back, spit out his mouthpiece and took off his gloves and said “I’m bushed, been feeling weak for days; let’s go out and play.” They never boxed again, never fought, except for a few quick arguments, in any kind of way. They usually walked to school together, met outside after school to walk home, spent time together weekends, did this till they graduated in the eighth grade. Then Willy went to an agricultural high school in Queens—his grandfather owned a farm near Hartford and said he’d give him half of it—and Gordon to a special academic one in Brooklyn, and they didn’t see each other much for a year, and then not at all unless they bumped into each other on the subway going or coming home from school or on the block or in a neighborhood store or movie theater, let’s say. Then Willy’s dad got a super’s job in an apartment building on the East Side, and Gordon never saw Willy again till about twenty years later when Willy was at their favorite Central Park West corner watching spot with his kids for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade and Gordon was back with his folks till he got his own place. Willy introduced his girls to him—“This little pip-squeak was one of your daddy’s friends when he lived here.” He said what he did—a printer upstate—and then the parade started and Willy pushed his kids closer to the police barricades and then under them so they could all sit on the street, and when it was over Gordon thought he’d talk some more with him over coffee and juice and English muffins or something for his kids at the Cherry Restaurant on Columbus, but couldn’t find him.

  Think of Rachel. Thinks. Standing up in front of her third-story window, and the boys shouting “Take off your clothes, Rachel”—older boys first, then the younger ones joining in—“Take off all your clothes and show us,” and she disappeared and came back without her clothes on—he’d been told she’d done this before—and they all whistled and cheered and an older boy yelled “Put one finger in your mouth, Rachel, and now the other in your peepee hole,” and she did this and they whistled and cheered. Then her mother came to the window, pulled Rachel in, opened the window wider and shouted “You bad boys, you scum of the earth, you’re the worst of the worst, ditches you should dig for yourselves and die in, picking on a poor dumb girl like this, making her do things so wicked. Go home. All of you, I know you and I’m calling your mothers, so they’ll be looking for you to scold and I hope give a beating to, so run home quick, you slime, for I’m also calling the police.” He was scared what his mother would say and stayed away from home till dinner time, and when he got there his mother asked what did he do to Rachel? “Nothing, she was up in her window when I last saw her when I was walking up the block, so what could I have done to her?” and she said “Did you encourage her to do what her mother said you did?—the gang of you, Ben, Willy, Caesar and whatever other morons you have out there, though Willy I’m surprised,” and he said “I had nothing to do with anything, the older boys were the ones who said for her to do what she did, and I just stayed there because they’d stopped and I was walking to the park with them.” She believed him but told him to walk away from things like that from now on and docked him a week’s allowance. His father heard about it later and said he was lying and raised his hand as if to hit him and sent him to bed right after supper and took away his allowance for the next four weeks and barred him from spending any of the money he made on his own. Rachel’s parents took her out of kindergarten and from first grade on sent her by bus—“At a tremendous expense to them too, which they can’t afford,” his mother said—to a religious elementary and then high school.

  “So come on, out with it, what are you thinking about so deeply?” his wife says, going upstairs, which means she had come downstairs and passed him twice without him even knowing it. “Though of course if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay too,” and he says “Just some things, decisions, worries—let me first think them through a little more before I talk about them. But lots of things are troubling me, you can probably see that just from the strained look on my face,” and she says “No, you look all right, not smiling but not in any grieved or harried state.” “Well that’s good, but it’s for sure not how I’ve been feeling, for I’ve had thoughts running through like mortality, growing possibilities of sickness, painful illness, lots of nice things to look forward to—goddamn teeth every third week it seems with new problems, not to mention the daily reports of a collapsing globe, and my work, or lack of much satisfaction and completion in it. Kids growing up and leaving home and what they ultimately have to face, though who knows? Maybe they’ll do much better at it than I. And some of the terrible things I’ve done to them—you know, we’ve spoken of it—my anger, outbursts, pushing them hard, physically a few times, once slapping Sylvia’s face, ranting at them a couple of times that I wish they’d never been born or I was dead—that I find very difficult to live with. Well, not as bad as that, and the ‘live with’ and ‘was dead’ must sound funny, but also some deeper philosophical questions if some of those weren’t,” and she says “Like what? I’ve got time,” and he says “Nothing I can really talk about clearly right now—those are just floating around; but I’ll nab the buggers and get back to you with them later, I swear,” and she says “Good, I’ll be interested,” and throws him a kiss and goes upstairs.

  Think about Thomas. Thomas was a new kid on the block, they quickly became friends, for a while they also used to meet almost every weekday morning and then pick up Willy in front of his building and all walk to school. Then one day Thomas wasn’t outside his building waiting for him and wasn’t in school that day and wasn’t outside his building or in school the next day and Gordon asked his mother if he could call him and did. “Thomas is ill and won’t be returning to school this whole year,” Thomas’s mother said, “thank you for calling,” and he said “Does that mean after the summer too, since it’s only April now?” and she said “No, he could be back sometime in the fall, though thank you for calling, Thomas will appreciate it,” and she hung up before he could say “Can I please speak to him if he’s not too sick and it’s okay?” He told his mother he wanted to talk to Thomas to say he hopes he’ll feel better, and she said “Possibly she didn’t realize that, I think it’d be all right to call again.” He did, asked Thomas’s mother if he could visit him—“I could do it right now, I’m just a few houses up the block”—and she said “Oh no, my dear, he’s much too out of sorts to see anyone now. Maybe in a month or so, probably more like two,” and he said “Like in June? I hope not July because then I’ll be away in camp for two months,” and she said “If we’re lucky, the end of June. But don’t you worry about him, he’ll be better soon enough and will be delighted you called.” Almost every time he passed Thomas’s building the next few weeks he looked up to the fourth-floor brownstone window where his bedroom was, hoping to see him and wave. A few times he thought he should yell up to him “Thomas, it’s me, Gordon, can you come to the window—is there anything you want—are you okay?” but never did. H
is mother bought a get-well card for him to sign and leave above Thomas’s mailbox, the class sent him a card they all signed, and he called him once more to see how he was—maybe even get him to the phone, since it seemed to have been long enough—and Thomas’s mother said “He’s feeling a little better, not well enough to come to the phone though, but I will tell him you called—he’s loved all the attention he’s received lately from his teachers and friends.” About two weeks later his mother said she had some very bad news to tell him and he thought “Did I do something bad I don’t know about? Are they planning to move from the city and take me away from all my friends? Is one of my uncles or aunts very sick or did one of them die?” Two of them already had, one on a golf course, the other in a bathroom, and this is how she started to tell him it. She said “Your friend Thomas died two days ago in the hospital—that’s where he’s mostly been the last few weeks,” and he said “Well not two weeks ago, because that’s when I talked to his mother and she said he was home.” “Maybe she was keeping it from you, knowing how you’d feel. He had a weak heart, something he was born with, and it simply wouldn’t work for him anymore.” She was going to the funeral, he said he wanted to, and she said it was during school hours and, besides, he was much too young to go to a young person’s funeral. “They’re much sadder than an adult’s, and it might be upsetting for the boy’s parents to see you there.” He thought it strange she wanted to go; she hardly knew Thomas, didn’t even seem to like him when he was over at the house, but he went along with how she explained it: Since he couldn’t go, it was her way of showing his feelings and the family’s respects. Later that day after the funeral he asked how it was and she said there was a good turnout, she’d never seen such an array of flowers in the chapel, the coffin was open, which she didn’t think was right, till the ceremony began. “I’m glad I stopped you from going. It was the first funeral of a child I’ve been to and was almost too sad for me to take.” He asked if any kids were there and she said “Cousins, I heard, your age and younger, which is all right I suppose if they were close, but nobody from your class.” Just about everytime he walked past Thomas’s building the next few weeks he looked at his window. The shade was always down and then one day it was up and the next day there were Venetian blinds on it. Sometimes, the next few years, he saw Thomas’s parents in the neighborhood or on the block, together or alone, and they always asked how he was and to give their regards to his parents, whom they’d barely met and probably not his father once, and a few times said he was getting tall and seemed to be sprouting a little hair above his lips and was growing up to be a fine handsome young man and asked how school was and Miss O’Brien, his and Thomas’s former teacher. Please give her their regards too. He still, when he visits his mother, occasionally bumps into Mr. Neuman, Thomas’s father, who never recognizes him till he points out who he is: “Gordon Mandelbaum from up the block, number twenty-three, my dad’s the druggist at La Rochelle.” Mrs. Neuman died about five years after Thomas. “Heartbreak over her son,” his mother said. “It had to be that, for just by her looks and build and the type of work she did for a living till that time, I didn’t think there was a healthier woman alive.”