Nostalgia

by Dennis McFarland

  To Hayes’s right, the young man in the next bed begins to hum a tune, softly. He is not much older than Hayes, freckled, with reddish-brown side-whiskers, and called by the name of Casper. Like most of the patients on the ward, he rarely takes off his bummer’s cap, and Hayes, who arrived without one, envies the comfort he imagines it gives him. Casper’s left arm has been amputated just below the elbow, and the stump, swaddled in yards of bandaging, he has adopted as an infant child. He holds it with his right hand and rocks it and now and again sings to it; if people speak too loudly near his bed, he sometimes hushes them, gently admonishing them not to wake the dear, sleeping stump. Hayes admires Casper’s resourcefulness and good cheer. The soft tune he hums makes Hayes think of his own mother. (The young Summerfield stands in the hallway outside the slightly open door to her room, where, braiding his sister’s hair, she holds some pins between her lips and hums a wistful melody.) Hayes closes his eyes and listens to Casper’s lullaby, but soon he becomes aware of a small commotion to his left. The patient on that side of him—Leo, the poor man who has been shot through the bladder and leaks into his bedding—is outstretching his arm across the space between their beds. Hayes finds the part in the netting and takes from the man a small looking glass. Leo, entirely silent as always, seems satisfied and withdraws his arm, back into his own gauzy tent.

  Hayes peers briefly into the glass (where he finds gazing back at him a pair of surprisingly ancient-looking eyes), and he tries to think why Leo would pass him the mirror in the middle of the night. He cannot imagine what the man’s intention might be. But the next morning, when he finds Leo’s bed empty and watches as a surly attendant strips its sodden sheets, he’ll construe the incident of the looking glass as the feeble and brokenhearted impulse of a middle-aged soldier with no one to bid good-bye.

  WHEN HE WAS very young, perhaps four or five, his father took him one evening (for reasons he was never told or, if told, never understood) to his Brooklyn dance studio, where Mr. Hayes was to conduct a gentlemen’s class at eight o’clock. They’d set out on foot for the studio around seven, and as it was October, dusk had already cloaked the houses along Hicks Street. A bright yellow moon rose over the river, which meant that the fascinating new streetlamps, powered by gas piped beneath the ground, would not be lit tonight, a disappointment. Mr. Hayes said something about the “crisp” air, a remark Summerfield connected to the clopping of horses in the streets. He’d never before visited his father’s studio—which was located on the upper level of a two-story building opposite the City Hall—and he was immediately taken with the large room’s golden floor and enormous windows with arches at the top. Most odd, Mr. Hayes had brought along a pic-nic supper in a hamper, and after the ordeal of lighting the many tallow candles of the studio’s two chandeliers, they retired to a small connected room that served as an office. Here an oil lamp was lit, and they ate slices of cold meat, apples, and asparagus at the corner of a dark imposing desk. There was lemon cheesecake for dessert, but just before they got to it, someone arrived at the office door—a dashing and jolly man, who, when introduced to Summerfield, clicked his heels together and saluted like a soldier: Mr. Houseberry (funny name), who played piano for the gentlemen’s class. Mr. Hayes offered his piece of cheesecake to Mr. Houseberry, who made a negligible protest, sat down on a stool next to them, and ate it, exclaiming again and again, “What a treat! What a treat!”

  When he was done, Mr. Houseberry pulled a handkerchief from inside his coat and began to wipe his mouth and whiskers. While still executing this thorough clean-up, he said gravely, “So, Mr. Hayes, tell me, where do you think this ugly slave business will end? This secession business, this Compromise business, where is it all going to end?”

  Mr. Hayes glanced at Summerfield and drew his lips into a thin line. He shook his head sadly and sighed. “I honestly don’t know,” he said at last.

  “Well, I think it’ll surely end in war,” said Mr. Houseberry and returned the handkerchief to its place inside the coat. Summerfield couldn’t tell—not from the man’s face, not from his tone—if war pleased or displeased him.

  “I hope not,” said Mr. Hayes. “Or if it does, I pray it comes quickly and ends quickly, long before Summerfield’s of age.”

  “That’s the bind, isn’t it?” said Mr. Houseberry. “That’s the pickle. Efforts to avoid only serve to delay. And then we’ll be in for the ruin of the long-smoldering fire.”

  Mr. Hayes stood and took a step or two toward the doorway. Using his weary voice, which generally indicated it was time to move on, he said, “I hope you’re wrong, John.”

  “About what?” said Mr. Houseberry, turning on his stool.

  “About everything,” said Mr. Hayes, holding open the door. “About everything.”

  After Mr. Houseberry retreated to the studio, Summerfield soon heard a succession of scales from the piano, a rapid report, staccato style, that sounded as if the notes were being fired from a gun. Mr. Hayes changed out of his street shoes into a pair of peculiar red dancing slippers and white silk socks, which he claimed made it easy for students to observe the movements of his feet. Then he looked thoughtfully at Summerfield, and as if to explain his sacrifice of the cheesecake, he said, “I’m afraid I don’t pay Mr. Houseberry enough.”

  He lowered the lamp and got Summerfield settled on a bench with a soft cushion and a shawl. He told him he didn’t need to fall asleep, but that he should rest there until the class was over. He bent down and indicated by tapping a finger to his own cheek that Summerfield should kiss him, a request so rare it made Summerfield timid. “Well, come on,” said Mr. Hayes, tapping his finger again, and Summerfield craned his neck and pressed his mouth against his father’s face just above the line of his whiskers. The kiss left a salty flavor on his lips, which he explored cautiously with the tip of his tongue. “You won’t be afraid, will you?” said Mr. Hayes, and Summerfield shook his head. It was true, he would not be afraid.

  A short windowless hallway without lamp or candle connected the office to the studio. When Mr. Hayes left, he closed the doors at either end, and Summerfield could then barely hear the sound of the piano. The walls of the tiny office were paneled with dark wood, which glowed in the low lamplight, reddish and beautiful. Soon Mr. Houseberry stopped playing scales and began what might have been a church song—it progressed in the orderly style of a church song—and though the music sounded soft through the walls, Summerfield knew it was probably loud in the studio. Briefly he wondered what “of age” might mean; it sounded to him like another way of saying “very old,” but he couldn’t make sense of things, and he wasn’t even sure if he’d heard correctly. He rolled onto his side and noticed that the fabric on the cushion of the bench where he lay had a pattern of bees; his eyes were quite close to the bees, and he discovered that by fluttering his eyelids he could make the bees appear to dance. Soon, one of the bees, bored with dancing, flew away down into the kneehole of the enormous desk; Summerfield, following it there, found a very pleasant pond surrounded by willow trees, where his mother and his sister, waiting inside a white gazebo, greeted him affectionately.

  When he awakened, he could see nothing but unrecognizable shapes, darker within a darkness that smelled of lamp oil. He sat up and felt his feet touch a solid floor. Nearby he could make out the brass crescent shape of a doorknob. From far away, he could hear music playing, a piano, something fast and merry, which grew louder once he’d got the door open, louder still as he groped his way down a black hall (floor squeaking beneath his feet) and found a second knob. The next door, heavy and perhaps swollen, required all his strength just to draw it open enough so that he could press himself sideways through, and he ended up for a moment with his back to the place he’d entered. When he turned, he faced a spectacle stranger than any dream: at the farther end of the room—which was hot and smelled of wool and tobacco—many black-suited men danced together as couples, whirling in a frenzied manner, laughing as they went round in a circle; behind them, fou
r great arched windows rose up to the ceiling, black storybook mountains. As the piano grew steadily louder, the notes faster and faster, a heavy man slipped and crashed to the floor, causing, like cascading dominoes, a mad pileup, roars of laughter, and a sudden end to the music. Then, strangest of all, he heard his father, crying out from the midst of the ruckus, “And that, gentlemen, is the ball … room … polka!”

  Summerfield, who had moved slowly forward and stopped beneath the first of the chandeliers, now felt wax drip onto the sleeve of his jacket. He looked down, and when next he looked up, one white face from the jumble of men, one pair of eyes, had found him and stared back at him with a startled-dead expression.

  He turned and ran to the door behind him, wriggled through, pushed it shut, and stood in the now-soothing dark. After another moment, he thought, Papa, Papa’s studio, dancing class, cushion with bees. As he moved on, sliding his right shoulder along the wall, these thoughts, like stones in a stream, brought him back to himself.

  But when he gained the bench inside the office and lay down again, he couldn’t seem to rest, couldn’t even keep his eyes closed for more than a second or two. Lying on his back, he held his hand up a few inches over his face; he could barely see his fingers, but as always, there were four, and a thumb.

  What a surprising word, thumb, not at all like something that bled when pricked by a thorn.

  From beyond the windowless hallway and closed doors, faintly the music started again, slow at first, but gradually faster and faster. He cupped his hands over his ears and squeezed his eyes shut, but of course this did not entirely deliver him from a world in which anything at all might happen, in which men were capable of absolutely anything. He was brought back to himself, but not entirely. He was unafraid again, but not entirely. Mostly, he felt too tight inside his body—too large for the confines of his skin—and a strong wild urge to run.

  “BOY, WAKE UP!” the woman cries, and when he opens his eyes he sees, dressed all in black and leaning over him, the shrew everyone calls Matron. Her steel-gray hair, parted with razor sharpness straight down the middle, is pulled tightly into a knot at the back of her head. Overly thin, she appears always to tremble, and there’s something wrong with her eyes—they are inflamed and protrude from their sockets. “Tell us your name, boy!” she shouts, as if her face were not inches from Hayes’s own.

  Now she stands erect, a posture from which she can look more thoroughly down at him. “Your name,” she says as the attendant Babb moves with his pronounced limp beside her. Together they stare at Hayes, Babb’s mouth pressed tight and turned southward at the corners. Hayes hears from outdoors what sounds like a boat whistle, and the familiar bell that seems to ring when the wind blows. Matron lifts her chin and restores her head to its customary drawn-back position, a bearing Hayes thinks the likely result of her having found too much in life from which to recoil. “Well then,” she says at last, “I think he can do without any breakfast. Perhaps it will help him to find his tongue.”

  Babb, scrutinizing Hayes, nods and says, “Yes, ma’am. But do you think he can hear you?”

  Matron moves to the foot of the bed. “Mr. Babb,” she says, “please pass me that looking glass from that table. It shouldn’t be there.”

  Babb hands her the mirror. “He hears me,” she says. “He knows perfectly well what I’m asking him. Only he will not try to answer.”

  “He’s lost his voice,” says the freckled man, Casper, from the bed to Hayes’s right.

  “Perhaps so,” says Matron, “perhaps not. But I have little patience for boys who won’t make any effort. No breakfast today, Mr. Babb.”

  As they start to move away, Matron pauses and says, “And Mr. Babb, will you please get this other bed stripped, double-quick. And don’t make me ask you twice.”

  Babb, stopped, calls to her, and she turns around. “I’ll strip the bed,” he says. “But since it’s women’s work, not suitable for a veteran soldier, and a convalescent one at that … and since you’re in no position to be giving me orders … I’d thank you not to take that tone.”

  “Yes, yes, my apologies, Mr. Babb, I didn’t mean to offend,” says Matron quickly, and continues on her way.

  Hayes rolls his head to the side and watches as Babb removes the soiled, wet linens from Leo’s now-empty bed. Once Babb has everything wadded into a tight ball, he stops a colored boy passing by in the aisle and thrusts it onto the boy’s chest. “Take these to the laundry double-quick,” he says sternly to the boy. “And don’t make me ask you twice neither.”

  Hayes hears Casper laughing softly and ventures a glance his way. Casper looks at Hayes—they share the amusing moment provided by Babb, but something else, too: Casper whispers, “You can hear everything, can’t you?”

  Hayes averts his eyes to the ceiling.

  Several minutes pass, in which he senses the ward growing more crowded, busier, noisier, reacquiring its daytime circus atmosphere. Soon Casper is humming softly to his stump again, and Hayes stares up at the lamp on its chain. He will not allow himself to drift, will not lose the details of his situation. It is morning. On the opposite side of the ward, a steward moves from window to window, drawing the blinds. Perhaps at this same moment, Hayes thinks, a young woman in Brooklyn raises a window shade in a house on Hicks Street; she has only recently awakened and still wears her nightclothes. She stands at the window, looking into the garden, where the cherry trees are in bloom; she hopes to have a word from her brother today, for it has been a worrisome long time. Hayes stares at the lamp, which—in an agitation of the warming air—moves a half inch to one side and back to center. Or perhaps the young woman doesn’t think about her brother at all. Perhaps she still sleeps, only sleeps. Perhaps she has dreamed of his dying and wakes in distress. Or maybe her dreams were all pleasant, full of cherry blossoms and butterflies, and she wishes she could return to them, for on waking, she recalls how angry she is at her brother for deserting her.

  “Well, it looks to be Christmas in the month of May,” says Casper to no one in particular. “And here comes Santa Claus.”

  Hayes lifts his head from the pillow and sees, a dozen beds away, the old gentleman in the wine-colored suit; he has removed his floppy gray hat, which hangs on its drawstring behind his neck; he appears freshly bathed and groomed and carries a slate-colored knapsack strapped over his shoulder, from which—as he makes his way up the ward’s central aisle, moving from bed to bed—he distributes to the patients writing pads and pencils. When at last he reaches the empty bed to Hayes’s left, he stops, drops his bag to the floor, and sits at the foot of the mattress. Hayes notices the two little gold acorns attached to the drawstring of the man’s hat and he detects a sweet lemon-scented soap, one he thinks his sister, Sarah, sometimes uses. After a moment, the man turns and looks at Hayes, who only returns his eyes to the ceiling. The man heaves a great sigh, a perfect mix of sadness and resignation, then stands and moves around to the other side of Hayes’s bed, between Hayes and Casper. He reaches into the bag and gives to Casper a small homemade writing pad and a pencil, for which Casper thanks him, smiling shyly.

  “You don’t usually visit us in the morning,” says Casper.

  “I decided not to work today,” says the man. “It’s going to be too hot, I think.”

  Hayes’s hands, resting on his belly, already start to quiver—in his case, the gift of pencil and pad seems diagnostic, instructive, pointed. But the man removes from the bag a small red apple, which Hayes accepts, more awed than grateful. Evidently pleased with this reaction, the man leans in and kisses Hayes just above his right eye, where, years earlier, he’d been struck by a base ball bat, the blow that left the small, permanent lump beneath the skin. And then, without further ado, the old man moves on.

  Hayes immediately becomes aware of Casper’s studying him from across the short distance between their beds. When Hayes returns his gaze, Casper whispers, “How about a nibble? Just a nibble … promise not to take more.”

  Haye
s passes him the apple, and Casper holds it between his thumb and middle finger, turning it one way and another, admiringly, tosses it into the air, and catches it. He takes a bite and closes his eyes, savoring the flavor, chewing slowly, then passes it back to Hayes with a sad, reverent expression that makes Hayes think of the Holy Eucharist. Hayes samples the apple—the first he has had since leaving Brooklyn—but to his disappointment, he finds he has no appetite, and he gives it back to Casper to finish.

  A minute later, Babb appears at Casper’s bed with a pan of water and a sack of lint and bandages. “Matron wants me to change that dressing,” he says to Casper, “so hurry up and finish your little snack.”

  “If the dressing needs changing,” says Casper, “I want Walt to change it.”

  “Well, Walt ain’t gonna change it, ’cause Walt ain’t no nurse, ain’t no medical steward, ain’t no doctor, and ain’t been properly trained to do nothing in no hospital.”

  “He’s dressed more wounds and changed more dressings than you could count,” says Casper. “And if he did a poor job of it, it would still be better than what I’d get from the likes of you.”

  Babb gives Casper a sidelong glance, as if he has never been more insulted. He leaves the pan and the bandages on the table and limps away without a word.