by Ann Pancake
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Calvin didn’t bother to sneak as he left.
In his room, the mattress and box springs squatted directly on the floor so that Cal had to crawl down instead of up to get into bed, and once there, the frame rose around him like the bed rails in the mental hospitals he’d visited so often in his work. The enamel pot with a wire handle that he’d kept under the bed until the mattress fell through stood off in a corner. When nature called in the middle of the night, that was where the call came from. Calvin peeled off shoes, jeans, and two layers of plaid shirts, draping them over the bed frame, lastly swapping his Almost Heaven hat for his nightcap, a blaze-orange toboggan he kept on the bedpost. Stepping down onto the mattress, he stretched his envied physique full-length, folded his hands over his breast, and sighed.
His view from here was the dresser top across the room. On it Calvin’d propped a photo of his late mother and departed father in a frame of metal ivy, and he’d scattered around that small pictures of his kids at younger and more controllable ages. All of them except the son who used to have a few problems had moved away and found good jobs. They returned to Berker less and less often with every year that passed. Busy. He’d scrunched up and folded into the edge of the mirror the newspaper announcement of his election as Lions Club Tail Twister a decade ago, a final golden era before Helen Smithster. Tallest among the photos was a card featuring a buxom tom turkey that Theodore Munney had given him for his birthday last summer. Over top the turkey glittered the words “For a Special Grandpa on Thanksgiving.” Inside it read “Thanks, Grandpa, for all the happiness, joy, and special memories you’ve given to our family.”
Calvin rolled over to forage in the stale twist of covers for his book on the Russian royal family, found first a Donner Party book he’d completely forgotten and saw was nine months overdue at the library, plus two slices of Italian bread of the same brand he’d had earlier that morning but apparently from a much older loaf. At the foot of the bed, strangled in a T-shirt, he did unearth the Russian book, one of his all-time favorites and the source of his concept of the gun-bearer, a notion both he and Theodore Munney liked a lot.
He propped the book on his chest and thumbed to the chapter he’d been savoring since April. His wife, who zipped through five murder mysteries a week, ridiculed Cal’s reading pace of two or so pages a day. If you move slowly, you’ll notice more things. Calvin’s eyebrows raised, and he tipped his toboggan to a personality he hadn’t seen in a while. The Seasoned Woodsman. He polished off the first piece of found Italian bread, half-consciously patting himself on the back—a lesser roof-of-the-mouth would have needed stitches—and motored into the second.
When exactly the words “Catherine the Great” became “The Great Muppet Caper” Cal could not have said. “A Muppet Family Christmas,” “Elmo’s Adventures in Grouchland,” “Big Bird in China,” the phrases scrolled by, until the fruity odor of Theodore Munney pooled into Calvin’s sinuses, and oh no, uh-oh, oh no, uh-oh, Calvin clutched at the bed frame, but it was too late. He’d been snatched into another daydream.
The daydreams had been coming with more frequency lately, daydreams unpleasant, daydreams as uncontrollable or more than night dreams, and now Cal’s perspective was enlarging. He could see the black gridwork of more video racks, Theodore Munney’s back immediately in front of the rack Cal floated behind. To Theodore’s right the glass candy case, its microwave popcorn packets and Raisinets, to his left the sooty path through the gray-blue carpet, route of heaviest video-renter traffic. Calvin saw all this with a lucidity so exquisite he might be peering through God-burnished eyeballs and through tinnitus so amplified he wouldn’t have heard the fire siren if it blew, and oooohhh. Oooohhh, Cal reached for the rack to steady himself, but his hand passed through. Because, most unsettling of all, in the daydreams, Calvin could see and feel himself, but nothing there could see, hear, feel, him.
Behind the counter, blonde Nicole, attractive as always if a bit wide, was narrating with dramatic gesticulation and a heart-wringing expression of been-done-wrong a story to young Deputy Sheriff Justin Ripper. Theodore Munney jackhammered his fist in his hand, while Deputy Justin shook his head and shifted his holster, and suddenly the three of them took off for the rear of the store, Calvin towed behind Theodore like a helpless balloon.
The shock of sunlight in the grubby parking lot might have felled Cal if there’d been body to fell, and there among dandelions and Frito bags squatted Nicole’s green Dodge Caravan, the passenger side scraped, creased, and well-stove in. Nicole set to demonstrating the unopenability of the sliding door, and Theodore Munney, Calvin could discern by the hen-bob of his head, stuttered along as indignant backup chorus, while Justin put his pen to paperwork on the van’s snubbed hood. Then Nicole pointed towards the unattended cash register, the trio hustled back into the store, Cal again dragged after.
Here Justin undertook his report on the microwave popcorn counter, and Nicole retold her story to a customer. Theodore Munney had halted at a respectable distance from young Deputy Sheriff Justin Ripper, Calvin hover-trapped behind Theodore. But very soon, Cal felt the sensation as though it were his own, Theodore Munney could no longer resist the uniform, holster, badge. And nearer to young Justin Theodore sidled, nearer on light baby-chick feet, nearly imperceptibly nearer and nearer. Until Deputy Justin Ripper began eyeing the approaching Theodore Munney with a touch of discomfort.
Finally Justin laid down his pen. He stepped away from the counter and from Theodore Munney, and he reached into the deep pocket of his bear-brown deputy pants. As Theodore Munney’s eyes widened, Young Justin pulled out his palm and opened it. Theodore Munney leaned closer, so Calvin did, too. At first Cal identified the objects—there were four—as edibles. Then he understood there were not misshapen malt balls. They were miniés. Civil War reenactor rifle ammunition.
Gentle Justin Ripper dropped two into Theodore Munney’s fist.
“It is unlikely Zubov felt any strong attraction to sixty-one-year-old Catherine although she was a well-preserved lady with sound white teeth.”
Cautiously, Calvin lowered his book and darted his eyes about his room. Black-and-white parents, 2-by-3 children, chamber pot, bed frame like asylum rails—each stood in its appointed place. Cal brushed bread crumbs from his collar and forced a smile. Those ole daydreams! Symptoms of genius. Ha-ha. But Calvin’s heart beat harder than it should. He blinked rapidly and drew a few faux-emphysemic breaths, the ones that brought back memories of his late cigarette-favoring mother. This settled him some. Calvin turned over. He arranged his limbs into a napping position. When he closed his overworked eyes and saw only darkness, his relief carried him instantly into sleep.
He was awakened at 4 PM by a summons from the refrigerator. Right on schedule. Calvin’s stomach growled. He lifted his book off his hip, pausing to nod at the cover photo of Czar Nicholas and his doomed family, then folded in the jacket flap to secure his place. He’d started on page 272. He closed it on page 272. There was a kind of symmetry to it. Always learning. Always learning.
He staggered down the stairs, mouth watering. Through the dining room, around the kitchen table, the refrigerator drew its pilgrim on. Its sanctimonious whiteness. Its dependable hum. Its chrome handle like a ritual instrument, and now, it stood before him, its skin pimpled with magnets and coloring book pages, this suffering at the hands of his bride making it all the more precious. Calvin reached behind him and scraped a chair across the floor. He extended his right hand and pulled, bathing his belly in light. Tugging the chair closer, he sat down, his thighs spread, his back bent, his torso stretched into the refrigerator’s bosom. From somewhere he overheard a pleasure grunt.
And then he was sorting and shuffling, lid-lifting and poking. He was sniffing, he was tasting. After Russian history books, Calvin favored tales of explorers and adventurers, Shackleton, Cook, Everest toppers from Hillary to Krakauer. In the refrigerator, Calvin had encountered heretofore undocumented hues and textures, h
ad discovered exotic molds and Ice Age fungus. In the refrigerator, Calvin had observed fantastic patterns of shrinkings and separations, swellings and discolorations, in this very refrigerator, he had stumbled upon odors that eluded the English language. Odors perhaps only expressible in Olde Russian. Here anonymous paper bags and Styrofoam boxes gave up their secrets, today drumsticks as desiccated as shrunken heads, a broccoli and cheese that seemed to have reproduced like a yogurt culture. Today blue sour cream and germinating meatballs, and now Calvin hailed a banana as black as a St. Petersburg winter night, next a tiny wedge of cheese grits one generation removed from the Confederacy. Refrigerator as mapless territory, unbagged summit, sacred grotto. Refrigerator as archive, antique auction, refrigerator as mausoleum. At last, Calvin settled on a green Jell-O salad left over from Easter. He shut the door to conserve electricity and dignity, leaned back in his chair, pulled a spoon from his breast pocket, and slurped.
His wife passed behind him like a shade. “You know you’re not supposed to eat that.”
“I don’t guess anybody called while I was taking my nap?” Calvin asked in a jaunty tone as his wife gathered her pocketbook and other mysterious satchels for her return to the Fine Arts Room. Like she had earlier, she stopped and looked directly at him.
“Who were you expecting?”
Calvin continued to sip his collapsed green salad. Then his wife, so much shrewder than she needed to be, understood. “Oh!” Her eyebrows pulled to a vee. “You were waiting for them to call about the Knight of Olde Berker, weren’t you?”
Never had the VCR tracking been so clear. In this moment, Calvin Bergdoll hated his wife.
“Cal, they announced those nominations two weeks ago. Didn’t you see it in the paper?”
Calvin’s organs turned to stone.
He stood, cast the bowl into the sink, and swung open the refrigerator. “I don’t have time to read the paper. I have too much work to do,” he muttered into the leftovers to conceal his face.
“Well, I’ll tell you this: if you’re ever going to be nominated, you’re going to have to behave better around town. Finding a commode to pee in instead of a camellia bush would be a start. And if you think I haven’t heard about what happened in County Pride last week just because I haven’t mentioned it, you couldn’t be more wrong.” Bags rustled, car keys jingled, and the kitchen door hinges squealed shut behind her.
Calvin snatched the meatballs, dumped them into the broccoli and cheese, and slammed it all into the microwave. His innards burst from fossil to flame. Who in God’s name had been on that committee? What in God’s brain had they been thinking? Who in this county was a worthier candidate for Knight of Olde Berker than he? His family had settled in this valley seven generations ago, he’d been born here and had lived here his entire life except for the last two years of college in Morgantown, and then he’d come home every weekend. His father had been an esteemed leading citizen and a landowner, and Calvin Bergdoll had been respected as well, had even served for one term on the school board, never mind that his wife believed he’d won only because the photo on his campaign poster triggered rumors that he was terminally ill (bad lighting), there were worse reasons people got elected to things. The microwave beeped, the startle of it ratcheting his rage, and Calvin seized the softened Tupperware and lurched to the TV room. If not a nomination for Knight of Olde Berker, they should at least make him an honored exhibit, a representative of living history. And if not that, surely someone should interview him. An unsolicited voice broke in. If you want to be part of Bygone Days, why don’t you volunteer? Nobody calls me up and begs me to help, you know. Well, his wife wasn’t even from here.
He dropped heavily into her newish red recliner, the one he was forbidden to sit in unless he was wearing clean clothes and had recently showered. Grabbing the remote—focus! focus!—he streamlined his brain to where he could punch the buttons for the Arts Channel. The County Pride incident hadn’t been his fault, he had not started it, he was a peaceable creature, he never did. A German choir. Medieval hymns. Calvin expelled a strangled breath and crouched over his meatballs. Next a three-minute excerpt from a play, The Cherry Orchard, Cal’d not seen this one before, and, oh, it was Russian, he pricked up, a Russian play. Calvin’s sugar considered tiptoeing back to the nether regions of his digestive tract or wherever it was that it belonged. And after the play, a Gregorian chant while the camera panned statues of stone saints in some Old Country crypt.
That was when the revelation struck. As Calvin watched the second slow survey of the gallery of saints, certain granite faces assumed the features of—Cal squinted—of former . . . was it so? Former Knights of Old Berker? Calvin leaned forward and stared. And now, yes, entire statues dissolved into Knights, a kind of psychic palimpsest, Calvin transfixed, the white heads, the gnarled limbs. The canes, one wheelchair, a toupee, and a glass eye. And by the time ballerinas replaced the crypt, Calvin Bergdoll understood.
To the number, the Knights of Bygone Days past had been older than he. Calvin loosed an epiphanic grunt. Although Cal had many health problems and was probably soon to die, had been at the risk of death for twenty years, he was actually just sixty-eight and looked even younger than he was.
That was it. They were postponing his nomination because of his age.
He must be patient. Let those who appeared nearer death than he take their turn.
Calvin swallowed his last broccoli spear, then lay back in the recliner, removed his cap, and set it on his knee facing him where he could see the Almost Heaven. First Buck and Biggest Rack radiated their assent. The floor underneath lay silent, the possums at truce. And then Calvin remembered something else, and he only had to launch himself out of the recliner and swing a few feet to the left to reach it. On the bookshelf, cached behind a framed finger-painting by his little grandson, a fist-sized chunk of deer baloney.
FRIDAY MORNING FOUND Calvin Bergdoll, Theodore Munney, and Blackie on the street in front of Rita’s Diner. Calvin was not sure how long Rita’s ban was in effect, and with the price hikes at McDonald’s, he’d decided he’d just show up and see if anyone said anything. He’d made sure they arrived after 8:30 AM to prevent any chance of running into Helen Smithster, who worked a few storefronts away and occasionally frequented Rita’s on the early shift. As they walked in, Cal forwent his usual hearty and undirected greetings. The restaurant, the size of a two-car garage, was half full, a couple Calvin didn’t know, probably Bygone Days gawkers, in intense conversation under the broken cuckoo clock, others, whom Cal did know, hypnotized by Fox News on a television mounted in the front corner. A few old men nodded at Calvin, but Rita just looked up through the slot into the kitchen, then looked away. Calvin and Theodore took their favorite booth near the front window.
“Anything you want, Theodore my lad. Anything you want. As long as it’s not over a dollar fifty. Ha-ha.”
Before he’d left the house that morning, Cal’d checked the dryer, found it full of his wife’s clothes, and flipped open the washer to see the sodden heap of Theodore Munney’s. She must have pulled them out long enough to wash hers, then dumped them back. A clever one. The lawn mower, beaded with dew, squatted forlorn in the mostly uncut yard. Him and Floodie’ll probably be over to finish it once the grass dries. Now a high school student named Tasha Haggerty carried over two tiny plastic water glasses. Calvin unfurled his arm towards her.
“This is Miss Tasha, a Russian lady from Purgitsville,” the Courtly Gentleman announced. Tasha rolled her eyes. “And this, Miss Tasha”—the arm now gestured towards Theodore Munney—“is Theodore O. Munney, my gun-bearer.”
“Do you all want anything to drink besides water?” Tasha said.
Cal scanned the menu. Somehow during the ban, he’d forgotten the outrageousness of Rita’s coffee prices. “Just water,” he said, the Courtly Gentleman doused. “And a sausage biscuit for Theodore Munney and a bowl of oatmeal with brown sugar for myself.” Tasha scribbled on her pad, unsmiling. “And”—a mute
button went off in his brain, but the signal didn’t reach his mouth in time—“for a dollar fifty, it better be a big bowl of oatmeal.”
Tasha swished off without comment.
Calvin settled back in the booth and tucked his napkin in his collar. “Well, Theodore,” he began in his most expansive patronly tone, “would you like to cut a little grass today?” No sooner had “little grass” crossed his lips than a flash of Floodie flitted by. Cal swiveled to the window and watched Floodie slow for an instant at the stop sign. Ten dollars would buy you a lot bigger breakfast than a bowl of oatmeal and a cup of water.
“D-d-d-d-d-didchahearwhathappenedatthedumpyesterday?”
“What?” asked Calvin.
“Bigpilecinderblocksblewup.”
“Hmmm,” said Cal. He had spied, on a table that two of his acquaintances had just vacated, a piece of scrapple the dimensions of a Gideon New Testament. He said nothing. I’m on my best behavior today. Lou Seaton walked in, followed by his daughter, a friend of Calvin’s youngest daughter’s. Cal withdrew into his cap. His own children were very busy these days. They didn’t often come home. It was hard to get to Berker. The nearest airport was a hundred miles away. The last time they’d come for Bygone Days, the son who had a few problems exercised poor judgment and forged three checks with Calvin’s name. The other children were unhappy when Calvin refused to press charges, and their spirits were only moderately lifted when the son was arrested that weekend anyway for a gas driveaway at the 7-Eleven.
Cal surfaced from his cap to address Theodore Munney about the matter of grass. But Theodore Munney was gone.
Theodore was sprint-strutting out Rita’s front door where a motley squadron of reenactors trudged down the center of Shute Street. Centuries and wars collapsed into four rows across and six down, their ranks including not only Confederates and Federals, but a few representatives from World Wars I and II and one musket-bearing French and Indian remnant, Vietnam notable by its absence. A largely bedraggled and spiritless bunch, especially for the very first morning of Bygone Days, but Theodore Munney and now a couple of regulars from the VFW next door stood at attention on the sidewalk, one VFW denizen cocking a hand in salute. Lou Seaton was remarking to Tasha, “I hear they’re actually going to reenact a battle this year. For the train.”
