The Coldest Night

by Robert Olmstead

  As the Jean Carol made her approach to the dock, Henry descended from the wheelhouse and took up the forward spring line.

  The captain came in at an angle, stopped the engine, and then bore off. When close, he backed her engine and Henry put out the spring line. The captain worked her ahead until the Jean Carol was alongside the dock. Propeller wash drove down between her hull and the dock and pushed her away from the face.

  Henry tossed off his seabag and stepped down after it. His legs went weak for the draw of the solid, unmoving concrete. The captain yelled down from the wheelhouse and Henry waved without looking back. He looked down the river, the boathouse where she might be. He looked to the sky. For the long way east the signal star had guided him home. He shouldered his seabag and passed into the streets and entered the fog-­damp city.

  Chapter 30

  IT WAS AN OLD city and worn out and as if built for some future that came by but did not stop for long. The streets steamed ghostlike from the recent thrash of rain. They were dank streets into which the daylight could hardly penetrate.

  He felt the eyes of the watchers as he passed by: waiting, isolated, suspicious.

  Standing behind the old soaks and idlers were upright boys smoking cigarettes against the walls. They seemed content to smoke and age until they could ascend to the ranks of the sitters. It was a city of speculators who’d guessed the price of coal, lumber, labor, and now controlled such prices.

  He passed in front of the Red Pony, a barroom decorated for Christmas the first year it opened. The red and green lights strung to the corners had burned eternally since. He stopped to calculate if he was old enough to buy a drink. He wasn’t, but he went in anyway and took a place in the shadows and before long he had a whisky and a beer. He wondered who these people were. He did not know any of them. He needed to leave and find his way home. It’d only been a year, but he’d come so far already and home was just a little ways more.

  A weariness descended upon him and he was suddenly very tired. It’d been a long journey. His mouth was hurting for the loss of the tooth earlier that day. It’d been bothering him since St. Louis, so the captain put in at Huntington and he’d had it extracted. He declined the tooth-­dentist’s offer of codeine and then accepted. On a whim he wanted to ask the dentist to please give him something for homecomings instead. But he didn’t. He liked the dentist. He was elderly with an enchanted disposition and was missing an arm, so whatever he did was slow and methodical and he did not seem to lack in any way for the missing arm.

  Henry felt the whisky high in his throat and then down his neck and into his stomach where it glowed like a small hot sun. As the codeine’s ability to affect him wore off, the liquor took over with the taste of dull metals.

  He had the bitter thought he’d find his father and tell him who he was, tell him Clemmie had died and never once had she spoken of him.

  From the shadows, he listened to the squeak of the chalk and the clack of the balls. He looked at his watch. The hour was getting late. He ordered again.

  The door opened and as more people came in he found himself in a pleasant state of mind. The door opened again, a party of men and women, and he thought he saw Mercy’s brother with them. The man’s face was round and florid and he sweated profusely. Trouble he did not need or want. There was something new and very dangerous inside him, the days of war shadowing his every thought. Watchful, he looked again and realized it wasn’t Randall.

  In short time he’d had too many. He felt he was returning from some outer boundary of human existence and thought he was in the hell of an eternal return and never arriving. But then again, maybe it was only the whisky.

  He waved a hand to catch the bartender’s eye.

  “Is there a place to eat?”

  “There’s a late-­night diner right down the street.”

  “What kind is it?”

  “What kind? Why, how many kinds is there?”

  Henry shrugged and put down his money. He guessed he really didn’t know how many kinds.

  Outside, a wall of silver rain was lashing the street. In a second-­floor window was a woman leaning on her elbows smoking a cigarette, watching the rain. The smoke from her cigarette glossed and hovered. The woman in the window looked down at him and would not give way. When he looked again she waved and smiled and he waved back.

  He walked into the diner where he sat on a stool, next to the plate-­glass windows that looked onto the street. He did not know what he wanted to eat. The menu meant nothing to him. Then he decided. He wanted eggs, bacon, fried potatoes, and red-­eyed gravy. He felt suddenly young and free, a man in the world. He’d not be haunted. The past was in the past. He’d have a little life, by god. By god, he would. He thought about delaying his return home and spending the night in a hotel room. He’d buy a bottle and lie in bed having a few sips and maybe read a newspaper or a book. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d read a book. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept in a bed. He wondered where he could find a book and if such a place as where you found books still existed in the city. He supposed the library would be closed.

  A tiny perfectly formed man entered the diner and took a stool to the other side of him. He wore a tiny suit and tiny shoes, a felt hat, miniature jewelry: ring, cuff links, wristwatch. He was smoking a cigarette and carried an ivory-­headed cane.

  The waitress was tall for a woman and bold figured. She had big able hands and wide, flat hips. She wore her blond hair in a tight knot at the back of her head. About her neck and shoulders she wore a wide strawberry-­colored scarf. She wore no jewelry on her hands, wrists or neck. She carried a pot of boiling water for tea.

  The tiny man insisted the waitress take his order first: a plate of chicken livers.

  She took his order and delivered it to the kitchen and then she came back around.

  “Who’s this?” the tiny man said, pointing at Henry.

  “I don’t know,” the waitress said. “Unlike most people he doesn’t talk too much.”

  “He’s a good-­looking young man,” the man observed.

  “He looks about used up to me,” she said.

  “I been eatin’ dry bread, if you know what I mean,” Henry said.

  “What’ll you have?”

  “The sign says you serve breakfast all day long.”

  “I’ll take care of you,” she said with a wink.

  When his chicken livers came out the tiny man lit another cigarette and smoked while he ate.

  A drummer came in. He wore a checker-­patterned suit and a derby hat. He carried the square case that contained his samples. The man eating chicken livers turned on him as soon as he touched the counter.

  “Mister, do you want to fight?” he asked.

  “What say?”

  “Fight. Do you want to fight?”

  “No sir,” the drummer said cheerfully. “I am a man of peace.”

  “You are a bullshit artist.”

  The waitress set down a breakfast platter in front of Henry. She then leaned in and said something to the tiny man. They exchanged a look and she removed the bill from where it sat beside his plate.

  “What does it matter?” the tiny man huffed. He dropped his fork and walked to the door where he waited until she came out with a brown paper sack and handed it to him.

  “I apologize for the trouble,” the tiny man told her.

  “You’re the devil,” she said, and pinched his cheek and everyone laughed. He took his sack of food and left.

  “Who’s he?” Henry said when she returned.

  “A foreman at the factory. He’s a little off his rocker.”

  “What do they make there?”

  “Farm machinery. Got any more questions?”

  No—he shook his head and, overwhelmed with how hungry he was, he began forking food into his mouth on the one side where he had all of his teeth.

  With chuffings and clankings a train could be heard starting to roll. More than one man took out his wat
ch to check his pocket time against the train’s time.

  Henry ate wolfishly and when the food was gone he scraped at the traces of yolk still on his plate, his appetite still fresh.

  “You’re still hungry,” the waitress said, and he nodded and after a moment’s deliberation he ordered a plate of beans and frankfurters with mustard and chopped onions.

  “Not salty enough?” she said when he reached for the salt.

  He told her he needed his salt and she smiled.

  After the beans and frankfurters he ordered again until finally he was full and damping crumbs from the counter into his mouth with a finger. Before him were the remains of his most recent plate: a pork sandwich and red beans and rice and a tall glass of water with white cubes of ice floating at the top.

  In the back he could hear dishes colliding in sink water. A man without any teeth sat at the other end of the counter dawdling over his pie and coffee. The man cut his food into huge sections and slowly eased them into his mouth. It was a moment in his life when he didn’t have to be doing anything because he was eating and he wanted to enjoy it as long as he could.

  Henry wished the woman would return.

  When he looked again the toothless man, propped on his elbows, was snoozing at the counter. His head would bob and he would straighten for a spell and then slowly begin to subside again.

  “I just can’t get not hungry,” Henry said when she retuned to clear his plate.

  “Sometimes the body does that. It knows what it needs. I’ll stodge up a little something more for you.”

  “No,” he said. “Thank you.”

  The toothless man finished eating and stood, jingling coins in his pocket.

  “You go ahead,” the waitress said. “I’ll get you next time.” He thanked her and left out the door.

  “You going to get in trouble with your boss letting food walk out the door?” Henry asked.

  “I am the boss,” she said.

  She brought him a piece of lemon meringue pie and just so he knew she told him it was the last piece.

  She then turned and busied herself wiping down counters. She paused to look into the mirror that backed the cash register. She glanced at herself and then she caught him looking at her before going into the kitchen. He’d never noticed how self-­regarding women were. It was in the way they touched at their hair, the way they looked at their hands and feet, the way they moved as if they were experiencing themselves moving.

  The dining room was now empty and the night grew slack. The day had turned into the next. He sat at the counter smoking and she was to the other side leaning on her elbows and staring out the windows at the rain spattered street. Neither moved and the only sound was the ticking of the clock.

  Henry had drunk too much and eaten too much. He felt the waitress’s eyes on him and turned to look at her. He smiled and pointed to his head, twirling his index finger.

  She nodded and gave to him a solemn look, as if to say she understood.

  “Take your time,” she said, and busied herself.

  When she came by again she’d fitted a cigarette into a holder and asked him if he had a match. Briefly there was smoke between them and then it cleared. After she exhaled she touched the bottom of her top lip with her rough pink tongue. Her eyes found his before he could look away.

  “You seem to be the only one left,” she said.

  “I’ll get out of your hair,” he said.

  “What happened?”

  “Long story.”

  “Oh, go ahead. I am rich with time.”

  “Maybe some other time.”

  “Fair enough,” she said. “We can have conversations about little things.”

  “How long have you owned this place?”

  “Too long.”

  “Where else would you be?”

  “I like the beach.”

  “The ocean?”

  “I have never seen the ocean,” she said, letting her head back and exhaling.

  A patrol car drove by, its tires sawing the rain soaked street. The door swung open, but whoever it was changed his mind. She lit another cigarette and one for him.

  “How’d you get that face?” she said.

  “Korea.”

  “What war is that?” she said. “I don’t think I heard of it.”

  “The one over in Korea. They call it the Korean War.”

  “What was it like?” she asked as she hovered by his place at the counter.

  “Let’s just say it sharpened my desire to be somewheres else.” He said this and it made her smile.

  “It was bad,” she said.

  “War is hell. The men are brave. What else is there to say?”

  “Do you drink, or have you quit?”

  “I have been known to take a drink or two.”

  She set out a bottle of Old Crow, two glasses, and a small pitcher of water.

  “Drink that,” she said, handing him one of the glasses she poured. “You look like you could use a friend.”

  He nodded. He drained the glass and licked the rim.

  “I believe I will go now,” he said, setting the glass down.

  “Another?”

  “I’ll have another.”

  “I’m in no hurry,” she said. “You’re welcome to sit on that stool as long as you like.”

  “Your name’s Viv?”

  “It comes off as easy as it goes on,” she said, unclipping the name pinned to her smock.

  She looked at him with casual detachment. He read her to be weighing the possibilities. Then a faint smile creased her lips. He could see her hair was streaked with gray, but her face was still young and so too her hands and neck. Her cheeks had flushed from the whisky.

  She clinked her glass against his and they both drank again.

  “What is it you know,” she said.

  “Know?”

  He drank what she’d poured him and he was coming into something. He didn’t know what. A sort of emotion he could feel that he’d never felt before. He knew the emotions by name; he’d just never felt them all.

  “You know something,” she said. “Your eyes have been all over me since you walked in here.”

  “No,” he said after a long tired sigh.

  “Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.”

  “No,” he said, his face masked by his tiredness.

  “Would you like some company tonight?”

  “Company?”

  “All night long,” she said, setting her glass down and leaning over the counter, her face close to his.

  “I have gotten used to my own company,” he said as if a whispered prayer. His mind went back to the cold and snow.

  “Pucker up,” she said, and she took his face in her hands and kissed him gently, her lips so soft. She held his face and then she let go.

  “Forgetting isn’t something you can do,” she said. “You just have to wait.”

  By the time he stepped out onto the street the rain had blown itself out. The night that lay before him was so quiet he could hear the tone of his own footsteps.

  People passed him in ones and twos and he said hello or good evening and they returned his salutation. He had the sense of old men and whispering women gathered in the shadows, shuffling from one room to the next. A light moving through rooms. Someone was carrying a lamp.

  It would be chilly tonight. His feet burned on chilly nights, every time the temperature dropped below fifty degrees.

  It’s time to turn for home, he thought. He longed for a home feeling, but it was not coming. Overhead was the white light of the full moon. He wondered if he could be happy in the world with no more than these stars and this light and this deep night.

  Chapter 31

  WHEN HE AWOKE THAT morning he was lying under a bridge clinging to his sea bag. The sarvis and redbud were in bloom. Rivers of clouds were rising from the earth’s surface and fueling the sky. A policeman was prodding him in the back with his nightstick. He sat up and began to shiver. Th
e policeman asked if he was okay and he said he was. Someone said they’d seen a dead body down by the river and when he came down the bank and saw him he was sure that was what he’d found.

  “I ain’t dead yet,” Henry said.

  “You got a place to be?” the policeman asked. “You can’t stay here.”

  “Give me a minute.”

  “What were you doing here?”

  “Enjoying the night.”

  “Don’t smart-­mouth me.”

  Henry turned to look up at him and the policeman saw the side of his face that’d been turned away from him. He was a young policeman but still older than Henry. The policeman gave him a grim look, one that seemed to take a long time.

  Then he said, “Can I give you a ride somewheres?”

  Henry lifted his hand and gestured no.

  He collected himself and passed through the ragged yellow light of the streets and then the light ran out in shadow and there was the light cast from grimy windows.

  In the early morning he walked the mazy streets until he came to a street of white-­framed bungalows, white-­painted trees and rocks, boxwood hedges. The DDT truck passed by him, dispensing a cloudy mist. The mist enveloped him as the truck passed and the driver waved.

  His own was a neighborhood where dogs were chained in front yards and the old ones sat on their evening porches with their chins on their chests. The young ones were bored and without prospect, and the promise of diminishing inheritance. Life was over even when they were still young. They were whittlers, tinkerers, mechanics, home brewers, and butchers. The nervous and discontent, with constant necessity for handwork.

  There was a white picket fence and a wooden gate that opened onto a flagstone path to the front porch of his house. A honeysuckle vine twined the wooden fence and the shrubbery was broad leaved and green in the early light.

  The house was old and ramshackle and on the edge of the city. He did not remember it this way, so distant and as if decaying. On the wide porch were wicker back rockers and a glider painted white. He stood in the bare dirt yard before he went up the stairs. There was a cat he did not know sitting on the porch. The cat yawned and stretched. The house was lit with a yellow light shining through the open transom and curtained windows. The cat watched him and rubbed its head against him when he stepped up.