Stillness & Shadows

by John Gardner

  Craine stepped carefully to the end of the bookshelf where the choir robe had disappeared. At the nearest of the tables that now came into view, Carnac sprawled as if he’d been there for hours, engrossed in a map of the Holy Land. “Maniac,” Craine muttered, and lowered his nose toward his book again, then pursed his lips and, with a curt little nod and a cunning look, as if someone had suggested it, moved back to where he’d been before, out of Carnac’s view. It was too much to hope that Two-heads would forget him, mercifully go trouble someone else. The whisper was still in Craine’s ear, like an itch: Detective, you’re being watched. He glanced to the left, past his shoulder, then quickly to the right. It wasn’t true; no one was watching him. “Maniac,” he whispered again, angrily. He spoke sternly, but, listening, he wasn’t convinced. He was by nature a suspicious man—it had saved his life on more occasions than one—and his years had taught him it was best to suspect the worst. As a matter of fact he’d been feeling all morning a weird impression of eyes following him, tacked to him like buttons, some observer single-minded as a cat. A light shudder passed over Craine’s shoulders and down his back, and he thought momentarily of the whiskey in its brown paper sack in his trench coat pocket, but he did not reach for it. He ran his tongue around his mouth—dry as dust from too much smoking—bent closer to his book, and, for an instant, squeezed his eyes shut.

  He got an image, in the movie-house blackness inside his mind, of a face, bearded, bespectacled, as expressionless as stone. He was so startled by the sight—memory or vision—that he opened his eyes at once and, to his consternation, lost it. When he closed his eyes again all he saw was the image of Carnac sprawled at his map table as if he’d been propped there since time began. The books and walls around him had the dried-out, slightly rotted look that sooner or later came to everything in Carbondale, every line clean but moldy, like the wood of old pilings, or like deadmen at the rim of a swamp—the look of things submerged and then salvaged again, as if the Mississippi River had come boiling over the hills like a cancerous eruption, death-yellow in the sun, and had lain on the town for a week or so, dropping silt and gray slime, then receded at last, leaving behind it, when the dirt was washed away, that deep-down, ancient, decayed look. Oak boards, one imagined, were as soft as daddock, and one might have believed that even the concrete of the sidewalks was in secret sprouting seeds. It was only an impression; Carbondale had never been flooded in all its long history, or anyway not by the Mississippi River, twenty miles westward, beyond the county seat and walled off by wooded blue hills; but it was often enough soaked by torrential rains, storms of a kind Craine would have associated only with the tropics, before he came here: fat warm drops out of a black, roaring sky—it was tornado country—flash-flooding rains that turned the streets to yellow rivers and made the grass, the pokeweed and trumpet vines in vacant lots and the edges of people’s lawns shoot up lushly, obscenely, made althaea shrubs and redbud trees hang heavy as overgrown animals, hogs too fat to walk or obese, shaggy calves penned up at slaughtering time. Surrounded by all that churning vegetation, thousands of humming insects and hurrying birds, the town’s old oak trees, above buckling sidewalks, glowed darkly, like pensive observers full of gloom. After each rain the sun would come out and burn hot as a furnace, charging the world with muggy dampness and making huge, roiling clouds overhead and, soon, more rain.

  The whole town smelled musty, Tully’s Tome Shop more than most places—not that the smell was one Gerald Craine disliked. The mustiness made him think (standing with his eyes closed, chin lifted above the book) of compost heaps, mulch in a greenhouse, attics where a man might explore for a week without exhausting the debris of some stranger’s past—old Collier’s magazines, crockery, stuffed trunks. That was the one real pleasure he got out of his work as a detective. The past—any past, or any but his own—even the history of some thin-lipped ex-mailman—had a spirit to it, a mysterious aliveness that could pull him up short every time. A childish pleasure, or “childlike,” rather, as his neighbor down the hall at the hotel had said, correcting him—not judging or condemning, simply observing, getting the facts lined up, accurate and precise, in his compulsive, poetical way; should’ve been a policeman. “I just record things,” he’d said one time, speaking of his poetry. Craine had watched him, not perfectly certain he understood. Maybe it was this: that poems were, to Craine’s neighbor—so Craine put it to himself—like the proofs of their existence effeminate, instable people put in journals. The weather, the temperature, sensitive impressions. There was a line in one of the books he’d published: Autumn, clear as the eyes of chickens.

  Craine had paused over it, interested, but after that the poem had gone nowhere, no story, no characters—nobody home—just more sensitive impressions. He’d glanced warily at his neighbor, thinking—or toying with the possibility of thinking—“Sick mind”; but he hadn’t felt sure of himself. What an ordinary person, some objective observer, would have said, he knew, was “Craine, that’s ridiculous. Lots of perfectly healthy people write poetry.” That might be true and then again it might not. Mental aberration was an interesting business. Nine times out of ten most people missed it, but in Craine’s line of work you developed a careful eye for possibilities. What kind of grown-up, healthy person would go around noticing that a clear autumn day, especially in the late afternoon, was like the eyes of chickens? No harm, the objective observer would say. Live and let live was their motto, these objective observers—till somebody started to find bodies down under the house.

  Eyes of chickens. It showed a kind of fixity—obsessiveness. Hinted at a kind of self-absorption, subtle hedonism, a curious detachment or withdrawal from the ordinary serious concerns of humanity that could make you uneasy, once you thought about it. Craine would keep an eye peeled, wait for more evidence. The man had a thing about chickens, possibly. His cat was called Rooster.

  Yet he did seem harmless enough, Craine’s neighbor, and no doubt some people thought well of what he did. He’d published three of those skimpy little books—Craine had not read them, though he watched for them now, whenever he was in bookstores—and he taught English at the university. He was young—thirty-two—and bearded. Jewish. He wore suspenders and arm-garters. City boy’s hankering for the country, no doubt. Another mistake, and not without dark implications: potentially dangerous desire to live more lives than one. Except for the cat he’d taken in, and sometimes a girlfriend for the night, Craine’s neighbor lived alone. His room ticked and clicked. He was a collector of old clocks, also hourglasses. Sign of dissatisfaction, reactionary snobbery, faint-trace hatred of his fellow man. An alien, then: a kind of Martian in our midst …

  Craine gave a sudden little jump. Watched!—Watched by whom? he wondered in brief, wild panic. Watched by the police? His right hand began picking at the front of his coat. His eyes teared up. It was monstrously unfair, like everything. There were dozens of them, only one of him, and they were young, clear-headed; no memory blanks. Ah son, my son, step off the straight and narrow for one little ball-ball-shuffle-shuffle-hop—mark my words, my boy …

  And if not the police, since why should the P.D. be interested in him, in these days of cutbacks and tax revolt, the Age of Accountability, and election year at that, if he wasn’t mistaken (he had no idea what year it was; it was all pure rhetoric, games, games, games) … He clenched his fist as if to hit himself.

  If not the police … Again the shudder passed over Craine’s shoulders, and he abruptly changed his mind, snapped his eyes open, drew the whiskey in its sack from his overcoat pocket, tucked the book under his elbow, and unscrewed the cap from the bottle for a quick restorer. As he drank, quickly and furtively, his Adam’s apple lunging, he glanced right, along the bookshelf.

  Carnac was at the end of the aisle, as Craine had somehow known he’d be. He stood making a face with the half of his head still movable, his thick lip lifted, pink underneath, from the huge yellow mule’s teeth, his right eye wide open, tumulose in the shadow o
f his top hat. As Craine accidentally took a step in his direction, jolted and thrown off balance, trying to get the bottle recapped, trying to wipe his mouth with his overcoat sleeve, Carnac bent forward as if in shocked surprise and made his knees knock together, playing horrified darkie—maybe a little mongoloid idiot thrown in—and waggled both large, pink-palmed hands. “Lawdy!” he mouthed without a sound, “oh Lawdy Jesus!” Still holding the whiskey sack, Craine jabbed one finger toward Carnac, warning him, furiously stabbing in the general direction of the black, misshapen jaw. Whiskey splashed out as the bottle jerked. At the last minute, Craine remembered not to shout and, blushing, filled with righteous indignation, got the whiskey capped and back into his overcoat pocket, both hands shaking, then turned his back and bent closer to his book.

  … rationalized in 58 B.C., he read. He nodded thoughtfully, angrily.

  It would be lunacy, of course, trying to talk sense to Two-heads Carnac, and more lunatic yet to shout at him, here in the stillness of Tully’s bookshop. That was no doubt what Carnac wanted. For Craine to shout, make himself appear to all the world a drunken lunatic. It was like an old movie, some slapstick comedy in which Carnac had cast him as the stuffed-shirt donzel who in secret took nips; the music teacher, maybe, who liked to touch little boys, or the self-righteous moustached policeman in the whorehouse, representative of lying society on its fat, white horse. Nothing could be stupider; Craine was nothing of the kind. A drinking man, maybe; but he put on no airs. Look at him!—baggy old overcoat, hat down half over his ears, knotted shoelaces … But you’d have better luck arguing with Jehovah than with Two-heads Carnac. What he really ought to do, when Carnac pulled one of those antics of his … Craine frowned, staring hard into the open book, mechanically wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then smiled, malevolent.

  The white-haired professor, or rather doctor, padded by, behind Carnac, carrying the dictionary and magnifying glass, holding the glass out in front of him as if looking for clues. He glanced at the choir robe, then over at Craine, but showed no interest or surprise. That was the usual response, these days, and, reminded that Carnac was no more important than he let him be—like a roar out of the earth, or a tornado in the distance—Craine turned away again and once more lowered his nose into his book. As the print swam into view, four inches from his eyes, he began lipreading, forcing himself to concentrate. In the view of the Vedic priests, he read (the gray type waggling on the page like minnows), each sound in Sanskrit corresponded to some natural force in the universe, so that in theory at least, if one correctly pronounced the Sanskrit words meaning “Mountain, move,” the mountain ought to move. He read the sentence twice, uncomprehending, his mind on the black man who stood watching.

  “Maniac,” he said again, decisively. Tears squirted into his eyes—eyestrain, partly, and partly a touch of the usual midmorning drunkenness. It couldn’t be emotion; he was feeling nothing whatsoever, numb-hearted as a stone.

  It was a fact, Carnac’s mania. Carnac was Carbondale’s one authentic lunatic, if you didn’t count Craine, and Craine didn’t. (He lowered his nose toward the book again, eyes sliding left, then right.) Carnac read tarot, when he was able to speak English—he had fits of glossolalia—and since he read neither shrewdly nor tactfully, he was sometimes beaten up by his customers. The long dark blue choir robe and black silk top hat were only the more obvious signals of his lunacy. He claimed he was a dowser, an alchemist, an astrologer, and to prove it he walked with a long, gnarled staff, like Moses. Sometimes, depending on the company, he claimed he was the living voice of Christ or Mohammed. “Penny for Al Khem?” he’d say, running up to Craine. It was merely to torment him. He’d learned long ago, if he ever learned anything, that Craine would give him nothing. Yet the mad little black man would follow Craine for blocks, shuffling along drop-foot, waving his top hat as if to drive away some stench, begging and spitting, wickedly imploring Craine’s mercy with his one good eye. The two sides of Carnac’s face looked in different directions. He’d been hit by a train. He was not an intentionally troublesome man, just playful and crazy as a loon; all the same, he was trouble. He’d be arrested every two, three weeks or so, once for begging with a sign that said stop Christianity! And to Gerald Craine he was especially trouble. He’d elected himself Craine’s devil. He’d dart from some entryway, drooling and gibbering, picking as if at Craine’s clothes, but from six feet back, sometimes making sudden passes, like Mandrake the Magician. Meeting Craine on the sidewalk he’d stop, throw his arms out, strike the ground with his stick, and cry, “Whang!” Craine had once caught him by the neck and yelled, shaking him—at the time flashing panic at the rage that had come over him—“Two-heads, why are you doing this?” Craine’s voice went up an octave, like the voice of a child about to cry. “Whoo-ee!” Two-heads yelled, as if joyfully, snatching off his top hat. “We making contact, brother! The spirits say, ‘Two-heads, don’t you mess with him, baby! That dude in the service of St. Cyril!’—but I mess with you anyways.” “Saint who?” Craine had yelped, but Two-heads had managed to wriggle free and had run from him, swinging his rear end obscenely and shimmying all over, making shocks and waves fly up his choir robe like light off a pigeon. Craine had not pursued and had never again touched him. Two-heads’ neck was as muscular as an adder’s. Ever since, the very thought of that flesh under his fingers made Craine’s skin crawl.

  Carnac’s whisper came through to him from the other side of the bookshelf. “Hssst! Look down by your belly, Mr. Craine! Quick!”

  Before he had time to think better of it, some thought of the scar on his belly in his mind, Craine raised the book and looked down, below it and between his lifted arms. Carnac’s black fingers came poking out, reaching through from the far side of the bookshelf, holding fanned-out red and white bicycle cards.

  “Pick a card,” Carnac whispered. He waited. Then, as if the police might swoop in at any moment, “Come on, man!”

  Craine lowered the book with his left hand, slowly, then after a moment reached forward with his right, his mouth turned down grimly, and drew a card from the fan. He tipped it over slowly. “Ace of hearts,” he said. His voice was thin and jarring, even in his own ears, like an iron wheel on concrete. He put the book down—slid it, opened to his place, onto the books on the bookshelf—then slowly, deliberately, tore up the card, glanced at the floor, then put the pieces in his pocket.

  “Pick another,” Carnac whispered, as if everything was exactly as it should be. His smell came through the bookshelves, sour as medicine.

  Craine picked another card and slowly tipped it over. “It’s another ace of hearts,” he said, and methodically tore it up.

  “Two aces of hearts!” Carnac whispered as if in astonishment. “There’s some mystery in this! Pick another!”

  Craine picked another, tipped it over—another ace of hearts—and tore it up.

  “Man, you lucky I caught you when I did,” Carnac whispered, and drew his hands and the remaining cards back in through the bookshelf, out of sight. “Strange forces is converging. No question about it!” The cards and the tips of his fingers reappeared, the cards face up. They were now all twos of diamonds.

  Craine lowered his head to look over the tops of the books into Carnac’s eye. It was wet, as if tear-filled, and unnaturally wide, staring as if trying to pin him where he stood. Craine glanced down, and instantly, as if reading his mind, Carnac jerked his hands and the cards back out of sight.

  Craine leaned closer to the bookshelf. “You don’t fool me, Carnac,” he said, too quietly for anyone else to hear. “I know what you’re up to.”

  The wet eye closed. “God bless you for saying that, brother! You got a heart of gold!” The eye popped open, very wide, as sober as the eye of a myna bird. “You the only one in this universe understands me, that’s why I takin good care of you. I lose you, Craine, and I’m ’onna sink into hopeless confusion. You hear about St. Peter, trine walkin on the waves?”

  Craine laughed sharply
, then scowled and abruptly turned away. It was his usual experience with Carnac; everything just at the edge of making sense. His madness was surely studied, like that of a fool to some old-time king. But also he was crazy; he’d been diagnosed. Sometimes he would sit on the sidewalk and cry. As if guiltily, Craine’s mind flicked away from the thought, and his right hand, unbeknownst to him, moved to touch the bottle in his pocket. He glanced at the watch on his left wrist—ten a.m., too early to be as drunk as he was, he thought, unaware that he was thinking it. He retrieved his book, still open, from its shelf.

  As Craine started down the aisle, retreating, Carnac called softly, “That’s a interesting point you make, tearin up my cards. I guess I never looked at it that way before.” He sounded hurt, and, again for no reason he could think of, Craine felt guilty. He glanced at his watch.

  As he emerged into the central area of the bookstore, where the tables were, Craine stopped abruptly. The doctor from the university stood six feet away, gazing at the floor, slightly smiling, the dictionary under his arm. There was someone else there, Craine believed for a moment, or rather someone else standing not far off, toward the back of the store, motionless, hidden among the stacks. He got a sudden mental image—as if the person in the stacks had beamed it at him—of a huge winged bull carved in stone. He would have known, if he’d thought for a moment, thought hard, that it was a memory from his childhood, a visit to some museum with his aunt Harriet; he might even have worked out why it was that he thought of just that, just then; but Gerald Craine did not believe he retained any memories from childhood; plagued by blanks, he shrank in distress, with a thousand excuses, from the very idea of memory; and in his tingling alcoholic panic—a chronic state at the moment grown acute—he did not think at all. The doctor glanced up at him, lifting his head with the elegance of a prince so that he could see through the lower lenses of his bifocals, and smiled still more brightly, nodding. He stood with his head thrown slightly forward, like a man looking into a fire or across a vast desert or out at the sea. Craine approached. The person in the stacks—person or snake coiled to strike; he was suddenly uncertain—did not move.