October

by Al Sarrantonio

  Davey examined the quiet front of the house. "Mr. Meyer!" he called out.

  He mounted the porch, banged loudly on the screen door.

  "Mr. Meyer! Mrs. Meyer!"

  He was met with silence.

  He turned to the dog, who had stopped warily behind him. "What do you think? Should we check it out?" The dog whined unhappily.

  "We'll check it out."

  Davey opened the screen door and went in.

  He noticed the clean floor just inside the door, where he had seen the tall man working last night. The dog sniffed around it, made a mournful sound.

  Davey walked back to the kitchen. Dishes were soaking in the sink; the cleanser bubbles had gone flat, leaving a grayish soapy film on top of the water. A wash towel was crumpled on the washboard next to the drying rack.

  “Someone left what they were doing,” Davey said.

  He opened the cabinets over the kitchen counter.They were filled with plates and glasses, pots and pans. Underneath the counter was a double door. He opened it, uncovering a storehouse of food—cereals, canned peaches, cans of pork and beans. There was a bag of dog food.

  “I feel bad about doing this,” he said. “But I bet Ben Meyer would help us if he were here.”

  Under the sink was another double door, shelves with cleansers, scrub brushes, a brown grocery bag stuffed with other folded grocery bags. He drew a bag out and packed it with supplies from the other cabinet. He took from the back, moving cans and boxes forward, leaving a false line of food rowed along the front. With luck, no one would know he had been here.

  He searched through the pull-out drawers above the double doors, finally locating a can opener. He searched farther back until he found another one, much older but unlikely to be missed. He threw it in the bag with the food.

  "Let's go."

  As they passed the door to the cellar, Davey remembered Ben Meyer's gun collection. The old man had showed it to him and Buddy once, crowing over a historical rifle.

  "Hold on, boy."

  Davey descended the stairs.

  It was dark and musty in the basement. There was a pull chain at the bottom of the steps. Davey snapped the light on, revealing the room as he remembered it—damp, stone walled, square, an oil burner in one corner, bucket under its drip spout. There were stacks of yellowing newspapers under one mossy window, an unplugged freezer, red enameled, in the center of the floor, its top piled with boxes and a string-tied stack of Life magazines, John Kennedy's face on the top issue.

  Against the wall directly opposite him, under its own pull-chained light, was the well-maintained gun case, head height, glass doors. It showed off four rifles inside, as well as a single handgun, trigger guard hung on a peg.

  Davey circled the freezer, pulled the chain in front of the gun case. The bulb didn't light. He reached up, nearly on tiptoe, and flicked it with his finger. It blinked, then went out again. He turned it in its socket. It went on and stayed on.

  There was no lock on the case. Davey snapped the door open, angled it back on its hinges. The glass rattled in its frame.

  As he studied the rifles, it occurred to him that Ben Meyer would certainly report the theft of a missing rifle.

  He closed the gun case, switched off the light. "Can't do it."

  The dog looked up at him, sniffed at the air, huffed.

  "What's wrong, boy?"

  The dog huffed again, cocked its head as if listening to something Davey couldn't hear.

  "Damn."

  Davey snapped off the cellar light as he passed it, bounded up the stairs, ran to the front window. Just cresting the hill was the tall man in suspenders, helping another man, shorter, older, wearing a raincoat and cap.

  "Come on," Davey said to the dog.

  He ran for the back of the house, searching for another door. There wasn't one. He made for the short hallway off the kitchen. Two bedrooms, a bathroom. Only the large bedroom faced the back of the house. He tried to open the window in it but it was painted shut.

  "Shit."

  He crossed to the other bedroom; through its window Davey saw the tall man and his companion reach the bottom of the hill, approach the front yard of the house.

  "Shit."

  Davey ran into the kitchen, closed the cabinet doors, grabbed the bag of groceries and hurried down the cellar steps. The dog followed. As he reached the bottom, the front door upstairs opened.

  Davey crouched behind the enameled freezer, putting the bag of groceries next to him, holding the dog tightly, muzzling it against him.

  “Quiet,” he whispered.

  The dog whimpered in the back of its throat, was silent.

  Above them, voices. One of them loud, dramatic. The other gently insistent.

  There were some loud steps. Davey estimated they were in the short hallway to the bedrooms.

  The steps stopped over his head.

  After a short interval, he heard a loud laugh, the words “You needn’t be . . .” and then a muffled sound, as if furniture had been moved or bumped.

  Silence.

  Then, a scream.

  Davey turned to ice. He heard a dull thump, another and another. The screams built to a crescendo before abruptly ending. There was a larger thump, something heavy striking the floor. He heard the sound of something being dragged, heard the front door open on its hinges. After a moment, he heard it whack closed again.

  “Shit,” he said. “Shit.”

  A shadow fell briefly across the mossy cellar window facing the front of the house. Cautiously, Davey rose and went to it. He boosted himself on one of the stacks of yellowing newspapers and looked out.

  Through a filter of mossy dirt he watched the tall man drag the limp bloody-headed body of the man in the raincoat toward the garden. The tall man left it there, went to the barn, disappeared into its open doorway.

  “Jesus.”

  Davey jumped from the newspaper stack, ran to the gun case, yanked the door open. His hands were trembling. He fumbled a Marlin automatic out of its cradle, yanked open the ammunition drawer underneath the rack.

  It was empty.

  “Oh, shit!”

  He remembered that Ben Meyer kept his ammunition upstairs in the dining room hutch. He had lectured Davey and Buddy about the stupidity of leaving everything in one place, where a fool or amateur could get their hands on it.

  He heard sound outside, dropped the rifle, ran to the window, climbed.

  The tall man was back with a shovel, toeing it into the dirt, digging.

  Davey went back to the freezer. His hands were shaking. The dog watched him with interest, head cocked toward the window, seemingly listening.

  "What are we going to do?" Davey said. He picked up the Marlin, held it uselessly in his hands. He contemplated running for the hutch upstairs, grabbing and loading a clip, facing the tall man—

  The window light from outside was eclipsed. Davey's heart clutched. The tall man was standing right in front of the cellar window. Hands sweaty, Davey hugged the Marlin to his chest. He imagined the tall man's legs crouching, the tall man's face pressed against the window, his cold eyes finding Davey, the creak of the front door opening, then the slow, deliberate steps on the floorboards above, the pause, the steps slowly descending the cellar stairs—

  The legs did not crouch. Davey heard the hammer of a water pipe, the rush of running water. There was the squeak of the valve closing. He saw the legs turn and retreat, saw the brief picture of a bucket, water sloshing over its side, weighing down the tall man's right hand. After a moment he heard the front door bang open, then close, heard the inner door being closed and locked.

  Davey moved to the window, mounted a newspaper stack, looked out. There was no sign of the short man in the raincoat.

  Upstairs, he heard the sound of a moving brush on a hard surface.

  “We’ll have to stay, boy,” Davey said.

  The dog huffed.

  “We’ll wait for him to leave.”

  In answer, the dog la
id his head down on one paw, just touching Davey’s jeans.

  Sometime later, the brushing sound stopped. Long, slow steps traversed the house. They stopped somewhere near the living room.

  After a few moments, Davey heard the man begin to talk. Davey thought there might be someone else in the house. But then, from the silent pauses between the tall man’s words, he imagined the tall man was using the telephone.

  The tall man spoke a long time. The conversation started in a low, almost mournful tone, but by the end the tall man was laughing, and then, incredibly, Davey heard him sob and distinctly say, “I know, I know.” Shortly after, the conversation ended. The tall man made a second call which went like the first.

  After the phone calls, the slow steps traversed the house again. Davey put his hand on the dog’s head, holding it still.

  The steps stopped in front of the cellar door.

  The door opened. The tall man’s shadow crawled down the wall next to the steps until no light was visible from the kitchen upstairs.

  Davey sat still as stone, the dog silent beside him.

  The tall man's shadow crawled back up the wall. The tall man stepped back. The cellar door closed. The slow steps walked the house, then stopped, Davey estimated, around the living room.

  Davey loosened his grip on the dog, rubbed behind the dog's ears. His left hand, which had gripped the Marlin like a club, loosened its hold.

  Later, as darkness fell, Davey ate a can of tuna. He poured dog food out onto the floor for the dog, then made a bed of newspapers. The dog lay down, next to him. There was silence from the house above.

  It got chilly. The oil burner snapped on, flooding the upstairs of the house with heat, but the cellar grew damp and cold. Davey began to shiver and covered himself with more newspapers.

  The dog curled close, but Davey could not banish the chills.

  "Like I said," he whispered, "we'll stay until he leaves."

  11

  October 24th

  The Time Machine, again . . .

  Don't they know I hate these seminars? Yet they make me do them. Like some sort of circus freak. It is a show, Lydia told me that. Luckily, most of us die before we are lionized. With any luck, that will be for me, too.

  Why, then, did I come? Is there still a streak of the Celtic need for confession in me, the drilling out of the soul, tickets sold to examine the cavity? We are all mock scientists. We think there must be reasons for everything. That is what they want to hear. Profundity. They want to hear we are in pain, that there are locked doors deep in the vaults of the heart, that the heart is only the blanket of the mind. (I like that, I'll put that down. Where's something to write on? Damn, this piece of paper—no, this matchbook cover will do.) They want to hear about the engines that drive the pen.

  Tiny engines, within tiny, keyless vaults.

  Kevin Michaels, the young man with the burning eyes, poor Ted Michaels's son, is the worst. A boy. Sensitive. Oi course, he talked me into this, and I let him. They've come before, to sit at the feet of the master (if they saw the corns on those feet, perhaps their adulation would not be so heartfelt!) and in the process, earn their degrees. Most of them want to know how, what the process is. In cocktail party terms, Where do you get your ideas? Which makes me want to use the pen as the sword on them.

  But Kevin Michaels is worse than his father. Relentless. Am I that much different from the rest of them, that much surer? Yes. Even with my failings, my hopes, dreams, I am still too much me. I feel comfortable in my skin, in my being, and the rest of them don't seem to have that. Danny could never stand it. It drove Bobby away; it drove Lydia into herself; it drove Eddie, poor, weak Eddie, to take him-self from the world.

  And it drives Kevin to me, with his burning eyes and burning heart. If only I knew! I want to tell him, to confide! Even with inner peace, there is a need to share, a need to . . . no, I won't say it.

  But God help me, I've come to look forward to his visits, with his half-fawning attention to poor Lydia, his tape recorder, his notes, his interest (some of it, genuine) in my welfare and that of my family. He wants to know, because he needs to know, poor puppy, and I, poor dog, have . . . fallen in love with him.

  There, I've said it.

  Foolishness. How's that for a middle-aged writer with corns on her feet? Is it because he reminds me of my lost Bobby? Yes. And because . . . I'm in love with him. Fool . . .

  What's that? Time for me to talk? I . . .

  The Time Machine, the curving flight through memory. . .

  Such a pretty day, my coffee getting cold, the funeral, and all I can think of is Bobby. Ten years. What would he look like now? Twenty-six years old. Would he be tall, stocky like Danny? Has he grown into an athlete? I still cry at night for him, and for Eddie, poor Eddie, gone now, and I, hope, at peace. He was not a good boy but he was mine. More Danny's than mine, but the ground has him now. The sun so orange through the whipping trees, leaves blowing into his open grave as they lowered it. The first spill of dirt. Leaves blowing in but they covered them, dying colors, it sent a chill through me. I remembered that other funeral day, so many leaves falling, the same wind blowing, and they let me watch the procession from the window. The hearses driving by, one after one, long black cars with stretched backs to hold the caskets. Such a beautiful, blowy day, a carpet of leaves unbrushed from the streets, rain the night before fastening them there, the sun breaking through into a deep, bluing sky. All those polished black hearses, the trailing parade behind. I saw Mrs. Greene crying into a handkerchief. Danny Sullivan and Ted Michaels are among them, walking together. They turn toward my house as they pass. I don't think they saw me at the window. They look so haunted. These pills they gave me lift me above it all, as if I'm in those breaking clouds, looking down like an angel.

  Am I crying? Yes. But why do I feel so at peace?

  Get away from me, Mother! Let Mr. Fields hold you!

  I'm crying as they pass. I didn't need this shot. They think I'm too calm.

  "She may try to follow," the doctor said. Survivor's guilt, a suicide watch. They say Ted Michaels tried to kill himself. But not me.

  My coffee cold. And Eddie cold, in the ground. Poor, foolish, lost boy. Danny was there, he came, we looked at each other across the hole. No words. He didn't even try, thank him for that. He just went home. They know he beat me, they know I threw him out. Bad wife! They still call me that in New Polk, Danny did his talking in the pubs before he left. Free wife.

  But even Danny knew it was no good at the end, a love based on nothing, a bond based on childhood and a bad memory, words locked in an unkeyed vault, in a wife's cold heart.

  They forget that it was he who sought me out for marriage, that he was drawn to me because I was the only one left . . .

  But Bobby, what would he look like? Like Danny? No, his bones were not big like that. Slender, short, like me. Perhaps like Lydia, but more of him. More substantial. Then again, maybe I'm wrong. I wonder if he ever used his love for words . . .

  The Machine again. Some days the disease is so clear, the pauses between rides so sharp. Ah, the hand on the lever . . .

  "Bobby. Don't leave, please. Your father, I'll make him leave you alone—"

  "It's not him," Bobby says. That brooding gulf between us. "I hate it here."

  "But can't you try—"

  "You're drowning me!" he shouts. "Don't you see that? I just want to be alone. Away from you."

  “Me?" I am genuinely shocked. He has been my favorite, even Lydia and Eddie have known this. It is something I have not been able to control. I see myself in him, my love for him is better than for the others.

  When he gets sullen like this, the fire in his eyes darkens. He broods, leaves the house, walks alone for hours when his father yells at him for his lack of sports prowess, or his brother, Eddie, fights with him, or when poor, ineffective Lydia tries to console him. "You're drowning me."

  And then, suddenly, I know what it is. I have been sneaking his writings away
from his drawer when he is at school, and now, I know what he is going to say next.

  "I'll never be as good as you."

  "Bobby, you will! You'll find your own way. You love words, it's obvious—"

  "Not with you smothering me."

  I take him by his shoulders and draw him to me. He lets me hold him, stiffly. "Bobby, please. Don't you know how much I love you?"

  The stiffness in his shoulders softens, then hardens again. When he speaks, his voice is soft. "I know you love me," he says. "But I have to go."

  That afternoon I hear the front door close as I work upstairs. I rush to the window to see him leaving the house. When I run downstairs and open the front door, he is already down the street, his back to me, his jacket collar up, a duffel bag clutched in his right hand.

  "Bobby!" I shout. "Bobby!"

  He doesn't turn . . .

  Into the void, the plunge through Time . . .

  Kevin. I want to tell him everything today. My last chance? He will soon be gone, I know, off to Cornell for his Ph.D., and already the foolish ache of his leaving is in me. I feel so old! Forty-eight, a dinosaur, a fool. Like those talk-show women, older women with younger men, they always look so grasping, so worthy of embarrassment. He is twenty-four, exactly half my age. I want him to take me in his arms (fool! fool!), baggy garden pants and all, old loafers, sweatshirt, plainly attractive face, no makeup, glasses, hair needing brushing, and tell me he loves me. I would lead him to the bed. Those darkly bright eyes, oblivious, his shock of brown hair, his preoccupation, and self-absorbed smile

  What's wrong with me! He wants answers from me I cannot give. He's not in love with me, he's in love with my work and an aspect of me he wants for himself. He is consoled by my worldview—would he be comforted by my touch? No! Could he love me, who has periods of forgetfulness, and occasional diarrhea, who cleaned spilled food on the kitchen floor when Lydia was a baby, who smells bad in the mouth in the morning, has a sagging line of belly that never went away from Eddie's birth, and truly loved to feel her hated husband inside her, because the rough act, the moving of his lustful hands over her, made her feel loved.