Horace Afoot

by Frederick Reuss

  A truck with a sign that reads Lawn, Inc., pulls up. A man gets out and ambles up the walk to the porch.

  “Mr. Horace?”

  “That’s me.”

  “You called for me to stop by.”

  “I didn’t call you.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  The man scratches the back of his head, puzzled. “Yesterday afternoon a Mr. Horace called, said he needed lawn work.”

  “It wasn’t me.”

  A pause ensues during which the man makes a quick appraisal of the front yard. “Well, I wouldn’t be here if someone didn’t call me,” he says with some irritation. “Anyhow, from the looks of it I’d say you could do with some yard work.”

  “I said I didn’t call you. And I like my lawn the way it is.”

  He scratches the back of his head and surveys. Finally he says, “That’s not a lawn, sir, that’s a disaster area.”

  “Did my neighbor send you?”

  “I couldn’t rightly say. All I know is a Mr. Horace called and said he wanted his lawn worked on.” The man takes his cap off and slaps it on his thigh, then adjusts it back on his head with military cockiness.

  “My neighbor must have called you. I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “That’s none of my business, sir, if you and your neighbor got problems. And I don’t ask for ID when someone calls me up. I just do lawns. It’s how I earn my living.”

  I rock a little and watch him. A board squeaks. I don’t want to talk to him, but he doesn’t get the message and stands there, gazing out into the yard. “Just taking a mower to it would be a big improvement. ’Course it’s only mowing weeds.”

  I don’t respond, just rock. Finally he gives me a business card. “Just in case you change your mind,” he says.

  As he turns to leave, I change my mind. “I’ll hire you on one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That you do everything by hand. No power mowers. Nothing that has a motor.”

  The man looks at me, removes his baseball cap, and slaps it back on again. “What’s your point here, Mr. Horace?”

  “No point. Those are my conditions.”

  “But I don’t see why?”

  “Because I hate the noise, for one.”

  The man looks at the ground and thinks for a moment. “Well, now, if it’s noise you want to get away from I could drop you off someplace and come and get you when I’m finished. The library over on Main Street is nice and quiet inside.”

  “I’m also against them.”

  “Lawn mowers?”

  “No, motors. Internal combustion engines.”

  “Well, now, I just happen to have an electric mower. It’s quieter than most, don’t hardly make any noise.”

  I shake my head. “No motors. Period.”

  The man stands in the middle of the walkway and surveys the yard again. “Mind if I take a look around?”

  “Help yourself.”

  I rock while he rustles around in the rear of the house. A few minutes later he returns. “It’s a big job, Mr. Horace. You got four-year saplings this big growing back there.” He holds his palm to his chest.

  “I forgot to mention. The trees stay.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Those saplings. Leave them.”

  “I hate to tell you this, Mr. Horace. They’re killing the grass.”

  “That’s fine with me.”

  The man shakes his head and removes his baseball cap and slaps it back on again. “Well, I don’t want to argue with you, Mr. Horace. I guess you’re not interested.”

  “I told you my conditions. Take it or leave it.”

  “I think I’ll just leave it, sir. You got troubles with your neighbor ain’t any business of mine.” He returns to his pickup truck, which is pulling a trailer with a small tractor on it. He pauses for a moment to look at his equipment. Cranking the steering wheel with the heel of his hand, he drives off in a mild huff.

  Shortly before sundown I go for a walk and find myself at the airport. The usual pickup trucks and kissing couples are parked along the fence. I follow the fence all the way around and end up in the terminal. I’ve never been inside before. Lines are forming at the ticket counter for the early evening flight out. It is cold inside the terminal. An old man pushes a dust mop along the polished floor, eyes half closed. The cashier at the newsstand watches him as he shuffles past, her head propped on the heel of one hand.

  I look at the departure schedule. Everyone in the airport is destined for Chicago. There are two flights later in the evening, each an hour apart. The first is to St. Louis, the second to Minneapolis. I find a seat among the departees. A young woman sits across from me holding a child in her lap. The child takes in the cavernous atmosphere, wide eyed. An elderly couple sits one row back, hands in their laps. A young man in a rumpled suit sips coffee from a Styrofoam cup and reads a sports magazine. I suddenly notice the Muzak playing softly throughout the terminal. It begins to roar in my ears. I can’t swallow the lump at the back of my throat. The woman and her child are looking at me. I stare back. The woman averts her eyes, but the child holds my gaze.

  I get up to leave, then sit down again a few seats away. The Muzak croons on. A swirl of black malice pinches my temples. My vision tunnels. But the sightless, thoughtless state doesn’t exist.

  I leave the airport through the front entrance, walk the length of the parking area and then along the fence to the end of the runway. The grass is dry and strewn with litter blown up against the fence. The airplane roars right over me, engines deafening. I force myself not to cover my ears. The wheels are drawn up into the belly of the huge machine, and it rises and banks away. Soon it is quiet again. All I can hear are crickets in the grass, and all I can see are the blinking red lights of the airplane high overhead.

  The clock above the main entrance to the public library reads nine. The door is locked. I knock, and a woman appears on the other side, holds up a finger, and fumbles with a set of keys. She drops them, stoops to pick them up again, fumbles some more, and after several wriggling, jiggling tries succeeds in opening the door. “Sorry about that,” she says pushing it open. “Our maintenance man is out sick today, and Mr. Mohr is running late and asked me to open up.” I follow the woman down the short corridor into the main reading room. The reading room is an airy place with gilded ceilings and high windows. It must have been a bank once. The floor is covered with carpeting that muffles the sound of footsteps. The place has the atmosphere and smell of a renovated vault.

  “Is there something particular you’re looking for?”

  “No. I just wanted to browse.”

  “I see. Well, if you need any help, please ask.”

  I walk between the rows of stacks browsing titles, not bothering to take anything from the shelf. Suddenly I realize there is something I would like to find, and I return to the front desk.

  “Where would I find information on the Indian mound outside of town?”

  The woman is jotting notes, holds up a finger. A few moments later she puts her pen down. “The head librarian, Mr. Mohr, is the person to talk to about that. Only he can grant access to special collections.”

  “Special collections?”

  “The Wilkington Collection. Local history. There is quite an amount of material in it. Mr. Mohr will be in shortly if you’d care to wait.” She nods toward the reading tables in the middle of the library. I withdraw to wait. Feeling lack of sleep, I put my head down on the table and drift in the library quiet, the smell of the old waxed table, and the mild hum of fluorescent lights.

  “Excuse me.”

  A frail man with a razor-scraped face has appeared and is clutching the edge of the table. Mr. Mohr. He has an air of chemotherapy about him that the wig arranged on the top of his head does nothing to belie.

  “Mrs. Entwhistle says you’re interested in the Wilkington Collection.” His speech is slow, a combined effort of articulation
and exhalation.

  “I’m curious about the Indian mound outside town.”

  “The Wilkington Mound?”

  “Is that the name?”

  The man nods stiffly. “It has other names, of course. Depending on the time. And who you talk to.” His small barrel chest rises with the effort of speaking, and I find myself staring expectantly at him, trying to anticipate his sentences. “It was once called the Tortoise Mound. Because of its resemblance to a large tortoise. From about 1865 onward it appears on maps as the Wilkington Mound.” He adjusts his glasses. “What exactly is it that you would like to know?”

  The air inside the library seems suddenly stale. I consider dropping the whole thing and returning home. “Nothing specific,” I say at last.

  He seems satisfied by this and scrutinizes me from under his ill-fitting wig. The eyes behind the horn-rims are sunken and roll deep in their orbits. The musculature of his face seems completely atrophied. He has the obliging and deserted look of someone without an intuitive sense. “I’ll show you what we have,” he says.

  I follow him up a flight of stairs to a small, windowless room lined with shelves and drawers. In the center stands a table over which an industrial fluorescent hood hangs, casting a bright cobweb of light. The head librarian motions for me to sit down. The first thing he hands me is a small volume called The Wilkington Mound. “That will give you details of the first scientific excavation,” he tells me. “It was conducted at the turn of the century by the Bureau of American Ethnology.”

  I thank him and peruse the brittle little book. There are several grainy photographs of canvas-trousered men holding shovels and picks, shirt sleeves rolled high.

  Mohr is examining a shelf across the room. “Most excavations of mounds in this area indicate they were used as burial sites.” He turns, an ironic grin playing at the corners of his mouth. “Some are simply garbage dumps.”

  “Dumps?”

  “Ancient trash heaps. The ones in this area, at least.”

  I flip through the book, dated 1904. Mohr slips a large leather folio onto the table. “This was a particularly rich site,” he says. “And these are photographs and illustrations of objects taken from the mound. Pipes. Hundreds of pipes.”

  “Found during the excavation?”

  “No. They were discovered much earlier. In 1846. By William Wilkington. He sold them in 1850 to an Englishman named Merrill for 150 dollars. William Wilkington, it seems, needed some quick money to settle his debts.”

  “Where did this folio come from?”

  “A grandson of Merrill had the pipes photographed around 1895. He seems also to have been a gentleman ethnologist man-of-science type. The younger Merrill sent this folio to Major Perry Wilkington. There are letters in the correspondence file that indicate Major Wilkington had sought to buy the pipes back from Merrill. The folio was a courtesy.”

  “A courtesy?”

  “That’s how the younger Merrill describes it in a letter. He explains that he intends to publish a descriptive catalog of the collection and offers the photographs as a courtesy to Major Wilkington. There is also correspondence pertaining to a visit the younger Merrill paid to Major Wilkington around the turn of the century. He came out to see the mound just before the Bureau of American Ethnology excavated it. I think there was some connection there.”

  “Was the catalog ever published?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where are the pipes now?”

  Mohr shrugs. “They seem to have disappeared. A few years ago an archaeologist came here looking for information. A woman named Palmer. She was in touch with someone in London who claimed to know the whereabouts of the collection. She said she wanted to excavate the mound, but I haven’t heard from her since then.”

  The pipes are stone, carved effigies of various birds and animals. The head librarian flips the pages silently, a vague insinuation of beauty and mystery at the corners of his mouth. Halfway through the folio he stops, gathers up the pile, and closes the contents back into their case. He shepherds the oversized volume back to its place on the shelf. “There is quite an amount of material on the mound,” he says with his back to me. “The state was going to put a road through it. The papers relating to that dispute are in the county archives. We have copies of most of them.”

  I watch as he sorts through more drawers. Although his back is turned I can sense his pleasure. Like some neglected child with a collection, his identity seems subsumed by the contents of this room. I have no doubt that he knows the history of this town down to the minutest and most insignificant detail. It is also obvious that he is dying.

  “So tell me,” he asks as he flips open a file drawer, “why are you interested in the mound?”

  I push away from the table. “No particular reason. I pass it frequently on walks and enjoy the view from it.”

  “That awful factory spoils it.” He opens a file drawer and begins to browse.

  “I was arrested there the other day.”

  “At the factory?”

  “No, the mound. I saw smoke coming from the top and went to see what was going on, and the sheriff accused me of setting the fire.”

  “Oh my. And they arrested you?”

  “And fined me five hundred dollars.”

  Mohr lurches between the drawers and shelves and vertical files. I wonder how long he has plied the upper story of this library, what he does after the library closes and he returns home. Does he have someone to dote on him? Does he dote on someone? Does he stand in front of the bathroom mirror and cry?

  His voice assumes a strained quality. “There are people in the area who consider the mound a sacred place,” he says, hauling an oversized manila envelope from the back of an overfilled drawer.

  “Indians?”

  “There haven’t been any Indians here for over a century. It’s New Age types. You’re not one of them, I hope.”

  I shake my head.

  “Good. They come in here now and then asking for books. One came in about a year or so ago and handed me this two-hundred-page manuscript and demanded that I place it in the archive. I put it in the Idiot File over there. The Indians who built the mound, he claims, were tuned into some natural cosmic consciousness, and somehow the mound amplifies and broadcasts it for the benefit of adepts like himself who can tune into it as if it were some noncommercial public radio station. Really, I don’t know where these people come from. Or where they learn that ecstatic babble.”

  “I wonder that myself.”

  “And why they feel compelled to sentimentalize the poor Indians. As if they haven’t suffered enough of the white man’s stupidities.” He puts the envelope containing the manuscript in front of me.

  “I think I’ll pass.”

  “If you’re ever in need of a good laugh,” he says, taking back the envelope and returning it to the drawer marked Idiot File.

  “The sheriff called it an official historical site when he arrested me.”

  The librarian coughs. “Funny. Don’t you think?”

  “That it is called an official site?”

  “That the government has appropriated it. As part of its own official history.”

  I think about this and find myself wishing there were a telephone handy. I’d prefer to continue the conversation on the phone. Mohr is running out of breath; his sentences are coming out slower and slower. He sets another manila envelope down in front of me, and I pull up tightly to the edge of the table. “What’s this?”

  “That is some of Major Wilkington’s correspondence. The mound was on his property. After fighting in the Indian Wars he became an advocate of Indian rights.” Mohr pauses for a moment while I peer into the manila envelope, then continues, “He expended quite an amount of energy preserving the mound. Stipulated that excavation could only be carried out under the auspices of the State Historical Society.” He stops, his breath exhausted.

  I slide the contents onto the table and select a letter at random. It is written
in an elegant nineteenth-century hand that I find difficult to read at first:

  Hon. S. H. Parker,

  My Dear Sir; I am in receipt of your valued favor of recent date, and beg to say that I recently wrote Congressman Farris that I would take up the matter with Mr. Howell. I rather think your suggestion a good one, that a commission or expert be appointed to investigate the matter. As I never tire of saying, the Indian, with whom over these last years I have had more than passing acquaintance, is being forgotten in the great onward march of civilization. It is only a matter of time when this mode of life will be an uncertain tradition, unless it be preserved in literature or in history. In my association with the Indian I have become aware that they lament this fact, for, like all proud people, they wish to be remembered at their best.

  “Don’t we all?” Mohr says, reading over my shoulder and leaning for support on the back of the chair.

  I put the letter on the table. “Don’t we all what?”

  “Wish to be remembered at our best.” He walks around to the other side of the table, puts a hand on his hip, shifts his puny weight, and fixes a look on me somewhere between disquiet and discomfort. His eyes swim in their broadened orbits behind his glasses. Then he turns away and looks at the ground.

  Wilkington’s letter is spread before me on the table like so many fragile yet tangible moments of the past. Though I haven’t yet seen the lithographed maps and blurry photographs of Wilkington’s Oblivion, his handwriting brings it to life in my mind. I can imagine the wheel-rutted road, the billowing elm trees, the corn crop, the dogs and dust, and the barefoot children. A bucolic, sentimental portrait, and I can see it in the major’s leisurely, elegant scrawl.

  “Will you be looking at more?”