Horace Afoot

by Frederick Reuss

  “I wish I could do that too.”

  “When she saw you she blinked.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just what I said. She remembered you. She’s not very talkative, but the doc was able to get her to say she remembered your face.”

  “Wait a minute.” I get out of the car and talk across the roof. “You said she asked to see me.”

  The sheriff turns and strides toward the station. “You’ll see what I mean,” he says, and gestures for me to follow him.

  “I’m not going in.”

  The Sheriff turns to me. With one hand in his pocket he jingles his change. “Look. She recognized you, that’s all. We asked if you were the man who attacked her, and she said no. The doc thinks seeing you might help her remember more.”

  “Is that why you brought me into the lineup? To help her remember?”

  “Yup. That’s right.” The sheriff opens the door and holds it for me.

  “Why didn’t they just ask me to come to the hospital?”

  “Because if she had identified you as the man who attacked her, we would have had to bring you here anyway. It saved us a trip.” He grins maliciously and tries to put his hand on my shoulder. I draw away. “Relax, pal. It’s just a joke. Nobody’s making any accusations. You’re doing a good deed is all.”

  We walk down the corridor. The reporter from the Sentinel suddenly appears. She shoots me an I-don’t-need-you-anyway look and begins to ask the sheriff a question. “Not now, honey. Later.” He waves her off and opens the door to his office, where a man is waiting.

  “This is Detective Ross.” We enter the flag- and mugshot- and plaque decorated room. “He’s been assigned to the case.”

  Detective Ross gets up and offers his hand.

  “Where is she?” I ask.

  “I’d like to ask you a couple of questions before we go in to see her,” the detective says.

  My eyes revert to the sheriff, behind his desk now and opening a drawer. “Why didn’t you tell me you were bringing me here to be questioned ?”

  “Didn’t think it mattered,” he says, then adds with a supercilious grin, “and you didn’t ask.”

  A flash of anger causes my throat to constrict and my stomach to tighten. “What the fuck do you want with me?” Heat is rising up into my face.

  “Cool it, mister. Just cool it.” The sheriff plants both palms flat and leans stiffly over his desk. “Or I’ll lock you up.”

  The detective cuts in. “Calm down, both of you,” he says and interposes himself between the sheriff and me. He turns to me. “I just want to get a sense of what happened. There’s nothing to be upset about.” He pinches his trousers at each knee and sits down in a chair next to the sheriffs desk. He is a middle-aged, flabby black man with a graying mustache, close-cropped hair, and a large cushion of flesh that squeezes above his collar. He is wearing a blue seersucker suit that seems casual and old fashioned among the starched uniforms of the station. He gestures for me to sit down in the chair across from him, ignoring the sheriff, who has his back to us and is unpinning papers from the cork wall at the back of the office.

  “Let me see if I got your name right,” the detective begins, reading from his notepad. “Quintus Horatius Falcus?”

  “Fiaccas.”

  “Flaccus. Flaccus. Quintus Horatius Flaccus,” he pronounces. “Mind if I ask where you got a name like that?”

  “I gave it to myself.”

  “Where are you from, Mr. Flaccus, originally?”

  “You mean where was I born?”

  “That’s right.”

  “New York.”

  “And would you mind telling us what name appears on your birth certificate?” He eyes me ironically. “You don’t have to, but we could find out easily enough for ourselves.”

  “Be my guest.”

  “All right, Mr., ah, Flaccus.”

  “Call me Horace.”

  The detective grins. “Okay, Horace. Could you tell me exactly what happened the other day? Exactly as you remember it.” He pulls a blank pad across the desk toward him and prepares to take notes, his face contracting into a frown of concern and concentration.

  I try to recount the episode for him, the shots, the birds, the whole thing exactly as it happened. Ross lets me talk without interruption, then holds up his hand. “Was she walking or running?”

  “She was stumbling. Her hands were tied.”

  “In front or behind?”

  “Behind.”

  “Did it look like she fell? Or did she collapse?”

  His questions strike me as completely superfluous. “I suppose she collapsed. That’s what it looked like to me.”

  “How far away were you when you first saw her?”

  “I don’t know, about a hundred feet or so.”

  “So she could have fallen.”

  “I suppose so. What difference does it make?”

  The detective jots as I talk. “Just going for as much detail as possible. Bear with me. Now,” he asks, leaning toward me, “was she running toward you or away from you when you first saw her?”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Just try to remember.”

  “Neither. She just collapsed.”

  “Before or after she saw you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Think about it. Did she come out of the field, turn, see you, and then collapse?”

  I shake my head. “She stumbled straight out of the field and collapsed onto the embankment at the side of the road. I have no idea if she saw me or not.”

  “When you approached her, was she frightened?”

  “Scared shitless.”

  “Did she let you approach her? Or did she try to get away?”

  “I said I wasn’t going to hurt her and held my hands up so she could see them. She had tape on her mouth and was having trouble getting enough air. She let me approach her to take the tape off. After that I untied her.”

  “Describe how you did it.”

  The detective continues writing as I speak, demanding details that finally leave me exasperated. “I just dropped it. I didn’t crumple it in my hands. I didn’t throw it. I just let it drop on the ground. Jesus Christ, what difference does it make?”

  “And that’s when you took off your shirt and gave it to her?” The detective leans back, slides a hand into his pocket. I half expect him to produce the cord we have been talking about, but instead he takes out a handkerchief and blows his nose. He folds it and slides it back into his pocket, leaving his hand tucked along his fat thigh.

  “Yeah. That’s right.”

  “I guess that’s all I need for now,” he says, speaking half to me and half to the sheriff. “You can go visiting when you’re ready.”

  They bring me into an adjoining office, and I am introduced to a woman I hardly recognize by a matronly psychiatrist who has accompanied Jane Doe here from the psych ward of the county hospital. Jane sits primly on a bright orange vinyl chair. Her hair is combed up and tied into a straggling black tail that begins high on her scalp. She has sea-blue eyes that seem to water at the sight of anything, and her nose is red, from crying, I suppose. She looks older than I remember her.

  Dr. Henley, the psychiatrist, does the talking while I stand across the room. Jane Doe stares at me in blank astonishment.

  “How are you feeling?” I ask her.

  She looks at me as though I hadn’t spoken a word.

  “This is the man you said you remembered. Do you still remember him?”

  Jane begins to fidget in her lap. A few moments elapse. Then her head bobs.

  “Wonderful. Very good,” the doctor exclaims.

  I feel as though I am sinking into the floor, sensing the shame that has suddenly swelled and thickened the air in the room. I look at the woman, whose eyes are cast down, and guess that I must fit into her trauma as some horrible frill. I glance at the doctor and signal that I am ready to leave, but the doctor sits on the worn
wooden arm of Jane’s chair and begins talking quietly to her.

  “I have to go,” I mutter and turn to leave.

  “Just a moment, please.” The doctor escorts me out of the room with a briskness that defies the sullen circumstances. In the hallway she offers me her hand and thanks me for cooperating. “You can’t imagine how important this has been for her.”

  “You have to hand it to these police.”

  “You misunderstand. It was my idea. I thought it might help her to remember. The police were very obliging.”

  “When it’s in their interest to be.”

  “And thank you for cooperating.”

  I nod my head slightly, wanting only to get out of there.

  “She recognized you. It is an important first step.”

  “So you’ve told me.”

  “When you came into the room with those other men, she pointed to you and said, ‘I remember him.”’ She puts her hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry,” she tells me, “she remembers you as the person who helped her. Not as her attacker.”

  “What’s wrong with her?” I ask.

  “The symptoms resemble a combination of post-traumatic stress disorder and psychogenic amnesia, a dissociative disorder.”

  “Was she hit over the head?”

  “There are no physical signs of concussion. But she has been badly traumatized, and there’s no telling how long the amnesia will persist. She could snap out of it any moment, or it could take weeks, even months.”

  “She has no idea what happened to her?”

  “She remembers what happened to her but has no memory of the person who attacked her or of her own identity. That’s why it’s significant that she recognized you.”

  “The police think so too.”

  The doctor’s eyes shift away. “Well, I don’t know what to say about that.”

  “Neither do I.”

  The faucet in the bathroom drips. Lying awake in bed, I can hear the sound echo down the hallway. It stays in the foreground. In the background the night chirrup of cicadas, a faint breeze blowing in the trees, the pulse of blood in my ear marking lonely time in the dark.

  Drip drip drip drop

  Squeak

  I sit up. Someone is in the house … or on the porch. The bedsprings shatter the silence. A thin shaft of blue moonlight illuminates the room. I swing my legs off the bed, stand up slowly. Carefully. A board squeaks underfoot. My pulse beating hard, I am motionless, listen, then tiptoe into the hallway and pause at the top of the stairs.

  Squeak squeak drip drip drip

  On the porch. Not inside. I exhale slowly through my nostrils, try to control my breathing. My ears are hot. The thought that I have no weapon occurs to me at the same moment I realize I’m naked. I stand at the top of the stairs, motionless. The springs on the screen door begin to crack as it is pulled open. The front door is never locked.

  Crack crack. The springs are straining. I imagine the screen door propped open with a shoulder. The front-door latch rattles quietly. A flashlight beam cuts the darkness, illuminates the wall at the foot of the stairs, skates around, and clicks off. My heart is pounding. I put my left hand on the wall for balance. The flashlight beam sweeps the bottom of the staircase again, clicks off. The front door clicks open.

  Aaahhhhhhh! I rush down the stairs, testicles bouncing. The door slams. Racing footsteps. I charge down the front steps into the middle of the yard. I strain to see the figure running up the street. In seconds it has vanished. I stand, heart pounding, chest and belly wet with sweat. The hollow pit in my stomach, I realize, is not fear but the slowly dawning pain of free-swinging balls. I have racked myself. I withdraw from the yard onto the front porch, one hand clutching my groin. Breath comes in short bursts. The pain swells as the adrenaline ebbs. A moan becomes a growl becomes a howl: mmmmmm ohhhhhhhh Fuuuuuck! I pause for another minute; teeth begin to chatter. In the distance the sound of a motorcycle. The pain in my groin spreads upward, turns to nausea. One retch. Another retch.

  I go back to bed but can’t sleep. I lie on my back staring at the little orbs of darkness and light that float before my eyes. Sight, in darkness or broad daylight, a function of gathered and filtered globules of viscous light. The pain in my groin has become a dull ache. Words string themselves together in a little rhyme. Do you ever see those little spots? Those tiny orbs? Those puny dots? Do you ever think you’re going blind? Walking straight ahead? Staying right behind? Your life is veiled by night mucus. The words stick in my head, forming a little jingle.

  By dawn the pain in my groin has become a hollow-stomach feeling. I get dressed and go outside. Mist hangs in the air.

  I walk to the police station. The desk sergeant looks up from his mug of coffee.

  “Got a problem?”

  “Someone tried to break into my house last night.”

  He puts down his coffee, reaches into a drawer, and takes out a form. He asks me to fill out the top half.

  “This doesn’t have to be anything formal.”

  “Are you reporting an incident or filing a complaint?”

  “Both.”

  He reaches into his drawer and brings out another form. “You’ll have to fill this out too.”

  “Can’t I just tell you what happened?”

  “We’ll get to that part afterward.”

  I fill out the forms and hand them back. The sergeant sips his coffee and glances at the papers. Then he fills in his part and asks me to tell him in my own words what happened.

  “I didn’t get a good look at him, but I know it was that asshole kid with the motorcycle, Tom Schroeder.”

  “What makes you think it was him?”

  “I heard his motorcycle.”

  “Did you see the motorcycle?”

  “No.”

  “How do you know it was his?”

  “I just do.”

  The sergeant looks at me over the rim of his coffee cup. “There’s not much here to go on, but I’ll make a note of it.”

  “Have you ever had a beard?” I ask him, thinking that men with loose jowls like his should grow beards.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” He frowns.

  “I was just curious.”

  He puts his hand to his cheek. “It’s against regulations. But it’s funny you should ask. My wife used to ask me to grow one when we were first married.”

  “Did you?”

  “I couldn’t. I was already on the force. Mustaches are okay, but full beards are against regulations.”

  “Who made that regulation?”

  He shrugs. “Beats me.” He taps his pen on the desk. “You think I’d look better with a beard?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe when I retire.” He laughs, sips coffee. “I’ll send a detective out to look around if you like.”

  “I’ve already looked around. There’s no need.”

  “Well then, all I can say is keep your door locked at night and try to get to a phone next time. There’s not much we can do at this point.”

  “What’s it going to take for you to catch that little prick?”

  “We’ll catch him one of these days; don’t you worry about it.”

  I sit at the small table in my kitchen, my notebook open in front of me. On the stove a pot of black beans bubbles and boils as I try to compose a thought worthy of expressing in writing, but except for today’s date I can think of no words to inscribe in the spiral bound pad - no words of my own, that is. So after checking the boiling pot and stirring the thickening mass and opening a bottle of the wine I bought at Winesburg Wine and Liquor yesterday, I find myself scribbling disconnected passages from Horace out of ransacked memory. What comes out onto the paper are the words of an ode that once inspired me.

  Remember in adversity to maintain a calm and even mind, and when times are good

  —what then? When times are good, when times are good …

  To guard no less against excessive happiness, Dellius,

  —and the na
me sends me scuttering among the overturned tables of all the Horatian poems I ever committed to memory with the thought that by having stored such things inside me, I am partaking more grandly in life by stretching the borders of my own existence backward into time….

  Happiness, Dellius, who are destined to die no less if you are forever sad

  —Dellius Dellius Dellius, friend preserved in the alcaic stanzas of dead Latin …

  Than if on every holiday you enjoyed secluded picnics with Falernian

  —wine, his own Gevrey-Chambertin …

  Out of the storeroom’s remotest corner.

  I put the pen down and read the lines, proud of my capacity to recollect them. I had thought they were gone, wiped out along with all the memories I have tried, with mixed results, to suppress.

  I take the pot off the stove, pour the cooked beans into a large bowl, and set them on the counter to cool. If left in the cooking pot, beans acquire an unpleasant metallic taste. An earthy smell now suffuses the kitchen and raises the humidity index of the entire house. I return to the table to look at the shaky black lines I have just put down, sip the wine Anderson sold me—from the storeroom’s remotest corner. I bought a case from him and asked if it could be delivered. He said he’d be more than happy to drop it off on his way home. He tried three times to conceal his surprise: first when I told him I’d take the entire case, then when I told him where to deliver it, and finally later that day when he stood politely at my front door and passed the heavy wooden crate across the threshold as though he were introducing something into the house that shouldn’t belong there.

  I haven’t used the telephone now for days. I’ve resisted the temptation, preferring to let the thoughts popping around my brain lie idle along with the rest of me. Drinking wine is a passable substitute. Earliest use of the wine jar imparts the bouquet that is longest lasting. Horace’s advice. So I have started using it, reaching for the bottle instead of the cradled receiver, pouring the ruby liquid into a glass, resting my Kilroy nose on the rim to absorb the waft of fumes instead of punching out seven random digits, listening to the clicks and pips, waiting for someone to answer. For the time being, sipping wine has replaced plying questions along the electronic river.