Horace Afoot

by Frederick Reuss

  “That’s right. It was.”

  “And your parents’ deaths were fair?”

  Mohr works himself into a more upright position. “Let’s say theirs were less unfair.”

  “And your own?”

  He stares at me for a moment, retreating behind the large rims of his glasses. “Less unfair.” He removes his glasses again and jabs his knuckle into his eye. “I’m not crying,” he says, rubbing. “It’s the medication. It dries me out. My eyes get. Irritated.” He replaces his glasses. “The real is the rational and the rational is the real. That’s what Hegel says.” He signals the waitress. “Hegel would probably have said that Jim’s death was world spirit working itself out. I used to think that those big philosophical positions explained things. That they contained truth.”

  “And now?”

  “Now? I think they are all a pile of shit.”

  “And what about the rational and the real?”

  “There is nothing rational or real that can’t be undone and destroyed by the smallest dose of absurdity.” He pauses for a moment, licks his lips. “Call it what you want, das Vernunftige, das Wahre, bad luck. If Hegel were alive today he’d probably be a systems analyst at the Pentagon.” He removes his glasses and resumes rubbing his eye. “And if I had any sense I’d go on vacation instead of checking myself into a goddamn hospice.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  He pauses for a moment. “Because I don’t have an umbrella,” he says, grinning broadly, and when the waitress arrives to take the check she finds us both giggling like schoolboys over a dirty joke.

  Mohr pays for his uneaten dinner and for my glass of wine, and we leave the restaurant. I walk with him to his car, parked in a reserved space in front of the library.

  “I’ll drive you home,” he says, struggling to fit his key into the frozen lock.

  “I’ll walk.”

  He opens the door and slides into the driver’s seat. I stand on the sidewalk and watch him maneuver himself into position behind the wheel. The engine comes to life. He rolls down the window. “Sure you don’t want a ride?”

  “No thanks.” I wave and start off in the direction of home. Mohr passes me slowly, honks his horn. He looks so small behind the wheel of the enormous car, protected from the elements outside by a heavy steel and glass exoskeleton, from the elements inside by sophisticated painkillers and who knows what other kinds of medication. He wears a wig to cover his baldness, thick glasses to compensate for myopia, dentures to enable him to eat. I imagine underneath his clothing he is supported by a variety of trusses and bandages and marked with scars where he has been cut open, probed, and explored. The red taillights of his car disappear into the night, carrying his fragile body away in an intricate and ghostly web of technological contingencies and artificial supports.

  Coming out of the bank I run into Jane Doe. She pulls open the glass door adjacent to the one I am pushing through, a pair of sunglasses perched on top of her head. “Hello.” I feel my face redden as I realize that perhaps I’ve spoken too soon. She is startled and glances at me with a puzzled look. Then, in a flush of recognition, her features relax into a look of embarrassment. “Oh, hello,” she says.

  We stand there for an awkward moment, each holding open a door. A smile breaks across Jane’s face, a smile of nervous relief that registers also in her eyes. Had she worn her sunglasses into the bank I might have pushed right by without recognizing her. Now we either continue in our separate directions and let the doors close behind us, or we must speak. She lets go of the door she is holding and steps to one side, lowering the sunglasses over her face. “I’m sorry,” she says.

  “Sorry? For what?”

  “I’ve always meant to thank you.”

  “There’s no need for that.” I can’t think of anything else to say. “How are you?”

  She shrugs. I notice that she is holding a small bundle in one hand, a canvas cash bag with a heavy-duty brass zipper and the name of the bank emblazoned on the side. She looks at it as if to remind herself where she is and why she came.

  “My name is Horace.”

  “I’m Sylvia.” We shake hands. Her grip is light, and she holds my hand for a brief moment before letting go. Everything is expressed in that gesture. There really is nothing else to say. She drops her gaze. “Well, I guess I better …”

  “Yes. Me too.” I step back as she pulls open the door, awkwardly and with a little too much force, and disappears into the bank.

  In ten minutes I find myself walking out along Old Route 47. The snow is piled high along each shoulder. My boots make a wet, scraping sound in the gully of slush that runs alongside the sand- and salt-strewn road. Waterproof. Just beyond the town limit, I test the hardness of the plowed snow and begin walking along the top of the ridge. It is slippery and much slower going, but now I have a better view across the flat, empty fields. The snow lies undisturbed except for animal tracks and patterns left by swirling drifts.

  The state has erected a fence around the Indian mound. The last time I walked out here there was no snow on the ground, just a heavy mulch of leaves and the usual traces left by visitors—cigarette butts, beer cans, etc. In deep snow the mound looks higher and rounded and more like a tortoise. When I came out in autumn, while the leaves were turning, I didn’t think of tortoises at all but of Major Wilkington and his hired men and the horse-drawn wagons that dragged the excavated remains away from the site like plunder from a battlefield. All my visits during the fall put me in mind of the Wilkingtons; visits not just to the mound but to the glen and all over town. Maybe it was the cooling of the atmosphere, the changing colors, the crisp, musty smell of decomposition. I don’t know. In autumn and early winter the mound seemed to belong, by conquest, to Major Wilkington and his century. Now, blanketed with snow, surrounded by a new chain-link fence freshly hung with signs that read No Trespassing, and looking more plundered and empty than ever, it could belong only to the present.

  I make a circuit, holding on to the fence for support, plowing along, shuffling and packing the snow underfoot. Where the path leading to the top begins I find a narrow, padlocked gate secured by a heavy chain. I climb the fence at the gate, drop into the snow on the other side, and lie embedded for several minutes, gazing up into overcast skies.

  Getting to the top of the mound is difficult. I scramble up the snow-covered slope, grabbing whatever I can lay hold of for support, and finally reach the top, panting and out of breath. The wind blows a light mist across the surrounding fields. The parking lot of Semantech has been cleared, the snow piled into high mounds around lamp posts that stud the lot and give it a desolate concentration-camp look. In the distance, the sprawl of the town pops up out of the flat monotony of covered fields, its shagginess cloaked by the thick layer of snow. It seems tidy, planned. The spire of the Methodist church competes with several tall buildings for dominance of the skyline. I can see the hospital and a corporate development that is under construction to the north. A high green water tower, relegated to the far western edge of town, juts ungainly from the periphery of the landscape and marks the exact location of my house. Oblivion.

  Sylvia occupies my thoughts, and the more I try to turn them away the greater force she exerts—like the light pressure of her hand, which exceeded any crush of words. Sylvia is not the name I would have guessed for her, and I have to force myself not to think of her as Jane Doe. Everything was articulated in the weak pressure of her grip and the forceful way she yanked open the bank door, twisting her small body awkwardly to contain the momentum, slightly pigeon-toed, her sunglasses like big black blinds clamped down over her eyes.

  I wander down Liberty Street, take my seat on the curved bench inside Wilkington’s gazebo, and look around for my friend, the border collie who now appears whenever I come visiting. Sure enough, he appears, the Hound of Liberty Street, trotting across the little playground, tail wagging. He marches up the steps, lowers his head for me to pat, then begins to nose around underneath the be
nch. I take a carrot out of my pocket. The dog sits down to watch.

  Sylvia. I wonder how often she thinks about what happened to her? I wonder if she regrets that her memory returned? Did bumping into me renew any pain? Perhaps. Maybe she will never recover from her ordeal. 130 am I to say? Maybe she will. Or already has. I don’t know what to think, really. And I don’t think I can empathize with her. Empathy is dull and empirical, an effort of full, subjective comprehension—impossible, dimensionless goals. Empathy attempts to lead beyond compassion and inevitably spins off into anger and hate, first of individuals and then of the whole vicious congregation of debased nature.

  The dog puts its paw on my knee, begging. I bite off a chunk of carrot, offer it. The dog snatches it from my fingers and swallows it whole. We sit staring at one another for some time. Man and dog. It follows each bite I take of the carrot with its eyes, rapt, eager to share. I give up another piece, and again the dog swallows it whole. This irritates me for some reason, and I realize it is because swallowing like that makes it seem that the dog didn’t properly savor the gift. What a ridiculous thing to expect! I hand over the rest of the carrot and the dog takes it and swallows, tail slapping the floor.

  I wish she hadn’t told me her name. Knowing it removes her from the periphery of my attention. Now everything is different. Again, the memory of cornfields and the suicides of van Gogh and Hemingway and the sound of gunshots, the flocking of birds and her sudden appearance on the side of the road. Now everything slips back a little and is replaced by a person named Sylvia.

  A car passes up the street, then another. The gazebo is like a shelter from the moment, and sitting in it makes me feel invisible. I get up to leave. Dampness has somehow seeped into my suit, and I begin to think of the fire I will build and the bottle of wine I will open when I get home.

  Halfway up the street I turn around to find the dog following several paces back. “Go home!” I shout. A few paces farther I look back again. “Go. Go home! Shoo!” The dog sits in a dry patch on the side of the road. At the top of the street I turn once again. The dog is still sitting there, watching, ears pricked up, anticipating an invitation.

  At home I rekindle the fire, tidy up, and eat. Winter has made me realize how fond I am of this creaky little house. As it grows dark outside, I find myself sitting on my bed staring at the orange glow through the creosote-stained glass of the stove. I reach for the phone.

  “Horace here.”

  “Horace?”

  “I want to ask you a question.”

  “Better make it a quick one, Horace.”

  “What is love?”

  “You’re kidding me! You selling lingerie or something?”

  “Let’s say I’m conducting a poll.”

  “A poll?”

  “Sure. On love. Have you thought about it lately?”

  “I got a lot of stuff on my mind, pal. I don’t have time to think.”

  “You haven’t thought about it at all?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “Have you ever thought about it?”

  “’Course I have. Everybody has.”

  “When was the last time?”

  I hear the aluminum crack of a beer can being opened. A pause, a slurp. “Say, you aren’t the guy who walks all over town, are you? The one without a car?”

  “How did you guess?”

  “You said your name was Horace. You know Ed Maver, right?”

  “I know who he is.”

  “I work out at Chevyland. Ed told me your name was Horace.” A pause, another slurp. “Ed says you’re one hell of a guy.” A slurp. “My name’s Fowler, Chuck Fowler.”

  It is tempting to put the phone down and try again, but I can’t. “What has Maver said to you?”

  “Ed? Oh, just talk, that’s all. Told us all about the big rescue last summer.”

  “The what?”

  “That woman you helped him pull out of the cornfield. Say, how come those TV reporters didn’t ever ask you about it?”

  “TV?”

  “You didn’t see Ed on TV?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Hell, we all wondered why he was getting all the attention. Ed said he figured you didn’t want to talk to anyone about it. Said you’re a real private guy. Anyway, they sent a reporter from Action News out to Chevyland to interview him.”

  A pit has opened in my stomach as I remember the reporter from the Sentinel.

  “So what’s this you’re asking about love?” A slurp.

  “Never mind.”

  “Hey, I was beginning to get interested.”

  “Forget it.” I depress the button and put the phone away. Television and newspapers. The whole town. The whole country. I get up and begin to pace in the dark. The goddamn news. I can see the headline in the paper. And the news anchor, brow pinched in a theatrical parody of moral concern and straining the resources of an impoverished collective imagination as the news is read from the teleprompter. And next sports and next weather and next and next and next and next. Another awful manifestation of the positivism of the times: keeping up. It implies the struggle to keep one’s head above water, implies drowning in an ocean of facts.

  I can’t sleep. Twice during the night I get out of bed to add wood to the stove and stoke the fire. The house is silent and dark except for the orange glow radiating through the glass door of the stove. As morning approaches I manage to drift off. But then at dawn I am up and stoking the fire again, boiling water for tea and frying an egg for breakfast.

  First stop is the police station.

  The desk sergeant looks up from newspaper, coffee and doughnut.

  “I’d like to see Detective Ross.”

  The sergeant glances at the clock hanging over the door. “Haven’t seen him yet. He usually comes in around now.”

  “I’ll wait.”

  “I’ll see if he’s at his desk.” He picks up the telephone, punches in the extension. “Nope. Not in yet. Get yourself some coffee. He’ll be here any minute.” He gestures to a corner where a coffeepot and a stack of Styrofoam cups are neatly arranged on a small table.

  “That wasn’t here last time.”

  “Nope.” The newspaper rattles. No further comment.

  I am drawn, as before, to the faces on the wanted posters. A few minutes later Ross is standing next to me. “Long time no see,” he says, looking freshly arrived and ready to start the day. We shake hands.

  “Did each of them get the satisfaction of news coverage?”

  “Say what?”

  I gesture to the wall of faces. “Did they make the news?”

  “Most of them. You bet.” He stands back, crosses his arms over his chest, and begins to expound. “The criminal is the only real celebrity, if you ask me. All you got to do is watch the television or read the papers.”

  “Celebrity?”

  “Sure. Not like entertainers, you understand. It’s different. Crime has consequences. You got victims, ruined lives. They both get covered. But the perpetrator, the criminal, he gets the most attention because he claims the most of society’s resources. We report the crimes, track down the criminals; doctors analyze them, lawyers speak for them, they get tried and judged and sentenced, and then they get locked up and sometimes we even execute ’em. You know how much it costs to execute a criminal in this state? Average?”

  I shake my head.

  “Three hundred fifty thousand dollars. Average. It’s about the same as keeping them locked up for life. I read it the other day. And you and me? We pay for it. So take your pick.” He waves at the wall with a heavy hand. “That’s what I call real celebrity—when society pays. You and me.” He goes over to the coffee table and pours himself a cup. “You come in to see me?”

  “Yes.”

  He gestures for me to follow him through the doors that lead into the rear of the station. His office is third down the corridor, a room not much bigger than the desk and the filing cabinet it contains. He sits behind his desk and motion
s for me to take the chair opposite. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’d like to know what you’ve learned about the rape last summer.”

  “The cornfield rape?”

  “Is that how they put it on TV?”

  “What would you prefer?”

  “How about just the rape?”

  “Which one? We got a bunch we could talk about. Cornfield. Gas station. Liberty Street.”

  “There was a rape on Liberty Street?”

  “Double. Mother and daughter.” Ross sips his coffee, regards me over the rim of his Styrofoam as if jotting a mental note, and leans back in his chair. “Surprised you don’t know about it. The whole state does.”

  “I don’t read the papers.”

  “Obviously not. Anyway: case unsolved.”

  “Tell me what you know so far.”

  “Right up front? Nothing.”

  “You don’t have any clues? No suspects?”

  He shakes his head. “Except for you and that other fellow, Maver, we haven’t got any witnesses.”

  “What about the woman?”

  “Well, sure. If she decides she wants to talk about it.”

  “What has she told you?”

  “Can’t tell you that.”

  “Why not?”

  “All I can say is: case unsolved.”

  “What about the other ones?”

  “The gas station we got. Some guy driving through. Pumped his tank full, put in a quart of oil, raped the cashier in the restroom, and drove away. Finally caught him in Nevada.”

  “And Liberty Street?”

  “Case unsolved.”

  “Do you think they’re connected?”

  Ross shrugs.

  “Would you tell me if you did?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Why not? I have a right to know.”

  “And I have a duty not to make statements that aren’t fully backed up by facts.”

  “You want to know what I think?”

  Ross puts his cup on the desk. “Always.”

  “I think you know exactly who did it.”