Horace Afoot

by Frederick Reuss

  “You a relative?”

  I shake my head. “Only an acquaintance.”

  Schroeder glares at me for a moment, then shakes his head. “Word sure gets out fast around here.”

  Rather than explain the circumstances, I simply agree and leave it at that. But Schroeder wants to know more. “Mind telling me how you heard?” He uncrosses his legs, leans forward, and plants his elbows on his knees, hands clasped, preparing to hear me out.

  “I was out at the mound when they took them away.”

  “Big party, huh?”

  The sarcasm in his voice is irritating. “I was with the archaeologists,” I answer with more defensiveness than intended.

  Schroeder’s head bobs slightly. He purses his lips.

  “What did the doctor tell you?”

  “Not much. Only that it was alcohol poisoning and they want to keep him on an IV until he wakes up.” He leans back in the chair and shakes his head. “Idiots drank near to half a gallon of whiskey. Of all the goddamn stupid things. And that damn girl he’s been hanging around. She’s a regular piece of business.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Schroeder glances at me as if to size up the exact nature of my professed acquaintance. “Only what I know and what the sheriff told me.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “She’s no goddamn good.”

  “Did the sheriff tell you she was raped and beaten last summer?”

  “Yeah, he told me that too.” He shakes his head. “The boy sure knows how to pick ’em, don’t he?”

  Schroeder’s words set off a flash of anger. I feel the blood rushing to my temples. “You talk as if she were some whore he picked up.”

  Schroeder turns his puffy face to me. “Yup. That’s exactly what she is. A fucking whore.”

  Our eyes meet, and a clarity descends on me that propels everything into sharp black perspective. Blood is pounding in my temples. My mouth feels dry. When I open it words spill out, measured and even. “No more than your son is, you stupid son of a bitch.” I am shaking with something I can’t name, stand, start for the exit. Before I’ve gone three paces I feel Schroeder’s hand on my shoulder. I spin. A hot shudder of adrenaline. Schroeder’s fist mashes into the side of my face. A crack. A ringing in my ears. I am wildly conscious, yet I sink to the floor on one knee. Two orderlies pull Schroeder away. “You piece of shit,” he yells. I manage to remain balanced on one knee, holding the side of my face, a pointillist cascade of light trimming the edges of my vision. “I’ll fucking kill you!” Schroeder is shouting. The orderlies shove him into a chair and stand over him. I rise to my feet just as a nurse appears at my side, takes me by the arm. A warm viscosity smears the side of my face. A ringing in my ears. The electricity fails. Everything swells shut.

  A crow has landed in the backyard and is cawing loudly. I stand in the open doorway on the kitchen stoop watching it flutter and flap in the grass while inside a pot of beans boils on the stove. It is the first day of hot weather, and the air in the house is stifling.

  The bird is distressed. It caws and caws, dancing a circle around a wing extended in the grass. I make my way slowly across the yard, moving toward it one step at a time. The bird stops its dance and hunkers down in fear. Its jet-black feathers are matted and wet and the grass around speckled and smeared with blood. It breaks into a loud, pitiful cawing, then falls silent and surrenders.

  The bird puts up a feeble struggle as I pick it out of the grass and wrap it in a towel. I carry it around to the front porch and put it into an empty kindling basket. It cocks its head from side to side, black eyes appraising.

  I call a vet. No luck with the first two listings in the telephone book. The first caters only to house pets, the second to farm animals. Both suggest calling an animal rescue league. I decide to try a different ploy and call the third number listed. A woman’s voice answers.

  “My dog was shot.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Half an hour.”

  “Where?”

  “Behind my house.”

  “I mean where is the wound?”

  “The wing.”

  “What?”

  “It winged him.”

  “Where?”

  “In the leg.”

  “Fore or rear?”

  “Rear.”

  “Have you been able to stop the bleeding?”

  “Not really.”

  “Is the dog conscious?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is there an exit wound?”

  “I don’t know. You’d better come see for yourself.”

  “Can you bring him to the clinic?”

  “I don’t have a car.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. I’ll have to call you back.”

  Ten minutes later she calls back to say she’ll make the trip over. I go out onto the porch to wait. The bird is calm now. In shock, I suppose. Yet it’s coal eyes seem vigilant and alert.

  “What’s in the box?”

  I start. Tom Schroeder is standing at the edge of the porch, a supercilious grin plashed across his face.

  “Goddamn! The old man really popped you good.”

  I stand up, trying not to startle the bird.

  “How many stitches you get?”

  I touch my cheekbone. The stitches at the corner of my eye are hard and feel like needlepoints protruding from numb skin. “Four.”

  “I came by to apologize, man. I’d sue if I were you. I hate the fucker. Hate his guts.” Schroeder sits on the porch step with a creak and a jangle.

  “What for? Spoiling you?”

  “I hate him for being a fucking pig.”

  “Is that what you came over to tell me?”

  Schroeder reaches into his scraped and stained and thoroughly filthy-looking leather jacket. “Nah. I came by to give you this.” He pulls my notebook out with a casual flourish and hands it to me. I take the pad and fan through the tattered pages. It almost seems foreign to me.

  Schroeder jams his hands back into the recesses of his jacket. “I took it to find out what you wrote about Sylvia.”

  “What made you think I’d written anything about her?”

  Schroeder shrugs. “I don’t know. Just thought maybe you had. I was looking for clues.”

  “Clues?”

  “Proof.”

  “Proof of what?”

  “That you raped her.”

  “You thought I raped her?”

  Schroeder flaps his elbows, shrugs.

  “How did you know I kept a notebook?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Then why did you break in and steal it?”

  “I didn’t come here to steal it, dude. I came here to kill you.”

  His macho gravity makes me want to laugh. I bend down to look at the crow. The bird tries to pull its head into the towel like a turtle retracting into its shell. But the towel is wrapped too tightly. I try to loosen it, but my efforts only agitate the bird. Schroeder is watching, waiting for my reaction. I go to the rocking chair and sit down. “You thought I raped her?”

  “Yup.”

  Now I return his stare, rocking. “What made you change your mind?”

  Schroeder leans against a corner post, looks down at his feet. “The notebook. I saw it lying on the kitchen table, so I started reading it. Then you came home and I figured I’d see if I could find written proof first.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I’d come back and kill you.”

  The floorboards of the porch creak under the rocker. Schroeder’s melodrama makes me want to laugh.

  Schroeder shrugs. “Anyway, I decided you didn’t do it.”

  “How did you conclude that?”

  “Because you didn’t write anything down.”

  “So?”

  “So what’s the point of writing and keeping a notebook if you don’t use it to confess something?”

  His comment surprises me. It’s the most intelligent thing I’ve ever he
ard come out of his mouth.

  Schroeder continues, “I read everything and couldn’t even find a hint. Just stuff like—Suppose a painter chose to place a human head upon a horse’s neck.”

  “That’s the beginning of theory Poetica.”

  “Whatever. I read it enough times. Anyway, I figured if you were weird enough to write poems, I figured you’d have written something about Sylvia.”

  “But I didn’t.”

  “Nope.”

  “So you decided not to kill me.”

  “Yup. I thought maybe it was, like, code and I tried cracking it. The part about putting a human head on a horse’s body?”

  “What about it?”

  “Sounded like, maybe, you were talking about a kind of code.”

  I fan the pages of the notebook.

  Schroeder shoves away from the corner post, grins at me. “Besides, I know it wasn’t you.” He stoops down to look at the bird in the basket. “What’s wrong with the bird?”

  “How? Did Sylvia tell you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Who was it?”

  Schroeder shrugs. “Never mind. What’s with the bird?” He bends down for a closer look.

  “How were you planning to kill me?”

  “What happened to the bird?”

  “First tell me how you planned to kill me.”

  “You really want to know?” Schroeder tries to touch the bird, but it pecks at him and he pulls his hand back.

  “Yes.”

  Without looking up from the bird he reaches into his jacket and pulls out a gun. He holds it out for me to see. “Saturday night special, dude. Clean. No numbers.” As he speaks a car pulls in front of the house. He slips the gun back into his pocket.

  “What are you carrying that around for?”

  “My security blanket.”

  “You walk around with it in your pocket?”

  “Yup.”

  “Loaded?”

  “Fucking right.”

  “You didn’t have it with you the day you passed out at the mound.”

  “I left it behind. Sylvia wanted to play roulette.”

  “Roulette? With the gun?”

  He grins stupidly.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Then don’t, dude.”

  The vet strides up the walk carrying a little black bag. “Where’s the patient?” she asks in a friendly, down-to-business voice. She is young and tall with long, fiery red hair. Schroeder, hands crammed conspiratorially into his jacket, nods to her and stands aside as she marches up the steps. By some instinct she ignores him and directs her attention to me.

  I point to the basket. Schroeder backs up a few paces and sits down at the other end of the porch.

  “Didn’t you say your dog was shot?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  She regards my swollen, stitched-up eye. Finally she kneels down next to the basket, turns to me. “Why’d you tell me that?”

  “Because nobody would come out here for an injured crow.”

  She returns her attention to the bird in the basket and for a few moments says nothing. Then she stands up. “Is there a place I can work inside? A table?” Her tone suggests that she is irritated and that I had better not bother her.

  I watch from the doorway, fingering the stitches at the corner of my eye, as she works at the kitchen table. She examines and dresses the wing, working swiftly and without comment. A splint is fashioned from a tongue depresser. The bird submits to her competent hands as if by instinct. “This is a wild bird,” she finally says, gently winding the wing with gauze. “Where did you find it?”

  “In the backyard.”

  When she is finished she places the bird in the basket. “I’ll take her back to the clinic. When the wing is healed we’ll let her go.”

  “I want to take care of her.”

  The woman says nothing and begins repacking her bag. “Caring for an injured animal is not easy,” she says. “Especially a wild one.”

  “I’d like to try.”

  The woman continues packing her bag. A brass nameplate on the side reads Jane. No last name, no initial. Just Jane. “You were right, the bird was shot. With a .22, I’d say. The bullet broke the bone and passed through the wing. It should heal fairly well.”

  “You’ll let me keep her?”

  Jane shrugs. “If you want to.”

  “Thanks.” I feel silly and a little overly enthusiastic. My eager gratitude seems to break the ice a little, and Jane smiles. An uncomplicated, straight, bright smile that makes me realize I am in the presence of an utterly direct person. She exudes clarity, seems wise. By contrast, I feel all convoluted and contorted, unspontaneous and foolish.

  “Crows eat carrion,” she says at last. “Put some hamburger in a dish and leave it in the basket. Some water too.”

  “Should I keep her inside?”

  “Where you had her is fine. If it gets cold at night you can bring her in. The less you do, the better.”

  “What if she tries to get out of the basket?”

  “She won’t. The splint is too cumbersome.”

  “How long will it take to heal?”

  I follow her back through the house to the front door. “I’ll come back toward the end of the week to check on her. We’ll see.”

  I hold the door open and step out on the porch. Schroeder is still sitting there, a leather-bound malfeasance. I ignore him and walk with Jane to her car. Before getting in she gives me a business card. “Call me if there are any problems.”

  I take the card. “What do I owe you?”

  Jane puts on her seatbelt and thinks for a moment. “Let’s see how she does first.”

  “Let me pay you for your time.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She starts the car. “You can pay me if the wing heals,” she says.

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  She pulls away without an answer. I watch as she turns into the neighbor’s driveway, backs out. “By the way,” she calls out the window, “I would have come out for a crow.” Then, without a glance back, she whips up the street. The card in my hand reads Jane’s Veterinary Services. No last name, just an address and a phone number.

  Schroeder has not moved from the porch. “What are you still doing here?”

  He drops his chin into the palm of his hand and scowls. All I can think of now is the gun in his pocket. It makes him more pathetic than dangerous, and his confession of contemplated murder angers more than frightens me.

  “I need money, man.” He has adopted the tone of a downtrodden teenager.

  “For what?”

  “My bike. The cops towed it. I need three hundred bucks to get it back.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem for a man about town like yourself.”

  “Fuck you, man.”

  “What about Dad?”

  “The fucker won’t help me out.”

  “Gee, that’s tough.”

  “Fuck you,” Schroeder grunts.

  I walk into the house and close the front door as a signal for him to leave. The crow is still in the basket, splinted wing akimbo. The white bandage and the black sheen of its feathers contrast beautifully and make the contorted bird look like some sort of appliquéd Maltese Falcon. I sit down and watch it for a few minutes, wondering why Jane refused payment. I decide that she is one of those people who are able to act without needing a motive and whose actions always seem right and proper and balanced. I lift the basket carefully and carry it back out onto the porch.

  Schroeder has still not moved. “How about lending me the money?”

  I ignore him and place the basket under the window on top of the small stack of firewood left over from winter. It is not completely stable. After a slight reshuffling of logs the basket sits nicely.

  “What do you say, man? I can pay you back in a week.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?”

 
“I don’t even want to explain why not.”

  Schroeder stares out into the yard. “Look,” he says after a short silence, “I’m sorry about the notebook. I should have returned it right away.”

  “The notebook has nothing to do with it.”

  “Then I’m sorry I told you I wanted to kill you. I probably wouldn’t have anyway.”

  “Well, at least you came prepared.”

  “Very funny,” Schroeder grunts.

  I reach for the broom leaning next to the front door and begin to sweep the porch.

  “If I had my bike back I could get my shit together, man. Get the fuck out of here. And take Sylvia with me too. She wants to go to Mexico.”

  “Why not get the money from her, then?”

  “She’s broker than I am. Lost her job at the pharmacy. Even had to sell her truck.”

  A cloud of dust has picked up. I move toward Schroeder, trying to keep it away from the bird. “Just out of curiosity …”

  “Out of curiosity what?”

  “What is it between you and Sylvia?”

  Schroeder lifts his knees and crosses his arms around them. “What do you mean?”

  “How long have you and she been—an item?”

  Schroeder casts me a why-the-hell-do-you-care look. “We been together on and off for a couple of years.”

  “She’s older than you are.”

  “She’s thirty-one.”

  “That’s quite an age difference.”

  Schroeder rests his chin on top of his knees. “In lots of ways I’m older than she is. Less fucked up, too.”

  I continue to sweep. Schroeder looks more and more pathetic the longer he sits there—despite or because of his concealed weapon, I can’t decide. “We’re both fuckups,” he says after a short pause. “She’s totally fucked up. Very, totally fucked up. I mean it. I’m fucked up too. That’s probably why we’re in love.”

  I put the broom back and go over to look at the bird. It cocks its head, wary. Its vigilance is astounding. The effort must be exhausting. It stares at me. I stare back, a game to see who blinks first. “Tell me what you know about the rape,” I finally say.

  Schroeder looks over at me. “Will you lend me the money?”

  The bird blinks. “I’ll think about it.”

  Schroeder rearranges himself so that he is leaning up against a corner post. He stretches his legs out in front and makes himself comfortable, boots, chains, concealed weapon, and all. “Promise?”