Horace Afoot

by Frederick Reuss

  “I said I’ll think about it.”

  “No money, no story.”

  “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

  “When you hear it you’ll know it’s the truth, man.”

  “Tell me one thing first.”

  “What?”

  “Did your mother really kill herself in front of you?”

  Schroeder doesn’t bat an eye. “Yup.” He fixes me with a level gaze, ready for another.

  The unnecessary cruelty of the question hangs heavily, but Schroeder shows no sign of anger. “Sorry.” I look away. “I’ll lend you the money.”

  “Fucking perfect,” he says and settles back against the post. He pulls a pack of Marlboros from the interior of his jacket and lights up with a studied expression. Inhales deeply and holds it as though the beginning, 222, and end of his story will condense in his lungs. “The names have been changed to protect the guilty,” he begins. A long exhalation of smoke.

  “Why not change the story while you’re at it too?”

  Schroeder flicks his ash, grins. “Maybe I already have. The guilty need as much protecting as anybody.”

  Who am I to argue the matter of names? Symbol and thing and the copula is—the third singular present form of to be and a terrifying predicament all around. I let him continue.

  “It all started when she got fired from Semantech.”

  “She said she was laid off.”

  “She got fired, her and another line worker. For fighting.”

  “She said she was a manager.”

  “She worked the line. Assembling whatever the fuck it is they assemble there. Bombs, I think.”

  I watch the crow while Schroeder takes long drags from the cigarette and reinvents Sylvia for me.

  “She and this dude worked the same shift. He used to sell her blow and it got so they started doing business together. He’d front her and she’d cut it and sell it out at Jack’s and take the profit in product. That’s when I met her. I used to cop from her there. I started getting in there when I was seventeen. First time at the door the guy asks me for ID and I pointed to my Sportster and said, ‘There’s my ID, dude.’ The guy just opened the door right up and nobody ever asked me for ID there again. At Jack’s a Harley is the only ID you need.”

  “You had that bike when you were seventeen?”

  “My dad gave it to me for a graduation present. Four point oh GPA and the highest SATs in fucking school history. Got scholarships from three colleges.” Schroeder flicks his cigarette into the yard. “I deferred a year. Then I deferred again, and I would have deferred again, but they said I had to start or lose the money, so off I went.”

  “Where?”

  “Notre fuckin’ Dame, man. And don’t give me that good school shit. They threw me out. That’s why I’m here.”

  “I’m sure you deserved it.”

  “I’ll tell you about it some other time.” Schroeder takes another cigarette, lights up, and continues. “So anyway, Sylvia starts fucking up with this dude, and I know all about it because by that time me and her are hanging out together pretty regularly. She gets burned a couple of times and keeps taking her cut anyway. Then she starts getting greedy and stomping on it so bad pretty soon she’s just selling pure inositol and nobody wants to cop from her.”

  “What does all this have to do with getting raped?”

  Schroeder drags on his cigarette. “I’m getting there, dude.”

  “Let me guess. Mr. X raped her.”

  “The man’s a fucking genius! How’d you guess? But there’s more to it.” He flicks his ash. “By now Mr. X is all over her big time. He wants his money, and Sylvia doesn’t have it. She blows him off and blows him off until finally it boils over and he smacks her one day at work and they both get fired. So then he starts harassing her at home. I offer the guy my goddamn bike so he’ll leave her alone. He says he’ll take it, but then he decides he wants to get paid his own way, and so one day he drags her out into that field and rapes her and tries to kill her, but she manages to get away. You know the rest of it, dude.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I am not fucking lying.”

  “Why should I believe a word of what you’re telling me when you just told me you thought I raped her?”

  “That was a lie.”

  “Why did you lie?”

  “Why not? Why should I tell you the truth? It wouldn’t make any difference. Not to me, anyway.”

  “Why did you break into my house?”

  Schroeder runs a hand through his dirty hair. “Because we thought you saw who raped her and didn’t want you to talk to the cops.”

  “Wait a minute.” I stand up and walk to the end of the porch. “You were going to kill me because you thought I would lead the police to the rapist?”

  Schroeder climbs to his feet. “You don’t get it, do you, dude? I’m rubbing your fucking nose in it and you just don’t fucking get it. You want me to make you up a sign?”

  “You’re right. I’m stupid. I don’t get it. So explain.”

  Schroeder comes to the end of the porch and stands directly in front of me. His hands are crammed into his jacket, unzipped except at the very bottom. His black tee shirt is spotted with sweat. Besides a gun and the hideous angel tattooed on his chest, I wonder what else he is concealing. “You’re going to have to figure it out for yourself, dude. I can’t tell you any more. I already told you more than I should have.”

  “Then you’re going to have to get your three hundred bucks someplace else.”

  “I told you everything I can. Not just because I need the money.”

  “Why else?”

  “Because I figured you’d understand better than most people and because someday, you never know, it might come up again, and I’ll be glad I told somebody.” He holds the end of the cigarette to his lips with pinched fingers, sucks on it, and flicks it away with a macho swagger. “You don’t want to know any more. Believe me.”

  The neighbor’s kitchen door bangs shut and the kid runs outside. He stops short at the sight of Schroeder. Then, regaining confidence, he hops over the fence and races up to the porch.

  “Some terrorists hijacked a school bus and now they’re surrounded by tanks and army.”

  “Where?”

  “In the Middle East.”

  “Which country?”

  “Jerusalem.”

  “Jerusalem is a city, not a country.”

  “In Israel, I think it said.”

  “You sure?”

  “That’s what it says on the news. Anyway, the terrorists are going to blow up the kids unless they get what they want.”

  “What do they want?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I hand the kid a dollar. “Let me know how it comes out.”

  The kid jams the dollar into his pocket and runs off.

  “What the fuck is that all about?”

  “My news service.”

  “You pay him every time?”

  “Only for good stories.”

  Schroeder laughs. “At least you’re consistent, man. Now where’s my money?”

  “I have to go to the bank.”

  “I’ll come with.”

  “No. Wait here.”

  “Jesus, dude. Why do you always have to fuck with me?”

  “Keep an eye on the bird until I get back. And stop calling me dude.”

  It isn’t until I get to the bank that the story gels. Derringer is at his desk and is about to begin the back-slapping but notices that I am preoccupied and, for the first time ever, skips the buffoonery and goes about getting my money. What Schroeder wouldn’t come out and tell me is that they intend to avenge the crime. That is the only obvious conclusion. And that they are determined not to let the opportunity slip—and to keep the police out of it.

  Derringer hands me the money. “Looks like you had a nasty run-in with a blunt object.”

  “A fist.” As if to remind myself, I run my fingers over the stit
ches.

  Derringer shakes his head. “Hope you gave as good as you got.”

  I ignore the remark, count the money he has given me, and slip it into my pocket. We shake hands and Derringer begins saying something about scars adding character to a face and his football days, but I turn and leave without letting him finish.

  I cross the street and sit on the bench in front of the Town Hall. My business there remains unfinished. I have not placed the required announcement and thus, legally, I am still Quintus Horatius Flaccus, although I haven’t been Horace for weeks. Or felt much like him. Horace wouldn’t give Schroeder a penny. He’d turn him in. Let Caesar watch over the state. Steer clear of insane contention. But vigilante justice has a certain visceral appeal to Lucian. He prefers self-assertion and direct moral satisfaction to the coercive, bureaucratic apparatus of the state. He distrusts monolithic structures.

  I get up and begin walking, though not in the direction of home. Soon I am on Liberty Street and headed for the gazebo. The Hound of Liberty Street comes bounding up. It has been some time since I’ve visited, and the dog wags its tail and yelps. I pat it and continue on in an empty haze, trying not to think.

  Winter has taken a noticeable toll on the iron gazebo. The paint is peeling in great gobs, and rust is slowly taking over. I climb in and sit down facing the street. A large moving van is being unloaded at the house at the end. The movers come and go from the house, directed with new-owner vigor by a man in a black jogging suit. No sign of wife or children or pets. I imagine the neighbor who will trot over tonight to welcome him and try to learn what he knows of the house’s ghastly history and who, when he discovers his new neighbor’s innocence, will inform him in confidential tones and with expressions of deep regret and much head-shaking.

  I watch for a while, wondering what sort of retribution and punishment the mother and her daughter would call for, and soon find myself begging the question of ordo amoris. If there is an objective order of love and hate that underlies everything and is at the core of our humanity, then the question of justice must be closely tied to it. Not justice as in the law of state or jungle, but justice as it pertains to acts of love and hate. According to Selected Philosophical Essays, the heart is a structured counterimage of the cosmos of all possible things worthy of love and to this extent is a microcosm of the world of values. The same must hold for hate. The heart must contain everything—love and hate and the infinite and undefinable shadings and gradations that fall in between, a stew of apples and oranges and things palatable and unpalatable, benign and malign, right and wrong, that call us to act or shrink away from acting.

  But beside this ordo amoris is another ordo that compels me equally. I call it the ordo tranquillus, the order of tranquillity and peace of mind. This ordo holds that the cosmos is undiscernible, unstable, and indifferent and that nothing definite can be said about it except that nothing definite can be said, so you can take your ordo amoris and your microcosmos of the world of values and stick them up your ass because the only appropriate way to survive here is to strive toward a state of complete ataraxia, imperturbable tranquillity, to suspend all judgment and be, forever, silent.

  Time passes, and the early summer sun casts a lazy pall over everything. It would be nice to lie down in the grass and take a nap, and as soon as I decide to do just that I realize what my course of action with Schroeder should and must be, and I hurry home.

  He is sitting in the rocking chair on the porch when I return.

  “Where the fuck have you been, man?” He flicks his cigarette into the yard and stands up. “You said you’d be right back.”

  “And here I am.”

  “You’ve been gone for three hours.”

  “Has it been that long?”

  “Fuck you.” He follows me into the kitchen. “I can’t hang around, dude. So if we could, like, just get down to business.”

  I motion for him to sit down across from me, which he does with a great show of impatience. “I have decided to lend you the money on the condition that you pay it back next week, like you said.”

  “No problem,” Schroeder says.

  “But there is one more thing I have to ask.”

  Schroeder stands up. “But you said …”

  “I want your gun.”

  Astonishment.

  “As collateral.”

  Schroeder is silent, and for several seconds the atmosphere in the kitchen resembles that of a bad western. Doubt flickers. He sits down and leans back in the spindly chair, which creaks under his weight. Then he reaches into his jacket, takes out the gun, and with a manic smile points it at me. “I’ll give you collateral, you asshole.” He stands up and kicks the chair away, holding the gun on me, finger on the trigger, strands of hair falling in his face.

  My pulse begins to race. I try to return his gaze as evenly as I can, feigning composure.

  “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t just take the fucking money.”

  I say nothing. Fear has now welled up, and the only way I can think of to avoid panic is to hide it. Remain absolutely still. Try to stare him down.

  Schroeder switches the gun from one hand to the other. “Fuck borrowing; I could just rob you, dude. I could take your goddamn money if I wanted. Couldn’t I?”

  My gaze is locked. The image of Schroeder, a boy, witnessing his mother’s suicide races through my mind and with it the understanding that he could easily murder, has been waiting all his life for the opportunity.

  “Goddamn right I could.” The volume is rising, the pitch is rising, his voice is wrong, cracked, and I begin to see that he is pushing himself toward some threshold and at the same time deciding whether he will cross it. He swipes the hair from his face, prods the gun. “Say it! Go ahead, man! Say it! Say I could rob you if I wanted.”

  I say nothing.

  Schroeder grips the gun in both hands, arms stiff out in front, police style. “Go on, asshole! Say it.”

  I say nothing. Stare.

  “Okay, then. Say ‘You could could kill me if you wanted.’ Say it!”

  I continue to stare and say nothing.

  “Say, ‘You could kill me if you wanted.’ Say it!”

  A chill works its way through my limbs. Panic. My heart is pounding. Schroeder is a panicked contortion towering over me. He has scared himself. I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out.

  “Say it, goddamnit! Or I’ll blow your fucking brains out!” Spit flies. He trembles.

  The words spill out of my mouth in a rush. “You could kill me if you wanted.” Schroeder stands trembling over me for several moments. Blank fear. Ringing ears. Then, like air escaping, his arms go limp. He stands for a long minute in complete silence. Then he tosses the gun onto the table. Something condenses in the air around us, palpable, unnameable. I take the three hundred dollars from my pocket and lay it on the table beside the gun. Another minute passes. Then, without a word, Schroeder picks up the money, counts it, and quietly leaves the house.

  Sunset.

  Twilight.

  The house grows dark. Cicadas begin their nightly chorus in the trees.

  I listen for a while, fingering the stitches at the corner of my eye, able to make out only the faint outline of the gun lying before me on the table like some malignant new infection. The neighbor’s truck pulls up next door. Headlight beams pierce the kitchen. A glint of the revolving cylinder. Copper and silver cartridge ends. Then blackness again. Slamming doors. I lift the gun from the table, carry its dead weight upstairs, slide it underneath the mattress of my bed. Then go downstairs to check on the injured crow.

  Mohr has taken a turn for the worse and has been unable to come to the phone for two days. The nurse at the hospice keeps saying I should call back later. She says he is in a weakened state. I decide to go out and pay him a visit.

  I pack some provisions for the trip and feed the crow. It has been gaining strength and now spends most of the day perched on the rim of the basket, tethered there by a piece of st
ring. With its splinted wing dangling magnificently at one side, it looks like a convalescent prizefighter. The bird seems to like me now. It squawks whenever I approach—a greeting, not a warning—and allows me touch it.

  The hospice is seven miles outside town. By midmorning I am at the airport. Instead of following Route 38 I cut across the parking lot and follow the footpath behind the hangars and along the fence. The lean-to of cut branches that I found last winter has been cleared away, and now only deep tire tracks mark the spot. I stop to eat an apple. An airplane takes off in the other direction. It rises and banks away to the south, then disappears from sight.

  Around noon I arrive at the hospice, an old farmhouse set back from the road and surrounded by a flat expanse of lawn fenced off from fields at the back and on either side. A single elm tree at the back provides the only shade. The house is a large white rambling structure that looks as if it grew to its present size by slow accretion and was then suddenly arrested by an iron fire escape trussed up along one side of the building.

  I climb the steps. A man stationed by the front door in a wheelchair lifts a hand from his knee in weary greeting. Two other men sit in wicker chairs playing checkers. The office is just inside the front door. A young woman in a white uniform greets me cheerfully. When I tell her I’m here to see Mohr, her expression changes. “He’s not doing too well,” she says.

  “Can I see him?”

  She tells me to wait and disappears into the house. A few minutes later she returns. “He’s asleep,” she says. “You can sit with him if you like. Just don’t disturb him. He’s very weak.” I follow her through the house to Mohr’s room. She pushes the door open and peers in before allowing me to enter.

  Mohr’s bed is next to a window at the far end of the room. The blinds are drawn, and the room is dark and quiet. Mohr is connected to an oxygen tank by a long plastic tube attached to his nose by a clip. The room smells of unwashed laundry and urine and alcohol swabs and air conditioning. A large leather chair and a table covered with books and papers dominate the center. A bricked-up fireplace with a broad wooden mantel takes up one wall; shelves filled with books occupy the remaining wall space. The floor is bare except for an old, tattered Oriental rug. I approach the bed, floorboards squeaking.