What are the groves and caves
this new self of mine must behold?
I swig again. And again. Then I strip myself naked, toss my clothes onto the upturned grave, and walk back to the house, the dog barking, leaping about me.
“That you?” Sylvia’s voice.
“Er. Yes.” I put the bottle on the table, no leaping of heart, no urgent rush to embrace her. Cower in the kitchen, not knowing what to do.
She appears in the doorway. “Jesus Christ! What happened to your clothes?”
My face colors; I try to cover myself with my hands. “I took them off.”
“I guess so.” She leans in the door frame. “The question is, where did you leave them?”
“In the woods.”
She nods in mock approval. Then laughs. “Didn’t realize you were into, like, nudity. Turn around. Let me get a good look at you.”
I slip past, heart pounding, and run upstairs to put on some clothes. When I return she is sitting at the kitchen table, wine bottle to her lips, her expression serious. She puts the bottle down. “Sorry I didn’t make it to the bank.”
I take two glasses from the cabinet, fill each to the brim, emptying the bottle.
“Did you get the money?”
I drink, avoiding her eyes. The dog paws at the door. I let it in, pat it on the back, good boy, raw disappointment making it difficult to respond, or even to look at her.
“They found a body at the Indian mound today.” I watch for her response.
She sips from her glass, eyes cast down at the table. “They did?”
“It had been buried there for almost a year.”
“Who says that?”
“The archaeologists who found it.”
She drinks again. Says nothing.
“The cops were out there. Ross, the detective, he asked about you and Schroeder.”
She avoids my gaze. Drinks more wine.
“Why would he be asking about you two?”
“I don’t know. He probably thinks we did it.”
“Did you?”
“Look. Do you have my money? I don’t feel like being interrogated.”
“Maybe I should ask Schroeder.”
“Good luck.” She drains her glass. “I don’t know where he is.”
I retrieve another bottle from the closet, shoving the pack into the corner.
“Look,” she seems to fumble for words, twirls her empty glass by the stem. “What is it you want from me?”
I pour more wine. “I don’t know.”
“Then why all the questions? I thought you wanted to help me out?”
“I did.”
“You did? You mean you changed your mind?”
“I still do. I think.”
“You think? Shit, man. What do you think I came here for?”
A twinge. I ease it with a long, loud slurp, roll the liquid on my tongue. “Don’t panic. It’s all right. I want to help you.”
An incredulous stare, then her nostrils flare, begin to pump, eyes well with tears, and she puts her head down on the table and begins to sob. I lean against the stove, watching her shoulders quake and her hair falling over arms and elbows, strangely, perversely satisfied. It is a cruel sort of pleasure, and I am neither proud nor relieved to be feeling it, but it has taken the edge off my disappointment, and because it is the truth I have no choice but to admit it. Why pretend otherwise?
“Did you kill the man who raped you?”
No response.
I press the point. “And did you bury the body out at the mound?”
No response. She won’t look up, continues to sob, face buried in her elbow. Am I torturing her? The thought that maybe I am sends a thrill through me. Revenge and the unwitting discovery of another crime. The knowledge puts me in control of a weapon that I am free to wield as I choose. “You did kill him. And you buried him on the mound. Amnesia was a way to hide everything, to keep the police from interfering.”
Her head jerks up. “No! I didn’t. I wish I had, but I didn’t!”
“Who did, then?”
“Tom did.” As she says it regret writes itself across her features, and to hide it she lifts the glass, buries her face in it, drinking greedily. “I wanted to. I would have. I’m glad he’s dead. But I didn’t kill him.”
“Why are you running away, then? You had a year to get away. Why the sudden rush?”
“I wanted to go with Tom.”
“But he left you.”
“He came back to get me. We were supposed to go together.”
“But he left without you. Why’d he do that?”
She shakes her head, wipes her nose with her sleeve. “I don’t know.”
“Did he leave you to take the rap?”
“I said I don’t know.”
“He couldn’t be long gone. The body was discovered this morning.”
She leans over, takes a letter from the back pocket of her jeans. “Here,” she says, handing it to me. “Read it.”
I sit across from her, spread the letter on the table. She reaches for the bottle and fills her glass. “I don’t care. I don’t give a fuck about anything. Tell the cops. Tell the fucking cops. I don’t care anymore.” She drinks.
I read the letter.
Reward is due for secrets kept;
I would forbid a man who divulged the rites
Of Ceres’ sacred mysteries to
Stand under rafters where I stood, or to
Put out to sea with me.
“I never knew he wrote poems,” she says, wine dribbling down her chin. “Words and fucking music.”
“He didn’t write it.” I slide the note across the table to her, sickened. “He didn’t write it. He stole it. From me. From Horace.”
“From you?”
I try to think of how to explain but can’t, feel violated by Schroeder as never before, as if he has ripped pieces from me and sent them up in flames. “You should be glad to be rid of him.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s an asshole.”
She looks at me with bleary-eyed disgust. “Yeah, right.”
“As soon as the body is identified they’ll come looking for you.”
“So what? They can think whatever they want. I didn’t do it. Besides, they’ll have to find me.”
I go to the closet, grab the pack and another bottle. “Here’s the money.” I toss her the pack.
She unzips the bag, reaches in, takes out the cash. She fans the two banded stacks with her thumb. “Holy fucking Christ! There’s ten grand here!”
I pull the cork, drunk now, feeling the cheap elation of a bribe accepted, a beggarly victory.
“Ten grand.” She seems unfocused and confused, thumbs the stacks again, then shoves them back in the pack. I feel a roaring, fill-the-glasses drunkenness coming on. But Sylvia does not roar along with me. She begins to cry.
“It’s okay.” I try to soothe her. “Don’t cry.” Her tears are not gratitude but humiliation, and I realize I am not saving her but dredging her in the mud. I put my glass down and walk on unsteady legs out to the porch to check on the crow. It is dusk, and the streetlights flicker on. I pull away the cover on the basket, venting a rank smell of rotten meat. The crow is dead, splinted wing pressed stiffly against the wall of the basket. I look around for the dog, but the dog is nowhere in sight; stand for an unsteady moment over the dead bird. I should have called Jane earlier.
Inside Sylvia is still sitting at the table. Reeling with wine, I watch her from the doorway, fighting an urge to embrace her. Then, a drunken inspiration. I throw open the closet and reach into the case for the last two bottles of wine, stuff them into the pack, and run upstairs for the gun.
“Come on!” I grab Sylvia by the arm, pull her out of the house. She doesn’t resist but stumbles along.
“Where are we going?”
“Walk fast. We don’t have much time.”
It is dark now, and at the top of West Street I let go of her hand an
d begin to set a pace.
“Where are we going?”
“The airport.”
She accepts this without comment. We walk at a brisk, sobering rate without speaking. Single file along the airport road. Cars flash past. The road is busy in early evening. We crunch along on the narrow shoulder, over discarded cigarette packs and cans and tumbling cellophane bags. Walking the road alone is easy. I feel invisible. In tandem it feels dangerous. The cars whoosh past; some slow down, curious, others swerve as if annoyed. In less than an hour we are standing in the high sulfur glare of airport parking-lot lights. I unshoulder the pack, remove the gun, and stuff it into my pants.
“Is that Tom’s gun?”
“It’s mine now.”
“What are you doing with it?”
“Keeping it for collateral.”
“Get rid of it. It’ll get you in trouble.”
I hand her the pack, and we cross the lot and enter the bright terminal building. The gun in my pants makes walking awkward. I still feel semidrunk.
The departure schedule lists one flight to Chicago.
“Guess I’m going to Chicago,” Sylvia says.
In line at the ticket counter she asks, “You coming with me?”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t. Besides, you haven’t told me where you’re going.”
“Mexico, man.”
“Where in Mexico?”
“Anywhere where there’s a beach.”
At the ticket counter I begin to sense panic. Her eyes dart, her small spindle of a body sprung tightly, a waif, all limbs and shaggy clothes and tossed hair. The clerk at the counter beckons. “Can I help you?” His head tillers from her to me, waiting for a response. Sylvia fumbles with the pack, stalling for time. “A ticket,” she says.
“To San Diego,” I cut in.
“One way or round trip?”
“One way.”
“Are both of you flying?”
“No,” Sylvia says. “Just me.” She rests the pack on the ledge under the counter. The clerk, plump and groomed sleek, begins typing. Sylvia leans toward me, whispers into my ear, “Why San Diego?”
“You don’t have a passport,” I whisper back.
“Yes I do,” she says and reaches into her back pocket for the mangled little booklet and waves it at me. “Excuse me, sir.”
The clerk looks up. “Yes?”
“I’d like to change that ticket.”
“How would you like to change it?”
“I want to go to Acapulco.”
“Acapulco?”
“That’s right.”
“One way? Or round trip?”
“One way,” she smiles.
“No, she doesn’t. She wants to go to San Diego.”
The clerk frowns. “San Diego? Acapulco? What’ll it be?”
“I want to go to Acapulco.”
I pull her away, whisper in her ear while the clerk screws his porcine features into a customer-first look of fake amusement. “Go to San Diego. Don’t give him your name. From there go anywhere you like.”
She nods, approves the strategy, returns to the counter.
“San Diego,” she says.
The clerk returns to his computer screen. I wander away to let her complete the transaction, stroll toward the waiting area with its little bucket seats and coin-operated television sets and murmur of Muzak and backlit advertisements for industries nobody should ever hear of. I think of my winter visit to the control tower, the flat expanse of Oblivion’s single runway under feet of snow. I imagine lifting off from it, lifting into the air and flying away with Sylvia next to me, gazing out the window as the lights of Oblivion shrink away into darkness.
“Is Sea World in San Diego?” Sylvia is behind me, slipping her ticket into the pack. She is exited. “It is, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Sure you do. Where they have those whales and dolphins and other trained fish that do tricks.” She slings the pack on her shoulder. “Come on. I’ll buy you a drink.” She takes my hand and pulls me toward the airport bar. “Let me buy you a couple of drinks.”
We sit on tall stools at an elevated little table. She orders Jack Daniels and Coke. I ask for wine. Like the engines of a jet she is winding herself up, setting herself on some trajectory where anxiety conceals itself in exuberance and a barrage of excited talk. “Want to see my ticket?” She takes it out, hands it over. “Read it,” she says.
“Sylvia Plath?”
“My favorite poet.” She laughs. “The idiot at the counter didn’t bat an eye.”
I return the ticket, sip sour wine, look through the glass partition into the airport. “Take a bus into Mexico. Don’t fly.”
“Why?”
“It’ll be too easy for them to trace you. Just go to the bus station and get on a bus.”
“To Acapulco?”
“Go anywhere you like, Sylvia Plath.”
Her exuberance fades. She jabs her finger into her drink, retracts it, and puts it in her mouth. “What will you say if the cops ask about me?”
“Nothing.”
“What about Tom?”
I shrug. “What about him?”
“You want to know the truth?” She dips her finger again. “Will you promise not to tell?”
I nod.
“I was there when it happened. That day in the field. I ran.” Her eyes begin to cloud. She jabs her finger into her drink. “I heard the shots, and I just ran and ran.” She finishes her drink. The flight to Chicago is announced. “Sea World, here I come,” she says.
“Why didn’t you claim self-defense?”
She stands, shoulders the pack. “Because it wasn’t.”
“But you were raped.”
She unshoulders the pack and takes out the wine bottles. “Here,” she says, handing them over. I take them, and she kisses me on the forehead. “It wasn’t supposed to get that far,” she says. “Tom was late. It all happened too fast. I ran away.”
Before I can ask her anything else she turns on her heel and strides toward the gate.
The flight to Chicago roars down the runway and lifts off, red lights beating counterpoint against the stars. I watch from behind the fence, from my bower of tall summer weeds, an open bottle of wine beside me and Schroeder’s gun in my lap. I grip the gun by the handle, point it at the airplane banking in the distance, and squeeze the trigger. My wrist bucks, the gun leaps in my hand. I squeeze the trigger again. Another bolt of sound, then immediate roaring silence and ringing ears. I examine the revolving chamber, sniff the muzzle, hot, oily cordite. Drop the gun into my lap and swig another mouthful of wine. Sylvia Plath. Sylvia Plath and me. Me and Sylvia Plath. By legal snafu still Quintus Horatius Flaccus and going by Lucian of Samosata but feeling for the moment more like George Gordon—who was Lord Byron, who was the rowdy sixth Baron Byron of Rochdale—singing between fat mouthfuls, I would to heaven that I were so much clay / As I am blood, bone, marrow, passion, feeling. I Because at least the past were passed away—swig— / and for the future (but I write this reeling, I Having got drunk exceedingly today. I So that I seem to stand upon the ceiling) /—swig again—/ say—and again—The future is a serious matter / And so—for God’s sake—blocks and soda water!
Yippee! I swig again. Swallow, cough, and sputter. Hock and soda water. Hockheim on the River Main! Spatlese and spatchcocks and sprudel wasser sp-sp-sputtering away. All goddamned day … Yippee! Wave good-bye to Sylvia Plath winging her way toward the beaches of Mexico. And I—Don Juan, perhaps? Diogenes in the dark? Or Plato? Thomas of Erceldoune? Alfred Lord Tennyson? François Villon? Who knows? Who cares?—here to finish these bottles. Sylvia Plath, good-bye. And good riddance! I couldn’t have withstood another fucking and, I know, could not have withstood you—your substanceless blue substance-lessness—much longer either. Whoever you are—or were—or will one day be. I think.
I reassemble her story backward from final confession to cor
nfield and crows (no, grackles) and van Gogh and Hemingway and suicides. Try to picture Sylvia luring her cocaine creditor into the field with promises of repayment and him thinking only of a hot fuck. When did he tie and gag her? Was the roughhousing part of the bargain? Was Sylvia begging off by then? Wondering, then panicking, where the fuck Schroeder is? The prearranged white knight? Where is he? What is he waiting for? And then Schroeder finally does appear, stepping out of the corn like a vengeful demiurge. But too late. Guinevere is already violated and, delirious with fear, she flees.
So where was Schroeder? Was he wandering? Lost in the corn? Or was he waiting for them, concealed? Doubled over with his gun in his fist, watching Sylvia, his live porno queen, being bound and gagged and savagely fucked. And only then stepping out from his hiding place with gun ready and cock hard and ejaculating bullets into the Nike-shod beast. Could that have been what happened? Pop pop pop. Blackbirds and corn and van Gogh and Hemingway and not suicide but murder.
So where was Schroeder? Did he watch her being raped? Did he peek out from his hiding place and—for the thrill of it—wait until things got rough before intervening? And if so, is Sylvia aware of it? Or did he tell her he was scared? Maybe that’s what he told her. He had doubts. Didn’t want to commit murder. That’s what happened. The trap was set and he began to doubt, couldn’t go through with it. So he watched. Then, when it started going really badly for her, he put his doubt aside and rushed in. And Sylvia ran away. And Schroeder buried the body and went off to college.
I swig again. The blinking red lights of the flight to Chicago have long since vanished. I think I would like to kill him. And use his gun to do it. I heft the stupid weapon. No. I couldn’t do it. I put the muzzle to my temple. Close my eyes. Feel the cold metal ring ready to blow an entrance into my brains. I count backward.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
No. I can’t. I can’t do it. It makes no sense, and sense is all I have ever sought from things.
One.
I drink. I drink to make sense. I read to make sense. I walk and talk and telephone to make sense. Sense of everything. Sense of nothing.
I drink. C’mon, Lucian of Samosata. You ridiculed Peregrinus Proteus, the phony Cynic, for his public self-immolation at the Olympic Games. For love of notoriety, you said he did it. Well, here we are. Laugh at me. Finger on the trigger. Have a good laugh!
Horace Afoot Page 27
