One of the lights on the cooker went out and Wayne pulled on some thick oven gloves. He opened the door carefully, slid in the tray with the pizza on it and then closed it. ‘It’ll take thirty minutes, Professor. Is it okay if I go down to the basement and sit for a while?’
‘Sure. Fill Moses’ bowl while you’re down there, will you – you know where the food is. I’ll give you a shout when the pizza’s ready.’
What Wayne saw in the basement was still a mystery to Larry. It was the least comfortable room in the house, unair-conditioned and lit by a single naked bulb. It was where Moses stayed when he left the house and where Larry did laundry. He could remember tidying it occasionally but never cleaning it, and it was only after Wayne had decided to sleep there that he’d been forced to make it more habitable. There was now a canvas camp bed in the room and a small side table, a portable 12 inch television and a forgotten easy chair that Larry had discovered under a pile of old dust sheets and dragged to the middle of the room.
Wayne spent time in the basement every time he visited the house and usually alone, as on this occasion. Every so often the sound of his voice would drift up the stairs, sometimes in conversation and sometimes in song. Larry didn’t consider this odd – after all, he spoke to himself – but only a sign that Wayne had spent too much time alone as he, since Helen’s death, had also done. He could hear Wayne’s voice now, but the words were drowned by the noise of the oven’s fan. He poured himself another glass of iced tea and waited for the oven to ping.
‘That sure was a good pizza, Professor. And it was me what done the cooking again, weren’t it?’
‘It were,’ Larry replied, quickly correcting himself. He’d given up trying to rectify Wayne’s grammar. It was a full time job and one that would have to wait for another day. One thing at a time, he kept telling himself: first responsibility and then diction.
‘I’ve been thinking, Professor. Is it okay if I make some jam while you’re away? I made it all the time when I lived in Charles Town.’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that, Wayne. That would involve a pan, wouldn’t it, and you know how you are with pans. Remember what happened when you boiled those hotdogs?’
‘It’s not that kind of pan, Professor. It’s more like a bucket than a saucepan. And I wouldn’t have to lift it when it got hot because all I’d do is ladle the jam into jars. And I’d give some of the jars to you and clean up any mess I made.’
‘I don’t think I have a pan like that or any jars for that matter. Helen never made jam. She always bought it at Safeway.’
‘I got all the stuff, Professor. I got it stored in Charles Town. That’s where I grew up. All we have to do is drive there and get it. It ain’t that far and you’ve got a car, don’t you?’
Larry promised to think it over and started clearing the dishes. Larry washed and Wayne wiped, and Wayne told Larry about all the blackberries growing wild in the area and how blackberry jam was the best jam there was and better for a person than any vegetable he knew of.
They moved to the lounge and Larry told Wayne to make himself comfortable for the next forty-four-and-a-half minutes. He then clicked the stopwatch and started to read: ‘In the history of America’s public domain the Desert Land Act of 1877 plays a dual role…’
Wayne made it through the first fifteen minutes and then his eyelids drooped. Ten minutes later he was snoring loudly and Larry stopped reading and put the paper aside. Again, it wasn’t quite the reaction he’d been hoping for and wondered if he should take his paper to the park in the morning and read it to the gang. But then an even better idea came to mind.
The next day he rose early and walked to Oak Hill Cemetery. A couple of groundsmen were standing by the gates when he arrived, one smoking a cigarette and tapping the ash into his hand and the other drinking coffee from a Starbucks container. Larry bade them a cheery hello and then made his way down the winding path to the resting place of Helen and the cemetery’s other Johnny-come-latelies.
The Columbarium was shaped like an amphitheatre and Larry positioned himself at its centre. He cleared his throat, pressed the stopwatch and started to speak. He spoke undisturbed and with growing confidence to an audience of granite boulders, blue jays and grey squirrels, and for the first time since completing his paper was able to appreciate the flow of its words, the cogency of their argument and, ultimately, the importance of his life’s work. He pressed the stopwatch for a second time and glanced at the readout: forty-five minutes on the dot – an allocation as precise as the twenty-four inches dedicated to his wife!
He went to Helen’s niche and thanked her for her time, for her stony reassurance and for being there when it mattered. He had lots of news he said, but no time to tell her now as he had to email his paper to Jerusalem and take Moses to the park. He’d return in a few days, though, because there were things he wanted to run by her: was it wise for Wayne to make jam in their kitchen and did she know anything about an old armchair he’d found in the basement. He was about to leave when he noticed a new plaque on the wall: Lydia Flores, loving wife of Herb and devoted mother of Daphne and Stanley. Larry quickly did the math. Lydia Flores had died at the age of 49. He decided to do some digging.
An hour later Larry was heading for Volta Park. He and Moses looked forward to their Saturday visits: it was a chance for Moses to sniff butts and run free, and an occasion for him to spend time with his friends and listen to their news. And amazingly Larry had become a listener – or, at least, a better listener. He’d taken Laura’s advice to heart and always considered her likely reaction to anything he might say before actually saying it. There were times when his mouth opened and then silently closed, when people would turn to him and ask what he’d been about to say, only for him to reply that it had been nothing, nothing really – certainly nothing of importance.
And if Larry was cowed by Laura’s salutary words he was even more unnerved by the nature of her friends’ conversations. The exchanges between Tank, Delores, Mike and Alice were often sharp and confrontational and flitted from one topic to another without so much as a pause for breath. He found it difficult to find his feet in such discussions – especially when he could never tell if the repartee was in jest or serious – and if not content to remain silent, he at least preferred speechlessness to the possibility of upsetting one by agreeing with another. These apprehensions were peppercorn, however, when set against his overriding joy at being a part of their group and sharing their company. It gave him a sense of belonging, something – bar his marriage to Helen – he’d never before truly enjoyed.
And just as Larry accepted his new friends, so did they – with the possible exception of Alice – accept him. They were a shifting accumulation of dribs and drabs rather than a select club, a group of dog owners who’d become park friends rather than friends in the wider sense and quite open to others joining them, especially if that person was vouched for by one of their own and arrived with a dog as likeable as Moses.
And because Laura had never mentioned any of Larry’s idiosyncrasies to them, he’d arrived in their midst without the word-of-mouth baggage that had dogged him throughout his professional life, when people new to the department had avoided him simply because those who’d been there longer already did and because it was politic and made life easier if common cause was made with the many against the one. As long as Larry was the butt of the department they remained safe.
In this respect life for Larry had improved fourfold since he’d retired. He was now but one of four butts, and the butt being baited when he arrived at the park that morning was Mike, who since the exhibition at the museum had grown a beard.
‘You don’t think I get my fill of beards in the Middle East?’ Tank said. ‘I get sick to death of seeing them. Every corner you round there’s a guy with a beard waiting to bump into you. And I’m not talking George Clooney beards here. I’m talking shit beards, straggly wisps of hair more
suited to a piece of cheese than a man’s face. And I’ll tell you this for free, Mike: that beard doesn’t suit you! It makes you look like Grizzly Adams.’
‘I can live with that,’ Mike said. ‘Donna thinks I look like Jesus.’
‘That’s Pastor Millsap to you,’ Tank said. ‘Only her special friends get to call her Donna.’
‘And are you her special friend yet?’ Alice smiled.
‘No, but I’m working on it. It’s just a matter of time.’
‘I think the beard suits you just fine, Mike,’ Delores said. ‘And I don’t know why you’re so surprised by all the beards in the Holy Land, Tank. It’s an important part of their religion.’
‘Well, if it is so important to their religion, then someone explain to me why some men wear them and others don’t. They all read the same books, don’t they?’
‘I can answer that,’ Larry said. He looked across to Laura and she smiled back, the go-ahead for him to continue.
‘It’s because Modern Orthodox Jews believe that the Bible only bans razors and not electric razors because electric razors have two blades and are more like scissors. Hasidic Jews disagree with this interpretation and point out that there wasn’t any electricity when the Bible was written. They believe the beard is a bridge between the mind and the heart, a point of connection that allows their ideals to influence their everyday living.’
Alice rolled her eyes. ‘More useless shit no one needs to know,’ she thought.
‘Is that why some Muslims have long beards and other Muslims don’t?’ Delores asked.
‘In a way,’ Larry said. ‘It’s a matter of how things are interpreted. The Koran doesn’t proscribe beards but the Hadith – that’s the collected sayings of the Prophet – says that Muslims have to grow their beards and trim their moustaches. There was a similar controversy in the early Christian church when…’
‘Now do you understand the crap I have to put up with,’ Tank interrupted. ‘If you get people arguing about the length of a fucking beard, how are you going to get them to agree on anything important? I just hope to God the Sikhs and Anabaptists never get into an argument.’
‘What exactly does the Middle East mean to you, Tank?’ Laura asked, a hint of exasperation in her voice.
Tank thought for a while and lit the cigar he’d been twirling. ‘Full employment,’ he said at last. ‘As long as I want a job, I’ve got one.’
And so the morning passed.
When Larry returned to Oak Hill Cemetery the following week he had the lowdown on his wife’s new neighbour. Lydia Flores had been murdered, shot through the head while out jogging. No one had been arrested and the investigation was going nowhere. The crime appeared to have been random, purposeless – a shot in the dark.
Lydia’s death had made the headlines and the story run in The Washington News for over three weeks. As a rule Larry would have known this, but the shooting had happened during the time he’d been writing his paper on the Desert Land Act and for those five weeks he’d neither read a newspaper nor turned on the television. He now downloaded the information from the internet, printed-off hard copies and placed them in a file.
He wondered about getting in touch with Herb Flores and proposing they meet for coffee: as their wives were now neighbours it made sense for them to know each other, too. He hated the idea of Herb sitting in his house alone – Daphne and Stanley were away at college, he’d read – and he’d suggest to Herb that he get a dog and join him and his friends in Volta Park on a Saturday morning. It would help him cope, just like Moses had helped him cope after Helen had died, and maybe the two of them could put their heads together and solve his wife’s murder.
Larry ran the idea past Helen and her silence convinced him that this was the right thing to do, but only after he returned from Israel when he’d be in a position to give Herb his undivided attention. Her silence didn’t help him figure out where the old armchair in the basement had come from, but it did persuade him that Wayne was quite capable of making jam in their kitchen while he was away, and a week later he and Wayne drove to Charles Town in Larry’s old Volvo. It was the first day of September.
‘Is the car broked?’ Wayne asked, once they were on 190.
Larry told him it wasn’t, that it had in fact just been serviced and that 27 mph was fast enough for anyone.
‘You sure blink a lot when you drive, Professor. You know that? You’re twitching like a rabbit’s nose.’
Larry explained that driving made him nervous and that the driver behind – who alternated between honking his horn and flashing his lights – wasn’t helping any.
‘Should I stop asking questions?’
Larry thought this a good idea and suggested they catch up with each other once they reached Charles Town.
A long two hours later they crossed the Potomac at Whites Ferry, and from Leesburg followed Route 9 into downtown Charles Town. Wayne directed Larry to the corner of Mildred and Congress, the site of the Zion Episcopal Church and Graveyard, and climbed out. ‘Just need to check on something, Professor,’ he said.
He returned five minutes later with news that the jam making equipment was still there – just where he and Kevin had left it – and suggested that Larry go to the Mountain View Diner and buy some burgers for the drive home. ‘By the time you get back I’ll have everything ready, Professor. Pass me my hat and sunglasses, will you?’
Larry drove to the diner and ordered two large cheeseburgers, a portion of fries to share and a couple of cans of soda and a packet of potato chips. The air-conditioning was on high and goose bumps formed at the base of his arm hair. A man came in and asked him where the nearest gun shop was and Larry said he didn’t know, that he was a first time visitor to Charles Town and only knew where the Zion Episcopal Church and Graveyard was.
Wayne was waiting by the kerb when he returned, his hat pulled down over his head as far as it would go and wearing sunglasses. He led Larry to twelve large boxes stacked behind the perimeter wall, wrapped in thick cellophane and heavily taped. ‘Careful you don’t drop one, Professor. Jam making equipment’s easily broked.’
Larry was surprised by the weight of the boxes, as if the jars inside were already filled with jam. Wayne assured him they weren’t and that the glass was heavy in its own right, made especially thick so the hot jam didn’t crack it. Something else puzzled Larry: why had the apparatus been stored in a church.
‘Pastor let us,’ Wayne said. ‘They got a storeroom they don’t use and it’s good and dry in there. Most of the jam me and Kevin made was sold to help pay the church’s bills and so the Pastor was happy to give us a key. We’d keep it in an old tobacco tin close to my Pa’s grave and that’s what I checked on when we first got here.’
The drive back to Georgetown was as long and uneventful as the journey to Charles Town had been. Wayne snoozed and Larry blinked. After almost three hours, and double the time a more assured driver would have taken to travel the distance, Larry pulled into the garage space at the back of his house. He wiped the palms of his hands on his trousers and nudged Wayne awake.
‘I was dreaming,’ Wayne said groggily. ‘Strangest dream, too.’ He ran his tongue around his mouth and licked his lips. ‘You got a mint, Professor?’
Larry rummaged in his trouser pocket and handed him one.
‘You want to hear about it?’ Wayne asked.
‘Sure,’ Larry said. ‘It will give me time to recover from the drive.’
‘Okay, then. This is what happened. There was this road I was crossing and I was taking a shortcut by crawling under a truck. I was in my good clothes, too. I’d almost made it out the other side when the truck came down on me and I got stuck. There was a man on his hands and knees close by and he asked if I wanted him to have a word with the driver and I said that I would, that I’d be very obliged if he did that. I didn’t hear him talking to the driver but he must have
telled him something because the truck started to rise up and I managed to squeeze out. It was then I noticed my clothes was all dirty and that the driver was standing over me and looking down. I told him not to worry about anything because it was as much my fault as it was his and that I wouldn’t be bringing any lawsuit against him for his carelessness. But he said he wanted one, Professor! Said he wanted one! He said a lawsuit would be a good way of both of us making some money and asked me what my thinking on the matter was. I didn’t have a chance to tell him because that’s when you woke me and I won’t be able to give him an answer now till tonight. I hope he don’t get mad. If he leaves his truck there for another six hours he might get a traffic ticket and blame me for it.’
‘It was a dream, Wayne,’ Larry laughed. ‘It’s finished with. You’ll be dreaming of something else tonight, something completely unrelated.’
Wayne looked at him. ‘Not me, Professor. My dreams always follow on. They pick up right where they leave off. I’m telling you: that truck driver will be waiting for me tonight and there’s no way of knowing what kind of mood he’ll be in.’
Larry smiled and shook his head. Consecutive dreams indeed! Wayne had to be pulling his leg.
‘Come on, young man: let’s get those boxes into the house before it rains. It looks like we’re in for a downpour. Where do you want to put them – the kitchen?’
‘I think the basement would be a better place,’ Wayne replied.
The time for Larry’s departure to Israel was nearing. He’d booked his flights and reserved a room at the King David for seven nights but still had no travel guide. Apart from the university bookstore – an outlet that devoted more space to clothes than it did books – Georgetown had no bookshops and he was forced to make a special trip into Washington.
He spent an hour at Barnes & Noble browsing the shelves and reorganising them when he saw fit, and left with two books: one on Israel and one on Jerusalem. He’d hoped to find one on a subject Laura had expressed interest in and surprise her with it the next time they met, but the girl behind the counter had just looked at him strangely and told him they didn’t stock books on that subject.
Larry & the Dog People Page 19
