by Jack Cady
At the harbor water moved like restless spirits. We live precariously beside this sea. Darkness rises from all horizons, but it is dark waters that beckon us. Every year a boat or two is drowned. Many, many hulks of sailing ships, coal burning ships, and modern steamers moulder beneath these waters.
What must James see beneath the waves? Skeletons, no doubt, skeletons representing failed hopes. He must see fortunes in cargo, even cargo once destined for Andrewes’s store. Perhaps he wanders beneath crystal chandeliers waving in water above dance floors of ships’ salons. Our remaining piers stand above great darkness, and the pull of the sea draws that irrational part of our minds to self-destruction.
"It’s Able Andrewes," Mamie Worthy told me when I encountered her at our Carnegie library. "You young ones have no notion of the weight of things." Mamie is as old as Edward and Charles, which is to say she is eighty; twenty years older than I. She takes her last name more seriously than she ought. In her case, duty asks inquiry into all of town life. She can trace the lineage of every cat and dog, can predict births occurring fewer than nine months after marriage, and knows when a preacher stumbles in prayer, and why. Mamie’s is not the voice of mirth, the voice of gladness. At the same time she is honest.
"I do not like you," she told me, "but that’s not news. The news is why I do not like you. You are a lonely man who protects himself with loneliness. The rest of the town just thinks you’re a snot."
"Yet, I like you," I replied with all truthfulness. "With the length of your nose from prying I should not, but there it is. Able Andrewes disappeared three years after I was born and two years after James saw life. By then Edward was twenty, and Charles nineteen. How can Able Andrewes have aught to do with us?"
Brightness faded briefly from her eyes. Her black dress, clean and pressed and ankle length, seemed more alive than she. Sadness overcame her face. "I do not give a holy hoot what people do," she told me. "If you think there’s a contradiction I’ll remind you that you are a grown man who digs at the past like a dog after small bones. You figure it out."
"I like you," I told her, "not because you offer pleasure or charm, but because until now you have always been honest."
"You chose to remain in this town," she said in a voice a little larger than a whisper. "Why?"
"It has always been my home." My response was not sufficient, but I had never pondered the question.
"No dream took you away. Your answer will be found in the realm of Able Andrewes’s dreams. I’ll say no more." She turned from me. Her black skirts whispered like the tears of widowhood.
Victorian secrecy caused loneliness, and I returned to Victorian streets. Mamie is acute, though I resented her comments. I reminded myself that a man with books is never lonely. Because a man chooses not to marry, or sit at the local cafe and talk crops or business spells nothing. And, all men age in a strange land because styles change and youth is ignorant. The landscape of memory becomes more real than modern landscape.
Mamie seemed inhibited. I sought one who is not. Our town drunk in no manner resembles the humorous Irishman so beloved by storytellers. He is Swede Andersen, a tall and broad man in his day, who in other days fisted sail. Vessels with auxiliary sail coasted these shores into the 1930s.
"Mamie takes things personal," he told me, "but it isn’t Able Andrewes, it’s the store. Come to think of it, it’s both." His diminished frame anchored the corner stool of our only tavern. Beyond windows, gray light walked the horizon. It wrapped around a fishing vessel swimming moderately heavy seas. Swede’s hands swell large around a beer glass, his knuckles dislodged in old accidents and fights. The rest of him seems no more than a cameo.
"How inebriated are you?"
"As well as can be expected," he told me, "but suds don’t make me talk. I’d tell you anyway." Eyes of thin blue, decorated with lines of red, watched the fishing vessel. "Damn fools," he said about the fishermen, but his voice was filled with longing for the sea. "This business of getting old sure makes a fella think."
"I have all afternoon," I told him, "and the will to listen."
"So James pokes around under the harbor, and it’s a wonder most of us ain’t with him for the stroll. We’re part of the store. You think I drink for fun?" Swede watched a young couple with a small child as they passed along the boardwalk. "Kids figure the world got made an hour before they were born," Swede said about the couple. "James sure thought that way."
Swede’s tale meandered, but gradually told of waste and sorrow. It centered on a daily round of innocuous tasks and perceptions. At eighteen James left for college and found no joy. He returned claiming study as impractical. The reliable James took a job at Andrewes’s store. He became reserved and distant.
"So he made a punk’s decision at eighteen," Swede said, "and never looked back. He became the world’s leading expert on that store, every nook and cranny and item in stock. To this day he can still find button hooks that ain’t been used since World War I."
"Which does not explain his actions."
"It likely does," Swede told me, "if you think about the Andrewes store and Andrewes. You probably figure that store stays alive because of the town, and you figure wrong. The store is what holds all the power here. The town stays alive because of the store."
For a moment it seemed I owned someone else’s memory, or someone else owned mine. Once, long ago, I wished to really study history, and really write it. Now I only record the events of a Victorian town gone stale.
"We all stayed too long," Swede said, "we stayed too long. Check with Mad Willie for the rest of it. He’s the only sane man in town."
"And you are not?"
"I’m part of the store," Swede said, and said it sadly. "So are you, but Willie, nope." Swede returned to drink and silence as I departed.
Unlike most village idiots, Willie is not easily found. I walked, knowing a day or two might pass before we met. One generally discovers Mad Willie in search for mushrooms and roots and herbs, or conversing with cattle in a near valley. His Indian and Filipino forebears combine in his sturdy frame. He strolls costumed in ragtag clothing from charity bins of churches. Animals delight in his presence, and children follow him until called away by fearful parents.
Gentle Reader, some Victorians were honest men and true, as, sometimes, are we. I must not debase a hundred years of toil without exceptions. And, when the rapacious 19th century gave way to the 20th, only the century changed. Victorian minds and values did not disappear because of dates on a calendar. Notions of "progress" continued. Nineteenth century trading posts would be replaced by a beatitude of goods in 20th century shopping malls.
And we, like they, write history every day while horror walks. We plant gardens as ghettos rise in flame. We tsk over dry cleaning bills while statesmen name themselves honorable men. This augers ill. Able Andrewes, gentleman, did not intentionally join in corruption, but corruption reaches forth and implicates. Victorians killed hundreds of thousands, while Andrewes’s trade built this town. Victorian houses, once gorgeous, line our streets. We live in them, preserve them, and our century kills millions.
I stood before dawn outside Andrewes’s store. James would soon arrive, and through the early streets our people passed: Paul Stenkey trudging toward the post office where he will sort and curse colorful flyers advertising goods, Madge Plummer to the weekly paper where she will report quibbles from city hall, and Jason Preston, young developer who is always three dollars short and two days late. I thought of long nights of correspondence at my store. Much of my income derives from rare books sold by mail to collectors.
Lights flared from the store as the Andrewes boys prepared for the business day. The store towered in darkness, and stained glass windows seemed to leap toward the mist. The windows rose like candles, or like colorful lamps of Victorian pride. Red and purple and blue mixed with oranges, yellows, greens, and browns. Here and there a spark of crystal twinkled, and here and there other glass shone black as polished ebony. Figures in
stained glass—fishermen and loggers, carpenters and peat miners, draftsmen and bartenders—seemed to move because of the mist, slowly counting days of endless toil. Far away a church bell tolled.
"Willie heard you calling," a voice said behind me. I turned to find Mad Willie dressed as a harlequin; faded yellow pants, red shirt, green cap. Willie may be mad, but he is well read, having mooched my cast-off books for years. His broad, olive-colored face shone with enthusiasm. He carried bunches of wild carrots and wild celery.
"I didn’t call."
"You did," he said, "or else it’s magic. But, just think of cows, just think of them. Cows don’t miss much. Some are even Methodist." He perfervidly began to explain bovine doctrines.
"We have a mystery unlikely solved by cows," I told him.
"Unlikely solved by anyone else," he told me, "plus some are Presbyterian." He watched through dark mist as a milk truck pulled up before the store. The driver stepped slowly down, as if in dispraise of cows. "Miraculous," Willie breathed. "You put in grass, and out comes milk and cheese and ice cream." His delight sounded as large as his wonder.
"Something dark stalks this town," I said. "James has become peculiar in his way. His reserve is gone and he speaks most kindly. Swede drinks but doesn’t care for it. Mamie is indifferent to events, and yet she pries. No one claims to fully understand. If someone does understand, that someone isn’t talking."
"James does his eternal job," Willie said seriously. "You do yours. Able Andrewes does his, and maybe some of what happens is wonderful." For a moment the man seemed sane. His lips lost their silly smile, and his broad forehead furrowed with concentrated thought.
"There’s wonderment to it," I said with grim voice, "but other words occur. Horror and death, for two."
"Celery," said Willie, and not unhappily. "Apium graveolens. In the wild state it is as rank as me, but with broader leaves. It is indigenous to marshy places near the sea. With breeding and blanching celery turns tame. Three varieties are cultivated, green, white, and red. Green is best, but James is white. Very little of the red shows up around here."
"You must be feigning madness," I told him, "while playing court jester spinning riddles." It is impossible to dislike Willie, but also impossible not to become impatient with him.
"James is a master of inventory," Willie said with dignity. "Do not speak of sanity and riddles in the same breath. Your sanity disappeared when you stopped riddling. When questions cease, people buy someone else’s dream."
"As James bought Andrewes’s dream?"
"And Andrewes, no doubt, bought an even older dream," Willie murmured, sounding his sadness. "Steam power was first used in 1698 by Englishmen, the same year Daniel Defoe suggested better roads and insane asylums." Willie looked toward cathedral windows still illuminated by electricity, more than by the first thin light of dawn. "Borrow all good dreams," he whispered, "but in the name of holy spirits don’t buy them. When you buy, you may own something good, but you also own whatever evil those dreams spawned."
"James is not without honor," I said, feeling somehow that I defended myself more than I defended James.
"James is in the thrall of the store," Willie said. "He changes because he has nothing left to lose. And, the store is in the thrall of an elder dream." He cocked his head as if hearing distant voices in the mist. "They sometimes wail at sunrise," he trilled. "Sad spirits call from shallow graves where progress placed them. Oh, this town once produced evil, evil, evil, yes it did."
"But Andrewes only bought and sold—"
"And Andrewes wished to honorably work, and honorably raise children, and honorably grow old, and honorably die. But when a man begins to slide it seems like all creation gets greased up for the occasion. Andrewes became implicated. The store became greater than he. The store became the dream." Willie pointed to cathedral windows aglow with Victorian ideals, and with work of Victorian hands. His face wrenched with a silly smile, but his voice sounded low, bereaved, whispering horror. "And there he sits, there he sits, he sits . . . Andrewes." Willie choked, and pointed to a small space high on one window, a window overlooking the harbor. "See how slowly he works because he is old," Willie said bemused, though still muttering as if through pain. "He is old, old, old, and yet he will never die because his sentence is not death, but dying." Willie continued to point. "Dying, but never dead for as long as dreams that put him there exist."
Like cattle, we do not look up, yet walk beneath the stars. I turned to those windows I have passed for six decades, seeing but not seeing; turned toward glass which held the small, black-suited figure of Able Andrewes, his soul become one with his windows. Andrewes, disappearing, but forever present. The dark figure hunched before an account book. A quill pen moved with glacial slowness, yet moved. About him other figures moved, but glacially.
It is the mist, I told myself, only mist, and knew I lied. Did Mamie know of this, did Swede? How many knew, yet feared to give their knowledge voice? Did James know? And Charles and Edward, working each day beside this grim eternity?
And yes, James knew, but with charity of newly discovered kindness kept quiet.
"Andrewes tends the store," Willie said, "and so does James. The wild carrot, Daucus carota, a member of the family Umbelliferae . . ."
I turned from Willie, knowing that I would soon be shaking; knowing also, because I am old, that this horror must soon pass into a greater horror. Andrewes’s quill pen moved, although one must concentrate to see it, for the life of the windows breathes slowly; ancient vapors; Victorian men and ladies caught in near stasis between half-known dreams.
And, yes, James knew. I thought of my own daily round, and the rounds of others in this town while understanding James; that master of inventory.
Who walked, I had no doubt, within the holds of sunken ships, and beside skeletons that once knew dreams. James, a creature of the store, inventorying drowned cargo destined for the store. James, a creature stepping always in behalf of the store, stepping more slowly each year; but always stepping. That genius of inventory.
And yes, I knew that all of us are creatures of the store. We bought Andrewes’s dream. The store could not have gained such power otherwise. Now a violent circle closes with quiet violence. When the store became the dream, it made the dream immortal. We are trapped. The future becomes a dirge, belling through heat of day and frost of night above the bones of our fathers.
I might have been a prophet instead of a scribbler, or a true historian rather than a recorder of facts. I might not have been lonely. And, my fellow townsmen, what might they have been? No matter. In a way I am not lonely, for all of my townsmen are encased like Andrewes in his stained glass—trapped with less grace than a bee embalmed in amber, for the bee is dead—while we are only, and eternally—dying. Mamie will eternally gossip. Swede will eternally drink. I will eternally sell old dreams as the newspaper prints old news. Able Andrewes, green grocer, will keep accounts. I turned toward the harbor.
The reliable James appeared, walking toward me through mist to become my comrade as we plod through time. From somewhere in the mist Willie hummed a hymn to morning. James stopped before me.
"It isn’t so bad," he said quietly. "But it does go on and on." His moist eyes dulled beyond horror, could no longer see horror. For a moment he trembled, thus still knew some emotion. "People do need things," he said, and visibly controlled his trembling, "but I suppose we should warn the children." Then he tasted the futility of his statement. "They wouldn’t listen," he said vaguely, and moved toward the store.
I felt not fear, but anger, and the need to strike. It was a loathsome need. No man of honor, no gentleman, could answer this blow with cruelty. When there is nothing left to lose, one must at least answer as James does, with kindness.
Thin sunlight cut the mist, and stained glass windows dulled before me, Gentle Reader; dulled before me like slow movement through slow aeons. There was aught to say except give thanks—thanks—that—at least—you are spared: for surel
y you are wise, and do not buy other people’s dreams. Surely you, unlike we, are not tending the store; are not, because of the store, enthroned by time forever, or, because of the store, forever perishing.
Ride the Thunder
A lot of people who claim not to believe in ghosts will not drive 150 above Mount Vernon. They are wrong. There is nothing there. Nothing with eyes gleaming from the roadside, or flickering as it smoothly glides not quite discernible along the fencerows. I know. I pull it now, although the Lexington route is better with the new sections of interstate. I do it because it feels good to know that the going-to-hell old road that carried so many billion tons of trucking is once more clean. The macabre presence that surrounded the road is gone, perhaps fleeing back into smoky valleys in some lost part of the Blue Ridge where haunted fires are said to gleam in great tribal circles and the forest is so thick that no man can make his way through.
Whatever, the road is clean. It can fall into respectable decay under the wheels of farmers bumbling along at 35 in their ’53 Chevies.
Or have you driven Kentucky? Have you driven that land that was known as a dark and bloody ground? Because, otherwise you will not know about the mystery that sometimes surrounds those hills, where a mist edges the distant mountain ridges like a memory.
And, you will not know about Joe Indian who used to ride those hills like a curse, booming down out of Indiana or Southern Illinois and bound to Knoxville in an old B-61 that was only running because it was a Mack.
You would see the rig first on 150 around Vincennes in Indiana. Or below Louisville on 64, crying its stuttering wail into the wind and lightning of a river valley storm as it ran under the darkness of electricity-charged air. A picture of desolation riding a road between battered fields, the exhaust shooting coal into the fluttering white load that looked like windswept rags. Joe hauled turkeys. Always turkeys and always white ones. When he was downgrade he rode them at seventy plus. Uphill he rode them at whatever speed the Mack would fetch.
