Nameless

by Sam Starbuck

  "Don't tell me he found nudie photos of Sandra," I rolled my eyes.

  "Carmen," Charles said disapprovingly.

  "Come on! Know what he found?" she asked me, ignoring his disapproving look. "He found a coat he swears belongs to Nolan's sister."

  "It's not our business," Charles scolded.

  "Hang on, how does he know it belongs to Nolan's sister?" I asked. Carmen gave me a dry, cynical look. "Oh my. I'll have to get out that diagram I was working on."

  "Carmen, I think it's time we went and got that drink," Charles said.

  "Fine, fine. You can catch me up later," she said, following Charles to the door.

  "Have a good day. I'll let you know if I hear anything about it," I called after them.

  When they were gone, I turned to the box they'd brought, slitting the packing tape and pulling the flaps up. Inside, between layers of tissue paper and packing peanuts, I found a whole host of treasures.

  In addition to receipts for purchase and postage, Marjorie had included a couple of handbills for interesting Chicago events, a letter full of literary talk, a bar of toffee chocolate from Vosges, and a bag of biscotti from a little bakery we used to visit when I was her customer instead of her protégé. I thought of calling her and joking that the biscotti had gone stale, but instead I unpacked her gifts and sorted through the handful of books she'd sent. She'd thoughtfully wrapped Lucas's book in plastic to keep the smell off the other books, and stuffed sage and bay leaves between the pages to try and de-smoke it a little. It helped, in a way – now the book smelled like herbs and cigarette smoke.

  The other two books had post-it notes on them: one said Thought you'd like this and the other Want your opinion. I set them aside, however, and picked up the book Lucas had requested, Ancient Games. It could use a good airing, and there's a certain guilty pleasure in reading books that someone else bought.

  It didn't seem like anything special. Another book about myths and superstitions, probably inaccurate considering the date on the imprint was 1944. The art inside was good, though, only slightly faded color plates of Egyptian tomb frescoes of hunters, black-and-white photographs of old mosaics (opus vermiculatum, very delicate work) depicting mock battles, and Roman paintings of women playing some kind of ball game. I could see why an artist would be attracted to them – even if he'd said he wasn't an artist, hands don't lie.

  The chapters were divided with scholarly neatness: games for play and games in earnest, one on witchcraft and one on "charms". I turned to "games in earnest", but it still seemed vaguely silly to me, the idea of reading serious mythological consequence into dead games. Of course you learn a lot from the games a culture plays, but only about the culture itself. If there is a hidden world beyond ours, old myths and games and playacting are not the likely key to it.

  At least, that was what I thought before the winter came.

  Chapter FOUR

  Most of the roads were still flooded when our mail made it through, and the walk out to The Pines that day would have been truly dangerous – there was slippery mud and the possibility of sinkholes, and even a little quicksand wasn't unknown in the wilder flatlands around Low Ferry. I wanted to walk out and deliver Lucas's book personally, but I decided to give it a day first. If the sun stayed out, the road would probably be safe, if not enjoyable, by the following day.

  The boy came by that afternoon and confirmed my suspicions. He'd tried to make it out to The Pines for his tutoring, and turned back when the water got over the axles of his bicycle wheels.

  "Why're you going there, anyway?" the boy asked, popping gum and leaning on my counter. I held out a tissue and he rolled his eyes and spat into it.

  "Lucas ordered a book, and it arrived with the mail. I hadn't seen him in a while," I said, tossing the gum out.

  "Yeah, he's been stuck up there. Phone must have gone out too."

  "Oh?" I asked.

  "Well, I called to see what he wanted me to study because I missed tutoring, and it just kept ringing," he said. "What's the book?"

  "You'll have to ask him that, it's his business."

  "Maybe he'll show me if I show him all the stuff I've done," he continued. "Got an A on my history paper."

  "Oh yeah? Good for you. I'm sure he'll be pleased," I said, and the boy beamed. "You buying, or just kibitzing?"

  "What's that?"

  "Making small talk."

  "Kibitzing," he said, testing the word out, then grinned at me as he shouldered his backpack. "Thanks. I gotta go."

  I spent that night restless, to be honest. In storm country you learn not to fret when someone's telephone has died or they are otherwise not where they ought to be, but most of the time you also know that they've survived other storms. Lucas, as far as I knew, might never have seen a field of unplowed snow before coming to Low Ferry. Living out in the wilds, with a disconnected phone and no car, no understanding of the need to run his taps to keep the pipes from bursting or knock the icicles off the eaves to keep them from falling around his ears, he was not necessarily safe.

  I woke early, not that I'd slept very soundly to begin with – it was more that I finally gave up, around six in the morning, on getting back to sleep. I washed and made myself some breakfast, keeping one eye on the clock; if I was efficient and the roads were safe, I could be at The Pines at a reasonable hour.

  After I ate, I sorted out the paperwork from Marjorie, stapling the receipts together and tucking them inside the book next to a flattened bay leaf. After a second's consideration, I wrapped up the book in brown paper and tied it with twine.

  Book and papers securely tucked in my backpack, I let myself out the back of the store and smiled cheerfully in the cold. There might be snow on the walk home. I liked a walk in winter, with the air sharp and the snow crunching under my boots.

  It was easy enough going, as long as I stayed on the pavement or the asphalt. Once I reached the dirt road out to The Pines I stuck to the edges, where the ground was firmer and the raised ridges kept me out of puddles that would be dangerous ice by nightfall.

  I didn't stray into the field itself, however, until the cottage's kitchen door was well in sight and the road would have forced me around the hill before I reached the house. Spattered with mud to mid-calf, my boots crusted and my spirits high, I knocked on the door in the optimistic hope that there would be hot chocolate and a warm kitchen awaiting me. There was no reply. I tried the door, but it was locked.

  It was past time most people would be awake, though he could have been sleeping. Still, I wanted to be sure before I tried the front door or had to walk back with the book still in my bag. I knocked again, and this time I heard a faint yell from elsewhere in the house. I waited while the lock clicked back in its mount and the door opened.

  "Jesus," I said, "Did you die or something?"

  Lucas smiled tiredly at me and rubbed his raw, chafed nose with the sharp angle of his wrist. "I know," he said. "Come in."

  I used the door-jamb to knock the worst of the mud off my boots and left them on a mat inside.

  "Try the living room – there's a fire," he said, gesturing to the tightly-shut door as he lit a burner on the stove.

  "Is there a reason your kitchen is subzero?" I asked, taking the bag off my shoulder. Lucas picked up a carton of milk sitting on the windowsill and poured some into a pan, setting it on the burner.

  "Power's out, heater's not working," he answered. He rubbed his bloodshot eyes. "It's all right – the living room's small and the fireplace puts out enough heat."

  "Your heater's gas," I replied. "They all are in this part of the country. If your stove works, your heater should."

  "Try it for yourself. It doesn't," he said, waving his hand at the metal grate set into the kitchen wall. I pulled the grate away and examined the mechanism.

  "That's because your pilot light's out."

  "Is that why?" he asked, intrigued. The look I gave him was probably more pity at his clear lack of common sense than anything else. He frow
ned. "I didn't know. I was going to ask next time I was in town. I've been sick, that's all."

  "Yes, so I see," I answered. His skin was an unhealthy gray, eyes red-rimmed and nose a mass of chapped, irritated cracks. He coughed. "How long has your heat been out?"

  "Only two days," he answered.

  "And the power too? I'll have to look at your breaker next," I muttered.

  "My what?"

  "You'd better give me those matches," I said, holding out my hand for them. It didn't take long to re-light the pilot, though I was nervous about blowing something up the entire time. With a whoosh, the heater roared to life. Warmth poured into the chilly room from two vents in the floor, and I replaced the grating.

  "That ought to take care of the rest of the house," I said, locating a small metal door in the opposite wall, the access hatch to the circuit box. When I opened the door, three of the switches were in the wrong position. I flipped them and the kitchen lights went on.

  "That's all that was wrong? Those great big light switches?" he asked.

  "Haven't you overloaded a circuit before?" I said. "You plug one thing in and the power goes out to the whole room?"

  "No," he replied, looking vaguely guilty.

  "Well, now you know," I said.

  "Does one of those switches control the phone too?"

  "No – your line's probably down, that's just bad luck," I replied. "I should have come to see you earlier – I knew you'd need help out here alone."

  "Oh, is that why you're here?" he asked, and I realized that I had barged in without explaining why I was there in the first place. "I didn't realize there was so much involved in just keeping the power on."

  "Actually, I came to bring you the book you ordered," I said, a little embarrassed. "You know how to shingle a roof but not how to work a circuit box?"

  "The home-repair book didn't cover that," he said. "Or, well, it probably does, but I didn't think to look. It's in my desk somewhere."

  The milk was beginning to steam in the pan. I washed my hands in frigid tap-water and shed my coat while he made the hot chocolate.

  "What on earth were you doing that you blew out three circuit-breakers and your pilot light?" I asked.

  "Come into the living room," he said, carrying the mugs. "It's warmer in there."

  "Fine, but I'm still curious," I answered. I picked up my backpack and held the door, gesturing for him to go first since his hands were full. That was why, the first time I saw his workshop, it was with Lucas standing in the middle of it. His back was to me as he set one of the mugs down on a bare space on one table.

  There was a bed in the corner, probably moved there when the heat went out. Next to the bed stood a grandfather clock that had, like most of the furniture, come with the house. A desk sat under one of the windows, the only one that wasn't covered with heavy drapes to keep the cold out. On the desk was the window-box from the kitchen, the sprouts looking weedy but still alive.

  The sofa had been pushed back against a wall, and two wing-chairs as well. They'd been moved to make room for the tables – a long workbench on rickety sawhorses, several small round end-tables, probably brought in from all over the house, and two folding card tables draped with drop-cloths. None of this was what struck me silent, though.

  Jumbled on the bookshelves, piled on one chair, laying around on the tables and hanging from long ropes hooked over the ceiling beams were dozens of masks. Enormous beaked bird-faces, small beaded half-masks on sticks, pale ovals covered with ribbons, garish children's masks shaped like animals and monsters. Incomplete versions sat on molds on the workbenches or in puddles of dried paint on the smaller tables. Blocks of clay, piles of rag fabric, cases of plaster-powder and heaps of ribbon sat in piles amid bottles of paint and glue. The fire, flickering in the hearth, threw shadows on the walls and made the nearest ones look as if they were subtly alive.

  Lucas, who hadn't turned around, reached out and switched on a lamp, which killed the shadows. He blew out a pair of fat candles burning on one table, then three more on the desk.

  "At least if the power actually goes out, I'll know what to do," I heard him say, but I was still looking at the masks. Lucas turned to see why I was silent and gave a scratchy, hoarse laugh.

  "It sometimes takes people that way," he said. "I should have warned you. I forgot you hadn't seen my workshop yet."

  "Did you make all of these?" I asked.

  "Most. A few are models I bought."

  "You said you weren't an artist," I said, still distracted. He reached up to a cluster of masks tied to a rope and untied one, offering it to me to examine.

  "I'm not, really," he said. "More like...a blacksmith, in my own way. I make tools."

  "Tools for what?" I asked, stroking the silk ribbon tied through a hole punched in stiff painted leather. The face that looked up at me was narrow and studious, with high cheekbones and a thin nose. Perched on the nose were false glasses made from thin copper wire.

  "Dottore," he said, pointing at the mask. "It's Italian. The educated fool."

  I grinned and held it up to my face. He took it out of my hands before I could fit it over my nose completely. I picked up another one, a wide-mouthed, smiling face.

  "Is this how you make your living?" I asked.

  "It isn't really a living," he said, looking down at Dottore. "I had a job in the city. I used to sell the masks before I came here, but just to keep them from piling up. It wasn't a career or anything."

  "They seem to have started piling," I said. He coughed into his sleeve before replying.

  "Yes," he answered, looking up and away at a cluster of masks hanging on another rope, all of which looked very similar – snoutish black grotesques decorated in a variety of ways, some made of what looked like painted leather, some made of velvet or stiffened paper on wire frames. "But I don't think Low Ferry is really the place to sell masks, do you?"

  "Halloween is nearly here."

  He nodded absently.

  "They're wonderful," I continued, looking around. "You have real skill. How long have you been making them?"

  "Since I was fifteen," he said. He sat on the bed and wrapped the blanket around his shoulders, watching me. "Most people find them frightening. The first time the boy came out to the cottage he looked in here and then hid in the bathroom. He thought they were looking at him. He still won't study in here."

  "Well, children, you know. Still enjoying tutoring?" I asked.

  "I suppose. He isn't interested in history, not the kind he's being taught, but he doesn't like me to disapprove of him, so he studies. Sometimes he's frustrating, but...I think he likes me."

  "He talks to me about you."

  "Does he?" Lucas looked pleased.

  "He says you think differently than his schoolteachers do."

  "Oh." His look of pleasure vanished. "I don't want to cause trouble with his teachers."

  "I doubt you will. They have a whole herd of children to care about. He doesn't seem the type to inspire a rebellion. Besides, this is still civilization. We don't burn people at the stake for having new ideas."

  "Really? Seems like that's exactly where people do that," he said. "But it doesn't matter. The one you're holding..." he said, indicating the mask in my hands. "I'm calling him Socrates. He's not finished yet. I'm waiting for the plants to finish growing."

  I looked over at the window box. "The plants?" I asked, setting Socrates down and walking to the window. The green stalks swayed gently.