by Gene Wolfe
“So how are they going, and how come it’s a coincidence to see me?”
“Quite nicely. One would think that holding this little affair each year as we do the springs would eventually run dry, but someone must be printing old books.” It was a regular joke of his, and he was the only one I ever heard laugh at it. “Look here: A.W. Sprague’s Log of the Cruise of the Schooner Julius Webb. Fifty dollars, and cheap at the price. And here’s one I found hardly a minute before you came in: Jim Gillet’s Six Years with the Texas Rangers. I’ve put it at sixteen fifty, and I’m going to buy it myself the moment the doors open.”
“I might beat you to it—I think I can run faster than you.”
His smile would have defrosted a freezer. “That’s right, you’re getting interested in police and crime books, aren’t you? Now here’s something you might enjoy that I know you can afford: Franke’s The Torture Doctor. It’s the history of the infamous Chicago murderer H.H. Holmes. No dust jacket, so I’ve marked it a dollar and a quarter; but you might look for a long time to find a copy, and in a year or two it should be worth ten dollars at least.”
He leaned across the table to pick up the book for me, and a piece of loose-leaf paper that had been dangling from his shirt pocket fell out.
“Oh, yes,” he said when he got it again, “this is for you, too. A very charming gentleman who said that he was a relation of yours was inquiring after you, not an hour ago. I honestly don’t think he realized at first that the school was closed for the summer—no doubt he saw the cars out front and thought a summer semester was in session. I overheard your name and had a little chat with him.”
I unfolded the note.
Dear Little Niece,
Remember what was said under the roses?
Wear one when you are free to see me.
Herbert Hollander III
How I Played Carmen to an Empty House
Well, what would you have done? Uncle Herbert was crazy, and I had this notion they wouldn’t keep somebody locked up so long when he acted as sane as Uncle Herbert did, unless they thought it might be an awfully bad idea to turn him loose. I didn’t want to be alone with him, but I didn’t want him mad at me either.
And anyhow, where was I supposed to get a rose? Out of the garden, right? Sure. Only there weren’t any rose bushes in our garden because it was practically all grass and evergreens, with some redbud trees and ornamental cherries. Besides if I did get a rose, when would I wear it? “Under the roses” meant sub rosa—Latin for “on the quiet”—unless I was even dumber than my teachers thought. Naturally Uncle Herbert wanted to keep things as quiet as he could, and that was as open as he’d dared to be about it in a note that a stranger might have read as soon as he was gone. If I wore a rose when there were people around, he might not like it, but if I wore it when I was alone, how could he see it?
In the end, I did two things—maybe smart and maybe not—as soon as we got the rest of the books unloaded and I could sneak away. Boutiques are the curse of Barton, but I found one, the Pink Pelican, that carried paper flowers. I bought a nice red rose, had them put it in a bag, and took it to a phone booth. Then I pulled Aladdin Blue’s card out of my wallet and called him up.
After we’d said hello and I’d explained who I was, I said, “That day we went out to Garden Meadow—you knew that my Uncle Herbert was going to bust out, right? That was why you were so interested in him.”
“I didn’t actually know it, Holly.” Blue has one of those voices that sound the same over a phone as they do faceto-face. “I’d been told it was probable, yes.”
“By your friend the judge?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“In the first place, because I had been told in confidence. And in the second, because it would only have worried you to no purpose. What could you have done, if I had? Told the director that your uncle should be watched more carefully? He would have asked you how you knew, and you would have been forced to tell him that you had been warned by a man you met on the train. How much weight would that have carried? He would have assured you that Garden Meadow was extremely secure, and that your uncle was watched quite carefully already.”
“I guess you’re right,” I admitted. “Is it? Secure, I mean?”
“As secure as such places usually are, I imagine, which is slightly less secure than a minimum-security prison. You must understand that out of one hundred psychotics, ninety-nine are dangerous only to themselves. The great risk places like Garden Meadow must guard against is suicide.”
“You know he’s escaped, too, because when I started talking about it you didn’t ask. Can that judge telephone?”
“I suspect he could, if he wanted to badly enough. But he didn’t tell me. I have a police radio, and when I’m working I find it more relaxing than music. The police have a code number to indicate a lost person, and their description fit your uncle quite well.”
“I didn’t think Garden Meadow would call the police.”
“They won’t shoot on sight, you understand. Just take him back.”
I knew what I wanted to ask next, but I couldn’t figure out how to ask it. Finally I said, “When we were on that train, you wanted to know what my uncle had done that got him sent where he was. Or anyhow, you wanted to find out if I knew. Do you know, yourself?”
“He killed his wife,” Blue said.
I think I hung up the phone, but I’m not completely sure. The next thing I really remember is walking up the street, about half a block away from the booth. Somebody in my head (I don’t know what you call her, except that it isn’t Conscience—maybe she’s Conscience’s sister) was saying, “Okay, Holly, this is it. You know what he looks like, and you know you have to be careful when some other woman wouldn’t suspect a thing. Maybe you can con him into going back, and if you can’t, you can at least blow the whistle. You’ve been as cocky as a cat on a cattleboat ever since you were born. Now put up or shut up.”
So I stuck the dumb paper rose in my hair—Hey, look at me, I’m Carmen—and went into the Yankeedooodle-Burger joint.
There were lots of people there, but no Uncle Herbert. I was just going to have a Coke and go home, but who did I see in a booth but Megan and Les with Megan’s brother Larry, and of course they yelled at me to come over.
“We’ve got a question,” Larry told me. “It’s about horses, and you’re our horse expert.”
Larry was one of the handsomest guys I had ever met; when he looked at me like that I wanted to do whatever he asked me to—even though I knew he was setting me up. So I said, “Les has two, but I know a lot more than she does.”
Les giggled. “He won’t take my word on this stuff, Holly. It’s up to you to straighten him out.”
Megan said, “My smart brother just happened to mention the well-known scientific fact that horses fly south in the winter.”
Larry rapped the table. “Let’s get this straight. I did not say fly. I’m aware that fly, when applied to a four-footed animal, is hardly more than a figure of speech. I—”
Naturally they jumped on that. “Bats fly,” Les told him. And Megan put in, “What about a hind-footed animal?”
“—merely stated that horses migrate, and I don’t intend to be put off by dragged-in references to a dumb animal that spends its time in dugouts.”
I figured it was my turn, so I said, “Horses don’t migrate, Larry. They gallop, they walk, they trot, they canter, and one or two will even pace—on a good day, with a full moon. But not migrate or swim under water—that’s ducks.”
“Certainly they do. You, Holly, are shut up in the winter, and so you don’t get to observe as I do. But let me tell you a plain, unvarnished fact. I hardly ever see a horse all winter.”
“I see one every couple of days,” I said, thinking of all the fancy, varnished hours I’d spent mucking out Sidi’s stall.
Les added, “And if you’d really looked, right after the big storm in January, you’d have seen
the inimitable Hopkins Family Sleigh, drawn by our own dear Big Red.”
“Sled horses are scouts,” Larry told her, “and it’s not at all surprising, Holly, that you saw your horse. He was cooped up, not free to migrate the way Nature intended. Ducks migrate, as you said yourself. When a farmer goes into his poultry house and sees his ducks sitting there, does that prove horses don’t migrate?”
Megan corrected him. “You mean ducks, Larry. Ducks don’t migrate.” That was when I caught onto the fact that Larry was a little high. Okay, I’m slow.
“Certainly they do, sis. Everybody knows that. They can fly, too, some of them.”
“Listen,” I said, “much as I enjoy all this horsing around, I’d like a Coke and a cheeseburger. ’Scuse me a minute?”
“Me too,” Megan said. “But I haven’t got any money. How about it, Larry?”
“Okay, but don’t let Molly find out I bought three gorgeous women dinner.”
What I had really wanted was an excuse that would get me on the other side of the booth, where my back would be to the wall, and for once everything worked out great. We all got up, Larry bought Coke and burgers for Megan and me, a Dr Pepper for Les, and coffee and fries for himself; and when we sat down again, I was in the back corner where I’d be hard to get at, with Larry between me and the table area. I figured that a guy who’d jump out of a helicopter into the jungle with a knife between his teeth should be able to take care of any screwy old uncle, high or not. So that was just fine.
What wasn’t fine was that his crack about not letting Molly find out had reminded me of that time I’d come home and seen his truck in front of the house. He and Elaine had split, and where had they split to and how had they done it? I’d looked over the whole house.
Except, come to think of it, I hadn’t. I hadn’t looked in the shop down in the basement; and besides about a million bucks worth of tools and his lock collection, my father had a nice big couch down there. Sometimes he even slept there—when he didn’t want to disturb Elaine, he said, but I think it was really when they’d been fighting and the bedroom was off limits. That day, Elaine might have been afraid Mrs. Maas would come upstairs to make the bed, or she just might not have wanted to take Larry to a messed-up bedroom. The shop would have been perfect, because if they were caught, he could have said he was showing her how he’d open Pandora’s Box; and anyway they probably wouldn’t have been caught because Mrs. Maas hardly ever went down there, and anybody (such as my father and me) who did go down had to open a door at the top of the steps first, then switch on the little stairway light, and then come down the steps, which were steep and noisy. It would’ve given them plenty of time to beat it out the door and up the other steps, the concrete ones that went up to the backyard.
So here I was now, sitting close enough to Larry to touch his leg with mine while he kidded away with Megan and Les, and thinking about how he and Elaine must’ve listened to me walking around upstairs looking for them, and breathed a big sigh when I’d finally gone outside and they could go up the steps and out the front door. Had they gotten back to it, I wondered, parked someplace in Larry’s van? But who knows, maybe they were just holding hands. That would’ve been like Elaine.
“What’s the matter?” Megan wanted to know. “Don’t you like that cheeseburger?”
“I was thinking,” I said. I picked it up and took a bite. It was okay, but I wished I’d remembered to ask them for some of their horseradish sauce. (Do horseradishes migrate?) They keep it for the roast beef, but I like it on burgers. Or at least I did until I realized what it looked like.
And I thought then that if I were just alone with Larry I’d brace him with it. He wasn’t exactly a bad guy, and even then I knew enough to know that only one man out of a hundred, married or not, would turn down a woman who looked like Elaine.
“What about?”
“Wondering how the Fair’s going to go tomorrow, I guess. Besides, somebody was going to meet me, and I’ve been looking around for him.”
“Kris? Mike?”
I shook my head. “It wasn’t definite. I just thought he might show up here.” Another bite of burger and a sip of Coke. Thinking, like I said.
And then Megan and Les were saying good-bye, they were going over to Les’s, and didn’t I want to come?
I said no, I had some things to do in town.
When they had gone, Larry offered me his fries. I don’t think he’d touched them, but I shook my head.
“You’re pissed off at me, aren’t you, Holly? I don’t blame you.”
That surprised me enough to make me look around at him. “You knew I knew?”
“Elaine said she thought you did.”
“I guess I’m not a very good actress. Yeah, I know.”
He wouldn’t look at me. “So who’s hurting, Holly? Maybe I can send a medic.”
“I am,” I said. “Molly, too, I think.”
It took a while, but he finally nodded. “Yeah. Molly. Molly for sure. How do you think Barney feels?”
“I guess I don’t know Barney.”
“Her first husband. They’d been married eight months when I met her. Let’s talk about you. You love your mother, right?”
I shook my head.
“I love her, Holly. Do you believe that? It’s true. I’ve been looking for three or four years now for a woman who wasn’t too good for me, that I could love, and I found her. I thought Molly was the one once, but I was wrong. Elaine’s as selfish as I am.”
“So naturally—” I wanted a sip of Coke but my hand was shaking so bad I had to put it down.
“Yes,” Larry said. “Yes.”
“Most people don’t think it’s so terribly attractive.” I was having trouble talking now, but I managed, “I don’t myself.”
“I wanted to go to college,” Larry said. “Didn’t Sis ever tell you?”
I shook my head. I guess he saw it out of the corner of his eye.
“Dad had just bought the store. He and Mom had borrowed every dime they could, mortgaged everything they owned to swing it. I was going to work nights, take a few classes. No more than I could handle. We figured it would take eight or nine years.”
“What the hell has this got to do with my mother?”
“It has to do with me,” he said.
I would have gotten up and walked out then, if I could have, but the way we were sitting I’d have had to crawl over him.
“Then there was this politician, who was going to get me into West Point. I fell in love with that—fell in love with the whole deal, and it never happened. He couldn’t swing it, he said, but I think he really gave it to somebody who could do him more good. Someday I’m going to look that somebody up and see what he did with my big chance.”
“So you joined anyhow.”
Larry nodded. “I thought maybe I could get into OCS. You know about the guy who wasted a village? It was in the news.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I remember.”
“Well, I never did that.” He stood up. I wasn’t expecting it, and I wanted to say wait a minute, when just a minute before I’d been ready to leave myself.
“I think I’m sober enough to go home, Holly. Sober enough to drive. Don’t you? Want a lift?”
I shook my head.
Larry bent over the table, whispering. “I never did that, but I would have. I got a lot of guys to fight for me, when I knew damn good and well down where I live that we weren’t going to win because nobody but us wanted us to win. Some were pretty good soldiers, and quite a few of them died.”
“Okay,” I said. “Okay.”
“I did it for me,” Larry told me, “and I’d do it again. So when your mom came across, it was like I was the only sane man on earth, everybody else was crazy as a loon, and then I found one other sane person. Is that wrong?”
I looked around. There were people at a couple of tables, but they weren’t paying attention to us.
Before I could open my mouth, Larry said, “It’s like I was
an empty house, Holly, and I’ve finally found somebody to live here.” Then he was gone. I’d been going to say yes, it’s still wrong, only I never got the chance; the way things turned out, I never did.
After that I must have spent about an hour mooching around Barton waiting for Uncle Herbert—or maybe Bugs Bunny—to tap me on the arm, only neither one of them showed. I’d never realized what a downer Carmen could be.
Hell, the only part I knew was the toreador song.
How War Came to Barton
The next day, Saturday, was Fair Day.
I wore my rose to the Fair; and I rode with Elaine, which meant I was there way early when the first exhibitors were just beginning to unload. Everybody said what a big help I was, but half the time I hardly knew what I was doing.
When the gate opened, I took tickets and ran errands till I was ready to drop. I saw Larry and Molly, and half my teachers, and Tom and Willa Coffey, and damn near every kid in Barton; but I didn’t see my father (just in case you’re wondering), because he’d gone to New York a couple of days earlier; and I didn’t see Uncle Herbert. But just when I was sure my legs were going to drop off, Uncle Dee saw me, and I guess he could tell how I felt from the way I looked. Anyway, he got me to relieve one of the cashiers at the Book Sale, which meant I got to sit on a folding chair, with a bridge table to lean on.
I had a great view of the main event through a window, too.
The idea was that at noon they’d hold the big drawing. A couple of the men had nailed up a little platform, and some of the women had decorated it with big red question marks and gold coins cut out of cardboard. With the winner looking on, Larry would magic open the box, and then the winner would get it, and whatever was inside, too.
Naturally, Elaine had to make a speech first about what a lovely day it was, the blue sky and all that, and how glad she was, how glad all the ladies were, that everyone had come. She looked pretty nervous, I thought, and I didn’t blame her a bit—that platform wasn’t a whole lot bigger than the roof of a car, and it didn’t have any railing.
