Chapter 5
In Which Raleigh Blackmails an Enemy and Frightens the Kaiser RALEIGH AWAKENED disoriented with a face warmly snuggled in his bare shoulder, and, like a traveler studying a strange motel room, he squinted warily at his surroundings. He was, however, in the “Mediterranean Modern” bed where he always slept, beside the person who always slept beside him. On the other hand, neither he nor Aura was wearing the pajamas they always wore; the alarm clock was not singing, the sky was the wrong color, it was only five-thirty in the morning.
In the bathroom, Hayes stepped with a shudder on the cold soggy heap of his jogging suit. He looked shyly in the mirror at his flushed sleepy face and rumpled hair. A former Raleigh Hayes about thirty years old tentatively smiled back. Not wanting to wake his wife (even at their normal hour not an eager riser, but one who would punch Snooze every ten minutes until, defeated, the system shut itself off), not wanting to wake his girls (a superfluous concern), the head of the family dressed, and tiptoed in socks down the carpeted stairs. Beneath the couch he found the cordovan wingtips that had carried him over yesterday’s dreadful journey. Sitting to lace them, he felt between the slipcovers the tiny black pistol he’d obviously dropped there, having, so it seemed, carried it away with him after disarming Mingo Sheffield. “Kill himself!” Hayes snorted when he opened the gun and found it unloaded. Nevertheless, Mingo in his present volatile state was certainly not to be trusted with a deadly weapon, nor could Raleigh leave it in the house with unwakable women. He put it in the pocket of his blue seersucker jacket; he was surprised at the heavy way it pulled on the cloth. He also had safety-pinned there in his jacket two sealed envelopes containing five thousand dollars each, which he intended to deposit as soon as the bank opened.
For breakfast, it was Raleigh’s habit to have fresh fruit for digestion, whole-grain cereal for roughage, and coffee for speed. But belly dancing or M.F.P. had no doubt taken Aura’s mind off her shopping, for the only fresh fruit he could find in the crowded kitchen were three hard limes in a basket with the nubbly stem of an otherwise missing bunch of grapes. The only cereal was all bright green and pink and cut in the shapes of cartoon characters, and while there was ample coffee, there were no filters. Hungry as he was (and he’d had nothing to eat since the orange slices in yesterday’s three Singapore Slings), Hayes would not breakfast on pink puffed comic strips, nor would he drink frozen orange juice, not since once reading of a lady who’d opened a can and found it entirely filled with a frozen mouse. Nor would he use, as Aura seemed to, a paper napkin with a flower design as a coffee filter.
“Didn’t wake you. Gone out on this business of Daddy’s. Will catch a bite to eat. No filters.” Pen twitching in hand, Raleigh studied this note to his wife, then unclipped it from the coffee machine and added, “Love, Raleigh.”
Out in his little greenhouse—where a third of his daffodils had indeed been snipped off—Raleigh extravagantly cut ten more, which he arranged in a water glass on the kitchen table. He dropped an aspirin in the glass, believing that they prolonged plant life, and suspecting that unless roused by the frenetic radio announcer on station WACK, Aura would sleep past the petals’ prime.
Outdoors, the silent streets of Starry Haven had at dawn a lush pastoral look, as if God, dissatisfied, had erased the world and started over. While the Fiesta had been returned to the driveway, undented, the seats were dewy because its hatchback had been left open. Moreover, the ashtray was half closed on a cigar butt. Hayes could not decide which was worse: that Caroline and Holly now smoked cigars, or that they gave lifts to strangers who did so, or that there was a nocturnal smoking joyrider loose in the subdivision. But, he thought as he saw his keys in the ignition, at least the tires had not been slashed, at least Vera Sheffield was not lying naked in the back seat, ready to flick him with her vicious riding crop.
At sixA.M., as Raleigh drove out of Starry Haven, in the driveways of Capes and Colonials and ranch houses still sat his neighbors’ cars, patiently waiting to take their owners to wherever day after day their owners drove to do something to pay for them. He saw not a soul, heard not a song but the musical comedy of the local bluejays, who were as big as pigeons and as bad-tempered as gulls.
What had happened—come to think of it, now that his friend, the World, had proven so noticeably fickle—what had happened to the nice long-ago noises of early morning? The bell of the vegetable truck with its swinging brass scale, the milkman’s chinkling rattle, the newsboy’s thunk? Where had everybody gone? Where was the man who came offering to sharpen scissors and lawnmower blades, the man who came with the saddle pony to see if anyone wanted a photograph of their child taken, the man who took away the knotted bunches of soiled laundry left on porches? Where were the eager pastor, the sleep-slouched doctor, the men wanting yardwork to do, having brushes to sell, white-papered meat to deliver? Where were the Mormons, the vendors, the carolers, the candidates? When had the world stopped coming to the door?
These uncustomary reflections on the past occupied Hayes as he sped along the beltway toward downtown Thermopylae and the 1927 Forbes Building—the town’s only skyscraper, with twelve floors (a third of them empty), on the highest of which Hayes had his office. In the building’s cavernous gilded lobby, across from the defunct tobacco and shoeshine stand, was Forbes Corner Coffee Shop. This establishment, Hayes, who never ate breakfast out, now entered. He recognized from the rear, their haunches hanging over the stools, the row of downtown businessmen flanked with their newspapers along the counter. They were the coffee shop regulars and preferred this side-by-side linear arrangement (as if they were still on the bench of the Thermopylae High football field) to any of the perpetually empty Formica-topped tables behind them.
Hayes knew them all, Nemours Kettell and Wayne Sparks, Pierce Jimson, Ned Ware, Mingo, and the rest; knew they rose early so they could come here to talk sports and money together, to vaunt together, shifting indiscriminately between boasts of success and boasts of failure.
“I tell you what, I one time lost fifty dollars on a six-point spread I had on the Cowboys,” Mingo smugly whined (and lied—for Raleigh knew it was only five dollars he’d lost) to Boyd Joyner, the best-looking Civitan.
“Yeah, well, you gotta know what you’re doing. I’m seven hundred ahead this month. You think I’m gonna tell the wife?” Joyner wrung his own neck.
“Hey, Boyd, I bet you sure didn’t tell her what you dropped in Atlantic City, right? You’dah got grounded for sure, right? Ball and chain!”
Boyd Joyner socked Nemours Kettell in agreement. “You know it. Eight ball and chain gang. Your wife ’ould kill you!”
They enjoyed pretending they were afraid of their wives. They enjoyed pretending they were flirting with the two middle-aged waitresses, Doris and Lucinda (thick-shouldered and raw-handed from years of lugging and washing dishes), who worked the counter and wearily grinned at invitations to shut off the grill and run away to lives of illicit passion.
As Hayes sat down at one of the empty tables, the pharmacist, Tommy Whitefield, was shouting along the row to Ned Ware, “Says here South Savings and Loan is gonna give you a computer if you take out a mortgage. Better watch out, Ned, South Savings’s giving away computers.”
Nemours Kettell shot a hand over his flattop like a jet leaving a carrier, and answered for the ex-halfback, Ned, who was not quick at this repartee. “Trick is, you find a guy in this town with the doughre-mi to plunk down on a mortgage in the first place that’s going to give it to a nigrah-run business like South Savings just for some computer. Right, Ned?”
“I guess so.”
“You tell ’em, Ned,” said Kettell’s son-in-law, the closet hippie, Wayne Sparks.
“I sure would like one of those computers,” said Ned, doing onearm curls with the napkin dispenser as a dumbbell.
Raleigh Hayes was standing to wave his fork at the waitress, when Boyd Joyner (who, with olive skin, black mustache, and salmon loafers, looked like the Italian owner of a Miami
nightspot, but was actually a Scots-descended native Carolinean building contractor) grabbed the woman’s hand and said, “Hey, Doris, come on, let’s make a fast run over to a bed at Holiday Inn. You too, Lucinda. Y’all need to get off your feet.”
The elder of the women, Doris, tugged up with her thumb on the bra strap that had worn a gorge across her shoulder, visible through the sleeveless nylon sweater. “I don’t know, Boyd,” she drawled speculatively. “It’s a little early in the day for me to do anything fast.” All the men laughed. Although she was not nearly as attractive as Lucinda, Doris was more popular, because Lucinda made the men nervous; she never wisecracked or called them by name, only smiled, and sometimes didn’t even do that. The regulars much preferred Doris, in whose retorts, particularly if insulting, they all delighted.
“Two eggs, no juice, how much I owe you?” politely inquired Joyner now, all kidding aside. He left a tip half the size of his check, pulled on his sunglasses, announced, “Well, boys and girls, another day,” and left.
Nemours Kettell, who’d spun around on his stool to sock Joyner good-bye, saw Raleigh, fork-raised in the corner, which was more than the waitress had done. “Look who’s here! Aura kick you out or what?” Kettell’s wide hand smacked the unfortunately empty stool beside him in invitation. “This place’s been integrated for years, Raleigh, come on over. Pour him a cup of cof, hon. Hey, Ral, get over here.”
Raleigh knew that Kettell was thinking that he’d sat across the room because he’d seen his family enemy Pierce Jimson seated at the counter. Everybody knew that Pierce’s father, PeeWee Jimson, had once clerked for Raleigh’s grandfather, Clayton Hayes, then had somehow ended up sole owner of both Hayes Market and Hayes Furniture Store. Everyone knew that the Jimsons had stayed hostile to the Hayeses ever since; it was hard to be nice to people you’d gypped. Actually, while Raleigh didn’t much like Pierce, he didn’t hold the slightest grudge about the past. What he couldn’t stand was eating with people squeezed in on his sides, reaching across him for ketchup to splatter on scrambled eggs, fluttering their newspapers over his bare arms, and talking with their mouths full of grizzled ham about who should have thrown what ball where.
Said Tommy Whitefield, “Soon as I got rid of my hook—hi, there, Raleigh—I lost my putt. On the green in three, and my putt goes to hell.”
Raleigh greeted everyone, including Pierce Jimson, who only nodded and studied his Wall Street Journal while sucking in coffee with his anteaterish upper lip. “I’m on the run,” Hayes apologized. “Excuse me, miss, do you have anything to go? Leaving, Mingo? Nice seeing you.” Sheffield waddled off with a sheepish wave.
“Danish, honeybun, jelly, glazed.” Doris fluffed out her beehive hair as she nodded at five sticky lumps of dough under a plastic cover. “What’s your pleasure?”
“Say, hey, Doris, ‘what’s his pleasure?’ You just met the guy. Matter of fact, he’s into B and D.” Wayne Sparks guffawed at his own remark, unaccompanied. He failed to understand why no one laughed at his jokes, which were much funnier than, say, Boyd Joyner’s innuendos. Well, probably no one at the counter knew what B and D meant, being more accustomed to alimentary than erotic abbreviations. Wayne sighed and thought of leaving town to join a commune, but sank back down on the stool as if handcuffed to his father-in-law.
“So, Ral, how’s Mut Life?” smirked Kettell.
“Pretty good, Nemours, how’s concrete? Yes, thank you, I’ll take those five. And black coffee, thank you.”
Ned Ware leaned around Sparks. “You find your daddy yet, Raleigh?”
Doris flapped open a bag. “You want all five of them?”
“Yes, all right, fine, thank you.”
“Five?”
“Earley lost or something?” Kettell asked.
“No, just gone on a trip for a few days.” Raleigh glared at Ned. “So,” he added quickly, “Boyd’s looking okay. Contracting business finally picked up?”
Wayne took another risk and said, “Only thing picking up in Thermopylae is people picking up and moving out. Right, Mr. K?”
“This town doesn’t need your negativity, Wayne,” said Mr. Kettell.
“Sorry.” Sparks raised eyes and hands to an Attendant Spirit hovering above, who presumably sympathized.
“Boyd’s going to lose his house,” Ned Ware announced with somber sympathy. “I feel real sorry for Boyd.”
“Gosh, I thought he was a big shot,” Doris sighed.
“Overextended,” explained Nemours Kettell, who had specialized in highway graft and done very well. “Built three condos, Couldn’t sell them, didn’t even finish the last one. I drove by there, saw the bulldozer just sitting in the hole for the pool.”
Pierce Jimson, without raising his eyes from his paper, spoke for the first time. “Lizzie Joyner came in the store and asked me for a job.”
Kettell stuck his little finger in his mouth to rub his gums. “That’s pitiful. I can’t believe America’s gotten to the point where a man like Boyd Joyner has to let his wife go out and earn a living.”
Uncharacteristically, the younger waitress, Lucinda, a short blonde with large breasts on a thin frame, made a remark. She said, “America got to that point about fifteen years ago as far as I’m concerned.”
Only Wayne laughed.
“Anyhow,” said Tommy Whitefield, the druggist, “I heard Boyd’s wife was running around.”
“I heard that too.”
“Somebody ought to tell him.”
Everyone nodded solemnly, except Raleigh, who didn’t gossip, and Pierce Jimson, who was having an affair with Mrs. Joyner.
By now, Raleigh had paid for his greasy bag of pastries and his coffee. “I’ve got to run.” He showed them his watch. It surprised him by announcing that it was only 6:50A.M. “Ned,” he said to the banker, “keep in mind our talk yesterday, will you?” Ware looked at him blankly, then smiled. In the exasperating certainty that, under the guise of troubled solicitude, Ned Ware was going to blab the whole story of Earley Hayes’s current antics with the young black woman and the convertible Cadillac, Raleigh decided on the spur of the moment to lure Pierce Jimson away before he heard it. He only then realized he was going to try to negotiate with Pierce to purchase the cabin at Knoll Pond. “Pierce, talk to you a second?” he asked, hand poised (with that precise Southern sensitivity to social nuance, lacking which Raleigh’s Philadelphia mother had often been accused of being both too friendly and too frosty) exactly three inches above Jimson’s right shoulder.
Tommy Whitefield was bragging to Jimson at the time, “Look, my wife tried any funny business like Boyd’s on me, I’d kill them both, wouldn’t you? Look, I heard on TV where all these guys in Brazil are getting off free as a bird for shooting their wives right through the head for having affairs and getting jobs and even just wearing short skirts, I’m not kidding. It’s a, you know, a question of honor. In Brazil, I heard juries let them just walk away right and left.”
Pierce Jimson shook his check at Doris, who asked him, “Wasn’t Desi Arnez from Brazil? Desi sure never tried to pull anything like that on Lucy when she got her divorce. In real life, Lucy was the brains, anyhow.”
“Cuba,” said Wayne Sparks. “Aiii yi yi yi! Desi was from Cuba!”
“Cuba!” snapped Kettell, as if Wayne had personally arranged that island’s revolution. “Okay, listen, boys, I want everybody to show at this do I’m throwing for Charlie Lukes tonight, you hear? Send him back to Congress, he’ll take care of places like Cuba. Let’s get behind him now.” Everybody nodded, but none really shared Kettell’s passion for political fund-raising, and besides they were too busy watching the unprecedented sight of a Hayes and a Jimson chatting as they strolled into the lobby together. For Jimson, to their surprise (but then they didn’t know how eager he was to escape further discussion of Mrs. Joyner’s infidelity), had announced in his sonorous voice, “Walk me out, Raleigh,” and Hayes had answered, “Sure thing.”
At fifty, Pierce Jimson was a balding, fr
eckled man of unprepossessing looks, average in height and narrow-shouldered, with a long upper lip above a pronounced overbite. At twelve, he had acquired one good feature—the strong, mellifluous baritone voice he had since then assiduously trained in debating clubs and choral singing. This voice was so rich and commanded such authority that everybody in Thermopylae had come to assume that the man behind it was large and rich and powerful, too. Consequently, he’d become so, and, over the years, had himself, like his neighbors, lost any realistic perspective on his appearance. When Pierce Jimson looked in a mirror, he saw his voice. A stranger, comparing the homely Jimson and the handsome Boyd Joyner, might have puzzled at Mrs. Joyner’s infatuation with the former, but a Thermopylean would have been surprised only because Jimson’s voice didn’t mess around like that. That voice, calling the roll at town council meetings or leading the choir in “God of Our Fathers,” was the voice of their own moral rectitude, of order in the home and in the state—not conceivably the voice of covert phone conversations and disheveled motel rooms. In fact, Lizzie Joyner was not enamored of the power of the voice; she was enamored of the overwhelming passion for her that, to Pierce’s bewilderment, had set upon the heretofore contentedly married man six months ago. They were both addicts of his passion.
Of course, Raleigh Hayes didn’t know any of this. He kept talking about Boyd Joyner after they reached the lobby, only because he was nervous, and didn’t want to open immediately with the topic of Knoll Pond. “I’d hate for Boyd to hear those rumors about his wife, wouldn’t you? I mean, on top of his business worries. Boy, I remember when he came home from Korea with all those decorations. Big Marine hero, so young. Everybody thought he was really going places. Damn shame.”
“Economy ought to pick up.” Jimson was thinking that Raleigh Hayes never gossiped about people, never talked about people, rarely ever talked to him. What was going on?
Handling Sin Page 7
