Sorrow Road

by Julia Keller

  And then there was Harm Strayer. His old pal Harm. A man who had skated by on his looks and his line of bullshit and on—what else? What else made people gravitate to Harm Strayer in a way they had never gravitated to him? Maybe pity. Harm had buried two wives, and people felt sorry for him. Raising his little girl on his own and all.

  Well, Alvie had known sorrow, too, and nobody ever seemed to be extending any kindness his way. Nobody ever said, “Sorry your boy’s such a good-for-nothing loser, Alvie. Too bad.” Because that was another thing: Harm’s girl, Darlene, was smart and focused. She was going places. You could just tell. She worked hard, and she had not taken the kind of shortcuts that Lenny specialized in: stealing things, cheating people when he thought he could get away with it. Losing job after job because he was lazy and stupid. He would get hired, then call in sick for the first week. When he finally showed up again, they’d tell him to leave. And while you’re at it, don’t come back. Ever.

  It was as if Harm was rubbing his nose in it, in what a bum Lenny was, just by having a daughter like Darlene. Go ahead, Harm probably said to himself over the years, secretly snickering. Go ahead and compare. Put them side by side: Lenny and Darlene. I dare you.

  There was no comparison. None at all.

  The kids had been friends for a while, in junior high and high school, his Lenny and Harm’s girl, Darlene. It was not a boy-girl thing—Alvie always had his suspicions about Darlene, her with that short hair and those dungarees, because every woman he knew cared deeply about her appearance and Darlene did not seem to give a rat’s ass about that—but it was a steady, solid friendship. Darlene helped his Lenny. For a time, when they were spending a lot of time together, Lenny’s grades ticked up a bit. His attitude improved. He even straightened up when he walked, losing that pathetic, please don’t hit me hunch of his. But then Darlene went away to college and that was that. Lenny slid back down into his old loser self. It was like she had given him a vision of another way to live, another kind of person to be, and then, just when he was starting to believe it might be possible—she left.

  Bitch.

  Alvie rattled the bag. He had a few more pieces to go. After he had gotten out the last one, he intended to reach over the table with two hands and crunch the bag in Harm’s face, hard and long. Really make that fucker squirm.

  Somebody else had come into the lounge.

  It was an aide, one of those fat old ladies in their pink smocks and their too-tight white pants and ugly white shoes. Alvie smiled and held up the bag. “Gonna play checkers,” he said. “Harm here loves his checkers.”

  The aide had come in to retrieve a cane propped up in a corner of the lounge. One of the residents had left it there. She picked up the cane, and then she looked over at Alvie, and then down at Harm, who sat in the chair with his arms around his shoulders. He was shuddering.

  “Doesn’t seem to me like he likes it too much,” she said dubiously.

  Alvie laughed. “Old Harm here don’t know what he likes anymore. He’ll come around. You watch.” He was silently willing her to leave, but he knew that if he showed that, if he revealed how much he wanted to see the last of her fat ass, she would probably stick around. People were perverse like that. Did what they could to go against you, every damned chance they got.

  He looked closer at the woman. She was standing a little cockeyed. She had a problem with one of her hips. Her named tag said MARCY.

  She’s the one, Alvie thought. When the time comes—and it’s coming, oh, yes, it’s coming—she’s the one I’ll tell Lenny to pick.

  He remembered seeing her not just here at the Terrace, but in town one day. In Norbitt. He had recognized her then, even though she wasn’t wearing that damned pink smock. The bad hip gave her away. She had been trying to feed coins into a meter and she dropped a couple, probably a nickel and a penny, could not have been much more than that, and when she tried to lean over to fetch them, her hip must have seized up on her, because she jerked and stood up straight again, her free hand going to her hip. She rubbed at it, and then she tried once more. Again, the hip misbehaved. It was only on the third try that she was able to pick up the coins from the sidewalk.

  Anybody who works that hard for a nickel and a penny is poor, Alvie remembered thinking. Really poor. As poor as his family had been when Alvie was a kid, after the church fired his dad because the Reverend Leonard Sherrill, Mr. Morality, Mr. I’m Better Than You Are, couldn’t keep it in his pants.

  Anybody that poor would be an easy target.

  “Just the same, sir,” Marcy was saying. “Why don’t you put the bag down and see if it calms him?”

  “Sure.” Alvie set the bag on the floor. He took the seat across from Harm. He spread out his arms, as if he was blessing the checkerboard, the table, his old buddy. “We’re just fine, ma’am. Appreciate the concern for good old Harm. You have yourself a nice day now, you hear?”

  Marcy stood there for a few more seconds, fingering the cane she had just retrieved, eyes on the checkerboard. She did not want to seem as if she was staring at the visitor, keeping tabs. But she needed to make sure things were really okay here. Tammy, the housekeeper, would be coming in momentarily to dust the blinds; if not for that, Marcy would not have left. She did not like this old man. He came here frequently, to sit with Mr. Strayer, and each time he did, she liked him less. There was a slipperiness to him. A sliminess. She could not define it past that.

  “You, too,” she said, because that was what you were supposed to say when someone told you to have a nice day. One of the other aides had told her that he was a preacher. Seemed unlikely, but okay.

  When she moved her eyes back in his direction, he was looking at her, too, just as intently. The two of them seemed equal at that moment, balanced. Yet they were not equal at all, because she did not know what he knew: That she was, in effect, looking into the eyes of her executioner.

  * * *

  This had not been a good visit. Harm just sat in the chair, refusing to look at Alvie, refusing to speak at all. You stubborn sonofabitch, Alvie wanted to shout at him. You tell me what you remember. Tell me what you might say.

  Finally he gave up. Good days and bad days: that’s what people with Alzheimer’s have, Alvie had been told. Up and down. Can’t predict.

  At first he had not given it a thought. Not a single thought. He was not worried at all. Why should he be? Harm Strayer’s mind was gone, swamped by what the newspaper articles said were these little fuckers called plaques and tangles—sticky shit your brain can’t shake off, plus squiggly things that worm themselves into the nooks and crannies between all the brain crap up there.

  Bottom line: If you get it, you’re screwed. There was no cure. Once that train starts heading downhill, you can pull the lever all you want, but it’s not stopping.

  Harm’s decline had not been gradual. Apparently it was different for everybody—Alvie had read that, too, in those articles he found about Alzheimer’s—and for Harm, it was whoosh, boom. Game over. His brain was a mushy blob.

  Which was actually pretty good news for Alvie. First, it was nice to see Harm Strayer not get a break. Good to see the odds finally catch up with Mr. Goody Two Shoes, Mr. Oh I’m So Perfect. And second, it meant Alvie would never have to worry about Harm shooting off his mouth about Caneytown. Alvie had worried about that—oh, yes he had. He’d worried about it since 1945, when the three of them came back from the war and Harm started getting a little strange. Nothing big—just more thoughtful than he’d been before. Slower to act. Alvie knew that Harm was one of those men who brooded, and dithered, and sat on his back porch thinking. No telling what he might do, if things broke a certain way in his head.

  Vic, he never worried about. Vic was smart. Vic was a winner. He understood there was nothing to gain—and everything to lose—from coming clean about Caneytown. Vic had moved to Bluefield and opened up a string of car washes. He had made a shitload of money. When he visited Norbitt, he came in a BMW. New wife every ten years.
New house every three. Or maybe it was the other way around.

  Anyway, Vic was okay. Harm—he was the real threat. Harm was the loose cannon. The one who could destroy all three of their lives by letting his guilty conscience get the best of him, and then dragging them down into the same pit.

  Well, they didn’t have to worry about that anymore, did they? No siree. Harm was down for the count. He had started his fade a few years ago, and then it speeded up. Six months ago came the end of the line. He got lost on Main Street, and a deputy drove him home. When they got to the house, Harm looked at the deputy and said, “Where are we? Who lives here?” The next day he walked out of the house in only his underwear. The day after that he started calling people and when they said, “Hello?” he said, “Hello?” back. When they asked why he’d called, he said, “Did I?”

  And then he almost set the house on fire. Put an empty pan on the stove, turned on the burner, left the room. Forgot all about it. By the time the boys from the fire department got there, the flames were eating up the kitchen curtains. They barely got Harm out in time.

  That was it. Darlene drove in from D.C.—she had an Audi, a fancy one, and just the sight of that car put Alvie in a bad mood—and packed up her dad and took him to Thornapple Terrace.

  Fine, Alvie thought. We’re in the clear.

  But maybe they weren’t.

  Because Alvie had read an article last year about Alzheimer’s. And it said something he’d never known before. Turns out that while people with Alzheimer’s can’t remember things they learned recently, they can sometimes remember old stuff. Stuff that has been in their brains for a long time. Stuff that has settled in for the long haul. Stuff from way, way back.

  Stuff from, say, 1938.

  * * *

  Right after reading that article, Alvie began driving over to the Terrace once, twice a week. He would bring the checkerboard. Sit there in the lounge with Harm.

  The checkerboard was part of Alvie’s plan to smoke out his old friend. Alvie would pick up a game piece. Harm would sometimes imitate the gesture and pick up one, too. Then it was Alvie’s turn again. Then Harm’s.

  Alvie figured that if Harm was more up to snuff mentally than he was letting on, he would slip and show it during a game of checkers. Harm loved checkers. Darlene had tried to teach him chess once, when she was in high school—Lenny told Alvie the story, just the way Darlene had told Lenny—and Harm had smiled, shook his head. “Don’t like to do that much thinking,” he said. “I like to play a game where I can shoot the breeze with my friends and play at the same time.” For all that nice-guy talk, though, Harm had a competitive streak when it came to his favorite game. Alvie knew that firsthand.

  So Harm might not be able to help himself. If he was not as far gone as he seemed to be, if the memory of Caneytown still lived in his brain in the same place it lived in Alvie’s brain—dead center—then Harm might tip his hand in a game of checkers. Make a smart move before he could stop himself. And that would give Alvie the perfect opening to ask him outright: Do you ever start mumbling about the old days, Harm? Telling the folks here about Caneytown? You wouldn’t do that, Harm, now, would you? Because Vic and I—we’ve got a stake in this, too, you know. We’ve all got a lot to lose.

  Especially him. Especially Reverend Alvie Sherrill. Especially now. The church was planning a big celebration in his honor next year. Sixty years in the pulpit. A hell of a lot longer than any other minister in town—or in the county, either—had been doing the job. And best of all, it was a hell of a lot longer than his old man had made it at Crooked Creek.

  This was going to be Alvie’s day. His moment in the sun. He would take their gifts and their good wishes, he would smile for the pictures and say grace at the big meal, and he would ride in the parade in the convertible Cadillac Eldorado that the president of the bank, Sherman Beamer, was loaning the church that day, and all of it might just barely begin to make up for everything he had suffered over the years. The slights, the insults, the murmured remarks he’d heard even though he was not supposed to.

  Rat Face. Beanpole. Pencil Dick.

  All of that would go away. The nicknames, the sneering, the pity. He had waited for this. He had waited patiently while Vic Plumley got the girlfriends and later the worldly success, while Harm Strayer got the sympathy and the respect, and Alvie Sherrill got … bupkis.

  Now, finally, he had his chance. He was old, he was tired, he took ten pills in the morning and another ten at night, he had terrible arthritis and a leaky heart, he had a good-for-nothing son whom he’d been bailing out of trouble and making excuses for ever since the kid filched his first piece of Bazooka from the Rexall, but by God—he would make it to his special day. His father never had such a day. God, what a laugh! His father, in a parade. No. He was getting the parade. He had beaten the old bastard. Beaten him good. And he would stay beaten—no matter what Alvie had to do. No matter what he had to order Lenny to do. No matter what.

  Nothing was going to go wrong. Nothing could interfere with his golden moment.

  Except, maybe, a sick old man with a dying brain and a big mouth.

  * * *

  The parking lot was never crowded at the Terrace. As Alvie Sherrill walked through the glass double doors and headed toward the red Chevette, he held his gray overcoat closed tightly at his throat—the cold was brutal on this early December day—and he reflected on all those empty spaces. Once they put you away in a place like this, people forgot about you. And why not? Why should anybody visit? It’s not like you’re going to sit around and discuss world affairs. The people who lived at Thornapple Terrace reminded him of the frozen-food section at the supermarket: row after row of bundled muteness. No sign of life.

  Lenny had driven him over here, like always. He was asleep in the car. Alvie could see his son through the front windshield, splayed in the driver’s seat, head thrown back, eyes closed, mouth open. Alvie couldn’t hear the snores but he could imagine them—clotted, wet-sounding messes.

  The wind was a pinching one, as quick and mean as a terrier’s bite. Alvie tried to pick up his pace. Hard to do with arthritis and scoliosis and every other damned ailment that went along with being an old fart. He was glad he had both hands free to keep his collar clutched shut. He was not carrying the checkerboard; he’d decided to leave the checkerboard in the lounge. Why keep toting the damned thing back and forth when he could just …

  “Alvie Sherrill. What the hell.”

  Alvie turned. He had instantly recognized the voice, but did not believe it.

  “Vic,” Alvie said. Now he believed it.

  For here was Vic Plumley, looking much thinner but still prosperous in a double-breasted camel hair coat that went almost all the way to the ground. He was bald, and the hanging flesh on his face looked like the skin of an overripe banana, complete with crowded-up brown spots—but Vic was Vic. He still had the old Vic Plumley aura, the roguish charm that Alvie had spent most of his life in awe of.

  “How’re you doing, you old bastard?” Vic said. There was a quaver in his voice now.

  “I’m fine, Vic.” Alvie felt himself shrinking down ever so slightly. Why did this happen every time Vic was in the vicinity? Alvie felt like a worm that some kid had poked with a stick. He coiled inward, making a circle out of what had been a line. Protecting himself from Vic’s hearty, heartless charm.

  Vic was talking again. “Still can’t believe you’re a fucking preacher, Alvie, but hey—stranger things’ve happened, am I right?”

  “Yeah.”

  Vic suddenly adopted his concerned look. Alvie remembered how well Vic had been able to do this, even as a kid. He would get nabbed for something and then, quick as you please, his face would crumple up, his eyes would grow solemn, and his mouth would droop into a sad little downturned half-moon. Next thing you knew, the teacher—or cop or storekeeper or whoever had caught Vic doing something he should not have been doing—would feel sorry for him, for Vic, for the perpetrator and the ringleade
r. The crime would be forgotten. They would want to focus on this poor sad boy. And on cheering him up, persuading him that things were not so bad, after all.

  “So,” Vic said. “How’s he doing? You come by and see him a lot, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And?”

  “Hell, Vic, he’s got Alzheimer’s. How do you think he is?”

  Vic looked even more stricken. “God, Alvie, you’re right. Stupid fucking question.” He brightened. “Hey—you said ‘hell.’ Thought preachers didn’t curse.”

  “Hell’s an important word in my business, Vic. Use it all the time.”

  “Ha! Good one, Alvie.” He thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his coat. “Cold out here.” He looked around the lot. “On your way home, are you? That your boy, over there in the car?”

  “Yeah.”

  Vic nodded. “I don’t get up here very often. Stay pretty busy in Bluefield. But I miss you guys, you know?”

  Alvie did not believe him. Vic was always working an angle. This sentimental, poor me pose was an act on behalf of something Vic was after. Some scam.

  “I’ve got to be heading out, Vic,” Alvie said. He wasn’t biting. Not this time. “Things to do at home.” When they were kids, Alvie was never the one to leave first. He was always the one being left. This felt good—telling Vic he would have to say whatever he wanted to say because Alvie had plans.

  “Right, right,” Vic said. He moved his weight from one foot to the other. “It’s like this, Alvie. With you being a preacher and all—well, I wanted to tell you…” He shook his head. He cupped a hand around the back of his bald head. “It’s like this, buddy. I don’t have a lot of time, you know?”

  Alvie had known Vic Plumley his entire life. He had seen him drunk, high, prideful, furious, conniving, horny, and hell-bent—but he had never seen him humble.