Prometheus Fit To Be Tied

by Paul Hawkins

  "Don't get to brooding over everything," Otto said. "Give it all time to sink in. You have an even bigger day ahead tomorrow with the reading of the will. I've made all the arrangements with the lawyer and the executor and the other interested parties. You just get some rest."

  White agreed. "I'm off to bed then," he said. "And my notes, you know, my works in progress?"

  "I've set boxes of the typed monographs on a table in your room."

  "Good. I expect to resume my work in earnest and finish several significant studies very soon. There will be much less to distract me out here."

  "Sounds good."

  "We'll have to let my publisher know to expect drafts." White's eyes glowed suddenly and he stabbed a finger in his palm. "And we'll need to be ready to draw the line with the locals, if necessary, to ensure my solitude!"

  "I'll arrange everything," Otto said.

  "Good – when everyone else is out to swindle me, I've always been able to count on you, Otto. Good night then."

  "Good night, Mr. White."

  White turned and ascended the stairs. At the top he went into the first room on the right. It was a small square room overcrowded with his exotic furniture. He laid his wallet, watch, and cufflinks on a low dresser, shut the door, then he lifted the window open. The night stretched wide and purple and a cool breeze blew in. He looked far across the plain. He looked to the farthest end of the horizon and saw flat country and the dark starless shapes of small hills.

  He reached into his coat pocket, took out his bottle of pills, and poured them out the window. They clattered softly down the eaves and disappeared into the night. He got undressed and lay down on the bed.

  Though he was tired beyond tired, White's eyes snapped open from his first attempt at sleep. He saw his white jacket and hat on a rack in the corner – a shell of himself but now purple in the shadows. Then he glanced at the dresser whose mirror was wedged with snapshots and postcards of places he'd been: Paris, London, Giza; Cairo, Venice, Tarsus, Moscow, Tibet, Hollywood. The photos often showed the people he had been there with. Where were they now? All they had left were Cheshire smiles and expenses on his accounts.

  He lay awake and the advent-tinted world drained him just as it'd done when he was a boy, when his father had been just another farmer but Mr. Perfect was never content to be just another farmer's son, when he was still a boy but already old enough for his heart to beat faster thinking that there was a wider brighter world out there that he was missing.

  When he had been coming home on the train, with the locomotive jostling relentlessly beneath him and with lots of time to think, White had come to believe that the world was dying. Television and totalitarianism and bad ideas with catchy slogans would hammer all the world's pieces together, with small stupid jobs for everyone and a bureaucratic engine to force health, harmony and hygiene onto a should-be-grateful populace, grinding them into a predictable paste that met some quota for machinated productivity and left no room for stuff that wasted time and made folks happy. It made him sick. And within a generation or two people would be too stupid to know what they were missing, too numb to care.

  Mr. Perfect had always thought that when he finally found the real world, it would turn out to be a marvelous place. He used to think that everyone was made for something wonderful.

  When the breeze had cooled a few more degrees he felt the muscles of his brow and back relax, and he fell asleep.

  *

  The next day was the reading of his mother's will. Daylight came and chased the purple from the corners of the house.

  He came down the stairs looking resplendent in his usual white suit, accented today with a black tie.

  "They're all waiting on you."

  "Let them wait a little longer," he said. "Were you able to get that kind of coffee I asked for?"

  "Overnight? I got the local brand, same as I told you I would."

  "It'll have to do." White said. He took the cup, sniffed at it suspiciously, but then sat down on the top stair and took a sip.

  "And you're going to drink it here when there's people downstairs waiting to meet you?"

  White shrugged. "Why not? It's my house now."

  "They haven't read the will yet."

  White frowned at his valet, but after a minute he got up and handed the cup to Otto. "All right, let's go."

  He walked down the narrow stairs and into the parlor. Ten men sat around a dark wood table. White moved to the end, pulled his chair out noisily, then sat as tall and upright as he could.

  A pinched-looking man in a black suit adjusted his spectacles and began reading in a droning voice.

  Ernest White reminded himself that it was his mother's will, and not his father's, and that he had always gotten along much better with her. He and his father had never seen eye-to-eye on much of anything. His father by all appearances had been an honest, God-fearing, hard-working man, and had sacrificed much for the boy he had taken into his home. Some felt that Mr. White had never acknowledged the debt.

  The executor was speaking in an aside now. How humble and benevolent Ernest White's mother had been. How loved by all – a pillar of the church. Missed but in a better place.

  White heard this and found his mind comparing the platitude to his actual memories, then felt an odd emotion open in his head, an unexpected type of affection that was new, not a reminted sensation from youth. He turned his mind to it and thought about his mother and the love of superfluity which she had taught him, and the ability to laugh at absurd stories, the love of beauty in excess.

  Now the executor's digression continued, a veiled lecture perhaps to soften the blow. How his parents had had a hard road, how they had both sacrificed convenience to live decent lives, how they had not let sudden wealth sway them from what was important in life, and how if they had one lesson to pass on, it would be the opportunity to prove one's self through hard work.

  White twisted tight a black button of his jacket. The sphinx etched on the button would have yelped if it could. Ernest felt suddenly lonely and old, far removed from the colorful distraction he had packed into his last twenty years. Everything in the small sparse room felt more hard and real than his pan-chromatic experiences. He wondered what he would do with the rest of his life.

  Finally the man had given up orating and was reading again. He pushed his glasses down onto his nose. Mr. Perfect looked up and caught his own reflection in the man's glasses, and he recognized his mother's smile in his own. He felt a tightness let go in his chest.

  Of course he inherited everything.

  *

  Mr. Perfect and Otto waved farewell to the sympathizers from the screened porch, watched the Fords and Plymouths and DeSotos wheel away. It was a bright Saturday afternoon. They turned back inside, and the house was big and quiet.

  Otto went to change out of his suit. Mr. Perfect opened the entranceway closet. He slid the black tie out from underneath his collar and knotted in its place a length of red silk with white palm trees. He pulled on his panama hat as Otto came downstairs.

  "Have you got your list?" he asked Otto. They were going into town. Otto had retrieved his list from the top of his dresser, and Ernest fished his from a jacket pocket. The lists read:

  Mr. White:

  Burma Shave

  vanishing cream

  Lucky Strikes

  harmonica

  penknife

  alligator house slippers, if available

  cufflinks shaped like oil wells

  Otto:

  2 pair black socks

  Listerine

  corn pads

  Phillips screwdriver

  lint brush

  big bottle Elmer's glue

  A cream-colored sixteen-foot Cadillac with a red interior was part of the inheritance. It was in perfect shape since his mother had only driven it to church and bingo. Although Mr. White was not a particularly good driver, he climbed behind the wheel and leaned across and opened the passenger door for Otto. Whit
e looked over his shoulder to back out of the garage, cut a circle across the lawn, and then pointed the vehicle toward the road.

  "I hope you're not making a mistake coming back here," Otto said. "I wonder if this is the right kind of environment for you."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Well, here in America people tend to divide things into polar opposites: right or wrong, good or evil, sickness or health. It's too simple here. There's no room for the comfortable middle ground that you enjoy. Europe's more tolerant."

  Mr. White smiled. "Ah yes, Europe - the place that's getting ready to go at it hammer and tongs again. When it's put to the test all Europe's middle ground rolls up and disappears. It's just a convenient fiction to license misbehavior in times of excess."

  "Well, that's certainly a new tune coming from you," Otto said. "Maybe you're ready to come back here after all."

  But Mr. White did not respond; instead he settled back in his seat and let his eyes scan the countryside and the town, sifting the old from the new, the decrepit from the still bright and hopeful.

  They rolled into town and parked along the main row of street-front businesses. A crowd of gawkers awaited them and shadowed them as they went from store to store.

  "Why’d he come back anyway?" a billowy lady in a loud-print dress stage-hissed to anyone within earshot.

  "He’s always acted like his birthplace was the armpit of the earth," a red-faced farmer said. "And now he says he wants to settle here for good?"

  "He must’ve pissed off everyone in Europe."

  "...or felt the stab of a broken heart..."

  "... or spent all his money..."

  "Spent all his money?" a slick-haired salesman moaned.

  "Relax," a sharp-faced young man said. "He couldn’t go through all his dough in a million years, even with a dozen con-men bilking him. But mark my word: there’s some shadow hovering over him – you can see it in his eyes, his footsteps. His joy of life’s been stolen. He has come back here to atone - to atone, and then..." he paused for effect, "to die."

  The larger woman fanned herself. "Mercy!"

  The young man smiled. The rest of the folks gathered around were not sure that they believed him, but if pressed would have admitted that his theory sounded rather fine.

  If White overheard any of this, he did not show it. He made their shopping trip brief and efficient.  He then returned to the old prairie mansion for a simple supper and engaged himself in study for the rest of the evening. It all went more quietly than Otto had expected.

  Chapter 2

  After doing all his necessary shopping and settling into the house, Mr. White and Otto walked the grounds of the farm. Aside from the windmill, generator, and phone line (the latter of which he had had installed for his mother at considerable expense), the place showed general neglect. An old tractor sat tilted and rusting in the tall grass not 20 yards beyond the back door. It was a favorite perch for an ancient rooster that was, as near as they could tell, completely feral.

  "Tilling the soil, the purest form of work and the most honest," White said like he'd read it off a match book. He devoted the morning to inventorying the tools in the shed and cleaning and sharpening them. Then in the afternoon he picked up the phone and called around, asking what would be the best crops to grow for his soil and for this time of year. Someone, recognizing his voice, tried to convince him to raise mink.

  But just three days later, with huge bags of seed in the barn and catalogs cluttering his desk, he was tired of it. Otto looked out the kitchen window in late afternoon to see White sitting on an overturned bucket near the horse trough, attempting a sleight-of-hand card trick. Two mules with wet muzzles stood on either side of him, watching with expressions of calm but persistent concentration. White came in later that night and ate like a horse and then went promptly to bed.

  The next day Otto got up early to find Mr. White already dressed and seated at his desk. His red suspender hung loose at his sides. One of his hands was buried in his golden hair and the other dashed a pen through a stack of papers, some yellowed but some new. When Otto walked into the room Mr. White looked up, and Otto could see that his face was transfigured.

  "I knew this move to the country would do me good!" he declared. "I'm finally making progress on that treatise of western civilization I've worked at for so long. I hope the Professor's plans come soon."

  The "Professor" was a dubiously-tenured old man from New York who wore cloth gloves with finger-holes even on the warmest days. In earlier years he and White had collaborated on a project to explain all of world history. It was a perpetual work in progress.

  But by afternoon the project was forgotten and White had left his desktop covered with papers. He wandered about the house gloomily, spinning the yellowed globe each time he walked by and finally settling himself on the back porch, lazily smoking cigarette after cigarette. When Otto creaked open the screen door, White took one last drag then stubbed out the butt and looked up. "Come on, Otto," he said, "I want you to help me with something." Otto followed him off the back porch and out a few yards to the car parked slantwise in the red dirt and faded grass. Mr. White climbed behind the wheel and turned the key. The engine purred to life, and Otto was still pulling his door shut when White set the car rolling down the road.

  "Where are we going?" Otto asked.

  "You'll see," White said. "I just need you to stand behind me while I do this."

  "Do what?"

  His employer waved a hand and demurred.

  It was a bright afternoon. They drove along the dirt road and ducked around curves where the road accommodated stunted hills and clumps of trees. They rose from a sudden dip to cross a creek and a clutch of houses came into view in the distance. Mr. White pulled up in front of one of the houses and got out. Otto followed him.

  They walked up to the mint-green facade of a craftsman-style house framed comfortably by a scattering of elms. White knocked on the door. They heard a child laughing inside, but then quiet, and footsteps.

  A woman opened the door. She was tall with blonde hair pulled back from a poised middle-aged face.  Her eyes were bright and green. The faces of two teen-ish girls could be seen watching from within the house. They whispered to each other and laughed quietly.

  Otto looked from White's face to hers and weighed the restrained familiarity between them.

  "Ernest – I thought you might drop by," she said.

  "Hello Constance. I couldn't very well not do so."

  She scowled at him. "That's because you're foolish enough to think you've come back for good. But you need to know that whatever your intentions are, I don't want to get caught up in them."

  "I just came by to apologize to you for being such an ass so many years ago."

  The woman shifted her weight to one foot. She cut her eyes from White’s face to Otto’s, to the cars parked recklessly on her lawn, then looked back at him. "Look, you don't need to. Your mind was always someplace else back then. Even when you were looking at me there was part of you that was always someplace else. You’re still someplace else and you always will be."

  Ernest frowned. "Your memory is too selective and too harsh. Remember when I brought that band in town for you?"

  The woman's face froze. "That was for her."

  "No..."

  But she persisted. "Yes - I'm sure. She wanted to learn to dance ballroom style and you told her `that's nobody's style these days' but she persisted and so you brought in an entire band just to teach her some damn lessons."

  Mr. White's jaw fell and he stared into space a moment. It did sound like something he might have done.

  Constance hardened her stare. "Good Lord - even now you’re your own worst witness. Of all the things to bring up."

  He reached into his jacket. "Look, in any case I'd like to do something for you now, to make up for all the nuisance I caused, to help take care of you." He began to take out his checkbook.

  Constance put her hands on her hips and l
aughed. "We don't need anything. A few months after you left I found a man who actually loved me. He was a good man and saw to it that we were taken care of. He helped design some of the biggest oil buildings in Tulsa. He would be proud of the way I am managing with the kids."

  White looked into the house past her at two faces peering from the kitchen doorway. "Are those your children?"

  "Yes, two girls – almost grown. That's what happens when you have a regular life. People change, babies get born and raised – life moves on. But you wouldn't know anything about that, would you, what with your hopping the globe so that not too much dust can settle on you at any one place, and packing the moments with diversions as showy and meaningless as confetti. I guess that’s this guy’s job - to sweep up the floor after every meaningless parade?" She looked at Otto. "Poor sap. Listen, Ernest, I don't know what you came back for, but I sincerely hope it's not to bother me."

  White looked at her, but she stared back at him until he felt every last empathetic impulse of his mind retreat. He put his checkbook back in his pocket and straightened his tie.

  "I wish you well," White said and walked back toward his car. "Come on, Otto."

  Otto thanked the woman for the time and gave a little deferential bow, but she just stared at him until he was glad to turn and follow his employer. The air felt cooler once they were off the porch and walking across the soft bluish grass.

  Ernest started the car in silence and they drove away. As they shot between stands of trees and yellowed fields Otto turned to see Mr. White take something out of his wallet. It was a picture of Constance as she had been years ago. Otto could see she was poised, happy and beautiful, with a spark of irony and intelligence in her eyes.

  White tore it up and tossed it out the window. "Thanks," he said to Otto.

  "For what?"

  "For standing behind me. If I hadn't known you were there, I might've run off screaming."

  "It was nothing," Otto said.

  "No," White said, stabbing his finger at the dashboard. "It was something I had to do. There are some things a man must forcibly put behind him if he's ever going to get any work done."

  "So, that was you putting her behind you?

  He shifted gears roughly as they climbed a shallow hill.  "I had to be certain there were no mixed signals."