by Barry Rachin
“And you’re going to read everyone.”
“A to Z!” Mavis grinned. “Problem is, I don’t recognize any of the authors. My reading to this point has been somewhat …erotic ”
“Erratic,” Harry corrected.
“Yah, that too.” Mavis bent over the table and positioned the sheet under his nose. “How’s this one?”
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Harry’s English literature class read the novel in his junior year. “I think you’d like it. It’s about this girl growing up -”
Mavis leaned forward across the reading table and impetuously thrust a hand over his mouth. “No, for God’s sake, don’t say a word! Don’t reveal a solitary thing that happens, because I’m going to read it cover to cover. Tonight!”
She ran off in the direction of the fiction shelves. For a solid minute after Mavis was gone, Harry could feel the pressure of her soft fingers against his lips. He should have kissed them - thrown her down on the reading room floor and made mad, debauched love to the young woman with the American Library Guild list. Instead, Harry collected his notes and quietly left the Brandenburg Public Library.
When he reached home, Harry took the three library books into his bedroom and laid them on a desk next to the study guide. The assignment was due in a week. Tomorrow after finishing his shift at the supermarket, he would copy out the rest of the material. Friday he would cobble together the artwork - drawings, graphs and scientific formulas. The science project would be finished with time to spare.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - it was a masterpiece to be sure. Mavis was probably already lying in bed next to her Neanderthal, redneck husband scanning the dust jacket. Maybe she would slog through the first fifty pages, at best, and then lose interest. Forget fifty! Harry doubted Mavis Calhoun would survive much past the first twenty. Everything with Mavis was slap dash, close enough for jazz. She was a sprinter not an intellectual, long distance runner. The other day at the supermarket, Mavis had gone off on a rant about some newfangled metaphysical theory. Harry couldn’t even recall the half of it. He couldn’t remember because, when Mavis held court, Harry zoned out. The verbiage fell away and, in its place was a pristine, immaculate silence, a communion transcending the spoken word.
Harry showered and brushed his teeth. After blow-drying his hair, he cross-referenced what he had learned about Bernoulli’s principle in the first book with the other two. Yes, everything was under control. When air was put in motion, the turbulent fluid created an imbalance in pressure above and below generating thrust, a forceful shove.
Mavis Calhoun entered the Brandenburg Public library reading room, causing Harry Wong Smith’s feet to imperceptibly levitate an infinitesimal fraction of an inch off the ground. It didn’t fall under the rubric of aerodynamics and certainly wasn’t the sort of thing he could use in a science project, but the phenomenon was every bit as real!
Mavis Calhoun and Bernoulli's principle were all tied up in a metaphysical blur. The woman from Knoxville, Tennessee generated so much emotional thrust that she literally lifted Harry out of his being, sent him careening into the cosmos like one of those romantically beguiled characters in a Chagall painting.
Flavor-of-the-month. Through the summer, Mavis immersed herself in the German existentialists, Kurt Vonnegut, Baba Ram Dass plus a hodgepodge of Sufi mystics and poets. There was no mention of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn or any of the other offerings on the ALG summer reading list. Regarding her eclectic, literary preferences, Harry had no opinion one way or the other. To witness Mavis’ exuberant passion for truth (or whatever else she hankered after) was worth the price of admission.
One day Mavis cornered Harry in front of customer service. “I found this enchanting poem by the Persian mystic, Rumi, but I’m not sure if I understand it.” She recited from memory leaning hard on a southern drawl that made the verse sound childishly commonplace:
Since we’ve seen each other, a game goes on.
Secretly I move, and you respond.
You’re winning, you think it’s funny.
But look up from the board now,
look how I’ve brought in furniture
to this invisible place, so we can live here.
When she finished, Harry blinked a half dozen times and stammered, “It’s beautiful but I haven’t a clue what the poet’s talking about.”
Three weeks later, Harry was restocking yogurt in the dairy aisle. Nellie Higgins from customer service approached from frozen foods. A pear-shaped woman, Nellie pranced about the store on her elephantine frame as though she were auditioning for the Boston Ballet. “A smashed jar of spaghetti sauce in aisle six needs seeing to.”
Harry stepped back from the refrigerated dairy case. “Mavis Calhoun’s husband just showed up with a dozen roses,” Nellie added with a sour smile. “Laid the flowers down with a flourish and left. Just like that! Not a word.” Nellie thrust her hands into her pink smock. “Sure wish someone would bring me a dozen roses for no good reason.”
“I’m sure he had his reasons - good or otherwise.”
“And what’s that suppose to mean?”
“Nothing,” Harry muttered.
Nellie grinned stupidly. “Don’t let puppy love cloud your judgment.”
Harry felt his cheeks burn. That he was sweet on Mavis was common knowledge. Still, no one at the supermarket had the right to make fun of their friendship. Not when the cashier at express checkout was having an affair with the assistant manager, a sordid back-alley romance, and one of the meat cutters was dating a fourteen year-old. “I suppose you heard the rumor.”
The remark caught Harry off guard. “I got ears. I hear things,” he replied noncommittally.
“Mavis’ husband worked in a textile mill down south. Got into a squabble with another redneck.” Nellie lowered her voice and moved closer. “A lovers’ triangle... he killed the guy.”
“That’s old news,” Harry lied.
“Police claimed it was self defense. Never even went to trial.” Nellie picked up a plastic tub of Dannon cherry yoghurt. “Still it’s just hearsay… could be a lot of bunk.”
Harry felt nauseous, light headed. He recalled an incident in early December. Travis Calhoun showed up midway through the afternoon shift, a heart-shaped box of chocolates tucked under his beefy arm. With a boyish grin, he laid the chocolates on the counter, blew an impetuous kiss and hurried away. Mavis pawed at the gift-wrapped box as though it contained an assortment of worthless rocks before stuffing it under the counter. Never once - not even when Travis mouthed the kiss - did he actually look at his wife; rather, his eyes ricocheted aimlessly off the customers, store fixtures, a cardboard display hawking Oreo Cookies at half price.
“What’d he kill him with?” Harry asked.
Nellie put the yoghurt back in the box and shrugged. Even when she was standing still, her unruly hips seemed to be decamping in a dozen, different directions. “Bare hands, a knife, crowbar, gun - what’s the difference? One punk’s rotting in a premature grave, while the other’s playing Don Juan passing out long stem roses.”
A lover’s triangle. Was Mavis, Harry wondered, the unnamed, third party? Or was the adulterous woman the dead man’s wife? Harry stifled the urge to retch. “But it’s just a rumor?”
“Mindless prattle,” Nellie confirmed, shaking her head vigorously up and down. “People run their mouths. Say any fool thing that pops into their demented heads.”
“Aisle six… spaghetti sauce.” He went off in search of a mop and pail.
*****
Through the winter, Harry sent away for college catalogues and admission forms. His father graduated from Northeastern University on Huntington Avenue across from Symphony Hall. Five years in the cooperative studies program earned him an engineering degree plus an offer from one of the more prestigious firms in the student placement program. Harry’s marks in math and the sciences were consistently high, and Mr. Smith was encouraging his son to follow his own example.
In t
he Sunday supplement to the Brandenburg Gazette Harry read an account of a Wall Street broker who left his two-hundred thousand dollar job to manage a bed and breakfast in Booth Bay Harbor, Maine. “Best thing I ever did!” the ex-broker boasted. A shoe salesman from the Midwest took early retirement so he could devote the remaining years of his life to saving wild horses. “What wild horses?” Harry wondered. And if wild horses live freely in natural surroundings, why did they need saving? But then, as Mavis would say, it was all a matter of ‘karmic destiny’. Engineer, classical musician, supermarket bag boy, rescuer of wild horses, innkeeper - the possibilities were limitless.
Harry dutifully filled out his college applications and mailed them off with the processing fees. His private fantasy was to spend the next thirty years at Shop Rite pricing cherry yoghurt, stocking dried apricots, basmati rice and farm-fresh vegetables. He’d marry a woman like Mavis Calhoun, start a family. To hell with conspicuous consumption! They would live in a tiny matchbox of a house - cramped, but perfectly cozy - drive second-hand cars, scale back their expectations to nil. From Brandenburg center, a 40-minute drive south on 495 brought you to the sand dunes at Horseneck Beach where the all-day parking fee was five dollars. There was the free, bird sanctuary in Norfolk, a children's playground alongside the zoo just outside the city and a local art museum. You didn’t have to be rich, just frugal. And, of course, you’d need a clone of Mavis. A Mavis facsimile was absolutely essential.
*****
“Doing anything Saturday night?” Mavis asked the first week in November. Harry said that he wasn’t. “Come for supper. I told Travis all about you and he’s dying to meet you.”
The idea of Travis Calhoun, bigoted redneck, adulterer and homicidal maniac, dying to meet Harry Wong Smith was so absurd it demanded an equally absurd rebuttal. “Did you tell him I lust after you day and night?”
Mavis burst into hysterical laughter. “You’re the funniest boy alive!” She could hardly catch her breath. “I’ll remember that one, for a hundred years.” Harry smiled weakly and went off to check his weekly assignment.
On Saturday late in the afternoon, Harry pulled on his best, wrinkle-free Dockers and a green sport shirt. Smearing Bay Rum cologne on either cheek, he grabbed his windbreaker and headed out the door.
The Calhouns lived at Fox Run Estates, a low-rent apartment complex, three miles north on route fifty-seven. The single bedroom apartment featured a cramped living room and dining area off the kitchen. She was alone when he arrived. On a coffee table was a picture of the couple at their senior prom. Travis Calhoun, macho blond hair curling over his ears and fifty pounds leaner, looked dashing in a white tuxedo. Mavis glowed with an utterly ditsy joie de vivre. Peering through the open doorway into her bedroom, Harry could see an antique white dresser and matching bed tables.
“Stove’s on the blink,” Mavis said. “Won’t be fixed till morning. Travis is picking up Chinese food. Can I get you something to drink?”
“Soda’s fine.”
Fifteen minutes later a blue pickup truck with a smashed side door pulled up in front of the building. Smelling of hard liquor, Travis Calhoun entered the kitchen. He went directly to his wife, kissed her on the mouth and placed a brown bag on the kitchen table. “Larry, is it?”
“Harry,” he corrected. Travis grabbed his hand and pumped it up and down a bit too forcefully. Lurching unsteadily to the refrigerator, he palmed two beers, placing one on the table next to Harry’s empty glass. Twisting the metal cap, Travis rubbed the rim of the bottle with a greasy hand and took a deep swig, draining half the contents before he came up for air. “Like music?”
Before Harry could answer, he added, “Shitkicker… that’s what we listen to mostly. Dwight Yokum, Delbert Clinton, Willie Nelson, Clint Black.” He fiddled with the dial until a twangy melody burst through the static. “Country and western. Good-ole-boy music.”
“That’s sort of nice,” Harry said, removing the cap from his beer. He filled the cup three-quarters full and took a sip. “Nice lyrics.” The tune, a rollicking, hillbilly song, told the story of a lovelorn cowboy who loses control and shoots up the jukebox in a bar; it was genuinely funny, as original as it was clever - a silly story told, in verse of a lovesick cowboy’s despair and redemption. Harry took another drink.
Travis opened containers while Mavis set the table and passed out silverware. “Let’s eat!”
When the meal was finished, Travis plucked two more beers from the refrigerator and hustled Harry into the living room. “Mavis’ a gem and I’m the luckiest sucker alive.”
“You’re the luckiest and I’m the second luckiest.” Harry wasn’t sure what he meant by the obtuse remark. The Smith’s were teetotalers. The first beer had softened Harry up; the second transported him to a state of magnanimous euphoria where he was beginning to appreciate Travis Calhoun as much if not more than his goddess-of-a-wife.
“It’s like I won the lottery when Mavis agreed to marry a worthless skunk, white trash, son-of-a-bitch like me.” Tipping the bottle vertical, Travis nursed the suds at the bottom through the longneck and into his waiting lips. “She don’t ever shut up though... always with the fucking Eastern philosophy.” He placed an arm around Harry Wong Smith’s shoulder and squeezed hard as though they were blood brothers.
“Small price to pay, though.” Harry’s speech was slurred. Was he being too familiar with Travis Calhoun, a man who, except for Nellie Higgins wild accusations, Harry hardly knew?
In response, Mavis’ husband jumped up and got more beer. “A deaf mute,” Travis sniggered. “When I lose my temper ‘cause she’s cackling on and on about some skinny-assed faggot in an oversized-diaper, I tell Mavis that I’m gonna divorce her. Marry some ugly bitch who can’t neither hear nor talk.”
“A deaf mute!” Harry repeated and burst into uncontrollable laughter.
“What’s so funny?” Mavis called from the kitchen.
Again Travis leaped up, but this time rushed into the bedroom instead. When he emerged, he was carrying a revolver. He handed the oversized gun, a Smith and Wesson Model 19 with a blue neoprene grip, to Harry.
“Getting sloppy in my old age.” Travis retrieved the gun, opened the barrel and removed the copper shells one by one. “Three fifty-seven magnum… hundred fifty-eight grain Federal jackets.”
He handed the gun back to Harry just as Mavis entered the room. “For God’s sake, Travis!”
He waved her off. “Gun’s empty, Safety catch’s on.”
“Nice looking weapon,” Harry said.
“Piece of shit. Don’t group the shots. Every bullet flies off in a different direction like goddamn birdshot.”
Mavis sat down on the couch next to Harry. She wore a cotton blouse and tan stretch pants. “Travis took the gun for repairs,” she said “but nobody can figure out what’s wrong with it.”
“Had the slugs checked with calipers. No problem. The hammer cams rearward when the trigger’s released and there’s plenty of mainspring pressure. Cylinder gap had some play to it but not enough to explain why it sprays lead like a shotgun.” Travis took the gun, pointed it at the far window and squeezed off a phantom round. The barrel spun with mechanical precision and the firing pin sprang forward.
“Jeez, Travis!” Mavis wrenched the gun from his hand and returned it to the bedroom.
Travis shook the slugs back and forth in his free hand like dice. “Still, who gives a shit about accuracy? Thief breaks into your house - at a distance of thirty feet you just point and shoot.” Travis fashioned a gun from his hand and index finger, squeezing off an imaginary round in the direction of his wife’s head.”
Mavis returned. “So, where were we?”
Christmas day, the Shop Rite Supermarket sponsored a free dinner for the unemployed and local residents down on their luck. Supermarket staff and VFW members catered the affair which was held at the post hall in South Attleboro. Harry waited tables. Mavis helped out in the kitchen preparing box lunches for elderly shut
-ins. Harry arrived an hour early. Two hundred people had already arrived, an odd assortment of somber souls.
“I don’t see how this makes any difference in the quality of their lives,” Harry grumbled. He was standing near the side entrance as a steady stream of late arrivals filtered into the room. Mavis had just come from the kitchen to join him.
At a nearby table, three men in their late twenties were laughing a bit too loudly, but nobody seemed to care. One of the men, a gaunt, goofy-looking fellow with bad teeth, winked at Mavis. The gesture seemed more childish than brazen and further dampened Harry’s holiday cheer. “The alternative,” Mavis said, “is we don’t have a party, and they all go without Christmas dinner.”
“They can’t help it,” Mavis added, nodding pleasantly to the fellow with the bad teeth. A staticky Jingle Bells burst over the loudspeaker but no one was singing. They were waiting for the main course. You could see it in the grim set of an old woman’s jaw, the impatient squabbling of a dowdy, middle-aged couple. Frig the music! Bring on the goddamn turkey!
The kitchen doors flew open and a column of staff emerged with platters of steaming mash potatoes, green beans and winter squash. The meal was officially underway. “Got to man my battle station.” Mavis disappeared back into the kitchen.
A teenage girl - she couldn’t have been any older than Harry - stank of body odor. Not the usual, day-old variety but the rancid, nose searing stench - a month’s accumulation of sloth and grunge. “Merry Christmas! How’s your meal?” Harry felt no connection whatsoever with the foul-smelling girl. She might as well have been a humanoid from some far-flung solar system impersonating the real thing. No sympathy or compassion. All Harry wanted was to finish out the shift, go home and forget about Brandenburg’s poor unfortunates.
“Another busload’s pulling in,” hollered one of the VFW workers. “Get a headcount and let cookie know how many extra meals.”
“Another busload,” Harry thought. Brandenburg was a relatively small community; how many indigents could there possibly be? With hot food on the table now, the guests were mollified. Not that anyone was singing, but the mood had lightened.
