In the Walled City

by Stewart O'Nan

  IN THE WALLED CITY

  Also by the Author

  FICTION

  Everyday People

  A Prayer for the Dying

  A World Away

  The Speed Queen

  The Names of the Dead

  Snow Angels

  NONFICTION

  The Circus Fire

  AS EDITOR

  The Vietnam Reader

  On Writers and Writing, by John Gardner

  In the Walled City

  STEWART O’NAN

  Copyright © 1993 by Stewart O’Nan

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

  Published by special arrangement with the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Printed in the United States of America

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  O’Nan, Stewart, 1961–

  In the walled city / Stewart O’Nan.

  p. cm.

  Contents: The finger —The third of July —In the walled city —Calling —Winter haven —Finding Amy —Mr. Wu thinks —The doctor’s sickness —The legion of superheroes —Steak —The big wheel —Econoline.

  eBook ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9669-9

  1. United States —Social life and customs —20th century —Fiction. I. Title.

  PN3565.N316 15 2001

  813′.54—dc21

  2001040157

  The Denis Johnson quote that appears on page vii is excerpted from his poem “The Honor” in The Veil (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987).

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following publications in which some of these stories first appeared: Ascent (“Econoline”); Columbia (“The Third of July”); Jam To-Day (“Mr. Wu Thinks”); The Nebraska Review (“Winter Haven”); Northwest Review (“The Finger”); South Dakota Review (“Calling”); and The Threepenny Review (“Steak”).

  I’d also like to acknowledge, first, the Cornell University MFA program for giving me both the time to write and a community of interested readers. I’d like to thank especially Stephanie Vaughn and Michael Koch, Lamar Herrin, Dan McCall, Jim McConkey, and Lorrie Moore, all of whom shared their time and experience generously. Thanks also to everyone who read these stories in and out of workshop, including my faithful readers whose comments helped shape the collection: Neil Plakcy, Manette Ansay, Tim Melley, and Jennie Cornell. Thanks, too, to Jen Hill and Larry Cantera, Deidre Pope, Juni Diaz, Michael Friedman, Peter Landesman, Elizabeth Graver, Paul Cody and Liz Holmes, Craig Triplett, Kim Dionis, Stu Shephard, Ed Hardy and Tamar Katz, Bob Fecho, Glenna and Kathy McKenzie, Kyna Taylor, Burlin Barr and Linda Wentworth, Joe Martin and Nancy Couto, John Landretti, Lisa Neville, the Southwicks and O’Nans, and, of course, Buck Schaefer. Without your talent, patience, and support, this book would not exist. And belated thanks to all who helped me get started and pointed me in the right direction: Daniel and Audrey Curley, Bill Roberson, Russell Banks, Scott Sommer, and David Bradley. Finally, thanks to Tobias Wolff for choosing my manuscript and to Fred Hetzel, Ed Ochester, Beth Detwiler, Peter Oresick, and everyone at Pitt for turning it into a book.

  Grove Press

  841 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  Contents

  The Finger

  The Third of July

  In the Walled City

  Calling

  Winter Haven

  Finding Amy

  Mr. Wu Thinks

  The Doctor’s Sickness

  The Legion of Superheroes

  Steak

  The Big Wheel

  Econoline

  for Trudy

  People will tell you that it’s awful

  to see facts eat our dreams, our presumptions,

  but they’re wrong. It is an honor

  to learn to replace one hope with another.

  — Denis Johnson

  IN THE WALLED CITY

  The Finger

  Sundays, Carter saw his wife and baby. It was not his decision and not Diane’s either, they just went along with it. There was nothing legal between them. They’d been separated barely a year, and if they still bristled face-to-face, distance had given him back some of his lost fondness.

  Carter knew she was seeing people, but compared with their years together —the rhythm of apartments and, in those fat and sunny years, bungalows —a few dinner dates with slicked-up slobs from work didn’t worry him. Sometimes when Diane was hurting for cash, Carter would take the bus over to Bay Shore after work and put an envelope in their mailbox. He was making the best money of his life at the landfill, and she had to pay the babysitter, she needed to buy food. Carter felt responsible in a way he hadn’t when they were together.

  This Sunday he was walking back from the bus stop along William Floyd Parkway toward his complex —at peace for having fulfilled his obligations —when a car shot by him with a man hanging out the passenger side window. He was maybe a little younger than himself, dark, with a DI and a pointed beard. Very clearly, the man called to Carter, “Fuck you,” and gave him the finger, pumping his whole arm for emphasis. Carter stopped walking. The car —a big, brown LTD with New York plates —made the light at Montauk Highway, rumbled over the railroad tracks, and sped away down the Floyd toward the beach.

  “Drunk,” Carter said, and kept walking along the berm. It was Sunday, mild, late April, a few hours of light left. He debated buying a quart of Miller at the Dairy Barn and brown-bagging it on the beach. He needed some release after the effort of keeping the peace with his wife all afternoon. Jessie was sick, napping late, and he and Diane had sat in the kitchen, pretending to be civil, unscathed. She ran water for coffee, and he noticed the faucet leaked around the base.

  “It’s not your problem,” she said.

  “It’s a two-dollar part. It’ll take me five minutes.”

  She talked about gardening; she did every year but never planted anything.

  “You don’t like green pepper,” he reminded her.

  “I can get to like it. I’m going to give most of them to Mrs. Contas.”

  “What else?” he asked, because he liked to see her make plans. It was something he was no good at, and partly why he’d fallen for her. Her original plan was to get her circuit board certificate from the SUNY extension and work at Grumman’s; then he could quit and go back to school full time. Late nights, sweeping the laundromat, Carter would stop amid the warm tumbling of the dryers and think of her taking notes, cross-legged, imagining in a few years he’d be there. He had wanted —and still wanted —to be a physical therapist. A year before their marriage, he’d laid down his bike in the rain and shattered a knee. When the doctors cut the cast off, the leg was grayish-yellow and half the size of the other, the quad jelly. He couldn’t bend the knee and thought he’d never be the same. He wanted to be like the people who saved him.

  The guy with the beard had leaned out, made a real effort, Carter thought. There was no one around him, no one else walking the sandy shoulder. He wondered, as cars shot by in hot waves of exhaust, if the man had mistaken him for someone he knew. Or if in some crummy part of his life he had actually known the man —had deserved maybe more than the finger. Maybe right now the LTD was doubling back. He kept an eye on the oncoming traff
ic. Probably just a joke, high spirits. Why would anyone wish that on another?

  He and Diane hadn’t been sleeping together for a few weeks when she told him she was pregnant. Their plans had fallen through and they were living off his father —money Carter had vowed he’d never accept. He’d been seeing an ex-friend of hers, and the way he flaunted his own coldness, he expected Diane would find someone —a guy from work, a nice guy, he didn’t want to know. He had imagined it again and again, but a baby was stupid. He wanted to think it was his. Diane didn’t.

  Against his father’s urging, Carter moved out east on the Island where it was cheaper. He had a one-bedroom in a failed retirement complex. A lot of the original tenants were still there, getting by on assistance. It was quiet, if a little rundown.

  If he could buy a quart with just the change in his pockets, he would. It was a game he couldn’t really lose. He was short a quarter but decided to splurge anyway. It was Sunday, he wasn’t doing anything. He bought two and made sure to chat up the clerk, who looked like a regular guy, a good guy, Carter thought, maybe had a family. The Dairy Barn was a drive-thru; the man was probably lonely.

  How the hell would he know?

  The weather brought the oldsters out. On the lawn in front of his building, Mr. Katz and a guy Carter knew from the laundry room sat in folding chairs, bundled up. Mr. Katz had a Mets cap on to keep the sun out of his eyes. They were both holding dollar bills.

  “Here’s my friend Carter. Tell Manny here it is impossible to dig up a prehistoric elephant —we’re talking a couple billion years old here —and eat it like it’s leftovers. Will you tell him that?”

  “Carter?” Manny said, “Carter, you’ve heard of the woolly mammoth, is that right? So you know they find them frozen in the ice. In the Arctic. What I’m saying is, these archeologists who find them find them totally preserved.”

  “Like a big freezer, he’s saying.”

  “And when they taste the meat it’s fresh like from the butcher. They eat it up, throw a picnic right there in the Arctic.”

  “I never heard that,” Carter said.

  “See? The man won’t lie.” Mr. Katz reached for the dollar but Manny pulled his hand away.

  “I’m not talking Ripley’s here, this is the National Geographic, for God’s sake.”

  “It might be,” Carter said, “I just never saw it.”

  “That doesn’t prove anything.”

  “What do you want,” Mr. Katz said, “the World Book Encyclopedia?”

  “You guys want to drink some beer?”

  “Gives me gas,” Mr. Katz said.

  “With my stomach?” Manny said.

  “Mr. Woolly Mammoth,” Mr. Katz said, “Mr. Picnic-on-the-Tundra.”

  “Carter,” Manny said, “remind me never to ask you anything ever again.”

  Inside, Carter left his lights off, sitting in a square of sun, moving his chair as the beer dwindled. He imagined himself at the beach, the failing light bronzing the water. It was probably cold; besides, it was a long walk. He could not stop thinking about the guy with the beard, how he stuck his upper half out to yell at him. Carter was probably lucky they hadn’t come back for him with baseball bats. Who was driving? Diane could have easily beaten him out there, the car her boyfriend’s. Looked like her type —psychotic. She swore she wasn’t sleeping with anyone, but he knew she was saying it for him, for the money. He did not want to believe his cynicism anymore; he was tired of living for himself, and liked to think the chill between them would —like everything of importance, unspoken, an understanding beyond argument —miraculously thaw. Every time he went over to the old place he had the urge to stay the night, stay the next day and on and on, as if nothing had changed. She never offered, he never asked.

  The room was going dark, the beer dregs. He went to his foot-locker and made sure he had clothes for tomorrow. At work they provided jumpsuits, but Carter always worried that the smell of the garbage was seeping into his skin, like a virus. Since his father had finagled the job for him, he’d slowly lost his sense of smell. In the beginning he wore the mask they gave him, but it didn’t work and none of the others wore theirs. On the bus sometimes people stayed away from him; other days they pressed right into his pits. If he stank he wasn’t able to tell, but every time he did laundry he’d sniff and sniff, unsure.

  Diane never said anything. She knew his father had gotten him the job after they’d broken up. At first Carter had hated him for it, but he no longer minded the job. He liked sitting high up in the Cat’s glassed-in cab, packing and grading the great mounds of trash, the gulls thick and wheeling above. The fill was the highest point for miles, and on a clear day he could see the trawlers rocking far off Fire Island. Best, he knew the job was temporary. Not because he could afford to quit, but because he could not imagine himself working in the heat and stink for more than a few years.

  He laid out his clothes for tomorrow, then made himself dinner —a fried egg sandwich washed down with Hi-C out of the big cold can. It disgusted and dismayed him. He told himself this was all temporary.

  He called Diane.

  “What do you want?” she answered.

  “I just wanted to know you were all right.”

  “I’m all right.”

  “I had a good time today.”

  “Right. Look, we’re eating.”

  “We.”

  “Me and Jess,” she said as if he’d said something absurd. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Listen,” Carter said, “I had this thing happen to me today.”

  “You’re drinking. Jesus, I can smell it on you from here.”

  “Just beer, I swear it.”

  “I’ll see you next Sunday,” she said, and hung up.

  By nine everyone in his building was in bed. Carter listened to the kids from the other buildings playing flashlight tag, private planes landing at Brookhaven Airport, and, beneath it all, the steady wash of cars on the Floyd. He couldn’t wait to fall asleep, to wake up.

  He rode the Cat, thinking of Sunday, far off and bright as the island sky. The wind was up, riffling skeins of plastic caught in the razor wire. Monday was white-items day, neighborhood contractors bringing in truckloads of doorless refrigerators and stoves and washers and dryers, halved kitchen tables and matching chairs, broken-backed couches, ripped Barcaloungers. Vernon, the manager, set aside the nicer pieces behind his trailer —first come first serve. Anything left on Friday got tossed. Carter’s apartment was furnished with such junk, most of it beyond his means.

  At break Lorena said there was a nice sectional he might like, and they took their coffees around back. Lorena knew his father from the water authority, and looked after Carter as if he were helpless. Carter appreciated it.

  The sectional was tan and had five pieces including a curve, across which lay a plate-sized wine stain. Lorena swiped at the cushions and sat down.

  “It’s nice,” Carter said, “but I don’t have the room.”

  “The stain. Don’t feel pressured. If you can’t use it, my niece might. Did you look at the dresser with the nice handles?”

  It was red oak, a little nicked but better than the pressboard one he had at home, found here last August. He could strip it and stain it.

  “I don’t know,” he said, “I’ve got enough stuff already.”

  “Maybe Diane could use it.”

  “Maybe,” he said. “Sure, hey, what the hey.”

  Lorena gave him a ride home with the dresser wrapped in an old army blanket, legs sticking out of the trunk. The Dairy Mart passed. Mr. Katz supervised them getting it up the stairs and into Carter’s apartment.

  “It was a mastodon,” Mr. Katz said after Lorena had left.

  “What?”

  “Your woolly mammoth, it was a mastodon. Manny got this book from the library. These guys picked the thing apart like a nice whitefish. They even got a picture of it.”

  “What are you telling me for?” Carter asked.

  “Mr. Irritable h
ere. I thought you were interested. A stick of wood is more interesting, is that it?”

  “It’s for my wife.” He had it on an island of newspaper in the living room. Mr. Katz was on the couch, his cane between his legs.

  “What for?”

  “It’s a gift.” He opened the can of stripper.

  “What do you want to do that for? Buy her a nice dress or something, take her out to dinner.” He took out a handkerchief and held it to his nose. “Are you supposed to be doing this indoors?”

  Carter opened a window.

  “Forget it,” Mr. Katz said, and hobbled to the door. “Call me when she dumps you again.”

  “Leave it open,” Carter said.

  He brought a wobbly floor lamp over and took off the shade so he could see what he was doing. He soaked a pad of steel wool with stripper and rubbed along the grain. The stain came off gummy, dying his fingers like nicotine. He skipped dinner, scouring the scrolled legs, the ball-and-claw feet. The steel wool wore down and pricked his fingers, the stripper burned. Midnight, groggy from the fumes, he could see it was going to work. He stood back, admiring the bare whorls. The complex was dark, silent; he closed his door. Around two he ran out of steel wool and quit for the night. The stain wouldn’t come off his fingers, even using Goop. Hours later, he got out of bed and closed the window.

  He woke up with a crushing headache. It poured, fog sitting over the sea. The first two hours not a single truck showed. Only pros ran in the rain. He sat in his cab with the heater up, listening to the roof drumming, the wipers slishing. Gulls stood in flocks, puffed for warmth. He thought of the dresser sitting in his dark apartment, how foolish he was to think it would change things.

  Right at break, a town truck climbed the hill, its lights on, stacks smoking. Lorena radioed him that he could go back to the trailer.

  “You go,” he said. “I’ll take it.”

  “Sure?” she said.

  The truck backed to the wall of trash, raised its bed, and began inching out, laying a long swath of garbage. Carter dropped his blade, throttled up, and headed for the pile. The truck lowered its bed and its gate banged shut. The driver gave Carter a flash of his high beams, which Carter returned. As they passed, the driver stuck his arm out the window and waved. Carter did not know him but waved back, confused but glad.