Horace Afoot (19 page)

“Unfair?”

“He didn’t give his life—as the army says in the letter they sent to my parents—he had it taken from him. It was so meaningless and unnecessary.”

“How is that different from any other death?”

“I don’t know. I will die of cancer. There’s no
meaning
in that, I suppose.”

“But you say your brother’s death was meaningless and unnecessary and unfair?”

“That’s right. It was.”

“And your parents’ deaths were fair?”

Mohr works himself into a more upright position. “Let’s say theirs were less unfair.”

“And your own?”

He stares at me for a moment, retreating behind the large rims of his glasses. “Less unfair.” He removes his glasses again and jabs his knuckle into his eye. “I’m not crying,” he says, rubbing. “It’s the medication. It dries me out. My eyes get. Irritated.” He replaces his glasses. “The real is the rational and the rational is the real. That’s what Hegel says.” He signals the waitress. “Hegel would probably have said that Jim’s death was world spirit working itself out. I used to think that those big philosophical positions explained things. That they contained truth.”

“And now?”

“Now? I think they are all a pile of shit.”

“And what about the rational and the real?”

“There is nothing rational or real that can’t be undone and destroyed by the smallest dose of absurdity.” He pauses for a moment, licks his lips. “Call it what you want,
das Vernunftige, das Wahre
, bad luck. If Hegel were alive today he’d probably be a systems analyst at the Pentagon.” He removes his glasses and resumes rubbing his eye. “And if I had any sense I’d go on vacation instead of checking myself into a goddamn hospice.”

“Why don’t you?”

He pauses for a moment. “Because I don’t have an umbrella,” he says, grinning broadly, and when the waitress arrives to take the check she finds us both giggling like schoolboys over a dirty joke.

Mohr pays for his uneaten dinner and for my glass of wine, and we leave the restaurant. I walk with him to his car, parked in a reserved space in front of the library.

“I’ll drive you home,” he says, struggling to fit his key into the frozen lock.

“I’ll walk.”

He opens the door and slides into the driver’s seat. I stand on the sidewalk and watch him maneuver himself into position behind the wheel. The engine comes to life. He rolls down the window. “Sure you don’t want a ride?”

“No thanks.” I wave and start off in the direction of home. Mohr passes me slowly, honks his horn. He looks so small behind the wheel of the enormous car, protected from the elements outside by a heavy steel and glass exoskeleton, from the elements inside by sophisticated painkillers
and who knows what other kinds of medication. He wears a wig to cover his baldness, thick glasses to compensate for myopia, dentures to enable him to eat. I imagine underneath his clothing he is supported by a variety of trusses and bandages and marked with scars where he has been cut open, probed, and explored. The red taillights of his car disappear into the night, carrying his fragile body away in an intricate and ghostly web of technological contingencies and artificial supports.

Coming out of the bank I run into Jane Doe. She pulls open the glass door adjacent to the one I am pushing through, a pair of sunglasses perched on top of her head. “Hello.” I feel my face redden as I realize that perhaps I’ve spoken too soon. She is startled and glances at me with a puzzled look. Then, in a flush of recognition, her features relax into a look of embarrassment. “Oh, hello,” she says.

We stand there for an awkward moment, each holding open a door. A smile breaks across Jane’s face, a smile of nervous relief that registers also in her eyes. Had she worn her sunglasses into the bank I might have pushed right by without recognizing her. Now we either continue in our separate directions and let the doors close behind us, or we must speak. She lets go of the door she is holding and steps to one side, lowering the sunglasses over her face. “I’m sorry,” she says.

“Sorry? For what?”

“I’ve always meant to thank you.”

“There’s no need for that.” I can’t think of anything else to say. “How are you?”

She shrugs. I notice that she is holding a small bundle in one hand, a canvas cash bag with a heavy-duty brass zipper and the name of the bank emblazoned on the side. She looks at it as if to remind herself where she is and why she came.

“My name is Horace.”

“I’m Sylvia.” We shake hands. Her grip is light, and she holds my hand for a brief moment before letting go. Everything is expressed in that gesture. There really is nothing else to say. She drops her gaze. “Well, I guess I better …”

“Yes. Me too.” I step back as she pulls open the door, awkwardly and with a little too much force, and disappears into the bank.

In ten minutes I find myself walking out along Old Route 47. The snow is piled high along each shoulder. My boots make a wet, scraping sound in the gully of slush that runs alongside the sand- and salt-strewn road. Waterproof. Just beyond the town limit, I test the hardness of the plowed snow and begin walking along the top of the ridge. It is slippery and much slower going, but now I have a better view across the flat, empty fields. The snow lies undisturbed except for animal tracks and patterns left by swirling drifts.

The state has erected a fence around the Indian mound. The last time I walked out here there was no snow on the ground, just a heavy mulch of leaves and the usual traces left by visitors—cigarette butts, beer cans, etc. In deep snow the mound looks higher and rounded and more like a tortoise. When I came out in autumn, while the leaves were turning, I didn’t think of tortoises at all but of Major Wilkington and his hired men and the horse-drawn wagons that dragged the excavated remains away from the site like plunder from a battlefield. All my visits during the fall put me in mind of the Wilkingtons; visits not just to the mound but to the glen and all over town. Maybe it was the cooling of the atmosphere, the changing colors, the crisp, musty smell of decomposition. I don’t know. In autumn and early winter the mound seemed to belong, by conquest, to Major Wilkington and his century. Now, blanketed with snow, surrounded by a new chain-link fence freshly hung with signs that read
No Trespassing
, and looking more plundered and empty than ever, it could belong only to the present.

I make a circuit, holding on to the fence for support, plowing along, shuffling and packing the snow underfoot. Where the path leading to the top begins I find a narrow, padlocked gate secured by a heavy chain. I climb the fence at the gate, drop into the snow on the other side, and lie embedded for several minutes, gazing up into overcast skies.

Getting to the top of the mound is difficult. I scramble up the snow-covered slope, grabbing whatever I can lay hold of for support, and finally reach the top, panting and out of breath. The wind blows a light mist across the surrounding fields. The parking lot of Semantech has been cleared, the snow piled into high mounds around lamp posts that stud the lot and give it a desolate concentration-camp look. In the distance, the sprawl of the town pops up out of the flat monotony of covered fields, its shagginess cloaked by the thick layer of snow. It seems tidy, planned. The spire of the Methodist church competes with several tall buildings for dominance of the skyline. I can see the hospital and a corporate development that is under construction to the north. A high green water tower, relegated to the far western edge of town, juts ungainly from the periphery of the landscape and marks the exact location of my house. Oblivion.

Sylvia occupies my thoughts, and the more I try to turn them away the greater force she exerts—like the light pressure of her hand, which exceeded any crush of words. Sylvia is not the name I would have guessed for her, and I have to force myself not to think of her as Jane Doe. Everything was articulated in the weak pressure of her grip and the forceful way she yanked open the bank door, twisting her small body awkwardly to contain the momentum, slightly pigeon-toed, her sunglasses like big black blinds clamped down over her eyes.

I wander down Liberty Street, take my seat on the curved bench inside Wilkington’s gazebo, and look around for my friend, the border collie who now appears whenever I come visiting. Sure enough, he appears, the Hound of Liberty Street, trotting across the little playground, tail wagging. He marches up the steps, lowers his head for me to pat, then begins to nose around underneath the bench. I take a carrot out of my pocket. The dog sits down to watch.

Sylvia. I wonder how often she thinks about what happened to her? I wonder if she regrets that her memory returned? Did bumping into me renew any pain? Perhaps. Maybe she will never recover from her ordeal.
130 am I to say? Maybe she will. Or already has. I don’t know what to think, really. And I don’t think I can empathize with her. Empathy is dull and empirical, an effort of full, subjective comprehension—impossible, dimensionless goals. Empathy attempts to lead beyond compassion and inevitably spins off into anger and hate, first of individuals and then of the whole vicious congregation of debased nature.

The dog puts its paw on my knee, begging. I bite off a chunk of carrot, offer it. The dog snatches it from my fingers and swallows it whole. We sit staring at one another for some time. Man and dog. It follows each bite I take of the carrot with its eyes, rapt, eager to share. I give up another piece, and again the dog swallows it whole. This irritates me for some reason, and I realize it is because swallowing like that makes it seem that the dog didn’t properly savor the gift. What a ridiculous thing to expect! I hand over the rest of the carrot and the dog takes it and swallows, tail slapping the floor.

I wish she hadn’t told me her name. Knowing it removes her from the periphery of my attention. Now everything is different. Again, the memory of cornfields and the suicides of van Gogh and Hemingway and the sound of gunshots, the flocking of birds and her sudden appearance on the side of the road. Now everything slips back a little and is replaced by a person named Sylvia.

A car passes up the street, then another. The gazebo is like a shelter from the moment, and sitting in it makes me feel invisible. I get up to leave. Dampness has somehow seeped into my suit, and I begin to think of the fire I will build and the bottle of wine I will open when I get home.

Halfway up the street I turn around to find the dog following several paces back. “Go home!” I shout. A few paces farther I look back again. “Go. Go home! Shoo!” The dog sits in a dry patch on the side of the road. At the top of the street I turn once again. The dog is still sitting there, watching, ears pricked up, anticipating an invitation.

At home I rekindle the fire, tidy up, and eat. Winter has made me realize how fond I am of this creaky little house. As it grows dark outside, I find myself sitting on my bed staring at the orange glow through the creosote-stained glass of the stove. I reach for the phone.

“Horace here.”

“Horace?”

“I want to ask you a question.”

“Better make it a quick one, Horace.”

“What is love?”

“You’re kidding me! You selling lingerie or something?”

“Let’s say I’m conducting a poll.”

“A poll?”

“Sure. On love. Have you thought about it lately?”

“I got a lot of stuff on my mind, pal. I don’t have time to think.”

“You haven’t thought about it at all?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Have you ever thought about it?”

“’Course I have. Everybody has.”

“When was the last time?”

I hear the aluminum crack of a beer can being opened. A pause, a slurp. “Say, you aren’t the guy who walks all over town, are you? The one without a car?”

“How did you guess?”

“You said your name was Horace. You know Ed Maver, right?”

“I know who he is.”

“I work out at Chevyland. Ed told me your name was Horace.” A pause, another slurp. “Ed says you’re one hell of a guy.” A slurp. “My name’s Fowler, Chuck Fowler.”

It is tempting to put the phone down and try again, but I can’t. “What has Maver said to you?”