The End of Vandalism (25 page)

“I am always hungry these days,” she wrote. “Promised food, we do not get enough. The yard people have been here since morning. They miss so many leaves it seems to make things worse instead of better. They sit on the sidewalk eating their lunch and I want their chips. I would like to go out and rake with them. They probably never took care of a place alone. They probably never had a house to themselves. Raking would be a way for me to make some money and buy a clock radio. I know I have mentioned this before but I really want one. There is something about me that waking up I want to see a clock and hear a radio. Without them it is hard to come out of a dream.”

SHERIFF DAN NORMAN, in street clothes, painted campaign signs in his office on the Saturday night before the election. Some of his signs around the county had been knocked down or painted over, and therefore he needed new ones. The signs were nothing fancy. They said things like DAN NORMAN IS ALL RIGHT and VOTE EXPERIENCE VOTE DAN. The idea was simply to get his name out there.

As he was painting, a call came in from the Morrisville police. They had people out with the flu and required assistance at the strip club called the Basement. A man there was ranting and making trouble. Ed Aiken was on duty but was investigating a burglary in Lunenberg, so Dan decided to handle the call.

The Basement was on the west side of town, downstairs at the old Union Hotel. It is the law in Morrisville that strip joints must be underground, which makes it harder to see in. The Union Hotel was boarded up, but the Basement was not as rough a bar as it once was. Workers used to come down from the pin factory around the corner carrying straight pins and ready for trouble. There is still a bar magnet near the
front door, under the legend “Leave Pins Here,” although the last true pin came off the assembly line in 1969.

Dan drove over to the hotel and went downstairs, showing his badge to avoid the cover charge. Irv London and Chris Doren of the Morrisville police already had the guy handcuffed. He wore blue jeans and a gray sweatshirt. His name was Sterling, and he was the sort sometimes found around strip shows—the drunk, sentimental tough guy who wants to rescue the dancer or reclaim her innocence for her, regardless of her feelings on the subject.

London and Doren were escorting Sterling from the bar when he twisted loose and began knocking over tables. Dan and the two officers surrounded Sterling and let him get it out of his system. “Barbara, don’t let them take me,” he yelled.

Outside, they frisked him for weapons. “Who is this Barbara?” said Irv London. “The sign says Pamela Ardent.”

“That’s a stage name,” said Sterling. “Don’t you know anything?”

“You’re under arrest and have the right to remain silent,” said Chris Doren.

“In fact, we wish you would remain silent,” said Dan.

“I’ve cut my lip,” said Sterling. “Wonderful. I’m bleeding.”

Irv and Chris took Sterling off to jail and asked Dan if he would talk to the dancer. So Dan returned to the hot and smoky club, where the customers and bouncer were putting tables and chairs back. Pamela Ardent stood with one hand on her hip, punching songs into the jukebox.

Dan went to the bar and ordered a martini. Since Louise had gone north, he had developed an appreciation for the gin that she so admired. He stood with his back to the bar and surveyed the action. The house was not full, and as it was a
long and narrow space, Dan was reminded of the cheap prints of the Last Supper that seemed to hang so often on the walls of houses in which there had been trouble. Fires, breakns, and beatings made up the dinner theater of the Disciples.

The Basement smelled like a museum of cigars, and on the ceiling there was a spotlight with a painted-glass disc that turned slowly, changing the light on the stage from red to blue to yellow.

The dancer was supple and bored, with brown hair cut short and curled behind her ears. She danced as if she’d had lessons a long time ago. She straddled a wooden chair turned backward, thrust a hip forward while tilting an imaginary hat over her eyes, and strode the stage with her thumbs hooked under her arms. She wore a tiny black outfit with glittery swirls.

Dan went back to see her after the show. Her dressing room doubled as a storeroom, and she sat surrounded by aluminum kegs, looking into a cracked mirror wired to the wall. She had dressed in corduroy jeans and a sweater, and was cleaning her face with round pads of gauze.

“Do you know that man?” said Dan.

“No, look, I’m from Florida,” she said.

“Is your name by any chance Barbara?”

“My name is Marnie Rainville. I’m from Fort Myers, Florida. And I don’t know what this guy’s problem is, but he ain’t nobody I know.”

“Is there any reason somebody might call you Barbara?”

“Yeah, if they’re crazy. Which I wouldn’t rule out.”

“I believe it,” said Dan. “Do you have a license?”

She laughed. “You don’t need a license to dance.”

“A driver’s license.”

She sighed and began looking through her purse. “I’ve been doing this three years,” she said. “All over the United States and Canada. I like the South a lot. I like the Midwest too, but I could do without the cold. Did you ever go home to a cold room? That I could live without, easy. Not that I’m looking for company. That’s the last thing I need. I’m talking about the weather.”

“What’s Fort Myers like?” said Dan.

“What’s it like?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, man. It’s beautiful? It’s warm? The sun shines every day? What else? The grocery stores are very clean, with aisles of beautiful fruit? Someday I’ll go back in style and they’ll all come out to greet me. That’s the Fort Myers I know. Someday I’ll return to the land of decent weather and get out of this godforsaken deep freeze at last.”

“I hope your wish comes true,” said Dan.

“Oh, it will, believe me.”

They shook hands, and Dan left the bar and went back to the sheriff’s office. He picked up the radio. “Morrisville, come in, Morrisville.”

“Go ahead.”

“Yeah, Dan Norman here. Will you tell Chris or Irv that I talked to the stripper at the Basement but she doesn’t know the guy. Her name isn’t Barbara or Pamela. It’s Marnie.”

“Marnie?”

“That’s right,” said Dan. “She’s from Florida and she’s going back home just as soon as she can.”

“Maybe we should take up a collection.”

“Why don’t you do that.”

“Ten-four.”

He went back to painting his signs. It seemed as if in the short time he had been gone, someone had moved them. His mind wandered from the election frequently these days, and possibly he had just forgot where he left the signs. Then Mary Montrose and Hans Cook showed up.

“We’re on our way home from the movies,” said Mary.

“What did you see?” said Dan.

“The one where the fellow makes his children very small,” said Mary.

“Well?” said Dan.

“Hans liked it. I was somewhat disappointed.”

“It wasn’t anything extraordinary—just a good yarn,” said Hans.

“To me, once you knew they were small, there was no place for the movie to go,” said Mary.

“What do you think of my signs?” said Dan.

“Pretty good,” said Hans.

“They say Johnny White has a following,” said Mary.

“Have you seen his commercials?” said Dan.

“How could you miss them?” said Hans. “They’re saturating the airwaves.”

“The people get the sheriff they want,” said Dan. “That’s why it’s a democracy.”

Mary sat on the bench, and Hans went in back and stood in a cell with his hands on the bars.

“I’m innocent, I tell you,” he said.

“I wouldn’t give a nickel for Johnny’s crew,” said Mary. “He was on the news the other night, talking about alcoholic this and alcoholic that. Why, he’s no more alcoholic than the man in the moon. My uncle was an alcoholic, and believe me, I know what they are.”

Dan dipped his brush in paint and paused with it halfway to the sign he was working on. “I tried to make that very point to the League of Women Voters. I’m not sure they understood me. And then he produced that DWI arrest from Cleveland in 1982. Well, that doesn’t prove he’s an alcoholic.”

“Of course it doesn’t,” said Mary. “You’ve got to cut him down to size, just like this fellow did to his kids in the movie. If it were me, I would look him smack in the eye and say, ‘Johnny, you’re a goddamned phony.’”

“I did use some fairly strong language at the League of Women Voters,” said Dan.

“I bet you didn’t call him a goddamned phony.”

“No, that’s true,” said Dan. “I am wary of dwelling on the alcoholism claim.”

“I can see that,” said Mary. “It’s kind of a no-win situation.”

“I’m going to talk to Claude Robeshaw,” said Dan.

“He might know something,” said Mary.

Then they were silent a moment and could hear Hans humming the song “Una Paloma Blanca.”

“What do you hear from Louise?” said Dan.

“Not a lot,” said Mary. “Carol says she’s all right, but I don’t know. My family—they should do a long-term study. This is really why I stopped, Dan. I think you should try going to get her.”

“I have tried,” said Dan.

“Well, try again,” said Mary.

“I went up a couple weeks ago,” said Dan. “I asked her to come back. I really pushed the issue. But she wasn’t ready. Well, I guess you know she’s delivering newspapers.”

“Yes,” said Mary.

“Evidently she supervises a number of younger carriers,”
said Dan. “One of them has come down with mono. So she wants to run this girl’s route for her until she’s better.”

“Hell, Dan, mono can go on for months,” said Mary.

“I know it.”

“This is Carol’s doing,” said Mary. “I’m not saying the girl doesn’t have mono. She may have mono. I’m no doctor. But you have to understand Carol. Carol is an enigma. Carol is a very lonely lady. She wanted children, but instead of having children she has sunk all her energy into this fishing camp.”

“It’s a pretty nice camp,” said Dan.

“No one’s denying that,” said Mary.

The next morning was Sunday, and Dan went for a drive in Louise’s Vega. It was clear and cold; there was frost on the windshield. Louise had always kept a cluttered car, and the floor and the bead-covered seats had tissue dispensers, paperback books, and beer bottles on them. It seemed to Dan that he had married her without knowing her, did not know her now, and might never know her, but that these things she had thrown off had some magical power over him.

There was a guy who always sold flowers on Sunday from a cart at the intersection of Highway 8 and Jack White Road. Dan almost never saw anyone buying flowers. There was hardly room to stop.

Dan bought a mix of flowers, violet and orange and white.

“I’ll bet these are for that girl,” said the man.

“Excuse me?” said Dan.

“She was with you last week. About this high.”

“You’re mistaken,” said Dan.

“Sure she was.”

He drove up to North Cemetery. Larkin Brothers of Romyla had set the gravestone late in the summer. Brian Larkin carved the inscription, which read:

It was a small, flat stone of blue-gray slate, its surface about flush with the ground. Brian Larkin said this was how an infant’s grave should be. It was a good stone, but because it was horizontal, the leaves and dirt that landed on it in the normal course of cemetery life tended to stay. Ants traveled the grooves of the letters. You would think rain would wash it clean, but sand floated onto the slate and remained in delicate whorls after the rain had evaporated.

Dan took the flowers from the car, along with a bucket and chamois cloth. There was an iron pump in the middle of the cemetery, and he pumped water into the bucket. Over at the grave he removed the flowers that he had left the week before and dipped the chamois in the water. He washed the stone and dried it with a red handkerchief and put the new flowers down. He took the old flowers to the iron fence bordering the cemetery and tossed all but one over the fence into the grassy ditch. The flower that he kept he threw into Louise’s car with everything else. Then he went back and took a last look. Already a leaf had landed on the stone. The task was never-ending. He sat with his back to a tree and wondered if Iris had felt pain or perhaps only a fleeting sensation of something changing. He remembered her face as untroubled. Actually he was forgetting her face.
The nurses had given them Polaroid snapshots, but these did not do her justice.

Dan had Sunday dinner with Claude and Marietta Robeshaw. You can’t miss the Robeshaw farm if you go from Grafton to Pinville. The barns are light blue and a porch wraps around the big white house. For years the place was known as the one with the “Impeach Reagan” banner on the machine shed, but with Reagan gone back to California, that had been put away. The house was plain and spare inside, except for mementos of JFK, whom Claude had met once in Waterloo. Among their collection, the Robeshaws had two dozen Kennedy dinner plates, an autographed copy of
Why England Slept,
and a rare tapestry of PT 109. Young Albert liked to tell his friends that Kennedy himself was in the attic.

Of the six Robeshaw children, Albert was the only one still at home. The rest were grown and moved away. On Sundays, combinations of them came home to eat. Today Rolfe, Julia, Nestor, and Susan had returned with spouses and children.

So the meal had to be big, and the cooking was done mostly by the women. The exception would be Nestor cooking the Swiss chard, but this is deceptive. Nestor liked cooking Swiss chard, and it was assumed that if he were to walk away from it for any reason, one of the women would have to take over before it burned. Nor would anyone ask Nestor to cook anything but the Swiss chard. In other words, his sisters, wife, and mother might be there cooking beside him but did not have his freedom to pick and choose. Let’s take Susan, for example. She had been assigned the cooking of the yams. If she did not feel like cooking yams, too bad—she had to
anyway. The bad part of this arrangement for the men was that they had nothing to do. They sat around listening to Vaughan Meader records and drinking Claude’s Olympia. In the old days they would have been out threshing.

At the Robeshaw table the food and the eaters were opposing armies, and if you did not overeat, you were considered a traitor. Marietta reacted to the words “No, thank you” with a hurt and puzzled smile, as if you had cursed her in a foreign language. She also had rules for how and when things were to be passed, and nobody understood these rules, so they were constantly being broken.

Talk was fragmentary amid the pings and scrapes of cutlery. Nestor and Rolfe argued about hybrid grain.