Cartoonist (7 page)

“Your ma’s gone for the crowbar,” Pap said. His mouth was almost touching the side of the trap door. “She’s going to make me pry it open, Alfie. You might as well come on down. Once I get that crowbar …”

Alfie glanced at the trap door. The door was an inch thick. It fit tight except for the hole at the side where the light cord went downstairs. Pap, weak as he was, would never work it open.

“Here, Pap,” his mother said.

“I’ve got the crowbar,” Pap said. “This is your last chance.”

There was a silence while everyone waited, without hope, for a sound from the attic.

Pap sighed heavily. “Well, hold me steady,” he said. “Somebody get a grip on my legs. If my feet slip off the rungs, I’m done for. An old elephant with a broke hip ain’t—”

“Pap, I warned you!”

“—worth much.” There were scratching noises at the side of the trap door. “It won’t go in,” Pap panted. “The door fits too tight.”

“You aren’t trying, Pap.”

“Well, old arms is old arms.”

“Pap!”

“It’s true, and my arms always have trembled when I held them over my head for a long time. That’s what kept me out of the army.”

“Pap, you didn’t get in the army because you cut your trigger finger off with a saw. Now get that door open.”

There were more scratching noises at the side of the trap door, feeble sounds as Pap tried to work the crowbar into the wood. “This is hard wood,” he complained. “Feels like mahogany.” The sound of splintered wood crackled at the door. “There, well, I done
some
good.”

“Three splinters, Pap. Wonderful!”

“I’m doing what I can. I feel weak, though, and it’s not just my arms. Maybe if I had my supper …”

“All right!” His mother gave in with a shout. “We’ll eat supper.” She paused and lifted her head. “You hear that, Alfie? We’re going in to eat. You stay up there and starve.”

“He’s not going to starve,” Pap said. “He’s got crackers up there and peanut butter, Kool-Aid, a regular pantry. He could stay up there a month if he’d a mind to.”

“Well, he’s not going to stay up there a month. I guarantee that. I’m getting him down.”

“How?” Pap lowered his voice, but Alfie could still hear him. “To tell you the truth, Lily, I got as much chance of forcing that door as I have of picking up a mule. They don’t retire old people for nothing. If them people at the plant had thought I was strong enough to force a door … but they didn’t. That’s why they let me go.”

“One
of the reasons.”

“Anyway, the truth is I’m too old to be forcing doors.”

“All right then, I’ll call the fire department.” She started into the kitchen. “Junior Madison works there, and I went with him in high school. Firemen are used to chopping down doors.”

And now the house was quiet. The family was eating supper in the kitchen, and here he was at the card table, sitting in the darkness, staring at the end of the room. He had not glanced up once at his cartoons. He couldn’t.

There were some things in old folk tales and myths, he remembered, that you
couldn’t
look at. If you looked, you would be turned to stone or a pillar of salt.

He knew that if he looked up at his cartoons, if he looked at his drawings, pale ghosts of happier days, he would be struck in the same way. When the firemen broke into the attic, they would find him changed to stone or salt, face turned to the ceiling, eyes blank, mouth open a little.

“He was like that when we found him, Lily,” Junior Madison would say. They’d stand around sadly, and then one of the firemen would try to comfort his mother. “One thing, ma’am, he’ll make a real nice statue. Any park would be proud to have him.”

“Y
OUR SHOW IS ON
,” his mother called to Alfie. “The one about international cartoons.” It was Alfie’s favorite program, but his mother’s voice had a flat, hopeless sound, as if she knew he would not come down.

He did not answer. He had not moved for hours. His face had a hard set look, like clay.

The only change at all in Alfie had come with his mother’s threat of the firemen. The more he thought of that, the more trapped he felt. The security of being in his own attic, locked away from the world, had been broken.

Firemen
could
stream in from all directions, he had thought as the minutes ticked slowly past. They could chop their way through the roof, the eaves, ax down the door. He imagined them swarming into the attic, hale and hearty as hornets in their yellow slickers. This would be the kind of assignment they would really enjoy, he thought. They could practice their techniques without any risk.

It was Alma who had saved him.

“Mom, you are not going to call the fire department,” she had said as they came into the living room after supper. Alfie could hear their voices much clearer up here than he had heard them below. Maybe sound rose like heat. “I mean what I’m saying, Mom,” Alma said sternly. “Alfie has got to come down by himself. It’s important.”

“What do you know about it? You’ve never locked yourself up in the attic. You and Bubba had too much sense for that.”

“No, I’ve never locked myself in the attic, but there have been other things that I’ve had to accept and work out for myself, and that’s what Alfie’s going to have to do.”

There had been a pause. Alfie sagged a little in his chair. He knew there was no way he could work this out, alone or with the firemen’s help. He could never come down the ladder into the harsh light of the living room, no matter what happened. It was impossible. He had gone into the woods like Hansel, turned, and the breadcrumbs were missing. There was no way back.

Maybe when he was very old, he thought, eighty or ninety, when there was nothing left of the boy he had been, maybe then he could come down. He would be an old man, straggly beard, long gray hair, as thin as a skeleton, bent with arthritis and malnutrition. He would lift the trap door at last, trembling with effort, shaking in every limb, and slowly climb down the ladder.

There, in the faded living room, he would discover that his family—Mom, Alma, and Pap—had moved away years ago. A new family lived in the house now, a family who hadn’t even known he was up there. He would stand bewildered and lost, blinking in the light, as frightened and confused at seeing the strangers as they were at seeing him.

Below, his mother said to Alma, “Yes, but he could be dead up there, Alma, or unconscious. That’s why I wanted to call the firemen.”

“He’s not dead.”

“Well, sulking then. That’s just as bad.”

“Look, I’ve got to go to work—I’m late as it is, but you are
not
to call the fire department. I mean that, Mom.”

“The only reason I’m not calling them,” she said, “if you want the truth, is because I do not want Junior Madison, who I went with in high school, to know I have a son who goes around locking himself in attics!” She slammed something down on the television. “The last time I saw Junior Madison was at the Morgantown-Fairmont football game which Bubba
won,
and Junior Madison told me he knew how proud I must be of Bubba because his son had bad ankles and couldn’t even run across the family room.”

Alfie could hear the music of the international cartoon. His mother called, “Alfie, this cartoon from Yugoslavia is real interesting. It’s about cities that keep building until they turn into atomic explosions.”

“I don’t know why they make cartoons like that,” Pap complained. “Atom bombs ain’t funny.”

“It’s not supposed to be funny. If you’d listened to what the woman said—”

“Well,
cartoons
is supposed to be funny.” He got up from his chair. It creaked as he rose. “I’m going out back and see what the Governor’s up to.”

“He’s gone to Pittsburgh, Pap. Don’t you remember?”

“Oh, yeah.” He sat again, heavily.

“You’ve started over there four times. I thought
old elephants
never forgot.”

“Well, old brains ain’t like new ones.”

Alfie heard the music swell. He thought the city must be exploding in the cartoon now, spreading crayon radiation over the land.

“Hey, Miss-es Ma-son!”

Alfie lifted his head. It was one of the Finley twins calling his mother from the sidewalk. He recognized the high nasal twang.

“Hey, Miss-es Ma-son! We hear Alfie’s in the attic!”

Alfie stretched his arms out on the table as if he were trying to reach the eaves.

“Is Al-fie in the at-tic?”

Somehow they made it rhyme. Alfie closed his eyes. He imagined himself as part of a jump-rope rhyme. Years from now thin-legged girls would be reciting his saga as they jumped.

“Al-fie’s in the at-tic

Doing his car-toons.”

“Miss-es Ma-son! Is Alfie being pun-ished?” Both twins were calling now in perfect unison. “Is Al-fie being pun-ished?”

The Finley twins had always had a special sense for trouble in the neighborhood. They never missed an ambulance or a police car. They sensed when and where a fight was going to break out, and they knew when a child was going to be punished. They would be leaping up at the window, like dogs after a bone, in time to see the first blow.

“What’d he do, Miss-es Ma-son? What’d Al-fie do?”

Alfie heard the front door thrust open. It banged against the porch wall. “Get away from here!” his mother shouted. “Get away from here before I turn the hose on you.”

“But, Miss-es Ma-son,” they persisted. They inched closer to the steps. They wanted to be gossip columnists when they grew up. “But, Miss-es Mason,
why
is Al-fie in the at-tic?”

“Scat!”

“What’d he—”

“Scat! Shoo! Get away from here!”

There was a clanging noise. His mother must have thrown something at them, possibly the framed picture of himself that sat on the TV.

Alfie’s head sagged. He knew his mother must be very ashamed of him, and yet he didn’t understand it exactly. She had not been embarrassed at all when Bubba had been arrested after the football game riot. She had told that over and over, to anyone who would listen. And the time Bubba stole a car to drive the cheerleaders to a game in Clarksburg—she had told that next morning in the grocery store. And Bubba’s running into the police car and losing his job—she would make a good story out of that one day too, Alfie thought.

“Miss-es Ma-son!” voices called from the porch.

“Ignore them,” Pap said.

“I
knew
Wanda Wilkins would spread it all over town about Alfie. I should never have …”

Alfie could hear his mother’s voice fade as she went into the kitchen. She drew a pot of water. She crossed the living room, opened the door, and flung the water outside.

Alfie heard the splat, the two screams. The Finley twins must have taken a direct hit.

“We’re telling our mom,” one of the twins threatened as they retreated. “Miss-es Ma-son, we’re telling Mom.”

“And also tell
Mom
you were up on my porch trying to look in my door. Tell her
Miss-es Ma-son’s
going to call the cops the next time you come poking around here!”

She sat down on the sofa. Immediately she got up. The springs creaked. She turned off the television. “Oh, I’m going to bed. I’ve had all I can stand for one day.”

Alfie laid his head on his arms. The house was quiet now and he missed the noise. The sound of the television was a natural sound of the house, like the heater in winter or the wind from the north blowing through the eaves.

He lifted his head. Suddenly he actually felt like a statue. Maybe, he thought, he had turned to stone, even though he hadn’t looked up at his cartoons. He felt like stone.

He imagined himself in a park, high on a pedestal, far above the world. No matter what happened around him he would remain unmoving at his table, hands folded. Pigeons would flap around his head, light on his shoulders. Children would throw stones at them, hitting him. The statue would remain perfect. Muggings would take place in his shadow. Babies would teeter, fall, and cry. Girls would play games of tag around him. Only at night, like this, when the world got quiet, would the statue begin to soften. He closed his eyes. He became stone again.

“H
EY, ALFIE!”

Alfie’s eyes snapped open. He blinked. He lifted his head, turtlelike, and looked around the dusky attic. It was morning and there was no sunlight. The attic was as empty and cheerless as a stage waiting for props.

“Alfie, you ready for school?” Tree called. Alfie knew he was outside, standing at the edge of the steps.
“Hey, Alfie!”
he called again, louder.

Alfie waited with his hands folded on the table as if he were holding a small bunch of invisible flowers.

“Tree, would you come in the house a minute, please,” Alfie’s mother said at the front door. She had just gotten out of bed, and Alfie knew she would be standing in the doorway, clutching her peacock-blue bathrobe around her.

“Isn’t Alfie ready for school?” Tree asked anxiously. “I can’t be late again, Mrs. Mason, because I’ve already been late nine times, and if you’re late ten times you have to write a composition.”

“Just step inside for a second, Tree.”

“Compositions aren’t my thing.” He entered, feet dragging. He looked around the living room. “Where
is
Alfie? He’s not still in bed, is he? Look, Mrs. Mason, if he’s still in bed—”

“Tree, Alfie’s up in the attic,” his mother said in a serious voice, “and I want you to help me get him down.”

“
Where
is he?”

“In the attic.”

Alfie could imagine his mother pointing up to the trap door, holding her bathrobe closed with one hand. He could see Tree’s face lifted, puzzled, looking at the square door.

“He went up yesterday,” his mother explained, “and he won’t come down.”

There was a pause. Then Tree said in an awed voice, “That’s weird, Mrs. Mason.”

Alfie recognized that as one of Tree’s greatest insults. “He’s weird, Alfie, sang a solo in the Christmas pageant. Oh, holeeeeeee night!” Or, “She’s really weird, Alfie, toe-dances.” Or, ‘Yeah, but somebody told me he plays the fife. He’s
weird,
Alfie.”