Pieces for the Left Hand: Stories (9 page)

But later that day I remembered a book our neighbor had lent me almost a year before, which I had not returned because I found it self-aggrandizing, opaque and in poor taste, and had not wanted to have to lie to him that I liked it, when in fact I had not been able to finish it.

This reminded me that our neighbor had borrowed my belt sander when he moved in five years before, and never returned it. But my having forgotten this fact called attention to my own reluctance to undertake household projects requiring the sander, and I was filled with self-disgust.

The following morning I tossed the letter and book into the fire and bought a new sander, ignoring the least expensive model in favor of the one costing exactly thirty dollars. Why this choice should make me feel morally superior to my neighbor is unclear; nonetheless that is the way I feel.

Film Star’s Dog

Some months ago we visited our friend the painter in the city. Over lunch he told us that it was his habit to walk his dog in a certain park near his home, and that lately he had encountered there a famous film star and her dog, which his dog quickly befriended. Owing to the dogs’ relationship, our friend and the star entered into a cordial one as well. To keep the star’s favor our friend kept the conversation on the subject of dogs, believing that an acknowledgment of her fame, or in fact any mention of the film industry or suggestion of his fandom, would insult her and end their informal friendship, which he enjoyed. He told us that she had recently related the harrowing story of her dog’s near-death by rattlesnake bite in the mountains of southern California, and in fact the dog seemed to be in recovery from some illness, its fur patchy and its skin bright red, as if it had been scalded.

Not long after, we noticed a wire-service article about the star in our local newspaper. The article repeated the story of the snakebite and reported that the star had told it on a recent episode of a late-night talk show.

We found this funny, since it was a corroboration of our friend’s surprising story, but it wasn’t long before it occurred to us that our friend might have seen the talk show and invented his own involvement, for our amusement. We wouldn’t have put this past our friend, who led a mysterious and solitary life and was known for flights of fancy, but since he had recently suffered a bout of mental instability (he had reportedly had a fireplace installed in his home for the sole purpose of flinging paintings into it), we resolved not to confront him about the possibility.

In the end, however, our curiosity got the best of us and we sent the article to him without any note of explanation. We have not heard from him since.

Justice

A famous and wealthy retired judge moved to our town and bought a huge, stately downtown mansion. The mansion was surrounded by wonderful grounds, consisting of lush lawns and enormous spreading trees, which in previous years had been used, with the full permission of the friendly town magistrate who used to live there, as a kind of public park, available for all manner of recreation and enjoyment.

However, the new owner had a tall iron fence erected around the perimeter of the grounds, hired men to cut down all the trees and installed a giant private pool and a four-hole golf course, which additions he could be seen, through the iron bars, enjoying in solitude. In a feature article on the front page of our newspaper, the judge described his beloved collection of Cuban cigars, and responded to our complaints with the assertion that the house and the land it stood on were his alone, and that he alone would control all activities that took place in and upon them.

Not long ago a rumor circulated that the squirrels who once lived on the wooded grounds had, in the absence of trees, taken up residence in the judge’s mansion, and had found their way into his humidor and shredded his beloved cigar collection. The newspaper, eager to curry favor with the town’s wealthiest resident, printed an unsigned editorial denying the rumor, but we all happen to know the town exterminator, who insists it is true. We are pleased to learn that he has been careful not to kill
all
the squirrels, because although he cannot scoff at a client of the judge’s stature, at the same time he has, after all, a well-developed sense of justice.

Encounter

While walking alone one night on a deserted street in the city, I noticed a middle-aged man approaching from a block ahead, a tall African-American wearing a suit and carrying a thin briefcase. My initial instinct, given the time of day, the absence of other pedestrians and my general unwillingness to engage others when alone, was to cross to the other side of the street and avoid any encounter. But I questioned my own motives. Would I cross to the other side, I wondered, if this man, like me, were white? Perhaps not. This possibility filled me with guilt, so I resolved to remain on the same side as the man, convinced I could erase my discriminatory instincts by acting consciously against them.

When I met the man, he stopped and asked me for the time. I gave it to him. Then he asked, in a polite tone, if I lived nearby. He had no money for the bus, and wondered if he could use my telephone to call for a ride. I told him that I was sorry, but I was from out of town.

His face told me that he thought I was lying, in order to avoid bringing a black man into my home. In fact, I was telling the truth, but I wondered: would I have lied, had I lived nearby, for the very reason he had suggested? I didn’t think so, but since I would have been a different, perhaps more cautious, person entirely if I lived in this neighborhood, there was no real way of knowing. To preclude further misunderstanding, I quickly offered him money for the bus instead.

The offer made him even angrier, and he asked me did I think that every black guy I came across was a panhandler? Of course not, I said. But his refusal to accept the money got me thinking that perhaps he really was some kind of swindler, maybe a clever criminal in the guise of a modest businessman, who did, in fact, want to get into my house and rob it. I would lead him to the phone, and then he would turn and pull a gun out of his briefcase.

I glanced at the briefcase, then back at his face. He shook his head, called me a honky bastard and went on his way.

Of course, had I lived in the neighborhood, this final gesture would have filled me with remorse, forcing me to let him into my house after all, where, humiliated, I would or would not have been robbed.

The Letters

A stranger dropped dead in front of the post office. Nobody knew him and there was nothing anyone could do, so the ambulance was called and passersby waited with the body as sirens approached.

One bystander noticed that the dead man was clutching a pile of stamped letters in one hand. Wishing to be helpful, she took the letters from the dead man’s hand and dropped them into a mailbox. A few other bystanders nodded approvingly, while others glared as if in reproach. Still others had no visible reaction. In any event, the ambulance arrived, the man was pronounced dead and the body was taken away to be identified.

As it happened, the stranger was from another town, and had stopped in our town while fleeing his family and job. The letters had been addressed to several friends and relations, and confessed to a number of shocking betrayals which included romantic affairs, dishonest business dealings and lapses of confidence. Those who received them were horrified, and their good memories of the man they had known were tainted.

Not long afterward, the bystander who mailed the letters was successfully sued in civil court for damages related to the emotional distress inflicted upon the dead man’s family and friends. The family and friends agreed that the bystander had not written the letters; nor had she caused to be mailed any letters that the dead man would not have wanted mailed himself. In fact, the dead man’s family and friends admitted that they would have done the same thing had they been the bystander. Nevertheless, if it hadn’t been for the bystander’s act, they might have been spared the knowledge the letters contained, as the dead man’s wife, upon reading them, would probably have destroyed the letters and left secret their grim revelations. The bystander, a city employee, was unable to pay the full amount of the suit, and so her wages will be garnisheed until the balance is met.

Ex-Car

We got rid of our old car and immediately regretted our decision. It wasn’t that our new car was unsatisfactory; in fact it ran more smoothly and reliably than the old one ever had, even when it was new. But the old car had acquired a “personality” assembled from memories of our lives during the time we owned it, and we found that we missed it deeply, as we would have a favorite cousin who had died or moved away.

A few months after selling the car, we saw it in the parking lot of a restaurant in a nearby town. Our initial reaction was to deny that it was our old car, as the restaurant was of a decidedly inferior quality and, obviously, a place our car would never go. But this car was dented in the same place as our ex-car, and two of the six letters of its chrome nameplate were broken off as they had been on ours, and so there could be no doubt.