Days Like Today (13 page)

He pushed the chair back and stopped talking. He
enjoyed watching her work. It was like being at home, a long time ago, when everybody was still alive and he was in the kitchen where his mother was doing the baking.

In the evening Irene had a call from one of her sisters-in-law to say that a child in her son’s school had come down with some kind of lung infection at summer camp and he’d nearly died.

‘That camp’s a long way away,’ Franklin told her.

‘It makes you think, though.’

It also made both of them think about their life as it used to be, without Sherman, when it was always clear what was important and what didn’t have to be taken into consideration because, not being central, it didn’t count.

The next day was Saturday. Irene had to get one of the kids dressed for a birthday party and another one ready to go to the swimming pool. While she was setting the kitchen table for breakfast, she said, ‘It’s a beautiful day. Why don’t you give Sherman a tour of the district? Show him the local stuff, like it said in that book we had:
items of note
.

‘
Not.
Everything in that book was
items of not
. As I recall, we got lost trying to find half of them.’

‘That was only once. Come on. Otherwise most of the day will go by and you’ll just fritter the time away. I can fix you a picnic lunch.’

Franklin turned to Sherman for confirmation.

Sherman, who was once again overcome by shyness in Irene’s presence, lifted a shoulder and whispered, ‘Sure.’ The two little girls stared greedily at him; they kept clutch
ing each other and bursting into giggles for no apparent reason, never taking their eyes off him.

‘It’s going to be nice,’ Irene said.

Franklin looked out of the window, up at the sky and from one side to the other. He said, ‘Right.’

They’d had the sweltering days from the end of July and the hurricanes at the beginning of August. The first frost was to come and after that the leaves on the dogwood would redden, the old trees first, and gradually all the colors would come: the maples gold and orange and scarlet, even some of the oaks turning pink. The foods of the earth would reach perfection: apples and pumpkins, nuts and pears. The time of abundance was just ahead. But now it was still summer and they were coming to the end of it.

Franklin drove Sherman on a circuit around town and out onto the road that ran down by the river, to where the logging camp used to be. He talked about who used to live where and how the landscape had changed or stayed the same.

After a while Sherman said, ‘This whole place used to be Indian country, coast to coast. If the early settlers had intermarried instead of fighting, you and me would be Indians right now.’

‘That’s a thought.’

‘Would it be so different?’

‘It would for me. I can’t imagine an existence with that kind of social structure: all that tribal business with elders and so on.’

‘It wouldn’t make any difference to me. I’d be just the same.’

‘You’d be married with ten kids because that’s what the society would demand. Even in this area, in this state – in this country, for that matter – after a few years people are going to feel they should know why you don’t want or can’t get what everybody else thinks is of value.’

‘I’d be a brave.’

‘Braves are young. Beautiful maidens are young. You get through one stage and you go on to the next. If you don’t go on to the next, everybody’s going to think you aren’t up to it. Unless you’ve got something better to do. And that doesn’t often happen. If you want to dedicate your life to some important work, say. Or some worthy cause.’

They were headed for an open-air agricultural museum, the Buckhorn Farm, when Franklin changed his mind. He said, ‘Hey, I know what I can show you. The family inheritance that never was: Raymond Saddler’s place that ought to belong to Irene.’

They turned off the highway, went down a dirt road, traveled a good way along it and stopped.

There in the distance was a house, set back, with three big trees growing nearby but not so close that they could be a danger to the roof.

‘And that’s where the old buzzard lives,’ Franklin said.

The family had to attend an anniversary celebration over in the next state. They’d be gone all day – Franklin, Irene and the four kids. And they wouldn’t be back till late.

Franklin handed Sherman the keys. Irene didn’t look too happy at that but she didn’t say anything.

While they were away, Sherman went into town. He bought a piece of steak, took it back to the house, carried it upstairs to the bathroom and laced it with the sleeping pills he’d seen in the medicine cabinet. Then he packed it up in waxed paper and started off for Raymond Saddler’s place. He rode part of the way by bus and then walked.

He got into the house through a window at the back. Once he was inside, he went to the room he’d chosen, and stayed there.

From any part of an empty house the overall dimensions could be guessed – and, Sherman thought, you could also tell what kind of character the place had. The longer he waited, the more he liked it.

Saddler didn’t show up till mid-afternoon. The dog came rushing ahead of him – out of the pick-up and scrabbling across the threshold as soon as the door was unlocked. Saddler had the gun broken over his arm. For a bad-tempered man he didn’t act very suspicious.

The dog threw himself around the corner and Sherman tossed him the meat fast. Then he withdrew into a back room.

While Saddler was busy locking up, his dog bolted back every bit of the steak and lay down on the rug to sleep.

Sherman heard Saddler going into the kitchen. He moved from cover. He approached the hallway, where he saw the shotgun, no longer broken, standing up against the wall. That made everything easier. Before that moment, he’d intended to use his knife.

The next day, at noon, the rumors went around that
Raymond Saddler had committed suicide. He’d shot his dog first, but he’d been really fond of that dog: he’d fed it some sleeping pills before he did it.

Irene made two telephone calls to establish what part of the story was fact. Then she was on the phone for another hour, talking to friends and relatives.

The Page family expressed a decent regret at the news but they were jubilant. There was no doubt about what was to come: the property, the house, the money and all that it represented.

With the thought in mind of his wife’s certain inheritance, Franklin took Sherman out for a drink and told him that he saw how things were and he wanted to help Sherman to do what he’d done himself: pick a town somewhere, start up a business and make himself at home. He couldn’t spare much, but since Irene was going to come into Aunt Posie’s legacy at last, he could let Sherman have five hundred dollars. He handed over the check then and there.

Sherman took a swallow of beer and started to think. He thought until he convinced himself that Franklin had demanded a sacrifice of him that was equal to the moment in the war that neither of them could get away from. And when he’d cleared the debt by agreeing to carry out Franklin’s dearest wish for him, he was given an insulting five hundred bucks in exchange.

Was five hundred dollars enough to wipe away the memory of Raymond Saddler’s face or to allow him to sleep without seeing it again? From now on Franklin would be laughing: leading his normal life as if he didn’t have any
connection with a single thing that was low or underhand. Five hundred dollars was certainly not enough. Especially when you considered what that land was probably worth. If Franklin were any kind of a decent man – the kind that stuck by his friends – he’d have had the idea on his own that Sherman deserved a little extra. A supplement.

People who have money,
Sherman thought,
will always
rather give you money than a piece of their time
.
Franklin doesn’t
have all that much, which means that … he’s willing to go with
out, as long as he can get rid of me. It wasn’t just what she
wanted. He paid me off.

It would have to be five thousand at least, to make up for having to carry the burden. And also, for being treated like that: hired and fired – used, like some kind of menial servant.

That wife of his, too: Irene. All polite on top, and underneath she couldn’t stand you. That was something else that would have to be changed.

‘That’s mighty good of you, Frank,’ he said. ‘I appreciate it.’

‘For old time’s sake,’ Franklin told him.

Back at the house, Irene got her speech in, too. She told Sherman the latest gossip: according to the investigations, there was nothing suspicious about Raymond Saddler’s death – it was his own gun. She couldn’t feel sorry: he’d brought it on himself, leading that hermit life all alone in a big house, just so he could keep it from somebody else. No wonder he went crazy. But the thing was: she and Franklin were going to need the guest room now, because of the funeral. There were all kinds of cousins coming.

They’d hated Raymond Saddler but of course they’d go to the funeral. And collect the money.

‘You get his house?’ he asked.

‘Well, I don’t know. Why?’

‘That’s a nice house.’

‘Sort of broken down, maybe. He was the kind of man who’d never fix anything – he’d wait for it to fall down before he’d shell out on new paint.’

But it was a good house. With a house like that, you could get a wife easy. She’d clean it up, make it pretty, have lots of kids and they’d bring him his comfortable shoes in front of the fire. He’d have his dog and his gun, like Raymond Saddler, but not the same kind of dog – not one of those European police dogs. A good old American hunting hound. Get it when it was a pup and raise it to be his alone. He’d always wanted one. And the house.

The house was better than Franklin’s: larger, and with wider and taller windows that looked out on to big trees – the kind of place a gentleman would have owned in the old days. The days of yore.
The days of your and the days of mine.

During the night there was a light rain, just enough to make the next day fresh. In the morning, after breakfast and as Franklin was about to suggest taking him for a drive on the way to work, Sherman said, ‘Guess I should be moving on.’

Franklin was caught so that he could only say, ‘Oh?’ He’d been intending to talk to Sherman in the car and in a reasonable way to put forward exactly that suggestion,
reiterating the need to use the guest room for cousins.

Irene said, ‘I think that would be a good idea, Sherman. You don’t want to sit around, going stale, when you could get out and make a life for yourself. And we can’t give anybody much hospitality with the kids running around all the time.’

‘Oh, I got no complaints,’ he said.

Franklin thought he meant it. Irene wasn’t sure, and she became convinced to the contrary when – as he was finally stepping over the threshold to go out of the house – Sherman stopped dead, slapped his hands over his pockets and explained, ‘Don’t want to forget anything. I might have to come back.’

They got into the car and started off. Neither of them felt much like talking. Sherman was busy thinking:
This is my
chance
.
I’m only going to have one crack at it and that’s all.
Because otherwise I’d have to work up to everything he’s got. But
if I just step into it, she won’t mind. She’ll still have the kids and
the house and what her cousin tried to gyp her out of. And the
other house … the nice one. And it was thanks to me that she’s got
it back. He wouldn’t have done anything himself. He had to pay
somebody else to do his dirty work.

Further along the drive, he thought:
No, I
can’t do that
.
He saved me.
When he remembered that, he was – as always – struck into a kind of amazement by the strangeness of the fact. It was so simple, just something that had happened; yet it was a mystery. He’d think:
He saved me
.
Why? I was
nothing to him, or he to me. But he did that. And he could have
been killed doing it.

The event had become one of the large questions, like:
Why was I born?
or
What am I here for?
It perplexed him. Sometimes it filled him with despair.

They left the fields and drove through the hills. Sherman thought about Franklin’s life, so full of people and work and activity. What made Franklin so much better, that he deserved all that? When they’d come out of the service they were both the same. And now Franklin was on the inside, looking out. And he was on the outside, looking in. That wasn’t fair. Franklin had the house and the wife and the kids; that was what put him on the inside – not his character, which was no better than his own.

He could wait a while and then go back; go to Franklin and say:
I
want some more money, or I’ll tell
.

Or, even better:
I’ll tell her
.
And she’ll believe it and she won’t
want to stay married to you.

Or he could just go ahead and tell her, the two of them alone in the kitchen:
He said the place would be empty except
for the dog and that it was some kind of insurance thing with the
store
.
I didn’t think I was going to hurt anybody. I wanted to
repay him for saving my life.

She’d believe that. Wouldn’t she?

I
could say that he told me he wanted the money for a woman
named Margie Somebody.

Sherman remembered the hushed, night-time conversation but not the woman’s last name. As he tried to recall the sound of it, he became unsure about the first name, too: whether it was Maggie or Maisie or Molly. Or it might not
have begun with an M at all; it might have begun with a W. He’d have to drop that idea.

They went over the mountains and back into the valleys again, passing fields and farmhouses. Franklin drove him to the next town, where there was a bus depot – the same one where Sherman had been set down on his way to find Franklin’s address.