Driving Blind (5 page)

“Why,” she asked at last, “did you steal the letters? And use them this way, sixty years later? Who told you where the letters might be? I buried them in that coffin, that trunk, when I sailed to France. I don’t think I have looked at them more than once in the past thirty years. Did William Ross Fielding tell you about them?”

“Why, dear girl, haven’t you guessed?” said the old man. “My Lord, I
am
William Ross Fielding.”

There was an incredibly long silence.

“Let me look at you.” Emily leaned forward as he raised his head into the light.

“No,” she said. “I wish I could say. Nothing.”

“It’s an old man’s face now,” he said. “No matter. When you sailed around the world one way, I went another. I have lived in many countries and done many things, a bachelor traveling. When I heard that you had no children and that your husband died, many years ago, I drifted back to this, my grandparents’ house. It has taken all these years to nerve myself to find and send this best part of my life to you.”

The two sisters were very still. You could almost hear their hearts beating. The old man said:

“What now?”

“Why,” said Emily Bernice Watriss Wilkes slowly, “every day for the next two weeks, send the rest of the letters. One by one.”

He looked at her, steadily.

“And then?” he said.

“Oh, God!” she said. “I don’t know. Let’s see.”

“Yes, yes. Indeed. Let’s say good-bye.”

Opening the front door he almost touched her hand.

“My dear dearest Emily,” he said.

“Yes?” She waited.

“What—” he said.

“Yes?” she said.

“What …” he said, and swallowed. “What … are you …”

She waited.

“Doing tonight?” he finished, quickly.

“R
emember me? Of course, surely you
do!
”

His hand extended, the stranger waited.

“Why, yes,” I said. “You’re—”

I stopped and searched around for help. We were in middle-street in Florence, Italy, at high noon. He had been rushing one way, I the other, and almost collided. Now he waited to hear his name off my lips. Panicking, I rummaged my brain which ran on empty.

“You’re—” I said again.

He seized my hand as if fearing I might bolt and run. His face was a sunburst. He
knew
me! Shouldn’t I return the honor? There’s a good dog, he thought,
speak!

“I’m Harry!” he cried.

“Harry …?”

“Stadler!” he barked with a laugh. “Your butcher!”

“Jesus, of course. Harry, you old son of a bitch!” I pumped his hand with relief.

He almost danced with joy. “
That
son of a bitch, yes! Nine thousand miles from home. No wonder you didn’t know me! Hey, we’ll get killed out here. I’m at the Grand Hotel. The lobby parquetry floor, amazing! Dinner tonight? Florentine steaks—listen to your butcher, eh? Seven tonight! Yes!”

I opened my mouth to suck and blow out in a great refusal, but—

“Tonight!” he cried.

He spun about and ran, almost plowed under by a bumblebee motorbike. At the far curb he yelled:

“Harry Stadler!”

“Leonard Douglas,” I shouted, inanely.

“I know.” He waved and vanished in the mob. “I know …”

My God! I thought, staring at my massaged and abandoned hand. Who
was
that?

My butcher.

Now I saw him at his counter grinding hamburger, a tiny white toy-boat cap capsizing on his thin blond hair, Germanic, imperturbable, his cheeks all pork sausage as he pounded a steak into submission.

My butcher,
yes!

“Jesus!” I muttered for the rest of the day. “Christ! What made me accept? Why in hell did he
ask?
We don’t even
know
each other, except when he says, That’s five bucks sixty, and I say, So long! Hell!”

I rang his hotel room every half hour all afternoon. No answer.

“Will you leave a message, sir?”

“No thanks.”

Coward, I thought. Leave a message: sick. Leave a message: died!

I stared at the phone, helpless. Of course I hadn’t recognized him. Whoever recognizes anyone away from their counter, desk, car, piano, or wherever someone stands, sits, sells, speaks, provides, or dispenses? The mechanic free of his grease-monkey jumpsuit, the lawyer devoid of his pinstripes and wearing a fiery hibiscus sport shirt, the club woman released from her corset and crammed in an explosive bikini—all, all unfamiliar, strange, easily insulted if unrecognized! We all expect that no matter where we go or dress, we will be instantly recognized. Like disguised MacArthurs we stride ashore in far countries crying: “I have returned!”

But does anyone
give
a damn? This butcher, now—minus his cap, without the blood-fingerprinted smock, without the fan whirling above his head to drive off flies, without bright knives, sharp tenterhooks, whirled bologna slicers, mounds of pink flesh or spreads of marbled beef, he was the masked avenger.

Besides, travel had freshened him. Travel does that. Two weeks of luscious foods, rare wines, long sleeps, wondrous architectures and a man wakes ten years younger to hate going home to be old.

Myself? I was at the absolute peak of losing years in gaining miles. My butcher and I had become quasiteenagers reborn to collide in Florentine traffic to gibber and paw each other’s memories.

“Damn it to hell!” I jabbed his number on the touch-phone, viciously. Five o’clock: silence. Six: no answer. Seven: the same. Christ!

“Stop!” I yelled out the window.

All of Florence’s church bells sounded, sealing my doom.

Bang! Someone slammed a door, on their way out. Me.

When we met at five minutes after seven, we were like two angry lovers who hadn’t seen each other for days and now rushed in a turmoil of self-pity toward a supper with killed appetites.

Eat and run, no, eat and flee, was in our faces as we swayed in mid-lobby, at the last moment seized each other’s hands. Might we arm-wrestle? From somewhere crept false smiles and tepid laughter.

“Leonard Douglas,” he cried, “you old son of a bitch!”

He stopped, red-faced. Butchers, after all, do not swear at old customers!

“I mean,” he said, “come
on!
”

He shoved me into the elevator and babbled all the way up to the penthouse restaurant.

“What a coincidence. Middle of the street. Fine food here. Here’s our floor. Out!”

We sat to dine.

“Wine for me.” The butcher eyed the wine list, like an old friend. “Here’s a swell one. 1970, St. Emilion. Yes?”

“Thanks. A very dry vodka martini.!”

My butcher scowled.

“But,” I said, quickly, “I
will
have some wine, of course!”

I ordered salad to start. He scowled again.

“The salad and the martini will ruin your taste for the wine. Beg pardon.”

“Well then,” I said, hastily, “the salad,
later
.”

We ordered our steaks, his rare, mine well-done.

“Sorry,” said my butcher, “but you
should
treat your meat more kindly.”

“Not like St. Joan, eh?” I said, and laughed.

“That’s a good one. Not like St. Joan.”

At which moment the wine arrived to be uncorked. I offered my glass quickly and, glad that my martini had been delayed, or might never come, made the next minute easier by sniffing, whirling, and sipping the St. Emilion. My butcher watched, as a cat might watch a rather strange dog.

I swallowed the merest sip, eyes closed, and nodded.

The stranger across the table also sipped and nodded.

A tie.

We stared at the twilight horizon of Florence.

“Well …” I said, frantic for conversation “… what do you think of Florence’s art?”

“Paintings make me nervous,” he admitted. “What I
really
like is walking around. Italian women! I’d like to ice-pack and ship them home!”

“Er, yes …” I cleared my throat. “But Giotto …?”

“Giotto bores me. Sorry. He’s too soon in art history for me. Stick figures. Masaccio’s better. Raphael’s best. And
Rubens!
I have a butcher’s taste for flesh.”

“Rubens?”

“Rubens!” Harry Stadler forked some neat little salami slices, popped them in his mouth, and chewed opinions. “Rubens! All bosom and bum, big cumulus clouds of pink flesh, eh? You can feel the heart beating like a kettledrum in a ton of that stuff. Every woman a bed; throw yourself on them, sink from sight. To hell with the boy David, all that cold white marble and no fig leaf! No, no, I like color, life, and meat that covers the bone. You’re not
eating!
”

“Watch.” I ate my bloody salami and pink bologna and my dead white provolone, wondering if I should ask his opinion of the cold white colorless cheeses of the world.

The headwaiter delivered our steaks.

Stadler’s was so rare you could run blood tests on it. Mine resembled a withered black man’s head left to smoke and char my plate.

My butcher growled at my burnt offering.

“My God,” he cried, “they treated Joan of Arc better than that! Will you puff it or chew it?”

“But yours,” I laughed, “is still
breathing!
”

My steak sounded like crunched autumn leaves, every time I chewed.

Stadler, like W. C. Fields, hacked his way through a wall of living flesh, dragging his canoe behind him.

He killed his dinner. I buried mine.

We ate swiftly. All too soon, in a shared panic, we sensed that we must talk once more.

We ate in a terrible silence like an old married couple, angry at lost arguments, the reasons for which were also lost, leaving irritability and muted rage.

We buttered bread to fill the silence. We ordered coffee, which filled more time and at last settled back, watching that other stranger across a snowfield of linen, napery, and silver. Then, abomination of abominations, I heard myself say:

“When we get home, we must have dinner some night to talk about our time here, yes? Florence, the weather, the paintings.”

“Yes.” He downed his drink. “No!”

“What?”

“No,” he said, simply. “Let’s face it, Leonard, when we were home we had nothing in common. Even here we have nothing except time, distance, and travel to share. We have no talk, no interests. Hell, it’s a shame, but there it is. This whole thing was impulsive, for the best, or at the worst, mysterious reasons. You’re alone, I’m alone in a strange city at noon, and here tonight. But we’re like a couple of grave-diggers who meet and try to shake hands, but their ectoplasm falls right through each other, hmm? We’ve kidded ourselves all day.”

I sat there stunned. I shut my eyes, felt as if I might be angry, then gave a great gusting exhalation.

“You’re the most honest man I’ve ever known.”

“I hate being honest and realistic.” Then he laughed.

“I tried to call you all afternoon.”

“I tried to call
you!
”

“I wanted to cancel dinner.”

“Me, too!”

“I never got through.”

“I missed
you
.”

“My God!”

“Jesus Christ!”

We both began to laugh, threw our heads back, and almost fell from our chairs.

“This is
rich!
”

“It most certainly
is!
” I said, imitating Oliver Hardy’s way of speaking.

“God, order another bottle of champagne!”

“Waiter!”

We hardly stopped laughing as the waiter poured the second bottle.

“Well, we have
one
thing in common,” said Harry Stadler.

“What’s that?”

“This whole cockamamie silly stupid wonderful day, starting at noon, ending here. We’ll tell this story to friends the rest of our lives. How I invited you, and you fell in with it not wanting to, and how we both tried to call it off before it started, and how we both came to dinner hating it, and how we blurted it out, silly, silly, and how suddenly—” He stopped. His eyes watered and his voice softened. “How suddenly it wasn’t so silly anymore. But okay. Suddenly we liked
each other in our foolishness. And if we don’t try to make the rest of the evening too long, it won’t be so bad, after all.”

I tapped my champagne glass to his. The tenderness had reached me, too, along with the stupid and silly.

“We won’t ever have any dinners back home.”

“No.”

“And we don’t have to be afraid of long talks about nothing.”

“Just the weather for a few seconds, now and then.”

“And we won’t meet socially.”

“Here’s to that.”

“But suddenly it’s a nice night, old Leonard Douglas, customer of mine.”

“Here’s to Harry Stadler.” I raised my glass. “Wherever he goes from here.”

“Bless me. Bless you.”

We drank and simply sat there for another five minutes, warm and comfortable as old friends who had suddenly found that a long long time ago we had loved the same beautiful librarian who had touched our books and touched our cheeks. But the memory was fading.

“It’s going to rain.” I arose with my wallet.

Stadler stared until I put the wallet back in my jacket.

“Thanks and good night.”

“Thanks to you,” he said, “I’m not so lonely now, no matter what.”

I gulped the rest of my wine, gasped with pleasure, ruffled Stadler’s hair with a quick hand, and ran.

At the door I turned. He saw this and shouted across the room.

“
Remember
me?”

I pretended to pause, scratch my head, cudgel my memory. Then I pointed at him and cried:

“The butcher!”

He lifted his drink.

“Yes!” he called. “The butcher!”

I hurried downstairs and across the parquetry floor which was too beautiful to walk on, and out into a storm.

I walked in the rain for a long while, face up.

Hell, I thought, I don’t feel so lonely
myself!

Then, soaked through, and laughing, I ducked and ran all the way back to my hotel.

T
he postman came melting along the sidewalk in the hot summer sun, his nose dripping, his fingers wet on his full leather pouch. “Let’s see. Next house is Barton’s. Three letters. One for Thomas Q., one for his wife, Liddy, and one for old Grandma. Is
she
still alive? How they
do
hang on.”

He slid the letters in the box and froze.

A lion roared.

He stepped back, eyes wide.

The screen door sang open on its taut spring. “Morning, Ralph.”

“Morning, Mrs. Barton. Just heard your pet lion.”

“What?”

“Lion. In your kitchen.”

She listened. “Oh,
that?
Our Garburator. You know: garbage disposal unit.”

“Your husband buy it?”

“Right. You men and your machines. That thing’ll eat anything, bones and all.”

“Careful. It might eat you.”

“No. I’m a lion-tamer.” She laughed, and listened. “Hey, it
does
sound like a lion.”

“A hungry one. Well, so long.”

He drifted off into the hot morning.

Liddy ran upstairs with the letters.

“Grandma?” She tapped on a door. “Letter for you.”

The door was silent.

“Grandma? You in there?”

After a long pause, a dry-wicker voice replied, “Yep.”

“What’re you doing?”

“Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies,” chanted the old one, hid away.

“You’ve been in there all morning.”

“I might be here all year,” snapped Grandma.

Liddy tried the knob. “You’ve locked the door.”

“Well, so I
have!
”

“You coming down to lunch, Grandma?”

“Nope. Nor supper. I won’t come down till you throw that damned machine out of the kitchen.” Her flinty eye jittered in the keyhole, staring out at her granddaughter.

“You mean the Garburator?” Liddy smiled.

“I heard the postman. He’s right. I won’t have a lion in my house!
Listen!
There’s your husband now,
using
it.”

Below stairs, the Garburator roared, swallowing garbage, bones and all.

“Liddy!” her husband called. “Liddy, come on down. See it work!”

Liddy spoke to Grandma’s keyhole. “Don’t you want to watch, Grandma?”

“Nope!”

Footsteps arose behind Liddy. Turning, she found Tom on the top stairs. “Go down and try, Liddy. I got some extra bones from the butcher. It really
chews
them.”

She descended toward the kitchen. “It’s grisly, but heck, why not?”

Thomas Barton stood neat and alone at Grandma’s door and waited a full minute, motionless, a prim smile on his lips. He knocked softly, delicately. “Grandma?” he whispered. No reply. He patted the knob tenderly. “I know you’re there, you old ruin. Grandma, you
hear?
Down below. You
hear?
How come your door’s locked? Something wrong? What could bother you on such a nice summer day?”

Silence. He moved into the bathroom.

The hall stood empty. From the bath came sounds of water running. Then, Thomas Barton’s voice, full and resonant in the tile room, sang:

In the kitchen, the lion roared.

Grandma smelled like attic furniture, smelled like
dust, smelled like a lemon, and resembled a withered flower. Her firm jaw sagged and her pale gold eyes were flinty bright as she sat in her chair like a hatchet, cleaving the hot noon air, rocking.

She heard Thomas Barton’s song.

Her heart grew an ice crystal.

She had heard her grandson-in-law rip open the crate this morning, like a child with an evil Christmas toy. The fierce cracklings and tearings, the cry of triumph, the eager fumbling of his hands over the toothy machine. He had caught Grandma’s yellow eagle eye in the hall entry and given her a mighty wink. Bang! She had run to slam her door!

Grandma shivered in her room all day.

Liddy knocked again, concerning lunch, but was scolded away.

Through the simmering afternoon, the Garburator lived gloriously in the kitchen sink. It fed, it ate, it made grinding, smacking noises with hungry mouth and vicious hidden teeth. It whirled, it groaned. It ate pig knuckles, coffee grounds, eggshells, drumsticks. It was an ancient hunger which, unfed, waited, crouched, metal entrail upon metal entrail, little flailing propellers of razor-screw all bright with lust.

Liddy carried supper up on a tray.

“Slide it under the door,” shouted Grandma.

“Heavens!” said Liddy. “Open the door long enough for me to poke it in at you.”

“Look over your shoulder; anyone
lurking
in the hall?”

“No.”

“So!” The door flew wide. Half the corn was spilled being yanked in. She gave Liddy a shove and slammed the door. “That was close!” she cried, holding the rabbit-run in her bosom.

“Grandma, what’s got
in
you?”

Grandma watched the knob twist. “No use telling, you wouldn’t believe, child. Out of the goodness of my heart I moved you here a year ago. Tom and I always spit at each other. Now he wants me gone, but he won’t get
me
, no sir! I know his trick. One day you’ll come from the store and I’ll be nowhere. You’ll ask Tom: What happened to old Grandma? Sweet-smiling, he’ll say: Grandma? Just now decided to hike to Illinois! Just packed and
left!
And you won’t see Grandma again, Liddy, you know why, you got an inkling?”

“Grandma, that’s gibberish. Tom
loves
you!”

“Loves my house, my antiques, my mattress-money,
that’s
what he loves dearly! Get away, I’ll work this out myself! I’m locked in here till hell burns out.”

“What about your canary, Grandma?”

“
You
feed Singing Sam! Buy hamburger for Spottie, he’s a happy dog, I can’t let him starve. Bring Kitten up on occasion, I can’t live without cats. Now, shoo! I’m climbing in bed.”

Grandma put herself to bed like a corpse preparing its own coffin. She folded her yellow wax fingers on her ruffly bosom, as her mothlike eyelids winced shut. What to do? What weapon to use against that clockwork mechanic? Liddy? But Liddy was fresh as new-baked
bread, her rosy face was excited only by cinnamon buns and raised muffins, she smelled of yeast and warm milk. The only murder Liddy might consider was one where the victim ended on the dinner platter, orange sucked in mouth, cloves in pink hide, silent under the knife. No, you couldn’t tell wild truths to Liddy, she’d only laugh and bake another cake.

Grandma sighed a lost sigh.

The small vein in her chicken neck stopped throbbing. Only the fragile bellows of her tiny lungs moved in the room like the ghost of an apprehension, whispering.

Below, in its bright chromed cage, the lion slept.

A week passed.

Only “heading for the bathroom” ran Grandma out of hiding. When Thomas Barton throttled his car she panicked from her bedroom. Her bathroom visits were frantic and explosive. She fell back in bed a few minutes later. Some mornings, Thomas delayed going to his office, purposely, and stood, erect as a numeral one, mathematically clean, working on her door with his eyes, smiling at this delay.

Once in the middle of a summer night, she sneaked down and fed the “lion” a bag of nuts and bolts. She trusted Liddy to turn on the beast at dawn and choke it to death. She lay in bed early, hearing the first stirs and yawns of the two arising people, waiting for the sound of the lion shrieking, choked by bolt, washer, and screw, dying of indigestible parts.

She heard Thomas walk downstairs.

Half an hour later his voice said, “Here’s a present for you, Grandma. My lion says: No thanks.”

Peeking out, later, she found the nuts and bolts laid in a neat row on her sill.

On the morning of the twelfth day of imprisonment, Grandma dialed her bedroom phone:

“Hello, Tom, that
you?
You at
work
, Tom?”

“This is my office number,
why?
”

“True.” She hung up and tiptoed down the hall stairs into the parlor.

Liddy looked up, shocked. “Grandma!”

“Who else?” snapped the old one. “Tom here?”

“You
know
he’s working.”

“Yes, yes!” Grandma stared unblinkingly about, gumming her porcelain teeth. “Just phoned him. Take ten minutes for him to drive home, don’t it?”

“Sometimes half an hour.”

“Good.” Grandma mourned. “Can’t stay in my room. Just had to come down, see you, set awhile, breathe.” She pulled a tiny gold watch from her bosom. “In ten minutes, back up I go. I’ll phone Tom then, to see if he’s still at work. I might come down again, if he is.” She opened the front door and called out into the fresh summer day. “Spottie, here, Spot! Kitten, here, Kitt!”

A large white dog, unmarked, appeared, yelping, to be let in, followed by a plump black cat which leaped in her lap when she sat.

“Good pals,” Grandma cooed, stroking them. She
lay back, eyes shut, and listened for the song of her wonderful canary in his golden cage in the dining room bay window.

Silence.

Grandma rose and peeked through the dining room door.

It was an instant before she realized what had happened to the cage.

It was empty.

“Singing Sam’s gone!” screamed Grandma. She ran to dump the cage upside down. “Gone!”

The cage fell to the floor, just as Liddy appeared. “I thought it was quiet, but didn’t know why. I must’ve left the cage open by mistake—”

“You
sure?
Oh my God,
wait!
”

Grandma closed her eyes and groped her way out to the kitchen. Finding the kitchen sink cool under her fingers, she opened her eyes and looked down.

The Garburator lay gleaming, silent, its mouth wide. At its rim lay a small yellow feather.

Grandma turned on the water.

The Garburator made a chewing, swallowing noise.

Slowly, Grandma clamped both skinny hands over her mouth.

Her room was quiet as a pool; she remained in it like a quiet forest thing, knowing that once out of its shade, she might be set on by a jungle terror. With Singing Sam’s disappearance, the horror had made a
mushroom growth into hysteria. Liddy had had to fight her away from the sink, where Grandma was trying to bat the gluttonous machine with a hammer. Liddy had forced her upstairs to put ice compresses on her raging brow.

“Singing Sam, he’s killed poor Sam!” Grandma had sobbed and wailed. But then the thrashing ceased, firm resolve seeped back. She locked Liddy out again and now there was a cold rage in her, in company with the fear and trembling; to think Tom would
dare
do this to her!

Now she would not open the door far enough to allow even supper in on a tray. She had dinner rattled to a chair outside, and she ate through the door-crack, held open on a safety chain just far enough so you saw her skeleton hand dart out like a bird shadowing the meat and corn, flying off with morsels, flying back for more. “Thanks!” And the swift bird vanished behind the shut door.

“Singing Sam must’ve flown off, Grandma.” Liddy phoned from the drugstore to Grandma’s room, because Grandma refused to talk any other way.

“Good
night!
” cried Grandma, and disconnected.

The next day Grandma phoned Thomas again.

“You
there
, Tom?”

“Where
else?
” said Tom.

Grandma ran downstairs.

“Here, Spot, Spottie! Here, Kitten!”

The dog and cat did not answer.

She waited, gripping the door, and then she called for Liddy.

Liddy came.

“Liddy,” said Grandma, in a stiff voice, barely audible, not looking at her. “Go look in the Garburator. Lift up the metal piece. Tell me what you see.”

Grandma heard Liddy’s footsteps far away. A silence.

“What do you see?” cried Grandma, impatient and afraid.

Liddy hesitated. “A piece of white fur—”

“Yes?”

“And—a piece of black fur.”

“Stop. No more. Get me an aspirin.”

Liddy obeyed. “You and Tom must stop, Grandma. This silly game, I mean. I’ll chew him out tonight. It’s not funny anymore. I thought if I let you alone, you’d stop raving about some lion. But now it’s been a week—”

Grandma said, “Do you really think we’ll ever see Spot or Kitten again?”

“They’ll be home for supper, hungry as ever,” Liddy replied. “It was crude of Tom to stuff that fur in the Garburator. I’ll stop it.”

“Will you, Liddy?” Grandma walked upstairs as in a trance. “Will you, really?”

Grandma lay planning through the night. This all must end. The dog and cat had not returned for supper, though Liddy laughed and said they would. Grandma
nodded. She and Tom must tie a final knot now. Destroy the machine? But he’d install another, and, between them, put her into an asylum if she didn’t stop babbling. No, a crisis must be forced, on her own grounds, in her own time and way. How? Liddy must be tricked from the house. Then Grandma must meet Thomas, at long last, alone. She was dead tired of his smiles, worn away by this quick eating and hiding, this lizard-darting in and out doors. No. She sniffed the cooling wind at midnight.

“Tomorrow,” she decided, “will be a grand day for a picnic.”

“Grandma!”

Liddy’s voice through the keyhole. “We’re leaving now. Sure you won’t come along?”

“No, child! Enjoy yourselves. It’s a fine morning!”

Bright Saturday. Grandma, early, had telephoned downstairs suggesting her two relatives take ham and pickle sandwiches out through the green forests. Tom had assented swiftly. Of course! A picnic! Tom had laughed and rubbed his hands.

“Good-bye, Grandma!”

The rustle of picnic wickers, the slamming door, the car purring off into the excellent weather.

“There.” Grandma appeared in the living room. “Now it’s just a matter of time. He’ll sneak back. I could tell by his voice;
too
happy! He’ll creep in, all alone, to visit.”