Frolic of His Own (48 page)

Sincerely yours,

—Jack Preswig. Look at that. Sincerely yours, Jack Preswig. They've put the whole case in the hands of some flunky who's probably not even . . .

—You find your lawyers on matchbook covers what do you expect.

—That's got nothing to do with it Christina. They all do it, these white shoe firms and all of them, look at Harry, a senior partner will bill you three or four hundred dollars an hour, look at Swyne & Dour, they put an associate on it and only bill you maybe one fifty. Look at Mister Mudpye.

—And look at Mister Basie. You're simply not making any sense Oscar, I don't know what in God's name you're complaining about. You want them to save you money don't you? Now where are you going.

—To get back to work! couldn't she see? spending all day here trying to capture these voices of men a hundred years ago swept by the tide of events toward the end of innocence? to bring them to life caught up in the toils of history, struggling vainly with the great riddles of human existence, justice and slavery, war, destiny, things are in the saddle and ride mankind in Emerson's voice cut short by the tin trivial interruption of Jack Preswig? It mightn't sound so trivial when he got their bill she prompted him, and it had sounded to her like he'd spent most of the morning that way on the phone himself, calling the zoo and asking for —But that's exactly what I mean! he broke out, calling hotels, he'd been calling hotels in the theatre district, he'd been calling the theatre he'd tried calling the Directors Guild he'd even called the newspaper, he couldn't make an appointment and just send this script off if he didn't know where to send it could he? If he had somebody to help him, if he had a secretary like everybody else to handle these miserable chores but he was the one who ended up talking to their secretaries who were paid to be devoured by trivia, his indignation swerving back to the lilt of a brogue from the pages he'd picked up again struggling to recapture a voice from a hundred and more years ago, to bring it to life —now the word is out that it's no more than a war to free the naygers?

—Is Lily in the kitchen? I forgot to ask her to peel those carrots for supper, and one of these days might it occur to you to shave.

—Yes, preserve the Union! he came on in a burst that brought him back to his feet —with four million naygers running around free? Why, the woods is full of them right now, and do you expect a nayger to go back into slavery once he's been as free to come and go as yourself? The phone's ring caught him off balance. By the time he got there it had stopped ringing; by the time he was back out of reach it rang again, stumbling over a wastebasket —hello? Well who is it . . . Well who are you calling! what . . . hello? hello? He slammed it down, —Idiot! his hand straying down to the bulge in his trousers, was she out there in the kitchen? her nimble fingers stripping the hard length of a carrot? but all he found was the wilted package of Home Runs down there distending his pocket and he had one out down the hall before he reached the door.

—Oscar? Who was that on the phone. Well where is he.

—I heard something fall down before. I thought maybe it was him.

—You'd hear more than that if it had been, my God it was simpler when he was in his little cart at least you knew where he was, like a baby. You can't wait for them to learn to walk, the minute they learn there's not a minute's peace you wish they'd never, what was that.

—Christina! The doors crashed closed down the hall —the car's gone!

—It's right out by the porch Oscar, I can . . .

—Not yours, mine! The one that was in the accident, it's gone!

—Well it can't be, it's practically dark you can hardly . . .

—It's gone Christina, it was right out there beside the shed it's gone.

—Why in God's name would anyone, well call the police.

—That's what I'm doing! Where the . . .

—The number's right there stuck to the, will you put that thing out! What were you doing out there anyhow.

—That's what I was doing! You don't want me to smoke in here so I, hello? Yes, yes I want to report a stolen car, it's . . . what? It's a red . . . No, my name? Yes it's . . .

—Take that thing away from him will you Lily? Throw it in the, not in the fireplace no and open a window before he gives us all cancer. They probably drove it away when we'd gone shopping and he was sitting right here gaping at his odious nature program, God knows who would want it. Oscar? when he'd hung up, —who was that on the phone.

—Well who do you think it was! I just called the police didn't I?

—I know you just called the police. When the phone rang earlier, who was it.

—I don't know. It was some hysterical woman who could hardly . . .

—My God. Was it Trish? But you wouldn't know her voice anyhow you haven't seen her for years, not that it's changed since her operation for, what did she say?

—Nothing, I told you, just a lot of garbled . . .

—I'd better call her. Do you have to turn that thing on right now? and she had the phone, —even hear myself think while somebody's trying to sell me toothpaste, will you see if that water's boiling yet Lily? I put the, hello? Hello? Yes it's Christina, are you . . . No, Christina, it's Teen, yes are you all right? You sound . . . yes, did you call earlier? who? No, a rude man who hung up in your face? No he, you must have had a wrong number, you don't sound . . . oh my God! She turned her back to the diverting spectacle on the silent screen where the evening news led off with the inevitable skeletal parade scantily tailored in garments of pounded bark against an arid landscape, distant Mozambique this time, a woman with milkless dugs lofting a child deprived of food had there been any by a mouth fungus in the swelling vanguard of Africa's twenty eight million
famine orchestrated candidates for oblivion —but my God how awful, how did it happen? Far to the north, a gold mitred Pope in ankle length skirts rebuking a benumbed audience fresh from the potato fields with the revelation that all children born and unborn were gifts of God gave way, nearer home, to a fetid congregation of homeless being ousted from their digs under a railway trestle —still in court? But which was it, this nonsense about foetal personhood or for wearing the skins of these dead chinchillas my God that's all they're good for isn't it? a fur coat? A new denture cleaner and brightener, a new itch fighting shampoo, the radiant testimonial of a halitosis survivor nonchalantly sweeping up dead leaves with a bamboo lawn rake whipped up in a Chinese prison and back to news on the economic front, the trade deficit, a burgeoning bank fraud, a lugubrious President announcing China's most favoured nation status —chewing your bandages? Well stop him. Will you turn that thing down!

—Look! Christina look!

—Or an ambulance if you have to, you can find one in the phone book it will do you so much good. Can't you stop him? what? In court again tomorrow? No, pry his jaws open and push it to the back of his throat and then hold them closed till he . . . oh! did it break the skin? I'd better hang up yes, whenever you can, I'll get things ready, now. Did you have to turn that thing up while I was . . .

—But look! And surely enough, there looming over this dark tale with a happy ending the jagged planes of Cyclone Seven shed its scarred benisons down upon the wedding of Billy Pinks and Millie Kalikow, her fifth grade classmates clutching bouquets of bluebonnets side by side with the groom's ushers buoyed by the bonhomie of his colleagues on the loading docks at Miller Feed Co. drawn up at the patio entrance to the newly inaugurated Mel's Motel to be followed by the numerous guests into the generous dining area where the bride cut a cake topped by a spun sugar approximation of the towering artifact beyond the glass where their romance had first been kindled amid the passions that had blazed forth here on a darker occasion as the screen revisited the floodlit melee of flying rocks and beer cans, Stars, Bars and Stripes asunder, signs and placards brandished and trampled
GOD IS JUDGE
aloft and
IMPEACH
smouldering on the judicial robes of controversy lately put to rest by the conciliatory visit of Senator —wait stop it, what are you doing!

—I'm turning it off, what does it look like I'm doing.

—No but didn't you hear what he . . .

—I don't care what he's saying, my God do we have to go through that scene again? What time is it.

—Didn't you hear what he started to say about the . . .

—Please! before we, it's too late to go shopping isn't it, will you write
down chicken? Lily? have you got a pencil, juices, soup, something bland, sole, plain flounder if they don't have it, rice, beef broth and, oh and do we have a heating pad Oscar? one that works?

—Yes but I've been using it for my . . .

—I'm sure you can manage without it for a few days, there's no sense filling the house with them, there's that old hot water bottle Father had for his gout you can find that and, yes and some gauze bandage she may forget to bring any she's been so distracted, this commotion over her daughter's breakdown when she cut her wrists last night and little T J called the doctor going to court like that all day or they might have thrown out this fight over her mother's will if she hadn't shown up and this sanctimonious idiot who threw catsup on her fur coat in a courtroom right down the hall where she has to show up tomorrow for that revolting boy with his absurd paternity suit when the whole thing literally went down the drain weeks ago my God she's so brave, if you could have heard her just now. Bright, cheerful, she even thought of you Oscar, the midst of all she's going through asking if it would upset you if she comes out?

—But, well no but how long do you think she would . . .

—For as long as she wants to! I've never heard anything so selfish even from you, we've taken your friend here in haven't we? She can sleep right there in the library, I think you're able to start staggering up the stairs to your own room again aren't you? You can help me air it out after supper Lily and get rid of those stacks of newspapers, they can go right down to the laundry room Oscar if you can't bear to part with them, it's not as though you're being asked to actually do anything my God, I'm the one who'll be waiting on both of you aren't I? And that little phone stand right there Lily, it can go in the library where you can take her tea in the morning, or coffee, write down some sort of muffins will you? or those frozen croissants though God knows she may just want to sleep, is that asking too much?

—No but listen, Christina . . .

—Is it? in a cry taken up next morning before a drop of coffee —or just tea Lily, and you can sleep on that couch in the sunroom can't you, I've napped there and it's quite comfortable, do you have that list? I'd like to get down there when the stores open, we'll have plenty to do here, will you try to pick up your things in the library while we're gone Oscar? that's not too much to ask is it?

—No but Christina, listen . . . but the doors down the hall clattered closed behind them, the car's engine thumped, thundered, and they were gone leaving him to falter his way back from the kitchen splashing tea in the saucer where he set it down, gathering up pages, clearing his throat, the words coming hit or miss, coming in chirps, descending for —Ahhh!
must a man be scourged then, and racked, have his eyes burnt out and then be set up on a pole, to know that he should wish, not to be just, but to seem it? plaintive now, almost a bleat, was it the words? his choice of them? or the very words themselves, the strongest words in the finest language in man's history, God what they could accomplish with the simplest of lumber, the mansions they had built: Now he belongs to the ages! Maintenant il appartient à l'histoire, sheer tissue paper. Jetzt der gehört er der Welt? Geschichte? like a cow backing into a stall. Let them look up at the sky then! if they must be so blind . . . He stood gazing out over the pond where each branch on the leafless trees standing out sharply on the opposite bank blurred into a dull strip of grey without a cloud in the sky, putting down the pages to steady himself as the whole middle distance seemed to come closer and fall away, abruptly seizing up some pages he'd left on the sill there and bracing himself as though facing an audience intent for the facts not the words, not the sound of the language but its straightforward artless function, —Grant's army ascending the Tennessee River to disembark at Pittsburg Landing where Buell's divisions were to join it, the Confederate army deployed in battle lines near the Shiloh church barely two miles away in the gloom that had descended out there over the pond where the few isolated houses and the wide lawn below seemed to slip into the water as though the pond were flooding, and he took out the last Home Run to smoke on the veranda before he brought in the newspaper, settling back in the familiar embrace of his immobilized chair to fold back its pages in wide sweeps and mutterings, guttural sounds of impatience, aversion, an occasional mmmph of satisfaction, a gasp, ha! just as the sharp clack of heels down the hall brought him to his feet.

—Oscar? can you help us here?

—Listen to this! Listen. A new court case surfaced today in the boiling controversy that has engulfed the notorious outdoor steel sculpture known as Cyclone Seven since the initial uproar that greeted its first appearance in this sleepy rural hamlet, far from . . .

—Put some water on to boil will you Lily? in the big pot with a cover, will you help her with those bags Oscar?

—In a minute listen, made headlines recently when a small dog named Spot, trapped in its interstices, was killed when the towering structure was struck by lightning, provoking a nationwide outpouring of grief. The dog's body was accidentally disposed of, and its owner, a boy named James B acting through his guardian, has now brought suit against an enterprising glover for appropriating the dog's name in connection with a new line marketed as Hiawatha's Magic Mittens, which . . .