Meeks (11 page)
Authors: Julia Holmes
When he was a boy, Ben and his mother had watched the failed bachelors being marched down the street at the end of each summer, on their way to the factories, to the work crews in the park, to the river's edge, to the prison. The men in gray smocks shuffled past, and boys and girls threw apples at their feet, and rowdy men jumped down into their yards and shouted, “Throw out the trash! Throw out the trash!” until their wives cajoled them back up onto their porches, and Ben's mother rested her hands lightly on his shoulders and said, “What a shame."
Thanks to me, the Enemy was still at large in the woods, and now I had only Buddy's pistol with which to defend myself. Every waking hour, I waited for the Enemy whom I had spared to slaughter us. I waited for him day and night. During long, silent, defensive dig-ins behind the line of pines that spring, I listened more intently than I ever had. I listened to the sounds of spring: the crackling thaw of creeks, the rush of water, the new breeze through the trees, the thrum of insects, the wingbeats and calls of the red-throated birds. I tried to listen harder, better: though these were the sounds of spring, I feared that hidden among them was the sound of the Enemy advancing, expertly cloaking his footfall in the sounds of the world.
Summer came. The ground was sun-baked hard beneath our boots, the hornets drifted peevishly between the pines. I was resting in the ovenlike shade of a tent, watching the shadows of the trees shift along the taut canvas. A trapped moth bumped against the pale interior of the tent, hitting the end, I thought, hitting the end of all he'd ever know.
A fellow soldier had tried to buck me up, admonished me to remember my wife and my son. I pictured Ben, the question-generating machinery of youth whirring endlessly in his sweet, soft head, and I thought of my wife, how she could close my eyes and hold my head against her chest, and I could hear her heart,
tump, tump,
and all was well, and, yet,
still
our little camp was a plague of mud, snakes, hornets. I no longer cared if the Enemy found us, if he hacked away at me with a dull hatchet and made a woodpile of my limbs, sliced me to ribbons under the bright seal of the noonday sun. Let him. I wouldn't raise a hand against him. He was my Enemy only because someone had forced me to grow up beside him in hatred, and now we were as close as brothers, and it was already too late. I was cursed with an Enemy in life, and he was cursed with me. We would never know peace together or away from one another.
"
Move
, soldier,” seethed my commanding officer. “On your feet!” He was standing in the mouth of the tent. The wind picked up. I watched the shadow-needles of the ghostly pines rising and falling across the sun-bleached canvas overhead. I was in the bow of the ghost ship safely crossing the open sea . . . the waves were kicking at me, kicking at me.
Finally our tour of duty was up. The Enemy had never shown himself, never attacked, never so much as left a single track. We were sailing down the great river in the middle of the night, huddled together against the fresh chill in the air. “Soon you'll see your boy, Ben!” shouted a fellow soldier. The other men were jubilant, relaxed, but I was the prisoner of a lunatic thought: what if the Enemy had stowed away in my brain, where he would lie low until I was back in the heart of my life, my city, my home, my little Ben nested deep in his covers?
We had marched at full-tilt day and night to make it home in time for Independence Day, but I parted company with the other men by the old prison. “I want to visit my mother first,” I said, yanking my collar and nodding grimly toward the train station and the Sheds. It was simply the first thing that came to mind—I knew I couldn't go home. I took an old postcard from my pack and wrote a quick note to my wife. I handed it to a fellow soldier whose house was near mine. “Do you mind?” I asked. “I don't want her to worry when I don't come home right away.” I could hear the distant pops of hammers falling, the asthmatic hewing of the broad saws through the long planks, the shouts of men. The intolerable sounds of Independence Day.
I walked away from my bewildered brothers, out toward open country, and I thought of my mother. When one thinks of the Sheds (and, really, how many of us go out to see them for ourselves?), one thinks of the bookroom quiet, the dusky light, the “solemn hush of the countryside"—by which one means: the beautiful stoicism of women. To the very end, our mothers accompanied by birdsong and the sounds of trains and the endearing swarms of dust motes that visit them in the afternoons, when the sun cracks through the spaces between the boards and deepens the silence with light. But I preferred to think of my mother fighting for her life. I wanted her to kick at the chained doors and curse and scream and punch wildly at the boarded windows, the way young women do (or are expected to), when they refuse to marry, refuse to choose, and are entombed in the Sheds in the full bloom of youth.
I turned back toward the river and walked farther and farther out, until I had plunged back into the wilderness. I was immediately afraid. Alone in the cold woods, while my wife and son sat beside the crackling hearth and waited for the telltale sound of my boots on the front walk. I pictured Ben racing to the window and back again, at the mercy of his happy little body, a doomed little animal, all heart and appetite. But I walked deeper into the dark pinewoods, the tumultuous sea of leaves, the green-choked alleys of the creek beds. The fangs of the underbrush—it knows me, it has me, it's in me. Or my thoughts have fanged the underbrush, invented this dark green villainy. I tried to settle my mind—I knew that when I was unhappy in this way, all of life was an armory, a hall of weapons I polished with my thoughts.
Before long, the old dreaded project dangled in my brain. The villainous, mutineering hand of the mind had begun to turn its own crank. Where was this terrible volition originating (in my brain—where else)?
Where is this terrible volition originating?
A voice harangued me, followed me through the woods—I struggled to anchor it, with reason, to the center of my brain.
Where do you think you're going?
the voice sneered. The stalwart trees watched me indifferently.
"What are you doing?” I managed to ask myself aloud. But my thoughts were already re-forming the designations: the hanging vines were hangmen, the heaped leaves were pyres. I had the terrible feeling of wrongheaded lucidity that had dogged me since boyhood. I remembered suddenly that I had thrown my knife in the woods months before—I had wanted nothing more to do with it. Now, I was determined to retrace my steps to it. I knew that I was something that the universe would have to correct if it was to redeem itself in the eyes of others. I reassured myself that I was a better husband and father for limiting the liability of my wife and my son, for sparing them the elaborate negotiations in which the universe and I were now embroiled. The woods grew colder and darker, until I had to crawl on my hands and knees to feel my way.
Look at this new kind of creature crawling on the earth.
The hateful voice followed me through the woods. I was listening attentively, crawling through the darkness, trying to feel my way along a steep, rocky embankment.
Saw you ALONE
, said the voice.
Thought I'd come OVER
.
I woke the next morning deep in the woods—I was hopelessly lost, exhausted. I stared overhead, through the layers and layers of indifferent and alien leaves, beyond which the sky was pale and bright. I thought of the sameness of the leaves in the city, how abundant but ordinary leaves represent a profusion of Life, but perhaps one not worth living. I was a mere man, but I could add to the beauty of the world. I slid down the embankment to the river's edge. The soft green shapes of the algae-carpeted rocks were above the waterline and drying in the sun; the pink and gray granites, house-sized boulders of rock veined with quartz, looked in the autumnal light like tombs of silver and gold. I stood at the water's edge and looked to the opposite shore. Wheresoever the Enemy goes, we must follow.
Ben
The front door to the Bachelor House had swelled in the heat and was stuck open at an angle that permitted flies, hornets, mice, rats, dogs, and cockroaches to come and go freely but required a man of average size (Ben) to scrape between the door and the frame. He squeezed through, tearing another hole in his jacket, and climbed the stairs, listening to his own heavy footfall stamp the soft, ominous silence with a sad tempo. The halls were silent; he counted the closed doors . . . four, five, six . . . and pictured doomed bachelors behind each one, catatonic men in bed, staring, starving, waiting for the liberating “My brother!” of the Brothers of Mercy swarming the house. Up and down the street, the Bachelor Houses were dying their annual deaths. The rooms were cold and dark as empty cupboards, there was the smell of old kitchen grease congealing, there were the muddy tracks and leaf scrub drying out in the front hall. At night, the house creaked like an abandoned ship phantoming through the swells.
The door to Selfridge's room had stood open for days: another lucky man hurrying toward the warmth of an embrace that—what could possibly harm or alter a human being who loved and was loved?
In Selfridge's room still lived the many guns, another bachelor skill happily abandoned by its practitioner. There were guns lined neatly on the shelves and others depicted in posters hanging on the wall. Rows and rows: guns with flintlocks, those with hammerlocks, those known to misfire, those to be used in a duel, those carved of cherrywood, those with etched mother-of-pearl handles, those with the names of women, those with the names of generals, and those that were black and plain—the ones that seemed to be everywhere. Ben took one off the shelf and picked up a few bullets, which were scattered across the floor. Selfridge had shot out his window, leaving only the bullet-nicked white frame and the picture of the world.
Ben sat on the windowsill and loaded the gun. He aimed at the tree in the yard and fired, sending the birds into the air and the squirrels winding frantically down the tree. There was no denying the pleasure: he had made that happen. He made things happen! He fired again and watched the animals draining from the branches. At the base of the tree, they scattered along the ground, while the birds, able by virtue of flight to keep the problem in play, lifted, alighted, lifted, alighted.
Then Ben heard shouts in the house, someone struggling with the front door. He shoved the gun into his pocket and ran out into the hall. Finton was on the landing, peering down the stairs.
"Oh, my God,” said Ben. “They're here, they're here."
"Who's here?"
"The Brothers of Mercy are coming. No, no, no . . ."
"I don't think so—not yet. Calm down, Ben."
"Finton, please,” whispered Ben in a near panic. Did Finton not grasp that they had finally come for him? For his lack of concern in matters of this world, for their very serious consequences. For his noted absence from the world. For his long occupation of a place (a Bachelor House—worse, his mother's house!) designed for a discreet experience, a tightly contained form of youth (exuberance alternating with melancholy) from which one must move on. “Just go back to your room, Finton. And close the door."
"Ben, I can help—I've been through all this before."
"Finton! I don't think you understand your situation. It's not a normal situation. Please just hide."
Ben could hear some new and brutal force pushing at the door. He considered jumping from one of the second-story windows but pushed past Finton instead so he could peer down the stairs at the door. He could see someone trying to squeeze into the house—it was only a policeman! “I'll handle this,” said Ben. He jogged down the stairs, buttoning his jacket as he went. He poked his head amiably through the opening in the door.
"Officers."
Two policemen stood on the front steps. Several others milled through the yard, studying the grass, inspecting the flower beds. Ben smiled and buttoned the top button of his dark coat. Perhaps Selfridge is a wanted man, Ben thought hopefully.
The policemen stared.
"Sir,” said the shorter officer.
"Officers,” said Ben again, disliking the thin timbre of his voice. “Has something happened to Selfridge?"
The other officer, inexpressive and tall, wrote in his notebook:
Selfridge?
"Who is Selfridge?"
"One of us, a former boarder bachelor—I mean bachelor boarder. He's married, or, I should say, he is
getting
married."
The policemen smiled at one another fondly and took a step forward. The tall one said, “And you're jealous? Had your eye on his girl maybe?"
"No, of course not."
"Come out here, why don't you?"
Ben pushed his way through and stood on the front step with the officers.
"And who are you?” asked the short one, giving Ben an official look: gentle, predatory.
"Beh,” said Ben nervously.
"Ben,” corrected the tall officer.
The short officer gave a friendly smile: “Seems you've been treading on the tailor's good nature."
"What?"
"Even the tailor's generosity has its limits. He has notified us of his intention to stop carrying you."
"What?"
"You must vacate this house immediately. Unless you want to be charged with illegal occupation of a house."
"Wait. I paid him—"
The short officer regarded the tall one in disbelief. “Please tell me he isn't going to argue with us."