The Unspeakable (20 page)

Later that evening.

I could see Marbury sitting in the bar even from here, from my car parked across the street. It was dark inside, a heavy, wood-paneled place, low lights except for the pink and green glow of a jukebox and a flickering television playing in the background. A basketball game was on. Marbury was sitting at a table by himself, half eating a bowl of peanuts supplied by the bar no doubt. He looked lonely.

His expression changed when I walked in. First a wave and a big smile, then he cringed as I took off my coat.

“Not your collar. Not here, Peter.”

“Why not?”

“It's a bar, for God sakes.”

But nobody seemed to care. The few patrons were watching the game or else staring into their drinks. Either way I was safe.

“Nobody can see me. It's too dark.”

“They don't need to see you. Your vibes are enough.”

And sure enough, the bartender, who before was only standing there, wiping out glasses with a cloth, walked over. I saw one of his feet drag for an instant, almost hesitate when he saw me, as though he didn't know quite what to do next. Even whether he should come over to our table.

Finally he said:

“Name your poison, Father. Mineral water, soda, I even have wine.”

Scotch. Double it up, please. And save the ice.

What I wanted to order. In my mind I sounded exactly like Humphrey Bogart, except Bogie with a clerical collar. The bartender just looked at me. Maybe he blinked once or twice, thinking that I would disappear, but I didn't.

I said, “Anything diet for me. And a beer for my friend.”

The bartender left shaking his head, probably the high point of his evening. But Marbury wasn't so amused.

He said, “Some mood you're in.”

“We're not supposed to be happy on Good Friday.”

“Since when?”

“Since I talked to Louise Howser.”

I leaned back in my chair and told Marbury everything that the bookkeeper had told me, even going as far as producing a statement from her, which he read. He listened patiently while I spoke, rocking his body back and forth, a dumb grin on his face all the time.

It took a moment but he said, “Sure, I had money.”

“You admit it then?”

“Well, you can't give away what you don't already have.”

He stopped rocking and looked square at me.

“People needed it. It's one thing to feed and house someone, another to get them a job. Hard to get a job without a phone or when you stink. Try it.”

“You gave money away for that?”

“Yes. You expected something more exotic?”

“I expected you to exercise some common sense.”

“I thought I was.”

“Twelve thousand dollars, Marbury.”

“I don't know. I never counted.”

“Well, I did.”

The bartender came right by then and handed us both our drinks. I could see Marbury across from me, biting his lip. Half in humiliation, half in anger. But instead of taking a drink from his beer, as I would have, he just played with the condensation on the glass. Drawing faces. Clowns.

“I'd give away a million if it would help. Now if that's a crime—”

“It's a crime of judgment,” I said.

“Whose? Yours or mine?”

“You just can't hand out money.”

“I didn't. I checked people out.”

“You checked them out? How?”

“I spoke with them first.”

“Like how you talked with Tricky and his girlfriend?”

When he didn't respond I did.

“You remember Tricky. Quite the upstanding citizen.”

“You've seen too many movies, Peter.”

“Have I? Ask him that. You gave him money.”

“Who?”

I told Marbury what Father Stone had related to me. A man whose street name was Tricky hung around the shelter for a few weeks and Marbury eventually helped him, especially after he told everyone that he was going straight.

“That Tricky. He just got out of prison.”

“OK, I made a mistake.”

“See, that's what I mean, Marbury. You're an easy mark.”

“Is that what Stone told you?”

“He thought you were too kind.”

And I couldn't disagree with that assessment. For I've been a recipient of that kindness myself on several occasions. I remember one Christmas in particular when he gave me his car, a risky thing because none of us were supposed to have vehicles of our own, but nobody knew. I had missed my bus. And the only way I could get back to Minnesota was by car, which Marbury supplied, that old half-running Volvo. He even filled up the gas tank for me and gave me enough money to make it back in one piece. For he knew that car. Fresh oil every hundred or so miles, and driving on ice-slickened tires only made the ride more treacherous. But I survived and I never forgot the favor.

He smiled. “Is that what you think? That I'm too kind?”

“Yes.”

“Then you should talk to Jill. She might suggest otherwise.”

Marbury said that he moved in with Jill right away. He didn't
own very much, hardly more than the clothes on his back, so the move was an easy one. At least from that perspective. But the house that Jill lived in, a one-bedroom farmhouse right off the highway, the same house that Jill lived in with her ex-husband, looked like it was ready to fall down. Walls leaned in opposite directions. The roof was flaking off and leaky. Windows were broken. Steps crumbling. Weeds everywhere. For the first few months, Marbury said that he did little else but work and go to school. He rebuilt entire doorways by hand, replaced windows and dry rot, but nothing seemed to help. Once he finished with one project, another would present itself. If it wasn't the roof, it was the flooring. And the more that he worked, the faster the house just seemed to collapse.

The exterior of the house wasn't the only thing in need of repair. Nearly everything inside was broken as well. Only one burner on the stove worked. Lights were knocked out. The toilet ran over and flooded everything. Stairwells wobbled. Mice ran roughshod over the kitchen. But it wasn't always this way. When Jill and her husband first moved into this house, it was in good condition. Jill's husband, a real loser who spent most of his days drinking or out with his buddies, got the place on loan from a friend of his named Jack to settle on an old debt. But the only thing settled was the decay of the house. What began as flaking paint escalated into something horrible, an entire foundation that started to rot and sway beneath their feet. And the worse the relationship got, the more the house declined, like some kind of physical metaphor, until reaching its present state of disrepair.

Jill's husband, when he was living there, did nothing to stop it and actually cheered on the demise of the house by his neglect. He didn't work at all. He barely got up in the morning. Not that Jill contributed much herself. Between school and her job at the grocery store, the house came last. And when Marbury walked onto the scene he said that he felt what firemen must feel in the face of such destruction. Just tragedy.

Marbury began to work day and night. The sound of sawing and hammering broke any illusion of peace. And even Jill pitched in. Measuring boards and hauling out trash. She nailed as well, joining the project like any good assistant. But Marbury needed more than assistance. It was like filling a huge sinkhole. Once he got enough dirt together, it just disappeared into the earth without hardly making a dent.

And that's when it happened.

Marbury was taking a break from the house one day when he decided to work on the husband's old car out in the garage. The car had been sitting there idle for years. Spiders had spun webs in the engine block and dust covered just about everything else. The garage was unheated, quite cold, and Marbury went in to find his coat. But Jill had thrown his coat in the wash. He went upstairs to their bedroom and searched the closet for something else to wear when he saw a box of old clothes. The ex-husband's. Marbury said that he reached in and pulled out a shirt, harmless, and the shirt didn't even fit that well. But it felt good and he walked around with it on. He even wore it to work on the car. Just like the husband must have.

And the irony struck him there. Here was Marbury, wearing the husband's clothes, working on the husband's car, screwing the husband's wife in the husband's bed. Soon he found himself doing everything the ex-husband did. Watching the same television, drinking the same beer in the same easy chair with the same baseball cap on. He started to grow a beard for reasons he couldn't explain. Maybe the ex-husband had one. Or maybe Marbury was tired of shaving, he didn't know.

“I was tired of everything. That damn house especially.”

“Why didn't you just leave?”

“It's expensive to move. Besides, I didn't want to be alone. Not yet.”

Marbury said that Jill, noticing his changes, started to change herself. She was no longer the sweet girl who made him breakfast in the mornings after a night of lovemaking. In fact, they never touched anymore. She started to become more distant, angrily smoking cigarettes and bathing even less frequently. Like a protest. Soon the protest became verbal. She began to complain about money and how Marbury wasn't pulling his weight, in particular with the house. By this time, he had quit most of his nightly carpentry work for beer and football, except that half of the house was still unfinished. The upstairs had no heat. Not a problem for him since he liked it cold, but Jill complained incessantly that she was freezing.

And they started to fight more as well. Screams and angry words at first, then like most things, it escalated. Once the police were called by a neighbor. Another time Marbury walked out, only to return a few hours later. Still another time Jill broke a glass over his head, sending him to the doctor for stitches. But the worst night, he said, was the night that he hit her.

“I was drunk,” said Marbury. “But that's no excuse.”

“What happened?”

“We were fighting like usual. I guess I lost control.”

I thought I saw a tear well up from his eye but it quickly evaporated.

“Funny thing is, I couldn't leave.”

“A lot of people can't leave, Marbury. So they never do.”

It wasn't much of an answer but he took it anyway. We just sat quietly after that, watching the basketball game. I don't know who was playing, nor did I care. It was an escape.

The bar was thinning out. One man stood up, half drunk, and wobbled out the door. I saw a cab waiting for him outside but he
couldn't get in without assistance. The man kept stumbling, his legs and arms flailing on the pavement like a washed-up bug. I thought it was because of the alcohol until I saw the bartender look my way.

He yelled, “His glasses! He forgot them!”

I stood up and took the glasses. Maybe I thought about him wandering around half blind and drunk, or maybe I just didn't want to think about Marbury's story, I don't know. I ran for it. A rubbery arm was waving the door shut and I made my best move, trying to flag him down. But I was too late. He was gone.

“He'll be back,” said the bartender.

I handed over the glasses. “Is he a regular?”

“Never saw him before.”

Marbury gave me a resigned kind of shrug as I returned to our table. I thought about the man waking up the next morning trying to figure out what happened. He would probably replay this night over and over in excruciating detail, depending on his memory or until the evening just blurred together. Maybe this wasn't his first bar of the night. Or maybe he was visiting from out of town. He might not even remember where he was or what he did. And that lack of a memory would haunt him. But he would say that it was just the glasses that he lost, though I knew better.

“Forget about it, Peter. You're not responsible for the world,” said Marbury.

“I'm responsible for more than you know.”

“Like what? I assume you're not talking about the glasses.”

“Like a lot of things.”

Marbury looked at me. Studied me.

“Do you mean the railroad tracks?”

I meant the railroad tracks but I just didn't know it at the time.

“You mentioned that someone was living in the caboose,” he said.

“Yes. A man.”

“Well, who was he?” asked Marbury.

“Maybe he was my conscience.”

The railroad tracks.

In the Styrofoam cup the coffee was still warm, I could smell it.

My face was against the floor of the red caboose, hidden by a fortress of broken chairs and tabletops and blankets torn up in the air, when I heard it. The sound of someone shuffling, like feet dragging across wrought-iron metal. At first I believed it was Sandra, walking up the stairs of the caboose to get me, but the sound was too heavy. And before I could even think, debate my next move, the door opened and I saw a pair of old work boots. They had holes in them, the soles all wrapped up with silver duct tape.

It wasn't Sandra.

I froze, hoping that the person, now clearly a man, had forgotten something. He stood there for the longest time, not moving. I could see the lower half of his body shift and turn, like he was surveying the quarters, but I couldn't see his face. My chest was pounding. I could barely breathe, or when I did it was in short gasps. He started to rummage around, tossing things to the side. Then he found it. A comic book that was under another pile of debris. He bent over to get it when I saw his face turn my way. Our eyes met. A toothy smile. He was missing some teeth.

“I'm Superman,” he said. “Get your own.”

His face closed in on mine. And then I saw it. He had a large crease in his forehead, as though someone had hit him with a hammer or other such object but now it was just part of his face. He looked scary. Made only more scary by his nearly shaved head, and the fact that he was cutting off my escape route.

“I'm sorry, mister. I didn't swipe anything. Honest.”