Read Who Made Stevie Crye? Online
Authors: Michael Bishop
Tags: #Fiction, #science fiction, #General
Who Made Stevie Crye? (9 page)
XVIII
“
Seaton,” Stevie said, recovering a little
, “most visitors park in our driveway, not the backyard.”
He glanced over his shoulder at the motorcycle, a shiny black monster with enormous handlebars and a pair of built-in carryalls behind the long padded seat. “I’ll move it.” He grabbed the machine by its horns and walked it past Stevie toward the drive.
“Get out from under the swing set,” Stevie whispered to Teddy and Marella, motioning with her hand. “No telling what kind of manners that monkey’s got.”
The creature cocked its skull-like head and stared at her. She had never seen a living entity whose lineaments so clearly prophesied its inevitable end (save only aged or sick people passively awaiting death, like Ted in his final two months), and she dropped her gaze before the monkey did. Ordinarily, she knew, animals surrendered to human beings in staring contests. Not this time, though. The monkey had a demon on its side.
“How long has he been here?” Stevie asked Teddy, nodding at Benecke. “What does he want?”
“To see you,” Teddy said, still grinning. “A gentleman caller.”
Marella refrained from adding an editorial
“Yuck!”
Seaton had won the children over by arriving on a sleek chrome-filigreed motorcycle and bringing along his hideous pet monkey. How could a parent compete with such miraculous inducements?
“How long?” Stevie insisted. She was afraid he had shown up right after her departure for the post office. The thought that he had been “entertaining” her kids for the past half hour made her shudder. Benecke looked like a baby-faced assassin and his monkey like a miniature Nosferatu with fur. The ridiculous little football jersey in no wise diminished the animal’s sinisterness.
“Three or four minutes ago, Mom. That’s all.”
“The monkey was holding on to his back,” Marella added. “It was wearing a crash helmet. It jumped onto the swings as soon as he took its helmet off. And it climbed up there.” Unnecessarily, she pointed.
“An Atlanta Falcons helmet, Mom. See his shirt? He’s wearing Steve Bartkowski’s number. He’s a quarterback.”
“Well, I wish he were all the way back. All the way back where he belongs, wherever that is.”
“Costa Rica,” Seaton Benecke said, coming up behind her without his motorcycle. “That’s where his ancestors come from, but I don’t think
he’s
ever been there. I bought him in a pet store in Atlanta.” Hands pocketed, Seaton regarded his monkey as if reevaluating his purchase of it. “The people there may have got him through some other people at the Yerkes Primate Center. I’m not sure. Anyway, he’s an
old
monkey. I’ve had him five or six years.”
“Seaton, what’re you doing here?”
The intruder hesitated, scuffling his foot on the carpet of dead grass. “It’s my day off. Saturday, you know. Sorry I wheeled my bike over your lawn. It’s just I saw the kids back here —” He fell silent.
“But what’re you doing in Barclay, Seaton? You don’t usually spend your day off roaming rural Georgia, do you?”
His hand came out of his right pocket clutching a crumpled green bill. “That tip you gave me, Mrs. Crye.” He pushed the bill toward her. “I decided it wasn’t right to keep it. Dad pays everyone a salary. Nobody else gets tips, so I shouldn’t either.”
Is this young man for real? Stevie asked herself. Or are you being manipulated? If so, for what reason? Whatever the case, the bill between his fingers was the very one Stevie had given the cashier at Benecke & Sons to hand over to Seaton. She recognized the squiggle of red ink next to the engraving of Lincoln. For two days he had held that bill without breaking it. Not bad for a young bachelor with ash-blond hair, pudgy good looks, and a monster motorcycle. Didn’t he have buddies, a girl friend, expensive after-hours hobbies? True, he was a little weird (as the monkey testified), but no weirder than many contemporary young people who had not yet found themselves.
“Seaton, I gave you that money because you deserved it. You saved me eight or nine times that amount.”
“I came up here to give it back.”
“I’m not going to take it, Seaton.”
“I’ll stand here all night,” he replied, gazing at the money instead of her face. “I won’t leave until you take it.”
You mean it too, don’t you? thought Stevie. You’re just like Vincent van Gogh holding his palm over a candle flame to convince some little French gal of his undying love. If I don’t take the bill back, you’ll remain in my yard as a permanent fixture, like a clothesline pole or a birdbath. If I should convince you to leave with the money, you’ll just mail it back to me in a box—along with a gift certificate for typing paper and one of your own severed ears. Or maybe one of the monkey’s. At the moment this is a Mexican standoff, but
I’m
going to be the first to blink. I know it.
“Listen,” Teddy piped up, “if he doesn’t want that five dollars, I’ll be glad to look after it for him.” A monkey, a motorcycle, a gentleman caller, a dispute over money—why, this was a regular amusement-park tour for the boy. Six Flags Over Georgia in his own backyard. His grin was more wondering than avaricious.
Seaton turned toward Teddy.
“He gets an allowance,” Stevie said. “Don’t you
dare
give that to him.” She stepped forward and relieved their visitor of the bill. “You’re being foolish, Seaton. This was really yours.”
He seemed gratified to have won the contest. He plunged his hands back into his fatigue pockets and rocked on his heels. “That’s not the only reason I came, though.”
“It’s not?”
“No, Mrs. Crye. If you’d like me to check your typewriter, this could be a service call. Is it working okay?”
“Why shouldn’t it be?” The hostility in her voice surprised even Stevie. “You fixed it, didn’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then there’s no reason to look at it again, is there?”
“Not if you don’t want me to, Mrs. Crye. I just thought—”
“What?”
“I brought my tools. The timing might’ve slipped a little. I wouldn’t mind just giving it a look. For free, I mean. I’m not giving back that five dollars just to charge you more for something else. I don’t do that. I’m just—”
“—being neighborly.”
Seaton Benecke scuffed the soles of his combat boots on the twiggy grass and looked at the ground. “I read your article on the Ladysmith cancer clinic in yesterday evening’s
Ledger
. It was really good. You really got deep into that stuff—thermograms, nuclear medicine, and all. Really good. I always try to read what you do.” He looked up without engaging Stevie’s eyes. “I guess I just sort of wanted to see what your writing place looked like. I’ve never seen a writer’s place before, how you’ve got your typewriter and all set up. But I would’ve worked on it even if you wanted to bring it out of your office to the kitchen or something—if it needed it, I mean. I would’ve checked it out for you. Sometimes you can catch some things before they go wacky or really break.”
Teddy said, “He can stay for lunch, can’t he?”
Oh, Lord, not that trick again. Stevie glowered at the boy. How many times had she told him not to invite a friend to the house without first consulting with her in private? She could only appear ungracious if she refused such a request within hearing of the disinvited party. Teddy never learned. He issued invitations the way some people threw confetti.
“He’s come forty miles,” the boy pointed out. “It wouldn’t hurt for him to just check your typewriter.”
“I
know
how far he’s come. I’ve made that trip a few times.” Was Teddy being obtuse on purpose?
“That’s okay,” Seaton Benecke said. “I was going to eat when I got home. It’s hard to stop anywhere when you’re traveling with a monkey.”
“You’re welcome to stay,” Stevie said tightly, still trying to communicate her ire to her son. “If you don’t mind hot dogs or fried-egg sandwiches. That’s about all we’ve got.”
“We love fried-egg sandwiches,” Seaton Benecke declared flatly. “At home, Mrs. Crye, I fix them all the time.”
“Did you say ‘we,’ Seaton?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Look now, please don’t think me rude, but although I’m prepared to have
you
for a guest, I don’t think I’m ready for your monkey.” Just like I’m not ready for a train carrying toxic waste to derail in downtown Barclay. Just like I’m not ready for a reprise of Ted’s last two months on earth.
“He’s housebroken, Mrs. Crye. He’s neater than some people.”
The gall of
some
people, thought Stevie, was a poison they sprinkled about like baptismal water.
“Hello there,” Marella was saying. “Hello there, monkey. Grab this stick. Jump down here.”
The girl had extended a broken pecan limb toward the crossbar on which the white-faced, white-bearded monkey was sidling back and forth in its football jersey. The monkey ignored the stick, which was not quite long enough to reach the bar, but he opened his mouth and favored Marella with a hissing death’s-head grin. The monkey gripped the crossbar with his tail, as well as with his feet and hands, edging first this way and then that, a living windup toy.
“Please don’t poke at him,” Seaton said to Marella. “He’s really little, and he thinks you’re trying to hurt him.”
“I’m just
playing
with him. I want him to come down for lunch.”
Oh, me too, thought Stevie. That’s exactly what I want. Aloud she said, “Marella, put down that stick.”
Marella obeyed, whereupon the acrobat on the swing set startled Stevie by running along the crossbar and leaping over the girl’s head into the fork of the pecan tree. Briefly, terribly briefly, she had feared that the monkey was attacking her daughter, but he had merely been scrambling to a loftier haven.
Hands still in his pockets, Seaton ambled over to the tree and encouraged the tiny beast to come down.
“What’s his name?” Teddy asked him.
“’Crets,” Seaton replied abstractedly.
“Come on down, ’Crets,” Marella began baby-talking. “Come on down, little ’Cretsie.”
“Why do you call him that?” Teddy asked.
“It’s sort of a joke, I guess. I’ll show you how I get him down.” From the same fatigue pocket from which he had taken the five-dollar bill, Seaton removed a small metal tin of throat lozenges. Then he unwrapped one of the foil-covered drops and held it up to the monkey. “He’s always loved Sucrets. You can get him to do just about anything for a Sucret.”
’Crets demonstrated the truth of this assertion by leaping from the pecan tree to Seaton’s shoulder, taking the lozenge into his mouth, and cracking it with his teeth.
“He doesn’t suck them, though. He eats them. I suppose he probably is a little hungry. He only had some banana for breakfast this morning. That was about five hours ago.’’
“Poor dear,” Stevie said.
Marella circled behind Seaton, reached up, and thoughtfully stroked the monkey’s sinuous tail, which was dark brown rather than white and an inch or two longer than the animal itself. ’Crets did not seem to mind. He continued cracking his sore-throat medicine, and when he had finished, he begged for another. Seaton refused him.
“You’ll spoil your lunch,” he said.
XIX
The day had gone scratchy and sour
. Not even a gross of Sucrets would take away the sourness and sweeten what remained. An hour ago she had almost managed to forget her typewriter woes and her worries about Marella. The afterglow of mailing off her book proposal had still enveloped her.
Now, however, Seaton Benecke had invaded her kitchen, bringing with him—of all impossible things!—a furry little ghoul dressed in football-jersey drag. And she was cooking—
cooking
, for God’s sake!—for these freeloaders. She had caved in to Seaton’s easy assumption that he was welcome and to her kids’ infatuation with ’Crets. What a travesty of hospitality was her real mood, though, and how bitterly she resented this intrusion.
At the round oaken table in the dining area sat Teddy, Marella, and Seaton, the latter with ’Crets in his lap. From the stove Stevie could glance to her right down the length of her breakfast-bar island into the faces of her visitors, Seaton’s face a mask of pale piety, the monkey’s an uncanny blur as, like a spectator at a tennis match, the creature glanced back and forth between Teddy and Marella. His tiny head—you could probably crush it with a large pair of pliers—was all that was visible of the monkey above the table edge. In fact, Seaton resembled a piece of placid Buddhist statuary with an animate clockwork skull set into its paunch. Stevie hated having the animal in the dining area, but she was grateful that Seaton had not put ’Crets down and given him the run of the kitchen. There was a highchair in the attic, but to get it out for no longer than she intended her visitors to be on the premises would have required a much better hostess than she.
“He doesn’t like cold weather,” Seaton was telling the kids. “That’s why I’ve got him in this outfit. My mother made it for him—before she got sick a while back.” Seaton paused, as if considering the relevance of this last bit of exposition. Then he said, “He watches football on TV, and he can throw a plastic football—one of the little toy ones—just like Bartkowski . . . sort of. Sometimes his throws end up behind him.”
The kids laughed.
Stevie flipped the eggs in her skillet. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that ’Crets had stopped playing tennis-match spectator. The animal was staring at her, its black-ringed eye sockets like little portholes into nothingness.
“What kind of monkey is it?” she asked defensively. “He, I mean.”
“White-throated capuchin,” Seaton responded. “Capuchins are what you call organ-grinder monkeys, sometimes. You don’t see very many organ-grinders anymore, though. ’Crets has never worked with one.”
“Only with a typewriter repairman, huh?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Seaton gave a polite laugh. “’Crets likes to watch me fix ’em, but Dad doesn’t like having a monkey around the office. Not one that’s, uh, not related by blood, anyway.” He gave another perfunctory laugh to indicate that this was a standing joke between his father and him.
So rapidly did the boorish in Seaton’s character alternate with the pathetic that Stevie no longer knew whether to despise or pity him. The sinister aspects of his personality—if you ignored the vague menace embodied by the monkey—had given way to a shallow blandness. ’Crets continued to disturb Stevie, but she no longer feared his master. Owning a white-throated capuchin and riding a big black motorcycle were Seaton’s transparent attempts to distinguish a life devoid of any accomplishment but his mastery of typewriter repair. At twenty-five or twenty-six he was still an adolescent.
“Okay, kids,” Stevie said, “get off your fannies and set the table. I’m supposed to get some help around here.”
“Only one plate for ’Crets and me,” Seaton put in as Teddy went for the china and Marella for the silverware. “I don’t want you to have to clean up for two guests, Mrs. Crye.”
“We can spare an extra plate, Seaton.”
“No, no. Please don’t do that. Just one.”
“Does he need a fork?” Marella asked from the utensil drawer.
“Do you maybe have a cocktail fork?” Seaton asked Marella. “A cocktail fork’s about the right size for ’Crets.”
Stevie left the stove to help Marella find a cocktail fork in the jumble of the utensil drawer. Maybe ’Crets would also like a silver-inlaid napkin ring, a stem of imported crystal, and a finger bowl. Hey, a finger bowl might not be such a bad idea. She could tip a couple of drops of Lysol into the water while neither Seaton nor the monkey was looking. As it was, she would not feel right about her kitchen again until she had scrubbed it from baseboard to cornice and invited the county sanitarian in for an inspection.
The meal went well enough. ’Crets preferred his fried-egg sandwiches without bread, a stipulation Seaton had failed to make while Stevie was cooking. Consequently, the bread had to be removed from around the egg and the egg cut up into vaguely lozenge-shaped pieces before the capuchin could begin to eat. Seaton took care of these minor exigencies, transferring the bread slices to a napkin beside their plate (which slices, later on, Seaton ate), and Stevie was surprised by the daintiness with which ’Crets wielded the cocktail fork, spearing each bite of egg, lifting it to his mouth, and licking the fork tines before returning the instrument to his plate. Moreover, he chewed with his mouth closed. In the fastidiousness of this particular he clearly outpointed Teddy.
“You cook as good as you write,” Seaton said at length, pushing back his chair and daubing at his mouth with a paper napkin.
“That’s an ambiguous compliment.”
“Oh, no, ma’am. I liked it. ’Crets did too.”
“Well, maybe it’ll hold you on your ride back to Columbus.” Not too subtle, but you could hardly accuse
Seaton
of acute sensitivity. He was unaware of her discomfort (or, worse, indifferent to it), and ’Crets had resumed staring at her from empty-seeming eye sockets.
“He’s got to check your typewriter before he goes,” Teddy said. “So he doesn’t waste the trip.”
“That says a lot for my cooking and your company, young man.”
“You know what I mean, Mom.”
“My typewriter’s all right.”
“I’ll be glad to look at it, though. The timing and all. You’ve probably got one or two letters that spin back before they hit, don’t you? That happens to the Exceleriter sometimes.”
“It’s fine.”
“You don’t have any letters that strike off-center?”
“Only the
t
, Seaton. Sometimes the
t
doesn’t do quite right. Very seldom, though. It’s not anything to worry about.”
“That’s the timing. I’ll fix it.”
“Let him fix it,” Teddy urged her. “He’s already told you it’s free.”
Marella said, “Never look a gift horse in the mouth, Mama.”
“I don’t think that’s quite the adage you’re looking for,” Stevie replied. “Try ‘Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.’ ” The steely scrutiny of the capuchin and young Benecke’s low-key eagerness were wearing her down. They had purchased entry by returning her five-dollar tip. What else did they want?
Then ’Crets ceased staring at her. The animal twisted about on Seaton’s lap, grabbed the front of his fatigue jacket, and looked imploringly up into the young man’s face. Between his tiny pointed teeth ’Crets made a screeching noise. Marella leaned over and stroked his tail.
“Time for dessert, eh?” Seaton asked. “You want your dessert?”
Chutzpah enough to choke an army of stand-up comics. Stevie had made no dessert, and she was not about to whip up a banana-cream pie or a pan of cinnamon rolls so that Seaton’s monkey could satisfy his sweet tooth. To paraphrase another unfeeling lady, let him eat Sucrets.
But instead of looking to Stevie to appease the capuchin, Seaton jostled the monkey back down into his lap, lifted his right forefinger to the animal’s mouth, and allowed ’Crets to suckle the fingertip as if it were a teat or a Popsicle. A moment later, a snaky thread of blood ran down Seaton’s knuckle. He wiped away the blood with his other hand but did not take his finger from the monkey’s mouth. ’Crets kept feeding, his black-ringed eyes closed in a rapturous trance.
“Ugh!” squealed Marella. “What are you doing?”
“I cut myself on a typebar yesterday. One of the prongs on the machine’s
y
was broken. It sliced me good. ’Crets is trying to help me heal it.”
“By biting the scab off?” Stevie asked, repulsed. “What did you mean by mentioning dessert, then? Was that supposed to be funny?” Maybe so blunt a challenge was rude, but even Teddy’s face had twisted into an involuntary moue of disgust.
“Yes, ma’am,” said Seaton, stunned by her implied objection. “It was just a joke. Actually, I’ve had this little wound for years.” He still did not pull his finger back. “Sucking it’s something ’Crets likes to do. I don’t mind. It really doesn’t hurt. Makes it feel better, in fact.”
“I want you to stop it.”
“Ma’am?”
“Against my better judgment, and beyond my most outlandish dream, I’ve just entertained a monkey in my kitchen, Seaton. Don’t push me any further than that. As a matter of fact, I’m asking you to leave.”
“You want me to stop?” His wayward gaze had not yet intercepted her unwavering one. Could he really be so dense?
“That’s what I said. If that’s something you both feel compelled to do—finger fellatio or whatever you call it—please go on back to Columbus to do it. In the privacy of your own monkeyhouse, you can be consenting primates together, till blood poisoning or anemia do ye part. Here, though, you’ve overstepped the permissible.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Crye.” Using his thumb and middle finger, he pushed the capuchin’s head back and extracted his bleeding finger from the creature’s mouth. Then he wiped it ostentatiously on the breast pocket of his fatigues.
’Crets turned a stare of steady outrage on Stevie. For the first time since coming inside, she saw the
eyes
in his deep-set sockets, twin sparks of carnelian hostility. Even after being dumped ten yards behind the line of scrimmage, the Falcon quarterback never shot so damning a look at his departing tacklers. Stevie shivered but held the animal’s gaze.
Eventually, ’Crets blinked and sprawled out on Seaton’s leg. His posture implied that he had
let
her win.
Seaton, however, was chastened. He swung ’Crets from his thigh to his shoulder, stood, and spoke to the empty cut-glass vase on the table. “We’ll be going as soon as I’ve fixed that
t
on your Exceleriter, Mrs. Crye.”
“That isn’t necessary, Seaton.”
“Yes, ma’am. It’s the least I can do for eating lunch here. I didn’t mean to gross you out with ’Crets and so on. I’m not around other people all that much. It’s just a kind of habit we’ve got into. It’s a way of showing we like and trust each other. It’s never hurt me any, so far as I can see. In cold weather especially, I sort of feel I owe him. Costa Rica’s a long way off, Mrs. Crye. This keeps him warm.”
“I don’t think it’s advisable.”
“No, ma’am, not in front of other people. I just didn’t think.” He tapped the side of his head. “Uh, let’s go look at your machine so ’Crets and I can get moving on home.”
Although Stevie tried to dissuade him with a studied rekindling of her indignation, she just could not say, “No, I’ll be damned if I’ll let you up there.” She could not put her foot down. She felt sorry for Benecke. Teddy and Marella were on his side, and Stevie belatedly realized that even she wanted him to examine the Exceleriter. If he had somehow messed it up, given it, inadvertently, an autonomy comparable to a human being’s, maybe he could also
undo
this condition. (Of course the undoing of the typewriter’s maverick talent would leave her in the dark about a number of important matters, and maybe, after all, she did not really want the Exceleriter restored to its previous mechanical rectitude.) Sharing the burden with another person, even if that person was someone as strange as Seaton Benecke, definitely had its attractive aspects. And Seaton would believe where Dr. Elsa had (politely) scoffed.
“I just don’t want ’Crets to go upstairs with us. House-broken or not, he’s not going to get a chance to prove himself in my study.”
“We’ll take him back out to the swing set,” Teddy said.
Is that what you want? Stevie asked herself. Would you rather have Teddy and Marella watching ’Crets than suffer his presence upstairs? He’s a white-cowled vampire, a bloodsucking demon. Even if he beshat your drapes and Oriental rug, you’d be better off keeping him away from the kids. They’ll quickly live down their disappointment, but you’ll never live down an injury to either of them. Never . . .
“Seaton, there are a lot of dogs around here. In a small town they run loose. That’s the way people do things. If you’ll keep ’Crets close to you, he can come upstairs. He’ll be safer with us than outdoors with just the kids.”
Stamping her foot, Marella said, “Mama!”
“Hey, Mom, we can take care of him,” Teddy said.
“Listen: You remember that stupid Irish setter that came up onto our front porch two years ago and killed your guinea pigs? It pushed in the screen on their cage and dragged them out one after another.”
“Mom, ’Crets isn’t a guinea pig. Besides, I’m older, and there wasn’t anybody watching the porch that day.”
But Seaton (Stevie could tell) no longer wished to trust ’Crets’s welfare to her children. She had won—if you could call wresting temporary custody of that obscene beast away from the kids a victory—by resorting to deceit. Although it had taken Teddy and Marella a long time to get over the deaths of their utterly helpless guinea pigs, she had recounted the painful incident solely to prejudice Seaton against leaving the capuchin with them. Well, not solely. She was also exercising caution, playing a frightening maternal hunch.
“Crap!” said Teddy when he understood what she had done. He went out the kitchen door, slamming it behind him. Marella, imparting a similar emphatic impetus to the door, followed. Good kids, both of them.