Winter Vacation

[This is a story about a teenage boy who desperately wants to try a different reality. He wants, like most teenagers (and adults!), to be popular. Feel free to print the Google document instead of reading the story as a blog post. Photo below by Michael ONeal.]


Arthur Bradford Sims’ parents had called him at least once a week all fall and carried on about what a great town they had moved to and how wonderful his furniture looked in his new room and how much they were missing him and looking forward to having him home for winter vacation; and now on his first full day at home, his father was going to lunch with the Rotarians and his mother was downstairs putting on her Pink Lady uniform. He was glad he had slept through breakfast so she couldn’t kiss him goodbye in her Pink Lady uniform. She hadn’t even come to the airport to meet him. “Your mother couldn’t get out of her day at the Gift Shop, the busy season, you know,” his father had said, giving him a firm handshake, a clap on the shoulder. “But she and Tena have everything shipshape for you.”

“Tena?” he had said but he knew, of course, that she would be the maid. His mother always had a maid, always black, and usually middle-aged. He had spent a lot of time in the kitchen with his mother’s maids. He would come home from school and spread his books out on the table and there would be a huge slice of apple pie waiting for him and whatever he wanted to drink. He blamed his mother and her maids for his tendency to overeat.

“You look like you’re getting enough to eat at that school,” his father had said as soon as they were on the freeway.

“Starches,” Arthur had replied, squirming under the seat belt and hitting his fist against the palm of the other hand, thinking food fights, hard rolls flying through the air, terror the first time one landed in his plate, his arm going up hesitantly (as if he were truly taking aim) and sending it flying back wherever it had come from. “The plane made me feel a little sick,” he had said. “There was a lot of turbulence.” “You’d never make a sailor,” his father had said.

“Damn right,” Arthur thought, waiting for the two of them to get out of the house. “I’ll never make a sailor.” He lay on his back staring at the ceiling, the initials his mother had embroidered on his pajama pocket, rising and falling with his steady breathing as he blotted out all objects that attempted to drift (his peripheral vision was extremely acute) into his consciousness—the braided rug, the walnut dresses, the Eye-Saver Study lamp—all objects so familiar and intimate that their very familiarity assaulted him. If furniture could be squeezed, his thoughts would drain from their atoms. The ceiling was new, blank, white and knew nothing about him, especially it did not know that he had never had a real girlfriend. It was a tabula rasa, the here and now, the numerical fact that preceded minus zero, that upon which nothing depends.

“Arthur, Arthur,” his mother called up the stairs. “Darling, we’re getting ready to go out now. Don’t forget about my stamps. I like the Madonna, but if they’re out, get the other kind.”

“Okay. Goodbye,” he called out, cheerfully. “Have a good time. See you later.” Still supine, he was not at all cheerful and he did not want to be called “Arthur” anymore and he did not want to walk downtown and get stamps for his mother. He didn’t even know where the Post Office was. The Courthouse is next to the Jailhouse and the Jailhouse is next to the Post Office, a mini-civic center, his mother had said, laughing as if anyone at all would be able to find the Post Office. But he didn’t know where any one of those buildings was. He didn’t know one person besides his parents in this stupid town and probably wouldn’t know any more when his vacation was over. For sure, he wouldn’t know any women. The thought of his roommates lying on the beach at Ft. Lauderdale watching the girls go by while he wandered around in this two-bit town looking for the P.O. gave him a rash.

He heaved a sigh and heard his Father’s confident, managerial voice booming through the hall, “Fix Arthur some hot tomato soup and a grilled cheese, Tena.” Arthur waited to hear what Tena (short for Wheatena, his father has said on the drive back from the airport) would reply; but if she spoke, her voice was too soft for him to hear. He hasn’t seen her yet and while his father had said she was an excellent maid, very industrious, never wastes a minute, he hadn’t said whether she was 18 or 80. Arthur was hoping to try out his powers of conjecture before his visual perception was called into play, but he needed a few minimal clues.

The front door closed and he concentrated on the ceiling again, his crystal ball. Now the two of them (Tena and the young master) were in the house alone. He listened intently; he lay very still and listened with his whole being. He hoped she would sing or talk to herself; but instead she was dialing a number. “Mary Beth, honey, tell your Daddy that I’m going to talk to Jason this afternoon and I’ll tell Jason what your Daddy said I was to tell him. And tell your Daddy I thank him very much. See you tomorrow.”

Then the vacuum began and went on humming steadily for fifteen minutes, preventing him from holding the sound of her voice in his power. He strained for a pause in the hum, but none came. He had wanted her to be carefree and untroubled and already he knew she was mixed up in something with Jason, although her voice had been calm and sweet talking to “Mary Beth, honey.” He wondered if she would call him “Arthur, honey” or if he would tell her straight out that he wanted to be “Brad, honey.”

The vacuum stopped and a closet door opened and shut. Fear and hunger gripped his stomach with twin pangs. Maybe she wouldn’t hang around if he didn’t come downstairs and show himself. With one motion he threw back the covers and grabbed for his clothes, looking out the window to see what the weather was like. It looked cold, but compared to New Haven it probably wasn’t. He had one leg in his jeans when he heard her going out the back door; and when he hobbled over to the window to be sure, half in and half out of his pants, the window was steamed up and he had to rub a circle before he could see a slightly-built young woman (yes, black) dressed in a short suede jacket and wearing a red cap, ear muffs, and red mittens walking away from the house.

He yanked the window up and called out, “Tena, Tena. Where’s my lunch?” but she didn’t look back. She didn’t walk any faster away from the house but she kept walking like she had a place she needed to get to by a certain time.

He closed the window and thought about getting back in bed, but changed his mind and buttoned his jeans, gazing out at the house next door, almost exactly like this one except for a high fence around the backyard. A brace of unexceptional abodes, he thought. “We found a lovely Dutch Colonial,” his mother had written, “And we have wonderful neighbors who have made us feel very welcome.”

So why didn’t she just have Christmas with her wonderful neighbors? How come she’d had to tell him in every letter how much she was looking forward to having him home for winter vacation.

“Hot damn,” he said, kicking his shoes under the bed and then getting down and pulling them out to put on. As long as he had got up he might as well go downstairs and eat thought he wasn’t as hungry now as he had thought he was. “Curses, foiled again,” he said and practiced a few of his Gene Kelly steps. For once they had bought a house that didn’t have carpeted stairs.

On the kitchen table there was a note in a very neat cursive hand, “Arthur, your mother said if you didn’t come downstairs by the time I finished my work that I could leave your lunch on the table. Tena.” The note was propped against a can of tomato soup and a cheese sandwich wrapped in saran. There was a can opener and a small sauce pan next to the soup and butter had been spread on top of the bread.

“Well, I can see you don’t believe in babying the young master,” he said and ate the cheese sandwich, turning the bread around so that the buttered part was on the inside. Then he opened cupboards until he found where the cans were kept in this new house and put the can back where it came from. They would never run out of tomato soup. His mother bought it by the case.

He sniffed for the faint perfume of Tena’s presence, held the note to his lips, and looked again at the neat handwriting. He wondered if she ever signed her name “Wheatena.”

“I had to put that down on the social security form,” his father had said. “Embarrassing.”

He folded the note and put it in his back pocket and then went to the refrigerator to see what kind of ice cream his mother had stocked up on. They never ran out of ice cream.

The back doorbell rang and he brightened thinking maybe Tena had forgotten something or felt sorry about not fixing his lunch and had come back but instead it was a kid (white) pressing her nose and mouth against the glass and crossing her eyes at him while she was waiting for him to figure out how to unlock the door. “Let me in,” she hollered. “I’m cold standing out here.”

When he got the door open, she came in and went right over to the register and let the warm air go up her pants legs.

“Arthur Bradford Simmons if your name,” she said, taking off her jacket and hanging it over a chair. “You sure don’t get up very early.”

“My vacation,” he said. “What’s your name?”

“Mary Beth Jones,” she said. “You can call me Beth.”

“Okay,” he said. “You can call me Brad. Would you like some ice cream?”

“I’d rather go to the drugstore and get a banana split. Want to?”

He wondered if Tena was going to come back after a while and he wasn’t sure he wanted to walk downtown with this kid, but on the other hand she was bound to know the way to the Post Office and possibly she was the “Mary Beth” that Tena had been talking to in which case he could find out who Jason was.

“I’m kind of waiting around for my mother’s maid to come back,” he said.

“She’s gone?”

“How do you know?”

“Well, she works for your mama on Tuesday and Thursday and for my mama on Wednesday and Friday and I know what she does cause I live next door and I saw her leaving and what would she come back here for when nobody’s home but you.”

“Oh, yeah, do you know everything?”

“I know a lot,” she said. “What do you want to know?”

“Where’s the Post Office. I have to buy some stamps for my Mother. She’s got so much volunteer work to do that she doesn’t have time to buy her own stamps. She needs somebody with a college education to come home for Christmas and go to the Post Office for her.”

Mary Beth grinned at him and started to put her jacket back on. She was still wearing her galoshes. “Yeah,” she said. “Your papa and my papa are both Rotarians and your mama and my mama are like this.” She held up two fingers.

He wondered if this kid could possibly understand how much he hated it that fifteen minutes after his mother moved to a new town she did her old Esther Williams act, diving into the Junior League or the Pink Ladies or what have you.

He had been about the age of this kid the Thanksgiving his father had taken him to a restaurant because his mother was running a special Feast and Musical for the local nursing home.

“You mother is Admiral material, son,” his father had said. “She would have loved to have a big family, but it didn’t turn out that way.” His father had looked at him like he was at fault for being an only child and worse he had looked as if he were going to tell him that he was adopted or the product of artificial insemination or something like that. Instead they had gone home and built a fire in the fireplace; and he hadn’t had the nerves to ask if his father meant to say anything else and he didn’t. His father showed him how to arrange the kindling and always have three logs and don’t use but a wisp of paper. They never had lived in a house that hadn’t had at least one fireplace.

“Let’s get going,” he said to Mary Beth. “Do you need to tell anybody you’re going?”

“Naw,” she said. “I left my mama a note that I was coming over to see you.”

“How old are you anyway,” he said, breaking out in a sweat. If she was 13, he was calling it off.

“I’m ten and a half,” she said. “Look, my best friend is Jewish and she always goes to visit her Grandmother when everybody around here’s celebrating Christmas and television stinks in the daytime and I’m tired of reading.”

“Let’s go,” he said and pulled his coat off the hanger in the hall closet.

When they got to the front door, she said, “Your mama leaves the house key inside that pitcher.”

“At the last house,” he said. “This was in the kitchen.”

She smiled at him. “My mama told your mama it’s an antique and that she ought to display it.”

“Does the pitcher therefore become what it was not before?” he said, “Or is it the same object it was when I knew it?” He sounded, he thought, a little like Hamlet holding “Poor Yorick’s” skull.

“The Post Office closes at five o’clock,” she said and reached inside the pitcher and handed him the key.

He locked the door and they walked out to the sidewalk. He wondered if there was a sex-linked characteristic that women have, are born with, for getting their own way.

“Do you like Tena?” she asked when they were waiting at the first corner for the light to change.

“I like her and she liked me,” the kid said. “Her boyfriend’s in the Jailhouse.”

He wished he hadn’t gotten up. “Did he do something serious?” The cheese sandwich felt like it had congealed in his gut.

“He was in a fight,” the kid said, reaching up and taking his hand. “Nobody was killed. Tena told my Daddy he had to fight back, but the police put him in jail anyway.”

“Will he get off? Did you make this story up?” He let go of her hand and stopped walking. “Are you putting me on?”

“I don’t care if you believe me or not,” she said, shaking her head as if he were a piece of hair that was getting in her way, “But you better be nice to Tena or I’ll sic my dog on you.”

What kind of place had he come to? He hadn’t done one blessed thing and already he was being threatened by a ten-year-old girl.

She reached for his hand again. “I don’t think you’re mean. Your mama said you were too nice; that’s why you hadn’t ever had a girlfriend.” She looked up at him like she would be his pal for at least the week her friend was gone to visit her grandmother but she wasn’t making any promises beyond that. He knew the look. When they got to the Post Office he told her to go in and ask for a sheet of Madonna stamps and gave her a five-dollar bill. He said he would buy her two banana splits if she would do that for him. He could see there was a line and only one window. It was going to take at least fifteen minutes and he could imagine the going-over from the local populace he would get if he was to stand in that line, either by himself or with her. It was probably just what his mama had in mind.

“Don’t go off anywhere,” the girl said, taking the bill. She pointed to a sign set outside the Post Office saying “Learn Electronics—Be a Naval Technician.” She instructed, “Wait right there.”

He looked at the three people on the poster for a while, a black man, a white woman, and a white man. They looked like they knew electronics backwards and forwards.

He turned around and saw that the Courthouse and the Jailhouse were directly across the street, one behind the other. Like the Post Office, they were built of yellow brick. He could see that there was a certain economy to having the Jailhouse next to the Courthouse. There was neatly trimmed shrubbery planted all around the Courthouse and a lawn of winter grass on three sides but the Jailhouse was surrounded by crushed granite and a ten-foot fence with three strands of barbed wire at the top. While he was counting the number of windows, somebody on the second floor waved a handkerchief between the bars, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Tena coming along the path that led from the Courthouse. She was still wearing the bright red hat and mittens but she had taken off the ear muffs and she was carrying a giant sack of popcorn. When she got up close to the fence, he saw a dark brown arm come through the bars and wave. There was a bandage around the wrist.

She stood in front of the window and listened to what the person inside (Jason, he assumed) was saying and she shook her head yes and no several times. Some other people came over and started talking to her and looking up at Jason. He couldn’t understand anything any of them said; but when they moved off and left her standing by herself, she called out, and the wind caught her sweet, clear voice and carried it to him like a gift, asking Jason, “Do you like popcorn? I brought you some popcorn.”

Tears formed in his eyes and he turned his back to the Jailhouse for fear she would look around and see him watching and listening.

The kid had finished at the window and was coming towards him. He wondered if he told her that Tena was talking to Jason at the Jail, what she would do. Leave him standing on the sidewalk while she ran off to be with Tena? Drag him along with her to talk to Tena? He felt like he was in some kind of “B” movie. Any minute he expected somebody to come over and say something insulting to him. He couldn’t think what it would be but something he would have to respond to with physical violence.

All the way to the Drugstore the kid talked a mile a minute, telling him everything he would ever need to know about this town—where the Seven-Eleven Store was, where he could get his hair cut and his shoes shined and what days the Library stayed open.

When they got to the Drugstore, she steered him to a booth and then sent him to the fountain for their order. He had finished his coke before she had barely started on the second scoop of ice cream. He watched the methodical way she dipped her spoon and wondered if she could actually eat two banana splits.

If just once in his life somebody (anybody) would ask him (not tell him) did he like popcorn, he would die content. A yearning took hold of him so overpowering he told her he had to make a phone call and went to the pay phone in the back by the prescription counter and called his roommates in Fort Lauderdale. They were about to walk out of the room to go to the beach and they let the girls they had with them say “Hello, Brad, hurry on down.” He said he’d be on the Silver Comet faster than ice cream could melt or tomato soup form a good skin on top and he would not even leave a note on the kitchen table.

“We’ll make a song about that,” one of the girls said and he could feel in his bones what a good time it would be.

He leaned over Mary Beth finishing up the cherry she had set aside for the last bite, “Tell my mama I’ll be calling her on the phone. I’m going to Florida for my vacation.”

The look on her face (he remembered that she had been counting on him for entertainment) reminded him of his mother and how he had studiously avoided giving her a good smack on the lips. Now that he was cutting out, he wished he had. Instead, he leaned forward and kissed Mary Beth on the cheek. “Thanks kid,” he said. “Thanks a lot.”

[Written by Virginia McKinnon Mann. Undated.]

The Dumbwaiter

[Feel free to print the Google document instead of reading the story as a blog post. Photo below by Elliot Margolies.]


When Mr. Hexter died, there was a lot of curiosity, morbid curiosity you might call it, about his artificial leg. Some people thought that it was like false teeth, that nobody would think of removing a person’s false teeth before burial, while others argued that he had died in bed with the leg off and it would be more natural not to strap it back on just for the show.

Actually the question was moot because no one knew where he kept the leg at night when he took it off and was resting in bed. The funeral director said he couldn’t find it.

The other mystery which puzzled people like my brother, who had read all the Sherlock Holmes books, was that Mr. Hexter’s house was supposed to have a dumbwaiter. It didn’t seem reasonable. The house was only one story with three rooms, barely large enough for a bachelor like Mr. Hexter who took his meals at the boarding house downtown and who had no relatives to entertain and never engaged in card parties or otherwise invited anyone save the minister to cross his threshold.

How could a one-story house have a dumbwaiter, my brother and I asked ourselves over and over. No other house in town had such a device. The grandest domestic arrangement we knew of was a backstairs in the home of a former congressman, a person far above Mr. Hexter’s station in life. Yet we had always known about the dumbwaiter the same as we had always known not to ask Mr. Hexter how he lost his leg or how it was he had no family.

“He came here a grown man,” our father said, severely, when my brother brought the matter up. “If he wanted folks to know his life story, he’d have told us.”

“Perhaps no one ever gave him a chance,” my brother said. Like myself he was rather fond of Mr. Hexter, who always seemed glad to see us when we were sent to his shop with our parents’ shoes.

After we had stood respectfully at the counter for a while, he would look up and stop his noisy machine. Then he would limp over and hold out his hands expectantly, fondling the leather at the points of pressure, pushing at the sides for stitching that might have loosened, and finally slipping his hand inside to see if the inner sole had been abused.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he would say and launch into a recital of the deficiencies which must be corrected, giving a financial accounting for each item. While he was making this examination and diagnosis, he would limp restlessly back and forth in the small space behind the counter and giant sewing machine, the stiff leg heaved along by the rest of him.

He limped that way into church too, taking the steps one leg at a time, settling into a pew towards the front, his stiff leg stretched straight out. Invited to rise and fall as the minister directed, most of the infirm and elderly remained seated; but not Mr. Hexter, no matter how awkward. He was a man of observance.

“Too bad he wasn’t more of a mixer,” our mother said after the funeral, helping the funeral director to arrange the flowers over the new mound.

“We could have asked him to Sunday dinner,” my brother said, as if there were something about Mr. Hexter he would like to know in particular.

“A shoemaker must stick to his last,” I said, eager to change the subject for I could not bear to hear it when my brother was being impertinent.

“And now he’s had his last chance,” my brother whispered in my ear, pulling me aside to tell me that the funeral director when he was accused of misplacing the artificial leg had sworn on Mr. Hexter’s Bible (lying open where he had read his last devotional) that he had looked in every nook and cranny and the leg was nowhere to be found. He told the minister that he had no thought but to fix Mr. Hexter up the same as if he were going to church.

Since Mr. Hexter never used crutches, there was no way he would have taken the leg off in one room and then gone into his bedroom and gotten into bed. A person would have to be extremely nimble to hop about like that on one leg and clearly old Mr. Hexter wasn’t, heaving his artificial leg along like a great stiff board, a burden if ever there was one, but still a great invention for a person deprived of the normal leg that most of us enjoy without giving it a second thought. My brother compared him to Long John Silver with his craggy visage and tapping peg leg and we were relieved that Mr. Hexter could wear a regular shoe and hide his maimed body under the long canvas apron which protected him from the grime and messiness of his trade.

On Sunday at church he was often accompanied by some lost soul he had badgered into coming with him. I came into his shop one day when he was after one of these poor sinners and heard Mr. Hexter meeting his protests. “You just get down there to the clothing store and buy yourself a suit of Sunday clothes. They’ll put it on my bill.” And when Sunday came, I saw the man, suitably clothed, sitting with Mr. Hexter. They never came twice these lost sheep, but Mr. Hexter made a rich man of the clothing store owner, my father said.

“Still, it beats the loneliness of sitting there by yourself week after week,” our mother said. “I’ll say amen to that,” our father said, smiling at my brother and me.

I felt at that moment what the Bible meant when it spoke of lying in the bosom of Abraham and I could feel my brother beside me grow tense with the desire to know some other way of life besides our own, to say to our father that not everyone was bon to marry and beget children, that Mr. Hexter might have chosen bachelorhood even if he had not lost a leg.

“For a long time I prayed that old Mr. Hexter would grow a new leg from his stump,” I said, wanting to veer the conversation in some safe direction, not caring that my father would look at me sharply and inquire how I knew anything about Mr. Hexter’s poor stump.

“The Bible wants us to believe in miracles and it says if you believe you can move mountains,” I said, grown heady with the knowledge that through my efforts my brother had relaxed and was smiling at the childish nature of my thought. I admired him too much and wanted his approval too much to sit still while he singlehandedly confronted our father with some idea which our father would find unspeakable and forbid us to hold to.

“Mr. Hexter is a mystery man,” my brother said, smiling at me. “A great saver of souls.”

We thought it a wonderful pun and even now I can never hear the word salvation without thinking of Mr. Hexter and his cobbler shop. Only now I think of him as free and mobile, enjoying forever the life of the spirit.

When he died there wasn’t much furniture in his little house, but what there was he left to the church along with the house. Even when the furniture and odds and ends were auctioned off, the artificial leg didn’t turn up. There was a lot of talk then, but by the time the house had stood empty for six months or more, most people had forgotten all about Mr. Hexter and his artificial leg.

I was sure, however, that my brother hadn’t forgotten, that he meant to investigate for himself the inside of Mr. Hexter’s house; and I watched all through the summer for signs of the irresistible itch that I had seen come over him before when a house stood empty for any length of time. Because I had proved my trustworthiness on several occasions, I hoped that he would take me with him when he decided to break into Mr. Hexter’s house. Even though it was church property under the terms of Mr. Hexter’s will and I knew well the penalty for violating church property with an unclean heart, I prayed nightly that my brother would invite me to go with him.

When the day came, he stood in front of our parents with his fingers crossed behind his back and said that he would take me swimming with him if they gave permission. It was late in August just before school started up again and right after lunch when we could be pretty sure that there would be nobody on the streets or busy in their yards. Any neighbors who hadn’t gone to the mountains for the worst of August were at least sensible enough to lie down and be still in the early afternoon.

We headed off in the direction of the ballast pits where we swam in the hot weather and cut through some vacant lots to come up onto the back of Mr. Hexter’s house.

There was a window where the latch had rusted loose, and since nothing of value was left inside the house, nobody had bothered to fix it. My brother carefully raised the window and we crawled into what appeared to be a kitchen; the next room was a small sitting or dining room and the next was a bedroom or so it seemed from the built-in cupboard and the faded wall paper where pictures or at least a calendar had been hung. We shone the flashlight in closets and cupboards, but not even a button or stray pin was left. We looked carefully about the paneling supposed that we would see immediately the place where the dumb waiter would be, but there was no sign of any opening. We felt about for a secret spring that would reveal an opening, but with no luck. Then we looked for stairs to go down to a cellar or maybe a trap door. Nothing. The house was too simple and beastly hot. There was no break in the flooring anywhere. Defeated and perspiring, we crawled outside again and looked around to see if there was some clue we had missed.

“Three chimneys,” my brother said, “and only two fireplaces in the house.”

We knew that there had to be a cellar door. Two old-fashioned rambling rose bushes had been planted in the back; and as we gingerly lifted back the long, intertwined canes, we could see a small wooden cover. My brother got out his jackknife and pried at the edge until it splintered and gave. We crawled backwards down five rotting steps. He shone his flashlight around the room and sure enough there was a fireplace, large enough for open-hearth cooking.

“It was the kitchen in slave times, for sure,” he said. “The poor devils.”

The flashlight beam lit on an open space in the brick; and even though I couldn’t see his face at all, I knew his eyes were shining.

“Look,” he said, pulling at the rope. “They put the food on a tray and there was another person upstairs who took it off and served it.” He tugged again at the rope. At first it didn’t budge; but when he tried harder, it pulled loose and we could hear the sound of the platform breaking loose overhead seconds before it landed with a plop and clatter, raising the dust of years.

When we opened our eyes and took our hands away from our mouths, the flashlight beam rested on Mr. Hexter’s leg. The dumb waiter must have been his hiding place; and what we had thought was the dining room was really his bedroom. Probably the panel was where he could reach it from his bed and along with the funeral director we had been too dumb to spot it.

For a minute we looked at the foot and the toes molded into terrible togetherness, then at the faint glow which came from the upper part of the leg, pink and smooth, the thigh shapely with an ankle as neat as a girl’s. How Mr. Hexter must have laughed with delight every time he strapped that beautiful leg onto the rest of him.

We closed the cellar door as if it had been a tomb, spreading the rose bushes back as best we could in a hurry.

[Undated short story by Virginia McKinnon Mann.]

Barking Dog Magna Cum Laude

[Feel free to print the Google document instead of reading the story as a blog post. Photo below by Bright Green Pants.]


“103 Brandywine Lane.” Penelope lovingly pronounced the bordering streets, “George Washington Drive, Benjamin Franklin Place, Alexander Hamilton Terrace.” After all the Embarcaderos, Divisideros, El Carmelos, and Loma Verdes they had spent their apartment days on, the names seemed rich in history, evocative, promising a solid future. The house was a mix of architectural styles—a bit of dental work, a patch of fish-scale shingles, and a miniature widow’s walk. Maybe they would take off the widow’s walk at some point, but now they wanted to unpack their boxes for good and settle down. By Sunday night, Penelope’s workroom was set up with her drafting table and paint pots; and Bernie’s closet was hung with his business suits and coordinating shirts and ties.

“I love it,” Penelope said, Monday morning, kissing Bernie goodbye. “If this house were a horse, it would be an Appaloosa.”

Bernie thought about Penelope all day, her sense of humor, her talent, how much she loved him and how much he loved her, how lucky they were to have found the house. It made up for his job, his tortured dealings with Morrison, his boss. Somehow he couldn’t find an area where he felt simpatico with Morrison. He couldn’t zoom onto the right wavelength. They were both talking about Countdown Clothes; but Bernie, who handled advertising, couldn’t connect somehow to Morrison’s concepts. Actually, it was Morrison who couldn’t connect to Bernie’s concepts; but Bernie could not say that to anyone but Penelope, who always was on the same wavelength.

But the minute he walked into the house, he saw that she was close to tears.

“I’m ready to tear out my hair,” she said. “The dog next door barked nonstop all day. I nearly went bonkers.”

Bernie rubbed his hands back and forth over her shoulders until he felt her relax, go soft against his body. How could he have known the neighbors’ dog would bark like a maniac. When they looked at the house, the dog, a beautiful Irish Setter, was sitting quietly on the neighbors’ patio, looking as if he didn’t have a bark in his head.

“As soon as we can, we’ll move, sweetheart.” Bernie would have said anything to make Penelope feel better, anything that would cheer her up.

They both knew that moving was not an option. Their finances were already stretched. It was a double bind. If Penelope weren’t freelancing at home, saving the money that a studio would have cost, they couldn’t afford the monthly payments; and it was because she was working at home that the barking dog was driving her crazy.

“Surely we can solve this problem,” Bernie said. The idea that an Irish Setter was going to dictate their lives seemed ridiculous. Irish Setters were supposed to be even-tempered, good with children. This one seemed singularly dedicated to full-time barking.

Like Morrison. “Orders” he barked. “That’s why we’re here. Never forget it. Orders, orders, orders.”
Bernie wished he could work at home like Penelope. Together outsmart this barking dog and he would not have to hear Morrison barking every minute.

Penelope’s workroom, next to the neighbor’s patio where the dog was left all day, had excellent natural light; and if she could leave the window open, excellent cross ventilation. Their bedroom was on the dark side of the house.

“I felt so irritated today I didn’t get a lick of work done. First I tried ear plugs but they made my ears hurt and then I moved to our bedroom but the light was no good. I can’t meet my deadline if I miss another day of work.”

Bernie did the washing up so that she could get back to her drawing board. “I feel much better,” she said, kissing him goodnight; but she tossed and turned for hours and once she woke him up saying, “Stupid dog.” When he put his arm out, she snuggled against him and sighed in her sleep.

The responsibility! What if she weren’t a “liberated” woman with her own business and her own business card. How had men stood it before women took charge of their lives.

He wondered if Morrison’s wife snuggled up to him in bed. Miss McFadden, the secretary, said she bred dogs. He wondered what breed and Miss McFadden said, “Something like miniature long-haired dachshunds. The next time he was in Morrison’s office, he noticed a picture of his wife holding two puppies. They looked as if they were yapping at the top of their lungs and he told Miss McFadden she should type “Yap, Yap” and tape it to the picture like the subtitles in old movies.

“You are not bucking for a promotion, buster,” she said.

When he described his problem with the Irish Setter, she said, “Make a tape and play it back when they’re at home. Give them a dose of their own medicine.”

“I love it,” Penelope said. “Would it be possible that dog owners enjoy dog barking the way opera lovers love opera singing? Perhaps he’s an Irish tenor and we are simply not tuned into dog arias.”
The worst of it was that they didn’t know the neighbors at all. How could you complain to people you had never met.

ESP didn’t help. They both concentrated like crazy when the dog was let out for the day and the neighbors went off to work. “Don’t bark, don’t bark, don’t bark.” He concentrated so hard that he jumped when the dog started up. “What have we done to you?” No matter what the dog meant to express, his barking sounded to Bernie as if he wanted to chew them to bits, just the way he felt when Morrison spit out, “Orders! Orders!” All day he thought about the problem. He called his friend in the Legal Department and got suggestions Formidable. First they would have to make polite requests, give the neighbors adequate time to comply, etc.

“Get a dog yourself and let them bark at each other,” the friend said. For that he needed a law degree? He was so upset thinking how upset Penelope was, he was sure that Morrison would notice; but Morrison was having an off day.

Miss McFadden whispered, “He’s in conference, having a little nappy on his sofa.”
Bernie wondered if Morrison’s wife’s dogs barked all night and kept Morrison awake. Could he be an ally? It was hard to imagine.

Just before five Morrison called him into his office. Bernie made a point of staring at the picture of Mrs. Morrison with the dogs, but he didn’t say anything. There was a report he and Morrison were supposed to go over.

“Your wife work?” Morrison asked.

“She works at home—freelance artist. Or she did until the neighbor’s dog started driving her crazy.”

“My wife breeds dogs,” Morrison said. “Damnedest hobby a person could have.”

Bernie smiled in the direction of Mrs. Morrison’s photograph and held on hard to the chair in front of him. He would be able to recall this conversation for Penelope with no strain. He felt his brain recording it for all eternity. Lately he had felt his brain whirring on and off with the slight sound a computer makes in action, little starts and stops, wait, saving file, etc. Barks at home, bites in the office.

“They’re a noisy bunch—dogs.” He was trying to look neutral, but he wasn’t sure he was doing a good job.

“An Irish Setter I think. Would you be able to tell by the bark? Do breeds have different barks? I could bring in a tape.”

Morrison laughed and stuffed the report in his briefcase. “You’re the sly one.”

“My wife says I have hidden depths, but I’m not sure what she means.”

Morrison frowned. “God knows what it is they want—women, I mean.”

Ben nodded. He hoped the telephone would ring. Where was Miss McFadden? Why didn’t she interrupt?

“I’ll take this home tonight and we’ll go over it tomorrow,” Morrison said finally.

************

Penelope held her hands over her ears. She felt as if her auditory sense had taken over her whole life.

The noise ordinance was confusing. It specifically referred to leaf-blowers, so many decibels allowed. She liked the word decibel. It made her think of a poem by Edgar Allen Poe.

“You might as well try to prevent conversation,” the woman at City Hall said when Penelope described the situation. “Try Small Claims Court.” Do dogs have free speech rights, Penelope wondered. Is speech a survival instinct? The dog only barked when the owners were not there, which was most of the waking day. He must be experiencing loneliness, but why did his vocal chords collapse. Did the constant exercise of the bark increase capacity and strength to bark.

At first she thought it was the garbage truck the dog was barking at, but that would explain only one morning of the week. Dogs were dominated by their sense of smell just as she was dominated by her auditory sense. It was imperative that she develop a strategy.

************

Together Bernie and Penelope worked on a formal letter of complaint, trying to achieve just the right tone. After all, they were going to be living next to these people for a long time. Just as they were putting the finishing touches on the letter and were ready to run it off on their printer, using Penelope’s letterhead to emphasize her professional need for peace and quiet, the phone rang. It was Flora, next door, who introduced herself and invited them over for drinks on Friday.

“Thank you, we’d love to,” Bernie said. “Flora and Lance. And we are Bernie and Penelope. Oh yes, you also have Rusty. We will look forward to getting acquainted.”

“That’s a break,” he said, turning to Penelope. “Now we can address them by their names. If we can’t negotiate something, we can still send the letter.”

“I’ll make a tape of that damn dog barking his head off.”

“They may not believe you, but it’s worth a try.”

The next morning as soon as the dog started, Penelope plugged in their tape recorder and ran the microphone out the window. She filled one side with continuous barking. She listened for nuances of barking. When he stopped for a minute, she assumed he had gone to his water bowl. Second verse, same as the first, a little bit louder and a little bit worse. She thought of the other Irish Setters she had known. All she could remember was how beautiful they were, nothing at all about barking. Lassie, who of course was a collie, never barked except in extremis. Lassie was so thoughtful and caring and capable that a mere child was his master [sic]. Was she incompetent, at fault in this matter of the barking dog. She put the tape and tape recorder by her handbag.

************

On Friday when Bernie came home from work they went into conference. “What should we do first? How should we go about this?” Planning was essential. He had seen too many sweet deals fall through because somebody had forgotten to take care of the details, decide who was going to say what.

Bernie would bring up the subject of barking, diplomatically. Penelope would play the tape if they needed evidence.

“Never assume anything,” Morrison said and although he hated to agree with Morrison he had to admit he was right on that assumption. When he went into conference with Morrison he felt the carpet had found inches of foam underneath. Unnerving.

“Everything’s soft until it’s firm,” was one of Morrison’s favorite sayings.

Penelope decided she would wear slacks and sandals for their visit to the neighbors; Bernie changed into his suntans and his Hawaiian shirt. “If you were a dog,” he said, “You would never have to change your clothes.”

“You would have more time to devote to your barking,” Penelope said. “Your output.”

Flora opened the door and led them through the living room to the side yard. Rusty was sitting quietly next to Lance, who said “Stay” and walked towards Bernie and Penelope with one hand behind him.

“Glad you could come over,” he said and extended his other hand. “We’re training Rusty by the Barbara Woodhouse method, but sometimes the hand signals get in the way of other uses you want to make of your hands. Sit down, please.”

Flora appeared with the leash and attached it to Rusty’s collar. She held her hand at waist height, slightly cupped with the leash strap over two fingers and then slapped one hand against her leg as she said, “Walk, Rusty,” and made a quick circle around the patio. “Barbara Woodhouse calls this walkies,” she said. She leaned down and praised Rusty, “Good dog.”

Penelope thought, we’ve lost.

Bernie said, “Is there a command for ‘don’t bark’?”

Penelope pointed to the window of their house where her workroom was. “You see, I work at home and Rusty barks a lot. It’s hard to concentrate.”

“I’m so sorry,” Flora said. “I had no idea. I do hope it won’t happen again. Let him get acquainted.” She stopped stroking Rusty and gave him a push in Penelope’s direction.

He leaped across the patch of grass and sniffed at Penelope’s sandals. She could feel Flora watching for signs that she was flinching. She remembered her English professor explaining how the poet achieves his purpose in a poem by throwing the dog a juicy piece of meat while he gets on with ransacking the house. It was an idea she had intellectually accepted, but never realized emotionally before. It had seemed so vague—though presented by the professor in such a spellbinding way—she felt struck dumb with the clarity of it while Rusty slobbered on her big toe. She reached for one of the cocktail napkins and dried her toe. Then she ran her hand over Rusty’s head. She felt his response and repeated the stroke. He moved closer and rested his head on her knee. “Rusty,” she said without meaning to, or had she said ‘precious’? She looked at Flora, who was smiling proudly.

Lance came out with a tray of wine glasses and a bottle of wine. Flora followed with a tray of cheese and crackers. Tucked under her arm was a folder. She showed them a photograph of Rusty wearing a Mortar Board. “It was a package deal. There’s a fancy certificate with a gold seal. We decided not to frame it. After he graduated from obedience school, we saw the Woodhouse method on television and decided to give him a postgraduate course.”

“You look very intelligent,” Penelope said to Rusty. She struggled to keep a straight face.
“What about the tape?” Bernie asked when Lance went back for ice and Flora took Rusty into the kitchen for his feeding.

“There’s no plug out here and I forgot to get batteries. Somehow it didn’t dawn on me that we’d be outside.”

“No matter, we can save it for later. He’s a beautiful dog. He doesn’t look like a barker.”

“They seem very pleasant, but it’s clear that they don’t believe me since the dog doesn’t bark when they are home. ‘She hopes it won’t happen again.’ She thinks I’m referring to an isolated incident.”

Bernie felt hopeless. He remembered a line Miss McFadden used a lot, especially when he complained to her about Morrison. “Sometimes you can’t win for losing.”

************

The next morning Penelope thought Rusty wouldn’t bark. Now he would know that he had a friend next door. As soon as Flora and Lance drove out of their driveway, the barking began.

“Maybe you could talk to him a little and he would shut up,” Bernie said. He felt guilty leaving Penelope, but Morrison was a bear about tardiness.

“I’ll try,” Penelope said. “I can’t take another day of racket, no matter how educated.”

When she went outside, Rusty was running back and forth along the fence barking as if his life depended on it.

“Rusty, good boy, don’t be upset. I’m here all day. I’ll be your friend.”

He stopped and looked at her. Then he pushed his nose against the fence.

“No, don’t do that,” Penelope said. “You’ll get your nose caught. Wait a minute.” She went into the kitchen and cut up a turkey hot dog. Would he care if it were heated or not? She doubted it. She tossed the pieces over the fence and thought maybe he barks because they don’t feed him enough. She ran back into the house and telephoned Bernie.

“Did it keep him quiet?”

“I don’t know yet, but I just wanted to report.”

“Could you go over to their patio and work on their picnic table?”

“I don’t feel right about doing that. Suppose one of them got sick and came home unexpectedly from work. Or suppose the meter reader came by or who knows what. It sounds too much like a Raymond Carver story, you know the one where the couple tried on the other couple’s clothes.”

“Well, you’ll work it out somehow,” Bernie said. He could see Morrison coming down the hall towards his office. “You can’t let a stupid dog ruin your life, our life.”

“He’s not stupid. He’s like a child being left along all day.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean that. I’ve got to go. Morrison’s on his way to bark at me.”

“He’s a very smart dog.”

“Right. Right. Goodbye.”

************

As soon as she hung up she could hear that the barking had started again. Maybe it was squirrels he was barking at. That would be only instinct. She raced around to the gate and opened the latch. “Rusty, old barker. Quiet down.”

Rusty came towards her and waited to be petted. His leash was hanging by the back door. She said, “Sit.” He sat. “Good dog.” She snapped the leash on and said, “Walkies.” Rusty followed alongside her and she brought him into her yard. “What a good dog.”

Shouldn’t she reward Rusty for being a good dog. She picked out the meat from some left-overs and put it on a plate. She found a bowl for water and stroked his beautiful, silky coat. “Just a tidbit, you wouldn’t want to lose your appetite.” She stroked his head again and thought what a wonderful color his coat was. She brought him into her workroom and closed the door. He lay down very calmly on the rug. Penelope thought she heard a sigh of relief. “That makes two of us.” She did a quick sketch of Rusty curled up on her rug, then she settled into her job.

At four o’clock she led Rusty back to his yard, petting and praising him. The minute she closed the gate, he started barking.

************

When Morrison called him into his office, Bernie told him about the photograph of Rusty wearing a Mortar Board.

He waited for Morrison to have the idea. He was sure it would emerge. “You mean barking dog magna cum laude.”

Bernie laughed. Morrison laughed.

Miss McFadden said, “Good boy, Bernie. Good boy.”

************

The next morning Penelope opened a can of roast beef hash and poached an egg to go on top. “I don’t think you’re eating a proper lunch,” she said to Bernie. “You’d better have a good breakfast.”

She set aside half the can for Rusty and put it in a pie tin. It looked a lot like dog food anyway, she thought.

Bernie poured ketchup over his hash and broke the egg. “I’m afraid to eat lunch because I’ll get sleepy in the afternoon and I don’t have a sofa in my office like Morrison.”

Penelope wondered what other things she could cook that Rusty would like. Probably she should get dog biscuits. They were supposed to help keep the teeth lean.

As soon as Bernie left she turned on the TV and flipped channels until she found a commercial for dog food. The dogs were not nearly as intelligent-looking as Rusty.

When she went to the grocery store, she looked in the pet section at the flea collars and toys. A woman stopped and picked up a flea collar. “These are really good,” she said. “What breed of dog do you have?”

“Irish Setter,” Penelope said.

“I like little dogs,” the woman said. “Mine’s a Boston.”

************

When she got home, she didn’t feel like settling down to work. Rusty would probably like a walk. Maybe it was exercise instead of food that would keep him from barking. Maybe it would calm her nerves as well. She has never done a sneaky thing in her life before. She wonders if people who steal babies from buggies feel as excited as she feels now. She attaches Rusty’s leash and starts down the street. Who would know it’s not her dog? She looks like a dog owner, she knows the commands.

[Undated short story by Virginia McKinnon Mann.]

Extremely Alert

[Feel free to print the Google document instead of reading the story as a blog post. Photo below: TOMBOLO! by Pat.]


The groom’s mother, shimmering blue watersilk with shoes dyed to match, dabs perfume behind her ears, saving a drop for the lacy handkerchief she slips in her purse, the very same handkerchief she carried when she and John said their vows. “Oh beautiful dress,” she sings, twisting to get a view of herself in the bathroom mirror. “You were there on that rack when I needed you most.” She believes steadfastly in omens of good fortune and looks for them everywhere. “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.”

She is the something old, the bride is the something new, her dress is the something blue; and if only the bride will ask, her handkerchief will be the something borrowed.

Randy, elder brother and best man, fully and impeccably dressed, stands and folds a tiny square of flannel. The mother fidgets as he tucks the flannel carefully into his shoe kit, recognizing the pattern as belonging to his once-favorite pajamas. That would also be something old, but the best man does not traditionally have superstitions. Perhaps Clifford, the groom, will wear a penny in his shoe for good luck, or should she be the one to wear a penny in her shoe, her luck having deserted her so long ago when the boys were mere babies and she lost their father. Will today be one of her heightened awareness days, she wonders and pours the second cup of coffee that she almost drank down the lavatory drain. Even so, she is likely to remember too much, to see and hear too clearly.

“Extremely alert,” Randy says, “You look extremely alert, Mother dear,” and she asks if he means to bless or curse her.

Clifford, half dressed, opens the hall closet and pokes at a set of golf clubs. “Can’t find my black shoes.”

“You’ve never put shoes in there,” the mother says. She hears a tinge of hysteria in his voice.

“I’m looking for the flashlight; where is it?” Clifford straightens. “The blooming light’s out in my closet.”

“Flashlight?” the mother says, remembering the flashlight dead and leaking a month ago and writing it down on her grocery list but not remembering to buy one. No point now in making a full confession… Full confessions never make anybody feel better.

Clifford grins, “I had my teeth cleaned. Nobody can say I didn’t have my sweet little old teeth cleaned.”

Randy shakes his head. “The poor bride. Poor, poor Nancy.”

“Don’t say that.” The mother sighs and puts her arm around Randy’s waist. Be quiet, tongue. She cannot stop this banter between brothers. Their father should be here to deal with them man to man. It isn’t fair that widows should be left with everything to do. She hums the wedding march.

“Do shut up,” they say like twins.

“I still think we should have a limo.” Randy holds up his new wallet, a gift from the groom. “I can afford it.”

“I know you can, dear, but I couldn’t. Conspicuous consumption makes me feel ridiculous.”

“Obviously.” Randy looks pointedly at the sofa bed he has slept the night on and at the coffee table pathetically in need of refinishing. He has offered to replace both pieces and been shushed.

She thinks this very minute, when they have not even left for the church he is picturing her returning to this wreck alone—their home sweet home. No apologies. Too late for being in the kitchen baking cookies. Too late for making the children’s beds.

Randy picks up a purplish ashtray and empties it in the fireplace. “I might have been an artist—professionally, I mean. This work shows real promise.”

She watches him handling the precious objects from her desk—his perfect hand in plaster from the Mother’s Day he was five, Clifford’s balsa-wood hotrod painted fluorescent pink. She silently screams, “My collection—don’t touch.”

“Look at that glaze.” He holds the ashtray under the lamp. “The purple blob. Outstanding.”

She remembers the expression of pride on his first-grade face. “You took it out of your bag so calmly and handed it to me as if you made ashtrays every day of the week.”

“The teacher kept saying, are you making that for your father and I didn’t want to admit that my father was dead or that my mother smoked so I said it was for myself.”

He smiles as if the faraway boy didn’t really need the father he was once embarrassed not to have.

The mother frowns and tries to remember how she felt when she was not yet a widow. “I thought you were happy in school. Naïve of me.”

“Not at all. Looking back—as a man of experience… First grade teachers are viewed somewhat uncritically.” He touches her shoulder “… while Mothers are always Mothers.”

“Of course, what else could we be?” She thinks, now it is open to question with surrogate mothers all over the place but for me it was an absolute state. She wants to say, “And you might have had (almost did have) a different mother.”

She checks again to be sure the lacy handkerchief is in her purse, the handkerchief John’s mother gave her for “something borrowed”—still beautifully white and perfectly ironed in case Nancy should turn and ask if she has “something old.”

“Perhaps I do,” she would say and offer the handkerchief. No reason really she should expect Nancy to ask. Weddings were fantasy enough without adding her own, but she would have it if Nancy should want it, though probably brides didn’t have those little superstitions anymore. Nor grooms.

Clifford all dressed now except for shoes, comes into the living room, twirling about in his stocking feet, coattails flying straight out like a turkey cock’s feathers.

“Not in your closet?” the Mother says.

“Did you send them out to be polished? That might be it.”

Randy, as always, thinks of the one logical course of action the bridegroom might have taken and a conversation from weeks ago about dress suits and black patent shoes comes back to her, some vague admonition she gave to have his shoes smartened up and marking that off her mental list of things to mention. He is a grown man, after all, about to become “head of household” or is there any such thing anymore?

“What am I going to do?” Clifford for the first time looks stricken. “I thought I was all set. I did every stupid thing on Nancy’s list.”

The Mother starts. Nancy’s stupid list? Does the bride make a list for the groom? She doesn’t remember making a list. She pats her tiny hat into place and stands back from the hall mirror to check her slip. Hang in there underwear. Don’t give up the ship garter belt. Don’t have a sneezing fit nose.

“I can’t believe you expected me to provide you with a pair of black shoes,” Randy says. “Nancy didn’t give me a list and mine won’t fit you.”

“No, I’m sure I didn’t expect you to provide shoes. I bought the ring.”

She looks at Randy’s watch and remembers John slipping her ring on and how totally married she felt from that moment on.

“What am I going to do? Go barefoot?”

She wonders if Nancy has ever heard that in his voice, a kind of hysterical silliness. John couldn’t stand silliness.

“I know my feet are bigger than yours.” Clifford glares at Randy as if he meant to punch him, but instead brings out from behind his back a pair of black basketball shoes covered with dust.

“Don’t breathe, Mother.”

“Clifford, look at your knees.”

Randy opens his suitcase and offers his clothes brush.

She holds out her hand. “I’ll do it.” Adrenaline sweeps through her body. She orders Randy, “You get the taxi.”

Clifford stands stiffly for her to brush his suit.

She tries to remember what their father wore on their marriage day and can only remember his sweet smile, his sweet arms around her.

“Are you sure you didn’t take your shoes to the shop? Look in your wallet and see if you have a ticker.”

Clifford turns his wallet out onto the table: credit cards, driver’s license, and small crushed ticket saying Shoe Renew.

They look at one another and smile. If nothing else the shoes exist, did not jump unwittingly into the Goodwill bag or self-immolate.

“Put on your loafers and we’ll swing by and get them.” Randy locks the door and pushes the elevator button.

“They say that stuff about selling things if you don’t pick them up, but they don’t really do it.”

“Right.”

How handsome he is hurrying down the street while Clifford stands serenely gazing at the stone steps across the street. What can he be thinking? She cannot believe that in forty minutes he will stand beside his bride and repeat the holy bonds of matrimony. Should she tell him about the birds and the bees?

“You look lovely, Mother-of-the-Groom,” Clifford says.

She squeezes his arm and thinks how easily she found her white gloves, how perfectly her shoes match her dress, how unlike herself she looks today.

“You’re absolutely psychic,” Clifford said every time she turned up a missing cufflink and she basked in it. Now she is suffering from her eternal mother’s pride. The Groom’s mother has so little to do, she might have remembered shoes. Too late, too late.

They climb into the taxi, mother in the middle, the place she claimed—keeping them apart because each always wanted a window. Now Clifford would have his own ally and she would keep still. No matter what happened she would not speak. They could have babies or not have babies; she would never speak. They could live in Timbuctoo if they wanted—but no, no, no.

Randy leans across her lap. “Do you remember where the shop is?”

Clifford glares back. “I walk by the place every day.”

“Don’t start that.” She puts a hand over each big fist. How small their father would have looked between them. They were huge horses beside him. They would think him too small, too delicate. But he would be with her, not them, and he would not be too small.

“Why didn’t you pick them up if you went by the shop every day?”

In that moment the mother knows that Randy will never marry, that his standards are too high, that he is not foolish and inconsiderate enough to marry, that he can settle for nothing less than perfection, and that she will never see his children.

“Driver, stop right here.” Clifford jumps out of the cab and points triumphantly to the window where finished shoes are lined in a row. He bangs on the door. “Anybody there?”

If this were a movie, she thinks, he would put his fist through and pluck out the shoes, without a scratch, while upstairs over the shop a couple would hear the commotion and frown down at the madman banging on the door and calmly close the shutters.

Randy gets out of the taxi and points to the CLOSED sign. “It won’t matter, Cliff. Nobody ever looks at the groom.”

Clifford lets Randy push him towards the taxi.

They settle on either side of her again, breathing heavily, saying nothing. Closing her eyes, she feels a memory break loose from where it has hovered all day waiting its chance to float free, a story John’s sister told her long after he died, how he courted a young woman for more than a year and planned to propose marriage, how the sister packed a picnic for him and he borrowed the family car to drive to a particularly romantic spot in the country to declare his intentions, and how just after they got started the car broke down totally. In his efforts to repair it, he covered his white linen suit with grease and dirt and was too embarrassed to propose. She looked away quickly from the laughing sister, feeling her heart pierced for poor John and the woman who might have been his bride.

She has never told the boys because she does not want them to think of their father as ridiculous and because they were never the right age to understand how nearly she had not been their mother. Now it comes rushing out, one word tumbling over the other as the taxi gets closer and closer to the church.

Randy pats her hand. “That was a bit of a close call, old dear.”

Clifford stares out the window as if he has not heard one word.

Perhaps she should not have told the story today, or ever. They could care less that they exist quite by chance.

The church looms in front of them, covering a city block with its sanctuary, inner courtyards, library, and fellowship hall. Randy leans over and hands the driver a bill. “Take us to the side entrance and then drive slowly around and leave our mother at the front steps.” He turns to her and whispers, “Our extremely alert mother.”

She watches them enter by the choir door, Randy with his arm around Clifford’s shoulder, showing him with the other hand that the ring is safe in his waistcoat pocket. They turn and throw her a kiss, as if it were a lark, some debutante party they are attending in search of a wife and might yet emerge from with unsettled feelings. She feels quite the wallflower in advance and longs for John to hold her, to give her his arm for the long walk down the aisle.

“Tears, get back where you belong.” She leans back hard against the seat, clutching her purse with an edge of old lace caught in the clasp.

[Undated short story by Virginia McKinnon Mann.]

The Silver Belt Buckle

[Feel free to print the Google document instead of reading the story as a blog post.]

I look in the mirror and smile as broadly as possible. I think that if teeth are all it takes, I will be quite successful. I part my hair in the middle and see that I look old-fashioned like Uncle Matthew. I pull it forward and smile rakishly; now I am my father all over.

The silver belt buckle I am wearing belonged to my grandfather, my mother’s father; and for many years my mother thought that it lay buried with my grandfather’s remains. She thought that Uncle Matthew, who lived with Grandfather and made all the funeral arrangements, had not wanted me to have the silver belt buckle, that he had been resentful that I, not he, shared these engraved initials. See how beautifully they are cut into the silver; a Mr. Farrier, a great friend of Grandfather, gave it to him. He was a jeweler and did the engraving himself. Grandfather, an open, warm-hearted person, had lots of friends but Mr. Farrier was his best friend. No one has ever understood why Uncle Matthew, his only song, could grow up to be solitary, never marry, and be interested only in rocks.

Nothing however has ever seemed strange about Uncle Matthew to me. I have always loved and admired him and I was watching when he walked up to the front of the church for his last look at Grandfather. I saw him reach inside the coffin and slip this buckle into his palm. I saw him execute that sleight of hand because I was seated to the side of the front pew, while my mother’s weeping face was turned into my father’s shoulder and his gaze was directed to the tip of his shoe.

When we visited on the anniversary of Grandfather’s death and drove out to the cemetery to lay flowers on his grave and on Grandmother’s grave next to him, she must have thought bitterly of the buckle deep in the ground. Yet she never asked Uncle Matthew or me if what she thought to be true was true; and while Uncle Matthew may have known what she was thinking (may indeed for all I know have rejoiced in her bitterness) I had not a glimmer. Some secrets are kept out of ignorance. That was why I never spoke of what I knew. The belt buckle would be mine when I had grown big enough to wear long pants and need a belt. I understood that condition just as I understood my mother’s fear that I would not grow up to be “normal”, that I would choose a strange profession such as geology, never marry, and give her no grandchildren. Yet her concern for my future life assured me that there would be a future life, that nothing could stop me from growing up. It was as if her thoughts of me as an adult, odd and reclusive as I possibly might be, staved off disease and pestilence, prevented the Angel of Death from discovering my whereabouts. I have always felt lucky. This buckle is lucky because it is a gift of love.

Before I was born, my parents had elected to live in San Francisco and even after I was born, they found that an apartment was quite large enough for their needs. It was because they could always drive down the Peninsula any weekend to visit Grandfather that they felt no need for a house and land. I was sent to visit every summer while they went to other large cities around the world for their vacations of more operas and museums and fine restaurants. They were relieved that because of these annual exposures I would grow up with a proper understanding of the natural world. Although they had chosen to be city dwellers, they said, it did not mean that they scorned the life Grandfather and Uncle Matthew led; but they regarded it as an existence more suitable for children than for adults such as themselves.

“They’ve sent you to rusticate,” Uncle Matthew always said when I arrived for one of my annual visits. “Let’s go out to see the sheep.”

We would lean on the fence and Uncle Matthew would give the sheep a report on the evening news, announce some earthquake in China or an eclipse of the moon we could expect to see next week if the clouds weren’t took thick. I knew that it was myself he was educating, but it was a good joke that the sheep had an interest in world events.

They were Blackface which Grandfather had bought from his friend Mr. Farrier and their startling black masks against the white fleece put me in mind of Halloween, false teeth, and the old saying about “wolves in sheep’s clothing.”

Yet like all sheep they lay low and spent their whole efforts cropping the meadow, their strong, occlusive teeth never still until every blade of grass was nipped clean to the ground.

“You can’t fool a Ewe,” Uncle Matthew told me. “You can’t make a Ewe take another Ewe’s lamb. If the mother dies, the lamb will die. It’s the damnest thing about sheep. You can’t teach them a thing.”

It was this passion for teaching me everything he knew that endeared Uncle Matthew to me, that the affection we shared for Grandfather.

“He’s been looking for you all day,” Uncle Matthew would say, having given my parents a chance to greet Grandfather privately and tell him anything they wished before I was brought back to the house. Or was it that Uncle Matthew loved me and my company so much that he wanted to be with me first. So glorious wooed—how could I have been happier.

Turning away from the pasture, we visited the chicken house to collect the warm eggs, both of us laughing at the squawking, offended chickens as they half-jumped, half-flew from their boxes. Better yet, I was allowed to place the thin glass eggs Uncle Matthew kept in the china closet into the nesting boxes. “Can the hens possibly believe those dead-white eggs are the results of their own efforts?” Grandfather asked me. “No,” he answered, “It is instinct that makes them start to set when the nest is full. They can’t think a single thing through,” he said sadly, as if he wished dumb animals had been dealt a better hand. But together we tricked the hens. [Note: the original version of this paragraph had Uncle Matthew saying that, not Grandfather.]

“It’s a blessing Mother can’t see how Matt’s let everything run down,” my mother always teases after one of our visits to Grandfather; and I thought she disliked Uncle Matthew because he did not take care of the house well enough, refusing to have a regular cleaning arrangement, letting spider webs accumulate in all the bedrooms, doing nothing at all with my grandmother’s rose garden. Did she wish that she could get rid of my father and myself so she could come back and look after Grandfather as her mother would have. I thought not. I know how she loved the city and how she neglected her own housework to read one historical novel after another. I did not mourn the way this unknown grandmother’s taste and habits of cleanliness were ignored.

I had eyes only for Grandfather who always as soon as our car had stopped was in the front yard holding out his arms for me to come running. As he lifted me up, his immense stomach pressed against me. How wonderful his stomach was, reaching out for me, never shrinking back. When he sat, it spilled forward against his legs and left little room for me to sit, but enough. I could never fall, secure in the crook of his arm. Such strength infused my limbs after one of these visits that a week or two would pass before my mother was saying “nervous little thing” about me again.

I was always an acute child, I have been told, startled by noises, offended by odors, distraught if a pianist hit a wrong note. When I began to take piano lessons myself, the poor piano had to endure kicks and scuffs from my nervous, impatient feet wanting to pay it back for those infelicities of my fingers. In spite of these difficulties which stemmed from my sensory acuteness, Grandfather accepted me with his whole being; I was secure in my favored position of namesake, secure in the knowledge that I would one day wear his silver belt buckle, engraved with our shared initials.

My mother and father would sit talking to Grandfather while he held me, telling some event from our life in the city or recalling the time when my mother and Uncle Matthew were the children of the family and vied for my place on his lap. My parents basked in the pleasure they were bringing him while Uncle Matthew, thin as a rail, glided like a ghost through the rooms; and I saw that he was very like the photograph of my dead grandmother which my mother carried in a locket around her neck, his features blurred by his quick movements: that is how I see the resemblance. It does not occur to me until many years later that he too is “nervous” or that he might be jealous of Grandfather’s love for me. Even then, I think it is hardly worth thinking about.

But I am not at all sure what Uncle Matthew’s position is. My parents always speak of the visit we make to Grandfather’s house and although they embrace and shake hands with Uncle Matthew, they never swerve from their attention to Grandfather. But they do stay up late after Grandfather and I have gone to bed talking over affairs with Uncle Matthew as I have known them to do at home when we have had visits from their old friends who lavish questions and looks on me until it is my bedtime and then when I am out of the way laugh and talk into the wee hours. I do not think so. Uncle Matthew excuses himself soon after dinner. He must get up early and drive to the geological station where he works. [The contradiction in this paragraph is a mystery.]

When Uncle Matthew calls and tells my mother that Grandfather has died in his sleep and she comes to tell my father and myself, weeping and hardly able to talk, I refuse to believe that he has died. I force myself to think of our last moments together, feeling his strong arms around my body as he carries me from the barn, not wanting my city shoes to get muddy and ruined. My short pants slide up and his belt buckle rubs against my thigh. I cry out at the coldness and he stops, looking down at my skinny legs. “What is it, little one? Oh, that, my buckle. When I die, you’ll have it to wear. I’ve told Matt you’re to have it.”

I pull a long face and squinch up my eyes, stamping my feet like a colt, wishing I could run into the pasture and be one.

“Oh, come now,” he says, always knowing exactly what I am thinking. “I’m not going to die anytime soon.” He shows me how easily the buckle unsnaps from the belt and puts it into my hand. I rub my nose across the initials (our initials) and ask why the metal is so cold.

“Because it has no life,” he says and swings me up into his arms again. “My boy, my own boy.”

When we arrive for the funeral I refuse to speak to all the Aunts and Uncles and Cousins who are filling Grandfather’s house.

“Where is he?” I demand, running from room to room, until Uncle Matthew tells my parents that he will see what he can do. He carries me to peer in the coffin; but I refuse to recognize the bodily remains, shaking my head wildly and thrashing about in his arms until he says to my parents that he will take me out to see the Blackface sheep.

I feel better away from the house full of strangers who claim to know who I am.

“You remember Mr. Farrier, my telling you about Grandfather’s friend Mr. Farrier who sold him the sheep and made the belt buckle for him?”

I nod yes. “Has he died too?”

“All of Grandfather’s friends have died; he was ready to go. We’ll miss him, you and me, but he was ready to go. He was getting very tired.”

“I don’t like it,” I say but I feel better.

“The sheep don’t like it either,” he says before we come back into the kitchen. I see pushed in a corner the great, black galoshes that Grandfather always wore flopping about his ankles when he went to feed the stock. He would carry me to the fence and set me there to watch him do his chores. “These sheep are better than a lawnmower,” he would say.

Friends and neighbors have brought in enough food to feed threshers, but someone must solve the problem of bedding down all these far-flung relatives. No one is callous enough to suggest a motel. Cots are found and dragged from the attic. Doubling-up is the order of the day.

My mother comes to me from the kitchen drying her hands as she walks through the room towards the sofa where I have burrowed into the familiar cushions, the wonderful smell of tobacco and male sweat overcoming the deadly odor of flowers which has filled the house. She gives her hands a brisk rub because she knows how I shy away from cold hands. “You are going to sleep in Uncle Matthew’s room,” she says, “And keep him company.” I am already half-asleep on the on the sofa. If only they would leave me there, cover me over with a coat or blanket or even pile the cushions over me, cover my head, let me wake up to find them all gone and only Grandfather and Uncle Matthew in the kitchen starting a fire in the wood stove. But my father must be summoned from his conversation with all these strange Aunts and Uncles to carry me up the stairs. Someone else has been assigned to the sofa.

He puts me down on a cot which has been set up at the foot of Uncle Matthew’s big double bed and leans over to kiss me goodnight. “We’re right down the hall,” he says. “I’ll look in on you before we go to bed.” They do not believe that a child should sleep in the same room as his parents or ever share their bed.

Perhaps he and my mother do look in on me, but I am fast asleep. I do not awaken until first light is entering the bedroom. Uncle Matthew is sitting on his bed in his shorts. He has taken his teeth out and his cheeks have fallen in. “Good morning,” he says and goes into the bathroom, his thin legs hairy and spindly. I remember Grandfather is dead and pull the covers over my face. I think, “If Uncle Matthew dies, so will I.” I sit bolt upright and begin to scream.

My mother and father come running into the room, barefoot and shivering. “What has happened?” my father asks.

“Nothing,” I sob.

“A nightmare,” my mother says. “Poor boy.”

My father lifts me up and carries me down the hall to their bed. My sobs are smothered in his shoulder. I fall asleep between them thinking that I have deserted Uncle Matthew. But I know that they can care for me, that the Angel of Death will not dare to visit our apartment in the city.

After the funeral when we are on our way home and they think that I am asleep in the back seat, my father says, “Old Matt hasn’t changed a bit, has he.”

“No,” my mother says and sighs. In a while she sighs again as if the years of knowing that Old Matt has not changed a bit stretched as endlessly in both directions as the road which we follow.

“Papa wanted” (she turns to see if I am still asleep and does not speak my name) “to have his silver belt buckle.”

“Matt didn’t know that, I suppose,” my father says.

“Oh yes, he did; but he knew I wouldn’t make a row about it.”

I think of Grandfather lying in his coffin with his girth circled and sealed with our initials and of Uncle Matthew going to lean over the coffin to touch Grandfather one last time and of the silver buckle in his palm, and the expression on his face as he returns to sit next to me, saying that I am not to tell and who would believe me anyway?

My mother who has cried steadily throughout the church service and at the graveside is still crying softly as she says, “It’s like everything else about funerals. As if he would ever stand again and hold us all in his arms.”

“I know, I know,” my father says. I can hear the bubbly noise that always comes before he blows his nose.

***********************************************
The next summer they decide that I am old enough to go to camp and I do not go alone again to Grandfather’s house. After our visit on the first anniversary of his death, we are never free again to drive down although my mother calls often just at 6 p.m. to see if Uncle Matthew is getting along all right. He always says that he is watching the evening news. She invites him to come visit us and tells him that I will share my bedroom with him, but he finds a million excuses for not making the trip.

On my twelfth birthday they decide that we will spend it with Uncle Matthew. As soon as we arrive and while my parents are walking about the yard (my grandmother’s roses are resurrected and full of blooms) to see how well Uncle Matthew has managed by himself, he invited me to his room and rummages in his bureau drawer until he finds a small grey jeweler’s box with the name J. Farrier printed on the satin lining of the lid. Imprisoned by a hidden catch, the silver belt buckle is difficult to lift out.

“Your grandfather wanted you to have this,” he says simply, putting the buckle into my hand. He shows what a snap the box makes when he closes it. “Like a snapping turtle.” He is trying to help me forget the coffin lid coming down so silently, closing Grandfather away from us forever and he keeps talking fast while I take off my belt and punch a new hole with the pocket knife my father has bought me for my birthday. I want to put on the buckle immediately.

“Do you remember Mr. Farrier who was Grandfather’s friend?” Uncle Matthew says.

“Yes,” I say, impatiently, as if it is the answer to an examination question. “He sold Grandfather the sheep. Right?”

When we come back downstairs and I push out my stomach so that my parents will notice the buckle immediately, my mother is dumbfounded. “All these years, I thought…” She kisses Uncle Matthew on the cheek. My father too is smiling. Uncle Matthew says it must be time for the evening news.

In some strange way, I feel that he has been defeated.

***********************************************
Several years later I am invited to a Halloween party given by one of the girls in my class at school. At the Novelty Shop where I have gone to select a costume, I linger over the wax teeth. Finally I pay for the pair which looks least ghoulish.

“There look almost as good as the real thing,” the clerk says and I want to say something funny in reply, but nothing comes to mind. I wish I had bought a rubber nose instead. I cannot bear the thought that someone (another boy at the party) will suggest the similarity of thin rubber, flesh-colored object. [That last was handwritten on the typed manuscript.]

At the party we begin by bobbing for apples, and I forget that the teeth are a part of my costume. As soon as the apple-bobbing is over we are served popcorn and candy corn and take turns telling ghost stories. All the lights are turned out for the ghost stories I am terrified of and following suit (like all fifteen-year-olds) I kiss the girls on either side of me. When the lights are turned on again the girls get out their lipsticks and giggle at the smears the boys have on their handkerchiefs.

At home undressing for bed, I forget about the teeth altogether and when the laundry is sorted they are overlooked and melted in the dryer, making unsightly grease spots all over my father’s best shirts. My mother is very distraught because she cannot understand what has happened, but I cannot bring myself to tell her. I put my hand to my throat and feel the great lump of Adam’s Apple and I fear that if I speak my voice will crack.

I long to see Uncle Matthew and reassure him of my love and friendship. I wonder if he still keeps the Blackface sheep and if he goes out to see them after the evening news and tells them what is happening in the world. “I was just watching the evening news,” he still says to my mother when she calls to see if he is getting along all right.

I roll around in my mouth the taste of love and the pleasure of love withheld. It is a taste both sweet and sour.

[Undated short story by Virginia McKinnon Mann.]

The Yellow Bowling Shirt and Other Concerns

[If you prefer, feel free to print the Google document instead of reading the story as a blog post.]



Photo by Adam Lerner.
As their plane came into the Raleigh-Durham Airport, Jaime and Evelyn expected the heavy scent of Magnolia blossoms but instead it was the sweet, heavy scent of tobacco that gave Durham its tantalizing aroma—especially tantalizing to Jaime, who had begun his sabbatical with the resolution never to smoke again.

Evelyn, who had never started, had promised to do everything in her power to help him stop. She was the perfect academic wife, Jaime thought, supportive, involved with her own research and with a bit of fun about her. Sometimes a wee bit too much fun. Teasing him by not telling where she’d put his yellow bowling shirt (JRE embroidered in brown on the breast pocket). He had wanted to wear it this weekend. He had wanted to see if Gregory would remember it from their college days, their Friday nights at the bowling alley. He had thought about that when they were packing to leave New Haven. He remembered specifically.

Evelyn had said yellow was not his best color and the shirt looked like a prime candidate for the Goodwill sack she was filling up; and he had said no matter if it did, it was an artifact from his college days, a material symbol of his friendship with Gregory. After that, she hadn’t mentioned it again. How soft the fabric had become; how faintly his old laundry number showed at the collar. That shirt had the power to soothe; not many material things had the power to soothe. He was going to relax on this sabbatical or die trying.

“You can’t expect to decompress immediately,” Gregory had said, inviting them to Morehead city to see his sailboat, the first thing he had bought the minute he got his job at Duke.

“Count on Gregory to spend his last dime on something both foolish and wonderful,” Jaime said and Evelyn giggled, “Going overboard is Gregory’s style.”

Neither of them was extravagant by nature—they had never argued over money—but it was nice to know someone who had a sailboat and wanted to share it with them. They both liked the idea of going to the coast for a weekend, before settling down to their respective projects.

********************
If the sun had been out, it would have been a day full of glare, unpleasant for driving, but it was still early. They had just listened to the news when Jaime spotted the hitch-hiker standing by the side of the road. He was very thin and very black and his plain white shirt buttoned to the neck and with no tie stood out against the slightly overcast, indistinct morning. He must have stood there holding onto his suit coat shivering while the mist was lifting on Drowning Creek, the Shake River, the Pee Dee, the Catawba, waiting for them to be on their way through the country with their spirits up, looking for adventure, enlightenment, diversion.

He didn’t usually stop for hitch-hikers (unless they were students he recognized) but on an impulse Jaime pulled to a stop and called out, “Want a ride?”

The Hitch-hiker opened the back door and got in without saying anything and sat holding onto his suit coat, a rolled-up newspaper with something inside (maybe the tie he wasn’t wearing) and a road map of the Southeastern States.

“We’re the Edwards,” Jaime said, careful not to say more, though he didn’t suppose a Ph.D. would mean much if anything to this fellow.

“Uh huh,” the Hitch-hiker said.

Evelyn smiled at Jaime. They were both interested in language, in authentic speech patterns.

“Where’re you headed?” Jaime asked when they had travelled for a while in silence.

“This road be fine,” the Hitch-hiker said.

“We’re going to Morehead City,” Jaime said, hoping to encourage a few spontaneous remarks.

“Uh huh,” the Hitch-hiker said, leaning back and taking out a pack of almost flat cigarettes.

Smoke and the sound of cellophane being stuffed into the ash tray began to fill the car. The last one in the pack, Jaime hoped.

“This is sure beautiful country,” Evelyn said. “Do you live around here?”

“No’am,” the Hitch-hiker said.

“What sort of work do you do?” Jaime asked.

“Kitchen when I can,” the Hitch-hiker said.

“That’s interesting,” Evelyn said.

The Hitch-hiker didn’t say anything. He smoked his cigarette down to nothing and then fished around in his pockets until he found another flattened out pack and pulled one of those out, spilling tobacco all over the back seat. The loose cigarette paper blazed up suddenly and in the rear view mirror it looked as if the whole back seat was going up in flames.

Thinking about the dangers of fire was one of the ways Jaime had psyched himself to quit smoking. He rolled the window down slowly and deliberately and breathed the fresh air. He was not going to freak out. He could, of course, if he chose to do so, stop the car and put the fellow out—the nameless one. Since he worked, he had a social security number and that meant he had a name because you couldn’t get a social security number without a name. But he obviously wasn’t going to divulge anything. To use Gregory’s favorite all-purpose expression, “Just forget it.” He would talk to Evelyn.

“I hope the wind will be good for sailing,” he said.

“Who cares about sailing? I just want to walk on the beach,” Evelyn said.

“What you mean,” Jaime said, putting his hand over her knee, “is that you like the way you look in your new bikini.”

She smiled back.

Evelyn was such a sweetheart. He was a fool to have picked up the Hitch-hiker; but since he had, he’d like to show Evelyn how he could get such a shy fellow to speak up. He was a challenge.

“How long you been on the road?” he asked, turning his head quickly to the back seat.

“Yesterday, but I was sleeping part of the time,” the Hitch-hiker said.

Where could he have slept in that white shirt and those front-pleated pants that had probably hung in some husband’s closet for years and years until some wife obsessed with neatness carried them off to the Goodwill. He was sure that Evelyn would not do that to him.

“You got a fishing boat?” the Hitch-hiker asked.

His voice sounded interested, alive, for the first time. If I only knew something about fishing, I could probably get him started, Jaime thought.

“My friend has a sailboat,” he said. “He calls it The Blue Devil. That’s what they call the Duke football team.”

The Hitch-hiker hunched forward and pointed out the front window at the Morehead City sign and right next to it a sign saying, “Sanitary Fish market—Good Food.”

“My uncle works there,” the Hitch-hiker said.

“We ought to have you for a guide,” Evelyn said.

Jaime pulled to a stop in front of the restaurant. Across the street was a parking lot with a sign, “Park While You Eat.”

“Where can we find the Marina?” Jaime asked as the Hitch-hiker was half out of the car. “Could you just tell us that.”

“Up past the railroad yard,” he said, backing off. “Keep going up that way and cross the tracks. You’ll find it.”

“What a relief,” Jaime said when they were out of the business district. He wanted a cigarette so badly he could taste it. “I hope he didn’t set fire to anything. See if anything’s smoldering.”

“You could have asked him not to smoke,” Evelyn said.

“I love smoking,” Jaime said. “I’d like nothing better right this minute.”

Evelyn turned her head to the window.

She didn’t understand how smoking had a soothing effect on the nerves. The total taciturnity of the Hitch-Hiker had unnerved him. He could always get students to talk. If anything, it was shutting them up that he had trouble with.

Another quarter mile of ragged asphalt blown over with sand and they were at the Marina, but damn it Gregory was nowhere to be seen. There was the restaurant where he had said they could meet, but with a CLOSED sign on the door. He needed to go to the bathroom.

“I’d be rich if I had a dime for every hour I’ve spent waiting for Gregory.” He kicked at a rock and scattered sand into his pants cuff.

“There’s a boat shop over there,” Evelyn said, walking delicately through the sand, stopping every few steps to shake out her sandals. A couple of men were hanging around smoking, watching another man clean some motor parts.

“Hi,” Evelyn said. “Do you happen to know when the restaurant opens?”

The men looked at one another and then back at Evelyn. “When the cook shows up,” one of them said.

“I could sure use a cup of tea.”

“Well, come on, little lady; we’ll see if we can fix you up.”

“Hello,” Jaime said as the men started to walk out of the shop. “We were supposed to meet a friend here and we can’t find him. He’s a tall fellow, about six-three.”

“His boat’s named ‘The Blue Devil,’” Evelyn said.

The man cleaning the motor said without looking up, “This here is part of his outfit. He’s around somewhere.”

“You mean that’s his motor?” Jaime felt sick. He saw Evelyn go into the restaurant and he walked as fast as he could in the deep sand, but the door locked shut and he had to bang with his fist until one of the men came over and unlocked it.

He went into the “Gents” room and took off his jacket, yearning again for his yellow bowling shirt. When he opened the door, he could hear Gregory talking and see his big frame draped over Evelyn.

“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” Jaime said. “What’s with your motor?”

“He promised yesterday,” Gregory said, handing Jaime his beer. “I’ll go see if they’ve got it in the boat yet.”

He was back before Jaime had had more than three swallows. “Let’s go. Bring the beer.”

“Do you have a fridge?” Evelyn asked, trying to match Gregory’s long stride.

Even in the sand he was a vigorous walker. Jaime felt tired and pulled down already.

“Everything your little heart desires,” Gregory said, putting his arm around Evelyn and delivering a running commentary on the boats they were passing—“The Roamer,” “The Mary Lou Too,” “Red Sails in the Sunset.” It was definitely not a Yacht Club kind of place.

“Do they know you’re a Duke professor?” Jaime asked?

“You don’t ask boat people what they do in real life,” Gregory said. “It’s escape, man, like cars, like stamp collecting, like model railroading…”

“No hitch-hikers on a boat,” Evelyn said, laughing. “We picked up a real weirdo on the way here.” “I wouldn’t have said weird,” Jaime said. “He was little strange; that is, he was very reticent, but I definitely wouldn’t have said weird.”

Gregory held out his hand for Evelyn to step aboard and Jaime put one foot on the deck just as it started to move off from the dock. He shifted his weight, leaped, and landed heavily on the seat where Evelyn was already curled up next to Gregory. Why was his life so full of near escapes? Why in Hell couldn’t he avoid making an ass of himself, or coming so close to it that he might as well have.

“I want to get out in the ocean,” Evelyn said, shivering with excitement.

“We won’t really be on the ocean,” Gregory said. “But we’ll get out in the channel before dark.”

“Untie us, Jaime,” Gregory called, starting the motor.

“We’re off, we’re off,” Evelyn said. “I love it.” She snuggled against Jaime and he slipped one arm from his jacket and covered her shoulders.

They passed an old barge and a boarded-up marine station. Gregory sat holding the rudder and scanning the passage. “I like this time of day,” he said. “If my running lights were working, we could stay out longer.” He shoved a fistful of popcorn into his mouth and passed the sack to Jaime.

Two things you could count on from Gregory—hungry and broke. “Our treat for dinner,” Jaime said.

“I accept,” Gregory said.

Jaime felt soothed by the water flowing by. His anxieties about smoking and his missing bowling shirt lifted, floated away. The moon was just beginning to come up. They were at sea when all sensible souls were easing into their berths and putting away gear for the night.

“It’ll be pitch dark before we know it,” Gregory said, turning the boat. “I’ll give you a proper ride tomorrow. We’ll get the sails up and head for the ocean.”

He cut the motor and they drifted in. “The best place to eat is the Sanitary Fish Market. Awful name, but the food’s good.”

“That’s where our hitch-hiker got out,” Jaime said. “His uncle works there.”

“Look at that gorgeous moon,” Evelyn said. “I don’t want to think about that strange character. We were just passing by and he wanted a ride. He didn’t want to talk to us and we were crazy to try to get him to. He didn’t want to be a research project.”

Gregory gave her a hug. “There’s nothing like sailing to take your mind off your work… I’d go nuts if I couldn’t get down here on weekends.”

Evelyn stood poised on deck ready to climb forward and tie up. She was showing off for Gregory, but who could blame her. The whole jaunt was kind of a phony excitement for them both. They really should have spent the weekend in the Library getting organized.

********************
All the way into town, Gregory never stopped talking for a minute, pointing out one historic spot after another. They were in front of the restaurant before Jaime had a chance to savor the environment.

“There he is,” Evelyn said, squeezing Jaime’s arm, “He’s parking cars.”

“Let’s go someplace else,” Jaime said, but the Hitch-hiker had already started for the car.

“Having a good visit?” Evelyn said.

“Will we be able to get out whenever we like?” Jaime asked, not taking his keys out of the ignition.

The Hitch-hiker pointed to the attendant’s shack. “On Duty Until Midnight.”

“Relax, Jaime,” Gregory said. “This is not New Haven.”

“OK, already,” Jaime said and handed over his keys.

Inside the restaurant, Gregory led the way to a table looking out over the water and ordered the food. It was the best they had had in North Carolina. Gregory explained that the restaurants in Durham were few and far between because everybody ate at home, but sea coast towns had a tourist trade to keep them going.

Jaime asked for the wine list, but Gregory said he was really out-of-touch living in Yankeeland. “This is not only the sunbelt, but the Bible Belt.”

“Love those hush-puppies,” Evelyn said.

“The food was excellent, I agree,” Jaime said. “It just would have been even better with a bottle of white wine.”

“Don’t get your water hot, ole Buddy,” Gregory said. “We’ll stop at a package store. We can sit on the beach and listen to the waves crashing.” He smiled at Evelyn. “How does that sound, Honeybun?”

“Brilliant,” she said, leading Gregory to the souvenir corner while Jaime paid the bill.

James R. Edwards, he wrote on the card and put the receipt in his pocket. He had never been audited, but he didn’t plan to tempt the IRS. And no tax on cigarettes, he noticed. That was a temptation.

When he pushed open the screen door and walked out into the starlit night, Gregory and Evelyn were standing by the car. The Hitch-hiker was nowhere to be seen. Jaime breathed a sigh of relief.

Getting in, he almost sat down on a torn-off piece of newspaper. “Here at seven-thirty in the morning if you ride back.” It was signed, if you could call it a signature, “R.R.”

Jaime looked at Evelyn. “I didn’t promise…”

“What’s your friend’s name?” he said to the attendant, handing him a dollar bill.

“He calls hisself R.R. don’t he?” The attendant looked as if he weren’t sure.

“Could you give him a message?”

“Gone,” the attendant said. “When they ride went.”

“Can you give us his telephone number?” Evelyn said.

“Not that I knows of,” the attendant said.

“Well, I’m sorry, but I didn’t make him any promises.”

Evelyn squeezed his arm. She knew he hadn’t misled the fellow.

Gregory said, “Just forget the whole thing.”

Damn. Easy enough for Gregory to say “forget it.” He never even saw “R.R.” for more than thirty seconds and didn’t take a good look at him then. Saying “forget it” was one thing; doing it was another.

After they had stopped at the Alcoholic Beverage Control store and Jaime had bought a bottle and some plastic cups, they drove for another half a mile.

“What a strange system,” Jaime said. “You can buy cigarettes for almost nothing in a restaurant, but you can’t buy a bottle of wine.”

Evelyn tugged at his arm. “This is far enough. I want to get on the beach.”

Jaime let himself be carried along like a jellyfish—following their directions to pull off the road, climbing up and sliding down a small dune until they were on the hardpacked sand, whitened by the bright moon and lines of foam washed up by the tide. Never leaving him alone for a minute, Evelyn and Gregory opened the wine and toasted Yale, Duke, The Blue Devil, the Moon, Friendship until his head was spinning. They kept saying, “Look at the sandpipers, Jaime, and put this beautiful shell in your pocket” not seeming to notice the mood he had sunk in, miserable and mad with himself, with Evelyn for hiding his bowling shirt somewhere and with the Hitch-hiker counting on him for a ride in the morning. He wished that he were already back in Durham, lying between cool, clean sheets, reading over what he had written this week. Not everybody needed constant stimulation. Not everybody liked libraries with open shelves and students lounging all over with their shoes off.

“I love the sound of the ocean,” Evelyn said. “It’s so primeval.”

“Yeah,” Gregory said. “You feel that especially when you’re sailing. You’re going to like that.”

The wet sand clung to the inside of Jaime’s socks and to the inside of his shoes. He felt sand in his hair and inside his mouth. His lips were salty and his cheeks felt drawn tight.

Gregory poured out the last of the wine and said, “Let’s go.” When they got to the Marina he jumped out of the car and started loping towards his berth. “I’ll come by for breakfast.”

“Sleep well,” Evelyn called out.

“Think of it,” she said when they had backed away from the Marina and were following the dark road, turning quietly into the pine-strewn parking space. “Sleeping on a boat.” She leaned her head against Jaime’s shoulder. “Rocked in the cradle of the deep.”

By the time he got the sand washed out of his hair and feet, Evelyn was dead to the world. He almost went downstairs to the Office to see if they had a cigarette machine. Instead, he lay in bed tossing and turning, trying to think about something to relieve his anxiety, something that would help him relax. He thought of the wonderful crack a bowling ball makes when it hits the king pin and the wood falls to a strike. He thought of the neatness of two black lines intersecting in a tiny square, the neatness of a perfect score. Evelyn couldn’t have taken the bowling shirt out of his suitcase and put it in the Goodwill sack. It wouldn’t be like her to do something dastardly like that.

He tried to let his mind go blank, but the madhouse scene just before they drove to the airport came back in excruciating detail. He had just folded his bowling shirt and put it in his suitcase when the doorbell rang. Evelyn called out form the kitchen and he went to the door. There was the man from Goodwill shuffling from one foot to the other, not saying a word, until Evelyn handed him the bulging Goodwill sack. When he went back to the bedroom, Evelyn had already closed his suitcase. That’s how it had happened. He would never see his yellow bowling shirt again.

He fell asleep exhausted and dreamed that he bowled 300, but that as soon as he wrote down his score, the numbers disappeared.

First thing when he awoke in the morning and heard the ocean pounding, pounding, and the sea birds piping and screeching, it came to him quickly, instinctually, that he would go the Sanitary Fish Market and see if R.R. were really there waiting for him.

He looked at Evelyn and saw that she was still in the prolonged sleep that was her unassailable talent. She and Gregory could have a fantastic day sailing while he could go back to Durham and get some work done. Dressing carefully, he thought out the note he would write and slipped a fifty into an envelope.

He eased the car out without looking back. He longed for the sweet tobacco odor that hung over Durham. R.R. was standing where he’d said he would be. He smiled when Jaime opened the car door, settling himself in without a word, not asking what had happened to Evelyn. Jaime wondered if he even remembered she had been in the car.

After they had turned out of the business district and were well on their way into the country, passing field after field grown up with scrub pine, Jaime said into the silence, “What do your initials stand for? Ronald, Roy, Randall, Richard, Robert?”

“The way it happened,” R.R. said, a slow smile crossing his face. “Before I was born, this man my mother worked for said, ‘When your child is born if you’ll name him Rolls Royce’—he run a car garage—‘I’ll give you five dollars.’ She said she could use the five dollars. Some call me Royce, some call me R.R.”

Jaime glanced sideways as R.R. took his cigarettes out and reached for the ashtray.

“Let me have one of those, will you,” Jaime said, flexing his hands on the steering wheel and then pushing in the lighter for them both.

“Royce,” he said. “I’ll call you Royce.”

[Undated short story by Virginia McKinnon Mann.]