Horace Afoot (12 page)

I reach for my
Selected Philosophical Essays
and thumb through it. I’ve always bridled at the notion that “help” is available for every human predicament. I won’t say “problem” because the word belongs to a vocabulary I prefer to steer clear of. There is no arithmetic of human emotions—problem + help = solution. And I’m suspicious of the “happy consciousness” that is the desired outcome of so much help. My instincts tell me something is wrong. If life is guided by the reality principle, it seems to me that serenity is a more appropriate goal than mere happiness. Happiness is fleeting and too easily confused with pleasure—which elevated to a principle creates the seesaw of discontent that Freud had all of civilization teetering on. Why make life so complicated? Serenity is a state achievable only when all contingencies have been dissolved. A completely autonomous life is free of contingency and requires nothing to sustain it.

So I’m a morbid asshole. So what?

I put the book away.

The sun is shining directly onto the porch. My headache seems to be getting worse despite my efforts to rock it gently away. I go inside for some aspirin. The bathroom mirror reflects a gaunt-faced stranger, blank and bloodshot.

I strip and climb into the bathtub. There is no shower nozzle, just a handheld rubber attachment. A blast of cold water, a quick, shivering lather. I rinse quickly, washing the soap from my tightened skin like a thin film of white paint. I climb out, toss my clothes into the tub, and begin to wash them. A sudden mania for laundry sends me through the house gathering more clothes and sheets and towels to wash. Kneeling over the tub, I try to pretend I am by the side of a clear, rock-strewn stream on Horace’s farm outside Rome two thousand years ago—sun shining, world twittering over my head and all around.

Out in the backyard I try to fit all the wash onto the clothesline. I am bare chested, wearing a pair of cut-off shorts. The ground is cool against my feet, the sun directly overhead and shining strongly from a deep blue, cloudless sky. I hang the sheets up first. They shiver on the line and bring to mind backyard images of domestic life that are soothing in a folksy sort of way. The picture is framed by the woods at the bottom of the yard; the little yellow clapboard house; the chain-link fence that encircles the neighbor’s property, dividing the citadel of discarded appliances and toys from who knows what; a rusty red-and-white reclining lawn chair set like found sculpture in the middle of the yard—three tattered, procumbent planes ratcheted into odd but supple angles. And the laundry going up on the line.

My hands swollen white with detergent and water, I wring each item before hanging it up, trying to get the last drop of water out, straining my pectorals with each squeeze. There are no clothespins, so I have to balance everything carefully.

“Heard you had a visitor last night.” The voice startles me. I turn to see Detective Ross standing almost directly behind me. He breaks into a sweaty grin. “Sorry if I made you jump.”

I step back from the line, wipe my detergent-swollen hands on the
back of my shorts, and glance at the detective. He is wearing the same blue seersucker I saw him in last time, the same inquiring grin, and a panama hat. “What can I do for you?”

“I have a question or two I’d like to ask.” He takes out a handkerchief, removes his hat, wipes his forehead and the interior band of the hat. “You reported a break-in last night.”

I nod. A jackhammer pounds away in the distance, a road crew at the top of the street. A dog barks. These distant sounds are amplified by the detective’s hard breathing. He looks scorched and uncomfortable beneath his suit and jowly grin. He replaces the hat on his head. “What was stolen?” he asks.

“My journal.”

“And have you noticed anything else missing?”

“No.”

“Just the notebook?”

“Just the notebook.”

“That’s a strange thing for a thief to take. Don’t you think?” Ross slowly folds his handkerchief and tucks it into the pocket of his jacket. “The Schroeder boy been bothering you a lot lately?”

“So you know about him. Good. The little fucker should be locked up.” I pick up the empty laundry basket and swing it to let the water fly. A small arc of droplets lands in the grass with a pleasing little sound.

“What do you think he wants with your notebook?”

“I have no idea.”

“How does he even know about it?”

“I’d like to know that myself.”

“I guess you write down your thoughts and such in it.”

“Yes and no.”

“What kind of stuff do you write in it?”

I rearrange the clothes on the line, considering how and whether I should answer.

“That’s what most people do, isn’t it?” He takes a small pad from his shirt pocket and holds it up. “That’s what I do with mine. Take notes. Record impressions. Couldn’t do my work without it.”

“I recite.”

Ross tucks the pad back into his pocket. “I don’t follow.”

“From memory. I recite passages, texts I’ve learned.”

Ross nods, a look of puzzled appreciation. “What kinds of texts?”

“All kinds of texts.”

“The Bible?”

“Ancient poetry and philosophy, mostly.”

Ross’s eyebrows arch and he nods again as though to say, my, my, but aren’t we … strange. I continue rearranging the clothes on the line, wondering what he is piecing together in his detective brain. For the briefest moment I’m tempted to invite him to sit down with me in the grass—or, better, on my front porch, my stoa—and discuss it. I might explain to him that my preoccupation with ancient texts isn’t as much an exercise in memory as it is an effort to construct—or reconstruct—a self. I might explain that nothing resonates more clearly or more truly, nothing creates a fuller sense of
being
, than the words and phrases that cycle through me; that my essence is memory and that the content of this memory is identical to the content of my being. I might tell him that I believe he too is a sum of texts and that to know them is to know himself, and I might recite to him the opening of the John Gospel, a text that I have no doubt already resides within him—
At the beginning of time the Word already was; and God had the Word abiding with him, and the Word was God. He abode, at the beginning of time, with God
. That you don’t even have to believe in God to know this about the Word, and finally that, this being the case, we are epigones, all of us, and thus may—no, must—choose the texts we live by.

“A personal question.” Ross holds up a finger. “Just one.”

“Go ahead.”

“What is a rich, educated, middle-aged dude like you doing in a place like this?” He gestures toward the house, the yard, a fat smile breaking across his face.

I have to think for a minute, and we stand facing each other beside the clothesline. Sheets billow gently. Ross’s stentorian breathing is as audible as the breeze. I swing the plastic basket once more and watch the tiny arc of water disappear in a neat, parabolic curve. “I like it here.”

The detective, grinning, shrugs his heavy shoulders. “Just asking,” he says.

Two squirrels scamper across the far corner of the lawn and up into a tree. I watch them with feigned interest.

Ross continues eyeing me from a discreet, detectively angle. “I thought folks like you preferred big cities, apartments. You don’t fit here. Know what I’m saying?”

“You didn’t come here to talk demographics, did you?”

His expression turns serious. One hand disappears into his pocket; he shifts his weight, paunch hanging over his belt. “I’ll get to the point,” he says. “What does that boy—assuming he was the one who broke in last night—what does he want with you?”

“How the hell should I know? He’s been pestering me for weeks.”

“How long you been living here?”

“Since the spring.”

The detective shakes a handful of change in his pocket.

“He started coming around in the beginning, but I made it pretty clear I wasn’t going to indulge him.”

The detective rocks back on his heels, jingling. “Far as you’re concerned, then, he’s just trying to get some attention.”

“I don’t know what he wants. He ought to be locked up.”

“And the notebooks—that’s just something personal he can lay his hands on. Like a souvenir. Know what I’m saying?”

“Who knows?” I swing the laundry basket again. “The kid gives me the creeps. He tried to break in here a week or so ago, but I chased him off.”

“I read the report.”

“Who else is he harassing?”

“You’re the only one been complaining.”

“Why don’t you just go and arrest the little bastard?”

An indulgent smile. Ross takes his hand from his pocket, extends it, and we shake. “Thanks, man. You’ve told me what I needed.”

“I have?” We walk together around the side of the house. “How’s Jane Doe doing?” I ask.

“As a matter of fact, she’s gone home,” Ross says.

“She’s home? I thought nobody knew who she was.”

“
We
knew who she was. They had to keep her until
she
knew who
she was. Couple of days ago it all came back to her. Except she still can’t remember who attacked her or how she ended up in that cornfield.”

We are standing by the front porch. Ross’s car is a white unmarked police cruiser with an enormous antenna bent and clamped down to one side of the roof.

“Who is she?” I ask.

The detective glances at me, then looks toward his car. “Let me ask you something.”

“Go ahead.”

“Did you see anyone else in the field that day?” The tone of his voice and his look demand that I try to remember.

“I heard shots. Then I saw her. That’s all.”

“Then what?”

“I told you before.”

“Tell me again.”

“I approached her. She let me untie her, and then I gave her my shirt.”

“Then what?”

“Then I flagged down a car.”

“The first car that came by?”

“Yes. The first car.”

“So. Until that car came along it was you and her alone by the side of the road. Nobody else.”

“That’s right.”

“And you didn’t hear any more shooting?”

“No.” I put down the laundry tub and lean against the frayed and rotting edges of the porch floorboards. “I told you everything already. What’s the point of going over it again?”

Ross takes out his handkerchief, tilts the brim of his hat back, and wipes his forehead. “Just routine,” he says unconvincingly.

“Routine,” I repeat.

“You sure you remember it exactly?”

“How many times do you want me to repeat myself?”

Ross folds his handkerchief carefully into a small triangle and tucks it back into his pocket. I watch him, thinking for the first time how
strange it is that he is a detective. With his big, soft grin and his rumpled looks he’d pass for a preacher or a school principal. “You see,” he says, extending his hand for another handshake, “it might be just like you say. And you didn’t see anyone else out there that day.” We shake, and he holds onto my hand for a beat longer than seems normal. “But that doesn’t mean there was nobody there and that
they
didn’t see
you
.” He turns to leave but changes his mind. “By the way, I did a little check back at the station, like you invited me to.” A broad, shrewd smile flashes across his face. “Mind if I ask you a question?”

“What do you want to know?”

“Did you change your name because you just didn’t like it? Or are you hiding from someone?”

“It’s none of your business.” I try to sound evenhanded, but the words come out with a defensive edge.

“I checked it out. You’re clean, no record. But you did change your name a few years back. That’s why I have to ask.”

“I figured.”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Blake. Mr. William Blake.” He winks. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

I watch him as he lumbers to his car and sinks behind the wheel in that big-man way that looks so uncomfortable and ill fitting. The engine roars to life. He yanks the gearshift into position and drives off. It isn’t until he’s gone that I realize he never told me who Jane Doe was.

The air is clogged with heat, humidity, and the pulsating chirrup of insects high in the trees. I position the reclining lawn chair in the middle of the yard and lie down. It barely holds my weight. The rotting plastic creaks like dried, worn-out leather.