Horace Afoot (16 page)

I take down the volume of Horace. I have been memorizing it. The way I test myself is to recite from memory and then check myself against the book.
Mortalia facta peribunt, nedum sermonum stet honos et gratia vivay
.

I have it correctly.
All that mortals make will die and language has yet a briefer span of pleasing life
. Or,
Everything mortal dies, language is easily broken
. Or, straight to the point,
Language, too, is mortal and will die
. I wonder if by uttering Horace’s Latin I am proving or refuting his point? In the conjunction of identities that is the world, Horace is dead and I am Horace.

I am alone in the crypt. The dusty clock above the door is dead, a remnant of the days when the building housed a bank. An hour or two passes, and I continue on with Horace. Then I hear the front door open, footsteps in the corridor. It is Mrs. Entwhistle.

“Thank you so much for coming in,” she says, entering the reading room. “Is Mr. Mohr not here yet?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Has he called?”

I shake my head. Mrs. Entwhistle pulls off her coat and hangs it in a closet behind the circulation desk. She takes off her boots and slips on a pair of shoes she keeps in the closet, telling me about the problems she had with her car and the condition of the roads, and finishes up by saying, “My, it is quiet in here, isn’t it? Maybe we’ll be lucky and it will stay this quiet all day, and I’ll actually have time to get some work done. Would you like some tea?”

I glance at my shelf full of books. “Sure, why not?”

Mrs. Entwhistle hurries off, asking me if I’d be so good as to answer the telephone in case it rings.

It doesn’t. I find myself thumbing a book about trees on top of the return pile. Custard Apple, Annona family, asimina triloba, or Paw. Leaves deciduous. Fruit edible. Flowers two inches in diameter, three green sepals. Six heavily veined purple petals.

“Here’s your tea.” Mrs. Entwhistle hands me a large cracked mug with a spoon and a teabag floating in it. She sits at a long table behind the circulation desk, carefully extracts the bag from her cup, and places it on a small saucer on the table. For several moments we blow steam from our tea in abstracted silence.

Mrs. Entwhistle is a heavy-lidded, middle-aged woman with platinum hair piled and tucked on her head who speaks in high, reedy tones that make her seem perpetually on the verge of a sudden outburst. All I know about her is what Mohr has told me, which is that her husband teaches chemistry at the high school, that they don’t have children, and that the two of them devote all their time to organizing summer field trips for the church choir they belong to. I can’t help suspecting Mrs. Entwhistle of harboring some secret nastiness, of being the sort of pious,
105-town churchgoer who might also belong to the Ku Klux Klan or bomb abortion clinics on weekends.

I finish my tea and begin getting ready to leave. The mailman breezes in just as I’m putting on my snowsuit. Mrs. Entwhistle puts her cup down. “Neither snow nor sleet,” she singsongs with phony cheer.

“Nor gloom of night,” the mailman booms back in his own overused brand of mock cheerfulness, sorting through his shoulder bag. “There’s an e-normous pileup out on the interstate,” he says. “Pretty dag-gone nasty.”

“Oh my,” Mrs. Entwhistle intones. “Is anybody hurt?”

“Don’t know for sure yet. Happened just a little while ago.”

“Why anybody would get on the interstate in this weather is beyond me.” She takes the handful of proffered mail.

“Some people got no choice,” he says, implying that he is one of them. “All I can say is I’m glad I don’t have to get on it today.”

Mrs. Entwhistle puts on her reading glasses and begins to flip through the stack of mail. The man turns to leave, sees me struggling to pull my boots back on. I glance up at him. “Lace ’em up tight now,” he says and sweeps past me out the door.

“Goodbye now,” Mrs. Entwhistle says without looking up. “And thank you very much.”

By the time I arrive at the iInterstate the fire and rescue squad is struggling to right the overturned tractor trailers. I watch from the overpass. The traffic files along slowly; snow piled up on each side of the highway and along the median creates the impression of two long asphalt furrows stretching away into the horizon. The air is filled with the muffled sound of motors, winches, and the hiss of tires on wet roadway.

A crew works to hoist the two overturned containers that have spilled their litter into the snow like a sprinkling of vital fluids. The drivers in the oncoming cars all slow to look upon the scene in curious empathy, then speed off on their way as though personally invulnerable.
106 cars have been hauled to the side of the highway, and one is upended headfirst in the ditch of the median. Rear wheels in the air, it looks more derelict and deranged than the rest. There is no sign of driver or passengers.

“Goddamn kids,” a voice mutters from behind. I turn to see Ed Maver coming toward me. His car is parked at the other end of the overpass. He lifts a hand in greeting, then leans over the railing and peers down at the highway. “Saw them being hauled into the station. Little bastards.”

“Who?”

“Kids throwing snowballs caused this whole mess.” He points out the broken windshield on the cab of one of the trucks. “Driver broke his neck. Had to fly him out in a helicopter. Goddamn kids. Parents probably won’t even find out little Johnny’s in trouble ’til they get home from work.” Maver pushes away from the rail, sticks out his hand. “Long time no see, buddy.” We shake. “And you’re still without an automobile, I see. What’d you do? Walk all the way out here?”

I nod and watch the trucks working below. Maver steps up to share the view. The truck with the broken windshield has been uprighted and is sagging on its broken axles on one side of the road. The road crew is now standing in a ring discussing the strategy for the next job. “Incredible,” Maver shakes his head. I don’t know if he’s referring to the efforts of the crew or the general scene of the accident or if he’s referring to the havoc wrought by a gang of kids throwing snowballs.

“Did anyone besides the truck driver get hurt?”

“Can’t say for sure. Three or four people got taken away in ambulances. I’ll say one thing for sure, though.”

“What’s that?”

“Those trucks must’ve been rolling along at a pretty good clip to wipe out like that. Combination of speed and ice and goddamn snowballs crashing through the windshield.” He shakes his head. “They oughta throw the book at the little bastards. Put ’em in boot camp. Straighten ’em out. My oldest, Jim. He began cutting up around sixteen. Couldn’t even list the stunts that boy pulled. Dropped out of high school and crapped around, good for nothing. Then he went into the Marines, and
boy oh boy, you should’ve seen his mother’s face when he came home after that. It was a different kid standing at the door. His mother and me couldn’t believe it. ‘It’s not Jim,’ she kept saying over and over. Now he’s got a wife and two kids, and I swear I never knew a straighter goddamn flyer my whole life. Goes to church fifty-two Sundays a year and twice on Christmas, and that’s something I quit doing years ago.”

As Maver talks I turn and lean against the rail. The sun is beginning to sink and the wind has picked up. Our elongated shadows stretch across the roadway, over the opposite rail, eastward ho. I won’t get home until long after dark. A car drives past. Maver waves to the driver.

“Well, I’ll be off now.” I step away from the rail.

“Lemme give you a lift,” Maver says.

“Thanks, but I enjoy the walk.”

“Suit yourself,” Maver says and offers his hand. We shake, and I turn to leave. “Hold on a second,” Maver erupts. “I almost forgot to say.”

“What’s that?”

“About a month ago. No, wait a minute. It was before Christmas. That’s right. It was two months ago. Two months ago I stopped in at Rice’s Pharmacy to pick up some flu medicine. Guess what I saw?”

“I have no idea.”

“That girl we dragged out of the cornfield last summer! Would you believe?” He cuts himself off and scrutinizes me for signs of shock, surprise, incredulity. It half occurs to me to remind him that neither of us dragged her from the field and that, in fact, all he did was drive to the hospital. “There she was. Working behind the prescription counter. Don’t think she recognized me, but I sure as hell remembered her. Couldn’t take my eyes off her the whole time.”

“Did you say anything to her?”

“Hell no, I didn’t. I just stood there looking dumb. Paid and left. What am I gonna say? ‘Dragged you bare-assed out of a cornfield last summer?’ Hell no. I just paid and left. Said thank you. Truth is, I was pretty goddamn embarrassed. Christ, I even felt my whole face going all red. And that’s not something that happens to Ed Maver too easily, I’ll tell you that for sure.” He pauses to gauge my reaction, then gestures to his car. “C’mon. I’ll drive you back into town. You can go in and see for yourself.”

I decline the invitation and turn to leave before Maver’s good-old-boy jollity forces me to say something nasty. “So long there, buddy,” he calls after me, sensing that he has hit a raw nerve.

The walk home takes longer than I expected. Darkness comes quickly, and the way is lighted by a half moon that rises over the bowl-shaped glow of the town like a forgotten piece of celestial furniture. Streetlights begin at the town limit, which is marked by a small sign. The snow, blue in moonlight, turns orange-yellow there.

Jane Doe has merged with my memory of cornfields and van Gogh and Hemingway, no longer imminent but part of a vague diffusion of considerations, cogitations, and ideas. Maver’s story has reanimated her. I can picture her across the pharmacy counter handing a bottle of pills to the bug-eyed and embarrassed Ed Maver, who is caught at a loss for words for the first time in years. As I walk she condenses in my imagination. I try to fend her off. sensing an unwholesome preoccupation coming on like symptoms of flu. Don’t think about it. Don’t think of the left ear of a camel. It’s useless. Maver has planted a germ in my imagination that will not easily go away. And the more I am curious about Jane Doe, the more I must wonder what underlies my curiosity. The first thing that occurs to me is that I might go and introduce myself to her, ask her how she is recovering from her ordeal. But that idea is soon submerged by a flood of uncertainties. What for? I can see myself standing across from her at the counter—just as Maver did—and getting a look that says, And now I suppose you have come to collect the reward? Or, Thank you for remembering me. Would you now please let me get on with my life? Or, I’ve recommended you for the Congressional Medal of Honor. You should be getting a letter from Washington any day now. Maybe I should go in and say, I’d forgotten all about you, but when I heard you were working here I figured I just had to come by and say hello. Or, to indicate that yes, I do have a reason for seeking her out: Could I have my shirt back?

The center of town is deserted. I walk past the library. One of the lamps at the entrance is burned out, and the other is flickering on the verge of extinction. The streets are almost clear. A layer of ice is forming despite all the salt and sand. The temperature is dropping quickly. I continue past the Town Hall and along Main Street. There is a smell of wood
and fireplaces in the air. The houses are set farther from the road the farther up Main Street you go. They seem stranded at the end of long, deep trenches cut into the snow from curb to front door. Windows are lit, driveways are cleared, cars are tucked into garages.

I stop at a corner underneath a streetlight and glance back toward the center of town. Not a car on the road. The wind picks up, blowing a fine mist of snow. I imagine myself, an icy statue, standing in this spot forever while people come and go from their houses and cars speed past during all seasons and airplanes take off and land out at the airport and everything slips past in timeless silence.

After three or four minutes my feet get cold, and I continue on toward home.

Snow falls for three full days. I dust and clean, oil my boots, wash clothes, and hang them on a line near the stove to dry. I commit passages from Horace and
Selected Philosophical Essays
to memory, continuing the graft of this fanciful self of mine from the newly cut boughs piling up at my feet. Remaining indoors helps, but despite all efforts of concoction—and with the snow piling up outside to suspend my own and the daily rhythms of the town—a kind of private obliteration occurs so that after the third full day indoors, I find I have begun to play around in Cartesian fashion with doubts about my own existence. The game is surprisingly entertaining, and the hot stove in the living room helps. But it doesn’t last long. In the end I am forced to admit that there is no
existence
to obliterate, merely a purely contingent self that finds the roaring flesh satisfying and irrecusable.