Horace Afoot (39 page)

Bright, cloudless dawn. The sun rising at my back, my shadow stretches long and spindly on the road ahead. A light dew covers the open fields, reflecting sparks and glints of morning light. I would like to take it all in, but my head feels tight, constricted, my vision pinched at the edges. It is not just the lingering effect of alcohol but some organic impurity of spirit and a general lack of conscious clarity that prevents me from attending to the quiet beauty of the morning. It is as though I were viewing the world through a rolled tube and breathing through that same tube and never achieving fullness of vision or aspiration and always aware of the limits and boundaries of this tight, conscripted subjectivity.

I pace along, watch the lengthened stride of my shadow on the pavement. A flock of birds erupts from a tree in the distance. I stop to watch as a huge sprinkler cuts on in the field to my right, an enormous wheel-mounted arachnid contraption that straddles the rows of corn and moves up and down them spraying in all directions. A generator pumps water through miles of bony pipe—
ftht ftht ftht
—a pickup truck speeds by, stirring a pungent smell into the air, the smell of manure and petrochemically fertilized earth and out of this the distilled odor of the world going diligently about its business, not meandering but working, working—even the corn working in the field and the big watering contraption roving up and down the rows like some cruel galley master shouting and brandishing a whip. Keep up the pace. Faster faster faster.

At the bend in the road I stop for a rest, mouth dry, sour wine in my stomach. A car drives past. The driver waves. I sit down on the bank of a narrow ditch that runs alongside the road. The sun is climbing. It is growing warmer. Dew is steaming off the fields and the wet shoulder of the road.

Another car blows past, then slows, reverses.

Ed Maver rolls down the window. “You all right there, buddy?”

I greet him with a tired wave. “Yes. Just resting.”

“What are you doing way out here this time of morning?”

“Just out walking.”

“You walked all the way out here?”

I nod.

“Goddamn, you must’ve been out walking all night.”

I shrug.

“Hop in. I’ll take you home.”

“Thanks, no. I’ll walk.”

“C’mon there, give the old feet a break.”

“No thanks.” I stand up, brush the seat of my pants.

Maver eyes me. “You sure you’re all right?”

“Do you have any water with you?”

He lifts a plastic-lidded mug from between his thighs. “Just coffee. Here, have some.”

I accept the mug, drink a mouthful, and offer it back.

“Go on, finish it.”

“You sure?”

“Sure I’m sure. Had two cups already this morning.”

The coffee is warm and sweet. I drink it down in large, stomach-warming swallows. Maver looks on curiously, the bill of his cap tilted up.

I return the mug to him. “Thanks.”

“C’mon now. Climb in and drive to town with me. We can stop for more coffee on the way.”

“I would prefer to walk.”

“Don’t give me that would-prefer bullshit. You look like you tied one on but good last night. A dose of Maver’s sure-fire hangover medicine’ll set you right. Cold V8 and scrambled eggs. C’mon and get in! It’ll take you all morning to get back to town.”

“I’m not in a hurry.”

Maver shrugs, returns the mug to a plastic holder suspended from the dashboard. “Suit yourself, buddy,” he says and yanks down on the gearshift. “One of these days you’re going to get sick of walking, and when you do I want to be right there to help you pick out a brand-new car.”

“Thanks for the coffee, Ed.” I wave, realizing that I’ve never called him by his name before.

“Sure thing, Horace,” he says.

“Lucian,” I correct him.

“Isn’t your name Horace?”

“Not anymore. I changed it.”

“I’ll be damned.” He shakes his head in friendly bewilderment. “Well, it’s a free country,” he says and pulls away, waving an arm out the window.

I continue on more steadily with Maver’s coffee warm in my stomach and his last words in my head—free country. A free country. How so, free? And wherefore this flight of words? This fleeing from self to self? Name to name? Wherefore this alien body that subsumes itself in a multitude of names and never comes closer to knowing itself than when it casts a name aside and flees from it? Is that what free means? I can’t say, and no one has told me. If you ask me I will admit that I am Chidiock
Tichborne and William Blake and Horace and Lucian of Samosata since they are all I have, my head, my arms, my legs—my only limbs. And I use them freely to navigate the open road that runs between Oblivion and oblivion.

As I near the curve ahead Tom Schroeder rides past me on his motorcycle. He skids and almost falls off before wresting control and coming to a stop by the side of the road. I walk past, ignoring him, but he pulls alongside, pedaling the ground with one foot. Our morning shadows stretch long on the road ahead. “Where’s Sylvia?” he demands.

“She’s gone.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where’d she go?”

“I don’t know. Mexico. Argentina. Anywhere.”

Schroeder works the levers on the handlebars. I continue to walk. “Give me my gun back,” he says.

I pull it out and offer it to him, holding it between pinched fingers in disdain.

He stops the bike and takes the gun. Stuffs it into his belt. “Did she tell you everything?”

I ignore the question and resume walking.

“What did she tell you?” He pulls alongside again, pedaling the ground with a dirty boot.

“Leave me alone.”

“Why should I leave you alone?”

“Because you’re an asshole.”

“You going to turn me in?” He sends a wad of spit arching high in front of us, leans an elbow on the enormous gas tank, pedaling.

“Yes.”

“What for?”

“Because you’re an asshole.”

“You tell on me and I’ll kill you.”

I ignore him, keep walking.

Schroeder lifts his foot from the road, kicks the machine into gear, and roars ahead. Then he swerves to the right and turns so that he is
blocking the road, straddling his bulky machine like some grand iron horse.

As I draw near he yanks the gun from his belt and levels it.

I continue toward him.

“Tell me where Sylvia is.”

“No.”

He keeps the gun leveled. “Tell me where she is!”

I walk straight at him. And pass by. He revs up the machine and blows by me, then swerves and blocks the road. Again he levels the gun. “Where is she?”

I walk straight at him.

“
Bang
!” he shouts. “
Bang bang bang
!” He tucks the gun into his pocket, laughing, then revs up the bike and blows past. I slow my pace, expecting him to turn and repeat the charade. But he doesn’t. He just keeps going. Headed on his noisy machine in the direction of the interstate.

Boethius, my parakeet, is singing loudly when I come home. He is always tuneful this time of day. Today his tone seems sweeter than usual. When I look into the cage I see that his seed dish is empty. Who says birds are dumb? Jane, the vet, gave me the parakeet as a present. Originally I wanted a crow. Then, for about a day, I considered getting a dog—until I realized that I couldn’t bring a dog with me to the library. Crows don’t make very good pets, Jane told me over the phone. A few days later she brought the parakeet. It’s yellow and speckled with white and has a touch of purple. Can I let it out of the cage? I asked. Not unless you want it to escape, she told me. Thus the name: Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius—not that I expect the bird to discover the consolations of philosophy. Remaining alive will be fine.

I fill the seed dish and water bottle. The cage hangs in a window, and Boethius has a nice view of the woods behind the house, brilliant now with autumn yellows and reds and browns.

It’s Saturday. I have taken Mrs. Entwhistle’s old job at the library. She hired me for it after a little arm-twisting in the form of a small fund I established, the Mohr Trust. Any guilt I may have had for buying myself the job has disappeared. Mrs. Entwhistle and I work very well together. She moved into Mohr’s office one week after his funeral. Redecorated it. Hung curtains and potted plants. I preferred Mohr’s
chaotic jungle of boxes and paper, but Mrs. Entwhistle has put her own imprimatur on the place. She has turned out to be quite a good head librarian. I have no complaints.

I occupy the circulation desk five days a week, Tuesday through Friday, ten until six. Saturday from ten until two. It’s busy work, but I have come to like it. What I especially like is knowing what people are reading. It never occurred to me that I might come to know the town so intimately—the quiet, unseen, reading life of it, that is. I have even infiltrated it in my own small way. A shelf of my own favorite reading stands near the circulation desk, where I can watch people browse. It took some time to catch on. People were wary. But now the books are being borrowed (and returned!) at a fairly decent rate. Even Claudian’s
Rape of Proserpine
was finally borrowed, though it came back within a week and I have now returned that work by the last great pagan poet to obscurity in the classics section.

I go into the kitchen, put some rice on to cook, uncork a 1989 Gevrey-Chambertin that Anderson got in last week. Two cases, one for him and one for me. The wine is as big and grand and robust as Anderson promised it would be. I sip it slowly; the strong bouquet opens my sinuses. The days, it seems, evaporate up my sinuses. I drink. I eat. I pretend I was never here. But the voices in my head dissuade me.

Lucian?

Yes.

Horace?

Also yes.

William Blake?

Him too.

I reach for the telephone, dial a number. Then Boethius erupts in a chitter, and I put the telephone down and wander over to look at the bird. He cocks his head; a tiny bead registers my presence. I put my finger in the cage and he pecks at it for a moment, then loses interest.

I forget about the telephone and return to the kitchen to finish preparing my dinner. Boethius, my exemplar, has nearly persuaded me to do away with telephoning altogether. But I still feel an occasional cramping. He has also persuaded me of something else, namely, that the elements that go into the making of a full life—food and drink and a modicum of sanity and the slow accretion over time of the tiny facts that define us—are easy enough to come by, but never to the full satisfaction of that shadowy self that lurks underneath all experience and that seeks its definition apart from and sometimes in contradiction to the world of facts. Some call it spirit or soul, but I think of it more concretely as an eponymous self: that entity within from whom we borrow our name and take our identity.

I host these philosophical visitations less and less frequently these days. Boethius is my stand-in. I like to think of his little cage as my anteroom, where Lady Philosophy is received and detained. I run everything by the little bird first. It’s not as crazy as it sounds.

Mrs. Entwhistle thinks she knows what I need. She doesn’t mind telling me either. Over the course of the last few months she has become bolder and bolder in her assertions. It started out with lessons on the organization of my work and proceeded, gently but with a certain preordained vigor, to encompass areas of my private life as well. Lately she has told me that I need to find a woman and marry. She can’t believe I can live alone as I do and be fulfilled or happy. I don’t invite her observations, but I don’t forbid them either. The other day I suspected her of trying to set me up.