Something in the Shadows (3 page)

• • •

Joseph gave up his pointless musing and, bracing himself, walked across the living room to his wife. “I like the commercial,” he said. “I never said I didn’t like it, did I?”

But Maggie was quick to boil; slow to simmer down. “Why don’t you read some of
your
stuff aloud?” she snarled. “Why don’t you read that fascinating piece on the lily motif in early Christian art? That’ll put some zip into the afternoon!”

Miriam Spencer tried, “It’s really quite interesting, I think. Mr. Meaker — Joseph and I, were talking about it earlier at breakfast.”

But Tom Spencer was already putting into practice the tactics of the diplomat — a wink for Maggie, a discreet beckon to Miriam. “Ladies and Gentlemen,” said he, “The Thomas Arthur Spencers bring you three minutes of uninterrupted peace!” — leading his wife then to the stairs.

“Oh, fat chance!” Maggie said after them.

“I am perfectly serious, Joseph,” Maggie had said, “wild and crazy as it’s going to sound. The only way for you to get along with people is to pretend each and every one of them is Ishmael come alive; then simply treat them the way you’d treat the goddam cat, if
it
were human! For
that
matter, just treat them the way you treat the goddam cat right now, every day. Just give people one-eighth the chance you give that cat!”

Joseph was thinking of that as he pulled his Ford Consul away from the Trenton train station. It had been a stiff parting from the Spencers. Maggie had been too angry still, to drive along with Joseph as he delivered her friends to their train, and Miriam and Tom had seemed sullen during the long ride. For some reason — probably because the pockets of his jacket were much too small, and the jacket too new — Joseph had been unable to get his hand out of his pocket in time to take Tom’s, extended in a farewell gesture, and Tom had gone off never realizing Joseph’s fingers were wiggling frantically to be free from the wool hole. Maggie would have said, “Well, what were you doing with your hands in your pockets anyway, Joseph, at a time like that? Not helping anyone with their luggage, you can bet!”

Miriam Spencer had revealed her pleasure with the weekend in a clumsy slip of speech, just as she was thanking Joseph for everything. “Thanks again, Mr. Meaker, for asking us home — I mean, for asking us to
your
home, Yours and Maggie’s, I mean,” and her husband had pulled the sleeve of her coat, jerking her out of the embarrassment.

During their quarrel that afternoon, Maggie had said, “Don’t worry, everyone knows you’re strange. No one comes out here unprepared. They’ve all heard you’re strange.”

Joseph headed towards the bridge that crossed to Pennsylvania, thinking it all over in his mind. “A man who likes cats is odd enough already,” Maggie had raged on. “Most men like dogs!”

Joseph had said, “That’s not necessarily true. T. S. Eliot likes cats. He wrote poems about them; one I remember began ‘I have a Grumbie Cat in mind, her name is Jennyanydots — ’”

Maggie had begun screaming then, “Who the hell cares about T. S. Eliot, Joseph!” She burst into tears at that point, took two Miltowns, and began the old harangue about having to start analysis again; about calling Dr. Mannerheim the very next morning to see if he had an hour free.

Then the frosting on the cake: Ishmael began to vomit all over the living-room rug. He had been out eating grass again, and picked that unfortunate moment to get rid of it. “Go on, wipe up after him!” Maggie snapped, and Joseph refrained from making any parallel to Tom Spencer’s bathroom-dashing most of the afternoon. It was better not to say anything, wasn’t it? Better to hold it in. Joseph knew that by the time he got back to the house, Maggie would be over her anger. She would say something about the rough week she had put in (every week
was);
something about the tension resulting from A.&F. getting the Picks account; something too, undoubtedly, about Joseph not being the easiest person in the world to be married to. That was the way those things ended.

As if to mock his thoughts the radio groaned out some new rock ‘n roll message about a dance called the Twist; the vocalist grunting in obscene tones that everyone was “twisting” all over the country, “doin’ it in St. Louis, doin’ it in L.A. — ” Impulsively, tiredly, Joseph finished the rhyme in his mind, “Doin’ it in New Hope, in old New Hope, P.A.” Then he reached out and switched off the radio. Where was joy in it all? In so many of the modern novels Joseph read, love-making was described in a clinical, antiseptical way. Where was joy? In modern novels it was often a memory in the hero’s mind, a memory of some flaxen-haired sixteen-year-old with whom the hero had once walked along a river and done nothing more than held hands; but a wife was not joy. A wife was stretch marks in bright sunlight on a once-young body. Joseph always became confused when he wondered about such things: was that the way Life really Was, the way it was with Maggie and him, the way it was in best sellers? Or was there more? Was he no better than a caricature of some fictional character, off in his room rereading Varda’s words?

“Dear is the tear, the wind soft-voiced, the peaceful word — ”

Did he dream it or was it real? Were we real, or were our dreams real?

At Washington Crossing, Joseph swung onto Route 32 headed for New Hope.

Actually his and Maggie’s house was not in New Hope, though his address was New Hope R.D. No. 1. They lived about seven miles from that town, nearer a town named Point Pleasant. The house was an old one made from wood once used for the barges on the canal; there was a huge rundown barn in back, and the property extended for twenty-four acres. It was isolated on a winding back road called Old Ferry; the other houses on the road were more than a mile away from theirs. Guests who did not have cars had to be met in Trenton, New Jersey; and since Maggie seldom ever let a week go by without having guests, Joseph made this trip often — usually with Maggie beside him. Usually with Maggie blabbing away about something or someone at A.&F. Usually with Joseph the only one to wonder at the sights seen along the Delaware; wonder without mentioning it: who were the pair there on the canal’s bank building a fire, spreading a blanket for a picnic, that middle-aged couple there? What did they talk about and why had they planned that outing? Why was the man dressed immaculately in a business suit, and the woman dressed in old slacks? Then farther down, a young handsome man (in his twenties?) by himself with a box full of papers, burning them, pushing pieces that fell away from the fire back into its flame, burning each one carefully, alone. What were they? Old letters? A novel given up? Why had he come here to burn them, to a lonely spot by the river? Then kids — a gang of them trooping along in Boy Scouts uniforms, swinging sticks, knapsacks on their backs, and far to the rear, a lone boy, much taller, much thinner slumped over, dragging his feet, a handkerchief wadded in his hand; he was bawling. Why did the others ignore him? What had he done? Was he some idiot, soft in the head, shunned for his abnormality, or was there another reason for this exile? What were the secrets of all those people, and was there any one among them watching Joseph drive the Ford Consul, watching Maggie beside him in the front seat, wondering about them as well? Wanting to know his and Maggie’s secrets?

• • •

A wind was beginning; with it, a slight fog along the river’s edge. Joseph blinked his headlights out of courtesy and safety for oncoming drivers; theirs blinked back at him. It gave him a strange feeling of involvement with the drivers of other cars. Were they all driven by other Josephs on their way back home, alone? Was this the only communication the Josephs in life had? And there was a car now whose driver left his lights to glare in Joseph’s face, and Joseph had the absurd thought: not one of us, are you?

At the crossroads outside New Hope, Joseph slowed for the Stop sign. He noticed the bar on the left, its lights out, closed on Sundays for Pennsylvania Blue Laws. Once on his way back from a visit with a student of folklore at Princeton University, Joseph had stopped in the bar to use the Men’s. He had ordered a ginger ale, and the men there — farmers, hunters, truckdrivers — had regarded him with a certain icy hostility, as though he were a child molester or some other despicable form of human being. He had never figured out why the whole room had seemed so against him. Because of the ginger ale? Simply because he was a stranger? All conversation seemed to stop, as though he had walked into someone’s living room without being invited, and a sudden despair overtook him then, as though he would always be excluded from every group, no matter how low, or how high, or how in-between. What had they done in life to deserve their belong there, and why hadn’t Joseph done it? It had made him so nervous that he spilled the ginger ale down the front of his shirt, and he felt that they were all snickering at him as he walked unsurely to the door, that when he got outside, they would all burst into laughter. So what! he told himself, they were a seedy bunch, the lot of them. He had seen their guns — the hunters among them — piled against the wall by the pool table. He imagined them standing around in there swilling whisky and bragging about how many pheasants or rabbits or quail they had “bagged.” He imagined them stalking up to their kill after their guns fired, picking up the dead creature oblivious to the last look of life frozen on its dead countenance, oblivious to the fact they had ended the life with a coward’s trigger pull; guns against rabbits; a well-aimed bullet against one quick last leap of surprise — and then would they haul the rabbit home, skin it on the back porch, and give their kids the feet for luck? He had thought all that the day he stopped in that bar, and he had hated the men in there; still he had driven away wondering why not even one so much as looked at Joseph with recognition, the impassive uncommitted kind that at least acknowledged his membership in humankind.

• • •

Beyond New Hope, nearer Point Pleasant, the fog lifted. Joseph kept close watch for his turn-off, for the hill-road which took him onto Old Ferry Road. In his rearview mirror, the headlights of another car showed. Joseph moved to the right to allow the car to pass, but it stayed behind him. When Joseph took the turn, the car did too. It was a steep hill, and the road was not lighted. The road twisted and turned sharply, and Joseph had to shift to second to make it. At the top of the hill, on Old Ferry, Joseph moved to the right again. Finally, the car passed him. A black Mercedes. Pennsylvania licence — M.D. It reminded Joseph to do something about getting his plates changed and obtaining a Pennsylvania driver’s licence. Pennsylvania did not recognize a New York licence, nor any other state’s. It had something to do with a personal tragedy in the Governor’s life; the Governor had lost a son — something like that; whatever it was, it had resulted in very strict rules. Just as well, Joseph Meaker thought, too many nuts on the highway as it was, and as Joseph thought that, he saw the Mercedes begin to swerve.

The driver was slowing up, weaving from one side of the road to the other. Joseph was not far from the house by then, closer than half a city block, and he was thankful for that. He himself had been drunk behind the wheel once; he had driven miles with one eye closed to focus better, his brains fried in whisky. It had been years ago; he had been returning from a conference at Yale, and he had been sipping rye from a flask to make the journey less tiresome. He knew how the driver in front of him must feel. It was a fearful sensation — that of realizing you were out of control and there was not a thing you could do about it. Joseph wondered if there were any sensation more fearful.

Slowing his own car to keep from colliding with the Mercedes, Joseph wondered about the driver in front of him. A doctor. That fact made Joseph all the more sympathetic somehow. From the back of his head, the doctor looked like a young man — perhaps a man younger than Joseph, though it was impossible to tell. Why was he drunk? Was he drunk a good percentage of the time, or was he drunk possibly for the first time? Joseph favoured the latter theory; he was a doctor after all, a man who knew better than to let whisky rot his liver; a man of responsibility, tension — was it tension? He was alone. Had he had a quarrel with a girl? His wife even? Had the girl walked out on him, left him at some party where he felt lonely and unwanted? Had he tried to strike up conversations with others there and been ignored? Had he taken another drink and then another to cover his self-consciousness? Was he drunk now because of a situation like that? It struck Joseph that everyone was miserable, whether they drove Fiats or Ford Consuls or Mercedes; everyone wanted a release. In his mind’s eye he saw the driver in front of him pulling up to a car lot and saying, “I want to trade this in for a release.” The man in the car lot would scratch his head and answer, “Buddy, I never heard of that car? Is it a foreign make?”

Again the black car swerved violently. That’s all right, Doctor, Joseph thought; it’s all right, Doctor. There are only two of us to know about it, go easy, slow; and Joseph was rooting for the fellow in front of him, praying to God the fellow did not have some bitch for a wife, who would take his head off when he did get where he was going.

EEEEEEE-OWWWWWW, EEEEEEEEEEEEE, OW-WWWWWWWWWWWWW!

Joseph Meaker slammed on his brakes at the noise. At the same time, the Mercedes charged forward in such a fit of speed, the dust was like a fog in the Ford’s headlights. Joseph pulled the emergency brake and slipped the car into neutral. He got out, not sure why or what he thought he would find, even though every nerve end ticking inside of him told him what that sound was. He went to the front of the car with his heart hammering, his hands wet in the palms, his throat dry. With the dust clearing now he could see the animal the Mercedes had struck. The elegant Siamese markings were splattered with blood. He fell to his knees, staring helplessly at the mutilated body of the cat, and when he reached his hand out to touch Ishmael, there was a shudder, one, and then another, and the cat’s blue eyes seemed to search Joseph’s momentarily for some answer as to why — then they were dead eyes.

Joseph toppled from his kneeling position and sat sideways in the road, his hands cupped over his eyes weeping. While he wept, he knew with a sudden knowledge that Ishmael had not been killed by a careless drunk. He remembered how carefully the Benz had taken the steep hill, how straight it had manoeuvered the twists of Old Ferry Road, before it had slowed to swerve, slowed while its headlights had hypnotized Ishmael; then the Benz had chased the creature from side to side until it caught him. Mission accomplished, the black Mercedes had used all its power to get away, the driver, all his sober skill to take the turns of Old Ferry in the escape. And had some sober mind calculated that the licence plates of the Consul were New York ones, that the driver did not live in this area, that therefore it was safe to go ahead with the game?

Weeping aloud now, the lights of his and Maggie’s house in the distance, Joseph Meaker picked up Ishmael and held him in his arms, stumbling to his feet, grabbing the car’s fender for support, holding on, waiting for the control that would come. But forgiveness would not come with it, nor would resignation. Because when Joseph Meaker had control again, he would think of some way to use it on the man in the Mercedes Benz.