The Axman Cometh (4 page)

"Ha! It doesn't run half the time when there
is
power. I hate and despise the damned thing, it's as big as a cattle car and
sooo
slow. And it never hits the floor exactly even; you have to step up eight inches, or down six inches—"

"You can't use the stairs to—"

"In this building?
This
neighborhood? It was a department store a hundred years ago, but the building went to pot after World War Two. A few years ago somebody got the bright idea of restoring the facade, which I have to admit is quite elegant, and converting several floors inside to office space. But they ran out of money, so the first couple of floors are deserted except for derelicts and God knows who else—walk? This far downtown, with the lights out? Not Petra
Kisber
. I'm perfectly happy to sit here with the doors locked, and I just
hope
the paraffin in this lamp doesn't give
out...
hmm, what was that?"

"Excuse me?"

"I thought I heard something just now. Someone
scr
—yelling. No, it must have been outside on the street."

"Miss
Kisber
—"

"Just call me Petra. I'm now managing editor, by the way. Excalibur Books."

"Yes, I've seen some of them. Very impressive. I wonder if—how long after Shannon left your office did the power fail?"

"I'm not sure. Let's see. I didn't walk her out, as I usually do—frankly, I had to use the little girl's sandbox, so that's where I was, sitting on the john when the lights went off. I'm telling you, I just about wrecked my shins getting back to my office—in the dark this floor is a maze of partitions and bookshelves. And wastebaskets: people will leave their wastebaskets anywhere. I'm writing a memo about that first thing in the—"

"There's a possibility that Shannon and perhaps others could be in the elevator, between floors?"

"Nobody else from here. I was the last one in the office. The floor below is vacant. And I doubt if the night cleaning crew shows up much before midnight."

"Is there an emergency alarm to ring?"

"Not in the elevator. Like I said, it's an old freight job with these massive gates Superman couldn't open by himself."

"Would you mind going to find out if anyone's trapped?"

"The elevator's clear on the other side of the building, and I don't mind admitting I'm getting a little stressed out being here all by my lonesome. I'd just as soon stay—"

Don pauses to drain the rest of his daiquiri, and, in the lifting of his arm, is aware that his armpits are icy, he is feeling more than a little apprehensive.

"Petra, if, just possibly, Shannon's in that elevator—by herself—imagine how
she
must feel."

"Weren't you two going to get married? I got the invitation and bought the most elegant —then wasn't it about three days before the wedding—?"

Don has long ago become sick of hearing about wedding gifts that had to be returned. "It's a long story. Listen to me, now. You don't know Shannon as well as I do—no one does. It would—be very bad for her to be by herself in that elevator. There could be serious psychological consequences."

"You mean she's claustrophobic?"

"Oh, I mean much worse than that." And he feels the sliding of icy sweat beads down his right side beneath his shirt.

"Hmm. Then I suppose I should—but I don't think there's a thing I can do if she's actually trapped—"

"The fire department will deal with that situation."

"I could stay here and call them. But if she's not in the elevator, then it's like turning in a false alarm, isn't it?"

"Petra. Please. Go find out if Shannon is in that elevator!"

"You're right. I ought to do that. I can put myself in her shoes. I'd certainly want somebody to come looking for me."

"Call me back. I'm at Cabrera's, on Columbus Avenue. The number is—"

Don reads it off for her, solicits further assurances that Petra will proceed to the elevator to find out if it is occupied, then notify the fire department. And call him. He hangs up and goes back to his seat at the bar with his empty glass; as soon as he sits down Francisco slides a fresh "Papa
doble
"
toward him. In the photograph on the back bar old Hemingway looks testier than ever, probably wishing somebody would fix him a frosty strengthened

"I heard," Francisco says. "I hope your lady is not in the elevator after all."

"Oh, God," Don says dismally, wiping his brow with a cocktail napkin, "you and me both, Frank."

Draw me.

I'm so thirsty! I wish I had something to drink. What I'd like right now is a draft beer— no, better than that, one of Cabrera's huge frozen daiquiris, in a goddamn beer mug. I'd give anything for—what did you say?

I want you to draw me, Shannon.

"Are you crazy? We're in the dark—I don't even know where you are."
I'm not sure you—

Exist?

That's what I was afraid of! I'm talking to myself! I
am
losing my mind!

No, you're not.

"Then—prove it to me. I'm here. I can't go anywhere, so—reach out and—and touch me.

I'd like to, Shannon. But I can't. First you have to draw me. The dark doesn't matter. You have your sketch pad with you. Your drawing pencils. Do me in charcoal. Your brain knows. Your hand will know. Draw me.

But if I do that—

What, Shannon?

No, I can't. I won't do it—I've never been able to do it!

If you let me out, then I'll let you out. You've always wanted to know the truth, Shannon. You've always wanted to be sure. Now is the time.

"I don't trust you! Stay where you belong, you son of a bitch—! Ah.
Ahhh
,
ahhhhh
!"

If you let yourself get hysterical, you won't be able to breathe. You could die here, Shannon, before anyone finds you. Die of suffocation in this elevator. We don't want that to happen. So get busy. Open your case. Take out your pencils. And draw me.

("Draw Me." On a plain piece of white paper, no more than eight-and-a-half-by- eleven inches. Sometimes it was a girl in the ads, sometimes the head of a dog in profile, done with economical charcoal strokes. When she was eleven Shannon had copied one of the drawings that appealed to her, a Dalmatian, and mailed it for a free evaluation of her potential. Unsurprisingly she was informed by the art school that she would be squandering a valuable talent if she didn't immediately sign up for the home-study course they offered. There was a convenient monthly payment plan. Shannon loved to draw but she didn't like to "study," so she continued to learn in her own way, by trial and error, winning school competitions every year through eleventh grade for her pastels and watercolors.)

"What's that going to be?" Chapman Hill asks his sister, who is hard at work on the back porch where the light is stronger after school than in her room.

"What does it look like?"

"Just a barn. Ho hum. Who needs another picture of an old barn?"

"It's not the object, it's how the artist perceives it," Shannon says with a slight frown, not looking up from her wide brush strokes.

"Huh?"

"Never mind. Don't you have anything to do but hang around the house?" Like a mother, nagging; in a way Shannon, five years older than her brother, is more of a mother to Chap than Ernestine. Who is fond of saying,
I never expected to have more than two,
and treats the boy with what amounts to indifference, as if he is a neighbor's child temporarily misplaced. "And don't get any closer with that
fudgecicle
, you're dripping."

There's a streak of chocolate down his bare chest, to his navel. Chap is wearing only a pair of raggedy shorts, and he's nearly as tan as he will get all summer. He already has his summer haircut, although there are two more

weeks of school left, and his ears stick out woefully. Chap is the only one of the three children to get his father's ears, for which Shannon is grateful: ears don't make any difference to boys.

"You're dripping too."

"On purpose; that's my
technique,
it's part of the painting."

"No, I mean you got a spot of black paint there on your red paint."

Shannon moistens the tip of a little finger with her tongue and wipes away the spot from the scarlet oval in her twenty-four- color tray. The telephone rings. "Grab that; mom's lying down with a headache."

"Ho hum. Are you sure it's a headache she's got?"

"What's that supposed to mean, of course I'm sure! Answer the G.D. phone, Chapman!"

"Found another empty bottle of vodka in the garbage. That makes two this week."

"What were you doing in the garbage?"

"I always look in the garbage," Chapman replies, sauntering into the kitchen. "I like to see what we're throwing out. All I'm trying to tell you is, she's at it again—hello? What? No, sir, I'm Chap, Allen Ray's at work. Who's this? You are? We did? I
dunno
. You want to talk to my sister?"

"Who is it?"

Chap appears in the doorway with the receiver of the telephone stretched to its limit on a long cord. "Say's he's Uncle Gilmore."

"Oh, give me the phone quick! Jesus, Chapman, you got chocolate all over—hello? Uncle Gilmore, it's Shannon! Yes, I did call you—oh, everything's all right. . . hope I didn't give you
that
idea. He's just fine. How about yourself?"

Shannon leans against the jamb of the door to the kitchen, cringing as Chapman gives her a "chocolate hickey" on the neck before springing outside in response to a call from Aaron
Wurzheimer
, three doors down, his best friend even though the
Wurzheimers
are Lutherans and the families don't socialize. Shannon pictures Uncle Gilmore as she drew him nearly three years ago, when he dropped by the house for a few hours' visit following an Elks' convention in Kansas City: a runt of a countryman with stubble, florid and bald; he had hooded licorice eyes and a turned-down mouth that could snap shut with surprising ferocity.

"You probably know," she says, when Gilmore runs out of bad things to say about the winter he's been through and the small rancher's plight at the hands of Eastern Liberal Democrats, and never mind where Lyndon

Johnson hails from, "that it's Dab's fiftieth birthday coming up—no, the fifth of June— and we're having this big surprise party for him; everybody's coming. So I was kind of hoping you could be here too."

"Well, gal, I just don't know. Spring is my busiest time, with so many heavies to look after. I did need to make a trip down to
Whichertaw
along about in June, so I suppose there is a chance—"

"We'd love to see you. What's a 'heavy?'"

"Heifer with calf. '
Preciate
you
thinkin
' about me, though. You'd be, what, about seventeen now?"

"In four months. Will you try real hard to make it?"

"Can't promise much; but
thanky
for the invitation. Got to
git
now."

"Give my best to Aunt Zelma and cousin
Auline
—" Shannon says hurriedly, hearing her uncle call to another part of his house just before hanging up, "
Naw
, it
ain't
that, Zelma, it's just some goddamn birthday part—"

Wincing, Shannon feels eyes on her and glances over her shoulder at the screen door of the back porch; she almost drops the receiver of the telephone because somebody is standing there, on the top step, looking in at

her; nobody she can recognize because the sun is behind him.

"Hi."

"Who is it?"

"Oh, it's me—Perry. Perry
Kennold
. From school."