The Caveman's Valentine (19 page)

For this eerie core of well-being now residing in Romulus’s bowels—

Oh, to fashion such perfidious and mendacious appearances as
these,
you’d need something much more potent and devious than Y-rays—

You’d need a new and wickeder radiance—

Radiance soft as moonlight, but
green,
the hushed green of first spring—

And so this was it, at last. Stuyvesant had finally done it. Come up with his puissant new weapon:

Z-rays.

A
s soon as Romulus had grasped the existence of Z-rays, the complexion of everything around him changed. He stood there stunned. Looked up at the moon. The moon had given everything away, and now the clouds were rushing back in a panic to throw some veils over the thing. Romulus stood there and slowly shook his head.

Then he heard a snarling beside him.

He turned. The husky, Lao-tse. Who threw back its head and started howling bloody murder.

L
ao-tse couldn’t figure it out.

She’d no sooner started barking than the stranger had gone down with a
whump.
And now there he was, lying on his back with his arms outstretched and his eyes wide open to the sky and he was clearly dead. And Lao-tse had uttered less than half a howl.

Well, it was clear that she simply didn’t know her own power.

Though there was still a chance the stranger was shamming. She came a little closer, still snarling, and sniffed at the shoes. Oh yes, now she remembered this one.

Suspicious-Shoes.
By God she’d keep these shoes for herself. After she’d ripped the stranger’s throat open, and tasted a few of the choicer organs, why, she’d just pull these exotic ships of stink off his feet and take them and bury them somewhere—for future meditation.

She moved up on the leg, sniffing. But when she came close to the groin, she got a disconcerting surprise—a blast of her
mistress’s
crotch smell. She stepped back. Tried to think it out. Came back and took another sniff and it was Moira’s crotch all right—but this stranger was wearing it—this guy from the walk today, this lunatic from the soiree contretemps.

What the hell?

Suddenly she caught a downdraft of breath from his nostrils—oh, so he
was
shamming. He raised his head a little. Put his lips together, pursed them in a kiss, and produced a smacking noise which did something funny to Lao-tse—made her feel like a milk pup and also made her forget, for a moment, to tear open his throat.

She kept her snarl out in front of her, and kept her war-hackles high. But she did sort of sidestep her butt over, a little closer to his outstretched hand, and when he brought that hand up and placed it gently on her back, and started that spidery uncanny back scratching of his, that
way
-down-the-back scratching, she pretended not to notice.

She thought, Well, after all, he is a guest. Maybe disemboweling’s not in order here. After all, Moira did swap crotches with him, so maybe he’s OK, and yes right
there,
that hits the spot, and
after all . . .

She looked dreamily toward the moon.

She heard footsteps behind her. She looked back.

Oh Christ. Elon.

Coming on with a look of grim determination. He was brandishing a rake.

Lao-tse snapped around again quick and resumed growling at the stranger and hoped to hell Elon hadn’t noticed any foolishness or dereliction of duty on her part.

E
lon, no.”

Romulus, on his knees, thought to try a chuckle, but it wouldn’t come and it wouldn’t have stopped Elon anyway. The rake came up over Elon’s head, and he swung it down wildly. Romulus leapt back and the thing just missed him. Slammed into the dirt. Elon tried to pull it out again but it was tangled in a root, and Romulus stepped on it and cried:

“Elon! No!”

Elon yanked at it. He was a small man but strong, and his yank knocked Romulus off balance, and he fell backward onto his butt.

“Elon! I’m on
your
side! For Christ’s sake!”

Again Elon brought the rake back behind his head and brandished it, the tines quivering. He stepped forward and Lao-tse advanced with him, snarling.

Romulus, his hands splayed out on the ground behind him, tried to scuttle away from them. Scuttled backward like a crab. They kept coming.

“
Listen,
for Christ’s sake! I’m just trying to get some answers, OK?”

Didn’t seem OK at all.

“Elon,
I just want to know who killed Scotty Gates.”

It took a while. The name had to work its way through the impossible plumbing of Elon’s brain, and meanwhile he kept coming on, the rake handle shivering in his clutch—and then he paused.

And said, in his high hoarse voice, “Scotty?”

“Do you know? Do you know who killed him?”

“Killed?”

“Right. He’s dead. Jesus Christ, they didn’t even tell you? Scotty’s dead.”

“No.”

“Yes. Dead.”

“Scotty’s here. In the coach house. Scotty’s in the coach house.”

“Not anymore. He’s gone.”

“No! Scotty’s always here! Always!”

“Did you like Scotty, Elon? Was he your friend? What did they do to him? Did they hurt him?”

The rake quivered again. The very suggestion of hurting Scotty seemed to rile him.

“At the parties, Elon. Did they hurt him at the parties?”

Elon shook his head. “I don’t go to no parties.”

“Whisper, OK? And tell the dog to cool it.
Bad dog,
Lao-tse.
Sit. Bad dog.
You got to tell him. Tell him to
sit.”

Suddenly Elon burst out in a giggle. “Loo-zoo’s a
girl.”

“Whisper. Tell her to sit.”

Elon giggled again. “You said
him.”

“I thought she was a drag queen. Tell her to fucking
sit.”

Elon shrugged. And whispered, “Sit, Loo-zoo.”

Lao-tse didn’t. Whispers carried no weight with her. Perhaps nothing Elon said carried weight with her. But at least she did cut out the snarling.

Romulus said, “What did David do to Scotty at the parties, Elon? Can you remember? Did he have sex with him?”

“Sex?”

“Fucking? Jamming? Jesus. I don’t know, what do you call it? Naked stuff?”

“Naked?”

“Did Scotty ever do naked stuff—”

“Scotty’s always naked.”

“Right. ’Cause he was modeling. But did David ever
hurt
Scotty when he was naked?”

“David is
gen
-tul.”

“Damn it! You must have seen something! You must—”

The breeze brought a sound from the coach house. The storm door opening. Shutting. He glanced back. The lights were ablaze, and a dark figure hurried from the house and got into a car. Not the scarlet death car, but one parked next to it.

Romulus whispered, “Or maybe you didn’t see anything. As you say, you don’t go to parties much. Hey, I better be going. Keep Loo-zoo with you, OK?”

He walked backward. He heard the car door shut. The engine started up, headlights.

Romulus waved good-bye to Elon and Lao-tse. Then he turned and strode purposefully in the direction of the moon and the river.

Elon called after him. “Hurt? Hurt with a needle?”

Romulus looked back.

“What?”

Said Elon, “Needles hurt.”

The headlights swept over the field as the car turned onto the long drive.

“Yes they do, Elon, but I have to run.”

“Wait!”

Elon suddenly tore off toward his little house, Lao-tse with him.

He’d said to wait. But the headlights were headed this way and for Romulus to hang around till they had him pinned seemed ill-advised. So he took off. Sprinted hell-for-leather down the wide magnificent moony field, and when the headlights started to pick up his shadow he dove into the grass, and huddled there.

He heard the car pass on the drive behind him. Glanced over his shoulder and saw the lights wrap around the farmhouse and then he saw the glow on the far side. He watched, and though the breeze took the sounds away from him, he could follow the car’s lights all the way to the main road, where they turned toward Gideon Manor.

So the hunter was still hunting. But had lost the scent.

Romulus got up and hobbled on down the field. When he came to another rock wall crossing through the blowing grass, he stopped, and sat on the wall, and rested.

Under the running moonlight, as far as the eye could see, Z-rays were telling their lies. Their sweet-talking lies. The shimmering Hudson River, the immaculate wind, the vast reaches of sky. Lord, they were glorious lies, and he stayed much longer than he had planned, just looking.

Then he heard panting beside him—right beside him—and he slid his eyes over, and there was Lao-tse, perched on the wall.

He scratched that spot on her back.

And then a voice at his ear: “Needles hurt.”

Romulus turned, and Elon was holding something out to him. He looked down. Hypodermic syringe.

Said Elon, “I found it. He hided it, but I found it.”

“Who hid it? David?”

“Needles hurt.”

The syringe was caked with mud and broken at the tip. And there was another stain inside it. Kind of a brown in this moonlight—maybe some other color by daylight.

Romulus demanded, “
Who
did it hurt? Did it hurt Scotty? Did he say it hurt him?”

Elon nodded solemnly.

“What did Scotty say, Elon?”

Elon opened his mouth and started to shriek.

“No. Elon,
no.
Shhh! I get the picture.”

Elon shut up. He was crying. He said, “Told me it
didn’t
hurt, but it hurt.”

“Who said it didn’t hurt? Scotty?”

“Told me, Don’t say, Elon. Don’t say.”

“You can say. It’s all right.”

“Needles hurt!”

“What was in this needle, Elon?”

Romulus grabbed for the thing. Elon snatched it out of reach.

“Mine.”

“I just want to borrow it.”

“Mine! Needles hurt!”

“Give it to me, Elon.”

“You hurt Scotty! Now Scotty’s gone! Loo-zoo, come!”

The two of them ran off up the hill. Romulus watched them go. Strange and a little impolite, the way they kept coming and going so abruptly, but don’t take it personally.

He drew a breath and started hoofing.

He hoofed it down to where the field became woods. Then the woods opened onto another field, then more woods. Down, down, and the moon set and he was dead tired and stumbling. He came to the edge of a railroad cut, a sharp drop to the tracks, and it took him half an hour to find his way down. Bits of coke got into his shoes, and when at last he got to the bottom he had to sit on the tracks and take off the shoes and pour sand and smoke from them.

He was next to the river now and he could hear the ice groaning but there was nothing moving except the wind, which was turning chillier and chillier. He wished to hell he had something more substantial on than this silly show coat.

He got up and followed the ties until the ties blurred. He wrapped his arms around himself as he walked, and marched on, and the wind whipped up a froth of dawn light and a few gulls.

The river changed color.

He heard a train coming from the north. He hid behind some boulders. It was a freight coming, a slow moan of boxcars, and lives there a soul in this country who has never dreamed of someday, in the right, necessary circumstances, hopping aboard a freight train?

This particular freight train was headed south, headed toward home, and would circumstances ever get any more necessary than they were now? They never would, thought Romulus, and he leapt aboard.

W
hen at last, a little after noon, he made it home, trudged up the hill to his cave, he felt that he had been away for a long time. That nothing would be the same, that the cave would be stripped bare. By now they would surely have stolen everything he had.

In fact no one had valued his TV, nor his mattress, nor his answering machine, nor his clothes, nor even his blankets.

But still, just as he had suspected, nothing was the same. The huge beech tree seemed unfamiliar. Its skin struck him as less glossy than he recalled. The cave herself greeted him indifferently. Had she always been this cramped and shallow?

Cave wasn’t the least bit happy to see him.

Well she doesn’t know what I’ve been through.

Anyway, what’s
with
you, Romulus, it’s not as though she’s yours, body and soul. This cave has made her bed for Algonquin Indians and drunken Dutchmen and whole families of poor Irish and what the hell sort of claim do you have on her?

She was simply stone, cave-seep, and forty million generations of moss, and she still remembered her mother the Ice Age, and she was not likely to be impressed by Romulus Ledbetter’s comings and goings.

She did not fraternize with the tenants.

T
aped to his answering machine, Romulus found a note. CALL ME. ASAP. CORK.

Got a lot of nerve coming right in here, poking around my things. Did he have a warrant for this intrusion? Romulus crunched the note into a ball and tossed it into the wastebasket.

Then he jabbed the Message button on the answering machine.

A series of clicks, a
boop,
and a voice:

“Mr. Ledbetter, this is Special Agent Jake Claw of the FBI. Understand you’ve got an assassin hunting for you? Could be a violation of your civil rights—we’d be
tickled
to help you out. If you’ll just report to our office in the Chrysler Building at fifteen hundred hours, why, we’ll put you right into witness protection, a castle upstate, lovely place called Matteawan, we want to—”

The machine swallowed the rest of the message.
Boop.
Machine was a piece of trash. Ought to return it to the Dumpster he’d fished it from.

Then came a series of
boops.
Then Leppenraub, midmessage:

“—and needles
hurt,
or so I’m told. Come back, amigo, all is forgiven, come to my sister’s arms—”

More
boops
and clicks and Romulus pulled a blanket over him and started to drift.

But then he heard shuffling footsteps and a shopping cart’s squeaky wheels and he didn’t have to pull the blanket down again to know who it was. It was Cyclops, the one-eyed old dying white woman from Alabama.

“I’m asleep, Cyclops.”

“Not no more. You going . . . come with me. Caveman. You just got to see this.”

“What? What’s this that I’ve got to see?”

“Not telling.” She coughed. “Surprise. Come see.”

“I’ll see it tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow it’ll be gone.” Which sounded like
Tahmarrah hit’ll be gaw-un.

“What’ll be gone, Cyclops?”

“Nothing.”

“Well. Can’t nothing wait? I think nothing can wait.”

“OK, it’s a bird.”

“What kind of bird?”

“
I
don’t know, Caveman. That’s why. Came to you. Big red head.”

“Cardinal?”

She shook her head. “Blue wings.”

“Blue. You sure not black? Like a woodpecker?”

“Bright. Blue. White crosses on the wings.”

He pulled the blanket off his head. “
No
such bird.”

“But I saw it. And it’s . . . it’s hurt. They isn’t no more. Like it. Last of its kind.”

“Cyclops, I’ve got to sleep. You don’t know how tired I am. I’ve had about twenty minutes of sleep in the last two days. I’m so tired I’m hallucinating. I’m hallucinating you coming to tell me about a mystical bird.”

“Mystical. That’s right, son.”

“An accidental, right? Blown off course from another galaxy?”

“Sleep’s just going to have to wait, son.”

H
e walked beside her. He pulled her cart for her, but still she walked very slowly and drew long rheumy breaths.

Cyclops had been a gym teacher in Alabama. This was a long long time ago. Now she had so many wrinkles that from her bad side, from the side with the empty eye socket, her skin looked as though she’d molted—as though she’d taken her skull out, gone back to Alabama with it, and just left the skin bag up here to amuse passers-by.

Said Romulus, “Where is this bird?”

“Just. Li’l piece.”

They walked up a hill and down another.

They passed three black kids who were hanging out by a bench. The kids whistled at Cyclops.

“Mmm-
mm.”

“What . . . a . . . fox.”

“Hey Mama.”

When Cyclops looked over, one kid did a pantomime of jacking off.

“Show us your tits, Mama.”

“Oh shit! I
see
her tits! See ’em? Down by her
feet,
man!”

Romulus gave them as nasty a look as he could dredge up, considering his eyes wouldn’t open.

He said, “Shut the fuck up.”

One of the kids said back, “Get a job.”

The kid did his jack-off thing for Romulus. Then all the kids catcalled and grotesqued till Romulus and Cyclops were over the next hill.

Said Cyclops, “I’m sorry, Caveman. Walking so slow.”

“It’s OK.”

“Hate this body.”

“What?” Romulus shrugged. “It’s an age, Cyclops.”

They kept walking.

Said Romulus, “What you need is a home. You had a home, you wouldn’t feel so bad.”

A moist boiling of her breath, which was as near as she could come to a laugh. “Don’t want a cave,” she said. “Spiders. No. Want a big
old
house. In Mobile.”

They walked all the way down to the low fields by the Harlem River. There was a swampy area and Romulus stepped off the path and reached down amid roots and uncovered a little hood of striped leaves. He opened it carefully. A blossom. He called to Cyclops:

“First flower of the year.”

“What is it?”

“Skunk cabbage. Come by in a few weeks, I’ll make a skunk cabbage soup.”

“How does. That taste?”

He shrugged. “Pretty bad.”

He came back to the path and walked beside her. He said, “Well, it’s skunk cabbage, how would you expect it to taste?”

They passed the playground. They came to the river’s edge. Cyclops stopped.

“Far enough.”

He looked at her. “Well?”

Her one eye rolled away from his gaze. She said, “Well what?”

“The bird?”

“Oh. It was right here.”

“It’s not here now?”

“No.”

“You said
blue
wings?
Bright
blue . . . ?”

“Oh. Maybe not. Maybe . . . maybe the wings were black. I think the whole bird. All black. Now I think. I think it might have been a crow.”

Which came out sounding like
Ah thaynk hit miy-uht ah bin a cur-row.

H
e left her on a bench by the water.

Then he hiked all the way up back to his cave. When he was nearly there, he heard voices and whispers and then silence, and a thought came into his weary head.

Setup.

Oh shit. Fucking fucking witch.
Witch.
If he got out of this she was losing her other eye. Let her and her fleas find their way down to hell by the light of her master’s Y-rays.

Then he saw the balloon tied to a limb of the beech tree.

Then he considered the date.

T
he birthday cake had one candle. He blasted it. They all applauded. He looked close at the cake and asked:

“Hey, what is that? Is that . . . is that
birdseed?”

Lulu took out the candle and handed the cake to him.

She said, “Birdseed in honey. When I bake a real cake, you won’t take it. This you’ll take, ’cause you can feed it to your damn birds.”

Big laugh.

Romulus nodded. He didn’t smile, but he
did
amiably lift his eyebrows, and he accepted the cake.

“Daddy, what’s with the suit? And you’ve got a haircut, and you’ve shaved—what’s going on?”

“Dressing for success, Lulu.”

“You know, you’re not so bad-looking, Daddy.”

Then his brother Lycurgus’s kid—Romulus forgot his nephew’s name but he was the one with all the hair shaved off except a big star on top—he switched on his juice box and of course it was Mahler’s Fifth. Because once when Romulus had been about fourteen, he’d said he liked Mahler, and now every year they played it at these birthday shivarees.

Trying to remind him that he was the sort of African-American that appreciated Mahler, and such a man oughtn’t to be living in a cave, living on skunk cabbage soup.

He ought to be living like his brothers.

Like his big brother Lycurgus, for example, who was an administrator at Beth Israel Hospital, and who had brought his wife and two kids, the one with the star on his head and the other, the daughter, who was attending Brown University and had won the Theodore Roethke Award for a poem she’d written about Uncle Romulus.

Sad uncle, the stars play their cadenzas,

but in the dark cave

of your exile you cannot see them! Society

has stolen the coat off your back, and your name

from our lips . . .

Something like that.

Or like his big brother Marcus, who was a producer of television commercials, and who wore a polka-dot scarf to work instead of a necktie. Marcus and his wife had brought the picnic basket. Fried chicken and ham-and-horseradish sandwiches, and potato salad and beet salad. Romulus didn’t eat, but he could smell the beet salad, and he knew Sheila had fixed it. He knew that sometime later this week Sheila would get around to asking Lulu if Romulus had tried it. Lulu would say no, and Sheila would say, “Well, let the fool starve if that’s what he wants to do.”

Or like his big brother Augustus, who could not attend because of pressing business in Washington, but who had sent Romulus a nice card.

Or like his big brother Samuel who had four fine kids, who were all future rocket scientists and who ran around screaming, and who decided the park was the Arabian desert and the cave was a berm they had to blow up.

And while they were blowing up everything in sight, the grown-ups milled around outside the cave eating chicken and making talk.

Mostly they talked about Mom and Pop. They didn’t try to talk too much to Romulus, because they knew better. They knew that sooner or later the talk would trigger his fury, and he’d harangue them all home, as he did every year, and they wanted to hold this off for a while.

But his daughter, Lulu, had brought her new boyfriend, and he talked to Romulus. He told Romulus he was a lawyer for an investment firm, and he had a place on the south shore, and his hobby was kites. Hadn’t Lulu warned the kid? Romulus got the feeling she had, but the young man was the sort who felt he could finesse most anything. He’d dealt with sweethearts’ daddies of all stripes, and he was dead sure he could handle the stripes of Romulus Ledbetter.

So he prattled on about his kites, and about his regard for Lulu, and Lulu’s regard for her father. And Mahler’s Fifth was blaring away in the background, which made his talk sound pretty dramatic. Like two lovers’ blood-red kites dueling in a cobalt sky, and whatever this might signify.

Romulus called to the kid with the star on his head.

“Nephew. Come here.”

The nephew approached Uncle Caveman—this guy from his nightmares—quite boldly.

Said Romulus, “Do you have any other tapes?”

“Yeah.”

But big brother Lycurgus, in the middle of a chat with big brother Marcus, heard his son’s “Yeah” and spoke sharply:
“Benjamin.”

“I mean,
Yes, sir.”

“Well,” said Romulus, “what tapes do you have?”

“Rappers and shit.”

Lycurgus heard that, too.
“Benjamin.”

Benjamin amended, “I mean stuff. You wouldn’t want to hear them.”

“Play anything but Mahler’s Fifth.”

“Dad says this is your kind of music.”

“Your dad knows as much about my kind of music as he knows about your kind of music.”

A little catch of silence. Then they all made talk again. Some rapper started rapping. Romulus deemed it no worse than “Gentle on My Mind.”

He turned back to the boyfriend and said, “Now what were you saying? Kites? Big redheaded kites with bright blue wings? What was the name of your firm again?”

“Wilcox and Lassiter.”

“And what was that a subsidiary of?”

“Excuse me?”

“Subsidiary. Who
owns
Wilcox and Lassiter?”

“No.”

That was big brother Lycurgus. The silence came crashing down again. Even the berm bombers shut up.

Said Romulus, “What did you say, Lycurgus?”

“I said,
No.
It’s not a subsidiary of
anything.
It’s not owned by Stuyvesant. Leave the boy alone.”

“The boy is courting my daughter. I have a right to know who he’s working for.”

“My niece has a right to make her own decisions. Which she does pretty damn well, considering the example you set for her. So drop the Stuyvesant crap, because nobody wants to hear it.”

Lycurgus’s wife touched her husband’s arm.

“Baby,” she said, “we’re on our first piece of chicken. Not yet, all right?”

Lycurgus ignored her. “If you want help, Romulus, we’ll get you help. But you’ve got to want it. We’re not going to try to force it on you anymore. You’ve got to do something for your damn
self.”

Lulu took her piece of chicken, which she hadn’t yet bit into, and put it back in the bucket. Muttering, “OK, here we go. Go ahead, Daddy, let it rip.”

Big brother Samuel’s wife put the lid back on the beet salad. She said, “Come on, kids.”

“Is it time for Uncle Romulus, Mom? Is he going to give the speech?”