The Caveman's Valentine (23 page)

I
n the waning moments of the game on TV, the New York/New Jersey Knights, trailing by three, launched a desperation pass. The Knights quarterback released the ball an instant before the Praetorian Guard reached him. Shields and swords aglitter, they cut him to pieces. The Knights responded with bursts from their semi-automatics. The ball soared into the night sky. Behind the ball could be seen the New York City skyline, most prominently Stuyvesant’s tower in its mist of glowing green cloud.

Then the ball came down and was caught with full balletic flourishes by one of the Knights, who carried it into the end zone and kept on running.

He ran down terrace steps, through a crumbling ivy-covered arch into a garden, and up to a pool. He took off his helmet. It was Bob, and Betty was a sylph in a translucent gown who lounged with her comely calves in the water. The trees were ancient oaks and mimosas. The color of the leaves was electric green. Betty embraced her hero, and offered him a wineskin, and when he had taken his fill, she put a tiny onion in his mouth, and he kissed her. During the kiss he passed the onion back into her mouth, and she giggled. The announcer told us that this broadcast was the sole property of the World League of American Football, and any rebroadcast for any purpose was strictly prohibited. Superimposed on the screen were the words

Tonight’s game was brought to you by . . .

Z-rays

What could be sweeter?

Was it all fraudulent, then? Was the sweetness and rare contentment that he had been feeling, was it all a grand fraud? He killed the screen.

He listened to a plane overhead.

Then he was listening to something else.

Footsteps?

T
he great ghost had his arm around Matthew, and he helped him along the meandering path, over the roots and rocks, as one might support a drunken friend. The silent ghost followed along behind.

Matthew stopped.

The big ghost tried to pull him along. Matthew shook his head violently. He raised his hand, and flapped it.

The great ghost looked, looked through the trees, and saw in the moonlight a ridge of rock. A dark smear in the ridge. He whispered, “That’s the cave, Matthew?”

Matthew pressed his face into the breast of the ghost.

The ghost laid Matthew down gently, where he was.

“Good boy. Stay. Don’t say a fucking word. Don’t make a fucking sound.”

He motioned to the other ghost.

They moved soundlessly through the trees. Up the slope. They spread out a little as they approached the cave.

They saw the mattress. The blanketed heap on it. They heard sleep-breathing. The lesser ghost waited by the broad trunk of the beech tree, and the great ghost went up swiftly.

He stood over the sleeping figure and switched on his flashlight.

“Caveman.”

The head of a one-eyed old woman emerged from the blankets.

“Not here. Who are you? You just missed him. He’s on vacation. Down south. Will you please get that light? Out of my face? What now, are you cops? I got a right. To be here. I’m subletting while he’s away. You just missed him. He just ten minutes ago up and went. He was.
Antsy.”

L
ent, North Carolina, had one motel, a mile out of town on the Lumberton Road. Shady Rest, they called it. The shade was a few brutally pruned pines. The lawn had been mown within an inch of its life. Not a restful-seeming place at all.

In the office, the furnishings were fit for a prison. Fit for that dungeon Matteawan, Romulus thought. Everything was pin neat. There was a little display of rebel flags for sale. A bigger Stars and Bars hung behind the desk, next to a portrait of Pat Robertson. By the window, there was a green-gold parakeet in a cage, but it didn’t dare open its mouth.

The white woman who came out from her parlor had all her hair pulled back sharply from her face and tied in a bun back there, and it looked as though she’d pulled her skin back and tied that up, too. She didn’t answer when he asked her about vacancies. Her eyes were narrow to begin with—she narrowed them some more, and asked:

“Where’s your car?”

“Ma’am, I came by bus.”

“Came for what?”

“Excuse me?”

“What is it you want here?”

“I came to visit an old friend of mine.”

“You got crumbs all over your shirt.”

“Excuse me? Oh yes. Heh-heh. The bus, eating on the . . . haven’t washed up yet.”

“Who’s your friend?”

“Clive Leif.”

“I don’t know him.”

“Ah.”

She said, “Maybe you got the wrong town.”

“This is Lent?”

“
This
isn’t Lent. This is outside of Lent.”

“Right.”

“Maybe your friend lives in Lumberton.”

“Maybe you’re right. I thought I heard him say Lent. Maybe he said Lumberton and I heard it wrong.”

She turned to head back to her parlor.

“Ma’am?”

She spoke over her shoulder. “No sir.”

“Ma’am?”

“You don’t have no bags. You don’t have no car.”

She shut the door.

Romulus shouted, “So where the hell do I stay,
ass-face?
This is the only fucking motel in town,
where do I stay?”

Through the door, she called, “Lavonia’s. By the Jiminy Mart. Go stay there.”

Before he left, he slid out the tray at the bottom of the parakeet’s cage, and removed the newspapers and threw them in the wastebasket. Then he took the big Confederate flag down from the wall, folded it neatly—he respected this woman’s need for neatness—and he put it in the tray and slid the tray back into the cage.

Then he went to look for Lavonia’s.

A
t the Jiminy Mart they told him how to get there. But he still couldn’t find it, so he stopped at an old wooden shotgun house and asked the black woman who came to the door if she knew where Lavonia’s Motel was.

“Right here. Want a room?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Eight dollars.”

“Yes ma’am. You Lavonia?”

“Uh-huh.”

“But this isn’t a motel.”

“You want a room, I got two rooms, nobody in neither of ’em, you want one of ’em? Come on.”

He followed her through her long hot living room. Kids’ toys,
Enquirers,
sofa cushions scattered about. The VCR was on, but frozen. Freeze frame of some fancy kitchen in suburbia. Young white hunk with the nostrils of a racehorse was caught in midsnarl at some blond witchlet.

Romulus asked, “What you watching there?”

“My
story.
You can use the kitchen if you want. You want, I’ll show you how to light the stove.”

“What story?”

“Huh? ‘Young and the Restless.’ I’m catching up. I tape it when I’m working. Tell me when you want a shower, and I won’t use the water.”

“Is it a good story? Is it about restlessness?”

“Huh?”

She looked back at him. She was a scarecrow. So was the woman at Shady Rest, so was the pump jockey at Jiminy’s. Whole town was famine-stricken.
Lent,
he thought, right.

His room was in the back, past the kids’ room. A bed, too short, and a card table. And an old yellowing poster of Jesus as giant, knock-knocking on the UN building in New York.

“Kids make too much noise, you tell me, OK?”

“OK.”

“How long you staying?”

“Long as it takes me to find who I’m looking for.”

“Who you looking for?”

“Man named Clive Leif. You know him? White kid? Early twenties, I guess?”

“No.
Uh
-uh.”

“He went to New York to work in the theater. But he didn’t make it and he came back.”

“Well, maybe Miz Peasley knows him. Her boy Joey went to New York.”

“Yeah? What happened to him?”

“Oh, he did some acting, he made it
big,
uh-huh. He was even on my story. Once. He played a bartender. I don’t know after that.”

“Was he good-looking?”

“I guess.
Some
would say.”

“You got that scene on tape by any chance?”

“Nope. That was more’n a year ago. Why you ask?”

“Beats me. Getting so I’ll ask anything. I guess I’m getting to be a true pain in the ass. Where’s this Miz Peasley live?”

M
iz Peasley lived in the kind of neighborhood that Sherman’s boys would have drooled over, if they’d happened to have swung their havoc a little to the north. The very cream of Doric mausoleums, of gables and pergolas and boxwood gardens and dovecotes and some fragrance heavy and maddening on the evening air.

Romulus peered through all the blossoming and saw some of the slave shacks, still standing, out in back of the big houses. Some looked as though they were still occupied. Well, why not? There were still plenty of slaves to occupy them.

He opened the gate at Miz Peasley’s and went up the cracked flagstone walk.

He wove through spills of wild rosebush.

High up, under a scalloped attic eave, an eyebrow window looked down upon him.

It was that sort of house. Tall, turreted. Partaking of the town’s general anorexia. A big brass knocker. He knocked.

A curtain fluttered in the bay window.

He knocked again.

Shifted over and peeked through the rose-colored sidelight into the hall. A bony woman appeared. She made a shooing gesture and shouted through the door.

“I’ve already bought plenty!”

“Ma’am?”

“Say I’ve already bought it and I didn’t like it!”

“I’m not selling anything!”

“I’ve got Jesus in my heart! I pray all day long! Suit you? Go away!”

“Miz Peasley! I want to talk to your son! I’m looking for Joey!”

She opened the door. “Joey doesn’t live here. He hasn’t lived here for years. Go away.”

“You know where he is?”

“What do you want with him?”

“I’m from New York, ma’am. I’m investigating a murder. Did your son use the professional name Clive Leif?”

“You a cop?”

“No ma’am. This is private. I think your son was acquainted with the murdered man. I think he might have some evidence I’d like to look at. I’d like to talk to him.”

“Well you can’t. I tell you, he doesn’t live here.”

“Where
does
he live?”

“Wouldn’t know.”

“Have you talked to him lately?”

“He doesn’t want to have a thing to do with that life. You understand? He’s finished with all that.”

“I do understand. I know what they did to him.”

“You wouldn’t have any idea.”

“Yes, I would. I do. Because they did the same thing to Scotty Gates, ma’am. The one who was killed.”

“You don’t know the way my son used to be.”

“But I know how he is now. He’s scared, right? He’s quiet. He’s got nothing to say. He doesn’t want to talk about it. He doesn’t want to do
anything,
right?”

She was silent. She squinted at him. “How do you know that?”

“Because I know what happened to him.”

“What? What happened to him?” Panic in her voice. “What did they do to my son?”

“He saw something.”

“What did he see?”

“He saw somebody getting hurt. Just to give somebody else a little thrill. And he couldn’t do anything about it. So maybe, maybe he just sort of
went along
with things.”

“My son would never—”

“I’m not saying he did. I’m just saying he saw—”

“What did my son see?”
Miz Peasley demanded.

She looked to have been through rough times, worry times. There was something old-woman and grasping in the way her eyes would dart and then seize hold of whatever they lit on. Even if it was only the brass knocker or the mother-of-pearl button on Romulus’s shirt—those eyes grabbed like an old woman’s eyes. But her hair was still blond and full, and her brow was still handsome. She was probably, Romulus realized, younger than he was.

Her eyes grabbed at his.

“What?
Tell me, for God’s sake, just tell me! You said a murder, did he
see
—”

“No. He didn’t see the murder. The murder was just a week ago. He saw torture, I guess. What
exactly
he saw—I don’t know. That’s why I want to talk to him.”

“I don’t know where he is.”

“Ma’am, he probably doesn’t even know there
was
a murder. If he knew, I think maybe he’d want to help me. If you’d just help me find him—”

“But I don’t know how to find him. I’m telling you the truth. He came home in October, but just for a while. For a while he moved back into the cottage—”

“What cottage?”

“Just behind the house here. It’s his own little place. I keep it clean for him. It’s always ready for him. Always fresh flowers. And when he came back I thought he’d stay. I prayed he would. Because he seemed so . . . he was in pieces, he came back in pieces. If I could have . . . if I could only have figured out how to make him stay, I could have healed him.”

“But he wouldn’t stay?”

“He said they could find him here. He said he had to go and he couldn’t tell me where he was going because if I knew, they could make me tell them. So he left, and I don’t see him at all anymore. Except once when he came home for a visit because he just couldn’t stand that life. And he cried in my arms for a day and then he was gone again and I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again. . . .”

She took a breath. She let it out.

“He’s a temp now. He types. Some city somewhere in the South. He won’t tell me which one but it doesn’t matter, they’re all the same. You know those horrible New South cities where they build the trashiest glass boxes imaginable and the theater’s worse than watching TV but who cares, because Joey doesn’t go out anyway. He just goes to work and comes home and watches TV and goes to bed. That’s what he does. He calls me sometimes and tells me about the TV he watches. About the old movies he watches. He was going to be a great stage director. A movie director. A famous
artist.
That’s what happened to my boy.”

“You wanted that?”

“Wanted what?”

“You wanted him to be famous?”

“Oh, that’s none of your business.”

“OK.”

Her eyes grabbed idly at the things on the porch. Then she said, “Actually, no—
I
never did. I never cared. His father cared.”

“OK.”

“None of your business though.”

“No ma’am.”

“And that man was not God’s gift to the stage, whatever Joey might think.”

“You mean Joey’s father?”

“The only real acting he ever did was when he talked me into marrying him. Enough. Enough of this. Next time Joey calls I’ll tell him you were looking for him.”

“Thank you.”

“Who shall I say came by?”

“The Caveman.”

“The Caveman? That’s your name?”

“That’s what people call me. I live in a cave, ma’am. In Inwood Park. Can you remember that? It’s in New York. Inwood Park, the Caveman. If he wants to, he’ll find me.”

“All right. I’ll remember. The man who lives in a cave, I certainly won’t forget that.”

“Things may change, ma’am. Things may get better. I used to read a lot of history. All of a sudden, you know, the cruel lord gets overthrown, they hang his body from the tower he used to rule from. Then everybody comes out of hiding.”

“Are you crazy?”

“Some have said so. But still—things may get better.”

He turned and walked down that path, steering around the rambling roses.

L
avonia asked him did he want to eat supper with them? For three dollars he had lamb chops and coleslaw and rice and turnip greens. She fixed the turnip greens because he had asked her for something southern. Her kids, Millie and Frazer, took a few bites of the greens and left the rest on their plates. As soon as they were done they went to watch TV. Presently he and Lavonia joined them. They watched a rerun of something called “Laverne and Shirley.” The kids sat on the floor, and Lavonia sat in an armchair with the stuffing busting out of it, and Romulus sat in an old white-lacquered captain’s chair. All four of them stared. Ads came and went, the kids’ attention did not falter for an instant. They seemed to have no more notion of what they were watching than Romulus did. They just gazed on, resolutely. Meanwhile Romulus shut his eyes and saw the face of Miz Peasley. Her anguish.

Now he had that to carry around with him, along with the images of Matthew’s anguish.

At some lull in the blare, he heard a bird outside enunciating perfectly the words
Chuck Will’s widow.

At another lull he asked Lavonia, “Suppose you had to get away from here, you had to hide, go live in some city so big and so dull that nobody would know your name and nobody would care—”

She didn’t let him finish. She kept her eyes on the set. She said simply: “Charlotte.”

When the show was over, Millie, who was nine years old, turned to him.

“Do you watch TV a lot, mister?”

“Pretty much.”

“What show do you like
best?”

“That one seemed pretty good. Really they’re all pretty good. They’re all just the same, aren’t they?”

Millie reminded him faintly of Lulu, so he tried not to look at her.

Frazer, who was eleven, said with stony conviction, “If I was from New York, I’d kill all the drug pushers.”