The Temple of Gold (22 page)

“I may be ill,” he said.

“Don’t you worry, Clarence,” I said, coming up to help. “You’re among friends.”

“Am I, Euripides?” he said.

I nodded, waiting.

“You were driving the car, weren’t you?”

I nodded again, watching him, both of us covered with yellow light. Then he smiled.

“Don’t you worry, Euripides,” he muttered, starting to fold. “You’re among friends.” With that he crumbled.

I got him back to his dorm, half carried him up the stairs, led him to bed. Then I stood by the window awhile, looking out at the quiet street beyond. Finally I lay down, eyes open, fighting sleep, cozy, drunk, and warm, lying there, in what would have been Zock’s room.

I spent the next three days at Harvard, talking with Clarence during the afternoons, listening to his poetry, drinking with him at night. Martha hopped over all the time, bringing him notes and outlines and whatever else was needed to keep him in school. For he never took it seriously, only his poems, bad as they were, and I had to respect him for that.

Then, the fourth morning, we went out for breakfast, mainly coffee. Clarence bought a copy of
The New York Times
and we split it, sipping away, not talking. It was the early edition and I thumbed through, noting mostly the sports results, which were pretty incomplete. So I went on, glancing here and there, and suddenly I saw my father’s picture staring out at me.

HENRY BAXTER TREVITT. AUTHOR AND EDUCATOR. That was the headline. I read every word, very slow, pausing after each sentence. Graduate of Harvard, it said. And it told about his Ph.D. from that unpronounceable school somewhere in Italy. And how he was the head of the Classics department at Athens College, Athens, Illinois. And how he had lectured all around the country. And his books:
Euripides and Modern Man
,
The Euripidean Hero
,
The Medea Myth
, plus a couple of others I didn’t even know about. And his translations of all the Greek plays. And the honors and prizes he had won. They listed everything there was to list, including my mother and me. I read it through twice and my only thought was: “Everything’s here. They got it all right.”

Then I quit the crapping around and realized it was my own father who was dead. And I knew, just as sure as God made green apples, that I was going to be there when they put him in the ground.

The next hour or two are pretty jumbled in my mind. I showed the clipping to Clarence, ran to his room, got my bag, said good-by to him, and headed for the airport. Once I got there I had more trouble, what with only five dollars in my pocket—not enough. But I talked and waved the paper and somebody must have taken pity on me because somehow I got a ticket.

I waited around the airport awhile before I could board the plane, getting more and more nervous. Finally we took off and I tried to sleep but never made it. Instead I just thought about my father and how mad he must have been when he knew he was going to die, with all those books left unwritten, all that work left undone, piled up there, on his desk. And what was the funeral going to be like. And facing my mother. And would Mrs. Crowe be there. And what would I say to her if she was. And on I went, trying to sleep, not being able to.

We were about an hour away from Chicago when the announcement came. Because of fog, we were not going to land in Chicago at all, but instead were going north to Milwaukee. And be calm because the bad weather is moving south across Lake Michigan and won’t bother us.

I started up to the pilot’s room but a stewardess stopped me from going in. “You’ll have to sit down,” she said. “And don’t worry about the weather.”

“It’s not the weather,” I said, waving the clipping in her face. “But my father’s being buried this afternoon and I’ve got to be there.”

“I’m sorry,” she answered. “You’ll just have to sit down.”

I went back to my seat, tensing up inside. My stomach started aching so I hit it, swearing quietly, trying to concentrate on something, anything at all. I knew that Milwaukee wasn’t any farther from Athens than Chicago, but that didn’t matter. Nothing did. I called to the stewardess and asked how long it would be before we landed. She said probably less than an hour. “Tell the pilot to hurry,” I said. “Tell him I haven’t got much time. Tell him my father’s being buried this afternoon.”

She didn’t, naturally, but I kept after her, asking her every two minutes how long until we landed, and when we finally did get there, I know she wasn’t unhappy being rid of me.

As soon as we were on the ground, I grabbed my bag and ran. I tore through the airport out to where the cabs were. “Athens, Illinois,” I said, hopping in.

The driver looked at me awhile. “Forty bucks,” he said. “In advance.”

I checked my wallet, pulled out the five. “Here,” I said. “Give you the rest when we get there.”

“In advance,” he repeated.

“Please.”

“Look, buddy,” he said, staring at me in the mirror.

“You son of a bitch!” I yelled, getting out. “My father’s being buried this afternoon.” I slammed the door all I had, hoping it would snap off at the hinges. Then I tried another cab, but it was the same thing. So I stood there, not knowing what to do, thinking: “If only I could find Mr. Hardecker. He’d drive me home all right. Mr. Hardecker would never let me down.”

Then somebody honked at me and I jumped out of the road. Scared, alone, with only five dollars in my pocket and no train that made any time at all. I just wanted to sit down there by the cab stand and die. Because my father was being buried that afternoon, and it began to look as if I wasn’t going to make it.

Finally I got the idea of hitchhiking, so I ran to the main parking lot and stood at the exit, yelling, “Athens, Illinois” to all the cars going by. But nobody answered and nobody stopped, not for a long time. Then, maybe half an hour later, the law of averages came through. A car pulled up. “You want to go to Athens?” the driver asked.

“I sure do,” I answered. “Yes, sir. Please.”

“Well, get in,” he said. “I’m going by there. And I’m in a hurry.”

“So am I,” I told him, opening the front door. “You can’t get there fast enough for me. Because my father’s being buried there this afternoon.”

We took off.

I never found out his name, but whoever he was, he could drive. We tore down the highway hitting eighty miles an hour, never talking but staring instead at the road as it stretched on ahead or the telephone poles that blurred by on either side. “I got a chance,” I told myself over and over. “If only we don’t get a flat, I got a chance.”

When we reached the Athens turn-off, I spoke to him. “Let me out here,” I said.

“I’m not in that much of a hurry,” he answered, and he made the turn toward town. I directed him on how to get to my house and in a few minutes we were there. “Thanks,” I said, jumping out. He nodded and drove away. I ran inside.

They were all there in the dark living-room; my mother, Mrs. Janes, Mrs. Atkins, the wife of the college president, plus half a dozen more, sitting in a semicircle with my mother in the middle, talking softly, hushed. When I came in, they stopped.

I went up to her, staring because she looked so awful. Pale and tired and almost dead; not crying any more but puffy still around the eyes. My mother looked to be about one hundred years old that afternoon and I couldn’t watch her, so I glanced out the window, over toward Zock’s house.

“I came as fast as I could,” I said.

“You’re too late,” she told me. “We buried him this morning.”

“Oh,” I said. That was all. Then I turned and went up to my room.

I lay on my bed, staring at the cracks in the ceiling, not able to feel a thing, but thinking: “I didn’t have to hurry at all. I could have walked. I could have walked all the way from Boston, Massachusetts, because they buried him this morning.” I had been there about an hour when my mother knocked on the door. “Come in,” I said, not getting up but just lying flat, my hands behind my head, staring at those cracks in the ceiling.

It wasn’t my mother who came in, though. It was Mrs. Janes, with the cloudy smell of alcohol trailing behind her. I didn’t say a word.

“Your mother isn’t herself,” Mrs. Janes said. “She’s very upset. It was a terrible thing.”

“He was sixty years old, Mrs. Janes. You can’t ask for more than that.”

“A terrible thing,” she repeated.

“
Hubris
,” I said, for no good reason. But it stopped the conversation for a while, so we were quiet and just looked at each other. I began getting edgy, what with her standing over me. I turned away, but she didn’t move.

“What is it, Mrs. Janes?” I said finally.

She fidgeted awhile. “That girl’s back,” she told me.

I looked at her. “What girl?”

“You know.”

“What girl?” I said again, knowing who she meant but just wanting to hear her say it.

“Annabelle,” Mrs. Janes whispered.

I nodded, waiting. I knew she had a whole spiel worked up, but the way I was acting upset her. She got that way easily, from her drinking and all.

“I thought you’d like to know,” she said, heading for the door.

“Good-by,” I called. “Thanks.” But I really didn’t care.

I stayed in my room until seven that night, lying on my bed, thinking about how it would have been to walk all the way from Boston, and what might have happened to me on the way. Which was silly, I suppose, but I couldn’t help it. Then, at seven, I went downstairs. They were still there, a bunch of them, sitting around, talking quietly. Actually, they were different people than before. But they might as well have been the same, for they sat in the same chairs and said the same things in the same hushed voices.

“I’m taking the car,” I told my mother. “I’m going out awhile.”

“Where are you going?”

“Just for a drive,” was all I told her.

I headed straight for the cemetery, speeding past the campus and beyond, to the edge of town. Athens Cemetery is very small. Quiet and beautiful, it is set on a hill overlooking a stretch of woods owned by the college. I parked the car and began searching for my father’s grave.

It wasn’t hard to find, what with all the flowers banked around it. I stepped over the flowers and stood on the grave, staring down.

Like Mrs. Janes, I had a whole spiel in mind, made up on the drive out. But I’d forgotten most of it. I didn’t know what to say. It had turned into a beautiful night, Indian summer, with just that hint of autumn in the air, sneaking up on you whenever a gust of wind blew by. It was the same kind of night as when Zock died and I couldn’t believe he was less than six months gone. I glanced around, trying to locate his grave. I couldn’t right off, so I dropped my head again and looked at my father.

“Old man,” I said. “I’m sorry.” But that wasn’t what I meant; not at all. “I guess you knew a lot about Euripides.” And then I muttered: “Indeed,” by way of finishing it off.

That was it. I took my time walking back to the car, looking around every few feet at my father’s grave, covered with all those flowers. How he would have hated them, the smell and all. A pot of tea would have been better. With a pipe set alongside. But of course, when you got right down to it, it didn’t really matter what they put there. Because he was dead. That was the hard thing to realize. I wasn’t shaken and I never once came close to crying. It was just the realization that was hard. I suppose I had him figured as being too smart ever to die. But there he was, dead, lying under all those smelly flowers.

By that time I was at the car. And she was there, standing, waiting beside it, waiting for me.

“Hello, Annabelle,” I said.

“I’m sorry about your father,” she said. I nodded, not saying a word. She began to fidget. “I called your house. They said you’d gone for a drive. I thought you might come here.” She stopped then, waiting for me to say something, anything at all, I suppose, so she could lead into whatever it was she had come to tell me. But I wasn’t talking. She got worse and worse as the quiet stretched on, fidgeting more, staring out past me to the woods beyond, where her third man was, biting her lips, hands clenched, pale. I waited.

Finally, she cracked, everything pouring out at once. “I’m in trouble. Ray, I’m in trouble. I’m going to have a baby. His baby. I need help. Money. Three hundred dollars. I’ve got to have it. You’ve got to give it to me. You’ve got to give me three hundred dollars.” I let her go on until she’d been all through it a couple of times. Then I stopped her.

“Your folks have money. Get it from them.”

“I can’t,” she said, as if it was an explanation.

“Get it from Janes.”

She shook her head. “His wife would find out.”

I had to laugh. “His wife knows. She knows all about it.”

“She’d divorce him.”

Which was funnier still. “Not a chance,” I said. “Not if he’d knocked up half a dozen girls.”

“I love him,” she whispered, shivering. “If that makes any difference.”

“Well now,” I said. “Why didn’t you say so? Sure. That makes all the difference. Love does. I mean, I loved you once. Of course, being as I’m shy, I never told you. But now I can. I loved you, Annabelle. What do you think of that?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “About what happened.”

“No need, Annabelle. It probably did me a lot of good.”

She believed me. “I’m glad. That you feel that way.”

“So you need money. Well, it’s sure in a worthy cause. You might even start a fund. “Abortions for Annabelle.’ ” I think she was about to scream when I put my arm around her. “Hey now,” I said. “Hey now, Annabelle. Take it easy.” But feeling her body warm against me threw me for a little, and I didn’t know if I could go through with it. Finally, I started to move.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“For a walk,” I told her. “Just for a stroll.”

We began moving silently among the graves, going up one row and down the next. We did that about ten minutes with never a word spoken. Then I found it.

“Zachary Crowe,” it said. “1934-1954. R.I.P.”

“Here’s a nice place,” I said, pushing her down on the grass. “Here’s a swell place. It’s beautiful here.” I knelt beside her and my hands shook as I started to undo the buttons of her blouse.