THIRTY-SEVEN

 

In Bangor, thirty years ago, my Aunt Greta told me that storms were really a giant old "hausfrau" sweeping out the old to make room for the new. Aunt Greta was in many ways a colorful and entertaining woman—"Lusty," my father used to say, which seemed to upset my mother. In my six- or seven-year-old brain, that giant old "hausfrau" was terribly real. I could see her. When storms came up, there she was with her awful broom, her long skirts, and her white bonnet (very much like the woman on the Old Dutch Cleanser cans), and, of course, of course, she was after me!

Eventually, I grew out of believing in the "giant old hausfrau," though my feelings toward my Aunt Greta remained ambivalent. On the one hand, I thought the story, horrific as it was, was wonderfully entertaining, and on the other hand, it really did give me a scare—the genuine scare of insecurity and aloneness and fear that is somehow different from the scare we get on roller coasters and at horror movies.

I bring Aunt Greta and her hausfrau up now because sitting there, in Kennedy Whelan's Chevette Scooter, in Brookfield, Vermont, at 8:45 in the morning, I could tell that a storm was coming. Even though the sky was a flat, pale blue and the sunlight warm through the Chevette's windows. I knew a storm was coming because I have always had a sixth sense about such things; many people do. Maybe there was a ragged edge to the morning's pleasantness. Maybe it was a little too pleasant. Maybe the few clouds scuttling about had a tinge of gray in them.

I said to Whelan, "There's a storm coming."

"Sure," he said. He didn't believe me.

"I mean it," I said. "I have a sixth sense about these things." I set my empty cup on the Chevette's dashboard. "There's a storm coming."

He nodded at the cup. "You want more?"

"I could use it," I said. I was still feeling a little groggy from sleeping in the Chevette's bucket seat. "I'll get it."

"Good enough," he said, and nodded again at the cup on the dashboard. "Take that with you, okay? I like to keep the car clean."

"You bet." I took the cup, climbed out of the car, and headed across the crowded street toward Hattie's Brookfield Restaurant. I was halfway across the street, and picking up bits and pieces of conversation from the crowds around me—"Eighteen dollars for an ashtray!" ... and "Guy must be out of his mind to be selling stuff like that at a family flea market"… and "Wouldn't mind settling here at all"—when I saw Abner.

He was coming out of Pete's Groceries and Things. He had a full bag of groceries in each arm and a look of desperation about him, as if the crowds that had invaded Brookfield planned to invade him next.

I stopped in the middle of the street. Someone jostled me; someone else, very annoyed, said, "Excuse me!" precisely the way Steve Martin says it.

"Abner!" I called.

He stopped. He glanced over at me. His look of desperation became a look of surprise and sudden panic. Then he bolted, his bags of groceries threatening to topple from his arms.

I looked quickly around at the Chevette. Whelan was rolling his window down and putting a new cigar into his mouth. "He's—" I called, and stopped. No, I thought, uncertain why, I don't want him knowing. But Whelan had heard me; he looked questioningly at me.

I held my cup high. "Cream?" I called.

He nodded.

"Great," I called, and walked very quickly to the door of Hattie's Brookfield Restaurant. I stopped there to let a few people walk in ahead of me, then I glanced back at the Chevette. Whelan was watching. He looked confused. I held the cup up again and smiled. "Cream?" I called; again he nodded.

I glanced in the direction that Abner had run. I saw only the flea market crowds, and, fleetingly, a wisp of darkness at the horizon.

I went in. The restaurant was packed. At the counter, I got the attention of a young and schoolgirl-pretty waitress (like the ones that fast-food restaurants use on TV commercials) who said, "Be with you in a moment, sir." She smiled a flat, vaguely welcoming smile.

"No," I said, "I don't want anything. Do you have a rear exit?"

Her smile vanished, as if I had said something obscene. Then, quickly, her smile reappeared. "Oh!" she said. "Yes, sure we do," and she nodded toward the back of the restaurant. "Over there," she said, and turned to the person who'd stepped up behind me. "Be with you in a moment, sir," she said.

He said, "Just coffee."

I closed my eyes. "Nuts!" I whispered. It was Kennedy Whelan's voice. I felt his hand on my shoulder. He gripped hard—harder, I thought, than he looked capable of. "You're a real amateur, Sam," he said.

I shrugged. "You've got to start somewhere," I said. I hadn't turned to look at him.

"What do you do for a living, Sam?"

"Construction work, mostly," I answered. "I've done other things."

"Good for you, Sam," he said, sounding very paternal. "Stick to that, okay?"

"Sure," I said. "That's a promise." I looked at him. He was wearing a shit-eating grin, his cigar between his lips, and somehow he looked more robust, stronger, not the enfeebled, overweight, out-of-shape former cop with whom I'd shared the last ten hours or so.

Apparently he saw my confusion, because he said, "Yeah, Sam. I've got asthma. I've had it since I was a kid, and it gives me trouble every once in a while. Like last night. But, beyond that, my friend, I'm a real hale and hearty son of a bitch."

The waitress reappeared, gave us both her flat, vaguely welcoming smile, and said, "Now, what was it you gentlemen wanted?"

"Coffees," Whelan told her. "Both with cream."

"Coming up," she said, and went to fill the order.

I said to Whelan, "It was an act, you mean?"

His shit-eating grin grew bolder; he nodded gloatingly. "A pretty good one, too, wouldn't you say? Hell, it was the only way to get you back to the car. No way was I going to go chasing through the woods after you. Where were you going anyway, Sam?"

I sighed. "There were some railroad tracks—"

"Sure," he cut in. "I'll lay you odds you were going in the wrong direction."

I shrugged. "Probably," I said, and thought, Jesus, you can't count on anyone, dead or alive. It wasn't true, of course, and I knew it wasn't true. There were several people I could count on—Madeline, Abner, Leslie. They were predictable. They were what they appeared to be. I knew that as surely as I knew about storms and gravity. But there was always one person I knew I could count on without question: myself.

The waitress came over with the coffees in a paper bag; she handed the bag across the counter. Whelan took it, thanked her, then said to me, "Let's go back to the car, Sam. You can tell me where Abner is."

We started out of the restaurant. "I don't know where he is," I said.

Whelan glanced critically at me. "You don't?" he said; it was almost a rhetorical question, as if he knew that I had told him the truth.

"No." I pushed the restaurant door open. "I saw him coming out of that little grocery store—"

"Did he see you?"

We stepped out of the restaurant, onto the crowded sidewalk. The sunlight was gone. "Yes," I answered. "He saw me. And he ran."

"Where to?"

I nodded toward the area beyond the grange hall and the spot where Whelan had told me the flea market had been set up. "There," I said.

We crossed the sidewalk to the street, Whelan using his bulk as a kind of courteous battering ram: "Excuse me, please" . . . "Excuse me" . . . "Coming through." He sounded like the archetypal New Yorker. He said to me, "And you didn't go after him, Sam?"

"I wanted to," I said. The street was alive with people now. God, I thought, what if an ambulance or something has to get through? "I wanted to," I repeated, "but . . . I guess I was having second thoughts about you, Mr. Whelan." We were at the car. I opened the driver's door; he got in. Before I closed the door, he said, "Why?"

"Why what?" I said.

"Why were you having second thoughts about me, Sam?"

I shrugged. "Instinct, I think."

He smiled at that, began, "Well, then, maybe there's hope for . . ." But he was cut off by a shrill, pain-ridden scream from the street.