6: THE HUNCHBACK’S PANTOMIME

The moment the door shut, Arlene Flagg turned to Zoe Cutter and said, “He’s not from here,” thus absolving the town of Darby from any responsibility for Howard Elman.

Arlene was forty-five but looked like an old woman. No, Zoe reconsidered; not like an old woman but like a good amateur actress posing as an old woman.

“He was a foster,” continued Arlene from her straight-back chair in front of the cash register of Flagg’s store (groceries, sundries, beer). “Both of ’em were fosters. He got her in trouble in the foster and had to marry her. One of his girls got into the same trouble. Another went to California”—here Arlene paused—“and stayed!” Her meaning was clear. You could go to California with some virtue, but if you did not return soon, you were cheap.

“How did he come to buy that house?” asked Zoe.

Arlene bent to scratch her ankle. She wore black nun shoes and baggy support stockings, which camouflaged attractive legs. “War money,” she said. “He bought it from Henry Piken when he came home from the war. Otherwise he’d be in a shack or trailer like the rest of ’em.”

“Town’s tax base is the worst in the county because of shacks and trailers,” said Harold Flagg, as—ponderously but stately—he began to make his way from the meat counter after his hushed conversation with Howard Elman. “Elman tells me that Willow Jordan is on the loose again.”

“Well, I’m not surprised—are you?” she said to her brother, but did not wait for an answer and immediately turned to Zoe. “Henry Piken quit the farm to go to Boston and become a millionaire. . . .”

“Which he never became,” answered her brother, white, lumpy, and fat, though curiously weightless, like a transparent bag of marshmallows.

“Not that Howard Elman ever farmed,” said Arlene. “Bought a farm but wouldn’t farm it. Went to work in a shop. Bragged about not farming right to Harold’s face. A terrible-mannered man. Once . . . tell her about the horse, Harold.”

Harold had arrived from his walk up the aisle. He was puffing. “Can’t blame him too much for that, Arlene. I consider the matter of the steps more important.”

“I consider the matter of the horse equally important.”

“Perhaps so, but the horse did require discipline,” said Harold.

“It was the way he carried it out. It reveals character.”

“I guess you might be right, Arlene.”

“Tell her about the horse.”

“Please do,” said Zoe, trying not to sound impatient.

“I will, but the steps were more important, because they affect the tax base.”

“Tell her,” said Arlene.

“It’s well documented, though I didn’t see it myself,” said the storekeeper. “Howard Elman owned a horse for his eldest daughter. One day he got into a discussion with the horse, and the horse disagreed with him, and—”

“Oh, don’t put it like that—a discussion. You don’t discuss with a horse.”

“I was trying to lend some humor to the story,” said Harold.

“It’s not a funny story.”

“I thought it was funny.”

“Some might consider the steps incident funny,” said Arlene.

“Anything to do with tax dollars is not funny,” said Harold, assuming the officious tone he took as chairman of the three-man board of selectmen.

“The horse incident was less funny.”

“Tell me if you think this is funny, Mrs. Cutter. We taxed Howard Elman ten years ago for putting in some new concrete front steps. The assessor went out to assess his place the next year and found the steps gone. Elman had broken them up with a sledgehammer and scattered the bits in his driveway. He spoke some choice language to the assessor about the matter. Of course, we couldn’t tax him for those steps the next year.”

“Or since,” Arlene interrupted.

“Or since.”

“Now tell her about the horse.”

“I meant to all along. I wanted to make the point about tax dollars.”

“It was a pretty horse,” said Arlene, “and that little girl cared for it well when you consider the kind of family she came from. Course, eventually she got in trouble. Lives in Keene now.”

“Anyway, one day he was holding a discussion with the horse, and the horse disagreed with him and stepped on his foot. . . .”

“Howard Elman’s youngest is quite the singer, you know,” Arlene interrupted.

Zoe nodded to Arlene but kept her eyes on Harold. Buried in the layers of sweaty fat about his face were pretty, almost girlish features. He had a scratchy, penetrating voice.

“After the horse stepped on his foot—”

“I thought you’d finished,” said Arlene.

“You weren’t listening.”

“It’s no wonder. You never come to the point.”

Such exchanges between the Flagg siblings went on all day, with neither showing a trace of humor or annoyance but talking like two veteran radio actors reading from a script. What perhaps had once been good-natured kidding between them was now mere habit, the original purpose lost.

“After the horse put its foot on Elman’s foot,” said Harold, doubling his plump, hairless fists, “he punched the horse between the eyes, so that it fell to its knees and wasn’t right for a whole day.”

“Terrible, terrible manners,” said Arlene gravely.

“Frankly,” said Harold, in an intimate aside to Zoe, designed to be overheard by Arlene, “it’s the only thing the man has ever done that I’ve admired.”

“Were there many horses then?” asked Zoe.

“I can remember horses tied up to that pole out there,” Harold replied. He didn’t bother to point it out, assuming Zoe must be familiar with it (she had never noticed it).

“There were more fields then, more agriculture,” said Arlene, as if she were speaking of two hundred years ago instead of twenty. She seemed on the verge of an impassioned plea of some kind, but changed her mind, and her voice fell away.

“Father had two hundred cows,” she whispered.

“Grandfather had three hundred cows,” said Harold, as though trying to one-up his sister.

“And Mr. Elman keeps automobiles in his fields instead of livestock,” said Zoe, bringing the conversation around to where she wanted it.

Arlene sighed, the quavering sigh of an old woman. “Fosters,” she said.

Zoe marveled at the oddity of the woman. Her complexion was flawless, yet she covered her cheeks with dull powder. She walked hunched over, squinted through glasses, and, it seemed, bound her bust with towels so that her chest protruded like a bird’s instead of a woman’s.

Harold shook his head at Zoe’s remark about Howard Elman’s junk cars.

“Why don’t you pass an ordinance barring them?” Zoe pressed on, and surprised the Flaggs by snapping her fingers and smiling as if anything could be done very simply if only enough will were brought to bear.

“Everyone wants the selectmen to bar something, especially in regards to his neighbor,” said Harold. He was talking over her as if to someone upstairs.

“Zoning. Do you have zoning?” Zoe said.

“Of course.”

“A planning board?”

“Course we do. Law requires it.”

“Could you ban junk cars if you wanted to?”

“Probably could. Not sure, though, whether it’s legal. We’d have to talk to the lawyer.” He was enjoying this, Zoe thought, almost as if he were flirting with her.

“Oh dear,” said Arlene, glancing at the thermometer that hung outside the window, “it’s getting colder.”

“A front,” said Harold.

“Affront?” said Zoe. She couldn’t tell by his tone what he meant—it was mysterious, hurt. And then she realized, oh, yes, he meant weather. New Englanders spent a lot of time discussing the severity and unpredictability of their weather. They took it personally. Weather was family, to be argued over, put down, scorned—unless you were an outsider, and then you didn’t have the right.

Zoe felt a pleasing, malicious urge to “improve” the Flaggs, chloroform them and spirit them off to a clinic in Denmark to be cleansed, trimmed, dressed, manicured, pedicured, mentally honed to fulfill what she perceived to be their potential—Harold, a slim, arrogant, poison dagger of a man, a critic; Arlene, a remote, untouchable, envy-provoking beauty, a cold, first-class bitch.

At this point the bell hanging over the door rang, and Howard Elman entered the store for the second time in fifteen minutes. The look on his face stunned them to silence.

.  .  .

Earlier that day Elenore Elman had watched her husband sitting on the floor among the parts of a rifle, like a giant child with his toys.

It had been pleasant having him home during the day, from the moment he received his first unemployment check a week ago. He had held it up like a prize. “Seventy-eight bucks. Feels good; feels like stealing, like a kid stealing an apple,” he said. Since then he had acted like a man on vacation, working on engines in the barn by a potbellied stove, weather-stripping the storm windows, doing dozens of odd jobs interspersed with numerous coffee breaks and catnaps. Wednesday, after the first snow of winter, instead of calling Pete Andrews to plow them out, he shoveled an overly ordered path from the road up the driveway, past the house and up to the barn; and for reasons known only to himself—which by now he had probably forgotten—he cleared a narrow walkway to a derelict Chevrolet in the field. The shoveling had taken him most of the day and seemed to please him immensely, as if he had discovered that snow removal could be a fascinating hobby as well as a necessity.

Two feet of snow had fallen, and Christmas hadn’t arrived yet. That was all right. Elenore believed that early snow meant early spring. In the evening, after Heather went to bed, they would sit on the couch in front of the television and talk; that is, she realized, she would talk and he listen. It wasn’t as though he cared what she said, or even heard; he listened for enjoyment, the way one listens to music or a sermon. Such moments made her feel womanly. Her health seemed better now, and she flirted with the idea of going back to work in the nursing home. She missed the sense of reverence she felt when she washed the backs of the old. Like children, they were close to God, and if you were quiet and emptied your mind, you could touch Him as you touched their loose and fragile skin. She did not want to work at Heaterman’s Laundry. The women there laughed evilly and used the Lord’s name in vain. She looked at Howard now, scrubbing a piece of metal with a toothbrush. He wasn’t a bad man, not fully grown up, true, and he had a mean streak that came and went like a thunderstorm, and at times he could be smart and stupid at once on the same subject, so that he would not listen to reason; but he was a good provider, at least until recently; he didn’t turn vicious with drink, and he was often entertaining.

This was an interim period for them, she realized, between the days when Howard was a foreman at the shop and whatever was to come. The period would be brief enough. It was a gift, and she crossed herself and thanked Him.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, amen. She bowed her head and then raised it—and was startled to see someone watching her from the window outside. It was Ollie Jordan.

Ollie never knocked. He let himself in, or kicked the door, or shook the handle. Now he merely stood by the window, studying her, motionless except for the hand that jumped to the crimson, tormented nose. She let him in, the hunchback, Turtle Jordan, limping behind. She tried to snub Ollie, punish him for watching as she prayed, but he brushed by her as if she were invisible.

“What’s wrong with the gun?” Ollie asked Howard. It was a professional’s question.

“Ain’t nothing wrong with it. Cleaning it.” Howard stood.

“Mighty elaborate takedown for cleaning,” said Ollie.

“Helps me clear my mind.”

Ollie nodded. “Willow has run away.”

“Hmmm,” said Howard. He scratched a two-day beard as Elenore watched. There was a promise of adventure here, and she could see that he was stirred. He had a forceful face, like an iron fry pan. He could lift the heaviest appliance or snatch a fly from the air with equal ease. Even now, after all these years, she was impressed by his strength, and yet she had no confidence in his ability to take care of himself during these “adventures.” He was too fearless, too inquisitive, his very strength a defect. She stepped between them, as though her presence might serve, in a way she could not have explained, as a warning. But the men talked through her, oblivious of her.

“You know where he went?” Howard asked.

Ollie shook his head slowly and pointed at Turtle, sitting in a corner. “He knows, but he won’t say.” He cupped his hand and brought it up to his mouth as if to drink, a gesture that spoke to Turtle.

The hunchback got on his knees, put the index finger of each hand over his ears, and curled his lower lip slightly over his upper.

“Cow?” asked Howard.

“Cow,” said Ollie.

Turtle imitated the slow, lurching walk of a cow backing out of a stall. Elenore suppressed a giggle of fright. Turtle crawled, ambled into the kitchen, still a cow. He paused and made as if to feed from the linoleum. Then he snapped his head up, and extended his neck straight out as far as it would go. His eyes bulged, and he stuck out his tongue. The muscles in his cheeks twitched. He held this pose for about a minute before tumbling backward as if halved. Lying on his side, he gradually relaxed his face, at last removing the fingers from the side of his head and bringing his hands together for a moment, as if in prayer. Then he leaned his cheek against his hands and pretended to fall asleep.

“Is he fooling with us?” Howard asked.

“Don’t know what he’s doing,” Ollie replied.

“He’s fooling,” said Howard.

“I wouldn’t put it past him,” said Ollie.

There is something wrong with this, Elenore wanted to say. This is violence, fists swinging, broken bottles, the open mouths of fish breathing out of water. But she was powerless, like the deaf-and-dumb hunchback. The men’s talking, as if in ceremony, stupefied her.

Ollie Jordan put his arm out like a traffic cop, and the hunchback ceased his mime, returned to his corner, and laid his head on his shoulder as if for a nap, though his eyes were open.

The two men sat at the kitchen table, muttering like two old checker players. Elenore heated water for instant coffee. Then she went into the living room and sat opposite the hunchback.

Ollie had sent Willow and Turtle to cut firewood in Franklin Dexter’s forest. Howard chuckled every time he heard Ollie use Dexter’s name. Ollie had reached a casual agreement with Dexter to thin trees on his property in return for half the wood. That was twenty years ago, and Dexter (who was fond of calling himself a Connecticut Yankee) had been dead for nineteen of those years. Dexter’s heirs sold the land to a Keene real-estate agent, and since then it had gone through several hands. Howard didn’t know who owned it now. Meanwhile, Ollie continued to harvest trees—red maple, black birch, white birch, some oak—leaving half, well, maybe a quarter, of what he had cut stacked in Dexter’s forest.

The hunchback raised his arms to Elenore, as though he wanted to be hugged, she figured, then thought better of it and looked away from her. Sitting, hands crossed on her lap, self-consciously stiff and holy, she watched him run his fingers over his eyebrows, like a cat cleaning itself. His face was soft, white, and beardless; his head was covered with golden hair in a snug, curly cap. His eyes reminded Elenore of blue hepatica. God had invested in the hunchback’s face all the beauty that was due the Jordans. This thought seemed very precious, very unusual, to Elenore, and she let it settle in her mind. She brought the hunchback a cup of coffee, and he took it from her hand.

She went into the kitchen and sat with the men. “Howard,” she whispered, but he did not hear. “Howard!” she shouted, much too loud.

“What’s the matter with you?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she said.

An important thought had come to her: A brief and pleasant time between them had passed almost as it was perceived, and perhaps the perceiving of it had hastened its departure. But after she had shouted “Howard,” she discovered she had no words for the thought, and he was too preoccupied to read it in her face. So she said “Nothing,” waited until they finished their coffee, and put the cups in the sink with great care. In a few minutes the men went off and Elenore was alone, itchy with knowledge.

Ollie, two hands on the wheel of his Plymouth Fury (Ollie called it his “go-to-church car,” though he never went to church), drove with jerky concentration.

Ollie’s love for Willow, Howard believed, was his single major flaw. Willow showed signs of insanity early in life. He had obsessions: tying knots in snakes, climbing trees and refusing to come down for days. Ollie persisted in calling Willow’s insanity his “sense of humor,” pointing to numerous mischievous stunts Willow pulled as evidence. It was clear even to Ollie that Willow acted according to the whims of an inner logic, which only by coincidence met the demands of the world; so Ollie took it upon himself to “educate” Willow. He tried beating him (Willow thrashed one of his sisters, as if following a good example); he tried bribing him with pies (Willow got fat); he tried talking sensibly to him (Willow memorized his phrases and repeated them for amusement); he tried shunning him (Willow wept). The “education” was good for Ollie, teaching him patience, but Willow learned nothing. Eventually Ollie gave up trying to change Willow and resigned himself to carrying him for the rest of his life like a gimpy knee.

Teeth, straight teeth. The thought of Freddy surfaced in Howard’s mind, rising out of the thought of Willow and Ollie. If only one could be wise about such things as son love. He had a crazy idea to propose to Ollie: that they swap sons for a year to bring to their respective problems a fresh, detached viewpoint. Howard decided he would give Willow to the Russians, as one might donate to the Department of Agriculture a two-headed chicken. He laughed out loud at the bitter joke.

“What the hell you laughing at?” asked Ollie.

Howard told him his plan.

“Makes it easier to go around the law than to obey it,” said Ollie without humor. He seemed about to explain why breaking natural laws was not good in the long run, but he couldn’t think of a reason.

Both men laughed out of an inexplicable embarrassment.

As soon as they were out of the car, the wind cuffed Ollie’s nose, swelling the veins from red to blue, and he began to weep, and wept all the while they were in the woods where Willow had last been seen. It was a cold, bright day with broken bits of the sun on a thin crust of snow. Willow had cut down half a dozen red maples, one on top of the other. The smell of raw wood hung in tiny hollows. Howard and Ollie found the gas can and ax in a mess of Willow’s tracks two hundred feet from the work area. The tracks meandered, as if they had been made by a curious animal stopping to sniff certain rocks and trees, and then they merged and became confused, as if there a man had paced in great anxiety. Finally, the tracks showed Willow had come to a decision, for they led straight with long steps to the road, where they could not be read. Following Willow’s tracks were the hunchback’s—direct, economical.

At the road Ollie grasped Turtle by the shoulders, so that the two of them looked like two twisted trees whose branches had become permanently entwined. He sat the boy down forcibly in the snow, stood over him, and (it seemed to Howard) chewed him out in Jordan sign language. The hunchback looked up at him from the snow, not in fear but in reverence, as if Ollie’s hands swore with great skill; but the hunchback made no return gestures, merely “listened” until Ollie exhausted himself and sat on a stump, propping his chin in his hand, as if in deep thought, though Howard knew he was resting and his mind was probably blank.

A minute passed. Ollie rested, Howard smoked, and the hunchback lay motionless on the snow. Gray birches, broken and dead, littered the shadow of a wolf pine, which had killed them by growing above them and stealing their sunlight. Birches came up first in abandoned fields and basked dreamily in the sun like so many bathers. Then the pines came, and the maples and the oaks. The gray birch is doomed to die in the shade, Howard had told Freddy. Teeth, straight teeth.

“Not now,” Howard whispered, but Ollie heard him and was startled. He drew his hand to his nose and searched the woods with his eyes.

“That was me. Thinking out loud,” said Howard, and as he spoke, he saw the soles of the hunchback’s boots and knew at once where Willow had gone.

“Turtle, don’t you move,” he said. He flicked his cigarette away, grasped the hunchback’s ankle, and with his pocketknife removed a cake wedged between the heel and sole of Turtle’s boot. He showed the cake to Ollie.

“Cowshit,” said Ollie.

“Cowshit,” said Howard, triumphant.

“Storekeeper’s barn,” said Ollie, and Howard smiled. The brain is a beautiful machine, he thought.

The men knew that Harold Flagg owned the nearest barn in which cattle were still kept. He raised a few meat steers for his store, along with some laying chickens and a pompous little cock that thought he was the king of Siam, from the sound of his crowing in the morning.

Ollie held the cake under Turtle’s nose and spoke to him in sign language with his free hand.

The hunchback bowed and brought his fingers to his head to imitate a cow’s horns. He knelt and stared placidly at a point directly in front of Howard. In a moment his expression changed; the tongue protruded, the eyes bulged, and the cheeks drew taut. A drill sergeant making a point, a gardener staring at the sun, a man laughing uncontrollably at himself in a mirror—whatever the expression meant, Howard could not read it. Finally, Turtle collapsed in the snow, exhausted. They carried him to the Plymouth. By the time they put him in the back seat, he was asleep, and by the time they reached Flagg’s store, he was having bad dreams.

Howard went into the store to get Flagg’s permission to search his barn while the Jordans waited outside, because Ollie owed Flagg money. Howard had no special liking for Flagg—mainly because although he was a storekeeper, he came from farmer stock and was associated with farmers, and Howard hated farmers. They had crazy ideas about land (they couldn’t leave it alone) and crazy ideas about work (they broke their bodies and the bodies of those around them with it and thought they were doing right). And he knew how Flagg could use his office of selectman to injure people he didn’t like. Harold Flagg was a dangerous man. Still, Howard always took pleasure in walking into the store. Years ago Howard had a crush on Flagg’s wife, a married man’s pure-hearted crush. Celia Flagg died in childbirth twelve years ago, but even these days Howard could feel her presence in the store—a shawl and a light step. He let the thought steep in his mind before entering.

“Harold,” he said, “you hear any chain-saw work going on this morning?”

“Road agent’s been cutting up that tree that fell in the storm,” said Harold. “I haven’t paid any attention.”

“Willow Jordan has gotten away,” said Howard. “He was sawing wood and he took off.”

Flagg was cutting meat, and now he began to cut more slowly. For a long moment he said nothing. He was measuring the situation. Howard decided to wait him out. Finally, Flagg said, “That so.”

“We got reason to believe that he’s in these whereabouts,” Howard said, speaking as he imagined Flagg would have spoken.

Another pause. Flagg cut slower and slower. It was he who was doing the waiting out, Howard realized.

“We’d like permission to search your barn in case he’s hiding there,” said Howard.

Flagg stopped his work altogether, put his knife down, and wiped his glasses on his apron. He was in full command.

“‘We’ being you and Ollie Jordan,” Flagg said.

“And Turtle,” said Howard.

“And why’d he send you in?” It was not a question so much as an accusation, and Howard said nothing. “You know, Howie, I got a good mind to call the sheriff. That son of Ollie’s is a menace to this town. Ain’t that so?”

“Um,” said Howard. He knew Flagg wouldn’t call the sheriff. It went against his principles to look for help from the outside.

Another pause, and Flagg nodded toward the door. Howard took the gesture as permission to search, a permission tinged with a threat.

On his way out, Howard saw Arlene Flagg, the town gossip, and Mrs. Cutter talking at the cash register. They reminded him of two old witches, brewing up something evil. He remembered now that Mrs. Cutter’s car wasn’t parked in front of the store. Strange. How had she got there? It seemed important to find out why the woman’s car was not out front, as though it were some overwhelming question—the missing link between man and ape, the roots of war and of love, the nature of the soul, the nature of the universe, the nature of time—that he felt suddenly called upon to answer for his own survival. It did not occur to him that Zoe might have walked more than a mile from her house to the store because she wanted to. Only the mad, like Willow Jordan, did such things, in Howard Elman’s view.

Outside, Howard scanned the common for Mrs. Cutter’s Mercedes. It was as if there were a plot against him. With great clarity now he could see it was possible that Hitler was still alive (say, in New Jersey) and that Mrs. Cutter was really what’s-her-name, Eva Bomb. Howard the soldier, dead in the snow, machine-gunned from a German car, son marching with the enemy, wife alone and numbed by prayer, youngest daughter altered in a laboratory, other daughters dim-witted in front of their television sets, land taken by the state and fenced, harem of vehicles sold down the river. The idea was comforting in a way because it was logical, perhaps even just. After all, who was he to deserve family and property?—he who had been meant by birth and inclination to hunt, fish, trap, roam from time to time like a goddamn moose, and on Saturday night get drunk and laid. What was not logical was that he had worked all these years for family and property; what was not just was that they should simply vanish and that he be left untouched, without battle, without knowledge, without even regrets. No Mercedes in sight. Troubling.

Ollie danced in the driveway to keep his feet warm; the hunchback was still but shivered violently and stared into space at some soundless, perfect world.

At the end of the driveway, they followed a path in the snow made by Harold Flagg’s heavy footsteps. The storekeeper’s house, like himself, was enormous, with too many additions on a delicate, now lost core, full of closed-off rooms meant for children never born. Behind the house was the barn, weathered black as a judge in robes.

They waited in the barn for a moment until their eyes got used to the darkness. The sunlight came jeweled through a thousand cracks between the boards; the air was heavy, rich, musty.

They could hear the whisper of a steer munching hay.

Another steer moved its stupendous bottom from side to side like a fat old woman preparing to sit. The hunchback warmed himself by its flank.

Ollie climbed the loft, kicking and punching the hay, and announced, in a tone of exaggerated importance, “He ain’t here.”

In a few minutes there was no place left to look.

Finally, as they were about to leave, the hunchback, pride or gift-giving in his eyes, led them to the rear of the barn. He tried to open a large sliding door, but it was stuck. Ollie grasped the handle and with a heave slid the door open.

As Howard remembered the event later, it was as if the moment Ollie opened the door, they were spacemen on an alien, hostile planet. The sunlight, he decided, caused the feeling, illuminating the snow-covered fields like a vast sheet of rippling, white-hot steel, the hills beyond dark and grim. In fact, as Howard remembered, he had watched Turtle begin his pantomime before he had seen the cow, though it lay in frozen gore nearly at his feet. He had been fascinated with the hunchback—on his knees, tongue out, eyes bulging, cheeks taut—and he believed that at that second he had guessed the truth before he had actually seen it, though of course you couldn’t be sure about such things. It was Ollie’s awed voice saying “My Jesus” that had taken his eyes from the hunchback to the steer, cut in half with a chain saw. What he last remembered, the image that stayed deep in his mind, to rise up in dreams and odd waking moments, was the hunchback’s completing his imitation, his face beside the severed steer, their expressions identical, and his thought at the time, how marvelous the human mind, and Ollie’s words, “My Jesus . . . my Jesus . . . my sweet Jesus, what a sense of humor that boy has got.”