William Haggard - The New Black Mask (No 5)

Simply, I think you’ve taken this far enough, Howard. I’ve been more than fair with my side, and I expect you to think about that. We’re not young now, and honest to God I need you around before I get out of here. We’re all there is, you know. There may be a cousin or so tucked somewhere, but I don’t count that. I love you and want you with me while there’s time. If you’re married again, which I doubt, we can all have a wonderful time together. I live up in the valley now. It’s some wooded property, and there is the main house and a smaller guest place. You’re welcome to either one, although I prefer you stayed in the larger house with me. It’s quiet, Howard, and lovely. You know the valley.

Not much else to say. I love you, and if you decide to stay there, you have your reasons, but I doubt I would agree. You know I would not hamper your life in any manner. I only want you back again. Enough is enough.

Love,

After this I’m contemplating the ground before me very hard. I tell Dick, “I thought she was on welfare. Someone I ran into told me that. Or that she filed bankruptcy. I can’t remember exactly.”

Dick’s cracking open a Lucky and shaking his head. “No stories today, Mr. Greenjeans. You wake up one morning and think you’re the Invisible Man: poof — El Splits-o. Couple of birthdays later your sister gets this phone call, collect, mind you, from Windy City.”

“It was dead of winter, Dick,” I say without reason.

“It was breakfast time in sunny California,” he says. “Sis and hubby are eating their corn flakes, minding their own, when suddenly the horn blows, and she’s hearing some old sot crying about the good old days, singing ‘The Way We Were,’ and how can he make it up now.”

For a while I’m speechless, trying to understand what’s going on. I’m remembering that phone call and say, “I was thinking then about when we were kids, her and I; us playing together, then being older and her going away to the institute, then her coming home and being delighted with my little winery and family and my leased Ford station wagon.”

“Charming,” says Dick, yawning and blowing smoke at the same time. He was different, all right. “Reminiscing with a rummy at daybreak must have been just peaches and cream for her. But let’s talk about now. Like the letter says, canman, she needs you, not your score note a month and a question mark.”

Then I’m shaking my head. “You’re wasting your time.”

“I get it,” he says. “You’d rather turn into Grandpa Prunes one day and wax line one of your stovepipes over there.”

“What’s in it for you?” I snap back. “I suppose, I go back, you get yourself a nice bonus?”

He was smiling, dangling that Lucky. “Ditto. I get five more Cs on my report card if I bring you back alive — but not kicking.”

“Well I damn sure would be,” I say. “She knows I could never do that again. Damn her, anyway.”

“Easy, Howard, I promised sis I’d leave my shotgun home.” He stands up now, stretching and looking around. “Anyway, your pet rats are getting on my nerves. What say we beat it for a quick nightcap?”

“Sorry, I’m limiting my social drinking these days.”

“One for the road,” he says. “Tomorrow I fly the friendly skies.”

“Is that right?” I reply. For some reason, this news bothers me. In any event, after hearing this I have to agree, and we end up at this seaman’s bar over by the river, which I know all the way there is a mistake. We have a drink, then two or three more, and I’m starting to tell Dick how it happened. Luckily, he stops me. I hadn’t talked about it for a while, but, as I should have known, it never did leave me in the best of spirits. Talking about it, that is.

So Dick’s blowing smoke, raising his hand and saying, “Save it, old-timer, sis gave me all the painful details before I left.”

By then I am feeling pretty rude and say, “Oh, yeah? What the hell does she know about it? What makes her so damn smart?”

Dick’s eyeing me real close now through those half-closed eyes of his. I hear him say, “Your problem is you’ve got a case of the sorries for yourself you’ve never been able to shake.”

“Go to hell,” I reply.

“No, I’m going over to the Monteleone and go to bed,” he says. “I’ve got a full tank trying to figure out why such a nice lady as that wants an old coot like you hanging around.”

Then he just disappears and there I am alone again. I start feeling guilty about it after a while, what I’d said and the way I’d acted. It was Dick still working on me. He was so damn sure of things, which made it even worse. Miserable puritan.

“Get you anything?”

It was just the bartender and me left. “Oh, hell,” I say. “A big cup of the blackest, meanest coffee you got.”

After he sets it down, he hangs around and we talk. Soon I start feeling the pressure ease up inside me. The beer jerker’s telling me about a catfish farm he wants to get going. It’s the big dream of his life, so we chew on it for fifteen minutes or so. Then he asks me what I do and, all clear headed, I start telling him about the winery. The one, I’m saying, I used to own. The funny thing is, it is the first time I’ve talked about it without being tight. For some time now I had equated sobbing and drooling into my whiskey glass with the running of a winery.

Now I am fresh and loose as sheets flapping in an autumn breeze in Maine.

I tell him carefully about how the thing used to run. I was recalling how much hard work and fun it had been, and I think he picked up on it. Then he asks me, if it was that good, why wasn’t I still there? In former times this would have been the cue to pull all stops. I’d learned a hundred ways to milk sympathy from some stranger, and the details of my personal tragedy got them every time. And, at that moment, more by habit than intention, I almost do the same thing again. I open my mouth to speak and suddenly feel the notion disappear. Of course it's all still there. It's picture perfect within my mind: how my wife Mary and our two boys — Brad was four and Danny was six — had got up early one morning and gone down to the city shopping. My birthday was around then, and I think they were going to get a present for me. Then I’m over in my warehouse moving empty casks around when Harry (who was chief of police in town) comes up crying his eyes out. It seems this car had pulled across the highway in front of our car and everyone was dead. The other folks, I found out later, had been to an all-night wedding shindig and were on their way home. I remember I kept thinking how, just before it happened, everyone in both cars must have been happy. They must have been smiling and feeling very pleased about things in general. I recall it was a beautiful day.

But now I only look at the bartender and say, “Change of luck, I’m afraid. You know how that is.”

He does and goes into familiar detail about some woman leaving him for another guy, and what he’d do if he ever ran into them. But I’m polite, letting him finish before I get the hell out of there.

The next thing I know I’m back at camp, but nothing looks right anymore. It’s like, after bringing Dick around, nothing’s the same anymore. So I leave again and just go walking. I end up at the Moonwalk, which is this elevated boardwalk overlooking the Mississippi. Behind me is Jackson Square and the Pontalbas, and, what I do is, I spend the rest of the night there. Just sit there and think. I recall how I’d moved in with Harry and Alice for a few days before I took off. I woke up one morning and felt short of breath. I sort of stumbled about the house, not being able to breathe properly. I was gone before Harry got up to start the coffee. Damn her, I was thinking now. Damn her.