David Alexander - Masters of Noir - Volume 4

Barton thought of Hugh with a bitter scorn. For all his big talk about being man enough to handle her, all she had to do was swish her tail to bring him down on all fours and use him up. He went to the bureau, dropped the binoculars in the bureau drawer and kneed it shut with an air of finality. That’s all there was these days, animals yielding to their pleasures, no discipline, no pride in strength, only in weakness. Barton caught sight of himself in the bureau mirror, which was flaking and yellowed, decaying like everything else in this dying house. Light from the peephole opening of the window shone on one side of his face, leaving the other in shadow, and an uneven line ran down the center as if a jagged axe blade had tried to split his head — and struck granite, he told himself. He had lived his life on his hind legs, and nothing, nothing short of God could bring him low at the end... no, not even the devil.

He left the bedroom and went along the hall, past the shut doors of the long-empty bedrooms, where the rugs and curtains and chairs and made-beds remained, unused, and giving off the silent musty breath of slow decay. He went down the gloomy central stairs and looked in at the big, glassed-in porch that had served as a play room and sewing room and second parlor, where the girls could entertain their beaux, and in the final years Melly, his wife, had made it her afternoon headquarters, for reading or sewing or just contenting herself looking out at the side lawn and her flowers and their fields. Often she would have her nap there after the midday meal and he’d come down from his own nap and they’d have coffee together before he went out to work. Sometimes he thought a belief in ghosts would be a help, so he could imagine her there smiling and asking if he’d had a good nap... though he was inclined to wake grumpy and had usually been aggravated by the question. On an impulse he went over and started to raise the blinds; a little clean light in this room of Melly’s might give the whole dreary house a better feel.

He glanced around to look at the furnishings when the first blind was up. Slowly, he lowered the blind again. The furnishings were shabby and graceless and heavy, nothing anybody would want today. It had been mighty pretty once. He shrugged. Better to leave it with the dead past.

He went to the kitchen and set coffee warming while he tidied up the mess from his dinner, his mouth down at the corners, a sourness in his stomach and at the base of his tongue. He took some baking soda and belched, looking with distaste at the leftovers in pans and skillet. He still ate the same old greasy food, and too much of it, just as if he still worked from “sun to sun.” He drank his coffee standing up; then marched out like a man going to work, but he wasn’t going to do anything but putter... maybe fix up that board in the corn crib, or maybe mend harness. He shook his head; damnfoolishness mending harness for a team of horses that never did anything but pasture and once in awhile some light hauling. The tractor did their work better and cheaper, and there wasn’t really enough land left to require a tractor. He had sold off all but the sixty acres he and Melly had started out with. He’d saved his three boys and two girls the trouble of waiting for him to die by giving them their patrimony shortly after Melly passed on. He had a few thousand and this place and he wouldn’t have to crowd any of his grandchildren out of their rooms, which was probably luckier than an old man had right to be.

He dawdled around in the barn, feeling that there wasn’t any point in doing anything in particular. He went and stood in the barn door and looked out over the green expanse of growing corn and beyond it in the south field to the vast great yellow square of young wheat. It would grow and ripen and then be cut down and there’d be another winter and maybe another spring...

He spat! God damn a self-pitying man. Whining at his age, worse than a whelp. He heard the tractor start up and located it out in the field with Hugh on the seat, riding young and high and mighty. Then his gaze slid toward the little house, the one he and Melly had started out in. Deena May would be up and chippying around at her chores... or maybe sprawled in the bed, sleeping and renewing that radiant, lustrous, sweet vital young body. The mere sight of that little house roused his belly to life.

He walked up the lane, toward the houses, toward the old barn, thinking of his Bible and the times of greatness when the old men were kings and Solomon lay cold on his bed and they brought to his bed the choicest virgins and... The land swirled in the bright heat and Barton stopped and lighted a cigarette... and there had been King David who had looked upon the flesh of Bathsheba... the smoke dry-tickled his throat and he coughed violently... and the great king had sent the young husband off to his death... in the Bible, yes, in the good Book, and it had been recorded, the living truth... wicked though it might be, it was the nature and the Fate of Man... and when a man grew cold with age he could not help himself if he went to the life-saving fire... it was his own life he saved, even if it came to King David’s way... Scraped down to the raw an animal had to choose to save his own life...

An animal, yes, an animal killed or was killed... but not a man, not a human standing on his hind legs. NO! He didn’t wipe out the pride of all his achievements at his life’s end...

Barton turned into the old barn, got into his car and drove to town. Maybe there would be a few cronies around the grain elevator or the feed store. He parked on Main Street. He sat, debating. He didn’t have many cronies left. And all they could do together would be to carp about the way things were and down in all their bellies was nothing but the cold fear of death and the fear of life and the aching, hopeless wish to be men again. He didn’t want the smell of them. He went over to the bank and cashed a check and drove on into the city. He parked and roamed the bright, busy streets, looking sharply in at the women’s shops, tempted and afraid to go in and buy some pretties for her. Panties and stockings and shoes and perfumes and dresses. He felt flushed and excited and he stopped at a travel agency window with its pictures of gay, carefree foreign places and girls in bathing suits and without exactly knowing what he was doing he got the car again and drove to the airport. He watched the great, shiny planes, landing and taking off; he mingled with the moving, lively crowds waiting to go or going and he longed to have Deena May there to see it and feel it and catch the fire and enthusiasm. He could take her and give her the sparkling brightness and the go go go that she craved. What did it come to, all his hard work and sober virtue? It came to dullness and death.

Hugh was at the milking when Barton got back and Barton, remembering all the hostile thoughts he had had toward the boy, took pains to praise him.

“Sorry to leave you with all the work. Had some business in town. But I’ll grant that you’re handling things fine, just fine.”

Hugh took it with clear pleasure. And after some easy talk about farm matters he said: “I hope she never bothered you, woke you up from your nap. Did she?”

Barton laughed. “Why no. Why? Was she cutting up?”

Hugh shook his head, looking comically earnest. “She was singing around in the yard and carrying on. The thing with Deena May, Mr. Barton, is she is a good-hearted little thing, only she’s childish. She was the young’un of a big family and they catered to her something awful. But I’ve got real confidence that right down in her heart she ain’t really spoiled, but will turn out a first-class woman.” He sighed. “I do have a time with her, she’s that childish. She’s enough to wear out your patience sometimes. But I won’t leave her get on your nerves.”