James Morrow - This Is the Way the World Ends

One-third truth, two-thirds lie. The Snape’s Hill Burial Grounds had indeed erected a remarkable memorial that month, a replica of a prehistoric megalith commissioned by an eccentric young man named Nathan Brown for his recently departed and allegedly Druid uncle. Arthur had not asked George to look at it, however, and the Crippen Monument Works would almost certainly not be ordering one.

He kissed her. They had not used contraception. If a girl: Aubrey. If a boy: Derek. They had been taking the necessary lack of precautions for the last ten weeks. Everything would work out. He wanted another girl, had instructed his sperm accordingly. Aubrey Paxton.

‘Is Arthur paying you to run around like this?’ asked Justine sneeringly. ‘Can’t he look at the damn rock?’

‘He’s busy today.’

‘Busy hauling Scotch bottles. Busy lifting shot glasses. It’s supposed to snow, you know.’

‘It won’t snow that much.’

But it did snow that much. Even before George had gotten their terminal-case Volkswagen van to the end of Pond Road, the first storm of December was under way. The heater fan groaned and squeaked as it shunted inadequate amounts of warmth toward his frigid toes. The wiper motors dragged frozen rubber across the windshield. Flakes came down everywhere, a billion soft collisions a second.

He turned left onto Main Street, steered the skittish vehicle past the post office, the Lizard Lounge, and the Wildgrove Mall, home of Raining Cats and Dogs. (Damn you, Harry Sweetser. I hope one of your tarantulas bites you on the ass.) A happier sight now, Sandy’s Sandwich Shop, where on Tuesday and Thursday nights, while Justine learned to act, he and Holly shared a pizza and something he was not embarrassed to call conversation; it was a tribute to children that whatever you discussed with them seemed important. A mechanical horse stood outside the shop. GIANT RIDE, the sign said. 25 CENTS, QUARTERS ONLY. INSERT COIN HERE. Holly always asked her daddy for an extra ride. The chances of her not getting one were equal to those of the sun not coming up the next day.

After the Arbor Road turn, the van rattled past John Frostig’s house. The Perpetual Security panel truck sat in the driveway, jam-packed with deterrence. George recalled his old fantasy of breaking into the truck and stealing a scopas suit for Holly. How wonderful it was not to be burdened with this temptation, to be bound instead for the Mad Tea Party and its free merchandise. Spying through the picture window, he saw little Nickie, clad in a scopas suit, watching TV. On the screen a mouse unleashed a bomb from a World War One fighter plane. As it detonated, a wave of well-being hit George.

Shoulders heaped with snow, a crooked figure was walking up the Frostig driveway. He recognized her handbag, shuddered to see her bent, defenseless frame. She should have a coat on, he thought, a sweater, a scopas suit, something besides that black dress.

Rosehaven Cemetery rushed by. Grace Loquatch’s stone – THE HAMMER GROWS SILENT – was now in place. White drifts engulfed black South African obelisks. Marble saints grinned stoically as the blizzard whipped their faces and stuck to their sides. Should I have offered Mrs Covington my down jacket? he wondered. Old ladies get cold… especially those with her kind of blood.

George switched on the car radio. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was deploying a hundred and fifty additional ground-launched Raven cruise missiles in Belgium to offset the Soviet deployment of three hundred intermediate-range SS-90 missiles in Poland. The snow slackened. George hummed along with Brahms’s String Quintet No. 2 in G Major. The van sailed into the white city.

He parked in a lot – five dollars, paid in advance, but who cares when you’re about to get a free scopas suit? – and, securing Nadine’s map under his arm, set off. The storm was over. Snow crunched beneath his boots. White sculpted mounds clung to everything, cars, fire hydrants, litter receptacles, subway entrances, all lying half-interred, vast pieces of quiet. Scopas-suited Christmas shoppers appeared on the frosted streets. George saw a Santa Claus, then an other, and another. Their scopas suits were blood red. Beards were glued to their helmets. The white strands vibrated in the wind. When the Santa Clauses rang their bells, the sound was lost in the fast bitter air.

George hurried on. He pitied the shoppers, sealed in their suits, unable to sense the magical white silence. Walking here was like being on a deep-sea dive into the heart of winter. He wore a wool cap, wool mittens, and a down jacket, but they were not enough – the wind still pinched his nose, stung his cheeks. Curling his fingers into self-warming fists, the epicure of everyday pleasures wished for hot coffee.

By the time he reached Snapes Hill, he had started doubting the wisdom of his trip. A free scopas suit? Just for making up a couple of silly epitaphs? More likely the black-blooded old woman was playing some senile joke. (‘I have always been with you…’ Nut talk.) He looked at the prehistoric megalith. Crude, humorless, and stern, it towered over stones of more conventional design. Here at the Snapes Hill Burial Grounds a canny observer could witness the entire evolution of a technology. In one section rose the limestone memorials, names, dates, and fond remembrances smeared away by decades of Boston weather. In an adjacent area leaned markers of slate, a sturdier proposition, inscriptions soft and worn but still readable. And finally, of course, the precincts of immortal granite, more permanent than anything a Pharaoh had ever demanded.

He left the graveyard, walked on, and suddenly it appeared, the coffee shop of his humble dream, the Holistic Donut. He went inside, treated himself to coffee with actual cream plus two donuts filled with a wondrous white goo. The waitress’s breasts flowed lushly against her scopas suit.

Had he and Justine conceived an Aubrey Paxton that morning? George began to whistle. Daddies could sense these things. Father’s intuition.

Still whistling, he stepped out of the Holistic Donut. He consulted Nadine’s map, charted his course. He turned left, went down an obscure street called Gooseberry Place, turned right, followed something called Pitchblende Lane, turned left, entered Moonburn Alley. It was a twisted, cobblestoned passageway pinched between rows of shops – cheese shop, rare coins shop, used books shop, clock repair shop – each snug and quaint, crescents of snow resting in their windows. Golden light spilled through the panes, marking the ground with shapes that George decided were elf shadows. Tonight, he thought, I’ll tell Holly a story about an elf who casts a golden shadow.

The sign advertising Theophilus Carter’s establishment was a hearty slab of oak bearing a painted teapot captioned THE MAD TEA PARTY – REMARKABLE THINGS FOR HUMAN BODIES. Under that, PROFESSOR THEOPHILUS CARTER – TAILOR, HATTER, FURRIER, INVENTOR, PROPRIETOR. Across the front of the Mad Tea Party ran a bellied, multi-paned window displaying a definitive collection of hats: beaver, homburg, derby, tricorne, fedora, slouch, bowler, fez, stovepipe, even a king’s bejeweled crown.

A frail carillon from three tin bells announced George’s entrance. The Mad Tea Party was dark and musty. It was also, he surmised, extremely popular – customers jammed the shop to the walls – but then he realized that this impression owed entirely to the several dozen mannequins stationed about, their reflections inhabiting a multitude of full-length mirrors. Like the hats in the front window, the mannequins’ clothing was extraordinarily varied, with no fashion or era neglected. George moved through a tangled mass of gowns, togas, kimonos, doublets, jerkins, sarongs, crinolines, tunics, and shining armor. Could these all be scopas suits? he wondered. Had Theophilus Carter figured out how to combine deterrence with style?