Jim Lewis - The King is Dead

Peter … said Nicole.

No, no, Peter went on. I’m curious. I mean, what do you do? Aside from rescuing lost women in parking lots.

That’s not enough? said Walter. My God, man. The training alone: months in the wastelands of the Arctic, years studying female physiognomy, perfecting the Reassuring Smile, the Unflappable Calm. This suit, for example: Do you think I simply fell into it this morning? Oh, no, my friend. It’s the result of decades—decades, I say—of research into color science … the psychology of texture … the evolution of animal skins. Ah, you know, John Thomas Scopes was one of ours.

The car was quiet, Peter’s wit had been broken by the time Walter had finished his second sentence, and only Nicole was smiling. Hers was the discovery: let the boys be less smug for it.

I work for the Governor, said Walter. I’m a speechwriter, an aide.

Again there was silence, and then Peter spoke again. The Governor, is that right? Tell me this, because I’ve been wondering. Has he met the newly crowned Queen yet?

The Queen? said Walter.

Elizabeth the Second. I wonder if she’ll ever come to visit us, said Peter wistfully. Well, never mind, we have our own Queen. We have our Queen right here. He reached across Walter’s legs and touched Nicole’s knee, a gesture, it seemed, as much to her silence as to the girl herself. Then he went back to staring out the window and making fun of George’s driving. The others began to go over the baseball game, making jokes, telling tales. When they got onto plays they had seen, fantastic and legendary moments, Walter spoke up.—I saw a triple play once, he said. This was in the minor leagues, though. In San Diego, while I was stationed there.

Stationed? The other man in the backseat lifted his head and leaned forward so he could crane around and look at Walter. Stationed, as in the Army? They were too young to have fought in the War, or even to remember it very well.

Marines, he said. He could feel a change of consciousness in the girl beside him, a soft click as she came a little bit more alive.

A thin-faced, red-lipped boy in the front seat turned. There were tears of excitement in his eyes. Selby, he said. Isn’t that right? Corporal Walter Selby. I knew I recognized you.

What’s that? said George, peering up at Walter through the rearview mirror.

Isn’t that right? said the thin boy again.

Yes, said Walter.

You came to my school to give a talk, about five, six years ago.—Walter frowned, not from forgetfulness but merely to disavow any vanity, but the thin boy misunderstood. Oh, you probably don’t remember, he said, as if remembering were a weakness.

Eddy remembers everything, said a weary man sitting beside Walter, who until then had said nothing at all.

You were awarded the Navy Cross, said Eddy. Yeah. For distinguished something, valor and bravery or something. Boy, you stood up there …

What’s the Navy Cross? said George.

A bit of ribbon, said Walter, and a bit of bronze.

Did you fight Germans?

You don’t use a navy to fight Europeans, said Peter.

Of course you do, said George. There’s a whole ocean between us. They had U-boats. They had a navy.

I fought Japanese, said Walter softly.

The car was quiet. They were passing over a bridge, the water below was pitch black and as smooth as glass, and Nicole reached over and briefly touched Walter’s arm.

Then they were at his door, and she was stepping out of the car, leaving him room to exit. Good night, you all, he said.

Five good-nights came back. He stood on the sidewalk, slightly turned away from Nicole, as if he couldn’t quite bear her brightness full on.

Thank you for taking care of me, she said.

You’re welcome, he said. It was a pleasure. Good night. He nodded gently and started up his walk, looking back at the girl when he was halfway to his door. She was standing beside the car, she smiled at him again with her effortless jubilation; then she waved good-bye. And she climbed back in, and the car drove off, leaving him there in the quiet of his neighborhood, in the center of his tiny little lawn, which stretched for miles and miles to his lighted front door.

Back in the days when days were new, Nicole had met a man named John Brice. That was in Charleston, it was early in the fall, and all of her friends had thought he was strange. Yes, they said, he was handsome, lean and graceful, but he was strange. To begin with, he’d just appeared on the street one April day—Nicole had seen him standing outside the Loews in the middle of the afternoon, waiting all by himself for a matinee to begin—and then again, there he was on Broad Street a few days later. After that it was time to time; he was always alone, often with his hands thrust into his pockets. Sometimes it seemed as if he was dancing a little bit, dancing to himself as he went on his way. She’d seen him, a tall slim fellow with refined, almost feminine features and his hair combed back.

At the time she was just out of her parents’ house; an only child, imaginative and open. She’d spent two years in junior college, and then she came home again, took an apartment with a girlfriend named Emily, and started working in a women’s clothing store called Clarkson’s: some dresses, some underthings. Just a job, although she took pleasure in the details of the place, the feel of her fingers stretching over satin or the resistance of a band of elastic. Mr. Clarkson was usually at home, tending to his sick wife, so most of the time the store was hers; she even had keys to open it in the morning and close it at night, with only an hour or two toward the end of the day when he would stop by to empty the till and deposit it into the bank across the street. Otherwise, there she was, alone amid the cloth, the silks and nylons, and the ladies who came in.

This man, he must have been new in Charleston but he strode down the sidewalk as if he’d put a down payment on the whole town. That was something you noticed right away. Still, she didn’t think much of him; he was not-quite-regular and all alone, and it didn’t take much to make a young man wrong for a girl, in that city, in those days. At first she couldn’t quite tell what it was, exactly, and then it came to her: there was a slight eccentricity in the way he dressed, nothing that most people would have heeded, but she had an eye for the way a man put himself together. He would pass her on the street, wearing a pair of black dress shoes, perfectly acceptable, except that the laces were mouse-grey, and he had doubled them through the eyelets before he tied them. Was that on purpose, or couldn’t he shop for something as simple as shoelaces? One evening when she was walking home from work she saw him standing outside a florist’s in a seersucker suit, quite a nice one, actually, with narrow stripes of a deep rich blue; but it was a little bit late in the year to be wearing summer clothes, late enough that you would’ve thought he would be cold; and his belt was a few inches too long, so that the extending tongue turned and fell a few inches down over his hip. It was just the kind of thing she would notice, and she crossed the street instead of passing by him; but he turned and watched her all the way down to the end of the block, and she could feel his attention dragging on her at every step.

Then he came into Clarkson’s. It was a Tuesday, late in the morning, and he opened the door, peered in for a second, and then slipped across the threshold. He didn’t say a word, he just moved among the dresses and the blouses, along a line of girdles, back and around and back again, while she followed him from behind the counter and thought, What is this man doing? He took a little half step sideways—very gracefully—and she stood perfectly still. Then he did a little dance, maybe, a few subtle steps almost too soft to be seen at all, a slight gesture with his hip, his head cocked. He glanced up at her, studying her face, and she would have reddened before his eyes—but just then the telephone rang, she looked down at it, and he suddenly turned and left the store before she’d even had time to pick it up.