Charles Baxter - The Feast of Love

“I got phlegm,” the Bat informed me. He looked around my apartment. Then he sat on a chair and gave me a look in which cheerfulness and meanness were mixed equally. He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Snows get into my lung cavities and I can’t get ’em out.” The coughing started up one more time. When he stopped, he said, “It’s bad. Don’t really know what it is. Don’t want to know.”

“You should see a doctor,” I said.

“You think so? All they have is bad news and bills you can’t pay. No, I’d rather see myself in hell first,” he told me. He tried to lean back, and when that didn’t work, he leaned forward. He smiled at me. “Here, you want this beer for your party?” He handed me the tallboy and reached into his shirt for a cigarette, which he proceeded to light. “You want to know what I do? For the lungs?”

“Sure,” I said.

“I go to a healer. We got this healer in our church. He lays his hands on me.”

“Does it help?”

“Wish I knew. I couldn’t say. I’m neither dead nor alive. You got an ashtray?”

I brought over a dish I kept under the sink and handed it to him. “There.”

“Thank you,” he said, fingering the ashtray and then peering at me. “I reckonized it. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about. I want to get to know you. A little, anyways. You don’t know me. For like an example, you don’ know I’m a Christian man. Go to a church, go to a healer.” He crossed his arms, holding the cigarette, and touched his forehead. I was watching the snow on his cap and his shoes. I was waiting for it to melt.

“No, I knew that. The church part.”

“How come?” He looked at me, squinting his eyes.

“Oscar told me.”

He shook his head, and water dripped down from his hair, but the snow remained on his shoes. He laughed. “I was born in Kentucky where we had a healer living on the same street. Old woman named Gladys — there was a scary and amazing power she had, so I’ve always believed in it more than medicine. She happened to be a great-aunt of mine. She called me Little Mac.”

“Like the hamburger.”

“Hunh?”

“You know. The Big Mac.”

“Oh, right.” He turned his eyes upon my apartment. He looked long and hard at the window. “Did you ever happen to come to Jesus yourself?”

“No, actually, he came to me. At a party. He asked me for directions.”

He stared at me for several moments. He stood up, went to the window, then sat down again. “That’s blasphemy. Well, I forgive it. Where’s your parents that you said was coming?” He scratched at a scar above his left eye. I couldn’t help it: I was watching him closely.

“They’re late.”

“I can see that. It must be they had trouble on the road. Weather reports give, I dunno, five-six-seven inches of snow.”

He threw me a look, the very same one I saw him give me when I walked past him out of Oscar’s bedroom into the hallway. I couldn’t say for sure, but I thought he was calculating his chances.

“Now you tell me about yourself,” the Bat said. “Let me hear your story. I’d like to hear that, where you come from and everything.”

I talked for ten minutes, yakking away, hoping my parents would arrive to get me out of this mess. But they didn’t come and didn’t come, and meanwhile, in the middle of my life story, the Bat went to the refrigerator and found himself a beer, not the tallboy he had bought but another one, which he opened and drank in about five seconds. I remembered that he wasn’t supposed to drink, that he had sworn it off and was supposed to be clean. Then he opened another beer and brought it over to his personal chair. He was, like, proportionating me all over again, his eyes like lizards crawling up and down my arms and legs. The phone rang once more and I ran to answer it. It was my dad, calling from his car phone, saying the axle was bent and they couldn’t drive it, seeing as how the car had gone into the ditch and the front end was broken open. I didn’t want to sound desperate so I just went uh-huh, uh-huh. My dad said if he could figure out a way to get over here in the next half-hour, they’d come by cab, if the cabs were running.

I went over to the boom box and put some music on softly, radio-type tunes.

“Who was that?” the Bat inquired, from his chair.

“My dad.”

“Still late, those two. Am I right? Well well. Just us, you and me, Missy and Mac. I kinda like the sound of that. ‘Missy and Mac.’ Do you believe in Jesus, Missy?”

“Back to that topic? Sure,” I said.

“Me too. You know why?”

“No.”

“’Cause he’s interested in me the way he’s interested in everybody. Being the way I am, big trouble in a small shape. Hey, I got a riddle for you. What’d the elephant say to the naked man?”

“I don’t know.”

“ ‘How do you eat with that thing?’ ” He smiled fiercely. “Get it? ‘How do you eat with that thing?’ I think that’s funny. You know, Oscar always said you were pretty, and I guess you are, but it’s more like country-cute.” He studied me for a moment. “With that toothy smile you got.”

“Thank you.”

“I can see why Oscar’d want to sleep with you and even marry you. All that marriageable cuteness in one package and such.”

“What was Oscar’s mother like? He’s told me —”

“ — Do you mind me saying what I just said, a dirty word or two? Sometimes I cain’t help it.”

“Well, no.”

“You should of. You should of said, ‘Mac, don’t talk that way, it’s nasty.’ Like that time I called you a dirty word. I shouldn’t remember doing that, but I do.”

“Well, it is nasty, I guess, but —”

“ — Not as nasty as the act, y’know. Which you did in my house, can you remember it? Walkin’ past me on display? That got me started.”

“I’m sorry for that.”

The Bat reached down and took a swig of his beer. He appeared to think for a moment. “So you can apologize after all. I liked it though.” He stared at me. “Seeing the features of yours. You sure are pretty.” He appeared to think for another moment. “Your parents ain’t comin’, right?”

“No, they’ll be here any minute.”

“I don’t think so. I think you’re puttin’ me on. You’re just actin’. That’s all you ever done with me, was pretend. I had high hopes, drivin’ over here in my four-wheel. Missy and Mac, I thought, maybe we can be friends.” He stood up and walked toward the kitchen area. He scratched his scalp with the beer bottle. “You think I’m a bad person? Honestly? Tell me now.”

“I don’t know what you are,” I said.

“That’s the ticket.” Now he scratched his ear with his index finger, then examined the finger. I wanted him to stop all the scratching. “That’s the ticket right there. I don’t know either. I just don’t know what I do from minute to minute. Goddamn, I am confused.” He stared up at the ceiling. “Lord, I am confused and tired. I am forever gettin’ tired. You think, Missy, we could, y’know, somehow, well, be friends, and I could someday, when your baby comes, help you out? I’d like to do that. Babysitting. I might help.”

“I think so.”

“I think so too. We could start all over. Like nothin’d ever happened between us. ’Cause I’ll be a granddaddy. We could give it a baptism. Wash it in the blood of the lamb. What you gonna name it?”

I told him I didn’t know.

For a moment this thing happened on his face. I had never seen it there before and I couldn’t be sure I was seeing it now. His face calmed down for a few seconds, settled into itself. He was peaceful and quiet. I saw at that moment that all my worries about the Bat were mistaken. He was just a harmless little middle-aged guy who drank way too much and who had once followed me around and who had trouble with demons.