Charles Baxter - Gryphon - New and Selected Stories

“I agree with you,” Harrelson said. “Pity is a bad foundation for any marriage.”

“Honey,” she said, “I don’t want to break off with you, because I do love you, but I’ve got other things going for me, and I can’t hold them off forever. You know I’ve been going out with other men.”

Harrelson nodded. He was silently praying that she wouldn’t continue in this vein.

“And many of them,” Meredith continued, “are very nice: very bright, successful, and, uh, you know, handsome. I can’t wait forever.”

Harrelson thought she had said everything possible to wound him. So he said, “I’ve made real progress this month. Really, I have. I’m only about fifty pages away from finishing.” He smiled. “Fifty pages away from the degree and a good job.”

“You’re thirty years old,” she said. “You’re getting too old to hire.”

“Oh, no!” This exclamation from Harrelson was more an outcry than a denial.

Meredith leaned forward. Her eyes were glittering. “Honey,” she said, “it’s just that I don’t want to be married to a nerd.”

This was more than even Harrelson could take. He put down his brandy, got into his coat, and left. Because he was Harrelson and because he lived according to a consistent style, he did not shout at her or make an accusation in return. He thought his guardian angels were on vacation and had failed to muzzle Meredith. They allowed her to say what shouldn’t have been said. What no one else knows is that although he attends no church, Harrelson is in an almost constant state of prayer. He has familiars in the spirit world.

The inside of his car smells of burned electrical wire and popcorn. As he exhales smoke from the hitchhiker’s leftover cigarette, a fog appears and frosts visibly on the inside windshield in a pattern of continuous webbing. The car pulls out of its parking spot, its engine making tappet noises that rise to a whine as the back wheels spin on the ice. Fishtailing, the car skids down the street. Harrelson has no snow tires; in fact, the tires are bald. He plans his route in an effort to avoid hills and valleys. Within a minute he has forgotten the route he has planned.

Despite the snow and the streetlights, the street is darker than it should be: a stygian street. Harrelson remembers that one of his headlights has blown out. His hands, gloveless, are aching, numb. And he feels ready to doze off, despite the cold. His drunkenness communicates itself to him as a fanatic desire to crawl into bed and pull the blankets up. He is seeing two of everything: two sets of streetlights, two streets, two steering wheels, two dashboards. And two red lights, both of which he now runs, unable and unwilling to stop the car before entering the intersection. With scholarly interest he observes that he has missed hitting a blue parked car by perhaps two or three feet. For the first time he understands that it might be a moral offense against God and man to be out driving in a snowstorm, drunk. But it is more of an offense before women to be a nerd, a coward, a man who will not help . He accelerates.

At high speed, in snow, the houses fan by him on either side, visually glazed and impacted into smears of windows, doors, roofs, unremoved Christmas lights, chimneys, and, again and again, interior lights, the lights of domesticity left on late at night to ward off prowlers and intruders. Where is the street? It has not been plowed. He continues driving. Continuous motion is important. A dog rushes out in front of the car. It is about the size of an enlarged rat and has a narrow snout. It stops in a seizure of panic. Harrelson hears no thump and feels no impact. He opens his window and looks out into the street receding behind him. The dog stands motionless, watching Harrelson’s car as Harrelson watches the dog, tire tracks imprinted on either side of it in the snow.

“Run over,” Harrelson says aloud, “but not run down.” He laughs to himself, feels the need again to doze off as the heater gradually warms up the car, but resists. He decides to recite poetry. “ ‘Fie, fond desire,’ ” he quotes from Fulke Greville, “ ‘think you that love wants glory / Because your shadows do yourself benight? / The hopes and fears of lust may make men sorry, / But love still in herself finds her delight.’ ” Harrelson hits a parked car. He knows he has hit it from the sound and the impact, but he hasn’t seen it because the windows on the right side are coated with snow. After hitting the car, Harrelson’s Buick bounces back into the middle of the street and begins to skid toward the other side. It hits another parked car, slides for twenty feet, then stops. Glass and plastic have been heard, breaking. He puts the car into first gear and continues down the street, which now looks darker than ever. “Uh-oh,” he says aloud. “I smashed the other headlight.”

I’m not funny, I’m a risk, he thinks.

Other cars are around him; some are moving, others are not. The ones that are moving honk at him and blink their lights. “I am a hazard to myself,” Harrelson says, passing a large building lit up on each floor, as if people are still working. He thinks he sees someone on the third floor looking down at him, an expression of pity on the stranger’s face. The thought of a stranger’s pity makes Harrelson’s eyes smart. Studying the dashboard, trying not to cry, Harrelson steps on the gas, hurrying down the street toward an area where the overhead lights are not so apparent. Sudden darkness: the car plunges into it. He passes two garages and a butcher shop with sausages hanging in the window, the glass lightly covered with snow. What if I hit a child, he thinks. What if I do that.

Now, having made a circle, Harrelson is back under lights in the business district, his car out of control, advancing down the street sideways. He grabs the seat, ready for a collision, and feels the foam under his hand. In front of him is a department-store window, moving from right to left, in which a bald dummy sits wearing a blue polyester leisure suit. He turns the wheel in the direction of the skid, and the Buick straightens out. He feels a sudden elation. He can control himself, the car, the weather conditions. He slows down, steers the car toward the curb, and shuts off the engine. He is drowsy. He will take a brief nap. He bends his head down on his chest and within thirty seconds falls asleep. Instantly a dream starts up. In the dream he is driving the car through a blizzard on his way to get Meredith. The car skids, hits a tree, and there is a bright flash. But he continues driving, reaches her apartment, gets out, and enters the building. He ascends the stairs and walks into her living room. Her back is to him as she works at the stove. “I’m here,” he says. “Hi,” she says, turning around. But now she cannot see him. “Honey,” she says, “is that you?” Her eyes scan the room. “Where are you?” Her voice rises. “I can’t see you.”

He wakes up, full of the intuition that his life is a disaster. He is the sort of person other people cite in order to feel that they themselves are well off: they could live the way Harrelson does. They could be Harrelson. They could think Harrelson’s grubby thoughts. He starts the car. Then, a non-Catholic, he makes the sign of the cross. He has not been arrested. His guardian angel is in the car with him, working overtime. Once in a dream the angel identified himself as Matthew and told Harrelson that he, Harrelson, was under his, Matthew’s, protection. Since that dream, Harrelson has been lazier, more slipshod; sometimes he thinks the dream may have been his undoing.

He drives and drives. He is lost. Visibility is poor. He sees no landmarks. He looks at his watch: he has been in the car for twenty minutes. The windshield wipers move slowly, heavily, like Harrelson’s eyes.