Charles Baxter - Gryphon - New and Selected Stories

AN OLD MAN, a murderer, had moved in next door to Ellickson. The murderer appeared to be a gardener and student of history. Prison had seemingly turned him into a reader. Putting out spring-loaded traps for the moles, Ellickson would sometimes glance over and see his neighbor, the murderer, sprawled out on a patio recliner as he made his way through a lengthy biography of General Robert E. Lee. At other times he saw the murderer spreading bone ash at the base of his backyard lilacs. The murderer’s uncombed gray hair stood up in sprouts at the back and the sides of his head, and he would wave from time to time at Ellickson, who had delayed introducing himself. Ellickson would wave back halfheartedly. The murderer did not seem to care that he was being snubbed. He kept busy. Bags of topsoil weighed down the back of his rusting yellow truck. He unloaded them and carried them over to the garden beds. Ellickson liked the idea of having a murderer on the same street where he himself lived. A paroled murderer’s problems put his own into perspective.

Ellickson had been sober for forty-three and a half days, but he still had the shakes. Just filling the coffeepot required maximum concentration. If his concentration lapsed, the coffee grounds sprayed themselves all over the kitchen floor and had to be cleaned up with a whisk broom and a dustpan. Everything, even the drinking of tap water, called for discipline and tenacity.

All day Ellickson endured. The sun rattled violently in the sky. After the passing hours had presented their trials by fire and ice, he would go to bed feeling that his skin was layered with sandpaper. The post-alcohol world contained no welcoming surfaces, and the interiors of things did not bear much looking into, either. Although God might have supplied a solution, He was in a permanent sulk. A determined Christian, Ellickson had put his faith in the Almighty to get him through this episode and through the rest of his life, but God had declined the honor so far and was keeping up a chilly silence.

The world was glass, and Ellickson felt himself skittering over its surface.

Ellickson, drunk, had lashed out at his family one night and done something unforgivable. Nightfall had always brought his devils out. His wife had therefore taken the two kids, Alex and Barbara, and had driven 150 miles to her mother’s. His family hated him now for good reason, and although he could live with his wife’s hatred — he was sort of used to it — he couldn’t bear the idea that he had become a monster to his children. Ellickson’s shame felt so intense that when he contemplated his actions, he groaned aloud.

Patiently and without hope, he went to the twelve-step meetings.

He had maintained the drinking for years in a careful program of adjustments and stealth. His job as a supervisor of hospital cleaning personnel had been so undemanding that he could work steadily under the influence and no one ever noticed. Drunk before breakfast, his mind regulated by alcohol, he’d been as steady as a bronze statue. The vodka had kept his breath clean and his hands strong. Now that he was sober, no one seemed to like him anymore, and his judgment flew away from him in little clouds. The real Ellickson, without the gleaming varnish of the booze, seemed to constitute an offense.

Desperate, unable to move, faced with the frightfulness and tedium of Saturday afternoon, he called his friend Lester, the ex-doctor.

“Lester,” he said, “I’m in trouble.”

“Hey, buddy. What sort of help d’you need? How’s the day so far?” Lester asked, blithely. The man’s usual speech was somewhat formal, but Lester was all right. He would cross a minefield without hesitation if you needed him to.

“I’m barely hanging on,” Ellickson said. “The sky’s falling again.”

“It does that. Yes?” He waited. “Go on.”

Ellickson tried to speak. But even speech seemed difficult. “It’s all creeping up, every bit of it. Do you know the word ‘heartsick’?” Ellickson waited for his next thought, and, on the other end of the line, Lester waited, too. “Boy, is that a good word. I’m glad we have that word. So, here’s the thing. I can’t do it anymore.” Ellickson knew that he did not have to define “it” to Lester. “I’m sitting in a chair and I can’t do it.”

“I can come over.” Lester had once been a surgeon — until drinking had led him ungently out of medicine. He couldn’t go back. Now he volunteered at a science museum, explaining the fossils to children. “Tell me what to do now. I can be over there in ten minutes. Say the word.”

“Maybe. No. It actually isn’t that. I just can’t live this way anymore.”

“No. That’s wrong, my friend. You can live any old way,” Lester said, “except drunk. We all can. Remember this will pass. Everything passes.” Then he said some of the usual admonitory phrases, complete with elaboration into belief and faith. They sounded correct but feeble at two thirty-six in the afternoon. “You can be proud of yourself. This is the hardest thing you’ve ever done in your life. We’re in this together, pal. People love you. Never doubt it.”

“Right, right. People. Ha. What people? The stars hate me. The moon hates me. The entire creation is opposed to my existence. What I need is a drink.”

“No, that’s what you don’t need. Ease up. What about the bus cure?”

The bus cure involved getting on a city bus and riding around until the urge to have a drink had passed. It only worked, however, if Ellickson took the number 13 route, which did not go down the streets where the bars were located. Also, he had to take a book or a newspaper along with him for the bus cure to work.

“I feel all the time as if …” Ellickson feared boring his friend and did not complete his sentence. “By the way. I haven’t told you: a murderer moved in next door.”

“What are you talking about?” Lester asked. “He’s murdering people now?” Lester laughed. Murder was easy compared to sobriety.

“No, no, he’s paroled or something. A lady up the street told me. I haven’t introduced myself to this guy yet.”

“Well, you should go do that.” Lester waited. “It’s Saturday afternoon. Go right over there. Tell the guy that you’re an alcoholic. Be up front about it. Provide a basis for friendship. He’s a murderer, and you’re a drunk. This friendship needs a basis to keep it solid, and you have one.”

“So okay. Maybe.”

“Not maybe,” Lester said firmly. “Definitely. Introduce yourself to the murderer.” He laughed at how upbeat the conversation had become. A murderer next door was good luck and great news. “Think of him,” Lester said, “as the next stop for your welcome wagon.”

Other murderers were probably somewhere in the city, but they weren’t in close proximity, at least that he knew about. Ellickson didn’t much care whether the murderer had paid his debt to society, because once you had committed a murder, you would always be a murderer. You would never be anything else. Nevertheless, Ellickson managed to get off the sofa. He went to the bathroom and combed his hair, hoping to look convivial. Then he strolled over to the murderer’s back patio, where his neighbor was pruning a rosebush with a pair of clippers.

“I was wondering when you’d get over here,” the old man said, straightening up and adjusting his glasses to take a look at Ellickson. “You’re not alarmed by my yardwork?” He laughed heartily, and his mouth showed uneven gray teeth with a prominent gap near the back. He wore a floppy blue hat, and a stained red handkerchief stuck out of his back pocket. “These roses are blighted.”

“No, I can’t say that I’m alarmed,” Ellickson said. “No, I can’t say that. Sorry I haven’t come over to introduce myself. I’ve just been through a spell of difficulties, that’s all.”