Charles Baxter - Gryphon - New and Selected Stories

“Come on,” Ellickson said. “Don’t bullshit me. I’m driving your truck. Was that a drug deal? A fix?”

“I … wouldn’t … describe … it … that … way.”

“How would you describe it?”

“Over and out,” the old man said. He shut his eyes, and his head lolled back.

When they reached the murderer’s house, Ellickson parked the man’s truck in his driveway, and, hurriedly, he opened the door on the passenger side and took the old man’s arm and threw it around his own neck in a fireman’s carry. Macfadden Eward grunted, and Ellickson took this as a good sign. He removed the old man from the truck and walked Eward down his own driveway out onto the sidewalk. The old man’s feet stumbled and shuffled beside Ellickson’s while his breath came in and went out in punchy oldster bursts. Ellickson headed down the street, the old man clinging to him, and he turned the corner to walk around the block, parading past the houses of all the neighbors.

“What’re we doin’?” the old man asked, waking up slightly from his nod.

“We’re walking it off,” Ellickson said. “In front of the neighbors.” They passed a house with a large front porch with a swing suspended from the ceiling; Ellickson thought of it as “the little girls’ house” because two little girls lived there with their parents, Republicans who put out lawn signs, and, sure enough, both girls were out on the porch with their rag dolls, their mother sitting in the swing reading a book, as Ellickson and the old man walked by. The girls looked at the two men, and Ellickson heard one of them asking her mother a question, and her mother answering in a low, lawyerly tone. They walked past the house of a widow, Mrs. Sherman, said to be a skinflint, who had told Ellickson about the murderer in the first place. They advanced in front of a duplex with a sharp peaked roof. Two young married couples lived there. Ellickson didn’t know who resided in the stucco Tudor beyond, but at the corner they turned again, and Ellickson and the old man stumbled past 1769 Caroline Street, where a boy was out front selling lemonade at a lemonade stand.

“I’d like some lemonade,” Ellickson said, fishing in his left pocket for some change.

The boy did not say anything. He looked frightened at the sorry spectacle that Ellickson and the old man, hanging on to Ellickson in a fireman’s carry, presented.

“Here,” Ellickson said, handing the boy two quarters. “ We’d like some lemonade.” He waited for a moment. “My friend here is a little sleepy.” The boy poured pink lemonade with a shaky hand into a Dixie cup and handed it to Ellickson.

“This is for you, old-timer,” Ellickson said, reaching over and putting the paper cup to his lips.

“Stop that,” Macfadden Eward said with sudden lucid clarity, straightening up slightly and coming out of his stupor. He reached for the cup and took a drink with his left hand. When he had completed the task, he took his right arm from around Ellickson’s neck. He stood a bit unsteadily, then handed the Dixie cup back to the boy, who had still said nothing and whose eyebrow was trembling. “Nice day,” the old man said. “Can’t beat it with a stick.”

“Guess so,” the boy replied in a quaver.

Macfadden Eward threw back his shoulders and walked forward. Ellickson followed him. “I’m headed homeward,” he slurred to anyone in the vicinity. Then he fell to his knees and gazed at the ground. Ellickson hoisted him up again and walked him back to his house. He took the old man upstairs and deposited him, clothes and all, in the tub and turned the cold shower water on him. Macfadden Eward began to sputter. “What’s this? What’s this?” he shouted. “Turn that off!”

Ellickson returned to his own house. What had just happened made him feel fitfully justified in his own eyes. His neighbor would live, but someday he might overdose, and everyone would feel contempt for him, and if he didn’t OD, there was a good chance he would end up in the gutter that beckoned toward all single men, the gutter that Ellickson believed in more strongly than he did in his God.

At his sister’s house a few days later, Ellickson was repairing an overhead light fixture while Irena steadied the ladder and handed him the electrical tape and aimed the flashlight at the wiring.

“Have you called Laura? Your wife?” Irena asked.

“No.”

“And why not is this?”

“I can’t.”

“Why not, I ask again?”

He looked down at her. “Shame.”

“No. Stoltz, ” she said. “In German. Not shame, but pride. In Russia, everyone is like you. Everyone is a shameful drunk full of pride. But they … manage. You must call Laura. I shall bully you. Like sister-in-law. Bully bully bully.” She nodded. “I am relentless. I am dictator.” When Ellickson looked down at her, he saw her grimly smiling Asiatic face, like Stalin’s.

The following weekend, Macfadden Eward arrived at Ellickson’s front door carrying an apple pie. He appeared to be loaded down with rage and spite. “Here, take this,” the old man said, shoving the pie in Ellickson’s general direction without a trace of generosity.

“Did you bake it yourself?” Ellickson asked.

“Of course not,” Macfadden Eward said. “I just bought the goddamn thing.” His glance took in Ellickson’s living room. “So, can I come in? You’ve never invited me in, you cheap bastard. I’ve been the one who’s had to show all the hospitality.”

“All right,” Ellickson said. “But you’re interrupting me. I’ve been writing a letter to my son.”

“Let’s hear it,” the murderer said, forcing his way past Ellickson, through the foyer, and into the living room. He sat down on Ellickson’s sofa. “It’s kind of a mess in here,” the man said, pointing at a newspaper on the floor. “So. Read me the letter.”

“It’s not for you, it’s for my son.”

“Try it out on me.”

“Don’t be a damn fool,” Ellickson said. “This is private.”

“Are you kidding? Nothing is private anymore,” Macfadden Eward said. “Not when you parade a disabled old man with diabetes in the street in front of his neighbors. Here. Take this apple pie.” He plopped it down next to where he was sitting on the sofa.

“When you came out of that place, you were in a—”

“Don’t say it,” the old man interrupted.

“Diabetes?” A silence followed.

“Well, maybe I was and maybe I wasn’t.” He made a rude noise with his mouth. “Let’s hear that letter. Otherwise, I’m going back home and I’ll go back to work on the spaceship.”

“To hell with your spaceship,” Ellickson said. “Fly to the moon, for all I care.”

“Just read me the letter. I need to hear it,” the murderer said. “I have to hear it right now.”

“No,” Ellickson said. “It’s not for you. I told you this already. I explained. This letter is for my boy.”

“All right, then,” the murderer said. “Tell me about your boy.”

“His name’s Alex.”

“Tell me about him. Be the proud poppa.”

“I can’t do that,” Ellickson said. Everything, traveling at sixty miles an hour, was about to hit him.

“Okay. Start with this: How old is he?”

“He’s ten.”

“Well, that’s a good age. Anyway, that’s what they tell me. Never had kids myself. Never was blessed with children.”

“Would you please leave me alone?” Ellickson asked.

“No. Tell me what’s going on. At least tell me what you did. Tell me why your family isn’t here with you.”

Ellickson began to weep. “Why should I tell you?” he asked, enraged. “You’re nothing.” Dead trees and caverns yawned open for him, and the devils in bow ties stood ready, and he couldn’t stop himself. The sobs broke out of him in a storm. “I was drunk,” he said. “And I … was angry at him. At Alex. My kid . I can’t even remember the reason. It can’t have been anything. And I … I don’t know why, but … I hit him.”