Charles Baxter - Saul and Patsy

But someone had failed to tell Gordy Himmelman that Saul was through with him, because here he was, loitering on the morning lawn, a sentry dressed in his uniform: soiled jeans and torn shirt. Saul put down his juice glass carefully in a cereal bowl near the kitchen sink and strolled outside to where Gordy was standing. Already the air was unsettled and feverish, though it had rained again in the middle of the night, another brief tantrum of a downpour, and the grass had a warm, damp prickliness, as if Saul were stepping on a horsehair doormat. It was a disagreeable sensation. In the trees the blue jays and crows flapped and screamed. The weather was getting so moody and violent these days: it was the warfare of heaven against earth, the opening of the seven seals.

“So,” Saul said. “Hey, Gordy.” Close up, his former student smelled of roasted pumpkin seeds and brine. He hadn’t shaved, and his boy’s scraggly indecisive peachfuzz facial hair mingled with his acne. He was wearing some sort of metal-and-leather apparatus around his neck, probably a dog collar, with a small broken soundless bell attached. He was chewing something — gum, Saul hoped.

“Hey, Mr. Bernstein.” Gordy nodded at Saul, then looked away quickly, as if he were busy, occupied with many tasks.

“Can I help you with something?”

“Nope,” Gordy said. “Not right now. Maybe later.” Gordy waved. “See ya.”

“Gordy, what’re you doing here?”

There was a long silence, during which Gordy Himmelman studied Saul’s feet. Finally he said, “I came here on my bike.”

“I know that. I mean, what are you doing here?”

“Is this, like, a quiz?” Gordy shrugged and started to laugh, then stopped himself. “Hey, I don’t mean to make no trouble. Ha ha ha ha ha. Not today anyways.”

“No. Right. I’m just asking you why you came.”

“It’s a nice day. Can’t I stand here?” Gordy smiled his odd square smile. He was now surveying the sky again. Once more the birds began their ritual screaming. Saul had the feeling that they were trying to tell him something important, in fact to convey an urgent message, in bird language. In addition, Saul could hear, behind him, Mary Esther’s crying and Patsy’s quiet, soothing, morning endearments.

“Yes, it is a nice day. I guess you can stand there, maybe for a minute. But did you come here to talk to me? Or apologize?” Hearing that word, whose meaning he could not possibly have known, the boy seemed to startle. “Gordy, why did you knock down my beehives ?”

For his trouble, Saul got one of Gordy’s sudden deadpan expressions. For a half-second it occurred to Saul that the boy might be lovestruck. Then Gordy said, “A hawk just went by, looked like. That thing you said, I couldn’t help it. It was like an idea I had. Me and Bob. Only Bob wasn’t there.”

“Well, you. . you hate me, right? And didn’t you kill that deer?”

“Well, I dunno. Naw. It’s not like that.” He looked away. He looked at the sky. Nothing up there but sky. Wherever Gordy went, he created a cognitive fog, even in broad daylight.

“You don’t know ? Okay. Then what are you doing here?”

“You mean right now?” He gave Saul a goofy how-dumb-do-you-think-I-am expression. “I’m talkin’ to you.”

“Yes. Of course. Certainly. But what I’m asking you is, why did you get on your bicycle and come over here? I really don’t get it. I’m missing something. You. . I thought you hated me. Don’t you? You and Bob Pawlak? I thought you couldn’t stand the sight of me. You called me a shitbird. That’s what you said. A shitbird. I don’t even know what a shitbird is. And then there were the hives. You ruined them. You owe me for them,” Saul said irritably.

“That was only in school. And the rest was just talk. Anyway I never said nothing about hating, not in that way. ’Cause it’s you who hate me. I can tell. Is that your car over there?” With his thumb, Gordy gestured toward Saul’s Chevy. He had been avoiding eye contact. The body shop had made the car look like new after Saul had rolled it all those many months ago.

“Yes.” Saul sighed. “Yes, it is.” He pointed a finger at the boy. “Gordy, if you can’t explain to me what you’re doing here, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“Okay.” The boy nodded. “Okay.” How hard it was to argue with someone when that person didn’t listen to you! Or did listen, but didn’t act on it. It was like being married.

“Gordy, please go home. You’re trespassing. You have to get off my property right now.”

“Okay.” He did not move. “What year is it?” He motioned again at the car with his thumb.

“The car?” Saul felt flustered. “It’s two years old.”

“Still shiny, though. You wash it in soapsuds?”

“That’s not the point.”

Gordy grinned at Saul, the grin of the torturer. Some sort of discoloration had applied itself down through the years to the boy’s teeth. They were rotting in a premature manner. “You must of just washed it, for it to look that clean. You must be proud of it.”

“Hey, Gordy,” Saul said. “I have a great idea. Let’s go for a ride. What d’you say? Let’s go for a ride in my car.”

“Where?”

“Oh, who cares. Let’s just go for a ride.”

“Know what this is?” Gordy reached in under the back of his trousers and pulled out a small shiny handgun, a revolver of some sort, one of the common ones, maybe a.22-caliber. He held it in his palm for Saul’s inspection. He grinned. Saul backed up two steps. He felt prickles on his skin and a sudden animal heat. He wanted to shout aloud at Patsy, to hide herself and Mary Esther. But silence for now might be better, less crisis-making.

“Well, it looks a lot like a gun,” Saul said quietly. Behind him, Mary Esther’s crying had ceased as suddenly as if a conductor had cued it to stop. Calm. Be calm. Saul thought that Patsy must be nursing the baby in the rocking chair upstairs, and he was counting the number of steps to the house and calculating how long it would take him to get there: about twenty-four running strides, approximately fifty seconds, much more time than the little metal duck in the shooting gallery had in its perilous journey from the right-hand side to the left. Saul imagined himself with a target painted on his chest, the same as the duck’s. The rest of Saul’s mind had gone haphazardly bare. He would protect his wife and child. But for now, he would not move. His entire life job was to stop this young man from creating harm. “What kind is it? Is it loaded?”

“That’s right,” Gordy said, suddenly serious. Then he gave himself a little squirrel-shake. “That’s right, it’s a gun. But, no, it ain’t loaded.” He raised it up to the sky and pulled the trigger again and again and again and again and again. After he lowered his arm, he looked directly at Saul. “You wouldn’t like me if I came here with a loaded gun. But, hey. You can shoot the sky all you want, Mr. Bernstein. I just thought I’d show it to you. I thought you’d be interested. You want it? Want to shoot the sky?” His eyebrows went up. “You can pretend to aim at the sun — you know, shoot it out?” He smiled his discolored toothy smile. “Then the earth would go dark.”

“No. Not now. Whose is it?” Saul asked. Somehow, as a survival trick, he felt he should keep Gordy talking. But the question seemed to flummox the boy. So Saul tried another question. “Why did you think I wanted to see it?”

“’Cause everybody wants to see a gun,” Gordy intoned with certainty. “Nobody don’t want to see a gun. A thing can’t get more important than a gun.”