Charles Baxter - Saul and Patsy

Saul offered to write a sample column, full of excellent opinion. He would bloviate.

On the day Saul brought back his first column, the features editor was short on copy and ran the piece on spec, close to the editorial page, where he thought it wouldn’t attract much attention. The column that day was titled “Why Quit? A Manifesto,” and it caused a great deal of furor in Five Oaks, resulting in an increase in circulation and several angry letters.

The angry letters continued and peppered the editorial page — the anti-Semitic ones were discreetly screened — but the bloviator had apparently managed to help keep the newspaper’s circulation on the rise, and Saul was made a permanent fixture of Five Oaks discourse.

Behind the house the pinwheels and toys and flowers and signs began to fade and to grow sodden.

Saul is currently on a campaign to rid the city of WaldChem and its toxic chemical plant, and he has begun to write about factory-farms just outside of town with their relentless pollution of the groundwater.

Patsy sometimes is approached in the bank by people who ask if she is married to that jerk — one person used the word “scum”—who writes for the paper. She usually smiles and points to a laminated letter to the editor she has put up on the wall behind her desk. The print is so small that no one can read it without walking behind her desk, and no one ever does that unless she invites them to do so. When they do read it, they often find it puzzling that she would be proud of her husband’s having inspired such a letter.

To the editor:

I have been a resident of Five Oaks for forty-six years and have had to su fer a great deal of nonsense in my day but “Saul Bernstein’s” recent column on his own so-called “personal” view of zoning in the southeast corner of the city just about beats anything. Whatever gives this blowhard the confidence to criticize the fine businesspeople in the city who are all for growth and prosperity? You can’t have an omelet without a few eggs. This bloviator fellow — I believe his name as printed in the paper is a pseudonym — is an enemy to employment, to business, to profit, to life liberty and the persuit of happiness and I happen to believe that the oldstyle tar-and-feathers is too good for him. If he was in charge we would all be on welfare in a welfare state taking orders from Mr. Big, who would be him. He writes like he owns the secrets to the universe and I for one am fed up and am cancelling my subscription to the newspaper. I encourage other likeminded folks to do the same. No good society was ever made from the likes of him.

Yours sincerely,

Floyd Muscat

Patsy’s heart is gladdened every time she reads Floyd Muscat’s letter. It is always pleasing when a man finds his true vocation, as Saul has, and can inspire fervor in others.

One summer day, on his way home from his new job, Saul passed through a recently constructed residential neighborhood close to his own new home on Kingfisher Road. He and Patsy had moved again, for a bit more space. This particular location he was driving by now was where, years ago, he and Patsy had first lived in the rented house with loose brown aluminum siding. All the farmland surrounding it had been leveled and developed into a subdivision. He decided to motor around and snoop. He had about twenty minutes before he needed to get home, but he was curious about housing developments where no trees had yet been planted, how people lived in such places, without shadows, exposed to everything, saturated with sunlight and wide open to the elements.

About three blocks in, on the sidewalk, close to the curb, he saw a girl who seemed to be about ten years old sitting behind a card table, reading a book. Behind her, shadeless, on its narrow lot, the vinyl-sided, two-story house stood, stark with optimism and sanitation. The girl had light red hair in pigtails and a white dress cinched by a red patent-leather belt, and she wore patent-leather black shoes. She sat with her arms crossed, the book flattened on the table in front of her. Her face was not cute but defiant. On the table, along with the book, was a small cardboard box for cash, a lemonade pitcher, a few Dixie Cups, and some oddly shaped objects Saul couldn’t make out from his car. Next to the table, facing the street, was a large cardboard sign with block letters written in thick green ink.

LEMONADE AND OTHER THINGS BUY SOME

It had been a long day; Saul was thirsty and desired lemonade. It had always been his habit to stop for curbside children selling their wares. After parking the car and wiping his forehead with his sleeve, he approached the little girl’s stand while fingering the change in his pocket. He had several quarters. It would be enough, he thought.

“Good afternoon. I’d like some lemonade, please,” he said. As he advanced upon the table, he saw that the oddly shaped objects that he hadn’t been able to make out before were stones, plain stones from the ground.

The little girl glanced up from her book and examined him. “Okay. That’ll be one dollar fifty,” she said.

Saul reached into his wallet. “Well,” he said, “that’s a bit more than I expected. I only have three quarters. I do have a five-dollar bill, if you have change.”

“No,” the little girl said. “I don’t have change.” She seemed bored or obscurely dissatisfied with Saul. “I don’t have any change at all.” She lifted up the small cardboard box and then quickly dropped it. No coins clinked.

“Well, what else do you have for sale? I could buy five dollars’ worth of stuff.”

“These stones,” the little girl said. “I have some stones you can buy.” She pointed at the stones on the table. “I picked them out myself.”

“I don’t get it,” Saul said. “Why should I buy stones from you? I can get stones anywhere.”

“These stones,” the little girl said, “are magic.” She glanced up at him to see if he believed her. She had strange azure eyes. The eyes didn’t go with the hair, or with anything else about her.

“What do the stones do?”

“What do you want them to do?” she asked. She was a clever little girl.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Saul said. “Make me rich. Cure the common cold.”

“Well,” she said, “they can’t do that.” She pretended to go back to reading her book. She peered at the words and turned a page after slowly and rather sensually rubbing it between her thumb and index finger.

“If they can’t do that, then what can they do?”

“What do you want them to do?” she repeated.

“I just told you,” Saul said. He twisted around to see the title of the book she was reading. She had lifted it up as if for inspection. There was a horse on the cover. It was something called Heaven Is a Wind Swept Hill.

“No, I mean, what else do you want them to do?” she asked, without looking up.

“Help me find objects around the house that I’ve lost.”

“They can’t do that, either.”

“Name one thing that these stones can do, then,” Saul told her, irritated by the privileges the girl had assumed were hers just because she was a child. “Or I won’t buy any of your damn lemonade.”

“Don’t be so mean,” the girl said, glaring at him. “All right.” She sat up. “These stones can mend a broken heart.”

“Oh, right,” Saul said. “What do you know about broken hearts?”

“You think I’m just a little girl, don’t you?”

“Well, that’s the way it looks right now.”

“Actually,” the little girl said, “I’m actually a very old woman. I’m actually a witch. I’m ancient . I only look like a girl.”