Anne Tyler - If Morning Ever Comes

“Not that I can remember,” Ben Joe said. He was getting worried now; the old man’s voice had become a mere wheezing sound, and he was so out of breath that Ben Joe’s own throat grew tight and breathless in sympathy.

“Well, I have. Often I have. I don’t know if you ever knew my son Sam. He’s a businessman, like on Wall Street, except that he happens to be in Connecticut instead. Got a real nice family, too. Course I think he could of made a better choice in wives, but then Sally’s right pretty and I reckon I can see his point in picking her. Just a mite bossy, in all. And then her family’s Jehovah’s Witnesses. Now, I got no quarrel to pick with any religion, excepting maybe a few, but I heard somewheres that Jehovah’s Witnesses they turn off all the lights and get under the chairs and tables and look for God. They do. Ain’t found Him yet, neither. Course Sally she’s reformed now, but still and all, still and all …”

On Main Street he became suddenly silent. He walked along almost on tiptoe, looking around him with a white, astonished face. Sometimes he would whisper, “Oh, my, look at that!” and purse his mouth and widen his eyes at some ordinary little store front. Ben Joe couldn’t understand him. What was so odd about Sandhill? Main Street was wide and white and almost bare of cars; a few shopkeepers whistled cheerfully as they swept in front of their stores, and a pretty girl Ben Joe had never seen before passed by, smiling. Except for the new hotel, there wasn’t a single building over three stories high in the whole town. Above the squat little shops the owners’ families lived, and their flowered curtains hung cozily behind narrow dark windows.

At the third block they turned left and started uphill on a small, well-shaded street. Main Street was the only commercial district in the town; as soon as they turned off it they were among large family houses with enormous old pecan trees towering over them. The old man had stopped exclaiming now, but he was still tiptoeing and wide-eyed. Although his baggy coat seemed paper thin and the morning was very cool, the surface of his face was shiny with perspiration. With a small grunt he switched his suitcase to his other hand and it banged against the side of his knee.

“I’ll trade you suitcases for a while,” Ben Joe said.

“No no. No no. You know, when I was a boy we’d of been plumb through town by now.”

“Sir?”

“Town’s grown some, I said.”

“Oh. You mean you’ve been here before?”

“Born here, I was. But I ain’t seen it since I was eighteen years old and that’s a fact. Went off to help my uncle make bed linens in Connecticut. Though at the time I never wanted to. I wanted to go to Africa.”

“Africa?”

“Africa.” He stopped and set down his suitcase in order to wipe his forehead with a carefully folded handkerchief from his breast pocket. “Wadn’t but two streets that was paved then,” he said. “Main and Dower. Dower’s my name. It was named after my daddy, who moved out west soon after I went north on account of the humidity here being bad for my mother’s ankle bones. But there wadn’t no street called Setdown then. Got no idea where that is.”

“Well, it’s not far,” Ben Joe said. “You got relatives living there?”

“Nope. Nope.”

“Where you going?”

“Home for the aged.”

“Oh.”

Ben Joe stood in silence for a minute, not knowing what to say next. Finally he cleared his throat and said, “Well, that’s where it is, all right.”

“Course it is. Going to die there.”

“Well. Well, um, I trust that’ll be a long time from now.”

“Don’t trust too hard,” the old man said. He seemed irritated by Ben Joe’s embarrassment; he picked up his suitcase with a jerk and they continued on up the hill. As they walked, Ben Joe kept looking over at him sideways.

“Don’t you corner your eyes like that,” Mr. Dower said. “Not at me you don’t.”

“Well, I was just thinking.”

“Don’t have to corner your eyes just to be thinking, do you?”

“I’ve been away some time myself,” Ben Joe said. “Some time for me , anyway. Going on four months. It seemed longer, though, and I sort of left planning not to return.”

“Then what you here for?” Mr. Dower snapped.

“Well, I don’t know,” Ben Joe said. “I just can’t seem to get anywhere. Nowhere permanent.”

“ I can. Can and did. Went away permanent and now I’ve come back to die permanent.”

“How can you have gone away permanent if you’ve come back?” Ben Joe asked.

“Because what I left ain’t here to come back to, that’s why. Therefore my going away can be counted as permanent.”

“That’s what they all say,” said Ben Joe. “But they’re fooling themselves.”

“Well.” Mr. Dower stopped again to wipe his forehead. “How much farther, boy?”

“Not far. Right at the end of this block.”

“Long blocks you’ve got. Long blocks. This here,” the old man said, pointing to an old stone house, “is where Jonah Barnlott lived, that married my sister. Like to broke my family’s heart doing it, too. He was a no-count boy, that Jonah. Became a doctor, finally, down in Georgia, but never had any patients to speak of. Was inflicted with athlete’s foot, he was, and decided shoes were what gave it to him, so he loafed about his office playing patience in a white uniform and pure-T bare feet, which scared all his patients away. My sister left him, finally, and got remarried to a lawyer. Lawyers’re better. Not so concerned with bodily matters. So now it’s Saul Bowen lives in that house. I reckon you know him.”

“No, sir.”

“Not know Saul Bowen? Fat old guy who goes around town all day eating pudding from a dish?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, no,” Mr. Dower said after a minute. “I guess not. I guess not.”

They were silent for the rest of the block. The old man’s shoes made a shuffling, scratchy noise on the sidewalk and the mewing of his breath was loud and unsteady, so that Ben Joe became frightened.

“Sir,” he said at the corner, “it’s just one block down from here, on the left. But I’d be happy to walk you the rest of the way.”

“I can make it. I can make it.”

“Well, it’s a big yellow house with a sign in front. You sure you’re all right?”

“I am dying,” said the old man. “But otherwise I’m fine and I’d appreciate to walk by myself for a spell.”

“Well. Good-by, Mr. Dower.”

“Bye, boy.”

The old man started down Setdown Street, his suitcase banging his knees at every step. For a minute Ben Joe watched after him, but the shabby little figure was pushing doggedly on with no help from him and there was nothing more he could do. Finally he turned and started walking again, on toward his own home.

The houses in this area were big and comfortable, although most of them were poorly cared-for. On some of the lawns the trees were so old and thick that there was a little whitening of frost on the grass beneath their limbs, even now that most of their leaves were gone. Ben Joe began shivering. He walked more quickly, past the wide, deserted porches and down the echoing sidewalk. Then he was on the corner, and across the street was his own house.

A long, low wire gate stood in front of it, although the fence that went with it had been torn down years ago when the last of the children had left the toddler stage. The lawn behind it had been allowed to grow wild and weedy, half as high as a wheat field and dotted here and there with little wiry shrubs and seedy, late-fall flowers. And the sidewalk from the gate to the front porch was cracked and broken; little clumps of grass grew in it. Towering above such an unkempt expanse of grass, the house took on a half-deserted look in spite of the lace curtains that hung primly in all the windows. It was an enormous white frame house, in need of a little touch-up with a paint brush, and it could easily be the ugliest house in town. Round stained-glass windows popped up in unexpected places; the front bay window was too tall and narrow, and the little turret, with its ridiculously curlicued weather vane, looked as if it must be stuffed with bats and cobwebs. People said — although Ben Joe never believed them — that the first time his mother had seen the house she had laughed so hard that she got hiccups and a neighbor had had to bring her a glass of peppermint water. And all the while that Ben Joe was growing up, little boys used to ask him jealously if his room was in the turret. He always said yes, although the truth was that nobody lived there; it was just a huge hollow space above the stairwell. The only thing that saved the house from looking haunted was the front porch, big and square and friendly. A shiny green metal glider sat there, and in the summertime the whole porch railing was littered with bathing suits and Coke bottles and the lounging figures of whatever boys his sisters were dating at the time. In front of the door, Ben Joe could just make out a rolled-up newspaper. That brought him to life again; he crossed the yard cheerfully, stopped on the porch to pick up the paper, and opened the front door.