Mark Dunn - American Decameron

Gathered around the fireplace in the Houses’ rustic stone manse (containing such familiar American colonial revival accents as interior wooden shutters, pewter mugs suspended from the mantel, and an early American spinning wheel that had, by all appearances, never been touched) the Houses and Trudy’s “young friend” Russell toasted marshmallows that had been left over from the candied sweet potato casserole and drank cocoa (which went well with the marshmallows) as the snow fell…and fell. The conversation orbited around Trudy and her brother Bud (as children) and Harry S. Truman (as president) and developments in the Korean War (or, rather, “police action”). Mr. House was a union man and his politics leaned more to the haw than to the gee. Mrs. House was a New Dealer in theory, just as her father was, but, unlike her father, had a moralistic streak that led her to say a few unkind things about Ingrid Bergman, who earlier that year had given birth to Italian director Roberto Rossellini’s “love child.”

“And to think that she had just played Joan of Arc!”

Russell spoke vaguely of his childhood in Erie and his war service in Italy, and did not happen to mention (as he had never mentioned to his potential future wife Trudy) the fact that often, before he met Trudy and nearly as frequently thereafter, he would go out late at night and put a gun to the heads of a total strangers and make them beg for their lives. Eventually he would let his victims go, and then on the way home he would try to remember exactly what the persons had said in their moments of fear and quiet hysteria, and he would write it all down in a notebook and read it now and then while masturbating.

The snow didn’t let up all the next day. Russell took Trudy aside that afternoon to say that perhaps they should try to make it back to Cleveland before the weather got any worse, so that they wouldn’t find themselves snowbound either here or in Erie.

“If you miss a day or two from work, will it be the end of the world?” asked Trudy, pinching her boyfriend’s nose with playful affection. “You really should see your mother, and aren’t you having a good time here?”

“I love my mother. I like your family. I don’t, however, enjoy the thought of being trapped. Anywhere. I’m already feeling antsy.”

Trudy put on her pouty face. “My family has been nothing but open and hospitable since we got here. How can you be antsy?”

“I just am. I get a little claustrophobic in situations like this.”

“Daddy would be happy to lend you his snow boots. You can go out and crump around all you like.”

Russell nodded. He closed his eyes and tried not to imagine the walls closing in on him. That afternoon, under the pretext of checking to see if the local supermarket was still open so he could get Mr. House some Pall Malls — because his possible future father-in-law was almost out of smokes and was in a near-panic of his own over the fact that he hadn’t stocked up before the storm — Russell braved the snowstorm that was increasing in intensity and that had all the makings of a “doozie,” as Mr. House called it. Russell took deep breaths — though the air was arctic-frigid and punishing to his lungs — to calm himself.

It seemed to work. He felt better that night — at least for a while. But as the family gathered around the fireplace anew, after having just eaten the turkey tetrazzini that Mrs. House had whipped up (with Trudy’s help), Russell became restless again. The feeling that the walls were closing in returned with a vengeance. But there was another feeling too — a longing to take his Colt.32 pocket pistol from its hiding place in his suitcase and go out into the night and find someone who could weep and beg in ways that Russell had not heard before.

Later that night, in the room he shared with Trudy’s younger brother, he waited until Bud had gone off to sleep and then he went over to the suitcase on the stand and he pulled out the notebook that he kept with him at all times. He went into the bathroom and locked the door, put the lid down on the toilet and sat and read the transcriptions of several of his encounters from over the last three years, none of which had led to an arrest or even a single suspicion, since Cleveland was a large city and Russell made sure to venture only into neighborhoods far from home or work. Reading from the notebook made him feel temporarily better.

By the next day, the snowstorm had transformed itself into a blizzard of historic proportions. And though in Columbus the Buckeyes and the Wolverines managed to do something that looked a little like football in the midst of near whiteout conditions, and Michigan to do it slightly better than Ohio State, the snow brought several states from the Great Lakes across the Ohio Valley and throughout the Alleghenies to a near standstill. And while the two-foot pileup upon the roof of his house made Mr. House worry about a cave-in, and while high drifts against the house made Mrs. House fear that they might soon be trapped within — this particular fear also resonating with Russell, who volunteered to keep the porch and front walk “semi-shoveled” (because full shoveling in a blizzard is a bootless activity) — Russell kept his head. He kept his head by shoveling and drinking.

Trudy explained to her parents and to her brother that Russell wasn’t ordinarily a drinker, but given the trying circumstances, surely they would excuse him, and Mr. and Mrs. House and Trudy’s younger sibling understood, even though Mr. House regretted seeing some of his best bourbon disappear right before his eyes.

That night — officially the third night of the powerful blizzard — and with the snow still falling like some grand meteorological joke being played on the Tri-State area, which was bearing the brunt of the storm, Russell tranquilized himself with gin (the bourbon whiskey having now been fully expended) and fell asleep on the ruffle-skirted black-and-white plaid colonial sofa where he had sat feigning politeness and equanimity and sanity earlier in the evening. At precisely two o’clock, he awoke. It was the chiming of the Houses’ faux colonial table clock announcing the hour that had disturbed his hard alcohol-abetted slumber. He felt woozy. His head was pounding. The house was quiet. He walked to a window. A nearby streetlamp illuminated the snow, its flakes still falling fast and thick.

Russell counted up in his head how many nights had passed since he had last been able to practice his unique hobby. Was it eight? Maybe it was nine. Russell had never felt that it was an addiction. Hadn’t there been periods in the past — three, four, five weeks at a time — that had gone by without his having terrorized even a single person?

And yet he missed it terribly, longed for the thrill of holding the lives of total strangers in his hands. Because the gun was always loaded. Because the safety was always off. There was power and authority in Russell’s trigger finger — a power and authority that stimulated and excited him both in the moment of the potentially deadly encounter and later in the sordid, orgasmic recall of it.

Tonight he wanted desperately to go out and yet he could not. Quietly, he opened the front door. What faced him was the white wall of a snowdrift, like something out of a cartoon.

He stepped back from the imposing barrier. He closed the door and stumbled to Bud’s bedroom. Trudy had turned down the sheets for him, perhaps thinking that he might later regain consciousness and want a more comfortable place to spend the balance of the night.

He stripped down to his underwear and slipped under the sheets. The house was cold. Trudy’s father liked to turn the thermostat down at night. Miraculously, the electrical current to the house hadn’t gone out. The power lines were still holding their own against the brutal assault of snow and ice. Just in case, though, Mr. House and his son had gone out that morning and brought in more wood for the fireplace. Russell had volunteered to help, but Mr. House knew that his guest had worn himself out trying to shovel the front walk, and declined the offer.