William Gaddis - Carpenter's Gothic

— What's this one way ticket, your wicked fleeing where no man pursueth? you think I'm on the run?

— It's when, McCandless. When… He was back far from reach scraping a moulding, down tapping the wainscotting, — when no man pursueth, Proverbs twenty eight, but the…

— And the righteous are bold as a lion is that it? You break in here picking through papers, tapping the walls what do you…

— It's but, McCandless, but the righteous are bold as a lion Proverbs twenty eight, one. He tapped, tapped again, straightened up — You know what this was in here? This was the kitchen, you know that? You've got this wainscotting all the way around and listen… he tapped, — now listen over here. You hear the difference? This is the flue. This little cement slab this is where the stove was and this is the flue for that extra chimney. You've got an extra chimney out there that doesn't go anyplace, I couldn't figure it out. This was the kitchen, your kitchen in there was the dining room and your dining room was the family parlour. It's too bad you never had kids, you know that? He'd turned backed against the dictionary stand there just inside the sliding door, — you could have bullied them with all your great ideas like you bully everybody else… he flicked over a page of Webster's second, tossed over a sheaf of them where a card stiff with invitation and the subscript Hope you and Irene can come lay inserted in the cleft, — you know that? I said we used to talk, we never did. You used to talk. You talked and I listened, Helen Keller in the woods when the tree falls and all the rest of your, the truth and what really happens you know something? They didn't recruit me McCandless, Cruikshank didn't recruit me. You did. You know that? He tossed over pages, paused appearing to study a colour plate display Orders of Knighthood and of Merit in garish contrivances of crosses and ribbons. — Just leave this whole mess behind you and you're out there with sixteen thousand walking around money. We don't have much time.

— I heard you.

He heaved the book closed. — You ever think of putting smoke detectors in here? You could have a real fire, you know that? Books, papers, nothing but paper, your beams have been drying out for ninety years. You ought to think of your tenants McCandless, you ought to put in smoke detectors. You ought to think of the redhead. Anything you've got squirreled away here would be gone in a minute with the rest of your trash, anybody who was after it wouldn't have it but they'd know nobody else would show up with it and pull out the rug. You think fires start by themselves? He pulled the jacket tight, turned through the door for the kitchen, buttoning it. — You'll thank me someday, you know that?

— I'll thank you right now Lester, came on behind him, into the kitchen, — I'll thank you for leaving.

— Get smoke detectors in there now they'd go off before you could put them up. What was that about the ladies' room at Saks.

— She had her purse stolen. It had her keys in it.

— Could have been anybody… He'd stopped there standing over the table, arms drawn close as wings, studying that page of crosses, smudges, hails of arrows as the light came on. — You know one good thing in that rotten book of yours? He turned the page to one side, to the other, — that scene where this Frank Kinkead is out on deck setting up this steamer chair on that night passage down from Mogadishu? where he gets his thumbs caught in the hinges when he comes down in it and his own weight's got him trapped there yelling for help, he's out there all night and nobody goes by but the black boy who sees him twisting around yelling and just thinks he's drunk. Maybe that's what happened… He had the page upside down, brought it back as he'd had it. — Maybe that's what really happened.

— Maybe Methuselah lived nine hundred years. Here, I'll let you out.

— Wait, you know what this is? He thrust the page over, — it's Cressy. I just figured it out. It's the battle of Cressy, look. Here's Edward the Third up here, and here… the long smudge under his thumb — the rear center in reserve, the Black Prince on his right and Northampton on his left and the archers, two wings of English archers eleven thousand of them, look. The battle order's drawn up between Wadicourt and Cressy this is Cressy here, it ought to be further up… he got the pencil by the phone, a circled X — here's Cressy here, and here's the French. Here's Estrées down here it ought to be further over… a circled + —here's the French attack look, these long arrows from Estrées under Philip of Valois, he's this big cross here and all these little crosses coming up here twelve thousand men at arms, six thousand crossbows and all these draftees, these little v's? These irregular columns coming up from Abbeville it ought to go like this, the road went like this… a heavy parabola — and here, here's the thunderstorm, this big lightning streak? The storm that delayed the first attack when the crossbows went in and the English longbows cut them down on both flanks, their own cavalry rode down on them from behind… the horde of ciphers — by midnight the French army wiped itself out look at them, sixteen attacks and the archers cut them down every time they came in, I wish I'd seen that. That was the beginning of firepower… he emphasized a smudge and stood off from it. — I wish I'd seen that.

— Always get it right don't you, Lester.

— Sixteen thousand, McCandless. Here's a phone number… he scribbled in a space just east of Estrées. — You don't have much time.

— I'll let you out. It's Halloween out there too.

— What do you…

— What you came for isn't it? trick or treat? I'll let you out.

— You know something, McCandless?

— I said I'll let you out!

But even with the light gone on there under the sampler by the door, and the door pulled open, — you see that now? this was the front parlour? for guests? They probably kept the blinds drawn so the sun wouldn't fade the carpets. Those drapes, those silk flowers all of it, she's got nice taste hasn't she, the redhead. She'll walk out on you too, you know that? How old was that Jeannie, the one you had down in the Bureau of Mines she lived on DuPont Circle. They always do, don't they? And even there in the open gape of the doorway on the dark outside he'd caught a hand loath on the doorframe, looking down the road where figures, three, four of them came blown in white sheets up the hill toward the broken patch of streetlight. — You know the rottenest thing you did in that book? Making Slyke a Mormon. You didn't need to do that. It wouldn't have changed the story any. You want to know something, McCandless? God loves you whether you like it or not, you know that? The wind up from the river brought the straggling figures closer, close enough for the headlights of a car rounding the corner to freeze them catching at masks as it passed. — They want a haunted house, they've found it… and then, out on the crumbled brick where the wind in the festooned branches scattered the light on the black of the road, on the fence palings opposite and the exhortation melted down the windows of the white frame garage beyond, — lucky thing for the redhead they didn't hang you up by your dingus.

When the headlights flashed on, the four had already gained the step pushing the smallest of them forward, white skull mask askew and a hand up to raise it on eyes absorbed with greed for the coin from the depth of a pocket, and the black car moved sweeping its lights across the front of the house as the door closed against it.

Past the ringing phone in the kitchen he stopped for a rag from the cupboard, wiping his hands on it back in the sudden stillness of the room, wiping off the bottle and raising the quavering lip of the glass to pour back half an ounce for the good ounce that spilled and wiping that up, sitting down, taking a sip, picking up the scattered cigarettes one by one back into the tin and lighting the last one before he swept papers, bills, folders from the open file drawer into the carton. Here and there he paused to set something aside, to study a page, or a picture, crumpled with the rest till the carton was full and he carried it in to the hearth, down digging for matches, heaping the empty grate, pulling the wing chair closer as the blaze came up, sitting there with the notebook unopened on his lap. Headlights glowed at the windows, passed the alcove and were gone. The wind had risen out there, throwing the leafless branches dancing in black silhouette, setting up the creak of a beam in the dark somewhere up past the head of the stairs. He came forward to stir the fire with the edge of the notebook, an old school looking sort of thing in crudely chiaroscuroed covers, Compositions lettered on the front, Name left blank, he banked it against the flames and got up pulling off the jacket he'd had on all this time, walked into the kitchen and looked in the refrigerator, into the dining room and looked at the plants, filled a clean glass to water a wilting member of the jewel-weed family, moving more slowly till now he was back staring at the books in the bookshelves, taking one down, and another, running through them to stop at pages checked in the margins, to stare at those passages perplexed as though someone else must have marked them, must have found some stinging revelation in this inconsequential line, or that one, jamming them back till he came on one with a narrow orange spine as if it were what he'd been after all this time. He came out with it, and the glass, and a sheaf of cobwebbed papers from under the table, brought it all out to the fire in the living room which he stirred into life with a stick from the copper tub by the fireplace where he stood for a minute looking into the flames. Then he walked straight into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, took a pot out and raised the lid on some chance kind of stew sporting wrinkled peas, greying peaks of potato, and put it on the stove; went on to pull closed the sliding door, the light still on in there; stopped to come down abruptly and dig in the trash for the worn address book. Round the end of the kitchen table he turned on the radio which eagerly informed him that a group of handicapped mountainclimbers had carried an American flag and a bag of jellybeans to the summit of Mount Rainier before he could bend to turn the dial, slowly, bringing in the full chord of a cello.