Steven Millhauser: We Others: New and Selected Stories

THE COAT. The coat raised a number of questions that none of us could answer. If, during the attack on Robert Sutliff and Charles Kraus, the man had been wearing steel-toe work boots, jeans, and an open-necked plaid flannel shirt over a T-shirt, then we might have subscribed to the theory of protest: the attacker, a blue-collar worker, bore a grudge against the white-collar element of our town. Since, however, the man was wearing a fashionable coat, with the belt looped in front, and was therefore dressed like a successful businessman who might easily have lived in our town and ridden our train, the theory of social or class protest was unacceptable — unless, of course, the stranger had deliberately adopted a costume that wouldn’t draw attention to itself in the station parking lot. The third attack — we hadn’t yet learned about Walter Lasher — complicated our already complicated sense of things. A man dressed like a businessman had attacked a cable repairman in work clothes. What could it mean? Perhaps, we thought, the stranger had lost his job; simmering with rage, he was taking out his frustration on anyone still fortunate enough to have work. It was also possible that the coat had nothing at all to do with the man and what he was after, and that we were guilty of reading into a piece of clothing a significance that was meaningless.

IN THE HARDWARE STORE. On Saturday afternoon, six hours after the Daily Observer reported the attack on Raymond Sorensen, Walter Lasher stood in the hardware store, examining a row of light-switch plates. As he began weighing the virtues of old-fashioned brass switch plates against a display of new steel plates in bright colors, Joan Summers, who lived three houses away from him, passed the aisle on her way to weather stripping and noticed him standing there. Joan Summers hesitated. He seemed so intent on his switch plates that she felt reluctant to disturb him, even with a greeting; at the same time, now that she had paused, she felt it would be rude to ignore him, especially if he’d happened to see her out of the corner of his eye. Instead, therefore, of entering the aisle, Joan stood at the end and called down: “Oh, hello there.” What happened next surprised her. Walter Lasher glanced abruptly, as if furtively, in her direction, gave a quick nod, and turned back to his switch plates. They were not close friends, but they had been neighbors for many years and had always had pleasant exchanges. Joan Summers marched off toward the aisle of weather stripping, which she needed for the downstairs bathroom window. His behavior verged on rudeness but had not seemed rude, exactly: it had seemed peculiar. Walter Lasher was not a peculiar man. Joan Summers shook it out of her mind but was careful not to go to the cash register until she was absolutely certain that Lasher had left the store.

A RIPPLE OF DISAPPOINTMENT. As the weekend passed without incident, we wondered whether the man had been frightened away by the police presence, or whether he was lying low, waiting for another chance. It was also possible that he had settled his score, whatever it was, that he had done what he’d come to do and had left our town forever. Our sense of relief was accompanied by a ripple of disappointment. For though we were happy to be rid of him, if in fact we were rid of him, we were annoyed at our failure to catch him and troubled by our inability to understand anything whatever about who he was or what he was trying to do. Many of us, while openly expressing pleasure at his disappearance, secretly admitted that we would have been happier if something worse had happened in our town, even much worse, so long as it was something we were able to understand, like murder.

VICTIM. Even as we were growing accustomed to the word “victim” in relation to these incidents, we began to ask ourselves to what extent the word corresponded to our sense of what had actually taken place. No one doubted that something impermissible, even outrageous, had been done to all three men, but it was also true that the attacks had been carefully limited: no robbery had been committed, the stranger had inflicted no physical damage, and he had immediately walked away. Our town, it should be said, is a very safe place in which to live. We take pride in our safety and have no tolerance for crime. Nevertheless, we’re part of the world and are not spared our share of serious trouble: child molestation, felony assault, rape, even two murders in the last seven years. The crime represented by a slap in the face is at most a Class A misdemeanor. To speak of a “victim” might therefore seem to exaggerate the consequences of a deed that, for all its unpleasantness, amounts to very little in the scheme of things. Even so, it seemed to most of us that the suddenness of the attack, the strength of the slap, the apparent randomness, the anger and helplessness induced in the person receiving the slap, all suggested that those who were slapped were indeed victims, though of a strange variety that kept eluding our understanding.

A MULTITUDE OF SLAPS. Although we had read about the three slaps — the ones delivered to the faces of Robert Sutliff, Charles Kraus, and Raymond Sorensen — we knew that the total number of slaps was far greater than those reported in the paper. The three slaps were the visible slaps, the public slaps, the ones that entered the police record and the pages of the Daily Observer . But alongside those slaps there existed a multitude of invisible slaps, of subterranean slaps, which took place solely in our minds. The other slaps struck, over and over again, the faces of Robert Sutliff, Charles Kraus, and Raymond Sorensen, and they struck our own faces as well. We imagined the hand rising, the arm swinging, the palm striking the flesh of a cheek. We heard the peculiar sound of a slap, the crisp soft-hardness of it, like that of a whip. We thought of wood snapping, of ice cracking. We thought of TV footage of distant wars, the sharp clap of gunfire in the night. As we walked along the aisles of a clothing shop in the mall, as we sat at a booth in a coffee shop in town, we heard a rustling of slaps all about us. In our beds at night we heard them, obscured by the passing cars, a distant radio, the roll of trucks on the thruway: the other slaps of our town, a whole chorus of them, rising up out of the quiet like fire crackling in the dark.

SHARON HANDS. On Monday afternoon, as police cars were pulling in and out of parking lots at banks, supermarkets, car dealerships, and medical buildings, Sharon Hands, a senior at Andrew Butler High, waved good-bye to Kelsey Donahue at the corner of Maple and Penrose and continued on her way home. Basketball practice had gone well, though she’d messed up two jump shots; tonight she had a meeting with the Thespians in the school auditorium, and she’d promised her mother that when she returned she’d help go through the pile of catalogues to find a cable-knit sweater for Aunt Debra, who was hard to please at the best of times but impossible on her birthday. There was never a minute left over in the day. She couldn’t help throwing herself into things, her boyfriend had complained about it more than once, but that was who she was, at least for now, though who knew what the future held. But she loved these long walks home, the only time in the whole day, it seemed, when she was by herself. Her legs felt strong, her body was bursting with energy, even after the long school day and the two-hour basketball practice, and as she cut through the little park on the other side of the thruway overpass she looked with pleasure at the row of three swings, the climbing structure with its towers and rope ladders and slides, the slatted bench with a maroon scarf thrown across the back. People thought they knew her, but they didn’t, not really. They thought all she liked was to be surrounded by friends, lots of friends, and though she loved her friends, every single one of them, even Jenny Treadwell with her endless problems and complaints, she also loved these solitary walks between school and home with her cell off, her book bag slung over her shoulder, her long hair bouncing on her back, her arms swinging, her tights showing off her legs, and why not, if you’ve got it flaunt it, and she had it, she knew she did, it was why she loved walking down the halls between classes, walking in town in her stretch tops and jeans, or on the beach in summer, in her pink string bikini, along the hard sand at the water’s edge, the heads turning, the friends waving, the gulls skimming the water, and as she left the park and started along Woods End Road she listened with pleasure to the knock of the heels of her cognac-colored boots against the shady sidewalk. On Woods End Road the houses were large and set well back from the street. High trees rose from the lawns, and shutters spread from the windows like wings. She walked under the branches of old sycamores, their trunks such a lovely green and cream that they made you want to reach out and stroke them, as if they were big soft animals. Oh, sometimes she had strange ideas, funny ideas she shared with no one. She glanced at her watch: she’d be home in five or six minutes, just enough time to text a few friends, call Molly about Friday night, and read a chapter of American Democracy before dinner. As she approached Meadowbrook Lane, a squirrel scampered across a telephone line, a boy raced down a driveway on a skateboard, and in front of her, on her left, a handsome man stepped out from behind a tree. She was used to the smiles of older men. He walked up to her, stopped, and slapped her across the face. The blow hurt; she felt her head bend to one side. She felt like bursting into tears, or screaming at the sky — just screaming. Sharon raised her hand to her cheek, as if to comfort it. No one had ever hit her before: ever. By the time she thought to shout out for help, the man was no longer anywhere to be seen.