William Gaddis - J R

There half withdrawn from ambush lightning froze him seeking kneehold, poised upon the thrust to come, the thunder to come, the ease of the screen door below hung shaken twisted on one hinge, as wind might have shaken it, and then the crush of glass underfoot and the voice still to come, and loudly, — Stella? And then the thunder, sounding far away.

— Up here, she called unblinking past his shoulder, — we’re coming down… the instant’s twinge of her knees gone, limp as her hands spread wide beside them there palms up as though listlessly waiting to be filled.

— You’re what?

Her hands closed empty where he’d come down all weight and she gained an elbow bringing her shoulders up, dropping them with a sigh of movement no more than pushing a chair back leaving table. — Don’t try to come up without a light, she called again, one foot out to the floor, and the other — it’s quite a mess…

— But who is that!

— Just Norman… she stood steadying a hand to the rafter’s slant as she pressed into one shoe, then the other, bent to pick up that gray dress from the floor.

— I’ve got the police, the voice came up to them again, — Stella?

She stood hands high for the dress to drop round her and pulled its shoulders into place walking the length of the bed to stand there, waiting, till his hands left fighting buttons and rose to pull its zipper closed. — Yes we’re coming, she called back, dangling the flashlight lighted toward the door and pausing, one foot cocked on Miss Isadora Duncan and Mister Walter Damrosch, to run its spot up on him full sitting on the welter of the bed, staring at her. — Edward’s here.

— Edward? Up there?

— He’s trying to get a window closed.

— Up there?

— He’ll be right down… and she turned for the stairs as the sound of rain came, finally, scattered across the roof, a fall that now gave substance to the stilled beams of headlamps in the drive where those of flashlights rose and fell to cadenced steps come back and round the range of yew and up the terrace and through the door to fall on broken glass and flee across the inkstained carpet, darting, climbing, caught fixed in niches, they scaled the walls and leaped the beams to skirt the hayloft.

— Who found it like this?

— We did, officer, I did, an hour or so ago…

— And who are you?

— We’re, I’m part of the family we came out visiting, my husband and I.

— Visiting? Him?

— That’s Mister Bast yes, she said as a light caught him on the stairs and led him down before it leapt the fireplace for the kitchen. — Norman? You’ve never met Edward?

— Sorry, it’s a hell of a way to meet you Edward… he took his hand and shook it. — Be careful there, Stella. I guess you didn’t find anything, any papers? He took the light from her and splashed it over them, — be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Even that waiver they couldn’t find that, your aunts, right over in the house there, Edward. The one Coen just brought out for you to sign? The light came down like the cut of a saber. — I couldn’t get across to them in there at all. That ink, watch your shoe there Stella…

She stepped aside. — I think they just want to wait until…

— Wait? Wait till the tax people step in and pull the whole company out from under all of us? He put his empty hand on the shoulder sunk before him and the light dwelled on the tie knotted out over the collar, — I don’t care who inherits what, you and Stella, you understand that Edward? It’s all in the family, that’s just where we’ve got to keep it.

Light from behind caught his barbered neck. — You’d never even know this place was back here. The policeman shot his light up the stairs, — let me just take a look up there. They must have been throwing plates around, watch where you step… he lit a way behind him. — What do you do here, use it like a summer house? Who reads all the books, you? he followed his light into the hayloft. — Anything taken? You miss anything?

— I don’t know I, I don’t know what they wanted.

— A place for a little fancy screwing… the light swept over the tumbled bed. — The first chilly day and that’s what they look for, a dry place to screw where they won’t freeze their nuts… He pulled away the spread and paused his light along the sheet. — You ever find any drugs in this place? any joints? needles? empty bottles of glue? Underfoot Miss Isadora Duncan and Mister Walter Damrosch grated in his turn for the door. — You better try to get the whole place boarded up.

— Edward? came from below. — We’re going to have to leave…

And there Norman’s arm sank his shoulders hunching the man to do so, gesturing the light with his free hand as he went on with — what that’s got to do with the price of apples here anyway Stella, his father James there going out and adopting that Jewish boy out of that Jewish orphan asylum don’t mean he thought Edward here was…

— The boy had talent, you’ve heard him play Edward?

— He, Reuben you mean? he, he plays like an acrobat it’s all technique he, like a stunt like asking somebody to…

— Why you’d want to bring that up right now for anyway Stella, if James wanted to take the boy in he just must have thought…

— For his talent yes that’s what you just said Stella his talent, for his talent…

— But wasn’t it? She was gone behind the light, — just the talent he loved? not the boy?

— Well sure and with Edward here it was the boy, like you’d expect a…

— That’s what she said! Just the boy not the talent, that’s what you meant isn’t it Stella? Because there wasn’t any talent that’s what you meant isn’t it? He ducked from the weight of the arm on his shoulder into the beam of light — isn’t it? The talent yes that he had it and I didn’t that’s what you meant when I, when you came out here and wouldn’t even listen to what I’d…

— Edward please…

— What please what! you can’t even, just now it’s what you meant up there just now too isn’t it when you knew all the time… he caught balance backed against the piano as overhead in the beams, from the kitchen, through the bull’s eyed door to the garage lights came on all together, and a policeman through it brushing his hands.

— Want to get this place boarded up, lucky these kids didn’t burn it down for you.

He was staring down at the label of a record underfoot as though its label were in a language he did not understand and looked up slowly at the fragments of plates, glass, records and more records flung among books split, ink splattered pages of music some still untorn, with a sound of trying to clear his throat. — Kids…?

— Kids… the policeman nodded past his elbow, — who else would shit in your piano.

— You, you never can tell… he stared for an instant at the staved and unfinished notes on paper crumpled and smeared in the strings there before he turned with one step, and another as vague, to reach and tap a high C, and then far enough to fit his hand to an octave and falter a dissonant chord, again, and again, before he corrected it and looked up, — right? Believing and shitting are two very different things?

— Edward…

— Never have to clean your toilet bowl again… he recovered the dissonant chord, — right?

— Well yeah you, you want to get the place boarded up, some kid gets hurt in here you could be in real trouble… straightening jackets, belts, pocketing pads, flashlights in departing scurries to the lighted eaves, toward the door abruptly choreographed, Sousa in chords of play by ear, a glissando descending to a dull thump.

— Kids that’s all! a generation in heat that’s all… he pounded two chords against each other’s unrest — no subject is taboo, no act is forbidden that’s all…! and he struck into the sailors’ chorus from Dido and Aeneas, — you’ll never, no never, have to clean your…