Stanley Elkin - The MacGuffin

“Jews killed her? Jews ran her down?”

“No. I don’t even think they followed us. I could see them shaking their fists after us, though, as I drove off that lot.”

And Druff, stabbed by a sudden, astonished envy of the dead Lebanese woman, mildly contemplated the notion of enemies, entertained the thought of them, wondered, even momentarily wished that he’d had more in his life, people who would have pushed him in directions not of his choosing. If nothing happened to you you had to fall back on your character, spinning your life out of whole cloth, disaffiliate from the world. What he had had for an enemy had been merely his own body, his diseases, how they’d made him look in his suits. He wished now he had gone further in politics, drawn opponents from out of the woodwork, campaigners who might have gotten the goods on him, or even just slung a little mud. He’d been lazy with his life. Some stinginess of energy had stalled his heart, disengaged him and woken MacGuffins.

“What?” Druff asked. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“I asked what she wanted me to do with that rug in the trunk.”

“You had a rug in your trunk?”

“In your trunk, Daddy. I was driving your car.”

“My car?”

“Don’t you remember? Mine was in the shop.”

“Well, what were you doing with a rug in the trunk?”

“Come on, Dad, I told you. I drove for her, Daddy. I was the wheelman.”

“The wheelman.”

“When she made her deliveries.”

“Of the smuggled rugs.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Jesus Christ, Mikey. Do you know what you’ve done?”

“Gone and gotten you in trouble?”

“Goddamn right.”

“Are we well off?”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“I’m sorry.”

“All right. What happened then?”

“Well,” Mikey said, “like I told you, she was bitching at me so bad it was hard for me to concentrate on my driving. It was your car, Dad. I didn’t want to smash it up in an accident. That’s why I told her that if she didn’t stop shouting and screaming at me I’d have to let her out at the light.”

In dread, the City Commissioner of Streets asked, “Which light?”

“Well, that push-button one on Kersh Boulevard,” his son said, his eyes shut, his own lights out. “Where they’re going to put that crosswalk.”

“Scene of the crime,” Druff said.

“Well, I pulled over. Well, I let her out at the curb. ”

“Scene of the fucking crime.”

“Well, no,” his son said, “not exactly.”

“Near enough. Scene of the fucking crime.”

“No,” his son said. “Because after she got out of your car I drove another fifty or sixty feet before I remembered about the rug. That’s when I stopped and called out what did she want me to do with the rug in your trunk. She was still standing by that light.”

“Well, of course.”

“No,” Mikey said, “that’s just the thing. It was green. It had turned green in her favor.”

“Did anyone see you?” Druff said. “Did they hear you call her?”

“No. Absolutely not. Well, maybe whoever ran her down.”

“Someone was at the light?”

“In a car. Stopped in a car there, yes.”

“Sure,” Druff said. “Because the light was against him.” His heart was pounding furiously. He began to feel not angina but the conditions for angina, his heart tightening, circling his wagons. Sure, Druff thought, this happens too. Your mouth dries up, your tongue gets thick. You get nervous. You need your pills.

“Yes, but that’s just the thing, Daddy. Su’ad didn’t even answer when I called to her. She was staring so hard at the driver in that car stopped at that red light, it was as if she hadn’t even heard me.”

“Why didn’t she cross?” he asked slowly, as carefully as he could. So as not to spook the horses. To keep them from rearing, to keep their hooves from trampling his chest. (And this happens. You get too excited, too caught up in shit for your own good.)

“Well, I don’t know. I mean it was like she was hypnotized, fascinated. You know?”

“Why didn’t she cross the street, the light was in her favor?”

“Well I don’t know,” Mikey said again. “I mean then the light turned against her, and it was the driver who didn’t move. Then it was in her favor again and finally she just stepped out into the street.”

Druff’s eyes were squeezed shut.

“Next thing I knew there was this dull thump. I mean, that’s what it was. A thump. Su’ad was dead in the road but it made less noise to kill her than a fender bender, a little chip when a stone jumps up and breaks your headlight.”

Druff was drawing short, shallow breaths.

“And it wasn’t the Jews,” he said.

“Someone I recognized from the lecture, lined up along that path we took or in the parking lot, you mean?”

Druff was slow to answer. “That’s right,” he said finally.

“That’s right,” his son said. “But it isn’t as if I got a really good look. I was maybe seventy-five feet in front of him when he was stopped at that light. Then after he ran Su’ad down, she got like caught on his car somehow and he was doing these really wild maneuvers, throwing it into reverse, making wide swings, coming forward hard and braking. To shake her loose. You know? I was watching Su’ad,” Mikey said. “I couldn’t keep my eyes off Su’ad. Her wild ride,” he said, his voice breaking. “When he passed it was like a blur. I mean I couldn’t even tell what make he was driving. I was all blinded by my tears.”

“Hey,” Druff said, “Mikey, take it easy. It’s all right.”

“It isn’t all right,” Mikey said. “I loved her. I was going to go back to goddamn Lebanon with her. I was going to let them make me a hostage.”

Then, in the event, dread or no dread, thick tongue or no thick tongue, heart pressure or no heart pressure, angina or no angina, pills or no pills, this happens: You forget yourself, you forget you even have these things or that you need your medicine, and you make a MacGuffin-like leap.

“How,” he asked his son, “did she get money for the rugs?”

“She told me she borrowed it, Dad.”

Druff had no proof. He could have done it. She’d been screaming at him, bitching at him for some incompetence or other. She might still have been shouting when he threw her out of the car. She could have gotten his goat, screamed some devastating thing at him that just might have torn it. Maybe he was on steroids. Christ, he was big enough. Maybe he was on steroids and they had brainwashed his heart. So he could have done it. He’d never know, would he, not really know. He was a mysterious kid, had been a mysterious kid, was now a mysterious man. Mikey. Jesus Christ Jesus. Mikey! So it was conceivable. So he could have done it, the mysterious man-kid, thrown some sudden, thunderous tantrum, some killer snit. But he thought not. For love he’d been willing to go for a hostage in Lebanon, he’d said — some foolish fate. Only an innocent was capable of inventing something like that. He hadn’t run anyone down. He was innocent. As innocent as he’d been in not coming forward in the first place, everything mitigated by fear. His son hadn’t done it. The very terms of his telling it had cleared him. So that should have been a relief. A load off Druff’s mind. But his body was still doing its things. He was short of breath now, too.

It’s the excitement, he thought. I’m sound as a dollar.

“What’s wrong, Daddy? Is something wrong?”

“No,” Druff said, “nothing. Not a thing.”

“Are you feeling all right?”

“I’m feeling fine.”

“Shall I go get my mom?”