John Hawkes - The Lime Twig

Inside the closet he is rummaging overhead to a shelf — reaching and pushing among the dresses now, invading anew and for himself this hiding place which he expects to keep from her. He stands on tiptoe, an arm is angular at the crook, his unused hand is dragging one of the dresses off its hanger by the shoulder; but the other set of high fingers is pushing, working a way through the dusty folds toward what he knows is resting behind the duster and pail near the wall. His hipbone strikes the thin paneling of the door so that it squeaks and swings outward, casting a perfect black shadow across the foot of the bed. And after a moment he steps out into the room, turns sideways, uncorks the bottle, tilts it up, and puts the hot mouth of the bottle to his lips. He drinks— until the queer mechanism of his throat can pass no more and his lips stop sucking and a little of it spills down his chin. Upstairs a breakfast kettle begins to shriek. He takes a step, holds the bottle against his breast, suddenly turns his face straight to the sun.

She’ll wonder about me. She’ll wonder where her hubby’s at, rightly enough .

He left the flat door open. Throughout the day, whenever anyone moved inside the building, slammed a window or shouted a few words down the unlighted stair— “Why don’t you leave off it? Why don’t you just leave off it, you with your bloody kissing round the gas works”—the open door swung a hand’s length to and fro, drifted its desolate and careless small arc in a house of shadow and brief argument. But no one took notice of the door, no one entered the four empty rooms beyond it, and only the abandoned cat followed with its turning head each swing of the door. Until at the end of the day Margaret came in smiling, walked the length of the hall with a felt hat over one ear, feet hot, market sack pulling from the straps in her hand and, stopping short, discovered the waiting animal in the door’s crack. Stopped, backed off, went for help from a second-floor neighbor who had a heart large with comfort and all the cheer in the world, went for help as he knew she would.

Knowing how much she feared his dreams: knowing that her own worst dream was one day to find him gone, overdue minute by minute some late afternoon until the inexplicable absence of him became a certainty; knowing that his own worst dream, and best, was of a horse which was itself the flesh of all violent dreams; knowing this dream, that the horse was in their sitting room — he had left the flat door open as if he meant to return in a moment or meant never to return — seeing the room empty except for moonlight bright as day and, in the middle of the floor, the tall upright shape of the horse draped from head to tail in an enormous sheet that falls over the eyes and hangs down stiffly from the silver jaw; knowing the horse on sight and listening while it raises one shadowed hoof on the end of a silver thread of foreleg and drives down the hoof to splinter in a single crash one plank of that empty Dreary Station floor; knowing his own impurity and Hencher’s guile; and knowing that Margaret’s hand has nothing in the palm but a short life span (finding one of her hairpins in his pocket that Wednesday dawn when he walked out into the sunlight with nothing cupped in the lip of his knowledge except thoughts of the night and pleasure he was about to find) — knowing all this, he heard in Hencher’s first question the sound of a dirty wind, a secret thought, the sudden crashing in of the plank and the crashing shut of that door.

“How’s the missus, Mr. Banks? Got off to her marketing all right?”

Then: “No offense. No offense,” said Hencher after Banks’ pause and answer.

The Artemis —a small excursion boat — shivered and rolled now and again ever so slightly though it was moored fast to the quay. Banks heard the cries of dock hands who were fixing a boom’s hook to a cargo net, the sound of a pump, and the sound, from the top deck, of a child shouting through cupped hands in the direction of the river’s distant traffic of puffing tugs and barges. And also overhead there were the quick uncontrollable running footfalls of smaller children and, on the gangway, hidden beyond the white bulkhead of the refreshment saloon, there was the steady tramp of still more boarding passengers.

A bar, a dance floor — everyone was dancing — a row of salt-sealed windows, a small skylight drawn over with the shadow of a fat gull: here was Hencher’s fun, and Banks could feel the crowd mounting the sides of the ship, feel the dance rhythm tingling through the greasy wood of the table top beneath his hand. For a moment and in a clear space past the open sea doors held back by small brass hooks, he saw hatless members of the crew dragging a mountain of battered life preservers forward in a great tar-stained shroud of canvas.

“No offense, eh, Mr. Banks? Too good a day for that. And tell me now, how’s this for a bit of a good trip?”

The lodger’s hand was putty round the bottom of the beer glass, the black-and-cream checkered cap was tight on the head — surely the fat man would sail away with the mothers and children and smart young girls when the whistle blew.

“No offense, Hencher. But you can leave off mentioning her, if you don’t mind.”

Perhaps he would sail away himself. That would be the laugh, he and Hencher, stowaways both, elbowing room at the ship’s rail between lovers and old ladies, looking out themselves — the two of them — for a glimpse of the water or a great furnace burning far-off at the river’s edge. Sail away out of the river’s mouth and into the afternoons of an excursion life. Hear the laughter, feel the ship’s beam wallow in the deep seas and lie down at night beneath a lifeboat’s white spongy prow still hot to the hand. No luggage, no destination, helmsman tying the wheel — on any course — to have a smoke with a girl. This would be the laugh, with only the pimply barkeep who had never been to sea before drawing beer the night long. But there was better than this in wait for him, something much better than this.

In the crowd at the foot of the gangplank an officer had asked for their tickets, and Hencher had spoken to the man: “My old woman’s on that boat, Captain, and me and my friend here will just see that she’s got a proper deck chair and a robe round her legs.”

And now the dawn was gone, the morning hours too were gone. He had found the crabbed address and come upon the doorway in which Hencher waited; had walked with him down all those streets until the squat ship, unseaworthy, just for pleasure, lay ahead of them in a berth between two tankers; had already seen the rigging, the smokestacks, the flesh-colored masts and rusty sirens and whistles in a blue sky above the rotting roof of the cargo sheds; had boarded the Artemis , which smelled of coke and rank canvas and sea animals and beer and boys looking for sport.

“We’ll just have some drink and a little talk on this ship before she sails, Mr. Banks. …”

He leaned toward Hencher. His elbows were on the table and his wet glass was touching Hencher’s frothy glass in the center of the table. Someone had dropped a mustard pot and beneath his shoe he felt the fragments of smashed china, the shape of a wooden spoon, the slick of the mustard on the dirty spoon. A woman with lunch packed in a box pushed through the crowd and bumped against him, paused and rested the box upon their table. Protruding from the top of the box and sealed with a string and paper was a tall jar filled with black bottled tea. The woman carried her own folding chair.

“Bloody slow in putting to sea, mates,” she said, and laughed. She wore an old sweater, a man’s muffler was knotted round her throat. “I could do with a breath of that sea air right now, I could.”