John Cheever: Bullet Park

Tony Nailles, who would direct traffic, came over the lawn with a flashlight. "Hi Tony," said Lewellen. "You want a drink?" "I'd like a beer," Tony said. "There isn't any beer," said Lewellen, "why don't you have a gin and tonic?" As Tony went over to one of the two bars, a car came up the drive and stopped on the lawn. It was the Wickwires. They were, as always, impeccably dressed and incandescently charming but he wore dark glasses and had a piece of court plaster over one eye. "What a divine idea to have a tent," she exclaimed. She was in a wheelchair.

Nailles, stepping into the bathroom, found Nellie naked and took her in his arms. "If we're going to do it," Nellie said, "let's do it before I take my bath." They did. Then Nailles prepared to dress. Nellie had put his clothes on the bed and, standing naked above them, Nailles felt a powerful reluctance to dress. Having, in his experience with trains, learned something about the mysterious polarities that moved him, he wondered what would happen if his unwillingness to dress turned into a phobia. Would he spend the rest of his life padding naked around the bedroom while poor Nellie tried to conceal his condition from the rest of the world? He did not cherish his nakedness but he detested his suit. Spread out on the bed it seemed to claim a rectitude and a uniformity that was repulsively unlike his nature. Did he want to go to the party in a fig leaf, a tiger skin, nothing at all? Something like that.

Nailles thought about his mother. He had visited her on Tuesday night. "Are you feeling any better, Mother," he had asked. "Would you like Tony to come and see you. Is there anything I can get you." She had not replied for nearly a month. Then from some part of his mind, deeper than memory, he heard singing:

Dressed, Nailles began to look for his wallet. It would be in the jacket pocket of the suit he had worn that afternoon. When he reached into the pocket he found it empty. The empty pocket seemed mysteriously portentous, as if he had asked some grave questions about pain and death and had got no answer; had been told there was none. "I came into the house," he said aloud, "and I made a drink and then I went upstairs and undressed and took a shower so it must be in the bedroom somewhere." He must have put the wallet on some surface in the bedroom and now he examined all of these-the dressing table, the chest of drawers, etc. It was nowhere. He could not recall having been in any of the other bedrooms but he examined them. He heard Nellie's heels coming down the hall. "I've lost my wallet," he said. "Oh dear," said Nellie. He had no use for the wallet that night, she knew, but she knew that he would not go to the party without it. The loss of any object was for both of them acute as if their lives rested on some substructure of talismans. "I came into the house," Nailles kept saying, "and I made a drink and then I went upstairs and I undressed and took a shower so it must be here somewhere."

For the next half hour or longer they were upstairs, downstairs, in and out of the living room, opening unused drawers onto collections of Christmas ribbon, feeling under chairs, lifting up newspapers and magazines, shaking out pillows and grabbing under cushions. To look into their faces you would have thought they had lost their grail, their cross, their anchor. Why couldn't Nailles go to the party without his wallet? He couldn't. "I came into the house," he said, "and I made a drink and then I went upstairs and undressed and took a shower." "Oh here it is," cried Nellie. It was the pure voice of an angel, freed from the mortal bonds of grossness and aspiration. "It was in the pantry under the minutes of your last meeting. You must have put it there when you made your drink." "Thank you darling, thank you," said Nailles to his deliverer. They started for the party. Thunder sounded. The noise reminded Nailles again of what it had felt like to be young and easy. "You know I was awfully happy that summer I climbed in the Tirol," he said. "I climbed the Grand Kaiser and the Pengelstein. In the Tirol when there's a thunderstorm they ring all the church bells. All up and down the valley. It's very exciting. I don't know why I tell you all of this. I guess it must be the storm."

Eliot and Nellie got to the party at quarter to eight. Ten minutes later Hammer parked his car at the foot of the driveway. He was very drunk and had not changed his clothes. He wore a sweater. Tony called down to him: "Please bring your car up. There's plenty of room on the lawn. Please bring your car up." When Hammer did not move Tony jogged down the drive. "Please bring your car up the driveway," he said. "There's still plenty of room on the hill."

"I have to leave early," Hammer said, "and I thought that if I parked here it would be easier to get away."

"You won't have any trouble," Tony said. "They're only expecting about thirty cars."

"Well get in then," Hammer said, "and I'll drive you up the hill."

As soon as Tony slipped into the car Hammer flushed the Mace into his eyes. Tony let out a loud, hoarse roar of pain and fell forward, striking his head on the dashboard. Hammer gave him a vicious, a murderer's blow with the truncheon. He drove the short distance to church, where the door was, as usual, unlocked for prayer and meditation.

He was luckier than he knew. Ten minutes earlier Miss Templeton had finished arranging the roses on the altar. He dragged Tony into the narthex and then went back to his car for the gasoline. Then he locked the narthex door, the only door into the church, excepting the door to the vestarium. The only light that burned was the vigil, and in this faint light he dragged Tony down the aisle to the chancel. He found the switch for the chancel lights and was about to pour the gasoline onto Tony when he thought he would first smoke a cigarette. He was tired and winded. He laughed when he noticed how expertly the Lamb of God on the altar hooked its hoof around the wooden standard of Christendom. He heard a stir from the narthex and he thought his heart would explode until he realized that it was nothing. It had begun to rain. That was all.

When Rutuola got out of a taxi at the Lewellens' the headwaiter stopped him. "If it's a delivery," he said, "you'll have to go in the back way."

"I have to see Mr. Nailles," the swami said.

"You can't come in here."

"Mr. Nailles, Mr. Nailles," he shouted. "Mr. Nailles, come here quickly please."

Nailles, who was standing at one of the bars, heard his name called and left the tent. "Go to Christ's Church," Rutuola said. "Don't ask me any questions. Go to Christ's Church now."

Nailles felt, from Rutuola's voice, that Tony was in danger but he did not run to the car and did nothing else hurriedly. His lips were swollen. His nerves were unusually steady. Some cars, coming up from the railroad station where the late train had just arrived, slowed him down but he did not take the risk of trying to pass them. When he got to the church he recognized Hammer's car. In some way he had expected this. He pounded on the locked door.

"Who is it," Hammer asked.

"Nailles."

"You can't get in. I've locked all the doors."

"What are you doing, what are you going to do?"

"I'm going to kill Tony."

Nailles returned to his car. There was a loud and painful ringing in his ears that seemed like some part of his purposefulness. He was neither frightened nor confused. He drove directly to Chestnut Lane, got the chain saw from the cellar and returned to the church.

"Hammer?"

"Yes."

"Is Tony all right?"

"He's all right now but I'm going to kill him. First I want to finish this cigarette."