Энн Тайлер - Searching for Caleb

She stopped swinging her foot.

“But I was tempted to disobey you anyway,” he told her. “I admit. I went to see my friend, the one in merchandising. He has these clients, you understand, department stores and such, they come to him for ideas on . . . but anyway. I said I might join up with him. ‘Oh, fine,’ he tells me. But then he starts suggesting I wear a different style of clothes. Well, that I can follow. I am practical, I know how the world works. But he doesn’t see, he’s still trying to convince me. ‘Face it, Alonzo,’ he says, ‘we all have to give in in little ways. Look at me . I’m a tall man,’ he says. And he is, a fine tall man. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘when important clients come, know what I do? I try to stay seated as much as possible, and if I stand I kind of squinch down. I don’t stoop ,’ he says, ‘that’s too obvious. Just bend at the knees a little. Understand, it’s not something I think of so consciously. But you can see a client, important fellow like that, he wouldn’t feel right if I was to tower over him. You got to keep a watch for such things, Alonzo.’ ”

He shook his head, and pulled his great silver belt buckle around to where it wouldn’t cut into his stomach so.

“Justine,” he said, “do you know that I have never before done what you told me to do?”

“I’m not surprised,” she said.

“I mean it. You’re always right, but only because I go against instructions and things turn out badly just the way you said they would. Now I discover things turn out badly anyhow. Is that your secret? I’ve found it, ha? You give people advice they’ll be sure not to follow. Right?”

She laughed. “No, Alonzo,” she said. “And I’m glad you didn’t sell the carnival. Whatever’s gone wrong.”

“My mechanic’s been arrested.”

“Lem?”

“He robbed a bank in nineteen sixty-nine. They say .”

“Oh, I see.”

“Now, here’s what I want to know. Is he coming back, or not? I mean if he’s coming soon I’ll hold the machines together somehow and wait it out, but if he’s guilty, on the other hand—”

“Well, I don’t think I’m supposed to say if someone’s guilty or not.”

“Look here! What do I care about guilt? All they lost was two hundred dollars, let him keep it. Besides a little matter of a shooting. I want to know about my business . I want to know if I should just give up, because to tell the truth this fellow Lem was a man I relied on. He saw to everything. Now, merchandising is out but there is always something else, and the jodhpur lady still wants my carnival. Shall I sell, after all? Is the man gone forever?”

Justine frowned at a card.

“You see what I’ve fallen to,” Alonzo said. “I used to ask about beautiful women. Now it’s financial matters.”

“Well, Lem is not coming back,” said Justine.

“I knew it.”

“But you shouldn’t sell the carnival.”

“How can you keep saying such a stupid thing?”

“Don’t argue with me, argue with the cards. Have you ever seen anything like it? I’ve turned up every jack in the deck, you’ll have all the mechanics you want.”

“Oh, of course,” Alonzo said. “One after the other. The first one drinks, the second leaves with my ponies—”

“And look at the women! Look, Alonzo, you’re not paying attention. See? Here you are, the king of hearts. And here’s the queen of hearts, the queen of clubs, the queen of diamonds . . . ”

Alonzo sat forward, peering at the cards, resting his hand upon his knees.

“Here is the good luck card, the card of friendship, the celebration card . . . ”

“All right, all right! ” Alonzo said.

She sat back and smiled at him.

“Oh, Justine,” he told her sadly, “sometimes I think I would like to go live in a cabin in the woods, all alone. I’d take a lifetime supply of slivovitz, my accordion, plenty of food, perhaps some books. Do you know I’ve never read an entire book? Just the good parts. I think about hibernating like a bear, just eating and drinking and sleeping. No tax, insurance, electric bills, alimony, repairs or repainting or Rustoleum, no women to mess up my life, no one shooting bank guards, no children. Then here you come galloping along in your terrible hat and your two sharp hipbones like pebbles in your pockets and you tell me all these things I may expect, a life full of surprises. How can I refuse? I feel curious all over again, I like to know what will happen next.”

And he shook his head, stroking downward on his mustache, but he did not look so tired as when he had arrived. All his tiredness seemed to have passed to Justine, who sat slumped in her chair with her hands limp on the cards.

Duncan and Justine were on the front steps, watching the fireflies spark all around them. “Today I sold an antique garden engine,” Duncan said.

“What’s a garden engine?”

“It’s this big wheeled thing to spray water on your flowers. What a relief! I bought it with my own money in a moment of weakness. I kept it sitting in the back room; I had to open the double doors to get it in and then I was afraid it would go right through the floorboards. A man named Newton Norton bought it. He’s just started reconstructing this old-time farmhouse out in the country.”

“Well, that’s nice,” said Justine.

“He also bought some fuller’s shears, and all my carpentry tools.”

“That’s nice.”

He looked over at her.

“When I went into Meg’s room,” she said, “and found her note telling me she’d gone, I never read anything that hurt so. But then I looked up, and there I was reflected in the window that was just starting to go dark outside. There were these deep black shadows in my eyes and cheekbones. I thought, ‘My, don’t I look interesting? Like someone who has had something dramatic happen.’ I thought that!”

She laid her face against Duncan’s sleeve. Duncan put his arm around her and pulled her closer, but he didn’t say anything.

Lucy Peck had to ride in the suicide seat, beside her husband Two, who was driving. Laura May and Sarah got to sit in back. Lucy had to put up with the hot air rushing in Two’s open window and Mantovani playing much too loudly on the radio. She had to say what roads to take when she couldn’t even fold a map right, much less read it. “Now the next thing is you’re going to turn left, about a quarter-inch after Seven Stone Road. Or, I don’t know. What would a little bitty broken blue line seem to mean?” Her husband set his front teeth together very, very delicately, not a good sign at all. A bumble bee flew in past his nose, causing Lucy to cry out and fling her road map into the air. And meanwhile there sat Laura May and Sarah, protected by layered hats with brown veils, contemplating two separate views peacefully like children being taken for a drive.

It was the sixth of June and they were on their way to Caro Mill, Maryland, to celebrate their father’s ninety-third birthday. Unfortunately his birthday fell on a Wednesday this year, which meant that no one who worked could come along. And Bea was confined to her bed with lower back pain. It was up to them: Lucy and the maiden aunts, and Two, who was now retired. Between them they had loaded the car with presents and fruit, a Thermos of Sanka, Laura May’s needlework, Sarah’s knitting, insect repellent, sunscreen, Bufferin, Gelusil, a Triple-A tour guide, a can of Fix-a-Flat, a fire extinguisher, six emergency flares, and a white banner reading SEND HELP. They had had the Texaco man check the gas, oil, water, brake fluid, transmission fluid, tire pressure, and windshield cleaner. Then Two nosed the car out into traffic and they were on their way, with enough horns honking behind them to remind Lucy of an orchestra tuning up. Young people nowadays were so impatient. Luckily Two was not a man who could be fussed, and he went on driving at his same stately tempo. In his old age he had shrunk somewhat, and was made to seem even smaller by his habit of tipping his head back as he peered through the windshield. His eyes were narrow blue hyphens. His mouth was pulled downward by two ropes in his neck. When he decided to turn left from the right-hand lane he signaled imperiously out the window, still facing front, maintaining his cool Apache profile for Lucy to marvel at while behind them more horns honked. “Kindly check the odometer, Lucy,” was all he said. “I would be interested in knowing our mileage on this trip.”