John Gardner - Stillness & Shadows

The day was blindingly bright and clear, the sky and the sunlit walls of buildings charged with that yellow-white, tropical brilliance of sunlight unexpectedly encountered after hours in a movie theater, except worse, more like the darkness of Mammoth Cave or the center of the earth. Pain shot in through his eye sockets. Coming out into the daylight had been a mistake, he saw; but after all that business he could hardly go back. He shaded his eyes with the book on Sanskrit, then, gradually adjusting to the dazzle in every atom on the sunstruck street, groped forward, lowering the book, reaching out vaguely, like a swimmer, his shoes stumbling close to obstructions in his path, then away again, his right elbow now clamped tightly on the book. His eyes adjusted more and, leaning close, touching things, he began to get his bearings. The grainy configurations in telephone poles, the finely sifted dust on car and truck fenders, the humps and jagged cracks in the sidewalk — grass pushing up through them, insects thriving on them, ants and wood ticks, ladybugs, mosquitoes — took on at last, even for Craine’s thick-spectacled eyes, their proper definition, that and somewhat more, the unnatural sharpness of objects observed through the lens of slight drunkenness — a sharpness less unnatural to Craine than to most people, and one he accepted with pleasure now, anchoring his mind by it as he straightened from his inspection of the cracks at his feet and unsteadily turned left, heading downtown in the direction of his office. He paused once, feeling those eyes on him, and glanced back over his shoulder at Tully’s, just in time to see Carnac come flying out onto the sidewalk as if thrown. A moment later, in great distress, the old doctor emerged, his arms extended, one reaching back toward Tully’s door, the other (the one that held the book) toward Carnac. He resolved his dilemma in favor of Carnac, hurrying to him, chasing the hat for him, then helping him to his feet. Two small black children stopped to look and one of them bent over, picked up something from the sidewalk — a feather — and held it toward the doctor. The doctor took it from her, bowing and smiling, and held it toward Carnac, who stood furiously slapping at the seat of his choir robe, his narrow shoulders hunched. That was as much as Craine saw of the event; people on the sidewalk came flowing around them, hiding them from view. Craine set off again toward his office.

The street—“the strip,” as they called it these days — was crowded with life, as always — students in old Volkswagens, on motorcycles and bicycles, standing by store windows, holding hands, looking in; farmers in their pickups poking along toward the depot or Dillengers’ feed store; town and university people bustling through their errands; cats in upstairs apartment windows or preening on the painted-brick hems of porches; cardinals and blue jays, nuthatches, sparrows in the bushes and trees or up on tarpaper roofs; and everywhere — sleeping in doorways, tied by their leashes to parking meters, sniffing at the gutters, the coats of passing strangers — particolored, brown, gray, black, and pepper-speckled dogs. He passed Low’s Jewelry, where the clock in the window ran backwards, the clockface reversed, and like a man who has bitten into a lemon, he screwed his mouth up tight and squeezed his eyes shut, offended by the obstreperous clutter of things, toying with the idea of going back to his hotel room to bed. When he opened his eyes, it was of course all still there, slightly left of where he’d thought it would be, a universe stuffed like an old spinster’s hope chest with junk … “Junk!” he said aloud, angrily, clenching his fist, though he was conscious of no emotion.

“Morning, Craine,” Denham said, nodding from the door of his old tobacco shop. “Fine weather.”

Craine nodded, touched the brim of his hat, returned his hand to the neck of the bottle in his overcoat pocket, and hurried on. The sense of being watched was still with him, still strong. It gave solidity to his step, determination. He walked cocked forward, as if pushing against wind — wind, small planets, meteors, imploded stars — his lips sucked in, his eyes slightly bulging behind the thick, tinted glasses, and from time to time he would glance over his shoulder, as if hearing again Carnac’s warning. No wonder, of course, reinforced as the warning was by the doctor’s opinion, however tentative and mysterious, on the possible trustworthiness of Two-heads’ miswired mind. All very well to mutter, “Maniac, maniac!”; the fact remained, he could feel those hostile eyes on him. He glanced nervously at his watch. A door opened to his left, whispering “Sh!”—so much like a human warning that he jumped and, for an instant, stopped muttering. He studied the man now emerging from the aqueous dimness inside, an old, bearded Negro, then turned and looked carefully back in the direction from which he’d come. No sign, or anyway none he could make out. Beyond twenty-five feet, the world, to Craine, was like the floor of a clean, bright ocean. His hand, unbeknownst to him, reached up to his mouth with two fingers. His shadow on the sidewalk, stooped and hatted, lay patiently waiting for him to move again.

Abruptly he darted forward and turned left down the alley beside the dimestore. At the office, they’d wonder what on earth had become of him, but no matter; it was high time he settled this. If he was smart, of course, he’d go straight to the office and get help; this business of being tailed was no joke, Lord knew — maybe tailed by the cops, hoping to set him up, maybe by some lunatic who got his kicks, or hers, out of rolling old drunks, maybe pouring gas on ’em and lighting ’em. “Better play it smart,” Craine whispered, pausing, narrowing his eyes. He whispered it again, then again, then again, varying the delivery and intonation, getting it just right. But even as he spoke he forgot the point of it, that he should go back to the office and get help. He clamped the book on Sanskrit more tightly under his arm and walked bent farther forward, almost running. The echoes of his footsteps whispered on the dark brick walls and grumbled among garbage cans. He looked behind him — no one there, or no one he could see in the alley’s dim light, large blocks of shadow. When he emerged he turned right into what once had been the A&P parking lot, now half grown up in weeds, then left at the street, then left again at the corner, doubling back toward Tully’s. The eyes still seemed to be following him, if ever they had been. Yet the streets were busy; no way to be sure. He intensified his effort, cranked up his cunning. Once, turning suddenly, he spotted Two-heads Carnac at the back of an old building, sorting through large cardboard boxes. Craine flattened himself more against the wall, then crept away. Carnac sorted on, holding first one box, then another, up to the sun. “Hoo! Ha! Nah bad! Sum-bitch!” He smiled like a man sorting paintings.

So Craine continued for another twenty minutes. Turning corners, moving through the town’s decayed center, he would step off quickly in the new direction, then stop, hidden by the brick or wood of the building on the corner he’d just rounded, and would light his pipe, squinting, waiting, his right hand wandering with a mind of its own toward the whiskey bottle. Once or twice, drawing out the bottle, sack and all, he took a quick restorative. So far as he could tell, no one who came around the corner was the one he was waiting for. He saw old women with shopping bags, their eyes forlorn; fat businessmen angrily gesturing and talking or simple-mindedly beaming, dreaming of profits — makers of instruments of torture, for all he knew (America was the number one manufacturer of instruments of torture, he’d read); students on fire escapes or skipping across streets, some with long hair, some with Afros; a minister with whom he’d done business once; doctors, college professors, most of them young, full of twitches and fierce opinions, their faces as innocent as the faces of children; heavy-booted asparagus- and hog-farmers, bespectacled, scholarly, awkward down off their tractor seats, all with that look of slight confusion, as if they suspected that somehow they’d been tricked. Craine knew the whole dreary catalogue of their troubles, past, present, future — the troubles peculiar to each of them, from the old women to the fanners. Mortal tribulation was his stock in trade. But their troubles were not what he was thinking about now. People noticed him, some of them, but hardly registered the fact, hurrying on; and after a moment he would hurry on behind them, moving more or less in a spiral that would lead to his office.