William Gass - Middle C

Joey decided to retain both and later mail them to Marjorie in a jar of silverfish. All of a sudden his head replayed her most recent scream. Unhand me, Madame, had he said? In a desperate hurry now, he packed his few things in a pair of pillowcases he pulled from those on his bed. These, too, he would send back to the library unexplained. After astonishment, shock, and shame came rage like a wind that’s had a run from upriver. So what if he met her in the entry? she who said she was his friend, with whom he had shared amusing observations, and whom she had called “good boy” more than a few times; yet who had attacked him with unsheathed claws, causing him to knock over the milk, which was only a little milk after all, good to soften a butter cookie, and did no damage, but spill as in the proverb, which implied that shrieking about a little thing like that was unmannerly and, what’s more, pointless and could have the most inconvenient and unfortunate consequences.

And calling his car a … a piece of waste wasn’t a bit nice either, even if it was a wreck, because after all it did its work and kept its promise to turn its wheels and keep to the road — he was through the entry, out the door — Close it closely, he advised himself, close it softly, no horrid slam such as he — the neighborhood — had already had to suffer, and he was oops … slipping a little on the curved and dipping sidewalk as he made his way down the rise, a sack on each shoulder — some Santa — why had it happened? but — another thought made its presence felt — sleet showered him like rice — if the car wouldn’t go for him now, it wouldn’t go for Miriam either, when she wanted to call upon the baby rising in Deborah’s belly and exchange recipes and give her daughter her gosh-darned advice. There is some sweetness in the sourest grapes.

He never locked his car, not the driver’s door or the trunk, and he was grateful for that neglect now. The trunk, though, wouldn’t open, deformed as it was, so he had to toss his pillowcases into the backseat. An onset of shivers overtook him. It was cold, the car was cold, the seat as cold as an enamel sink, his cheek bitten by particles of ice, and his ears were burning, maybe from her sounds, maybe from the wind. He felt keys heavy and cold in his pocket: house key, library key, car key, mom’s key … cold, and he was scarcely dressed. His hands hurt while on the wheel. Its cold cut through flesh and bones that were no longer fingers. There was a laugh in the sound of the starting car — Witch Hazel’s laugh — it coughed, she laughed, it ran, and he bungled the clutch into gear so the car lurched from its curbside onto the street and immediately began to wobble down the hill toward town.

Lord. Lights, he thought. One worked. It looked like one was working. He could see a house lunge out of the dark at him as the beam swept along the sidewalk. Joseph refused to drive at night. Before this, that is, he had refused. He pumped the brakes as he had learned he had to do to slow the machine on icy streets, and the Bumbler squeaked like a conversation held between rusty hinges. He knew one thing for certain: he didn’t dare get stopped. First he drove below speed out of caution and then sped down the road out of fear and finally settled in at thirty-five as the safest. But the lone light was a beacon. The police would surely see it. And then he would be arrested for having an unsafe vehicle and no proper license and heaven knows what crimes the Major may have accused him of, for she was someone known and trusted in the town and would be believed. Without lights he could only crawl, and as he left the limits of the city the stark darkness of thick woods and plowed fields closed in until he turned his one eye back on.

A car came at him blazingly bright and blindingly haloed. Then blinked before it passed. What was that? what did that mean? Sometimes he saw the white line. Sometimes he saw a tree, a fence, a highway sign before the road turned, and he swung just in time to follow its course. He was too cold to know now just how cold he was. The windshield wept and the wipers weren’t working. He heard himself say Oh God oh gosh as he drove, growing small and losing his hold on Joseph altogether.

Whoa. He was traveling up a hilly dirt lane. He didn’t remember this. The road had gone the other way. Joey stopped and backtracked in a series of jerks and consternations as if retreating between deep ditches or climbing down a ladder leaning in a well, seeing only where he shouldn’t go, since ahead of him was entirely behind. He realized, in the midst of this, that he needed to pee. His bladder, he believed, had shrunk to the size of a prune. Tears of frustration felt like frost on his face. He halted the car but left it running and relieved himself in a stream against the side of something. It was covered with weeds and wouldn’t mind. Then he threw up, too. Mostly milk. Good boy, Joey said, wiping his mouth as far as his eyes. Good boy. The rest of his drive continued on the back of the night’s mare.

The lights of Woodbine were reassuring. He stalled the car in front of his mother’s house. Now it would have to be his house, too. It coughed as if killed. What next? What next? He dreaded the fuss that was about to ensue. Women. Major Miriam Miss Moss Debbie Miss Spiky Madame Mieux … Women. Mieux and Marjorie, Miss Moss and Miriam … Women. Mieux and Major, Moss and Mizz Spike, Debbie dear what have you done? He sat quite still in the driver’s seat until he got the joke, got out, and walked with slow deliberation to the house. He had a key for that, didn’t he? Which key? The cold one with the long cold barrel. In Woodbine, no sleet this night.

His mother actually put her arms around him. Poor Joey, she said in a tone meant to soothe. He had already thrown up so he didn’t cry. He sighed. His chest shuddered so his mother thought he might be sobbing. Joey broke her hold to insist he wasn’t. It’s all right to be upset, she said, which ordinarily would have made him furious. He held her hands to his cheeks. See. Dry-eyed. Poor boy, she said. Joey ran to his room and stood near the bed in despair. The bed … He couldn’t sit there. Eventually, he chose the chair.

During the next few days, Miriam got around to reminding him that she had always maintained the majorette woman was up to no good, had deep designs, even though Joey had not told her what had really happened. He wasn’t sure himself. There was an unpleasant proportion at the bottom of this business. As the Major had screamed at Portho, Marjorie had screamed at him. And he had been kicked out into the street the way Portho … the way Portho had been …

with lowlife language …

kicked …

along with his car …

into the street …

actually, Joey had been booted

out of town.

Like a penny in a pudding, the truth sank in. The Major’s yell had been intended to turn all blame toward him. No one else would hear his protest — Unhand me, Madame — they would only hear her cry as she defended herself from his … advances. Joey’s innocence made him guilty once again. So Portho may have been innocent, too, asleep behind the fold of his magazine to be suddenly awakened by a familiar perfume or drift of hair across his cheek … the possessive cup of her hands felt through the fur of his face. Yet Joey had placed his mother’s hands upon his frozen cheeks. Suppose Marjorie had simply been making a friendly, a comforting, a cheek-warming gesture he had then rejected in obnoxiously theatrical terms. That was another upsetting element in all this: the way the “unhand me” expression had apparently leaped from the page into some hole in his head only to pop from his mouth in a moment of startle.

How unexpected? Hadn’t he viewed the milk and cookies with some apprehension? Why would anyone be suspicious of such a harmless gift? or his all-too-ready hire, the handy offer of a spare room, its more-than-reasonable rent? Or the friendly chats or the fond banter? Joey had to admit he had found the shelter of her wing pleasant enough. Looking back, however … Perhaps their relationship had been adding to a different sum. And he had sensed that.