Armadillos & Old Lace Page 16

  “... two gentlemen callers in one day,” Hattie was saying. I thought that was pushing it a bit.

  “Who was the other one?” Elder asked.

  “Now don’t be jealous,” she teased. Ever the ingenue.

  “I’m not jealous,” said Elder patiently. “What’s he look like?”

  “He was very young,” she said. “Wore a big black cowboy hat. Smoked a cigar. Of course, he didn’t smoke it in here, what with my oxygen and all.”

  I was getting a bit jealous myself that Hattie was so voluble with her second gentleman caller.

  “Of course not,” Elder said. “What’d he want?”

  “Who?” said Hattie.

  That’s my girl.

  “The cowboy with the cigar,” said Elder helpfully.

  “He wanted to know about the girls. The girls in the Cotillion Ball of 1938,” she said dreamily.

  “Well, isn’t that something. That’s why I brought you these.”

  “Oh, lord, how beautiful! Are they all for me?”

  “They’re all for you, Hattie.”

  “Thank you so much. You’re so kind.”

  “Here, I’ll set ’em on the table where you can see ’em.”

  This guy was one sick chicken.

  “So nice of you to think of me.”

  “Oh, they’re not from me, Hattie. They’re from a friend of yours.”

  There was a brief, rather sinister silence as Hattie possibly realized she had damn few friends left alive in this world.

  “Can’t figure it out?” he said. “They’re from Susannah. Susannah Elder. You and your high-and-mighty little friends ruined her life for her all those many years ago. Now she’s payin’ you back. You pathetic, fucked-up, miserable old bitch, I’m sending you to hell.”

  I charged through the door just in time to see Boyd Elder snip the oxygen lines and then turn the pair of garden shears toward Hattie Blocker’s throat.

  CHAPTER 44

  “It was a valley very similar to this one,” Uncle Tom was telling the children, “but it was thousands of miles away and thousands of years ago.”

  The ranchers were all seated on benches on the tennis courts, gathered like multitudes around Uncle Tom as he began his story.

  “There were two brothers who lived at opposite ends of the valley and they farmed their fields together, growing large crops of grain. One brother had a wife and five children and the other brother was not married and lived alone. Each year at harvest time the two brothers gathered in the grain together from the fields and divided the harvest equally between them.” Marcie and I were sitting on a bench in back and I was fighting to ignore the dull throbbing pain in my left arm. It had been stitched up earlier that evening at Sid Peterson Hospital in Kerrville and it was wrapped in a fashion not dissimilar to that of the mummy of the Pharaoh Esophagus. But that was another of Uncle Tom’s stories.

  “That night after the first day of harvest,” Uncle Tom was saying, “the bachelor brother could not sleep. He lay awake tossing and turning and he thought, ‘If God was so good to give me all this grain I should share a little more with my brother, who has a wife and five children to feed.’ So in the middle of the night the bachelor brother got up, went to his bam, filled his wheelbarrow full of grain, and wheeled it across the valley where he put the grain in his brother’s bam. He did this five more times that night, and then went back to bed and slept peacefully.”

  “That’s more than I’ll be doing,” I said.

  “So tell me what happened,” said Marcie.

  “You mean you’ve heard Tom’s story?”

  “About eighty times.”

  “Good. Let’s hear it again.”

  “Just about the time the bachelor brother was going to sleep,” Uncle Tom continued, “the married brother was tossing and turning and finally he said to his wife, ‘You know, God has given us so much we ought to share a bit with my brother. We’ve got the kids to help us in our old age. He has no one.’ And the married brother went to his bam, loaded up his wheelbarrow in the dark, and made a number of trips himself across the valley, depositing each wheelbar-row-load in his brother’s barn. Then he went back home and fell into a deep, peaceful sleep.

  “In the morning both brothers went out to their barns and each saw that the grain he’d given to his brother had been fully replenished. Each believed that a miracle had occurred, but as they worked together in the fields that day neither felt quite right about mentioning it.

  “That night the bachelor brother couldn’t sleep. He felt if the Lord had been that good to him he could give his brother half the grain that was in his bam. So he got up, and like the previous night, delivered the grain to his married brother’s barn, and then went home to sleep. About that time the married brother was thinking the same thing. He went to his barn, loaded up in the dark, and proceeded to make three or four trips across the valley to his brother’s barn. Then he, too, went to sleep.”

  “You’d think with all this video shit today,” I said, “this story’d put these kids to sleep, too.”

  “No way,” said Marcie. “They’re riveted.”

  “In the morning both brothers went to their barns and, lo and behold, another miracle had occurred. The barns were just as full as they’d been before each brother had loaded his wheelbarrow. They worked in the fields that day side by side a little uneasy about things, but they didn’t say a word to each other about it.

  “The third night there was a full moon. The bachelor brother again couldn’t sleep. He went to his barn and thought if the Lord could give him this second miracle he could give yet half again of his harvest to his married brother with all of those mouths to feed. He filled up his wheelbarrow and began to trundle it across the valley to his brother’s barn.

  “At the same time, his brother began tossing and turning and finally decided that if the Lord had given him this second miracle he’d give half again of what he had to his bachelor brother who had no one to look after him. So the married brother went to his barn, loaded up his wheelbarrow, and headed out across the valley.

  “It was then, in the middle of the valley, in the moonlight, that the two brothers met. Each was pushing his wheelbarrow of grain to the other one’s bam. And as they stood there in the bright moonlight they both realized what had occurred. It was, indeed, a miracle. It was the miracle of brotherly love.”

  I thought of my own brother, Roger, in Maryland. Married with three kids. We loved each other but we’d become somewhat distant in any number of little ways over the years. We wanted to be in closer touch and we’d both vowed to do something about it, but life often gets in the way. It would be nice if we could just load up our wheelbarrows and head out across the valley.

  “There was a mountain overlooking this little valley where the brothers lived,” Tom was concluding. “It was not the biggest mountain around, nor was it especially the most beautiful. But there are those who say that the brothers did not go unnoticed. It is said that what happened in the little valley below was the reason God chose Mount Sinai upon which to give Moses the Ten Commandments.”

  I confess to having had a tear in my eye upon the conclusion of Tom’s story. I don’t know if it was the story itself or the way Tom had told it. It might’ve been for my brother, or possibly, for all of my brothers. Or maybe it was just the pain in my goddamn arm.

  CHAPTER 45

  Later that night, after the kids were in their bunks getting ready to go to sleep, Tom, Marcie, Sambo, and I sat out on the white benches on the tennis courts under the stars. I was giving them a brief rundown, so to speak, of my afternoon at Purple Hills.

  “... so I’m tearing down this hallway shrieking like a wounded faggot—there’s blood splattering from my arm all over the wall, giving the whole thing a nice Manson-family-ambience—and this totally crazed maniac with a ponytail and a pair of garden shears is ten steps behind me screaming that he’s going to send me to hell.”

  “Sounds unpleasant,” said Marcie.<
br />
  “Sounds like the perfect time to have asked him, ‘Why are you following me?’ ” said Tom.

  Sambo, who was quite well attuned to Tom’s humor, was smiling like a horse-collar.

  “Well, I knew that already,” I said, laughing in spite of the rather hideous memory. “Susannah Elder was the girl with no face in the old photograph. Boyd was her son, who the sheriff has since learned was her illegitimate son. We also now know that Susannah, as a result of the ensuing scandal, was thrown out of the DRT.”

  “Just like you were thrown out of the Peace Corps,” said Marcie.

  “ ‘De-selected’ is the word we like to use. And I got back in and became their fair-haired boy and spent two years in the jungles of Borneo before finally having to be returned to my own culture.”

  “Let’s redirect the conversation back to Susannah,” said Marcie.

  “Yes, well, she never made it to Borneo. Once you get eighty-sixed from one of these high society-type outfits you never get back in. You’re lucky if they ever speak to you again. And that’s what Boyd Elder claims happened to his mother. She became depressed, alcoholic, suicidal. He remembers strange men visiting his house at all hours when he was a child. When this happened she used to lock him in the closet for hours at a time but he could hear what was going on. He told all this to the sheriff.”

  “Mama sang bass, Daddy sang tenor,” said Marcie. “We had a very dysfunctional family.”

  “The sheriff wasn’t all that sympathetic, either,”

  I said. “After all, the guy’s whacked seven little old ladies without blinking an eye.”

  “But why,” said Tom, “did Elder wait over fifty years to exact his revenge?”

  “Well, that one’s kind of funny,” I said. “The sheriff did some checking this afternoon right after Elder was booked. His mother finally hit the bottom of the lifelong downward spiral that began with her being tossed out of the DRT in disgrace. She finally drank herself to death a little over nine months ago. Just a short time after that, Boyd Elder set out on his campaign of almost biblical vindication.”

  “So why did he have to wait until his mother died?” said Marcie. “If he’d always felt this way, why didn’t he act sooner?”

  “I’ll tell you what he told the sheriff: T don’t want Mother to think I’m a bad boy.’ ”

  “That shows a certain degree of thoughtfulness,” said Marcie, getting up from the bench. “I’ve got to check on how the Sunflowers are doing with their marshmallow roast. But congratulations, big brother. I’m glad you caught the bad guy.”

  After Marcie left I turned to Tom and started to finish the story about my experiences at Purple Hills.

  “... so the guy is gaining on me in the hallway and I can hear his screaming and now I can hear the garden shears clicking and as we thunder past I see two little old ladies standing there and I hear one of them say to the other, ‘Oh, look! It’s the Senior Olympics!’ ”

  Tom laughed, grabbed both my cheeks with his hands, and gently shook my head in a gesture of love I’d only seen him perform occasionally upon Earl, Roger, Marcie, Sambo (in this case, ears), or anyone else who was lucky enough to be the recipient of his blessing.

  “You done good, sonny boy,” he said. “Now I’ve got to go to a meeting with the counselors-in-training down at the dining hall.”

  “But wait,” I said. “Let me tell you what happened when Elder finally caught up with me.”

  “I can’t keep the C.I.T.’s waiting,” said Tom, as he walked off the tennis court. “Tell me the rest of it tomorrow.”

  “... so anyway,” I said to Sam, “I’m on my back at the end of the hallway and Elder’s got his knee in my stomach and he’s making swooping motions with his hands trying to snip my nose off and I’m just barely holding him back. All of a sudden I see an old man standing in a corner and I shout to him, ‘Call the police! Call a nurse! Get help! This guy’s trying to kill me!’

  “So blood is gushing out of my arm and Elder’s eyes are rolling back in his head and the garden shears are snipping, snipping, snipping about an inch away from my nose and the old man—he had a nice, lilting Irish tenor, as I recall—starts singing:

  I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy

  A Yankee Doodle do or die

  A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam

  Born on the Fourth of July!

  “Then I hear a tough woman’s voice shout, ‘Freeze, Elder, or I’ll blow your damned head off!’

  “Elder froze. So did I.

  “Moments later, after Elder was cuffed and taken away, I spoke to the sheriff.

  “ ‘Thanks,’ I said gratefully. ‘But how the hell did you ever find me here?’

  “ ‘It wasn’t too hard,’ she said. ‘I’ve had you tailed since you left my office this morning.’

  “The old man was still belting it out:

  Yankee Doodle went to London

  Just to ride the pony

  I am that Yankee Doodle Boy!!

  I am that Yankee Doodle Bo-y-y-y!!!

  “ ‘Can’t you shut him up?’ the sheriff said to a nurse.

  “The nurse shook her head.

  “ ‘No one’s ever been able to,’ she said.”

  I paused, my story over. At that precise moment an armadillo walked by the tennis court and Sam took out after him like an express train. I paced up and down the empty court for a while smoking a cigar. There was no one there, but perhaps because of Tom’s story, the valley almost seemed to have a presence in it. It was to that presence that I finally spoke.

  “Why do I get the feeling,” I said, “that after all these years we’re all still playing in the Negro leagues?”

  EPILOGUE

  New York City

  “Four men in an Indian restaurant,” I said, two weeks later as I looked around the table. “What are the chances that all of us will lead happy, fulfilling lives?”

  “Fucking remote,” said Ratso, “if the past is any indicator.”

  “Or the present,” said McGovern.

  “Oh, there’s always a chance,” said Jim Bessman. Jim was a talented freelance writer and possibly the only optimistic vegetarian I’d ever met in my life.

  “There’s always a chance,” I said, “that Ratso will pick up the check.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” said McGovern. “In fact I think I’ll have a Vodka McGovern.” He signaled the tall, turbaned bartender, who bowed and came over to the table. It was a fairly coochi-poochi-boomalini Indian restaurant.

  “I’ll take a Vodka McGovern,” said McGovern. “A Vodka McGovern,” said the bartender smoothly, as if somebody ordered one every night. “And how would you like this Vodka McGovern?”

  “Equal portions,” said McGovern, “of your best vodka, just-squeezed orange juice—from Israeli or California oranges, if possible. Israeli oranges are the best in the world—”

  “Of course,” Ratso and I said in unison. The bartender mumbled something to the waiter in his native dialect.

  “—and freshly charged club soda with a squeeze of lime. Just squeeze it, don’t bruise it.”

  The bartender was bowing his way away from the table, but McGovern wasn’t quite finished yet.

  “In a tall glass,” he called after him. “And stirred but not shaken.”

  The bartender nodded his head gravely. When you’re wearing a turban it’s hard to nod any other way.

  “Stirred but not shaken,” said Ratso. “That’s the way James Bond orders his drinks.”

  “Mr. Bond is not known to me,” said McGovern. “Speaking of James Bond,” said Jim Bessman, “it’s too bad that Rambam couldn’t join us tonight.”

  “Yeah,” said Ratso, looking up briefly from his tandoori chicken. “I was kind of hoping Heinrich Himmler could have dropped by as well.”

  “Saw a guy last night,” said McGovern as his Vodka McGovern arrived. “An old man. Looked just like Heinrich Himmler. So I said, ‘I don’t mean to offend you, but you look just like Heinrich Himmler.’
He says, ‘I am Heinrich Himmler. I’ve been living in Westchester for forty years and now I’m back and I’m gonna kill six million more Jews and three NFL players.’ ‘Who’re the three NFL players?’ I asked him. He says, ‘You see! Der Fuhrer was right! Nobody cares about the Jews!’ ”

  “Nobody cares about the Irish, either,” said Ratso.

  “Now that we’ve got that settled,” said Bessman, “where is Rambam?”

  “He’s in Lopbouri, Thailand,” I said. “Jumping.”

  “Jumping?” said McGovern. “Why can’t he jump right here in New York?”

  “I can think of a few places he could jump off'” said Ratso, “and at least one he could jump up.”

  “Not with the Royal Thai Paratroopers,” I said.

  There is a tasty pistachio ice cream dessert that many Indian restaurants feature. It is called kulfi. Unfortunately, “kulfi” is also the way most Indians pronounce the word “coffee.” This can sometimes make for a long, not to mention tedious, evening.

  “I’ll have some kulfi,” said Ratso to the waiter. “One kulfi” he said.

  “I’ll just have some coffee,” I said.

  “One kulfi,” he said.

  “You want coffee?” I asked Bessman.

  “I don’t drink coffee,” said Bessman, “but I’ll try some kulfi”

  “Two kulfis, one kulfi,” said the waiter.

  “I’ll try the kulfi” said McGovern, with a hearty Irish laugh that somewhat overwhelmed the subliminal sitar music.

  “You want kulfi?”

  “Yes. To go with the kulfi”

  “Okay,” said the waiter, “that’s three kulfis and two kulfis.”

  “Maybe I won’t have that kulfi” said Ratso. “I’m watching my diet. But I will have some coffee.”

  “Okay,” said the waiter, “that’s two kulfis and three kulfis.”

  “You know,” said Ratso after the waiter had gone away, “maybe I should’ve ordered decaf.”

  Later that night, in the light rain, Ratso bummed a cigar, and we walked through the Village together. Waiting to cross Sixth Avenue, I took out of my coat pocket a letter I’d received from the beekeeper and, shielding it from the rain with my cowboy hat, showed it to Ratso. He read it carefully, puffing on the cigar and shaking his head several times in some untitled emotion.