Horace Afoot Read online

  “I have a question or two I’d like to ask.” He takes out a handkerchief, removes his hat, wipes his forehead and the interior band of the hat. “You reported a break-in last night.”

  I nod. A jackhammer pounds away in the distance, a road crew at the top of the street. A dog barks. These distant sounds are amplified by the detective’s hard breathing. He looks scorched and uncomfortable beneath his suit and jowly grin. He replaces the hat on his head. “What was stolen?” he asks.

  “My journal.”

  “And have you noticed anything else missing?”

  “No.”

  “Just the notebook?”

  “Just the notebook.”

  “That’s a strange thing for a thief to take. Don’t you think?” Ross slowly folds his handkerchief and tucks it into the pocket of his jacket. “The Schroeder boy been bothering you a lot lately?”

  “So you know about him. Good. The little fucker should be locked up.” I pick up the empty laundry basket and swing it to let the water fly. A small arc of droplets lands in the grass with a pleasing little sound.

  “What do you think he wants with your notebook?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “How does he even know about it?”

  “I’d like to know that myself.”

  “I guess you write down your thoughts and such in it.”

  “Yes and no.”

  “What kind of stuff do you write in it?”

  I rearrange the clothes on the line, considering how and whether I should answer.

  “That’s what most people do, isn’t it?” He takes a small pad from his shirt pocket and holds it up. “That’s what I do with mine. Take notes. Record impressions. Couldn’t do my work without it.”

  “I recite.”

  Ross tucks the pad back into his pocket. “I don’t follow.”

  “From memory. I recite passages, texts I’ve learned.”

  Ross nods, a look of puzzled appreciation. “What kinds of texts?”

  “All kinds of texts.”

  “The Bible?”

  “Ancient poetry and philosophy, mostly.”

  Ross’s eyebrows arch and he nods again as though to say, my, my, but aren’t we … strange. I continue rearranging the clothes on the line, wondering what he is piecing together in his detective brain. For the briefest moment I’m tempted to invite him to sit down with me in the grass—or, better, on my front porch, my stoa—and discuss it. I might explain to him that my preoccupation with ancient texts isn’t as much an exercise in memory as it is an effort to construct—or reconstruct—a self. I might explain that nothing resonates more clearly or more truly, nothing creates a fuller sense of being, than the words and phrases that cycle through me; that my essence is memory and that the content of this memory is identical to the content of my being. I might tell him that I believe he too is a sum of texts and that to know them is to know himself, and I might recite to him the opening of the John Gospel, a text that I have no doubt already resides within him—At the beginning of time the Word already was; and God had the Word abiding with him, and the Word was God. He abode, at the beginning of time, with God. That you don’t even have to believe in God to know this about the Word, and finally that, this being the case, we are epigones, all of us, and thus may—no, must—choose the texts we live by.

  “A personal question.” Ross holds up a finger. “Just one.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “What is a rich, educated, middle-aged dude like you doing in a place like this?” He gestures toward the house, the yard, a fat smile breaking across his face.

  I have to think for a minute, and we stand facing each other beside the clothesline. Sheets billow gently. Ross’s stentorian breathing is as audible as the breeze. I swing the plastic basket once more and watch the tiny arc of water disappear in a neat, parabolic curve. “I like it here.”

  The detective, grinning, shrugs his heavy shoulders. “Just asking,” he says.

  Two squirrels scamper across the far corner of the lawn and up into a tree. I watch them with feigned interest.

  Ross continues eyeing me from a discreet, detectively angle. “I thought folks like you preferred big cities, apartments. You don’t fit here. Know what I’m saying?”

  “You didn’t come here to talk demographics, did you?”

  His expression turns serious. One hand disappears into his pocket; he shifts his weight, paunch hanging over his belt. “I’ll get to the point,” he says. “What does that boy—assuming he was the one who broke in last night—what does he want with you?”

  “How the hell should I know? He’s been pestering me for weeks.”

  “How long you been living here?”

  “Since the spring.”

  The detective shakes a handful of change in his pocket.

  “He started coming around in the beginning, but I made it pretty clear I wasn’t going to indulge him.”

  The detective rocks back on his heels, jingling. “Far as you’re concerned, then, he’s just trying to get some attention.”

  “I don’t know what he wants. He ought to be locked up.”

  “And the notebooks—that’s just something personal he can lay his hands on. Like a souvenir. Know what I’m saying?”

  “Who knows?” I swing the laundry basket again. “The kid gives me the creeps. He tried to break in here a week or so ago, but I chased him off.”

  “I read the report.”

  “Who else is he harassing?”

  “You’re the only one been complaining.”

  “Why don’t you just go and arrest the little bastard?”

  An indulgent smile. Ross takes his hand from his pocket, extends it, and we shake. “Thanks, man. You’ve told me what I needed.”

  “I have?” We walk together around the side of the house. “How’s Jane Doe doing?” I ask.

  “As a matter of fact, she’s gone home,” Ross says.

  “She’s home? I thought nobody knew who she was.”

  “We knew who she was. They had to keep her until she knew who she was. Couple of days ago it all came back to her. Except she still can’t remember who attacked her or how she ended up in that cornfield.”

  We are standing by the front porch. Ross’s car is a white unmarked police cruiser with an enormous antenna bent and clamped down to one side of the roof.

  “Who is she?” I ask.

  The detective glances at me, then looks toward his car. “Let me ask you something.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Did you see anyone else in the field that day?” The tone of his voice and his look demand that I try to remember.

  “I heard shots. Then I saw her. That’s all.”

  “Then what?”

  “I told you before.”

  “Tell me again.”

  “I approached her. She let me untie her, and then I gave her my shirt.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I flagged down a car.”

  “The first car that came by?”

  “Yes. The first car.”

  “So. Until that car came along it was you and her alone by the side of the road. Nobody else.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you didn’t hear any more shooting?”

  “No.” I put down the laundry tub and lean against the frayed and rotting edges of the porch floorboards. “I told you everything already. What’s the point of going over it again?”

  Ross takes out his handkerchief, tilts the brim of his hat back, and wipes his forehead. “Just routine,” he says unconvincingly.

  “Routine,” I repeat.

  “You sure you remember it exactly?”

  “How many times do you want me to repeat myself?”

  Ross folds his handkerchief carefully into a small triangle and tucks it back into his pocket. I watch him, thinking for the first time how strange it is that he is a detective. With his big, soft grin and his rumpled looks he’d pass for a preacher or a school principal. “Yo
u see,” he says, extending his hand for another handshake, “it might be just like you say. And you didn’t see anyone else out there that day.” We shake, and he holds onto my hand for a beat longer than seems normal. “But that doesn’t mean there was nobody there and that they didn’t see you.” He turns to leave but changes his mind. “By the way, I did a little check back at the station, like you invited me to.” A broad, shrewd smile flashes across his face. “Mind if I ask you a question?”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Did you change your name because you just didn’t like it? Or are you hiding from someone?”

  “It’s none of your business.” I try to sound evenhanded, but the words come out with a defensive edge.

  “I checked it out. You’re clean, no record. But you did change your name a few years back. That’s why I have to ask.”

  “I figured.”

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Blake. Mr. William Blake.” He winks. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

  I watch him as he lumbers to his car and sinks behind the wheel in that big-man way that looks so uncomfortable and ill fitting. The engine roars to life. He yanks the gearshift into position and drives off. It isn’t until he’s gone that I realize he never told me who Jane Doe was.

  The air is clogged with heat, humidity, and the pulsating chirrup of insects high in the trees. I position the reclining lawn chair in the middle of the yard and lie down. It barely holds my weight. The rotting plastic creaks like dried, worn-out leather.

  The detective’s visit has settled somewhere near the back of my mind. Discovering that I was once William Blake has aroused his suspicion. How sweet I roam’d from field to field and tasted all the summer’s pride…. It will be amusing when he realizes how irrelevant the discovery is. What do things look like to him? I wonder. The world as puzzle—traces that lead to traces, clues to clues, where everything that doesn’t fit must contradict. Telling him I shed William Blake because I was tired of being William Blake will not satisfy him. People don’t just shed names like that, he’d say. And people like me don’t live in shabby, run-down houses in out-of-the-way places like this, either. Not unless there’s a reason; there has to be a reason. And he’ll always be on the lookout for it. I should feel sorry for him. Paranoia is the outcome of vigilance.

  I might have spared myself this attention had I not tried to help Jane Doe. There’s an argument for autarkeia: the serenity of not caring. Peace and quiet. I aspire to a state of complete detachment but find myself tugged back again and again by circumstances, conventions, and a weakness for wanting to be good, which, like a weakness for wine, only requires a desire to feel good. Futile inoculations all. I close my eyes and imagine myself running across the yard flapping my arms, lifting off, soaring on gusts of wind, crashing down, and lifting off again.

  When I open my eyes the afternoon has slipped on. The sun has moved, leaving me in the lip of shade cast by the tall stand of trees at the edge of the woods. The clothes on the line are dry. As I gather them, the reddened skin on my chest and arms and face stings, feels cracked.

  I carry the bundle of clothes upstairs, drop it on the bed, and begin to fold. The cloth feels rough and warm. I fold with deliberate, pared-down movements: right arm over left, pants legs smooth, one half fold, half again, press flat.

  When the clothes are folded I make the bed. The little room is suffused with freshness and calm. I stand in the doorway and look into it as if through a lens: bed along the wall with telephone and Selected Philosophical Essays tucked underneath, mattress slightly sagging; a small round carpet, colors faded; a small table I found at some curb, dragged home, and cleaned up, which now it looks expensive and antique; the double-sashed windows through which the sun is slanting so that the whole room has the humble atmosphere of still life, a spirit of place, like van Gogh’s room at Aries—or Boethius’s prison cell.

  The just-so feeling inspires me to go downstairs, put some rice and beans on, and open a bottle of wine. The pots boil, and the afternoon fades to early evening. I sit at the kitchen table, mesmerized by a glowing sense of calm.

  The bottle empties. My silent lucubrations give way to alarm. I get up. Pace from room to room. Wine and sunburn combine into feverish restlessness. I go upstairs, look in the mirror. My face and chest are crimson, the skin hot to the touch. My tongue is red, my teeth are red, stained with wine. My whole being is stained, florid and flushed, red and toxic.

  I lie uncovered on my newly made bed, too sore for the weight of even a single sheet. In the morning my chest, legs, face, and arms are aflame, swollen with blisters. In the mirror I look like a napalm victim. My lips are whitish, eyelids so swollen I have to tilt my head to see in the mirror. I drink glass after glass of water. It trickles down my chin and chest and belly with flaming cold, seeps into the marsh of pubis, the only unburned part of me. It seems to belong to another body.

  The walk to the hospital should take only half an hour. This calculation happens without forethought. I go into the bedroom and sit gingerly on the edge of the bed, rip apart the seam of my shorts, and manage to slip them on, feeling made from cracked plaster. The hospital gown I wore home the other day hangs on the back of the door. I slip it on, leaving it open at the front.

  It is dawn, soft light and loud chirping high in the trees. I make my way up the front path to the street, walking like some ghoul from the movies: joints rigid, fingers splayed. A few yards up the street I turn back and return to the house, feeling ridiculous, swearing at myself as I go. Goddamnit. Goddamnit. Goddamnit.

  The telephone is under the bed.

  “Memorial Hospital.”

  “Are there any doctors there who will make a house call?”

  “You’ll have to come to the emergency room to see a doctor, sir.”

  “I can’t get there. Is there someone who could come to my house?”

  “I’m afraid not. Do you need an ambulance?”

  “No. Just a doctor.”

  “Have you been injured?”

  “Sort of, yes. I’m sunburned.”

  A pause. “You’d better come in if it’s that bad, sir. Do you need an ambulance?”

  I hang up. The thought of being carted off makes me feel even more stupid. I go to the bathroom sink for more water, remembering that burns and dehydration go together. Between mouthfuls I consider the prospects. Drink plenty of water. Lie in bed. Try to sleep.

  Hours pass. I lurch back and forth from the crisp white sheets of the bed to the faucet in the bathroom. Selected Philosophical Essays is no diversion at all. I try to muster all the indifference I am capable of. It seems the only given left to me.

  The telephone rings, jarring me up. I reach under the bed and answer on the second ring.

  “Hello?” Mohr’s voice is unmistakable.

  “Yes?”

  “Quintus Horatius Flaccus?”

  “Hello, Mr. Mohr. How did you get my number?”

  A pause. “From the form you filled out at the library.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “You don’t mind me calling, do you?”

  “No.” I try to sit up but can’t do it without bending at the waist. A painful maneuver. “I’m just a little surprised. Nobody has ever called me here.”

  “I am honored to be the first.” He laughs at his sarcasm. “I was calling, firstly, to say thank you. I enjoyed myself the other evening. Especially the wine.”

  “I’m glad.” I say this with enough of a monotone to let him know that he needn’t continue.

  “But that’s not why I’m calling.”

  “No?”

  “I wanted to tell you that I have just received a letter from Dr. Palmer. A funny coincidence, don’t you think?”

  “Who?”

  “Don’t you remember? The archaeologist I told you about? The one who inquired about the pipe collection?”

  “Oh yes. The mound. I’d forgotten all about it.” I sit up. The ruse of an old librarian. To become more interested in your res
earch than you yourself are.

  “She writes that she has located the Wilkington pipe collection.”

  I had been right in the beginning. The man does lack all intuitive sense. Either that, or he has calculated that taking an interest in my interest will result in further contact between us. I listen as he tells me about the professor’s efforts to locate the collection. He speaks as though the information will settle all questions that may be plaguing me. “It happens that the collection is for sale. The university is going to purchase it, and they want the Wilkington papers too.”

  “Can you sell them?”

  “You haven’t been listening,” Mohr says with a tsk tsk.

  “I have a small problem.”

  “Yes. You do,” he cuts in with a new, familiar tone in his voice. I realize that this isn’t a calculation, it is an act of friendship. I lie back down, resting the receiver between my ear and the pillow. “I was thinking that perhaps you would like to help me.”

  “Help you? With what?”

  “Microfilming the Wilkington Archive.”

  “Microfilming?”

  “It’s complicated, legally. The papers can’t be sold, so the university is going to pay to have them microfilmed. I was thinking that perhaps you would like to help me. There’s a lot to be done before they can be filmed.”

  A pause. The intensity of light coming into the room has started to bother me. But drawing the shade would plunge the room into darkness and cut off the circulation of air. I can have light and air or darkness and no circulation. Mohr continues talking. “Of course you would be paid for the work.” The voice seems distant. The receiver is wedged into the pillow, and my ear has slipped away from it. “Mrs. Entwhistle is too busy, and the job is too much for me to do all alone.”

  “Mr. Mohr.”

  “Yes?”

  I take the telephone and press it to my ear, propping myself up on one elbow. “Would you take me to the hospital?”

  “Good Lord. What is wrong?”

  “I’m burned.”

  “My God. What happened? Never mind. I’ll be right. Over.”

  I lie flat and look straight up at the ceiling. Mastering pain means learning to accept it, but in spite of my best efforts, the searing won’t go away. Autarkeia is not a theory. It is a state. With help on the way, I manage to have proven that much. As much as I would like to, I have no tolerance for pain because I have no attention span and can’t bend my mind away from myself. I’m too narcissistic and have no real experience of pain and don’t know how much worse it could be. And I am greedy for sympathy. At any rate, there is a vast difference between lying in pain and waiting for help. Strangely, with help now on the way, I want to feel worse. It occurs to me that I am not burned enough.