Gryphon_ New and Selected Stories - Charles Baxter [87]
Out through the front windows, Cooper saw the reassuring lights of the city, the lamplights shining out through the front windows, and the streetlights beginning to go on. A few children were playing on the sidewalks, hopscotch and tag, and in the sky a vapor trail from a jet was beginning to dissolve into orange wisps. What was the price one paid for loving one’s own life? He felt a tenderness toward existence and toward his own life, and felt guilty for that.
At the shelter, he let Billy out without saying good night. He watched the young man do his hop-and-skip walk toward the front door; then he put the car into gear and drove home. As he expected, Christine was waiting up for him and gave him a lecture, in bed, about guilty liberalism and bringing the slime element into your own home.
“That’s an exaggeration,” Cooper said. He was lying on his side of the bed, his hip touching hers. “That’s not what he was. I’m not wrong. I’m not.” He felt her lips descending over him and remembered how she always thought that his failures in judgment made him sensual.
Two days later he arrived at work before dawn and found Gilbert standing motionless in front of Cooper’s own baker’s bench. Cooper closed the door behind him and said, “Hey, Gilbert.”
“It’s all right,” Gilbert said. “I already called the cops.”
“What?”
Gilbert pointed. On the wood table were hundreds of pieces of broken glass from the scattered skylight in a slice-of-pie pattern, and, over the glass, a circle of dried blood the width of a teacup. Smaller dots of blood, like afterthoughts, were scattered around the bench and led across the floor to the cash register, which had been jimmied open. Cooper felt himself looking up. A bird of a type he couldn’t identify was perched on the broken skylight.
“Two hundred dollars,” Gilbert said, overpronouncing the words. “Somewhere somebody’s all cut up for a lousy two hundred dollars. I’d give the son of a bitch a hundred not to break in, if he’d asked. But you know what I really mind?”
“The blood,” Cooper said.
“Bingo.” Gilbert nodded, as he coughed. “I hate the idea of this guy’s blood in my kitchen, on the floor, on the table and over there in the mixing pans. I really hate it. A bakery. What a fucking stupid place to break into.”
“I told you so,” Christine said, washing Cooper’s face. Then she turned him around and ran the soapy washcloth down his back and over his buttocks.
August. Three days before Christine’s birthday. Cooper and his son were walking down Main Street toward a store called the Peaceable Kingdom to get Christine a present, a small stuffed pheasant that Alexander had had his eye on for many months. Alexander’s hand was in Cooper’s as they crossed at the corner, after waiting for the WALK sign to go on. Alexander had been asking Cooper for an exact definition of trolls, and how they differ from ghouls. And what, he wanted to know, what exactly is a goblin, and how are they born? In forests? Can they be born anywhere, like trolls?
Up ahead, squatting against the window of a sporting-goods store, was the man perpetually dressed in the filthy brown corduroy suit: James. His hands were woven together at his forehead, thumbs at temples, to shade his eyes against the sun. As Cooper and his son passed by, James spoke up. He did not ask for money. He said, “Hello, Cooper.”
“Hello, James,” Cooper said.
“Is this your boy?” He pulled his hands apart and pointed at Alexander.
“Yes.”
“Daddy,” Alexander said, tugging at his father’s hand.
“A fine boy,” James said, squinting. “Looks a bit like you.” The old man smelled as he had before: like a city dump, like everything.
“Thank you,” Cooper said, beaming. “He’s a handsome boy, isn’t he?”
“Indeed,” James said. “Would you like to hear a bit of the Gospels?”
“No, thank you, James,” Cooper said. “We’re on our way to get