The Wapshot Chronicle - John Cheever [95]
“See it?” Grimes whispered. “See it? Not everybody knows about it. That’s potter’s field. That’s where they bury us. These two men got sick last month. Charlie Dobbs and Henry Fosse. They both died one night. I had an idea what they were doing then but I wanted to make sure. I came out here that morning and I hid in the woods. Sure enough, about ten o’clock this fat fellow comes along with a wheelbarrow. He’s got Charlie Dobbs and Henry Fosse in it. Stark naked. Dumped on top of one another. Upside down. They didn’t like each other, Leander. They never even spoke to one another. But he buried them together. Oh, I couldn’t look. I couldn’t watch it. I’ve never felt right after that. If I die in the night they’ll dump me naked into a hole side by side with somebody I never knew. Go back and tell them, Leander. Tell them at the newspapers. You were always a good talker. Go back and tell them.…”
“Yes, yes,” Leander said. He was backing through the woods, away from the clearing and his hysterical friend. They climbed the stone wall and walked through the corn patch. Grimes gripped Leander’s arm. “Go back and tell them, tell them at the newspapers. Save me, Leander. Save me.…”
“Yes, I will, Grimes, yes, I will.”
Side by side the old men returned through the garden and Leander said good-by to Grimes in front of the central building. Then he went down the driveway, obliged to struggle to give the impression that he was not hurried. He was relieved when he got outside the gates. It was a long time before the bus came along and when one did appear he shouted, “Hello there. Stop stop, stop for me.”
He could not help Grimes; he could not, he realized when the bus approached St. Botolphs and he saw a sign, VISIT THE S.S. TOPAZE, THE ONLY FLOATING GIFT SHOPPE IN NEW ENGLAND, help himself. He hoped that the tea party would be over but when he approached the farm he found many cars parked on the lawn and the sides of the driveway. He swung wide around the house and went in at the back door and up the stairs to his room. It was late then and from his window he could see the Topaze—the twinkling of candles—and hear the voices of ladies drinking tea. The sight made him feel that he was being made ridiculous; that a public spectacle was being made of his mistakes and his misfortunes. He remembered his father then with tenderness and fear as if he had dreaded, all along, some end like Aaron’s. He guessed the ladies would talk about him and he only had to listen at the window to hear. “He drove her onto Gull Rock in broad daylight,” Mrs. Gates said as she went down the path to the wharf. “Theophilus thinks he was drunk.”
What a tender thing, then, is a man. How, for all his crotch-hitching and swagger, a whisper can turn his soul into a cinder. The taste of alum in the rind of a grape, the smell of the sea, the heat of the spring sun, berries bitter and sweet, a grain of sand in his teeth—all of that which he meant by life seemed taken away from him. Where were the serene twilights of his old age? He would have liked to pluck out his eyes. Watching the candlelight on his ship—he had brought her home through gales and tempests—he felt ghostly and emasculated. Then he went to his bureau drawer and took from under the dried rose and the wreath of hair his loaded pistol. He went to the window. The fires of the day were burning out like a conflagration in some industrial city and above the barn cupola he saw the evening star, as sweet and round as a human tear. He fired his pistol out of the window and then fell down on the floor.
He had underestimated the noise of teacups and ladies’ voices and no one on the Topaze heard the shot—only Lulu, who was in the kitchen, getting some hot water. She climbed the back stairs and hurried down the hall to his room and screamed when she opened the door. When he heard her voice Leander got to his knees. “Oh, Lulu, Lulu, you weren’t the one I wanted to hurt. I didn’t mean you. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“Are you all right, Leander? Are you hurt?”
“I’m foolish,” Leander said.
“Oh,