Dry Bones (33 page)

He took a cab to Penn Station. He descended onto the capacious main concourse, with its vaulted, steel-trussed glass ceiling. He turned left, past the shoe-shine stand. It was manned by the same handsome Negro who’d been there since the war and was known as much for the glossy shine he delivered as for the flair he delivered it with, tossing the brush in the air, spinning around, and catching it before it hit the floor.

Dunne went downstairs and bought a ticket to Forest Hills. Several times more expensive than the subway but three times as fast, the trip on the Long Island Rail Road took barely twenty minutes. He asked a ticket clerk about the return address on the envelope. The clerk said the location was an apartment building only a short walk from the station.

The faux-Tudor neighborhood was leafy and quiet. Absent rain, warm beer, rumpled clothes, wilted presence of a place worn down by war, it aped rather than replicated an English town. He stopped in a florist shop to buy a modest bouquet.

He entered the apartment building and examined the names on the brass mailboxes. “Mrs. G.M. Pohl” was in M4. He proceeded through a sunny main-floor lobby decorated with framed prints of English squires and ladies hunting, dancing, and feasting. M4 was two doors down the corridor on the left.

He pressed the button on the door frame. Nothing. He pressed again. The peephole opened. A gray eyebrow and a pupil the color of an olive pit rose into the round space.

“Mrs. Pohl?” Suddenly self-conscious about the bouquet he was carrying, he moved it behind his back.

“Yes, what can I do for you?”

“My name is Fintan Dunne. I was a friend of your son’s.”

The eye sank away for an instant, returned. “My son?”

“Yes, Louis.”

“He’s deceased.”

“That’s why I’ve come.”

“Why?”

“Because I was out of town when he died and never got a chance to pay my respects in person.” He held the bouquet in front of his chest.

“What did you say your name is?”

“Fintan Dunne.”

“You sent me a note after Louis passed, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did.” Dunne hesitated to invite himself in but feared their entire conversation would be conducted garden-wall style. “And you wrote back.”

“Louis spoke highly of you.” The door slowly opened. “Come in, please.”

An old woman, tiny in stature and badly stooped, Mrs. Pohl steadied herself on a rubber-tipped cane, shuffling in mop-size slippers across rug-less floors. She must have had to stand tiptoe to see out the peephole. At the end of the hallway was a cluttered living room. Directly ahead was an artificial fireplace. On the mantel, amid a company of porcelain figurines of dancers and musicians, was a copper urn—the final resting place, Dunne presumed, of Louis Pohl’s ashes.

He handed her the flowers.

“How sweet of you, Mr. Dunne. I must put them in water immediately.” She went into the kitchen, slippers gliding noiselessly across the linoleum, and put water and the bouquet in a ceramic vase. “Would you join me for a cup of tea?”

He stood near the kitchen door. “I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”

“No trouble. I was about to make one for myself.” She held
the kettle under the faucet, half filled it with water, and settled it atop a burner on the stove. “Louis was a wonderful boy.”

“We met in the service.”

She came out of the kitchen, put the vase on the dining table, and went over to a hutch. She picked up a thick album, laid it on the table. She sat and put on her glasses. He stood next to her. She turned the thick, cardboard pages with bent, arthritic fingers.

“This was Louis when he was a little boy, Mr. Dunne.” She touched a gnarled finger to the faded photo of a chubby, thumb-sucking child propped up in a baby carriage. A petite woman in a flower-bedecked hat gripped the handlebars. In the background was a lawn dotted with picnickers. “My husband, George, took this in Prospect Park. ‘Fresh air is the best medicine’ was a favorite saying of his. We went to the park every Sunday in those days, rain or shine, no matter the season. George was like that. Everything regular and on schedule. That was the German in him.”

She turned the pages slowly. Some of the photos had become unglued. She asked Dunne to fetch a small jar of glue on the hutch. She reattached the photos, delicately pressing them onto the pages. She talked continuously, an uninterrupted commentary on the life and career of her only child, a quiet, cooperative boy whose intellect and academic prowess was a source of great pride to his parents.

“Here’s Louis when he graduated from high school. First in his class, with a scholarship to Columbia.”

Short and broad, unsmiling face topped by a mortarboard, Louis stood between beaming mother, expressionless father.

The kettle began to whistle. “Stay where you are,” Dunne said. “I’ll get the tea.”

“That’s kind of you, Mr. Dunne. The tea bags are in the canister next to the sink. The cups and saucers are in the cabinet above. The sugar is here on the table. There’s milk in the icebox. I prefer my tea plain.”

“I do, too.” He dropped the tea bags in the cups, poured in
the hot water. He opened the cabinet drawer between the refrigerator and stove and put spoons on the saucers. He used a tray he found in the dish rack to carry the cups to the table.

Mrs. Pohl was hunched over the album. She turned a page. Speaking in a voice so soft it was barely audible, she reminded Dunne of an old priest reading from the altar missal as he said Mass, a ritual that required no audience.

Dunne pulled up a chair and sat next to her. They sipped their tea. He retrieved two more albums from the hutch. She continued her narrative, pictures and words, the liturgy of Louis Pohl.

Next-to-last picture: unsmiling Louis standing in front of the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center, his ancient mother leaning on his arm, her hat trimmed with fur instead of flowers. Last picture: high school student in cap and gown. “This is my nephew, the only son of my husband’s brother. His name is Louis Pohl. He’s in college at Brown. It brings me some comfort to know that my Louis’s name is being carried on.”

She closed the album. “My son was lonely, Mr. Dunne. I hoped he’d find the right girl, but he never did.”

“He had friends, Mrs. Pohl. We all admired him.”

“I’m afraid he was more comfortable with books than people. He could read when he was only three. Books were his lifelong companions.”

“We all respected his learning.”

“‘Better to have love than learning.’ That’s a saying among us Copts.” She removed her glasses. “But learning was what he had. The last thing he left me was a book. A book he loved. It was the day … the day … before he …” She shook her head.

“What book?”

“Do you like books, Mr. Dunne?”

“Some.”

Resting her palms on the table, she pushed herself up. She took her cane, went into the bedroom, and returned with a book under
her left arm. She hooked the cane over the chair and handed the book to Dunne. “I want you to have this.”

“Are you sure?” It was an old book, leather-bound. The gold-lettered title engraved on the cover was in a Gothic script he couldn’t decipher.

“It’s an early edition of Goethe’s
Die Leiden des jungen Werthers
. It was a favorite of Louis’s. Do you read German, Mr. Dunne?”

“No, I don’t.”

“No matter.
The Sorrows of Young Werther
is the title in English. The important thing is that you have one of Louis’s prized possessions. I’m sure he’d be pleased.”

As he opened the cover, the stiff, brittle spine creaked softly. Tucked into the frontispiece was what looked like a red ticket stub. He shut the cover.

“I don’t know why he took his own life. I’ve tried to understand. He was lonely but not unhappy. Can you understand that?”

“I can.”

“There’s a line in Goethe’s book that’s brought me some comfort. It’s where he writes that it’s just as silly to call a man a coward who dies by his own hand as it is to call a man a coward who dies from a malignant fever.”

“Your son was no coward.” He wrote his address and phone number in Florida on the back of his business card. “Let’s stay in touch, Mrs. Pohl. I don’t know if you travel much, but my wife and I would love to have you visit us in Florida.”

“How tempting. More likely, it will be a phone call. I enjoy talking on the phone.”

P
ENN
S
TATION
, M
ANHATTAN

D
UNNE WAITED UNTIL HE WAS ON THE TRAIN BACK TO
M
ANHATTAN
to examine the red ticket stub. It turned out to be baggage-claim receipt, number 100936, issued by the Pennsylvania Railroad, Pennsylvania Station, New York City.

When the train reached Penn Station, the evening’s flood tide of rush-hour commuters was ebbing away, giving the concourse the air of a beach just after a violent squall. He went upstairs to where he remembered the baggage checkroom was located.

A hot dog joint now occupied the space. A railroad porter came by pushing a dolly stacked with luggage. Dunne went over to him. “Where’s baggage claim?”

The porter stopped. “Hasn’t been here for a few years.”

“Last time I was here it was.”

“Lots of things aren’t where they used to be.”

“Where’s it now?”

The porter removed his cap and ran his finger around the sweat-stained inner band. A thin, meticulously tended pencil mustache crossed his cocoa-colored face. “Used to be that everybody traveled everywhere by train, here to New Orleans, points west and south. More and more, it’s the cheap-ticket crowd commuting next door to Jersey and Long Island.” He nodded in the direction of a nearby staircase. “That’s why they got hot dogs up here and baggage below.”

The baggage room was at the end of a corridor that had a subway smell—sweat, urine, and stale gum. Dunne handed the ticket stub to a clerk in a frayed, soiled beige smock. The clerk held the ticket by both ends. He frowned. “Christ, this is a nine-oh.”

“A what?”

“It’s been here over ninety days. Going to cost you an extra, let’s see”—he pulled the pen stuck behind his ear and did some quick calculations on a pad—“four dollars and seventy-five cents, which brings it to six bucks and fifteen cents.”

“Fine.” Dunne put a five and two singles on the counter. “Keep the change.”

“Thanks.” The clerk opened a receipt book.

“That’s not necessary.”

“Maybe not for you, but the railroad requires it.”

“Excuse me, but I’m in a hurry.”

A stylish, twentyish-looking woman behind Dunne held up a round blue traveling case. “I need to check this.”

The clerk continued filling out the receipt. He detached it from the book and gave it to Dunne. “Have to wait your turn, Miss.”

“I’m going to miss my train!”

“Everybody’s got to wait his turn, no exceptions.” The clerk sauntered down an aisle lined with metal shelves stuffed with suitcases and bags.

“Oh God, you’re hopeless!” the girl yelled at the empty counter and hurried away.

The clerk returned in a minute or so—less time than Dunne anticipated—with a brass-latched canvas satchel. “I appreciate your patience. Nobody wants to wait their turn no more. Not like the old days.” He put the pen back behind his ear and lifted the satchel onto the counter. “Here you go.”

“Thanks.” Dunne unfastened the latch, took a glimpse inside. There was a thick manila folder. On the cover in block letters was a single name:
KARSTEN HEINZ.
He tossed in the book Mrs. Pohl had given him and closed the satchel.

He walked to the staircase, removed a ten-dollar bill from his wallet, and folded it in his hand. At the top of the stairs, he veered right and mounted one of the three empty chairs on the shoe-shine platform.

“How you this evening, sir?” The shoe-shine attendant wore a smock similar to the baggage clerk’s, but his was clean and belted. “What will it be? Regular or deluxe?”

Dunne rested the canvas satchel in his lap. He slipped the ten-dollar bill into the attendant’s breast pocket. “Super deluxe.”

The attendant peeked into the pocket. “Man alive, super-duper deluxe it is!”

Dunne picked up a copy of the evening paper from the chair beside him, unfolded it, and pretended to read. “How long you been at this stand?”

“Since Adam met Eve.” The attendant laid a thick layer of brown paste on Dunne’s shoes and rubbed it in so hard it felt like a foot massage. The pomade in the attendant’s black, marcelled hair glistened in the artificial light from above. “You’re a worried man.”

“Ever meet a man who wasn’t?”

He looked Dunne in the eyes. “I met plenty wasn’t as worried as you.”

“Bet you know this room better than Adam knew the Garden of Eden.”

“What got you worried?” The attendant picked up a brush and pushed it hard across the front and sides of Dunne’s shoes.

“I’m not sure yet.”

“Worst trouble of all is the trouble you don’t know you got.” He threw the brush from hand to hand, buffing the shoes all the while. “Cop trouble?”

“You know about cop trouble?”

The attendant paused his brushing. “Every colored person in this city knows about cop trouble. Don’t have to look for it. Sooner or later, one way or other, it’ll come your way. Think you got a tail?”

“What do you think?”

The attendant threw the brush in the air, swirled in a circle, caught it, and worked on Dunne’s right shoe; he repeated the same routine on the left. “Every Eden got its snake.” He removed a felt cloth from his belt, laid it across the toe caps, pulled down on the ends. “You got two: snake number one by the newsstand, snake number two by the stairs to your left.” He snapped the cloth as he moved it to the sides, working away until the shine seemed to lift off the leather. “They ain’t railroad dicks, I’ll tell you that. Them I could pick out with my eyes closed.”

Dunne dismounted the stand. He took his wallet out.

The attendant shook his head. “You’re all paid up.”

“Not yet.” Dunne stuck a five in the same pocket as before. “What’s your guess?”

“About what?”

“My best way out.”

“Way you came, downstairs, hop the subway.”