Barking Man (24 page)

“You can go to hell if you want to, lady,” he said. You could say whatever you wanted so long as you smiled. “I’m through with you people. I’m going home.”

The jets of the shower were needle sharp and the head itself was as big as a sunflower. Inside the cubicle, the light was pearly gray. Ton-Ton Detroit stood with his face a foot from the shower head and let the rush of water plane down his features, turned hard and hot as it would go. When he couldn’t stand it anymore he turned his back to the jet and scrubbed all over his body with a pyramid-shaped hunk of brown soap, hard and rough as a pumice stone, till he felt he’d rubbed off a layer of skin. The water burst off his back in four directions, slid down all the walls and went swirling into the dented brass ring of the drain between his two feet. He soaped his hair and rinsed till the water began to run clear.

Finished, he pulled the dashiki from the hook where he’d hung it and held it under the shower until it was soaked. Once it was drenched he rubbed the soap all over it, then began to scour the fabric with two stones from the beach. The cloth was still new enough to run a little dye, and the colors came brighter the wetter they got. He gave the robe a forceful twist to wring most of the water out and stuffed it into a plastic grocery bag he’d brought along for the purpose.

Damply dressed in his jeans and blue undershirt, Ton-Ton Detroit went down the steps to the hall where the attendant sat reading the paper and twisting the tuft of hair that grew from the dark mole on the side of her chin. Around her he could see a patch of the harbor, shining so keenly it made him squint. He put an extra fifty centimes in her saucer and smiled widely at her as he went out, though she didn’t bother to look up.

Gooseflesh had begun to speckle from one arm to the other across his shoulders by the time he got to the outer sea wall. The tide was in and long iodine-blue swells ran in from the sea, striking the rocks with wild bursts of spray. Ton-Ton Detroit shook out the dashiki and spread it on the inside corner of one of the posts, where the spray could not reach it, stroking it flat to dry without wrinkles. It would take a half hour to dry in this sun.

He stood far out on the rocks and let the spray spatter him, tasting salt at the edge of his mouth with his tongue. The feel of his skin was still vibrant and clean. He went to the post and put together his flute and sat down, holding it on his lap with both hands curled around it. The haze of the last few days had lifted and the horizon was a sharp razor line which the waves ran back to in long roll after roll. He pictured his peace as a round white lifeboat, and it had been sucked out nearly that far, but now he could feel the tide bringing it back surely within his reach. Ton-Ton Detroit put on his fisherman’s sunglasses. Under the fourth wave a dozen faintly silver fish hung flickering, all of them facing his way, letting the water lift them and lower them, lift them and lower them, as he brought the flute to his lips in a smooth round motion and began to play “Green Dolphin Street.”

T
HE DAY HE HEARD
that Paxton Morgan was released, Wilson had been planning to revise a will. It was a slack period for him and he didn’t expect to be in court until late in the following week, but he’d come in early just the same. The door to his inner office was open on the lateral hallway, and he could hear the whisk of a letter opener as Mrs. Veech, behind the front desk, sliced into the morning mail. Mostly bills or offers of subscriptions, he’d glanced through it quickly on his way in.

There was a jingle as the front door opened and Wilson raised his head to listen, but it was a man he didn’t want to see, and Mrs. Veech denied his presence. A grumble, sound of pacing, scrape of a match and a faint distant odor of tobacco. Mrs. Veech coughed. The voice grudgingly inquired if the smoke bothered her. Mrs. Veech said nothing but coughed again, more significantly. Her allergy to cigarettes was highly selective—Wilson, for instance, smoked himself. When the front door released a jangle of departure, he picked up his pencil and went back to the will. Mrs. Veech, he could hear, was dealing with the remains of the mail.

“Mr. Wilson, did you know they were letting Pax Morgan go?

He heard her voice without immediately understanding it, registering only the anxiously rising note at the end. The task in his hand was complicated, though almost entirely frivolous: the testament of a women some forty years old who would probably live at least forty more, revising her bequests more or less semiannually. Still, it was an amusement she could afford if it pleased her, harmless enough, and he had use for the fee.

He drafted another line or two on the long yellow pad and broke the point of his pencil. Then the sense of Mrs. Veech’s question reached him and he stood up, taking a cigarette from his shirt pocket as he stepped into the hall. Mrs. Veech sat bolt upright in her desk chair, clamping some sort of form in both her hands. Wilson took it from her and walked to the front window, setting the unlit cigarette in the corner of his mouth as he moved. It was a slick gray photocopy of a release form from Central State, with the name of Paxton Morgan typed along with other information and the illegibly scrawled signature of some doctor or official in the lower right-hand corner. He noted that the box for the date was not filled in.

“They might have already turned him out,” Mrs. Veech said.

“Or they might just still be thinking about it.” Wilson turned to face her. Round, plain and comfortable, she was a clean fifteen years older than he and normally unfazeable, though now she seemed perceptibly disturbed.

“I wonder who sent us this,” he said.

“There wasn’t any cover letter.” Mrs. Veech frowned.

Wilson stepped across and picked up the slit envelope from the stack of circulars on the desk and paced back to the window, turning it over in his hands. It was letterhead stationery from the hospital, with his own address unremarkably typed and a postmark from two days before. Absently he folded it in three and peered out the window, around the hanging vines of the plants Mrs. Veech had insisted on stringing up there. The office was on the ground floor at the corner of the square, and sighting through the letter O of his own reversed name on the glass, Wilson could see a couple of cars and one mud-splattered pickup truck revolving lazily around the concrete Confederate soldier on his high pedestal at the center. Opposite, the usual complement of idlers lounged around the courthouse steps. The office had a southern exposure, and he could feel a slight sunny warmth on the side of his face through the pane.

“Well, damn their eyes,” he said, and then, as he noticed Mrs. Veech again, “Excuse me.”

Back in his inner office, Wilson lit the cigarette and set it in an ashtray to burn itself out, then began dialing the phone with the butt end of his pencil. In some fifteen minutes he had variously heard that Pax Morgan had already been released, was not going to be released at all, or had never been admitted. He hadn’t expected to discover who had sent the anonymous notification, and so was not surprised when he didn’t. Although he did learn that a Dr. Meagrum was supposed to be presiding over the case, he could not get through to him. He left a message asking that his call be returned. The central spring of his revolving chair squealed slightly as he leaned back, away from the phone. On the rear wall of the room, behind the triangle of clients’ chairs, bookshelves rose all the way to the high ceiling, bearing about half of Wilson’s law library. Hands laced behind his head, he scanned the top row of heavy books as though looking for something, though he was not. After a moment he tightened his lips and leaned forward again and made the call he had been postponing.

He had the number by heart already because it had once been his own, the Nashville law firm where he’d formerly worked. In those days Sharon Morgan would likely have answered the phone herself, but they used her more as a researcher now, and had hired a different receptionist. She was good at the work, and with the two children there was no doubt the better pay made a difference. Still studying for her own law degree, part time; Pax had never liked that much. Wilson asked for her and waited till she came on the line, her voice brisk, as he remembered it. It had been some months since they had spoken and the first few exchanges passed in pleasantries, inquiries about each other’s children and the like. Then, a pause.

“Well, you never called just to pass the time,” Sharon said. “Not if I know you.”

Wilson hesitated, thinking, What would she look like now? The same. Phone pinched between her chin and shoulder, a tail of her longish dark hair involved with the cord some way. Chances were she’d be doing something on her desk while she waited for him to continue, brown eyes sharp on some document, wasting no time.

“Right,” he said. “Have you heard anything of Pax lately?”

“And don’t care to,” she said, her tone still easy. “Why would you ask?”

The chair spring squeaked as Wilson shifted position. The distant sound of a typewriter came to him over the line. He flicked his pencil with a fingernail and watched its bevels turning over the lines of the yellow pad. “And not the hospital either, I don’t suppose.”

“Oh-
ho
,” Sharon said. He could hear her voice tightening down, homing in. She took the same grim satisfaction in any discovery, no matter its purport, which was part of what made her good at her job. “Is that what it is?”

“I’m afraid,” Wilson said, “they’re letting him out, if they haven’t already.”

“And never even let me know. There ought to be a law …”

“… but there doesn’t appear to be one,” Wilson said. He picked up the hospital form and read off to her its most salient details. A stall, he thought, even before he was through with it. “The morning mail,” he said. “No date, and I don’t even know who sent it.”

“Then what are you thinking to do?” she said.

“I’ve been calling the hospital,” Wilson said. “If I ever get through to the right doctor, maybe I can convince them to hold him, if he’s not already gone.”

“
If
,” Sharon said sharply. “All up to them, is it?”

“I would call it a case for persuasion,” Wilson said. “So, did you have any plans for the weekend? I should be able to get in touch …”

“I’m taking the children out to the lake.”

Wilson plucked another cigarette from his breast pocket and began to tamp it rhythmically on the old green desktop blotter. “I don’t know,” he said. “Why not go to your brother’s, say? Instead.”

“What would we want to do that for?”

“Look, Sharon,” he said. “You know, it’s to hell and gone from anywhere, that house on the lake. And nobody even out there this time of year.”

“I will
not
run from that—” She interrupted herself, but he thought the calm of her voice was artificial when she went on. “The kids are packed for it. They’re counting on it. I don’t see any reason to change our plans.”

“You don’t, do you?” Wilson said without sarcasm, and put a match to his cigarette. He supposed he’d been expecting this, or something a whole lot like it.

“Why don’t you get a peace bond on him?” Sharon said. “If he really is out, I mean. Something. Because it ought to be
his
problem. Not mine.”

“I could do that,” Wilson said. “Try to, anyway. You know what good it’ll do, too. You know it better than I do.”

There was silence in the receiver; the phantom typewriter had stopped. Pax Morgan had been under a restraining order that night back before the divorce decree when he’d appeared at the house in Nashville he and Sharon had shared and smashed out all the ground-floor windows with the butt end of his deer rifle; he’d made it all the way around the house before the police arrived.

“Well, devil take the hindmost,” Wilson said. “I’ll let you know what I can find out. And you take care.”

“Thanks for letting me know.”

“Take care, Sharon,” Wilson said, but she had already hung up, so he did too.

Shifting the cigarette to his left hand, he picked up the pencil and began jotting a list at the foot of the pad with the blunted tip. Often he did his thinking with the pencil point; he’d discovered that sometimes a solution would appear in the interstices of what he wrote. There were only two items on the list.

—Judge Oldfield        injunction P.M.

—Dr. Meagrum           Central State

He added a third.

—call back S.M.

The pencil doodled away from the last initial. The list was obvious and complete, and after he acted on it nothing would be solved. A long ash was sprouting from his cigarette, but he didn’t notice until the spark crawled far enough to burn his knuckle.

For the rest of the morning he worked abstractedly on the will with imperfect concentration. Every twenty minutes or so he interrupted himself to make some fruitless call. Dr. Meagrum was perpetually “on rounds” or “in consultation.” Judge Oldfield was spending his morning on the bench. Wilson’s own phone rang occasionally, but always over something trivial. When he called Oldfield’s chambers again around noon, he found that the judge was gone to lunch. He tightened his tie, got his seersucker suit coat down from the hat rack and, with a word or two to Mrs. Veech, went out himself.

Circling the square counterclockwise, he passed the Standard Farm Store, the bank and the courthouse steps, where one man or another raised a broad flat palm to greet him. It was warm out, an Indian summer heat wave, though it was late October and the leaves had already turned. A new asphalt path on the southbound street felt tacky on his shoes as he crossed. A couple of blocks west of the square he was already verging on the edge of time; beyond the long low roof of Dotson’s Restaurant there were woods, turned fired-clay red patched with sere yellow, with a few deep green cedars standing anomalously among the other trees.

The fans were on inside the restaurant, revolving on tall poles, fluttering the corners of the checked oilcloths on the small square tables. Judge Oldfield sat toward the rear— alone, for a wonder—behind a plate of fried catfish, hush-puppies and boiled greens. As Wilson approached he put down his newspaper and smiled. “What wind blows you here, young fellow my lad?”