Crawlspace (24 page)

Finally said, “I’m sorry, Alice. My mind’s made up.”

“Well, all right, dear. If you think it’s for the best.”

She gave in like that—Alice, who’s as stubborn a woman as ever lived. I’d said exactly what she’d wanted me to say for weeks. And when I made my decision, she looked at me with a grief-stricken face. But I knew that inwardly she was grateful and relieved.

It’s amusing, as I think about it now. It’s more than amusing; it’s hilarious. Just think of it—all that decisiveness and finality, all of that moral rectitude and puffing of the chest in the face of a few coffee streaks and a handful of broken crockery, when we’d been perfectly willing to forgive and forget the holocaust that had been visited on Harlowe Petrie. Oh, yes, in the case of Petrie, we were perfectly willing to be magnanimous.

I don’t know what possessed me next, or what supernatural hand guided me, but before I knew it I had a flashlight in hand and was descending the stairs into the basement.

Outside the sun was just beginning to set, and I stood for a moment at the bottom of the stairs peering into the green shimmering light of the cellar. The rakes and hoes and shovels all hanging from beam hooks and sharply silhouetted looked like a forest at dusk. It gave the illusion of standing at the bottom of a murky pond with sunlight filtering down upon you through the muddy depths.

I looked directly across the cluttered space to the black square which seemed once more to be floating in mid-air. Like a sleep-walker, as if in a dream, I started toward it. Outside a bird was chirping on the lawn above.

At one point it passed directly between the setting sun and the basement window, casting a huge, terrifying shadow of itself on the cellar wall.

I’ve never thought of myself as clairvoyant or prescient. I tend to scoff at such things. But I knew even as I stood there, just as I’d known upstairs when I reached for the flashlight, what I would find in the crawl.

It was all there, of course—the mound of hay, the tin can and cardboard containers recently opened and strewn about, the can of crude toiletries—and amid all the trash, lying on a newspaper dated two days earlier—the fresh carcasses of two small birds (I think they were doves). The bones were picked clean. Feathers still floated eerily around in the dim narrow space. And above it all, the sickening, choking, miasmal stench of human waste. In our absence, he’d gone back to live in the crawl.

He came that night at his usual hour and went, directly to the kitchen to start supper. Hearing the dull clomp of his steps on the back porch, I looked up from my newspaper. Alice was already staring in the direction of the kitchen.

“I’ll go,” I said. I rose and tossed aside my paper. Alice made a motion to come with me, but I waved her back.

“No—I prefer to do this myself.”

She dropped back into her chair obediently and watched me leave the room.

When I entered the kitchen he was already on his knees picking up the shattered bits of crockery. He didn’t look up at me, but stared at the floor as he spoke.

“I thought you run off,” he said before I could utter a word. His voice was a curious mixture of apology and defiance.

“Now, you know very well we’d never do that. Where would we run, for heaven’s sake?”

“I come in and you and Missus was gone.”

“I left you a note.”

. “You forgot about me. You just run off and left me. You can’t do that.”

“Can’t?” I said, trying to suppress the tremor in my voice. “Why can’t I?”

“You got responsibilities.”

“Responsibilities?” It was like GOD scrawled above my cellar door.

“You got ’em to me just like I got ’em to you. We’re a—” he paused, his eyes defiant and shy, searching for a word—“family.” He’d almost choked on it, but when he found the word, he held on to it for dear life. “We’re a family. And you forgot—”

His chest heaved and he was fearfully overwrought. “I waited for you. I waited all night. And still you didn’t come.”

“But Richard, I left a note.” I gave up completely the attempt to control my voice. “You knew we were coming back.”

“Don’t matter,” he said woefully. “Notes don’t matter to me. Had plenty of ’em in my time, and what they say ain’t true.”

“What made you go back down to the crawl?”

He looked like a cornered rat. For a moment I felt certain he was going to lie.

“Why’d you go back down there?” I said again.

“I thought you left!” he shouted. “So I left you!” His voice reached a fearful pitch, and he was on the brink of tears. “Don’t leave me like that again!” he shrieked. “Don’t you ever—”

There was something tyrannical and abusive about those last words. They were full of threat. Meant to be a warning. Take heed, they said.

Yet I wasn’t offended. On the contrary, I found myself oddly touched. He looked suddenly like a child. Worried and desperately frightened. And all because he thought he’d lost us. He thought we’d deserted him, and he’d been nearly out of his mind with fright. Even a note that spelled out clearly our intention of returning couldn’t allay the panic of a suspicious and distrustful mind. He made me feel guilty. As if I’d betrayed him. I was angry and at the same time horribly sad for him. My eyes began to fill foolishly, and in the next instant I turned and started for the door.

“You better not try that again,” he cried after me. I turned and glared back at him. His eyes were immense and ringed with red, as if he’d been up worrying the whole night. “Promise!” he cried at me across the shadows, his voice a long pathetic whine.

“I’m sorry, Richard,” I said, the words strangling in my throat. “I promise it won’t happen again.”

By the time I left the kitchen, he’d already picked up all the shattered crockery and was just beginning to sponge off the wall.

We entered now a curious period of transition. To a stranger first entering that house there would have been no perceptible signs of friction among the occupants. Things went on very much as they had. Meals were served at regular hours. People retired at regular hours. Work around the house continued as usual. A stiff civility obtained between us all. But there was a new tension, a kind of tacit hostility born of mutual mistrust. Richard believed we had betrayed him. Alice believed I had betrayed her. And I believed that Richard had betrayed me. We were watching him, and he was watching us. There was a friction now between Alice and me. I had promised her I’d turn him out and I hadn’t. And for this, though she said nothing, she judged me harshly.

As a result of our little tiff you might have expected that Richard Atlee’s passion to serve us would have been somewhat impaired. On the contrary, it was heightened, and often to ridiculous and embarrassing extremes. He became assiduous in his duties. For instance, he took to shining my shoes. He would do this unfailingly, each night, whether they needed it or not. In the mornings I’d find them spotless and shining outside my bedroom door. At first I protested. But he scarcely heard me. A short time later, I found my trousers freshly pressed and hanging in the closet. And this too was to be done on a daily basis.

He would collect the laundry at least two nights a week from the upstairs and downstairs baths, and those nights he would spend washing and ironing.

Alice had very specific ideas about laundry, and early on, the laundry business was a source of continual and growing friction.

“Richard,” I heard her say one evening, a strained sweetness in her manner. “This is not the way Mr. Graves wants his shirts folded.” It was a curious remark, because I never had any special opinions about the way my shirts ought to be folded.

I watched Richard stand there nodding while she explained systematically how I liked my shirts folded. He nodded and appeared to understand. But I’m sure he didn’t hear a word she said. He bad his own notions of how shirts should be folded.

“Really, Richard,” Alice went on a little apologetically, “I appreciate all of your help, but I do think you should leave the laundry to me.” She laughed nervously and he appeared to understand and even agree. But two nights later, long before she herself could get to the hampers, he had emptied them of dirty laundry and taken them down to the machine in the basement. Once again, it occasioned a terrible row between Alice ‘and Richard and ended with her sweeping imperiously out of the kitchen. Later, I found her crying in the upstairs bath. A short time after, she went quietly to the kitchen and baked raspberry tarts for him.

It was not an easy thing to live with, but so we lived.

One night toward the end of May I stirred in my bed. Through my sleep I imagined I heard cries in the night, shouting on the road. I raised my head from the pillow and through sleep-drugged eyes saw the headlights of a car sweep the circle of our room. Then it was gone. I thought I’d dreamed it. But the following morning at breakfast, Alice said: “Did you hear anything last night?” I looked up from my paper. “Did I what?”

“Did you hear anything last night?”

“Did I hear anything?”

“Yes.”

“Like what?” You see, I’d forgotten it already.

She placed a piece of French toast on my plate. “Noises. Shouting.”

I thought about it for a while with the memory of it slowly awakening in me. Now I recalled hearing something, but I was uncertain of what I’d actually heard, and even if it was the night before I’d heard it.

“I did hear something,” I said, a little vaguely. “But for the life of me I couldn’t tell you what it was. I’m not even sure it wasn’t a dream.”

“Was it last night?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Shouting? Was it shouting?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” I picked up my paper again. “Probably the raccoons fighting.”

Two nights later Alice woke me at about 1 A.M. “Albert. There are people out there.”

“People?”

“Listen,” she whispered. “Cars.”

I listened for a moment and heard nothing. Then I heard voices wafting upwards in the night air through our opened windows. When I got up and went to the window, I could see lights bending around the corner of the garage. They appeared to be coming from the road that passes in front of our house.

I went downstairs to the front parlor, where I could look out toward the road. Down below I could see a car parked about a hundred yards off at the foot of our driveway. Its headlights were on, its doors were open, and it was blaring music.

I went to the front door, opened it, and looked at the car. Then I could hear laughter and occasional shouting above the music. There were young boys in the car, and they were undoubtedly drinking.

I’m not the kind of person to go out and face that sort of thing myself. My first instinct was to call the police. When I turned to go back into the living room, I walked straight into Richard. He was standing in the darkness in his pajamas watching me. I could see clearly the whites of his eyes.

“Richard?”

“Yes.”

“They wake you, too?”

“Yes. Been goin’ on almost an hour.”

“That long?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

“Didn’t see much need. They usually go about ’bout an hour.”

“Usually? Have they been here before?”

“Couple of time.” He yawned and scratched his ear. “They park out there and shout. Bust a couple of beer bottles. Then they go off.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“Couple of weeks. I just clean up the mess every morning.”

“For God’s sake. Why didn’t you say something?”

“Saw no need,” he shrugged. “Just a pack of fools.”

“You know who they are?”

“Sure.” His voice was faintly mocking. “Don’t you?”

“Should I?”

He looked at me skeptically and shrugged again.

“Who are they?”

“The fellas I run up against in town.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure. I seen ’em. They come right up here to the door one night. It’s them three and a few others.”

I started for the phone. Just then Alice called down. “Is everything all right, Albert?”

“Everything’s fine, dear. Go back to bed.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. I’m coming right up.”

When I reached the phone he was standing right behind me. “What are you gonna do?”

“I’m going to get Birge out here.”

He smiled at me. It was the first expression of pure cynicism I’d ever seen on his face.

I felt myself blushing red. “What do you mean by that?”

He looked away to spare me any embarrassment. “Oh. You know.” He shrugged and started slowly back to his room.

Of course, I was the offending party. Again I’d promised him justice through Birge, the established instrument of justice. And now the very people whom Birge promised to put the fear of God into were out there scot-free and taunting him again.

I tried to reach Birge that night. Of course he couldn’t be reached. But I spoke to a deputy who promised to send a patrol car out immediately.

Shortly after my phone call I heard the motor of the car at the foot of the drive being gunned. Then a couple of wild Indian-like shrieks tore through the darkness, followed by the sound of shattering glass, and the car roaring off into the night.

We went back to bed. If a patrol car ever did come, I can’t say. I tend to doubt it, however.

The following morning I went down to the foot of the drive to see what I could find there. What I found was about a half-dozen smashed beer bottles and a few obscenities scrawled across the face of my picket fence. There was also a crude drawing of a skull smeared on with what appeared to be a black, tar-like substance.

When I turned, I found Richard standing behind me. He was staring quietly at the skull on the fence, a pail of warm, soapy water dangled from his hand. In the next moment, without so much as a word, he fell to his knees and began to scrub the vile words and the ugly little skull from the fence.

Later that morning I stood in Birge’s office, panting above his desk, telling my story. He pretended to be deeply concerned.

“You promised you’d talk to these boys—”

“I did, but in all fairness, Mr. Graves, we don’t know if this is the same bunch—”