Fiends (6 page)

6

Sunday after church Enid Waller drove down to Cumberland State Hospital while Marjory stayed behind to prepare dinner.

With the chicken in the oven and the salad in a covered bowl in the refrigerator, she made a tour of the house, giving a lick here and there with the featherduster, straightening the sturdy old mahogany furniture and repinning the yellowed lace antimacassars on the chairs in the parlor. She had the nervous flits, as her mother used to say. The guest towels, taken from the cedar closet in the hall, looked odd in the newly scrubbed bathroom (Enid had been up until three in the morning cleaning). They used them so seldom the towels seemed to belong to someone else's house. Back in the kitchen to baste the roasting hen, Marjory heard a car on the gravel at the side of the house. She took off her apron, gave a few tugs to her tight-fitting white pique dress (it felt glued to her hips), and went outside by way of the back porch.

It was Ted in his Firebird. Marjory waved to him from the steps, simultaneously made a misstep, and caught the heel of her only pair of summer dress shoes in a crack. The heel broke before her ankle did but she went sprawling, with a yelp of indignation.

Marjory got up, red in the face, as Ted hastened from the Firebird to help her.

"Hurt yourself?"

"No." She kicked off the shoe with the broken heel and balanced on one foot so as not to list. Some high clouds blocked the sun but the day was still a humid dazzler, and she already felt as if she had been spritzed with a garden hose.

Enid picked that moment to arrive with their other dinner guest.

"What happened?"

"Oh, I caught my heel and it snapped off."

"Looks like you've got a little grass smudge on your dress."

"I'll bleach it out."

"I've probably got a pair of shoes you can squeeze into; poke around in my closet."

Marjory took the other shoe off, and looked into the eyes of Arne Horsfall, who was standing a couple of feet behind Enid with a sketchbook under one arm.

He was a lot bigger than she'd assumed he would be. Even with a pronounced stoop he was half a head taller than Ted, who went six one and a half. There was more tangly white hair growing out of Arne's ears I ban he had on his skull. His features had retreated to the bone; where there was flesh it was deeply scored. He was thin, nearly gaunt. He did not give the impression of being frail but he had a strange, hung-together look, as if he had been composed from the ill-matched bones of others. The new clothes Enid had bought him fitted okay, but they didn't suit him. He might have looked better dressed all in black. He was so quiet and somber he seemed barely alive.

Marjory had become accustomed, in her brief tour of Cumberland State, to inmates who were quenched and passionless, and others with clownish, synthetic personalities, all side effects of psychoactive drugs as powerful as rocket fuel. Arne Horsfall was a different case. He looked like a migraine felt, but he had the power to hold her attention. She had a sensation of excitement, of discovery—someone lived there, all right, behind the small, dark eyes. He was distant, but not subdued in some dire, brainwashed manner. It was as if he had learned long ago to turn most people away with the rigid cast of his face, a bloodless indifference. The better to study them, as he now studied her.

"Marjory, Ted—I'd like for you to meet Mr. Horsfall, one of my very talented students."

Ted reached around Enid with his right hand. Arne Horsfall looked at it noncommittally for several seconds, as if no one had offered to shake his hand before. Then he took it, gingerly, with a glance at Ted but no change of expression. Marjory kept her distance and smiled, with a little flickering wave of welcome; she just couldn't bring herself to touch him, that long yellow hand with brown spots like motor oil stains, and gruesome black veins.

After eyeing Ted, Arne Horsfall looked, long and searchingly, at the house. The sun came out and his eyes narrowed, he hunched his shoulders as if he found so much light punishing.

"Well, why don't we all go inside?" Enid suggested. "It was a long drive, and I'm sure Mr. Horsfall is perishing for a drink of something sweet and cold—”

Marjory observed that whenever Enid spoke, Arne Horsfall gave her his full attention, listening as if to an oracle, a saint of his realm—Marjory could have died, but, abruptly, she had a change of heart and thought,
What of it?
He was a man, after all, and any man no matter how aged who didn't fall in love with Enid after spending a little time with her was, well, out of his mind. Reassured by that revelation of humanness, she began to feel a little better about Arne Horsfall, not so unhappy to have him around.

Enid slipped an arm gracefully inside Mr. Horsfall's and Ted smiled as if he were really looking forward to an afternoon of talking hunting and fishing with their guest. They all went into the house by the front door.

In the kitchen Marjory looked again at the golden hen in the oven, then set out a pitcher of lemonade and glasses on the heirloom silver tray they had been tempted to sell when funds were critically low. But selling the few handed-down treasures her mother had loved seemed a betrayal. Ada May Waller had never been one to put on airs, but she was a genealogy buff who knew intimately every sprig of a family tree that included persons of quality in Scotland and England. Enid had her mother's inbred sense of style and propriety. Marjory sometimes joked about herself that she looked like the family cleric who had been fond of charbroiling heretics; but the joke could be painful.

She carried the tray with the lemonade into the parlor, where daylong light filtered through the oak tree that, like a big green cumulus cloud, sheltered nearly the full front of their clapboard house.

Arne Horsfall, still clutching his sketchbook under one arm, was touring the walls of the parlor, where many portraits and photographs of forebears—men and women anciently composed in too much clothing and with their hair parted down the middle—had been hanging since before Enid was born. He seemed momentarily fascinated by a stuffed red squirrel, up on its hind legs and with forepaws spread in a menacing way, as if it had grizzly genes. Marjory reckoned that it might become tedious talking to a man who couldn't respond, although Enid didn't seem fazed. She could talk on and on about things that would bore most people to tears, yet Enid was never boring because her voice, her natural cadences, were so pleasing that words didn't matter. Ted watched her as if he truly appreciated how lucky he was.

Marjory placed the tray on a table in front of one of the rigorously uncomfortable horsehair sofas and poured lemonade.

"Anything interesting happening in your life?"

Ted replied in a low voice, "Well, I was shot at last night."

"What? You're kidding!" Thrilled and apprehensive, Marjory inspected him quickly for damages. Ted shrugged. "They missed, huh? What happened?"

"Oh, it was about nine o'clock over on Deacon's Mill Road. A car was in the ditch and the wrecker was there. Traffic was moving okay. I never heard the shot, but it busted one of my reds to smithereens. I was standing a couple of feet away. Couldn't identify where the shot came from, or who fired it. Probably some yahoo in a pickup who got a speeding ticket last week, and wanted to take it out on me."

"That must have given you the runs."

Ted shrugged again, a little proud of his grit under fire. "Nah. Those things happen. Listen, maybe you better not say anything to Enid—you know how she is."

"Hey,
Enid,
have I got news for you!"

Enid turned, smiling. "What?"

Ted said quickly, "Thought you all might like to catch Bob Dylan at the Parthenon next weekend."

"Wonderful."

Marjory handed up two glasses of lemonade. Ted sat back on the sofa, looking painfully amused. "Anything else I can do, Marjory?"

Marjory, wide-eyed, shook her head. "Oh, no, Ted. Bob Dylan sounds terrific. And it's so thoughtful to invite
me.
I just never seem to go anywhere lately."

Arne Horsfall sat on the edge of a Queen Anne chair with his sketchbook in his lap. He sipped lemonade and, for the most part, looked at Enid. The ceiling fan shuddered annoyingly but kept them cool. Ted commented, as he usually did, "I need to fix that thing the next time I'm over." Enid talked about the art class she conducted at Cumberland State, and the surprising number of her students who were doing original and interesting work. Presently Arne Horsfall's eyes closed and he appeared to fall asleep sitting up in the chair.

"Poor man," Enid murmured. She got up to gently remove the lemonade glass from his hand. His nearly lashless eyelids fluttered, then his head tilted forward another inch and they heard him snore. "But I think he's doing real well. You know, he hasn't been
anywhere
in donkey's years. I could just tell he was terrified in the car, all those huge trucks thundering by on the Interstate. He never shut his eyes once, though; he was so busy taking everything in. That tires out your brain if you're not accustomed to it."

"Enid, I think the chicken's about done. Should we wake him up?"

Arne Horsfall woke himself up, with a rasping snore that caused his eyes to open and his head to jerk sideways. Ted started off the sofa to keep their guest from toppling out of his chair. But Arne righted himself, then looked around uncomprehendingly, the wispy white hair clinging to the back of his head stirred by the fan paddles over them. He needed to clear his throat, which he did but with great difficulty. Marjory tried to dig her fingers into the hard, slick horsehair. Then, as if he were attracted by the cooking odors, Arne rose in the manner of stiff, old men—lurching half erect, then pausing, suspensefully, before lurching all the way up—and made his way back to the sunny kitchen. Enid, then Marjory followed.

After looking around in his rapt, obsessive manner, he moved circuitously to the screen door where he stared out at the backyard and the heat haze over the glum green surface of Crudup's pond, blinking, his eyes watering. Finally he turned to Enid as Marjory opened the oven door and brought out the roasted chicken. He began, using his hands, to silently converse with Enid, gesturing to the stove, tapping the side of his head with a long finger, always in motion like a symphony conductor hearing ghostly music, cajoling invisible instruments.

"Stove . . . this kitchen . . ." Arne nodded vigorously, and Marjory wondered how his skinny neck could stand the strain. "Reminds you . . . of where you used to live, do I have that right?" Arne nodded again, also tapping his foot in an excess of nervous release. "How long ago was that, Mr. Horsfall?" He put his hand, palm down, near his waist. Enid frowned, trying to interpret the message. "Oh! When you were a boy? I see. Where? Do you remember?" Arne shook his head this time, but gazed out again through the screen, extending a hand from the level of his brow. Marjory thought of Cochise in the movies, communicating sternly with the white-eyes. Maybe Arne Horsfall had seen the same westerns she had. It was almost funny; but the way his lips worked, and the small amount of drool he was producing in his efforts to get them to understand, didn't impress her as amusing at all—she was a little sick to her stomach.

"Were you raised on a farm?" Enid hazarded, "like Crudup's farm over there?" Arne now clasped his hands together, nodding, nodding, his sign language failing to keep pace with his thoughts, his memories. He made a steeple with his index fingers. "Church? Uh . . . your father was a preacher?" Arne shook his head. He glanced at the pots and pans hanging on racks beside the stove, took one down, ran his fingers over the copper bottom, made the sign of the steeple again. "The church you attended had a copper steeple?" Enid interpreted, her face pinked from excitement. Yes. She turned to Ted, who was standing behind her in the doorway idly swishing ice cubes in an inch of lemonade.

"Didn't our old sanctuary have a copper-covered spire?"

"Yeh . . . I think so. But it burned down, shoot, that was before I was a gleam in daddy's eye. Back about nineteen forty, forty-one."

"You were born in Sublimity!" Enid said to Arne Horsfall.

He shook off that conclusion, then spread his hands, turning toward the screen door as he did so.

"But
near
here. Across the river? The Cumberland or the—Harpeth!— River . . . well! How about that? And your father was a farmer. Your mother—"

Arne made a sudden move toward Marjory, who looked up, startled, and shied away as he touched the bob of her hair, blunt-cut like a paintbrush.

"Your mother had blond hair like Marjory's and she was. . . tall, is that correct? We're getting to know quite a bit about you now, aren't we? Did you have brothers and sisters? Oh, you didn't. I wonder what else you have to tell us, this is so interesting—"

"Enid, I think I'd better carve the chicken."

"I'll do that for you, Marjory," Ted offered.

"Thanks. I just need to go up to my room for a minute; be right back, why don't you put everything on the table."

Shoeless, Marjory hustled up the stairs in her stockings and closed the bathroom door. She splashed cold water in her face (it came from their own deep artesian well and was always bitingly cold, even at the height of summer), which got rid of the nausea that had suddenly come over her, but she was still a little shocked and chilled at the heart because of the way Arne Horsfall had lunged at her. Maybe Enid thought he was okay because lie could draw, a harmless old cuckoo at worst; but Marjory had her own opinion: solid instinct told her something was dangerously not right—more than memories were dammed up in Arne Horsfall, there was some dreadful passion that might come bursting forth at any time. She didn't want to be around when it happened.

Marjory decided to take off her panty girdle because she knew how uncomfortable she was going to be while sitting down and trying to eat, although at this point she had no appetite—smelling the plump roaster simmering with onions, carrots, and celery in fatty juices had contributed, along with tension and the heat of the kitchen, to her nausea. She needed to remove her dress to get shed of the onerous girdle. When she put the dress back on it was damp in several places, and so tight it was a good bet to tear if she didn't carefully consider every move she made. Tears filled the corners of her eyes and dribbled hotly down beside her nose; her chin trembled as she heard Enid calling from the foot of the stairs. With a washcloth she mopped her face (in the bleary scheme of the bathroom mirror such a ringer for her father's broad, likable, slightly fishy face, eyes an almost incandescent, illimitable blue) until her chin was steadier. Then she went slowly down to the dining room, still without shoes, and, with wide bars of shadow from the stair railing across her white dress, looking like a canceled bride.