Recessional: A Novel (16 page)

One afternoon when he was inspecting the savanna he passed the spot where Judge Noble sat on the bulkhead, his fishing pole out in the water and his congregation of birds standing like some Greek chorus about him and the tame pelican in the water yapping for his share of whatever fish the judge might catch that day. And the thought came to him like an epiphany: That good man is an adornment to this place. He and his birds must bring untold delights to our residents, and I must do something to show my appreciation.

Heading directly for Ken Krenek’s office, he asked: “Could I scrape up the funds to provide Judge Noble with a proper chair for his fishing? One with a wide band of wood across the back so we could have his name painted across it?”

“You’d have to check with Miss Foxworth to see how her petty cash stands.” But when he discussed the matter with her she asked, as always: “What kind of money are we talking about here?” And he said: “I think maybe fifty dollars would cover it, plus maybe fifteen for the lettering.”

She could not control her amazement: “Andy! Are you out of your mind? There’s a secondhand furniture shop down the road
where you can find a good chair for nine dollars, and I have a great do-it-yourself lettering kit, if you provide the black paint.”

She found pleasure in driving him to the secondhand shop, and on the way she said in a conciliatory tone: “It’s a great idea, Andy. You’ll make the old judge feel like an honored guest.”

They found a sturdy old chair for seven dollars and a small can of paint for one fifty. Back at the Palms, Zorn spent part of a morning sanding the chair and tightening the screws, after which Miss Foxworth did the lettering in a style as professional as she had promised.

When Zorn saw the finished chair he was enthusiastic: “It’s handsomer than I expected. That’s the chair of a real fisherman,” and he and Krenek alerted some of the residents to be ready to accompany Judge Noble when he left Gateways that afternoon to go out for his fishing: “Don’t trail along with him. He’d be suspicious. But when he sees the chair, rush out and give him the big hello!”

Then, about an hour before the judge customarily went for his fishing, Zorn and Krenek carried the chair to the spot where the judge usually sat on the bulkhead and placed it in position. A score of people watched from their balconies as the white-haired judge left Gateways with his rod, walked down the path as birds clustered about him and came to the chair on which a heron was perching. There, at the feet of the great blue, stood his name in fine blue lettering:
JUDGE NOBLE
.

He was deeply touched, especially when the group of residents who had quietly followed him rushed out to surround and congratulate him. Watching from the channel, even Rowdy the pelican seemed to be applauding.

Two days later when the judge walked down for his fishing, the chair was gone. At first no one had any idea of who might have taken it, but later a woman on the third floor said that the previous night she had been on her balcony because she was unable to sleep and had seen two men come from the landing at the river, creep down the path and steal the chair. Why had she not reported this sooner? She said: “I’m reporting it now, first chance I’ve had.”

Zorn was outraged, especially since the thieves could have bought such a chair for only a few dollars. He went back to Miss Foxworth and said: “I can’t allow hoodlums to ruin a great idea. Take me back to the furniture store. We’ll get another chair. And I’ll pay you five bucks for lettering it like last time.” As they drove back to the Palms he explained his strategy: “This time we bind the four legs with wire
straps to sturdy poles three feet long, and we sink those feet deep in the ground. We’ll put a flange at the bottom of each leg so that when the earth is tamped back in, the leg can’t be pulled out.”

This solution worked, for when the legs were well sunk into the earth, with the flanges securely anchored at the bottom, the chair with its fine lettering could not be stolen, and the various people who had helped Zorn in this adventure applauded when the chair remained in place with its festoon of birds each afternoon.

But Zorn’s triumph did not last long, because on the fifth or sixth night the woman who could not sleep telephoned the main desk: “The same people, I think it must have been, brought saws, and cut off part of the legs and carried the chair away.”

Zorn declared war: “Ken, phone around and find a place where I can get four steel pillars. We’ll sink them in concrete four feet down, and build us a chair seat between the parts that are above ground.”

“That would work, but we can’t do it from petty cash.”

“I’ll pay for it,” and under his direction a very solid engineering job was done, leaving no wooden parts that could be sawed away because the seat itself was made of the steel seat of an abandoned tractor, and now the judge had a seemingly indestructible chair. But not quite, because some nights later the same watchdog called again: “They’re beating it to death with hammers!” Running out with a flashlight Andy saw that the woman had reported correctly. The tractor seat had not been stolen but simply smashed to pieces as it remained bolted to the steel pillars.

Back in his office at four in the morning with hot cocoa that Krenek had made, Andy asked in deep frustration: “Ken, what’s going on out there? If the chair could be used, then I could understand stealing it, or even stealing half a chair that might be added to, but simply to destroy a chair for no good reason, that by damn I cannot fathom.”

“Andy, you’re a good, kind man, but you really are naïve. Time to face facts. In a top-quality place like this, there are people all around us who hate our guts. They tell one another: ‘The place is crowded with millionaires, let’s wreck it.’ We’ve had a lot of damage around here that I haven’t bothered you with.”

“But why do they do it?”

“Why did that quiet young man on Long Island murder eleven young women? Why did the guy in Sausalito murder his wife and four kids? Why do they paint ugly words over our sign, no matter
how many times we clean it up? I’ll tell you why. Because this world contains an irreducible minority of sick sons of bitches, and sooner or later one of them is going to impinge on your life, and mine. The chair destroyers? They’re your initiation to the breed, and there’s lots more like them lurking out there.”

“You have a harsh view of the human race, Ken,” and the older man replied: “More of their horse manure has piled up in my front yard. You’re just beginning to get your share.”

And four mornings later Zorn received an enormous dumpload of the stuff right in his face when he left his apartment in Gateways and walked down to his office to what sounded like a buzz saw operating close to the oval. He ran out to investigate and found a team of men in the process of cutting flush to the earth the handsome Brazilian pepper trees whose red berries formed such a lovely counterpart to the great palm trees along the entry drive. If they were cut down, half the beauty of the place would be lost.

“Hey! Hey!” he shouted, running up to the men who could not hear him because of the deafening whine of their saws. “Stop that! Stop it now!” And he informed the man in charge that he was the director of the Palms and the trees were absolutely not to be tampered with.

The foreman asked incredulously: “Hasn’t anyone told you, Buster, that these shrubs are a pest and the Florida agricultural people have passed a law they can’t be planted around a house. They run wild and destroy native plants.”

“But these aren’t running wild. Look, they’re in a neat line. We keep the grass trimmed around them. It’s like a park.”

“It’s the seeds, mister. Millions of them. Look at those birds. They eat the berries, the seeds pass right through the intestines and out onto land that hasn’t been contaminated yet. Look at that wilderness out there on your doorstep. It’s lousy with Brazilian pepper bushes,” and when Andy looked, he did indeed see a wealth of the green-and-red bushes.

“I forbid you to cut another shrub till I get confirmation from your head office that ours have to go. Give me the number to call.”

The man laughed: “Mister,
I
am the head office. It’s the law.”

“But I demand confirmation.”

The foreman pointed to one of his men: “Claude’s my assistant. Give him confirmation, Claude,” and the new man said in a persuasive
manner: “Mister, what he says is right. The law is that these pests that endanger Florida agriculture have got to go.”

Zorn insisted that they stop until he could obtain additional verification from someone, but the foreman warned him: “I have orders to remove these bushes, and if you try to stop me you’ll be fighting the entire government of Tampa, so, please, mister, stand back and let me get on with my job.”

“Krenek!” Andy shouted. “Come out here and help me!” But when the administrator appeared he brought bad news: “They warned me last week they’d be here to remove the Brazilians. I didn’t want to bother you with the details. It’s all legal because they’re a menace.”

Zorn felt defeated. Since the day of his arrival in January, whenever he had driven into or out of the Palms he had felt that the glorious avenue of Washingtonias and Brazilians was one of the major assets of the center, and to think of losing the Brazilians with their bright red berries made him sick, actually uneasy in his stomach.

“I don’t want to watch this desecration,” he said, turning his back on the workmen, who resumed their cutting. When he reached his office and could still hear the buzzing sound of their saws, he could hardly bear staying at his desk. So he telephoned Ambassador St. Près to ask if he would be free to wander through the savanna, and St. Près replied eagerly: “Always glad to get back to my Africa!” He soon appeared in his safari costume.

“Better put on some rougher clothes than that, Doctor. We’re to tramp right through the heart of it,” and off they went through the light morning mists, inland from the channel on a path that would take them to the Emerald Pool, where St. Près could point out the interesting low shrubs interspersed with medium-height palm trees and an occasional giant palm. But as he followed where the ambassador pointed, he saw off to one side a glorious spread of Brazilian pepper bushes, laden with berries that glistened in the sunlight. They were survivors from the Christmas season, and the display they made—an impenetrable hedge of beauty—caused Zorn’s heart to leap.

“Mr. Ambassador! Did you know they’re right now cutting down the magnificent line of these bushes that line our entrance way? Government orders.”

“I heard they’d declared the Brazilians a menace to be eradicated. But ours on the avenue? That’s incredible.”

“What’s to happen to our earth, sir? Everywhere I read about or see on television they’re destroying wildlife. I grew up in a city, I appreciate what we have out here, but nobody else seems to give a damn.” He studied the majestic display of the Brazilians, a wall of tangled color, green and red, and again felt nausea, but the ambassador was back in his beloved Africa: “Now, Andy, you see that curious growth of high, matted grass, impenetrable in that direction? That’s the kind of hiding place we’d be likely to find lions. That open veldt over there with the low trees, that’s elephant country. And the sort of meadowland in between, little growth but grass, that’s for the antelopes.”

Since the savanna stretched some miles to the south and grew ever more crowded with vegetation, including good-sized trees, the two men had many areas to explore, and at one point when they were deep within the growth, Zorn cried: “Can you imagine? Only a few miles from Tampa, and we have this wonderland!” St. Près said: “It’s the duty of you younger men, Andy, to ensure that places like this remain. My generation didn’t do a very good job, but there are places like this hiding here and there. Africa! Africa!” and he reveled in the similarity: “And so close to where I sleep! It’s truly miraculous!” and he danced a little jig, as if he were again in the veldt of Botswana.

They continued their game of safari among the wild beasts for about an hour before St. Près as the older explorer said: “About time for me to head back. But let’s cut right through the wildest part of all,” and soon they were ducking low to penetrate almost impassable natural barriers of intermeshed lianas, bushes and tangled branches. Zorn’s face was scratched by thorny twigs and his trousers were snagged by branches as the men slowly forced their way through. At last they found themselves less than fifty yards from the Palms.

“The building looks inviting, doesn’t it?” St. Près asked, but Zorn could see only the destroyed remains of the fishing chair and the empty gash where his pepper bushes had been.

By mid-April Dr. Zorn felt that he knew and understood most of the residents at the Palms. Richard St. Près, rigid and reserved, could only have been an ambassador, and Senator Raborn had been destined
to be an energetic politician. The Duchess had been a grande dame in her middle years and Maxim Lewandowski, the tall, angular fellow with the European accent, had clearly been a child prodigy in the sciences, for he still retained that boyhood enthusiasm for his field, the unraveling of the mysteries of human genetics.

But one man eluded him. Blustery, red-haired Muley Duggan—who knew what his first name really was?—looked like a minor New York gangster, with no neck, big ape-like arms, loud rasping voice and shifty watery eyes. He was in all ways a mystery, especially his being married to one of the most gracious ladies at the Palms, Marjorie Duggan, who occupied a separate apartment in Assisted Living. In contrast to his brute strength, she must have been frail even before contracting Alzheimer’s, and one could imagine her lending a delicate grace and dignity to a cotillion in her youth. Where he reveled in sports, especially professional football on television, she preferred the broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera. And in their double suite in Gateways, which they occupied before she was stricken, he had listened to noisy country music, while on her private stereo system in the back room she had taken enormous pleasure in playing a selection of compact disks featuring the current opera singers like Kiri Te Kanawa, Marilyn Home, Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti in their renditions of the great arias from the major works. Muley began to listen to her music and, to his own surprise, became something of an opera buff, so they came to share a common interest.