The Age of Cities (18 page)
Authors: Brett Josef Grubisic
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Social Science, #Gay & Lesbian, #Gay Men, #Gay, #Gay Studies
Winston imagined that a few minutes alone would help him regain his composure. He knocked on the bedroom door. No one answered. Curious to know if Frankie had fallen asleep, he turned the doorknob, stepped inside, and quietly closed the door. The heavy curtains were drawn in Dickie's bedroom. Frankie was gone. Winston made his way to the bed, vividly recalling Frankie's posture on the bed and Georgette avoiding his stare as she passed him in the hall. Winston told himself that he'd stretch out on the bed for a moment. He slid off his moccasins and lay down, resting his face near to where he'd watched Frankie.
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“C'mon, Sleeping Beauty, you ought to make your presence known to your minions.”
“Not too much of a drinker, we see. You need an iron stomach for it, I suppose.”
“What's the time?”
“It's late. Everyone's gone home.”
“Some fresh air would do us all well. We'll take a walk, see what's going on out there.”
“A walk to the Enchanted Forest.”
“What's that?”
“C'mon, get your regular clothes on. A brisk trip out of doors will sober you up.”
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The fog had lifted and the night was starry and clear. He could smell the lingering scent of exploded firecrackers, but Winston heard no vestiges of revelry. It felt like the winter stillness of November had completely settled in with the frost.
“We think you'll love it there, Farmer,” Dickie chirped.
“Why is that?” He thought that what he'd love was sleeping off his headache under warm blankets at home.
“Just an inkling, really.”
They crossed the street that evidently marked the border between city and parkâno other apartment blocks with brightly lit lobbies stood before themâand walked toward a pond over which hung the residue of fog. The men remained silent. Even Dickie kept to himself. Winston guessed that only he among them had no notion of their destination. That put him at a disadvantage.
“It's rather difficult to see,” he said as they strode ahead unerringly.
Dickie turned and explained in a loud whisper: “You'll get your sea legs in no time.”
In the gloom, Winston was barely able to distinguish the blank darkness of the forest and brush from the star-specked night sky. They walked over an elfin stone bridge; as they approached a road that severed grassy flatland from tenebrous wall of trees, Johnny and Ed huddled to light cigarettes.
Dickie caught up and gestured for Winston to join them. He placed an index finger to his lips. Winston could not fathom where he was heading with these men and wanted to giggle at the ridiculousness of this rendezvous-at-midnight situation. Like Dickie's purple bruise makeup, the silence and cloak and dagger skulking tilted into melodrama. It was trite, but he was hooked by it; the unknowingness had its narcotic effects. Besides, he'd heard, there was nothing like a trip away to make a man appreciate the comforts and routines of homeâthe idea being that grass would always be greener until it is visited up close.
Dickie clasped Winston by the neck and whispered in his ear: “Here we are.” Winston watched the men, now in single file, slip into a passage between two stands of trees. He could not have seen that sliver of an opening himself; these night dwellers apparently had the eyes of cats. He followed closely behind Dickie, exhaling vapour into the frigid air.
They stopped at a place where the trail widened into a grotto. “Stay right here. We're going to wander for a few minutes. But we'll fetch you, so don't fret.”
“You want to leave me here? What on earth for?” he whispered. This new part of their plan gave him instant cause for worry.
Dickie once again placed index finger to lip.
Winston could not help but think of the pranks and worse that children play on one another when left to their own devices. When he'd read
Lord of the Flies,
he'd guessed that Mr. Goldman's childhood experiences on the school playground had been the root of his pessimism. Civilization was, after all, the thinnest of veneers. But these men had never shown themselves to be pranksters; he'd never known adults who played practical jokes.
“You'll see soon enough,” Johnny said.
The men melted like spectres into the shadow. Winston stood rigid, hands balled in the pockets of his coat. Alone and literally in the dark, he felt chilled and foolish. What would Edward the Black Prince have done? He snorted aloud. Obviously, he would have never agreed to be taken anywhere; courtier heads would've rolled instead. His stomach felt queasy.
Winston could smell the mustiness of decaying leaves and the fresh sap of tree needles. The Enchanted Forest: he pictured wart-specked trolls lurking under bridges, crafty wolves, droopy-nosed dwarves in straw huts. Fair-skinned innocents waylaid by magical spells. He'd never thought about the actual Black Forest darkness of those stories; how frightened the orphaned children wandering under a sunless leafy canopy must have been. It was not fear that Winston felt now. The partial sleep and hangover had him bustling toward rancour. He was impatient for the mystery to be explained and until that happened his peering uselessly into the void made him feel as though he stood on the side of a road waiting for a bus whose schedule he did not know. Time had slowed to a crawl.
He wished that Dickie had handed over a clue about what he was supposed to be seeing or encountering in this place. Or when. Unlike the Port-Land, about which he had made suitableâif finally laughably inaccurateâconjectures, what offering a patch of forest in the middle of the November night could make to sightseers was completely puzzling. So far there was nothing noteworthy to glimpse.
Winston's mind grew fiery with imagesâwitches at midnight covens, white slavers, Soviet agents, the Ku Klux Klanâthat he instantly extinguished. Some ideas just did not have the legs on which to stand. It would serve reason that natural phenomena such as the aurora borealis or phosphorescent sea creatures would be closer to the mark. Yet, he could not come up with a thing offhand that might show up in a forest in the middle of the night. Some nocturnal animal, perhaps? Raccoons were hardly headline news. And it seemed unlikely these men would have any abiding interest in nature. They weren't of the bird-watching sort. Delilah mocked
city slickers
for having no appreciation for the rhythms of the seasons, and would blanch if she spent an hour in the company of these gentlemen.
In the aftermath of the Judy Canova Collins, Winston's whole body registered its complaints. His thoughts turned to Alberta's detective novels and their inevitable Mickey Finns. Why would these men bother? Or might the whole clandestine undertaking be a charade, one of Dickie's odd jokes? Dickie had never shown himself to be vindictive for no cause; he seemed more bark than bite. None of it made any sense.
As his senses adjusted to the blanketing shroud of darkness, Winston heard movements and watched mobile orange orbsâlit cigarettes. He squinted, trying to make the black against black shapes coalesce. Other men came here, then; it was not a secret only the gang was privy to. Everyone followed the rule of silence. Its strict adherence, Winston thought, lent credence to his nocturnal animal theory.
A silhouette holding a glowing cigarette made its way toward Winston, its movement reminiscent of a singular though sluggish firefly. It stopped a few feet from him and drew from the cigarette. The shape moved closer until it stood next to him. Winston was frozen. A hand settled on his thigh and did not lift again. The hand squeezed gently; a moment later it crept upward, resting on the fly of his trousers. A finger dug under the flap of the fly. Winston could feel the hard edge of a fingernail run up the zipper's metal surface, the vibration an electric shock.
In a smooth, practiced movement, the shadow was crouched in front of him, the mouth directly on his trousers, the breath a sharp contrast to the autumn air. Winston's mind was stalled; he wanted to push the shape away and tear out of the bower, and yet he was curious. He was aroused. With veteran ease, the figure unhitched Winston's trousers and underpants; hands stroked his behind and a mouthâhot and soft and moistâenveloped his manhood. The sensation was like no other. Winston clutched the man's head, felt the warmth of the ears, the oiled smoothness of the hair, the prickly stubble of his beard. Breathing in the pungent tobacco smoke, he could see other figures getting closer and then fading back. The moment climaxed in no time. The figure pulled away and, like the gang minutes before him, dissipated into the forest. The night air was cold on his exposed body. Winston tucked himself into his underpants and fastened his trousers. His senses reached out as he stared with dread into the fathomless dark of the night.
Epi[logue] I Ap[ril] [19]65
Winston lifted the squat clock that faced him from the right front corner of his desk. Winding it marked the final half hour of his working day. He also checked to see if windows were locked, made certain that no student had burrowed himself in a cubbyhole, and swept the room for leftover items that would become discards in the cardboard Lost and Found box he stored in the broom closet. Over the course of the afternoon, Winston had already picked up a white barrette, two notebooks, and a tube of lipstick. They would likely never be claimed.
He heard the library door close with a gentle click. That sound prompted his momentary frown; he foresaw having to tell this student that he'd have just five minutes before needing to leave for the day. It was an odd time for a student to show up; he should be attending some class or another. Perhaps a teacher had sent him to the library as a punishment. It was Winston's considered opinion that such a drastic measure came nowhere close to its target of correction.
A plain-looking girl with hair as black as Grendel's approached him. She held a notebook close to her bosom.
“Mr. Wilson, I'm flunking History. Can you help me?” Winston liked the gap between her front teeth.
“You have me at a disadvantage, young lady. What is your name, pray tell?”
“Em.”
“Em?”
“Oh, Emily Sanderson.”
“Pleased to meet you, Miss Sanderson. I don't recall having seen you in here before.” He raised his eyebrows in mild castigation:
Small wonder you're failing.
She stood in front of his desk, eyes cast downward.
“Now then, how can I be of assistance?”
“I figure that if I can do real, um, really well on the final assignment ⦠it's worth a quarter of our final grade, you see.” Winston guessed that she arrived by bus every morning from one of the outlying farms.
“Alright. What have you done so far?”
“You know that we have to write about Valley history, right?”
“Yes.” He did know this topic well, Delilah Pierce's perennial final assignment, and kept folders of clippings about towns and events in the Valley in the filing cabinet next to his desk.
“Well, I thought I would do something about women in business in the early years of River Bend City. My gran says the Bend used to be run by women.”
“She does, does she? That's a grand idea. But it's already fairly late in the day, Miss Sanderson. Spend a few minutes jotting down your ideas tonight and let's meet tomorrow. Will you have the spare time?”
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Winston stood for a moment at the threshold of Mrs. Pierce's classroom. In her yellow dress printed with daisies, she gesticulated toward the blackboard explainingâhe could hear her plain as dayâthe Treaties of Versailles to a small body of detainees. The instant he crowded into the edge of her vision, she turned and gave him a smile and quick wave. She returned to the after-hours remedial lecture in a beat.
He heard her skittering gait as he approached his west exit. Already guessing the urgent message she planned to deliver, he stopped and waited with a grin.
“Don't forget that you're hosting the Curriculum Committee tonight.” Her bright colouration and uneasy flutter reminded Winston of a canary.
She rested her left hand over her bosom, winded from the exertion.
“Of course, Delilah. I'm not so old that I've become that forgetful. Just this morning Mother was fretting about what kind of baking she ought to serve to our little group.”
“I'm sorry, Winston. Force of habit. Too many absent-minded students over the years, I suppose. See you at six o'clock on the dot. Shall I bring anything?”
“Your quick wit should suffice, Delilah.” Turning to the door, he adjusted his hat and pushed.
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Along his route toward Wilson Manor, Winston observed the density of the heavy grey clouds and could see that yet another deluge of rain was imminentâthe proper question would be “How much?” he decided resignedly, not “When?” He felt tired, under the grip of that dull weather. If he lived elsewhere, he wondered, some country with sunshine year round, would he be a more sanguine man? Not himself only, but the general population in the water-soaked Valley? Everyone here had an intimate kinship with the rainy weather blues.
And he was aware that these blues were no caprice of his. Alberta had told Winston that scientific surveys had proven that people in northern climates have a measurably greater proneness to doldrums, ruefulness, and even suicide. Maybe the life of Riley could not be found so far north. In fact, when he'd encountered the phrase
dolce far niente
in a novel about early Christian Rome it seemed felicitous, but also as exotic and beautiful as an Aegean sirenâand as remote: the kind of lassitude one could achieve here for a only a few days in summer.
He couldn't remember if the crucial factor in the Nordic low mood phenomenon was abundant snowfall or lack of available light. Alberta had not mentioned rain, he was certain of that. Maybe the sheets of falling water led to a special kind of melancholic disposition and ought to be taken into account. He'd ask Cameron McKay, who kept track of that scientific sort of thing. He'd know something. At least they weren't stuck along some granite fjord in Norway. Or captive in desolate Alaska.
The Manor's front yard was full of green budding promiseâfor which, he grudgingly admitted, rain should be paid respect. In a matter of weeks, the shrubs and trees would be fully in leaf; day by day, the dark clusters on Alberta's white lilac trees grew plump. Their bursting forth always seemed like nature's official announcement that grey winter and its cold rains had retreated for the next half of the year.
In the front hallway he yelled out, “Hello, Mother,” and checked for mail in the candy dish that had rested on the desk in the living room for as long as he could remember. No mail in hand, he headed toward the kitchen.
Alberta was scrubbing her nails under the tap. A comedy program was blaring from the radio.
She held up her dripping hands and wiggled her fingers in greeting. “It's damp out there. The dirt is chock full of worms, though. Wonderful.”
Now that Winston was home, Alberta would begin with her tea preparations. She dried her hands and shuffled toward the pantry door.
While she boiled water and warmed the teapot, Winston walked to his room. He sat at the edge of his bed and removed his shoes and socks. The mismatched socks and mildly distended foot no longer drew his attention with any regular frequency. It grew on you and became part of the landscape, he'd concluded, no differently than moss on the eaves of a house. That adjustment of perspective made sense, like some purposeful vestige of the survival instinct: there was a brief time of adaptation and it transformed naturally into the way it's always been. Otherwise, the worry and anxiety would be a debilitating handicap. Forward movement and achievement of biological goals were what compelled our species, he thought. Sulking over mortality and our feeble, ever-woundable flesh was not. He wondered if the war veterans with missing limbs had similar experiences. Surely some conditions were less easy to overlook.
A passing glance at the foot now pushed up shards of memories about his black-browed specialist pressing his thumbs into the spongy skin, and, regrettably, Dickie and Errol Flynn. The scenes flashed vividly. Though he had success in keeping those few hours of his past at bay, there were moments when they flew up like furies. All he desired was that they fade away as steadily as pencil sketches. After all, he'd decided that his sense of adventure had been misguided, like that of those Bend high school students last year whose drunken inspiration to “walk the tightrope” across a narrow iron beam on the bridge had resulted in gales of tears after three young bodies had washed up miles downstream. Likewise, his participation in the incident in the city had been a grievous error.
His lapse of judgment could be overlookedâand that was something those students could never claim. With the exception of the occasional insistence of memory, the entire episode stayed securely buried. And normally there was no thumping heart under the floorboards that drove him to distraction. Why should there be? Winston knew he must learn from Pandora and Eve's fatal choices: he understood that giving into that peculiar temptation would catapult disastrous changes into his peaceful world. Why bother with it, then? Unlike his mother, he had a curiosity that was easily satisfied.
He slid on his slippers and stood up. Looking in the mirror, he saw what was always there at this hour of the weekday: a trim and well-groomed man with a full head of hair in a woollen cardigan about to share a pot of tea and a plate of biscuits with his mother.
In the kitchen, Alberta was talking back to the radio announcer. She turned off the radio as he sat at the table, pausing to breathe in the humid kitchen's comforting smoky scent.
“I stopped in and talked with Mr. Bryson today. He gave me a few new brochures.” She pushed them across the table. Her excitement about their long-deferred bus tour to Nevada had grown visible as the date loomed closer. Winston looked at the tiny, inviting picturesâa cactus-shaped swimming pool, a young couple holding fancy cocktails, a stage of sequined performers, and a golden room the size of a warehouse filled with gamblers swathed in shimmering Hollywood glamour. High Rollers! exclaimed the cover of another pamphlet. Winston reached down when he felt Grendel butt up against his calf.
His picture of the craggy, sun-blasted stateâso tidy, pristine, and rectilinear on the mapâwas now overrun with frantic gamblers in man-made oases and cigarette-smoking crooners speeding through their rote-smooth patter night after night. The incongruity of the elements perplexed him. Atomic bomb test explosions and carrion birds crowded their way into his vision. He thought of the heavy grey clouds outside and scientists measuring the deleterious effects of winter weather on one's humour.
Standing at the table, Alberta was reading a brochure. “It will be such marvelous fun,” she said.
“You're right, Mother, it will.”
Winston watched the crows gathering on the clothesline. They were silent for the moment, but he knew that soon enough they'd begin to caw.
