The Drunken Spelunker's Guide to Plato (18 page)

“If one of y'all would go get it for me, I wouldn't mind a nice dish of Blossom's homemade peach ice cream right now,” Vera said.

“Brr, too cold for that,” Danny said. “I want something warm—a nice big plate of barbecue.”

“No barbecue places are open at this time of night,” Pancho said. “Only Clyde's.”

“Charlie Blue might still be over at Tia's, and we could ask him to bring us some burritos,” I said.

“No, he left early,” Rafi said. “He went to our house to practice some with Billy Joe.”

“Only Clyde's,” Pancho said again.

“I have nothing against chicken and biscuits,” I said. “That just might hit the spot.”

“It'll do,” Danny said, “as long as I'm not the one who has to go out into the cold to get it.”

“Come on, Pancho,” Rafi said. “I'll go with you to help carry it back.”

Vera and Rosalita both added their orders.

“What about you, Tom?” Rafi asked. “Want anything?”

Tom was sitting next to Rosalita, one arm around her, leaning back against the wall, his eyes looking drowsy.

“Nothing for me,” he said sleepily. “I've already got everything I want.”

In the tunnel leading out of the cave, the freed prisoner walks for a long time in absolute darkness.

In early February, on a bitterly cold morning, our phone rang just at dawn. Danny crawled out from under the blankets and went to the kitchen to answer it. When finally he came back to the bedroom, his face was gray and his voice was shaking.

“That was Rosalita calling from the hospital,” he said. “Somebody shot Tom last night. He's dead.”

8

DISSOLUTION

THE NEXT DAYS WERE
a nightmare jumble of confused newspaper reports and police statements, unanswerable questions, disbelief, sadness, and fear. They had not caught Tom's murderer, and so we didn't know why he was killed. It could have been a botched robbery—although why someone looking to steal actual money would target Tom would be beyond explanation. To be fair, it was possible that his death had nothing to do with politics or with the war or with the damning prayers of our local crusading Christians. To be fair.

On the day we buried Tom, I stood between Danny and Jake and felt the wind biting all the way through to my bones. Rosalita stood by herself at the edge of his grave and never said a word, just cried onto the raw red dirt.

Jake came back to our house with Danny and me after the funeral and sat next to Danny on our couch drinking beer, not saying anything.

“I guess y'all both knew Tom for a long time,” I said tentatively.

“Years,” Jake said.

Danny stared into the empty fireplace.

“What do you suppose will happen to the bookstore now?” I asked.

There was a pause. Jake glanced over at Danny and then said, “Dunno,” and lapsed back into silence. Danny just kept staring straight ahead.

“Rosalita . . . ,” I started, but stopped when Danny stood up suddenly.

“If you don't mind,” he said in a voice a little louder than usual, “I think I want to spend some time alone now.”

He didn't look at me, just took the keys and shut the door behind him. When I heard the car start outside, I looked over at Jake, who was still sitting on the couch holding his beer but not drinking it.

“Don't worry,” he said. “He just needs a little space for a while. He knew Tom for a long, long time.”

“Where do you think he's going?”

“He'll be back when he's ready.”

But Danny didn't come back at all that evening. Jake stayed, sitting on the couch watching TV and drinking beer. Eventually I went to bed, and when I woke up the next day, Jake was gone and Danny was asleep face down on the couch with all his clothes on. I didn't ever ask Danny where he had been. It could have been anywhere.

Two days later, the president of the United States declared that the war was over and that the United States had won and that there had been almost no casualties, not counting the
people who didn't, after all, really count. All across the country, there were celebrations of victory.

Down in the Cave, we watched the presidential announcement on the cable news channel. Then Rafi turned off the TV, and no one said anything.

The next day when I went to open the Cave in the middle of the afternoon, I found Pancho (who of course knew where the key was hidden) already inside. The television was on with the sound off, and by the flickering light from the screen, Pancho was playing the piano—music that sounded like lonely souls lost in the wilderness.

“Whatcha doing?” I asked him.

“Shh,” he said, pressing the keys with his eyes closed. “I'm trying to touch the spirit world.”

He played for a long time while I swept the floors and washed the ashtrays and opened up the pool tables. By the time I came in from the back room with the quarters from the pool tables all put neatly into their paper rolls, he was sitting at the bar drying the ashtrays for me.

“Any luck?” I asked.

“Not yet,” he said, looking downcast. Then he smiled a little at me in an encouraging way. “I'll keep trying, though.”

“Thank you, Pancho,” I said. I figured it couldn't hurt. Maybe Tom's soul was out there somewhere, and maybe he would be happy to be in touch and to have us say hello.

How strange it must be for the other prisoners when one among
their number vanishes, is taken from them. It must be terrifying at first to have their gods appear among them and lay hands on their comrade. Direct contact with the gods is a dangerous proposition in many philosophies.

And afterward, when it slowly becomes clear that he is not coming back—that he is never coming back—what do they begin to think of him? Perhaps they search their memories of him to dredge up possible sins, something that would justify and give meaning to his abduction. Or perhaps they begin to develop myths of him and to weave them into their theology, transfiguring him into one among the gods who have, at long last, come for him, their brother. Are any of them resentful—angry at being left behind? Do they begin then to plot their own escape? Plato does not tell us.

All we are told is that they stay there, shackled at the bottom of the cave. They are there waiting—endlessly, faithfully waiting—for the freed one to return.

I don't know who decided it or how it was decided that the bookstore would reopen. Vera and Blossom went in together one afternoon and cleaned up Tom's blood—and came out looking older than they did when they went in. And then we reopened the store, taking shifts in pairs because it was too hard still to be in there all alone. During those days, none of us talked much, but hardly anyone ever went home alone at night.

I stopped tending bar at the Cave then so I could work the morning shifts at the bookstore, unpacking boxes of books that Tom had ordered only days ago and sitting sadly on the couch next to Jake or Danny. Tom was everywhere in the store, his coat still hanging on the back of a door, his coffee cup, a coverless
copy of
Mythology
with a bookmark at the beginning of the chapter about the Trojan War sitting on the arm of the broken-down couch on the porch. Sometimes people who didn't know he had died called and asked to speak to him.