The Life of Hope (31 page)

“Don’t mind if I do,” had been Abram’s response. Whitecrow had then begun to speak in his cultured and refined way. For years, Whitecrow had said, cigarette smoking had been very popular in European High Society. (Jonathan Whitecrow seemed to have first-hand experience of European High Society, although Abram knew that to be impossible.) Now, Jonathon proceeded, it was beginning to gain popularity in North America. This land, Whitecrow had nodded vaguely at the gentle hills that surrounded him, would be very good for growing tobacco. Abram Skinner had nodded and accepted his third cigarette. “By jim,” Skinner said, “I think you’re right!”

Two days later, Abram had had to go into Trenton in order to pick up some wire needed for the production of the Opdycke Angling Spoon, Pat. 1863. Next to the foundry was a barbershop, and Abram was surprised to see a sign in the window that announced “CIGARETTOS FOR SALE.” Abram felt an inexplicably urgent need for one of the dainty white smokes. He’d entered the barber’s somewhat bashfully and waited for the man to finish a tooth extraction before mentioning that he was interested only in purchasing cigarettes.

“What brand?” asked the barber.

Abram was confused. He tried to recall the name printed on Whitecrow’s box and, although it sounded foolish, he said that he believed he wanted something called “corporals.”

“Caporals?” asked the barber.

Abram Skinner nodded.

Things became further confused. Not only was there a brand of cigarette called “CAPORAL,” there was another, “SPORTSMAN’S CAPORAL,” and yet another, “SWEET CAPORAL.”

“What is the difference?” asked Abram.

The barber shrugged and said that the “SWEET CAPORAL” were favored by women, while men tended to be partial to the “SPORTSMAN’S.” In his opinion, the barber went on, the two tasted identical. Not only that, Abram soon discovered, his choice was in no wise limited to cigarettos bearing the “CAPORAL” brand name. He could choose from all sorts, including “BOHEMIANS,” “DUKE OF DURHAM,” “CYCLONE” and
“TOWNTALK.” Abram began to knead the skin on his forehead, finding all of this troubling. He finally elected to purchase a packet of the “SPORTSMAN’S CAPORAL.” All the way back to the Phalanstery, Abram Skinner puffed on his smokes, holding the reins in his left hand, with his right trying out different ways of holding the cigarette.

J. B. Hope didn’t pay any particular attention to Abram and his tobacco-farming suggestions. Lately their Spiritual Leader had become distracted—all of the Perfectionists connected this change in mood with the death of Cairine McDiarmid.

George Quinton had discovered her. He’d been sent out early one morning to chop firewood for the Phalanstery. Later, toward noon, he’d returned a bloody mess, holding Cairine’s tiny body in his arms. “Sowwy!” George bawled over and over again, the only word he seemed capable of giving voice to, taking upon himself all of God’s injustice.

Cairine was mauled almost beyond recognition, her black clothes and flesh dangling from her in indeterminate tatters. “Sowwy!” screamed George, and it would be many hours before he was inwardly settled enough to tell them what had happened.

Returning home, George claimed, he’d stepped into a clearing to discover a huge black bear muzzling at something. George assumed that the beast had hunted an animal, until he recognized the heavy shade of Cairine McDiarmid’s mourning clothes. Even then he did not realize what had gone on, but George unleashed a terrible bellow and charged at the bear. The animal had looked up from its meal, curious and innocent; then, a little alarmed, the bear turned and lumbered into the neighboring forest.

The Perfectionists were shocked beyond speech. This was horrendously discordant with their whole way of thinking, and it seemed especially cruel that the bear’s victim should have been Cairine, a woman who loved God’s natural world with her whole heart. Joseph Hope told them that Cairine had gone to Heaven where all is unsullied, free of Earth’s grim forces—and such was his only pronouncement on the event.

The following day, Polyphilia Drinkwater Davies held a seance—the Spirit Rappings were loud and violent. Invisible forces
tore the room apart, smashing dishes, upsetting the furniture, lighting and dowsing candles at a furious clip.

So Abram Skinner didn’t press Hope on the point—in the final analysis Joseph was uninterested in such pedestrian matters, and justifiably so—he just went ahead and started planting tobacco.

Esther realized that she needed something called “Durkee Frank’s Louisiana Hot Sauce” (Esther was doing the cooking, making a huge pot of something that looked revoltingly like food) at the same time as Harvey decided he needed a Hoper so that on the morrow he could join me in my Mossback quest. There was nothing for it, then, but to go into town. I put on my disguise, a caterpillar cap with SCOUT stitched over its brim and a pair of mirrored sunglasses. Harvey regarded me somewhat disdainfully. “Ready?” he asked.

We three climbed into the Fiat and headed off for Hope.

“Hey, Esther!” Harvey remembered. “There’s a statue of Joseph Benton Hope in the Square. And …” Harvey giggled his horrible giggle. “There’s something really special about the statue. Isn’t there, Paulie? Eh, isn’t there, Paulie?”

“What’s special about it?” asked Esther.

“You tell us!” Harvey pulled up beside the Square and cranked up the parking brake.

The Square had more people in it that day than I’d ever seen there before: two boys tossing a hardball back and forth; three old gentlemen of a scholarly bent, studying the feeding habits of squirrels with great interest; a young mother walking her children, one in a perambulator, one strapped to the back papoose-style, another still nestled peacefully in her tummy;
some teenagers, the boys barechested, the girls halter- and tank-topped, playing with a Frisbee, throwing the day-glo disk at lethal speeds; and one old fart done up in gold-braided regimentals, ribboned and hung with medals, who marched around rather aimlessly and appeared to be Hope’s version of a parade.

In the midst of all this stood the stern representation of J. B. Hope, the Good Book in the crook of one arm, the other raised piously toward the sky. I had decided, based on my research, that I actually had a good deal of respect for this man. It seemed to me that he’d started his career with the most pure-hearted intentions and followed them through with a dog-like loyalty. Somewhere along the line he was branded the worst libertine since de Sade, and at the end of that line he got chopped up into morsels. I studied the statue’s face. I knew now why there was such a disparity in eye size, that the larger one was in life a huge, pale blue marble. Even for a statue, the face appeared chiselled; many of the writers I’d read had commented upon the sharpness of Hope’s features, describing them as “angular,” “aquiline” and, many times, “hawklike.”

Benson fanned his arms at the statue. “Well, Esther? Do we detect anything untoward?”

Esther looked at the statue briefly and said, “Oh, wow!”

The stone boner was even more apparent in the daylight, highlighted by the sun and shadow.

“If you rub it,” Harvey went on, “it’s good luck.”

Esther was a good sport. She marched forward and massaged the stone boner enthusiastically, closing her eyes and mouthing wishes. Then she stepped back and looked at us. “Come on, you guys!” she said. “It’s good luck!”

“I rubbed it already,” I answered.

“Me, too,” said Benson.

“Well, it’s not like you can have too much good luck!” countered Esther, and to prove the point she gave Hope’s stone boner an additional thrumming. “Come on!”

Harvey will do almost anything for someone who is in the position of denying or granting him amorous congress. He went up to the statue and laid his little fingers on it briefly, moving them a few centimeters so that the action qualified technically as a rub.

“Come on, Paulie,” said Harvey.

“Why not?” I wondered aloud. In a world full of nuclear weaponry, murder and mayhem, there is no percentage in refusing to rub stone boners. I stepped forward and tried to make myself a little good luck.

And I think it probable that at that same moment, the phone started to ring back at my little homestead.

Edgar the axe-murderer seemed delighted to see me. “Hey, Big Guy!” he barked, an unusual salutation, seeing as it came from a fellow who was built like a brick shit-house (the cliche is inadequate; let’s say a brick shit-house that could bench-press its own weight). “How’s it hangin’, Big Guy?” Edgar continued. “You haven’t been around for a while.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“Yeah, I bet.” Edgar trained his black eyes on my companions. “Hiya, guys!” he yelped enthusiastically. “What can I do you for?”

Harvey answered, “I need a Hoper.”

“Yep, I bet you do. If you’re goin’ after Ol’ Mossback, you sure do need you a Hoper.” Edgar reached below his counter and came up with a lure. “And here’s one of the little beauties right here!”

“Ah!” went Harvey, with the air of a connoisseur. “The Hoper!”

“Hey!” said I. “That’s not a Hoper!” This lure was an old-fashioned fishing plug, carved and painted to resemble a small perch.

“Of course it’s a Hoper,” said Harvey Benson. “I’ve been fishing long enough to know what a Hoper looks like.”

“Yeah,” agreed Edgar. “It’s a Hoper.”

“Well, what was that thing that you sold me?” I asked. “The thing that looks like a finger or, more to the point, a penis?”

“Watch your language, Big Guy!” snapped Edgar. “There’s a lady present!”

Esther smiled gently.

“A finger, then,” said I. “It looks like a finger.”

Edgar aimed one of his own foot-long digits at the lure in Harvey’s hand. “That there is a Hoper.”

“That is not a Hoper,” I mumbled. I looked at Esther furtively. “Further weirdness,” I whispered.

“It’s a real shame about Deedee and the lib’ary, eh?” said Edgar. “That really depressed me. I almost started drinking again.”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “Me, too.”

“She was smoking in bed,” continued Edgar. “That’s what they say. You’d think she’d know better, wouldn’t ya? One-hundred-and-four years old and still smoking in bed.” Edgar moved his shoulders in what was meant to be a philosophical shrug but looked more like a visual aid for a lecture on plate techtonics. “That’s the way she goes, eh, Big Guy?”

“I suppose.”

“Yeah,” repeated Edgar, “that’s the way she goes, all right.”

“How much for the Hoper?” asked Benson.

Edgar pursed his lips and decided, “Three forty-two.”

Harvey produced the money.

“Is the Hoper an Updike product?” I blurted out, almost before I’d formed the question in my mind.

Edgar’s eyes darkened. “Nope,” he replied. “I don’t carry the Updike products. ’S how come business is so shitty,” he snarled, adding, to Esther, “excuse my French.”

“But isn’t Bernie Updike a friend of yours?”

“Yeah, sure. Big Bernie and Little Bernie, too. But I still don’t carry the line.”

“Why not?” I asked, astounded at my courage.

Edgar leaned across the counter menacingly. “Ever watch that show, ‘Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom?’ ”

I nodded.

“So you know what the odds are,” Edgar said quietly.

“Four to one.”

“And what do you think of those odds?” Edgar’s voice dropped suddenly in volume and was almost a whisper.

“Pretty fair,” I whispered back.

Edgar slapped his immense hand on to the countertop with final and irrevocable judgment. “
That’s
why I don’t carry the Updike line.”

Then the three of us left Edgar’s place. We went back into the wild kingdom.

The next morning the three of us went fishing.

Of the night before, there’s little I can say. Most of it has vanished into an alcoholic blackout, although little pieces of memory are seared to my brain by the cocaine. I can tell you that I wept a good deal, nonspecifically, and recounted to Esther and Harvey the entire history of my relationship with Elspeth. Actually, I made most of this up. Moreover, I refused to grant freedom to the few truths that I kept locked up somewhere within me like tiny war criminals.

The three of us drove out to Lookout Lake, stopping here and there along the way so that Esther could examine the roadside vegetation. Esther was, like Harvey, employed at Chiliast U., her field being whatever field likes to examine roadside vegetation. It took us fully an hour to drive the two-plus miles, not that I cared particularly. I was groggy and muzzy-minded because, despite all my time spent bedside, I wasn’t getting any sleep. I was zooming right past sleep into that nether state that’s about as restful as running a marathon.

Once, we stopped and Esther ran out among the wildflowers. Esther was wearing a T-shirt that pictured and identified Darwin, although Darwin was looking grotesquely bug-eyed and hydrocephalic. Esther’s lower part was crammed into cut-off blue jeans. Harvey stared after her for a long moment and then craned his head toward me in the back seat. “I’m in love, Paulie,” Harvey said.

I scowled.

Harvey reached a clenched fist toward me. I slipped an opened palm beneath it. Harvey gentled his grip, and two white pills fell into my hand.

“What are those?” I asked.

Benson shrugged, expressive of pharmaceutical fine points beyond my comprehension. “Uppers,” he answered simply.

This was a little like throwing a stepladder to someone stuck
at the bottom of a well, but I eagerly chewed them up.

Esther came back and presented both of us with wildflowers. As we drove she wove some blossoms into what was left of Harvey’s head of hair.

It was a beautiful day. God seemed to be taking a vindictive delight in making each day more beautiful than the last. Even Lookout Lake seemed magical that day, not like it usually seemed, which was like Nature’s version of a motel room. The greens were deep, the face of the water jeweled, the rocks all buffed and polished. The three of us jumped out of the car and we each took a deep breath.