“I’ll be sure to beat the rush,” Shane said, turning away.
The retirement home seemed to be divided into two sections; assisted living in the east wing, and independent living in the west. Apparently Mr. Kichenbauer, despite his age, resided in the independent living wing. There were less wheelchair-bound sleepers here, and the few doors that were propped open showed small, tidy apartments, most with the televisions turned on, displaying soap operas or The Price is Right.
Bulletin boards adorned the walls between the doorways, all of them colorfully decorated for the holidays. He passed one framed in scalloped brown construction paper with cutouts of pilgrim’s hats and pumpkins stapled to it. In the middle, a sign-up sheet proclaimed the upcoming “THANKSGIVING DAY DANCE”, complete with “LIVE MUSIC” and an exhortation to “GOBBLE UP THE FREE CIDER AND COOKIES!”
To Shane, the bulletin boards looked disconcertingly like they belonged in a grade school hallway rather than a retirement home. As he reached the cafeteria, he passed a woman with a walker, grimly making her way into the unmistakable odor of boiled green beans and macaroni and cheese. He glanced up at the numbers on the plain metal doors, counting up. After a left turn into a narrower corridor, he finally found number fifty-one. It was cracked open, propped with a rolled up issue of TV Guide. Shane knocked lightly.
“Mr. Kirchenbauer?” he called softly. He could hear the sound of the television. It was loud enough that he could tell what was on. The eleven AM news was just starting on channel five. Shane pushed the door open a little and peeked inside. “Mr. Kirchenbauer?”
There was a very old orange Laz-E-Boy recliner in the corner by the little kitchen, but no one was sitting in it. A coffee cup and a crossword magazine lay on the side table, which reflected the glow of the wall-mounted television. Shane pushed the door open further. On the nappy carpet in front of the chair, looking like a Rorschach ink blot, was a splatter of dark liquid. An alarm bell began to go off in Shane’s mind.
Had something happened to the old guy? Should he go and alert the nursing staff? He could imagine how that would go. Crack team that they were, they’d surely rush to the rescue by sometime that afternoon, at least once lunch was over and they’d all finished their smoke breaks. Instead, he decided to check on Mr. Kirchenbauer himself.
He entered the small living room, allowing the door to ease shut behind him, closing on the rolled up magazine. There was a door in the back of the living area, across from the kitchen. It was mostly shut, showing only a bar of shadowy dark: probably the bedroom. Shane inched toward it, afraid of what he might find when he opened the door. He reached out for the handle, and when his fingers touched the cheap metal it was very cold. And then, shocking him so that his knees nearly unhinged, a toilet flushed almost directly behind him. It was so loud and so sudden that it sounded like an F-18 launching from an aircraft carrier.
Shane spun on the spot just in time to see movement in a second doorway, kitty-corner from the bedroom. A small, antiseptic bathroom lay beyond, complete with bright fluorescent lights and a thick, stainless-steel handbar next to the toilet. A small man was crossing the living room floor, hitching up his pants and ignoring Shane completely. Shane struggled to settle his heartbeat, and grinned at his foolishness. The small man eased himself into the orange chair, sinking into it so that his knobby knees poked up like dock pilings. He eyed Shane with no surprise, his eyes magnified behind a pair of horn-rimmed glasses.
“Well, get on with it, why don’cha?” he declared, flapping a large, knuckly hand. “What’re you waiting for? A written invitation?”
“I’m sorry?” Shane said, taken aback. “Were you expecting me?”
“What do you think I’m spending all my sociable security on, if it isn’t for you lackeys to clean up a spot of spilled coffee? I called down an hour ago already, told you I’d leave the door propped open so I wouldn’t have to get up again. It’s probably sunk right into the padding by now, and it serves you right. Where’s your cart, anyway? What you gonna do,
suck
it outta the carpet?”
Shane couldn’t help grinning. “Sorry to say it, Mr. Kirchenbauer, but I don’t work for the facility. I just came over to talk to you. Your grandson told me about you.”
“My grandson,” the man said, still eyeing Shane severely. “Shaun or Brian?”
“Er,” Shane replied, searching his memory again. “Brian. He works over at the IGA. That’s where I met him, and where he told me about you.”
“Oh, well why didn’t you say so? Sit down then. That Brian, he’s a good enough boy, if you don’t count the fact that he’s about as soft in the head as a November cabbage. Not like that uppity cousin of his, though; lives up in Chicago and thinks he’s ten different kinds of high and mighty. Works for some government office there, undersecretary of some stuffed shirt or other. I’ll take dull over uppity anyday. You know my Shaun, do you?”
“No,” Shane said, seating himself on an old sofa near the chair. The television blatted away over his head. “No, I just met Brian this morning. He told me about you. Said you might be an interesting person to talk to.”
“That Brian, now,” the man said, pushing his glasses up onto his bald brow with a horny thumb. “He’s all right enough. How long did you say you known him? It don’t matter anyway. Any friend of his is a friend of mine, long as they don’t interrupt my Royals games. You follow the Royals, er, what’d you say your name was?”
“My name’s Shane, Mr. Kirchenbauer. Shane Bellamy.”
“Bellamy, huh?” the man said, his eyes bright. “Sounds familiar. You from around here?”
“No, sir. I grew up in New Jersey. I spent the last ten years or so living in New York City.”
“Is that so!” the old man replied, impressed. “Well doesn’t that beat all! New York City. Had you a couple of decent ball teams, then, didn’t you? I went to a ball game there once, had to be sixty-four or five. I was there with my wife, but she didn’t come to the game. She never was one to go to ball games. She didn’t like the drinkin’ and the yellin’, always told me I should’ve gone in for a gentleman’s game, like golf. Golf! Can you believe that? I told her the day I start chasing a little white ball all over God’s earth is the day they may as well put me in a box. You golf, er…”
“Shane. No, sir. I used to, when I was a kid, but I never really got a taste for it.”
“Better off,” the old man said, waving a hand as if to disperse a nasty smell. “Buncha uppity son’s o’ bitches waltzin’ around like lords of the earth, chasin’ a white ball like it was the most important thing they ever saw. My Shaun goes out golfin’ with all his Chicago politico buddies. I always told him there was nothing for it once you started buying into that west county bull. Give me a ballgame, a beer and a frankfurter any day of the week. Brian took me down to see the Royals last year. He tell you that? They lost, but I got down close enough to the field to smell the grass and hear the chatter in the bullpen, just like when I was a kid. Some things never change and that’s the truth.” He finished and drew a huge sigh.
“Mr. Kirchenbauer,” Shane began, but the old man interrupted him.
“Name’s Earl. I never stood on formality. Only person that ever called me Mr. Kirchenbauer was my banker down at First Federal, and he’s been dead for twenty years now. You hungry? It’s almost lunch time.”
Shane stood as the small man gripped a cane and hoisted himself to his feet. As he followed the old man toward the door, he shook his head, amused. “Earl, then. Are you at all wondering why I came to see you?”
The man stopped in the middle of the doorway. He turned back and looked up at Shane, frowning slightly. “I only just now remembered you didn’t come to clean up the stain on my carpet. What do you expect from me? I’ll be ninety-five this winter. Be glad I remembered to put on my trousers this morning. You got some pressing matter for me to attend to, then you best make it quick, in case I keel over on the way to the cafeteria. Even if I live that long, the food there’ll probably finish me off. You got the floor, Mr. Shane from New York City.”
Shane followed the tiny man as he limped down the corridor, leaning heavily on his cane. In spite of his dire predictions, however, he moved down the hall quickly, almost as if he thought he was being chased.
“The truth is, Earl,” Shane said, walking alongside the small, wizened man. “Brian mentioned you when I told him where I was living. My wife and I bought the property a few years ago, but I just moved in full time now, since we got divorced. Around here, I guess they call it the river cottage. It used to be part of the Wilhelm estate.”
Earl didn’t break his limping stride, but he glanced up at Shane for a moment, his eyes sharp. “Is that so, then?
That’s
why your name rung a bell.”
Shane nodded. “Brian said you used to work out there, way back when it belonged to the Wilhelms. He said you knew Gus Wilhelm himself.”
Earl shuffled around the corner, joining a sort of slow throng in the main hallway, heading toward the cafeteria. He didn’t respond for a long moment. Finally, he said, “You say you’re divorced?”
Shane looked aside at the old man. He nodded. “Yeah. It wasn’t my choice.”
“Never is, is it?” Earl said, and cackled suddenly, loudly. “Shame about that. It really is. That place needs a woman’s touch. You ever think about trying to work things out with the little lady?”
“Frankly,” Shane said, frowning a little, “That’s pretty much out of my hands. I did everything I could.”
“Then what in hell made you want to move into that goddam cottage full time?” Earl said, finally glancing aside at Shane, almost furtively. “Does that really seem like such a good idea?”
Shane stopped walking. “I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Kirchenbauer.”
“Again with the ‘Mister’,” the old man said, turning aside and gripping Shane’s elbow, as if for support. His grip, like the old woman’s out front, was surprisingly strong. “I told you to call me Earl. Don’t be getting all uppity on me now. I’m just asking a simple question, that’s all, same as you.”
“I don’t think I’ve asked any questions at all, yet,” Shane replied.
“Yeah, but you were planning to, and I know just what kinds of questions you want to ask. I’ll save you the bother. You don’t really want to know any of the answers, Mr. Shane Bellamy. That house went and got torn down, and that’s that. Your cottage is all that’s left. Why you’d want to go living there, especially all by yourself, I can’t imagine, but you can suit yourself, just like the rest of the world.”
Shane looked down at the old man, suddenly feeling as if he’d wasted his time. Earl was obviously a few exits past rational, even if he did wash his own car once a month, like Brian had said. He nodded his head. “Sorry to bother you, Earl. Thanks for your time, anyway.”
But the man didn’t let go of Shane’s elbow. He stared up at Shane piercingly. “Just out of curiosity, Mr. Bellamy,” he said, his voice low now, without a trace of the previous cackle. “What do you do for a living?”
Shane considered asking Earl why in hell it should matter, but knew that would just be petulance. Earl had piqued him about being divorced, and he was still smarting from it. Instead, he answered truthfully. “I’m a commercial artist. I work at home.”
“Is that so, then,” Earl replied, nodding, not seeming particularly surprised. “Imagine that. You’re a painter. Quite the coincidence, wouldn’t you say?”
“That had occurred to me, yes.”
“Brian’s right, dull as he is,” Earl said, his face sagging a little, resigned. “I used to work out there. Knew the Wilhelms both, s’far as anyone from around here could. They kept their distance. All I can say to you is good luck with the place. It’s better for you the main house was torn down. You’ll be fine out there. Or, at least, that’s the hope.”
Shane shook his head in consternation. “Look, all I was planning to do was ask what the place had been like back when it was first built, but I’m getting the feeling that that’s no small answer. Is there something I should know about the property? What can you tell me?”
“Not much, not much,” Earl said, looking away, toward the cafeteria. “I stopped working for the Wilhelms in forty-seven, a year after Gus Wilhelm took off and left the place to the Missus.”
Shane blinked. “Brian said you were the caretaker when he was a little kid. He said you took him out there sometimes.”
“True enough,” Earl nodded, still not meeting Shane’s eyes. “But that was later, after the official caretaker gave it up. I was the only one left in town who’d originally worked out at the property. They called me to take up the job. I didn’t want to, but it was good money, paid right out of the old Wilhelm estate.
"Of course, the house was different by then. The Missus was dead, and the place had been converted into a sort of museum, staffed by volunteers. Hardly anyone ever came out to tour the place, though. Too far off the beaten path, for one thing. Not that many people even remember Wilhelm anymore, either. The man was most famous for his portraits, for Chrissake. It isn’t like folks today are clamoring to hang up prints of some old archduke or goddam secretary of state. They closed the museum down in the late seventies. I stayed on as caretaker until eighty-eight, when they sold off the cottage. The Wilhelm estate finally ran out of money for keeping the old house up, and the bank took it over. It’s city property now, since the last owner defaulted on their loan and the bank handed it off for a song. I wasn’t there during the time the Missus ran the place, though, if that’s what you’re curious about. That was Stambaugh’s tenure. He’d tell you everything you want to know about that strange time, if he could.”
Shane was indeed curious, and even more so for the tiny bits of information he was gleaning from Earl’s cryptic statements. “Stambaugh’s long dead, I assume?”
Earl nodded slowly, finally glancing up at Shane. “In a manner of speaking, yes. That’s close enough for government work, you might say.”
“What do you mean?”
Earl smiled a little crookedly and nodded toward the cafeteria doors. With his hand still on Shane’s elbow, they moved toward the open doorway.
