The Shadow Cabinet (50 page)

“I never seen anything like it. I never did. Who learned you all that?”

He'd learned it from a colored man over at the workhouse in Nashville—a check kiter from New Orleans. Tom Pepper was doing ninety days, the colored man six months. Time was heavy on their hands in the evening. “Sixty-five years old, that old man was,” Tom Pepper had told her. “Lordy, he could move them feet, faster'n anything I ever saw. His daddy died at a hun'ert an' two, like his daddy before him. You know how come?”

“How come.”

“Tap dancing. Keeps you spry, keeps the blood moving, the joints oiled up. Don't give old age a chance to come creeping in. Ain't nowhere for him to go, that's what he told me. You think that's something, wait'll Homer an' Jethro come on. You'll see some sparks a-flying.”

“What was you a-doing in the workhouse over in Nashville?” she'd asked suspiciously.

“Ninety days, like I said.”

“I'm not talking about that, dummy. How come you was there?”

“Had a fight, busted out a police car winder. Some honky-tonk next door was playing music too loud all night long an' didn't even have no liquor license.”

“It's nothing to be proud of,” she'd told him. “I don't want to get myself mixed up with any jailbird; any musician, either.”

“Hell, I ain't no musician. I ain't no jailbird, neither, not no more. Tap dancing keeps you young, keeps you frisky, draws all the meanness out.…”

He'd been right about that. He'd had no more problems with the law. He had no public ambitions; he never danced in front of an audience and had no desire to, although after their marriage and his two bankruptcies, she would sometimes say, “One of these days it'll sure enough come tap-dancing time. You and them skinny legs of yours will be the only thing between us and the poorhouse. And it'll be me a-holding the tin cup.…”

She told him the same thing just a week earlier, after the independent gas and diesel fuel distributor had given them notice that he would be reducing his operations and closing down the marginal outlets, like the pumps out front. They'd been expecting the notice for some time. Without the diesel fuel and gasoline, the truck stop would become just another abandoned building at the side of the road, like their other restaurants back in South Carolina and the roadside stand up near Gatlinburg.

She was still awake as the bed groaned, two shoes fell to the floor, and the covers lifted. “Frisky tonight, ain'cha?” Tom Pepper said, trying to tickle her. “All ready to go, ain'cha?”

“Never you mind. Don't be doing that now.” She hated being tickled.

“Hot stuff, ain'cha. Gimme some of them covers.”

“You go pulling them covers off me, you'll be waking up on the ground outside.” She often wondered where he got his energy.

“You'll be waking up with me, then. When anyone puts me in the ground, I'll be taking you with me.”

“I'll go too,” she said. “You ain't leaving me behind to pay all them bills of yours.”

He was still breathing hard, his heart pumping furiously. “Oh, Lordy,” he sighed as he settled back. “I'm plumb wore out.”

“You'll be having a stroke, you keep up all that foolishness.”

“I wasn't doing any foolishness; I got me an idea. Got me an idea an' I was working it out.”

“What kind of idea?”

“I knew that'd wake you up. Gotcha in'er'sted, don't I?”

“I heard of some of your ideas,” she said without enthusiasm. “It was your ideas got us in all this mess.”

“We're gonna put it all behind us. Let loose of that cover. I see you holding on. Gimme some.”

“You're gonna jerk it off me.”

“No, I ain't. Let loose a little.” She relaxed her grip and he sank back again. “Gonna put it all behind us,” he vowed, “gonna hit the road. Pack up that truck and hit the road.”

“Where to?”

“It was that fella here from Wash'n'ton give me the idea, that fella that was here with Dorsey, remember?”

“The one you wouldn't talk to about Bob Combs, all that meanness he was doing. You oughta be ashamed of yourself.”

“Just hold your horses. Just lemme take care of it. So I got me this idea. I gotta whole lot in my head besides just a franchise business, a whole lot in my old filing box too.…”

She'd heard him that evening rooting around in the filing cabinet in the office where he kept old records dating back to his Army days, his prison parole after his manslaughter sentence, his years as a car salesman in South Carolina, including his time with Bob Combs.

“So how come you wouldn't talk to this man from Washington?”

“'Cause I'm gonna tell you why. You just listen. Don't go butting in. What we're gonna do is pack up that old van truck and hit the road.”

“Where to?” she repeated.

“I'll tell you where to. To someplace where there ain't no hard times, where everyone's got him a gov'ment job, walking around the streets with money to spend. Where they got a whole lot more tourists than that goddamn whiny old bellyaching switchback road out yonder. Listen to it. Goddamn, all night long.…”

She heard a truck climbing the grade. “Don't you go talking about that road like that. That road done us a whole lotta good in its time.” Her eyes were open and she looked at the ceiling as the lights slid across, down the wall, and then dimmed away, but the singing of the tires still hovered there and her eyes were suddenly warm with tears as she remembered the many years here and the sadness of it all.

“We're gonna leave all this mess behind us soon as we can get packed up. Those pumps close down on Friday night, we'll be closing with them.”

She wiped her eyes against the pillow. “You can't just be walking off, leaving all them bills, all those creditors we got.”

“Won't be walking off—just a temporary shutdown while we get us some new working capital, get us a new gas and diesel fuel distributorship.”

“Now I know you're lying,” she said.

“I ain't lying!” Tom Pepper cried out in exasperation. He'd been thinking about the road outside, chained to him all those years, rattling in his sleep, like the leg irons he carried as a penitentiary prisoner working at a granite quarry.

“When you're thinking one thing and telling me another, you're a-lying. You said we was gonna pack up and hit the road, and now you're a-telling me it's just a temporary closedown. Where is it you're wanting to go? Truthful now.”

“Somewhere you won't find no hard times like this, where everybody's got him a federal job.”

“Must be Kingsport, then,” she said with a sigh, “where everyone works for TVA.”

Tom Pepper sat bolt upright in bed. “Kingsport! What kinda tomfool dummy would go up to Kingsport to make him some big money! I'm talking big times and you're talking Tennessee dog-scratch! You sure do make me wonder sometimes, Cora, you sure do. I might as well be talking to that mirror on that dresser yonder.” He sank back down. “Oh, Lordy me.”

“That dresser's paid for. All the ideas you ever get in your head never get paid for. Where is it we're going?” Her eyes were closed. He didn't answer, his back to her, insulted. She waited a few minutes, but he still didn't answer. “Well, that's all right,” she said sleepily, rolling to her side. “It must not be very big if you forgot already.”

“Wash'n'ton, D.C., that's where we're headed,” he declared, turning again to hover over her. “How do you like them apples?”

“Sour and half-baked,” she said, the way she always did when the question came. “You're thinking about Bob Combs and all that trouble he did back in South Carolina; that's what's got you all started up.”

“That's only some of it. They got other things up there too, all that gov'ment payroll, all them tourists. We could open up a franchise up there.”

She was silent, her eyes still closed. “What kind of a bird is it that don't fly?” she asked finally.

He knew the answer. “What kind do you think?” he said irritably. “The kind you're always asking about, the kind I'm always telling you about. A jailbird.”

She waited another minute. “You'd better get them skinny legs of yours a-moving, then,” she said sleepily, “dancing up a storm, 'cause with what you're thinking, you're gonna get us both locked up or throwed out in the street.”

2.

Ed Donlon and Mary Sifton had been asleep in the bedroom on the second floor of the Georgetown house when he was awakened by the sound of the downstairs door being closed. After a minute he heard Grace Ramsey's light tread on the stairs, heard her passing the half-closed bedroom door and then climbing to the third-floor guest room. The door closed softly and a few minutes later he heard the faint joyful sounds of Mozart.

It was two o'clock in the morning.

He had no idea where she had been. Although he'd adjusted to her mysterious goings and comings, he hadn't reconciled himself to them. She had one or two old friends she occasionally visited until late in the evening—shut-ins, she'd told him—but he wasn't sure who they were or where they lived. She'd gone to the Eastern shore several weeks earlier, the guest of her in-laws, but had returned abruptly early Saturday afternoon, complaining of creaking floors, ugly drafts, and strange water marks on the ceiling above her bed in the old prebellum house.

He foresaw a creeping hypochondria growing toward paralysis, similar to the ailment that had claimed his mother's spinster sister in the old Victorian house in Trenton.

When Mary Sifton was in the house, Grace avoided her and took her meals alone. She ate very little. Her body, once slender and graceful, seemed consumed by some wasting affliction, a dolor as much mental as physical. The brown eyes framed by the pale golden hair were darker than ever, but the face and arms were frail, amphetamine-thin. Her too large dresses and blouses hung on her bony shoulders; her hair had lost its thickness and seemed sparse, even dingy. She began to keep her hair concealed much of the time, even when she was indoors, pushed into an old brown beret. Wearing the beret, her legs encased in thick woolen stockings, like leg warmers, wearing a long skirt, a flowing scarf, cracked leather boots, her lean face almost Tartar-like without make-up, she resembled some fading figure from the stage or the ballet, slightly dotty now as her beauty had withered beyond the glare of the footlights, her face a mask, her thoughts fixed inscrutably upon some mad, manic choreography of her own making.

She sometimes described her outings to Donlon when they had dinner alone, only the newly hired housekeeper in attendance. She visited galleries, attended lectures on every conceivable subject, from El Salvador to Chinese porcelain, went to poetry readings, afternoon chamber music or organ recitals, auctions, performances at the Kennedy Center, or did research on her family genealogy at the Library of Congress.

One afternoon he encountered her by chance among the record shelves at the back of the Book Annex in Georgetown. Her face was turned away and he didn't recognize her. A brown shopping bag was over one arm, a large artist's portfolio under the other. A clerk was watching her curiously and Donlon, too, was attracted by this wild, romantic figure. But then, quite unexpectedly, he was reminded of the old white-haired woman with the grease-stained shopping bag who'd prowled the back alley behind his parochial school in Trenton. Forty years had passed since he'd remembered, but there she was—the derelict with her matted white hair, toothless jaws, and ratty old coat, accompanied by a half-blind brindled bulldog as she picked her way among the refuse cans, Donlon's voice the loudest as they taunted her with a rhyme of his own invention, for which the nun in charge of play period had cuffed his ears:

Annie Parker! The trashcan queen!

Bought her face on Haller-ween!

And then Grace Ramsey had turned. Donlon, recognizing the face, fled in confusion.

He'd seen her again without recognizing her as he'd emerged from a tobacco shop on Wisconsin Avenue—a willowy figure sweeping along the sidewalk in front of him. She'd turned into his street and he'd quickened his pace to learn where she lived, only to follow her to his own doorstep.

Roger Buckman, her New York lawyer, had called him three times to ask about her—whom she was seeing, the state of her health, how she was managing her solitude. She'd missed two appointments with a New York surgeon and both were concerned. Her in-laws in Maryland had also telephoned, still perplexed about her sudden departure that Saturday morning. Donlon had tried to reassure all of them, but what could he say?

Cornelia Bowen also pretended concern about Grace, who had accompanied him during his first visit. They'd remained only ten minutes. Grace had announced abruptly that it was time to go, just as he had accepted Cornelia's invitation for a drink. He'd returned alone a week later. Taking leave of Cornelia that night, leaning over her chaise longue, he had given her a fond kiss. Her response had been encouraging enough so that his lips remained in place and his left hand began exploring the scene of the crime twenty-eight years past. The hand moved down her neck and under her dressing gown, curious as to how those contours might have changed after all those decades. They'd changed very little, he discovered, but then the phone had rung, he already had his overcoat on, and so they'd separated. He promised to return. He was still giddy with suspended passion as he reached his front door.

On several occasions he thought Grace Ramsey was on the verge of leaving, although she'd said nothing to him. His clues about her intentions were invariably oblique ones. One evening he heard her talking on the telephone to New York and supposed she'd at last called Roger Buckman. He took the return call himself after Grace had departed for the evening and found himself talking to the manager of a Park Avenue hotel unable to provide her with the numbered suite she'd asked for on the date she'd requested. She had similar conversations with hotel managers in Palm Beach and Nassau. Reviewing his monthly telephone bill, he also discovered that she'd called his wife, Jane, in Connecticut every week and that their talks had been long ones. Her plans became more muddled after she informed him that she had decided to sell the house on the Potomac—sell it at any price. She loathed it and would never set foot in it again. Her principal concern was the volumes from her library. After the transfer company had moved her possessions to a storage vault in Maryland, she spent an afternoon at the warehouse, carefully segregating her books. She returned in a taxi with three heavy cartons of books, which Donlon carried up the stairs to the third floor, not daring to ask her what this latest maneuver meant.