Black Tickets (11 page)

“Nope, not in yet this morning, J.T. Come back this afternoon.”

“Well, I’ll do that, Cy.”

They’d shake hands and clap each other’s shoulders. Once Cy started tearing up.

“Now, boy, none of that,” said J.T. “Times are getting better, you’ll see. And if you have trouble with the store, you know I’m right here with whatever you need.”

Out front we’d sit down to discuss the stock market with the men.

“I tell you, boys, the market won’t go down. It may waver, but it stands firm.”

Of course everyone but he was painfully aware the market had crashed in ’29, but they sat discussing the possibility very seriously. They took sides, argued loudly. J.T. and his supporters usually won. They all sat believing in futures.

Finally J.T. got up and stretched, winked, said someone waited for him. He’d whistle all the way home and seem to forget me. He knew the way, he owned the street, I walked behind him. He’d begin to smooth his now-cropped hair and clear his throat.

We could smell our kitchen from down the block. Butterfried chicken, new potatoes, Jocasta’s buttermilk biscuits. Flowers on the swept porch. J.T. made his entrance, swept off his hat grandly, flourished the box. When he spoke to Lacey, white in her muslin dress, J.T. stuttered; something tugged in his brain but he got past it. He took Lacey’s hand and folded it to his mouth.

Through dinner she glanced at him, small penetrating glances, as he argued quietly to Jocasta about Galsworthy, whose collected green-bound volumes he read alone in his room at night. Lacey watched them both, twisting her dress beneath the table.

I cleared the plates and she turned on the phonograph, handled heavy waxen records until the old waltzes tinkled out at the right speed. J.T.’s eyes were bright; he whirled her around the room while Jocasta sat downcast. Finally they’d go upstairs as soon as it was decently dark, Lacey’s hair falling from the dancing. The record finished and kept scratching, needle bouncing back and forth.

The wind blew the curtains in billowed forms. The glories closed on their vines. We could hear the old brass bed
upstairs beginning, rocking very gently. Sometimes Jocasta turned the music on again. Sometimes we just sat, looking at each other, while the rocking went on; small swooning cries, sharp jabs of the bed against the wall.

During a summer storm, lightning struck the barn. Out the back window a rosy flame burned its petaled center, a cauliflower of fire and smoke. We ran outside, the neighbors came, we passed buckets for twenty minutes. J.T. supervised in his pajamas, lined up the men and women, pumped water at the trough. Stark-faced in the jumping light, his voice booming, he yelled directions.

“Get the lions and tigers out!” he kept shouting. “Don’t let the big cats burn!”

But the hay caught, the rain slacked. Everything burned except a few chickens and one cow Lacey saved at the risk of her skin.

At the end of it, she stood transfixed by the trough as all the people dispersed. Our neighbor Johannes went to her in the dark and took hold of her. He held her and rubbed her back. “There now, there.” She clung to him, grabbed one of his hands behind her and held it. His ashed face nearly shone with some power. He said to come, let him give her some coffee and whiskey. But she said no, she only wanted to stand here for a while. Johannes touched her face, stroked her hair. Picked me up and carried me to his house, and his wife gave me a bath.

Johannes’s wife was a wispy woman considerably older than he. She was actually his cousin once removed. They had left Sweden together, she thirty-one and he seventeen, both unmarried virgins. It was a long hard trip, and lonely.
When they got to New York he married her. She thought she carried a child but she was wrong. Johannes’s wife was barren; she had female problems. Some weeks she stayed in bed.

But that night she bathed me. She smelled of lavender. She lit the bathroom with candles, she sprinkled potpourri and spearmint in the steaming water. She made it bubble with bath salts. Rubbed me with a sponge as big as two hands and I was drunk with flowers. All the time she sang and muttered in her broken English, “Fire no good, poor fire.”

She lifted me out of the tub, swaddled me in towels and carried me, though she was frail, into a room where she kept her dolls from Sweden. More lamps, she lit them all, on the floor and the windowsills. Tall globes threw tangled shadows about the walls. Shadows of the dolls’ limbs loomed huge across the floor. Dolls, twenty or thirty, in big gossamer hats or bonnets with feathered parakeets, long tulle dresses, buttoned shoes. Their rose faces were perfect in a shadow of curled lashes. They posed sitting, standing, walking, running, holding dishes, bouquets, smaller dolls. One wore roller skates, another walked a stuffed Scottish terrier on a leash. That night was my first hallucination. The dolls began moving around the room, rolling hoops with sticks and talking in their whispery, breathless voices. Johannes’s wife was talking too. Her Swedish got faster and faster. She went walking around with the dolls, their glass eyes glazed. They kicked their feet out straight in front. I saw it, the goose-stepping dolls, naked and seven in that room.

“Gerta!” Johannes’s voice. He switched on the electric light. Spoke to her with harsh resignation and came to me on the rotating carpet. He pressed my face to his blond beard. The dolls’ faces still moved, secretly.

Lacey’s face was drawn and tight. She came to get me at Johannes’s house the next morning, my best white dress folded on her arm. She stood in the doorway, her hair pulled back severely and her muslin dress freshly ironed.

“Francie,” she said. “We’re going to the bank.”

We turned, walking. Wet grass spattered her stockings. At the garage she stopped, opened the old locks and let the creaking doors swing wide. The earthen floor rose its buried scent around our heads. When Lacey closed us inside, a powdered light sifted through the dirty window. I saw the board walls grown with chartreuse moss, old sleigh bells hung on leather straps, and something massive glinting in the middle of the room. It seemed to palpitate and breathe, then I saw the movement was only a casting of light on its hard black sides. Chrome and patent black. My eyes grew accustomed to shadows and the car emerged glimmering its saucered headlights. Smells of wax and leather mingled in the dark. Lacey knelt and stripped me. She fastened the dress, nails of her cool fingers scratching my skin. She stood then and walked around the car, touching it with one extended finger.

In the bank we waited, Lacey staring straight ahead. Simpson’s secretary, Bedelia, sucked her pencil. Two bright red spots in her cheeks jumped out. She watched Lacey and hated her. Bedelia wore long chains of fake pearls like the women in New York City, but in truth Simpson had found her not twenty miles from town when he foreclosed the mortgage on her father’s gritty farm. Bedelia kept a magazine picture of the Eiffel Tower on her desk. She looked at the Eiffel Tower. She looked at Lacey. When Simpson told her to send us in, she nodded at the door and a nerve jumped in her jaw.

Simpson sat in his fat like something cooked.

“My dear Lacey, some brandy, perhaps a sweet liqueur. And Francie needs a sarsaparilla.”

“Francine needs nothing. Mr. Simpson, I’ve come about the car.”

“Oh yes, I heard about the fire. Such a misfortune. I’m sure I can be of some help.”

Simpson twisted his moustache. Topaz and diamonds choked his little finger. Lacey was impassive; she clutched my hand and left a pale bruise on my wrist. Simpson went on in his honeyed voice.

“J.T. and I were very close, you know. Once I looked after his interests very well. I can do so again.”

Lacey was silent. Simpson smiled and watched her. His long black lashes brushed his cheeks, slowly. He blinked once, then again. Opened a drawer in his vast mahogany desk and pulled out a roll of bills. He tossed it in the air, caught it in his fist.

“And there’s the matter of that shack property down by the river. Surely you have no illusions that J.T. will ever work the mill again. I know you ran his business those last years; you have the know-how, I have the means. Perhaps we may arrive at a workable situation …”

Simpson was sweating now, his hair gleamed pomaded and perfect. He held out the money and Lacey didn’t move. I stepped forward and took it.

We put the money in the iron box; Lacey gave up the deed to the mill. I remember J.T. staying in his room, and the sound of the rocking chair creaking for hours as he sat, rocking, with his arms crossed, staring at the wall. Jocasta was not
singing. Lacey had locked her door and the house was weighted with silence, sinking in the dark. I fell asleep.

I saw my father standing over me in his checkered cap, red silk scarf, old suede driving coat. He had a pistol in his hand.

“Frank,” he said. “It’s time to go.”

He lifted me so softly I thought I dreamed him. He pulled my nightgown down to cover my thighs and we crept quietly down two flights of stairs past the sleepers. Everything slept; trees drooped close to the house, no insects sounded. My father’s face above me took on an ivory cast. The moon was gone and it was nearly dawn.

At the garage he fired two quick shots at the locks. The sharp report of the gun echoed back and forth. I saw Lacey’s light go on but I was in the car and the car was roaring. J.T. eased it down the street and gathered speed. He smiled, his hair blew back. The old bridge rattled under us and moved its lamps; their twelve whirled reflections wobbled in the river. J.T. flexed his beautiful hands and muttered. He touched the leather dash and the steering wheel laced with calfskin. We went faster out the bridge road to the mill.

“Pop?” I said. “Pop, where we going?”

“Straight home, boy. Straight home.”

The motor revved. At top speed the car began to shake. We were moving up Tucker Mountain and we shuddered at the crest. A sharp quick crack. I didn’t feel myself jump but I saw the wheel spin off, I saw the black Ford fly off the mountain and my father’s red scarf streaming.

I looked down two ledges at the overturned car. The wheels whined and smoked. I scrambled down but J.T. was nowhere. I called for him, choking on the smell of the car, then I saw him above me climbing back to the road. He had
the steering wheel in one hand. At the top he turned and looked down.

“Frank,” he yelled. “Hurry, it’s getting late.”

The mill was on the other side of Tucker Mountain. We walked. The light came up. Mist rose off the river and the rows of empty shacks seemed to float.

“There they are,” said J.T. “They’re always here this time of day.”

“Who, Pop? Who’s here?”

“They are, boy. Look at them, they know who you are.”

He raised his arm in the direction of the shacks. His hand hung limp and crooked.

“Where, Pop?”

“The windows, Frank. Look at the windows.”

They were slanted in their rotted sills. Broken glass stood out in jagged angles; what was left pearled at odd curves in the light. Something moved, then I knew it was true; I was as crazy as him. The faces shimmered like they were coming up out of water. They rose up from some place existing alongside and suddenly visible. Their blurry features held the same expression, they moved in and out of each other. Wind rushed, whispering sounds I couldn’t make out; more and more whispering, louder and louder … then they made one sound. “Francine,” they said, “Francine.”

“Francine. Francine, come here. Over here.”

I saw my mother at the edge of the woods. She had J.T.’s old deer rifle and she had it pointed at him. Beyond her Jocasta sat in the delivery cart and didn’t look at us. Lacey called me again and I tried to move. She fired the gun in the air; while the sharp boom moved around in the trees I ran to her. I knew the faces watched me. J.T. still looked at them, smiling. My mother held me away from him, tightly, until the faces faded. I must have talked, I must have said I saw
them. Her eyes were hard with light. The butt of the gun pressed into her stomach. She put J.T. in the cart and tied him in with a thick rope. He smoothed his torn clothes while she walked me through the shacks. Empty, every one of them. Rats thumped across the porches.

After that we had to have him put away. The morning they came and got him, he turned at the door.

“Lacey,” he said calmly, “Aren’t you coming with me?”

S
HE HADN’T
been home in a long time. Her father had a cancer operation; she went home. She went to the hospital every other day, sitting for hours beside his bed. She could see him flickering. He was very thin and the skin on his legs was soft and pure like fine paper. She remembered him saying ‘I give up’ when he was angry or exasperated. Sometimes he said it as a joke, ‘Jesus Christ, I give up.’ She kept hearing his voice in the words now even though he wasn’t saying them. She read his get-well cards aloud to him. One was from her mother’s relatives. Well, he said, I don’t think they had anything to do with it. He was speaking of his divorce two years before.

She put lather in a hospital cup and he got up to shave in the mirror. He had to lean on the sink. She combed the back of his head with water and her fingers. His hair was long after six weeks in the hospital, a gray-silver full of shadow
and smudge. She helped him get slowly into bed and he lay against the pillows breathing heavily. She sat down again. I can’t wait till I get some weight on me, he said, So I can knock down that son-of-a-bitch lawyer right in front of the courthouse.