Songs in Ordinary Time (29 page)

She touched his arm. “Promise you won’t tell Carol?” she whispered solemnly. “Last night I heard church bells in the background. I think it’s the Monsignor,” she said, bursting into laughter. “I think he’s got the hots for me!” Just then a call had come over the radio, reporting a disturbance up at the pig farm. He’d check it out as soon as he made one more stop, he said, looking at Eunice.

“Nosirree!” she roared. “The Monsignor’ll just have to wait!”

As they drove along the dark winding road to the pig farm, Eunice lit another cigarette and stared out the window. “God, I haven’t been out here in years,” she said with a shiver. “Al and I used to park somewhere along here.”

As they came over the rise, she pointed to the frozen gully below. “Right there’s where we parked!” She laughed. “Al used to break branches off and put them over the windows.” She was quiet again.

“Al always covered his bases,” Sonny said pointedly. Al had been a judicious man; his only lapse in judgment had been Eunice, though Carol used to say she was the best thing that had ever happened to her morose brother.

“Yup,” Eunice sighed. “Our own private fuck blind, he called it.”

He couldn’t help it, he burst out laughing. Eunice just stared out the window.

When they came to the farm, Grondine Carson ran out of the old gray house in his bathrobe and boots to report that someone had been banging on his windows. Sonny walked around the house, beaming his flashlight on the untracked crusted snow, knowing he would find nothing. The pig man had spent too many years alone. He was so accustomed to his trespassers that when they didn’t come he invented them.

“See anything?” Eunice asked when he came back.

“Nothing,” Sonny sighed, ducking his long body into the cruiser. “Every now and again he just needs to know someone’s around, I guess.”

“I know the feeling,” Eunice sighed, watching the ice-blasted trees flick past as they started back down the road.

He glanced at her. He was more accustomed to her blowsy humor than this melancholy. “Hey,” he chided after a minute. “I’m not used to you being so quiet. Cut it out!”

“I was just thinking. Poor Carson, all he needs is a woman. You know, it’s tough being alone. It really is. Being alone can make you crazy.”

“Uh-uh, no excuse.” He shook his head. “You were always crazy, Eunice!”

She laughed. “And you were always a pain in the ass! Just like Al. The two of you!”

SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 139

At that, he stopped the car, threw it into reverse, and switched on the flashing lights.

“What the hell’re you doing?” she gasped as they headed backward down the road.

“I’m bringing the pigman a woman!” He laughed over his shoulder. “Sure will cut down on these late-night runs.”

The car filled with her rocky laughter as she grabbed his arm and jammed her foot down on the brake, spiraling the cruiser over the ice, and as it turned, and turned, and turned, he felt it all getting away from him, all that caution, all that good sense, and he wasn’t afraid or angry, but laughing just as much as she was, even as the car slid over the soft shoulder, coming to rest against a snowdrift as gently and silently as a head sinks into a pillow.

He closed his eyes and kissed Eunice Bonifante’s warm wet mouth while the dome light spun red whorls on the snow.

One month later, Dr. Hess had called him at the station and asked him to stop by the office. Before he had even hung up the phone, Sonny knew that the price he’d pay for his sin would be Carol.

Lately, he understood nothing. Carol was dying, and he cried out in his sleep and sat up trembling with cold sweats in the heat. He couldn’t bear to look at his ravaged wife. His son got on his nerves all the time. His men thought him demanding and unreasonable with them and far too easy on the town’s transgressors. Their Chief never target-practiced with them anymore. At the station he sat in his closed office and stared out the window over Merchants Row, bewildered to find the bright July world so grimed with gray. His men thought it was his wife he mourned, but it was himself.

Tonight, the council room was stiff with heat and surly voices. Sonny Stoner squirmed in the hard oak chair. He had never liked meetings, and this one was always the most grueling. It was the annual vote on Joey Seldon’s popcorn stand, postponed these last few weeks because of Judge Clay’s death.

“Nothing but an eyesore,” John Creller was saying. “And one of these days, the whole shebang’s gonna come down on some innocent passerby and then there’ll be hell to pay! The town’ll be up to their ears in lawsuits.”

Sonny scraped his fingernail along the soft grime on the lip of the oak table. The popcorn stand that Sonny had helped build years ago as a boy was now falling apart. All that was left of the original roof was tar-paper strips that lifted in the slightest breeze. Some of the sideboards had buckled from the studs and the rotten cornerposts had become as precarious as the old man’s disposition. For years Joey had refused to repair the stand, claiming its upkeep was the town’s responsibility. Recently when people had tried to help by repairing the stand themselves, Joey had alienated them with his demands and criticism. And now neighbors around the park were complaining about his radio, which blared past midnight some nights.

“If he’d just say thanks,” Creller was saying. “But every year it’s the same thing—gimme, gimme, gimme.”

Sonny tilted his wrist to look at his watch. He should have been at Eunice’s 140 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

an hour ago. When he’d left the house tonight, Lester had called him a hypocrite when he said he had to work late. Lester wanted to see Alice tonight.

He’d never seen his son so angry, so violent. Lester had raised his fists, and Sonny had all he could do to keep from smacking him.

“I say we do the old man a favor and bulldoze the thing,” Creller said with a nod. He sat down, and next to him Jarden Greene grinned.

Sonny’s foot began to tap. He could feel Craig Bixby, the town counsel and a friend of both Joey Seldon and old Judge Clay, staring at him. Bixby expected Sonny to stand up now and deliver the Judge’s yearly speech on Joey’s behalf.

Joey Seldon had been Atkinson’s chief of police before Sonny’s father.

Seldon’s brief career as Chief had ended one night years ago up on Humpback Mountain with a violent explosion at Towler’s still that killed Ark Towler and left Joey Seldon comatose for weeks, and then blind.

Because Seldon hadn’t served long enough to qualify for a pension, the town built the popcorn stand and turned it over to him in a festive hero’s ceremony. Everyone was there, even Towler’s widow and her three little girls. Through all the speeches and songs, she stood under a tree, her blank expression never changing. When the ribbon was cut and Joey was finally led inside the red-enameled stand to applause and cheers, she smiled, then walked away. Joey had been off duty the night of the explosion, and the rumors had already started that he had been at Towler’s that night picking up his fee for silence.

Now Craig Bixby was trying to catch his eye, but Sonny just sat there. Let Bixby stick his neck out for once, he thought as he stared wearily at his folded hands.

Other men were looking down the table at him. They knew it was his turn. Why did they do this every year? he suddenly wondered. Why not vote Joey a ten-or twenty-year lease on the stand? Why had no one ever thought of this before?

The mayor rose now and patted his jacket pockets. He leafed through his papers, then, with a glance at Sonny, raised his eyebrows expectantly.

Sonny would not look up. His toes curled in his shoes.

“Well, here we go again,” the mayor began good-naturedly. “Beating the same old dead horse…”

His eyes glazed with the memory of Eunice’s husky voice describing the smooth satin sheets she’d put on the bed tonight.

“And Sonny’ll go up there tonight and tell Joey he can stay, but the condition is, he’s got to close at nine sharp. No ifs, ands, or buts….”

“You told him that last year,” Creller called out. Jarden Greene nodded furiously. “And his excuse last year was he had to keep the radio loud so’s he could hear the time when to close.” Greene nudged him then, and Creller added, “And even with the radio loud he still stayed open till all hours.”

Greene nodded smugly. Greene and Joey had been going at it for years.

Each wanted to be the park maestro.

“Okay,” the mayor said, rubbing his chin. “Ten-of-nine curfew, then.

SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 141

Sonny, you tell Joey when he hears the ten-of-nine blow, he’d better blow, too.”

The council members chuckled. Some had begun to pack up their papers.

Craig Bixby was unwrapping the big green vile-smelling cigar that always signaled the end of a meeting. The mayor looked up to take the vote.

“Bet he don’t do it!” Creller called out suddenly, with Greene hunched at his elbow. “And instead of a vote on the popcorn stand, by Jesus, I propose we vote on an investigating committee to find out what Seldon was
really
doing up at the still that night!”

The men groaned. Bixby laid the cigar on the table as the mayor looked entreatingly at Sonny.

Creller was one of those for whom every issue had to be a life-or-death struggle. Last meeting, at Robert Haddad’s urging, he had made a motion to ban women in shorts from all public places.

Every year it was the same, the same complaints about Joey’s arrogance, his lack of gratitude, the same speeches, the same defenders, but then, at the last moment, the same resounding vote to grant the old man his space on the corner of the park for one more year. Now the mayor had taken up Joey’s defense again. Sonny felt the room seethe with heat and the bitter smoke of newly lit cigarettes. The men coughed and squirmed in their seats.

It was going badly. Jarden Greene was on his feet, arguing with the mayor.

“No sir!” Greene ranted. “This is a matter for the courts. I move we let Bixby here earn the lawyer money we vote him every year, and let the courts settle this popcorn shit once and for all!”

Attorney Bixby swung his black briefcase onto the table, and as he stood up, he cast a last hopeful look at Sonny. Bixby tugged at his tie knot and sighed. “Fine with me, Jard.” He smiled down at Greene’s pinched face.

“Maybe I’m not too bright, but I really don’t see the harm in you sending one of your crews over with a jar of paint and a few shingles and a coupla nails to give that damn stand a quick one-two.” Bixby peered over the top of his wire-rimmed glasses. “It’d be a hell of a lot cheaper than a court fight.”

“A coupla nails and a jar of paint,” Greene scoffed, looking up and down the table. “Next thing, Craig’ll be up here asking why don’t I run a crew down to the tracks and spruce up Nigger Flood’s place.”

The council chuckled. Greene’s remark had been a dig at Mrs. Bixby’s annual chairmanship of the Fresh Air Fund, which delivered a dusty busload of New York street kids to Atkinson’s green valley every August. Bixby’s face reddened and his shrewd old eyes narrowed, and now, as he spoke, Sonny recognized the old courtroom cadence.

“That’s right, Jard. There’s a lot wrong in this world. A lot of people born a second too late and a step behind, or maybe even just a little different from you and me. And there’s not a lot we can do about it. We meet here every week to talk about wild dogs in Cumsin’s, and variances, and which department’s going to get a new water bubbler, and, of course, Mr. Creller’s indignation over public indecency. But every once in a great while we get to vote on one of those big issues—not from any laws or statute, Jard, but 142 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

from in here,” he said, thumping his chest. “We got important business here, Jard, and you’re asking us to tear down a poor harmless blind man’s popcorn stand? His only means of support?” He paused. “Why, Jard?

Wouldn’t have anything to do with that little incident with his radio during your last song, would it?”

“Of course not!” Greene spat.

“Wouldn’t have anything to do with his popcorn maybe being a bigger draw than your music, would it?”

“You’re demeaning me!” Greene hollered over the hoots of laughter.

Bixby stopped pacing and jabbed his finger at Greene. “You’re demeaning
yourself
, damn it! Now why don’t you just forget this nonsense and get a crew up there and fix up Seldon’s stand and be done with it.”

The council broke into scattered applause.

“Nossir!” Greene screamed, pounding his tiny fist on the table. “There’s a principle here—the same principle that keeps me from hot-topping council members’ driveways on town time and seeding their lawns like’s been done by every head of Public Works before me.” Greene was on his feet now, his spare body trembling with rage. “You can sure as hell fire me, but you can’t buy me, and goddamn it, you won’t humiliate me!” With that, he stalked out of the room.

The men blinked as the door slammed; then a few cleared their throats guiltily and dared take a breath. Not a one had had their driveways resurfaced free by town crews since Greene had been appointed. Bixby was still staring at the door. “Phew,” he said, turning back to the table. “Almost didn’t get his cross through,” he muttered. There was laughter, but it came thinly, uneasily.

Robert Haddad seemed screwed into a corner of his chair. For one so often indignant lately over everything, tonight he had said nothing. He was biting his nails. He glanced at his watch and sighed.

Looking up and down the table, Sonny felt not only detached but distant from these men, most of whom he had known all his life. And it came to him now, the reason for the Towler widow’s cold smile. It had been a smile of triumph as the blind man entered his stand that day, faltering, then lurching like an animal locked in its cage for the first time.

Creller’s words were sobering the council; a few nodded anxiously.

“…hoodlums tearing up and down the streets on their motorcycles, and their souped-up cars blasting their nigger music! While the young girls walk the streets with next to nothing on! Nothing’s sacred anymore. Nothing!

Because certain persons in this town, in positions of authority, certain officials are so busy hiding their own sins and transgressions, they got no time to do their job.”