The End of the Book (34 page)

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The door was locked. He rang the bell to the apartments, but no one came down. Perhaps his father was asleep. But he had never gotten much rest, accustomed as he was to innkeeper's hours. George rang the bell again and waited. A warm wind blew up and rustled the leaves of the maples. Not a soul stirred on the streets.

After some time he stepped back and called out,
Tom! Tom Willard! Are you up there?
But no reply came, and the second-story apartments remained dark. Clouds passed overhead, and the new moon appeared, reflecting on the repair-shop window.

George sat at the curb and waited, wondered where he would have to sleep the night: on the bench outside Hern's Grocery, back at the railroad station, under a tree by the banks of Waterworks Pond? What a sight he'd be for his former neighbors—curled up like a bug, trousers torn, the soot of the city casting shadows on his face.

As he thought of places where he might better conceal himself, a figure appeared down the street, and even at a distance George recognized the square shoulders and brisk walk.

“Great ghosts!” his father exclaimed. “What on earth are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you. Why, it's well past midnight.”

“So it is, son. But I believe it's you who owes an explanation.”

“Perhaps we can talk inside,” George said, and followed Tom Willard up the stairs to his meager lodgings, which smelled of old leather and shoe polish.

In the musty room, lit by a single overhead light bulb, George and his father talked. It didn't matter that they had never spoken about anything more serious than politics or the weather, had never talked about Elizabeth Willard's death or the failure of the hotel. Something in his father's letter had left an opening:
I don't know what I'm going to do. I need some time to think
… I've had a lot of dreams, George. Maybe now I can put them in order and see them through. This wasn't the old Tom Willard, the big talker ever ready with a snappy answer.

George began by saying that he had pursued Margaret out of fear he would lose his job; he'd been surprised by her interest, could hardly believe she would marry him. He recalled the visit to the ring counter at Marshall Field's, the proposal and wedding, and he realized as he was speaking that his father, too, had married up some thirty-odd years before.

Tom Willard sat and listened as George told him about Kennison and
Prove They Need It
and his diminished role at work, about seeing Helen White at the restaurant, then Hull House, how she had encouraged him to become a writer, just as many in Winesburg had when he was a young man working at the
Eagle
. George didn't know how to explain what had happened next with Helen, so he said, “I got myself into a bind, made a mess of things and lied to people. There's no going back to my marriage or my job.”

“What will you do?” his father asked.

“I could use some sleep,” George said. “Perhaps I'll know in the morning.”

The sun sifted through the dusty windows and spilled over the floor, waking George from a sound sleep. He got up and made coffee for himself and his father, showered, and put on his one change of clothes. When the telegraph office opened for business, he was waiting outside the door.

He wired three messages:

To Lazar:
I hereby resign my position, though I deserve to be fired. You gave me every opportunity, and I sincerely regret squandering your trust
.

To Margaret:
I am going away so that I might look in the mirror and explain to myself why I have done the things I've done. I wish I could make up for my cowardice and inconstancy, and perhaps one day I shall find the right words of apology for the suffering I have caused you
. I'm sorry
is not enough. Even a whole volume would surely not do
.

To Helen:
You were right. I am McAdams
.

He swung by the railroad station to check the eastbound schedule, then returned to his father's lodgings.

“Well?” Tom Willard asked.

“I'm going to New York,” George said. “I'll be on the 12:05.”

“And what will you do there?” Tom did not seem surprised.

“I still know my share of admen, some who could look beyond what happened at the Lazar Agency. But I want to avoid that kind of work for as long as I can,” he said. “I don't care a pin for a fancy title anymore, and I don't need my hands on money all the time. I wish I could have a few months to sit at a window in a small room and dream up a good story. How about you?”

Tom stood at the window and looked out upon the street. “I'm packing up for Sandusky next week,” he said. “I showed my face at the County Democratic Headquarters, and they need all the help they can get over there. The pay is rotten—volunteer, really—but that tin box should see me through for some time.”

“And Congress?” George indulged him. “Still thinking about making a run?”

Tom twisted his mustache, the gray roots showing through. “I'm too old,” he said. “We finally got ourselves a good candidate, Carl Anderson. Used to be a traveling salesman, then mayor of Fostoria. He's young, energetic. He could keep the seat for years.”

As George was folding his traveling clothes and packing his valise, his father went to the closet and came back with an envelope. “You might need this,” he said.

George opened the flap and looked inside at the stack of ten-dollar notes, probably enough to live on for a year. He made a gesture at giving the money back, but his father put up his hand.

“It's yours,” Tom insisted.

“I have no claim on that tin box.”

“Sure you do.”

George wondered for a moment if Helen had been right, if the box had belonged to his mother and his father somehow knew this, maybe knew it all along.

Then Tom said, “I kept a tally all those years you used to send money home—for repairs and upkeep. There's not a dollar in there that you didn't earn.”

“It's awfully generous of you.”

“I might have said the same.” Tom checked his watch. “Well, you ought to be going now.”

They took the short walk to the station, and George considered how different this departure was from the first one, thirteen years before. It had been spring, the green tongues of young leaves just tasting the air, and now it was autumn, the leaves soon to flame and fall away. He remembered the clerks sweeping the steps out front of their shops, but now half the stores in town were shuttered or for sale. Sylvester West's Drug Store, Winney's Dry Goods, Myerbaum's Notions—all gone. Ed Griffith's saloon was still in business, but Jerry Bird, who used to sleep past noon sprawled against the wall outside, must have taken his last drink. That first departure, everyone had come out to say
Hey you, George. How does it feel to be going away?
But few people busied the streets this Monday, and those he did see he didn't recognize. They nodded at Tom Willard but looked suspiciously at the stranger walking next to him.

At the chain-wire fence, George and his father stopped and wordlessly surveyed the site where the New Willard House once stood. There was nothing to see. The wood, carpet, wallpaper, furnishings had been hauled away. All that remained was fine rubble and dirt, weeds sprouting around the perimeter of the foundation. But just inside where the entrance used to be, George spotted some pieces of cut glass winking in the sunlight. He squeezed through a hole in the fence and picked up two of the pieces, which he recognized as beads from the lobby chandelier. He pocketed one and handed the other to his father, who thanked him and looked away. “Salvage,” George said. Then the two men walked down the small ramp to the station platform.

Half a dozen people sat on benches or stood waiting for the train to Cleveland, the connection terminal to the trunk-line railroad that ran clear to New York.

“I ought to be going,” Tom said. “I have a noon appointment.” He clenched his jaw, as if he wanted to speak but was holding something back. “You be sure and let me know where to find you once you've settled in.” He clapped his son's shoulder and gave him a firm handshake, then turned and disappeared.

Not a minute after he'd left, the locomotive came around a bend and made its way down the track. George stepped on and settled into his seat, checked his jacket pocket for the envelope of bills. He took out his pencil and notepad and stowed his valise.

The whistle blew, the train pulled out of the station, and as the platform slipped away he looked down lower Main Street and in the middle distance saw his father facing in his direction, scanning each window as the passenger cars slid by. George waved, but Tom Willard must not have noticed. He stood there on the sidewalk, hands in his pockets, perhaps fingering the bead from the lobby chandelier.

As the train picked up speed and drove into the countryside, his figure grew smaller and smaller until it was just a dot, like a pencil point on a blank piece of paper, a place for the story to begin.

I would like to thank Michael Griffith for selecting this novel for the Yellow Shoe Fiction Series. He's an incredible editor and writer, and I feel lucky to have had a chance to work with him. Michael also selected an excerpt, “The Writer's Writer,” for the
Cincinnati Review
. My agent, Lisa Bankoff, has been a constant supporter, advisor, and advocate. Many thanks to everyone at LSU press, especially MaryKatherine Callaway, Rand Dotson, Lee Sioles, Susan Murray, Mandy McDonald Scallan, and Erin Rolfs. I am also grateful to the Purdue College of Liberal Arts for a grant that provided me with a semester off to complete this book. As Director of the Creative Writing Program at Purdue for eight years, I worked with wonderful colleagues and students, and I appreciate their kindness and camaraderie.

As part of my research I read a number of turn-of-the-century novels and stories by both known and forgotten Chicago Renaissance writers like Hamlin Garland, Henry Blake Fuller, Elia Peattie, Frank Norris, Upton Sinclair, Edgar Lee Masters, Willa Cather, and Theodore Dreiser to get a sense of what Chicago was like when it was the fastest-growing city in the history of the world. I found the reporting of George Ade to be particularly helpful, and drew on one of his sketches, “The Mystery of the Back-roomer” (republished in the University of Illinois Press's
Stories of Chicago
) as well as on Julian Street's
Abroad at Home
. Of course, no book had a greater influence on me than Sherwood Anderson's
Winesburg, Ohio
, a longtime favorite that became an obsession. At various points in this novel I quote from
Winesburg
and from Anderson's
A Story Teller's Story
. I also use quotes from Kim Townsend's
Sherwood Anderson: A Biography
and Walter B. Rideout's
Sherwood Anderson: A Writer in America, Volumes I and II
. In each case, I have used quotation marks or italics to attribute the material.

I am grateful always for the love and support of my family in D.C. Most of all, I want to thank Bich, first reader, collaborator, partner, friend.

PORTER SHREVE is the author of three previous novels:
The Obituary Writer
was a
New York Times
Notable Book, and
Drives Like a Dream
and
When the White House Was Ours
were both
Chicago Tribune
Books of the Year. Shreve is coeditor of six anthologies, and his fiction, nonfiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in
Witness, Salon
, the
Chicago Tribune
, the
San Francisco Chronicle
, the
Boston Globe
, and the
New York Times
, among other places. He has taught at several universities, including Michigan, Purdue, and the University of San Francisco. A native of Washington, D.C., he spent a number of years in Chicago and the Midwest, and now lives with his wife and children in the Bay Area.