Cardinal Numbers: Stories Read online

  Courtney’s mother is Japanese, a war bride. Her father died last summer of asbestosis. Her brother is in his third year of biochemistry at Drexel. She is right-handed, underweight, wears glasses to correct a mild astigmatism.

  [7]

  They could be married to men like sleds on rails: top ten percent of the class, membership in a rowing club, an ability to anticipate currency fluctuations. They could be plain in Quaker bonnets, humming as they card wool, shaded sweetly by belief.

  [7A]

  Rod turned back to her in his belted leather coat of a too-shiny material that was not leather. His wide dark eyes glistened with forgiveness. Courtney inhaled the coat’s laboratory musk as he gathered her up in his arms.

  [7B]

  Jenelle heard the whispers in passing, her gray skirts brushing the cobbles, the black book cradled in her hand. She had broken the silence in fear, but her quiet simple words had then seemed to lift all eyes in the meetinghouse.

  [8]

  Was it a party? Jenelle is lying in bed, cold cucumber slices balanced on her face. She has unplugged the stereo, forbidden music. Wondering if he really will phone tonight, Courtney wishes for an interesting birthmark. Someone downstairs is raking leaves. Jenelle has an enema and feels better.

  J: Why don’t we have towels that match? With our initials intertwined in a contrasting color?

  C: I don’t know.

  [o]

  Strollers were unconsciously arranged around the fountain; the mothers could not wake their children. Earring Emporium had not had a customer all day. An NCR repairman set down his tool kit and wandered aimlessly. The sound track was muddy for Cinema III’s matinee. A man with no family bought a badminton set and charged it. An aquarium burst spontaneously at Petsateria; there was a brief waterfall over jagged glass, and then little flips on the carpet….

  Courtney took the taped package out from behind the stockroom fire extinguisher. Her mouth was dry. The package felt funny. Too heavy? Too light? She was late for the rendezvous….

  Jenelle put the mustard on her pretzel left-to-right, signing everything was go. Slowly, as if browsing, they moved toward the Westgate exit, past Jeans World, Muffy’s, the Cookie Castle. They were being followed. The two men wore state trooper glasses and trim black chin beards, but weren’t as young as they thought. Were they DEA? Libyans? No hesitation. Jenelle took the silver gun from under her rabbit jacket and gave each one two in the face. JFK time, brains on a pink dress….

  Courtney and Jenelle hydroplaning in a white Camaro, spinning across three lanes of expressway, coming out of it and going harder on. The windshield a gray boil. Hiss of the police-band radio. Swerving headlights. The needle edging past 100….

  “Don’t you read?” Courtney said.

  “No, I’ve finished school.”

  “Read and you’d know nothing ever happens to us. Just these little vignettes we’re not even aware of.”

  “You mean it?”

  “Anyway they do.”

  “Okay.”

  Jenelle threw the package out the window, bit off the tip of the silver barrel. The gun was made of wax and contained a thin lime syrup.

  [—1]

  Courtney and Jenelle in a cemetery with hoagies. From this elevation it is possible to see a white church, the empty river. New shoots of grass are just starting. The air is soft, receptive to the least aroma trace. Starlings forage between grave aisles, behind bronze-doored crypts. Oil trickles over Courtney’s lip. Jenelle catches it on her finger.

  C: I wish we were in our eighties and could look back.

  J: Me too.

  [oo]

  What then do we want words for?

  The tab on a file.

  To say this was in Pennsylvania, during the second term of Reagan.

  BLOOD ASPENS

  THE OUTLAW CAMP WAS on the middle fork of the Flathead between Horseshoe Peak and the Divide. Ponies nodded over their hay in the corral and jaybirds called from out of the big pines. Inside the loghouse, Buzz (Dan Duryea) was feeding the stove from a basket of cobs to heat a kettle of red beans and jerky. The wall behind him was hung with snakeskins and calendar art. He couldn’t remember the name of the song he was humming and by now he’d stopped trying. He spat on the stove and it hissed.

  Wiley (Andy Devine) came in from the dooryard and went to rummage in his medicine box. They called him “El Paciente” because he never stopped whining about his ailments. Lumbago today and bursitis tomorrow or palsy or milk leg or grippe. He brought over his packets of herbs and put a pan of water on the stove to make tea.

  Wiley said: “Smells good.”

  Buzz snorted. “Jerky and beans. Like always.”

  Wiley said: “Put in plenty of chili pods. It cleans out your system.”

  Buzz said: “I like mine to stay dirty.”

  Out by the hayrick, Midnight (Marlon Brando) was planting geranium slips in a rusted-through pump trough. One night he’d lost three fingers blowing a safe, but he was still deft anytime he worked with his hands. His long lank black hair fell down the back of his buckskin shirt. His boots glistened with mink oil. Midnight had an Oglala wife somewhere and two boys, but it’d been years since he left.

  Jackdaws were squawking in the dusk. Hard rain began to fall as Costain (Rod Taylor) came down off the ridge in his linen duster, four cutthroat trout in his bag. A wide Stetson brim darkened features that were already nut brown and fixed in their usual blank expression. They called him “High Wide and Handsome.” He opened the loghouse door and saw the stable hand naked on the end bunk. He had Wiley’s cock in his mouth and Midnight was greasing his butt with lard.

  Buzz said: “Juanito got drunk on liniment again and he’s ready for love.”

  Costain’s granddaddy had ridden with Quantrill’s raiders. Costain lit a cigarillo and …

  (two pages missing)

  … so Wiley and Midnight took the weasels down to the river edge for skinning. The water ran heavy with spring melt and the beach was halved. They scrubbed their knives with sand and it soaked up the blood. They pegged out the pelts to dry and threw the meat in the water because Wiley said these weasels and stoats and martens and so on carried disease like the rats in Europe.

  Wiley said: “Plague.” He nodded in that way that meant he’d studied up on whatever he was saying.

  Midnight said: “We better wash our hands real good then.”

  The stink of copper smelters down the valley came on the freshening wind. Costain knew it was 1910. People were starting to laugh at just the idea of road agents.

  Buzz kicked out at the barbed-wire fence. He said: “These Basque bastards and their sheep.”

  But Costain knew better.

  He said: “Perreault ain’t no Basque. He’s a general from France. Got drummed out of the Foreign Legion. Married a rich girl in Boston. Her father give him the ranch so’s he’d go away.”

  Buzz said: “Fuck him anyway,” and took out his wire cutters.

  Town was asleep at that time of day. There was only one horse tied to the railing in front of the pharmacy. The green mortar-and-pestle sign squeaked on its hinges. Costain and Buzz put on bear masks made out of paper. They busted the glass out of the door on their way in. Buzz swung on an old farmer who reached inside his black coat.

  Costain warned him: “Watch my .38,” but the old man kept reaching and Costain spun him with one shot and put a hole through his neck. The outlaw pair took four hundred in gold and paper and a brass-bound chest full of cocaine syrup and ether and belladonna and sleeping powders. A boy ran up in the street outside and Buzz gut-shot him.

  Buzz said: “Mask slipped. He saw my face.”

  The boy went into convulsions in the dirt. Red foam came to his mouth.

  Costain said: “Finish him.”

  The cut load took the boy’s skull apart and Buzz wiped brain off his boots. Then they rode hard up the draw and crossed the Flathead at the first show of treeline. Costain swept their trail with pine boughs. Then
they cut north through the shallows …

  (remainder of page mutilated)

  … and threw his cards down.

  Midnight said: “Plainly it ain’t or I wouldn’t be asking.”

  Wiley said: “Don’t you read three queens?”

  The stove had gone out and night frost come up on the windows, but they paid no mind. Costain was rattling coins in his hand. Midnight was pawing at an empty syrup bottle. His face was all puffed up and had confusion in it.

  Buzz said: “Should of seed it. First slug puts him in rotation like a top. Then High Wide gives him the cup of grass on the next one and near takes his head off clean.”

  Midnight said: “Shut up and deal.”

  Wiley had his eyes open like a trance, but he was snoring. The loghouse smelled of blankets. The wick of the lamp was turned low. Costain brought the bandanna soaked in ether up to his face.

  Buzz said: “Fuck cards.”

  Oil dripped off the edge of Midnight’s whetstone. Bits of steel shaved from the blade were too small to see. Midnight was nodding to the rhythm of scrapes. Hair fell over his eyes.

  He said: “How ’bout I cut you a new asshole?”

  Buzz shot out of his chair and flapped his hand over an empty holster. A fist came down hard on the table and it was Costain’s.

  He said: “Quit now. Stow it before I have to lay both of you out.”

  The rivals stared at each other a long minute and the heat came into their eyes.

  Costain said: “Midnight. Get some air. Go find Juanito.”

  It was so fresh outside. Midnight stood under the moon clear as water and threw up his arms. Trees and fenceposts made long shadows and his breath made steam. The stars seemed to flare. A chicken ran out from under the porch. Midnight caught her up and opened her throat on the blade. He sucked blood from his finger stumps.

  In the morning Juanito was missing with two horses. Each man went alone to his cache and found it untouched. Then they looked for a trail sign. They walked in mist to their knees and a silence that was tense. Costain had been expecting something but not exactly this. He knew there was a supply of time being used up and nothing he could do about that.

  To himself Wiley said: “We got to take steps.”

  He was thinking how it would be sad to leave this place, where Juanito was sure to bring law on purpose or by accident. He liked being near water. He liked being right under the sky. Anywhere else would bring on his claustrophobia.

  The search was called off at noon. Midnight stayed behind in the woods to drink cocaine syrup and curse the others. In the loghouse, Costain got out his maps.

  Buzz said: “What the hell are you so calm about?”

  Costain did not look up.

  Buzz said: “Let’s just torch the place and ride.”

  Wiley was stroking his pelt bundles. He said: “We made this. We worked it up and around and …”

  Costain told them both to shut up. His eyes narrowed. He said: “Three will take a week’s provisions and head out for the Beaverhead. The other one will find Juanito and quiet him.”

  Wiley said: “Can we go to the hot springs on the way?”

  The deck of cards came out and Wiley volunteered to sit for Midnight.

  Costain cut himself a red four. He said: “Low card wins. I’ll go.”

  They agreed to meet at the needle rocks on the first day of May and swore a pact of blood to die free. Buzz had tears in his eyes. Midnight had to be clubbed to stop his raving and then tied to his pinto. They took off just at dusk and followed a feeder creek up across the ridge. Further on they found a cave dug out of the red rock that would conceal their fire. They made camp and Buzz and Wiley lit into one another over who should’ve put coffee on the packhorse and hadn’t.

  Buzz said: “But for that greaser punk, we wouldn’t be asquat down in mud with fried biscuit for dinner.”

  Midnight said: “You gone soft?”

  They laid themselves down, but nobody slept. There was bat stink in the cave and a cold seep that had them all rucked up in their blankets.

  COSTAIN knew how to be careful. He wore a false mustache and ordered rye whiskey with a Spanish accent. The pianola was playing “Strawberry Blonde.” The mine drudgers had already shed their pay, so all the tables were empty except the one where Perreault could be seen. He had a cigar in his mouth and his finger up the girl child on his lap. Costain would have got him outside and hijacked his pockets but for the business at hand.

  He said to the barman: “Seen my cousin tonight? He berry thin witha long hair.”

  The answer came: “Yah, I seen ten guys like that and I didn’t ask nobody’s name.”

  This barman was a safecracker lammed from Cleveland first and then Denver. Talking the hour with Costain, he could boil it down and see they were comrades.

  He said: “Want help with this Mex pigeon a yers, then I could be the man.”

  Costain hadn’t dropped his guard for nothing. He could recognize an asset when it came up, and this one had a kind of city smarts that would fit.

  Costain said: “Meet me on the back street with a bottle.”

  THE drizzle lasted all morning. Wiley’s horse came up lame and had to be walked. They pulled up where aspens were in bud and scrounged for dry wood, but the fire was more steam than smoke. Midnight’s feet were swole up, so he couldn’t get his boots off.

  Buzz thumbed Costain’s hand-drafted map and said: “Settler’s cabin marked right two mile off. I say we go down and get proper fed. See what else might look good while we’re in the neighborhood.”

  Wiley said: “You go on. My gut burns fit to kill.”

  That knife went clean through wet leather. Midnight had it figured to the minute. He was going to walk the mountain on bloody feet till he found the Virgin Mary and got clean.

  Chicago said he knew about a Mex hideout in Bilby and why didn’t they go over there. The sun was going thump inside Costain’s hangover and all he could do was grunt. They rode four miles down the wagon-road ruts, but it was slow going in the mud and Chicago was impatient for a shortcut. Costain stopped to light a cigarillo.

  Chicago blew rain off his lips and whispered: “Thing of it is you told me all I need to know last night.”

  And then he brought up the Derringer and shot Costain through the eye. He stripped the body and hobbled the horse. He cut out for the Flathead camp with Costain’s ears tied to his belt and bouncing.

  (here ends recovered manuscript)

  IS THIS CIVILIZATION?

  AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE IS WHAT you can see from the road.

  That’s what I tell my class, and they put it down in their notebooks. The stout girl in the front row (I think her name is Bonnie) looks pointedly at her watch. She is dutiful, like all my students, but not interested in much. I think: This isn’t what I had in mind, either. I dismiss them ten minutes early and sit in the quiet room watching it snow.

  My apartment is chilly, the furnace clacking down below. I place my new space heater by the tub and soak a long time. The nightgown I put on has been washed so often the piping has come loose from around the collar. I take out some cold lentils, dress them with olive oil and what can be squeezed from a hard old lemon half, listen to a Dave Clark Five album, the oldest in my collection. On the back cover, under a leafy bower of red ballpoint ink, are my initials, S.E.A. Later, I get in bed to read, but my head tows me under. I fall asleep with all the lights on, the book cradled in my arm like a doll.

  BARBARA intercepts me outside the library. She is giving a dinner party for “interesting women,” and wants me to attend. An NPR reporter will be there, a peace activist visiting from Israel, two illustrators, an oncologist, and Sue Willens from the Drama Department. Barbara glitters with enthusiasm, or it could just be snow settling on her lashes. I don’t think much of an obligation to be interesting, but say I’ll call her by the weekend.

  Someone has to do the freshman lit. surveys, and it’s Barbara. Possibly having been raised on a farm with
eight brothers is useful in this respect. She speaks constantly of her family, of her writing hardly ever, which is how I can tell she’s serious about it.

  Though it’s completely out of sequence, I spend today’s class on Louis Sullivan. We look at details of the Carson Pirie Scott store, foliage intricately incised above the doorways. I show slides of Sullivan’s small-town Minnesota banks, slides Corey and I took one summer. Mistakenly among them is one he must have snapped without my knowing. In workshirt and white slacks, I kneel by a picnic table and stare at my hand. My expression is one of dismay, as if something were painfully embedded there. The sun is low behind me. I am unsettled by the picture, unable to recall ever having seen it before.

  I take the long way home, two legs of a triangle. Ice lumps turn in the slow porridge of the river. Long mill buildings, low storage lockers, seem solid and husklike at once. In a livelier, more solvent city, I realize, all this would be reclaimed, the brick blasted clean and a design center or galleria installed. Much prettier this way, dead.

  MY office is small to begin with, and on top of that, I double up. Alice has been teaching here for nearly thirty years, and she is very particular. I would say fussy, but her unrelenting dignity precludes it. Clear pushpins only are allowed on the cork board we share and I must stand in the hall to smoke. But Alice has given me the desk by the window because, she says, “You’re pale as shortening.”

  Guiltily, I am clearing away a month’s unopened mail. Outside, while turning everything to mush, the sun resembles something membranous and insubstantial. I scrabble through drawers for a cigarette, decide to chew a rubber band instead. There is a card from Holly, my brightest student of two years ago; on its front, a woodcut of mountains, and under that, “La poesía es como el pan, para todos.”

  Inside there is this:

  This will need to be in a hurry because I have a tutorial in forty minutes. This town, like you said, is full of noise, but I’m getting along. I have a room near campus in a house with turret gables and I’m seeing a man who makes sailboats, which is okay though he’s not very physical. We might go down to Baja this summer. Nothing much to say, except when I do something I want it to be the way you would.