Songs in Ordinary Time Read online

  With his trousers pressed and his shoes gleaming, Omar Duvall strode briskly down the street under a high blue sky, and he felt so good. He felt better than good. He felt sure. He felt nimble. The old spring was back in his step. He bounced up and down on the curbstone now while he waited for the light to change, then laughed softly as he passed in front of the idling cars. Omar Duvall was stepping out. Yes sir, he was on his way. No matter how low a man fell he could always get back on his feet as long as he had faith, faith in himself, and faith in life’s unlimited opportunities. He turned the corner, and as he neared Marie’s shabby little house, he smiled, relieved to see her car waiting for him in the driveway, just as she had promised. He had an appointment this afternoon in Bennington with the Northeast distributor of Roy Gold Enterprises. He took the matchbook cover from his pocket and read it again.

  PRESTO SOAP

  Do you want to be safe all your life,

  but stuck in the same old rut?

  OR

  Are you willing to take that first step

  onto the ladder of success?

  “Where I belong,” he whispered as he stepped into the dim back hall cluttered with winter jackets, muddy boots, mops and brooms and snow shovels. “Right on the very top rung,” he sighed, impulsively gathering up the shovels and jackets and boots, which he deposited in the garage. On his way back he spotted Marie’s laundry basket protruding from the lilac bush. Typical, he thought. That was so much of her trouble: carelessness, a lack of organizational skills. It was sad the way she let life overtake her, leaving in its wake this yard, the chaotic house, her frantic children. The poor woman had no faith in herself. He grabbed the wicker handle, then jumped back from the dark wet growl of Klubocks’ dog crouched in the bushes. His hand shot into his pocket, but of course the knife was gone, for that had been another time, another life. Only this was real, this moment, this pang in his breast. Sweat stung his eyes.

  “Good morning!” chirped a voice from the trees.

  Wiping his brow, he looked around, then saw Jessie Klubock’s round buttocks plumped on the second-floor sill, where she sat washing windows. “And a good morning to you, ma’am,” he called and she waved her rag.

  “Doesn’t this look like fun?” she called back, gesturing so excitedly now with both hands that he was afraid she would fall.

  “Oh it certainly does,” he said, shading his eyes, dizzied by her smallness against the sunstruck glass.

  “Then grab a rag and join me,” she called.

  “I would, except that I am deathly afraid of heights,” he hollered up.

  “I don’t believe that, a great big thing like you.” She laughed and began to scrub the windowpane with such exuberance that for a moment he couldn’t move. He gazed up with a throb of the old longing, not so much for flesh or even for his own comfort and solace as for a woman’s blind unquestioning trust; a woman in need, a woman who would believe.

  The back-hall door swung open. “Mr. Duvall?” Benjy called, and Omar hurried inside with the boy at his heels. “I thought you were gone,” Benjy said nervously. “I saw you come in the hall and then you left. I didn’t know what you were doing.”

  “Just trying to help your dear mother.” He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and felt him flinch. “Which you should be doing as well, son, helping your mother in every possible way.” He squeezed the bony shoulder and saw Benjy’s face steel with resolve. “Can you do that?” he asked, and the boy nodded. “Promise me, now,” he said. “Promise you’ll do whatever it takes to make her happy.”

  “I promise!” Benjy did not blink. He stared up at Duvall, who for a moment could not move or reply.

  “Good enough,” he finally said in a hoarse whisper, then looked away, heart racing, cheeks flushed, not with the heat of guileful shame, but with awe at this mastery that sometimes left him weak with the burden of his own powers.

  “Here’s the keys,” Benjy was saying. “And she made you a lunch, too.” The boy handed him a limp paper bag that smelled of tuna fish.

  She had mentioned gas money. Hoping she had remembered, Omar looked inside. There were three one-dollar bills and a note that said: Call me as soon as you hear anything. Good luck. Marie. Noticing a smudge above her name, he held the paper to the window and saw where she had erased Love.

  He said goodbye to Benjy and was starting the car when he realized the boy was still in the doorway, watching with a troubled expression. He rolled down the window. “What is it?” he called.

  Benjy’s mouth opened and closed, and then he shrugged. “Nothing,” he said through a weak smile.

  He was backing down the driveway when he saw a head bob alongside his window. He hit the brake. “Damn it, boy, what’re you doing?”

  “I was just wondering,” the boy called over the engine’s roar. Wincing, he blurted, “Are you coming back?”

  “Of course I’m coming back. Of course I am!” Omar said, not only amused and flattered by the boy’s apprehension, but drawn to it, energized by that mistrust with its inexpressible longing, by the loneliness, the terrible loneliness of lights burning through the night and telephones seized at the first ping, by that pain seeping sometimes into his own sleep, the pain of all those hearts in time with his own, even though he knew there was little one man could do to set it all right, so very, very little. And so, with a sigh, he pulled out of the driveway, then stared down the narrow one-way street. His grip tightened on the wheel and suddenly he knew exactly what the boy knew, that he was not coming back, not ever. He had a car, money in the pocket of his freshly cleaned and pressed suit, and there on the torn seat beside him, his next meal. He was free as a bird with nothing to hold him, nothing to get in his way. He could just keep on going. Why not? What was stopping him? The boy’s eyes still on him? Marie? Well, if anything, it would teach her a damn good lesson. Yes sir, a woman alone like that shouldn’t ever let a stranger into her home. Lucky for her it had been him and not some thieving, murdering pervert. Oh it was pathetic, it really was, a woman like that, so wanting, so lonely, so desperate she’d open her door to kindness no matter its guise or form.

  With his arm on the window well, he cruised down the street, the breeze flapping his sleeve. One of these days, real soon, as soon as he could, he’d write her a letter telling what a fine woman she was. A woman of strength. A woman of character. Yes sir, first chance he got, first opportunity, he’d write and say, My dear Marie…my dear, dearest sweet Marie, I have roamed this vast country far and wide and I have met many a fine woman, but none as good, as lonely, as…as…as stimulating as—

  “Oh fucking, fucking Jesus!” he cried. His foot shot to the brake and the car lurched to a stop before he could turn. Parked ahead on the distant corner was his old dusty station wagon. He slumped behind the wheel and watched the driver’s door open.

  Luther climbed out, then walked around to the other side of the car. He helped Reverend Pease out, then steadied him on his feet. The old man clung to the open door while Luther tugged a flimsy jacket onto his shoulders and centered the familiar porkpie hat on his head. Luther led him shuffling onto the sidewalk.

  Luther looked up and seemed now to be pointing toward this very corner where Omar sat, eyes glazed with terror, as his hand slipped slowly, so slowly it would take days to pass from the wheel to the stick to shift the car into reverse. The old man shook his head and stomped his feet in the perverse jig that meant he’d been bullied enough by the sullen Luther and now he’d have his way. He pointed toward the next street, which Omar realized must have been where they last saw Earlie. Yes, that was the very street down which Earlie had chased him. But how much did they really know? Had the old man actually seen his grandson follow Omar into the woods? He couldn’t have, Omar reasoned, and yet that was exactly where the old man was heading.

  Through the mirror, Omar stared back at those crow-infested tangled trees that loomed as the limping old man’s magnetic destination. They were the only ones who could link him to Earlie tha
t day, and so he had no choice, no choice now but to stop them. They had forced him to this. He hunched over the wheel, playing it through with such brutal clarity that only a moment later the act would seem blurred and unreal, its commission more dream than deed: the stuck gas pedal; a dip, then a bump in the road; the huge engine accelerating out of control, hurtling the car onto the sidewalk, crushing them both.

  He would stagger out as neighbors ran from their houses. “Duvall!” the old man might moan. There would be sirens. Only his eyes moved. Yes, there would be sirens, distant sirens, questions he could not answer. No, better to drive away. His foot eased to the gas pedal, then froze. If he did leave now, he’d be a hunted man whether they found Earlie in there or not. They’d be right on his tail. It was a small town. As soon as Marie reported her car gone, they would know. They knew all his tricks. No sir, he had to stay calm, cool, collected, and he had to keep thinking like them, every minute; just crawl inside the old man’s head to know what he knows and go where he goes, because it wasn’t spilled blood the old thief was tracking down, but a hard-beating, hard-pumping heart he knew as well as his own. Better to keep the old man pursuing love, a more alluring quarry than death; love to keep the gears turning, to keep them all moving. The old man had faith enough to search forever for his grandson, so Omar would provide the lure, proof that Earlie was still alive, but far, far from here.

  He hurried into the kitchen and the boy’s head shot up, his cheek smeared with colored ink. He had fallen asleep, drooling on the open comic book.

  “Now listen carefully,” he said, dragging a chair close. “Remember every word I tell you, because I am in very, very great danger, and I need your help.”

  Benjy stared, as if peering up from a watery dream.

  “It’s not just me,” he whispered, gripping the boy’s arm, demanding, imploring through flesh and bone, his fingertips pulsing a beat of such urgency that for a long time after there would be bruises on the soft white underflesh. “But all of us. We’re all counting on you. So listen to every single word I say….”

  It was Luther who first heard Benjy. The old man kept walking, each foot lifting with the heft of stone, then falling onto the sidewalk.

  “What you want?” Luther asked with the same resignation of the old man’s plodding journey. “You want something?” The whites of his eyes were yellow and hot, and his skin gleamed in the sunshine.

  The words died on Benjy’s tongue. Now the old man looked at him. His gold front tooth sparkled. Next to the younger man’s his dark skin seemed dull and as drab as if coated with dust. “You live around here, boy?” the old man asked.

  “Yes sir.” His reply seemed more gesture than sound. He had never spoken to a black man before.

  “You seen this young man around?” the old man asked, moving toward Benjy with his weighted step. The paler palm of his hand cupped a worn tissuey photograph.

  It was the picture of a boy not much older than Benjy. He shook his head, then looked up and nodded. It vaguely resembled the man he had seen in the woods that day with Omar.

  “When?” the old man demanded, hobbling closer. He reeked of sweat and still dark ponds.

  “A couple of weeks ago,” Benjy said, Omar’s carefully chosen words bobbing to the surface now. “Right down there.” He pointed toward the distant woods. “I was on my way home from school, and he came out of the woods, and he asked did I want to buy any magazines, and I said no, I couldn’t, I didn’t have any money, and he laughed, and he said, ‘Money! You need money?’ And he pulled out this big thick thing of money, of dollar bills in this silver thing that had a D engraved on it and…”

  “Duvall’s clip!” the young man cried. He looked at the old man and yelped. “That be Duvall’s clip!”

  “And Duvall’s cash!” said the old man, so gleefully clapping his hands that he stumbled. Luther steadied him by the back of his shirt. The old man just kept talking. “What he say then? Earlie—what he say?”

  “He…he said, ‘Here,’ and he gave me a dollar, and he told me not to tell the big white man in the white suit I saw him because he was on his way down to see his best girl, Laydee Dwelley, in Hankham, Mississippi.”

  “Oh my Lord,” gasped the grinning old man. He laid his hands on Benjy’s shoulders. “Try telling me now, there ain’t no divine purpose behind all that we do, Mr. Luther Corbett.”

  Luther just shook his head, apparently conceding the old man right, for once.

  “His best girl, who is Laydee Dwelley in Hankham, Mississippi.” The old man closed his eyes and sighed. “God did this. God sent this child. And now we’re gonna return the favor, child.” His bloodshot eyes widened. “That big white man Earlie told you about, his name is Omar Duvall and you ever see him, you watch out, ’cause he is a bad, bad man. He is what you call a treacherous man. He got knives! He got a switchblade with a snakeskin handle and a blade so sharp it can slice through bone, quick as that!” hissed the old man with such a sudden zigzagging thrust of his fist that Benjy jumped.

  “You scarin’ him!” Luther said.

  “But that’s the favor,” said the old man, drawing back. “Fear. Might just save your life one day, child.”

  “What’s your name?” Luther asked, reaching into his pocket. He held out a quarter.

  “I gotta go now,” Benjy said. He ran away, relieved, because that must have been just the way it had happened that day in the woods, just as Omar had told him. Earlie had stolen Omar’s money, and now he was on his way to Mississippi, and he suddenly realized that the glint he had seen that day, that glint through the leaves had not been a blade at all, but the silver money clip they had both been struggling for.

  At five o’clock Renie LaChance locked the door and pulled the shade over the glass. He opened a can of cat food and another can of sardines and poured more milk into Tom’s bowl. Then he reached under the counter for his slim green ledgers. In one, he printed: 4.50—Mrs. Ottman’s vegetable bins. 2.25—Mrs. Crowley’s reflector pans. That was the ledger the IRS could see. He opened the second ledger and turned the pages. In this one he recorded the day’s cash sales, 12.00—fan. 5.95—lint filter. On the next line he wrote: Slow day at Cushing’s, only sixty-five customers, approximately $195 by my estimation. Temperature—83 degrees. Sunny, muggy. Terrible smell. A stink. Makes some people sick in their stomach. Friday night, Helen hit Sam over the head with her statue. Police came. Now with Sam gone Helen will get meaner and meaner to me like always.

  Best news! Alice came in store and picked out the color yellow. Just like the sunshine! Golden Toastee rep coming to check store next week. I am nervous. If I get it I will put a sign up that says EXCLUSIVE GOLDEN TOASTEE DEALER in gold letters and people will come from all over.

  He looked at his watch. Only five-fifteen, the part of the day he least knew what to do with. There was no place for him between five and dinner at six-thirty. In a way it was the loneliest part of the day. All the ladies would be busy now in their kitchens, their hands too greasy or full to pick up their phones, so their children would answer or their husbands. When he had Riddles, this was the time he used to take him for walks. It hurt to remember what Sam had said about Helen burying Riddles, but he couldn’t allow himself such a terrible belief. If it was true, he would have to do something; what, he didn’t know, but it would be not only final, but probably the worst act he’d ever committed. It might even be murder, he realized, shuddering. Or love, he thought with sudden terror.

  All at once he rushed into the bathroom, sat down, and dialed his own number.

  “Hello,” came Helen’s crisp voice. “Hello? Hello! Who is this?” And then she hung up.

  He called her two more times. She answered, then slammed down the phone when she got no response. On the third call he stared up at his pictures, his gaze swimming in glossy blindness.

  “What do you want?” gasped Helen’s thin frightened voice. “Why do you keep calling?”

  He touched himself and moaned softly, thinking of t
he soft white skin on her shoulder.

  “Oh,” she said. “You stop! You just leave me alone.”

  He leaned back, legs apart, one hand on the phone at his ear, the other hand gently stroking as he moaned, his eyes closed with her scared little voice in his ear, in his heart, deep, deep in his groin.

  When it was over, he watched himself in the mirror as he washed his sticky hands in the small, stained sink and he saw how his eyes glowed and how his cheeks were flushed, and a great wonder seized him because he had never, ever dared do this with any of the others.

  He drove home with an ache burning in his chest and the knowledge that he loved his wife very much. As was Helen’s custom when he came through the door, she took his plate from the oven and set it on the table. She never ate, but seemed to live on air, he thought, without need of any bodily functions, not sex, not food, not defecation.

  “Sit down,” he said quickly, before she could leave the kitchen.

  “Why?” she asked, eyes steeled for the bad news her life attracted.

  “Well, I got things to tell you,” he said. From his pocket he with-drew the yellow disk and held it out to her. “For the store,” he said, laying it on the table when she didn’t take it. He told her about the Golden Toastee line and the salesman he expected and the gold-lettered sign, and now he was amazed to hear himself telling her about his surplus of fans, confessing how foolish he had felt all this past year with them jam-packing the storeroom, but then he’d sold one last Friday and another today, so this heat might turn out to be a real lifesaver…he loved her, loved her fine thin neck and her slim delicate fingers…people were drooping with the heat. They’d pay any price for cool air…he was a lucky man to have such a fine wife…. “Oh Helen!” he cried when she took a step toward him.