The Governor, a widower in his earliest fifties, turned off the
ignition, noting with satisfaction the absence of street signs limiting
parking time. Governor Lampley, serving out the unexpired term of
his predecessor and not entirely hopeless of nomination and election
in his own right, pictured the stupid or fanatical cop who under
any circumstances would write a ticket for the car with the license
GOV-001. He and Marvin had made a big joke out of those zeros, Marvin
showing his hostility under the kidding, the Governor hiding his
dislike for his secretary under his self-deprecation.
Before getting out he dusted the knees of his trousers and looked up
and down the shabby street. The Odd Fellows Hall was built of concrete
blocks; Almon Lampley was reasonably sure it hadn't been there thirty
years before. The other buildings seemed to be as he remembered
them, if anything so fragile as the reconstruction in his mind could
be called a memory. He'd forgotten the name of the place, its very
location. Only the highway marker, the one so close it rooted the
town briefly from obscurity to pinpoint it fleetingly: so many miles
from the capital behind him, so many miles to the destination before
him, hit the chord. Why, it was here. This was the place. How very
long, long ago. Goodness (he curbed the natural profanity of even his
thoughts lest he offend some straitlaced voter), goodness--years and
years. A generation. Before he met Mattie, before he switched from
selling agricultural implements to vote-getting.
* * * * *
And the sign just outside, Pop. 1,983. Pathetic lack of 17 more pop.
With 2,000 they could have boasted: We're on our way, on our third
thousand, the biggest little town between here and there. Watch us
grow. If you lived here, you'd be home now. Get in on the ground floor
and expand with us, Tomorrow's metropolis. Under two thousand was
stagnation, decay, surrender. 1,983: possibly a thousand registered
voters; more likely eight hundred--two precincts. How many Republicans,
how many Democrats? Maybe three screwballs: one voting Prohibition, one
writing in his own name, one casting a ballot for Pogo. A sad town, a
dead town. Surely it hadn't been so thirty years ago?
But there had been the railroad then, and young Almon Lampley swinging
down from the daycoach before the wheels stopped turning, bursting with
enthusiasm, eager, cocky, invincible. The railroad gone, its tracks
melted into scrap, its ties piled up and burned, its place taken by
trucking lines, buses, cars. You had to have progress. So what if the
town got lost in the process, fell behind? There were other towns,
equally deserving, equally promising, equally anxious to get ahead.
The state was full of them: chicory capital of the world, hub of mink
breeding, where the juiciest pickles are made, home-owners' heaven, the
friendliest city, Santa Claus' summer residence, host to the annual
girly festival, gateway to the alkali flats. Thousands of them. And
he was governor of the whole state. It would be non-feasance if not
mis-feasance in him to regret this one bypassed settlement.
Evidently progress, before it withered, had brought the Odd Fellows
Hall. No more. The false fronted stores were as he remembered--as he
thought he ought to have remembered--and the dwelling set back from
the street, forgotten or held in irascible obstinacy, petunias and
geraniums growing too lush in the overgrowned front yard. The Hay,
Grain & Feed where he had called--where he must have called--the
garage, the Chevrolet agency, the hotel.
* * * * *
The Governor gave a final brush to his trousers, pocketed the keys, and
picked up his overnight case from the seat beside him. The hotel was
unquestionably the most prominent building on either side of the street
yet he had unconsciously left noticing it to the last. It was a square
three stories high, probably older than anything else in town, of no
identifiable style, with a sign saying glumly ROOMS, MEALS, in paint
so ancient its surface had peeled away, leaving only fossil pigment
to take the weather and continue the message. The brown clapboards
had grayed, they were parted--driven asunder--by a vertical column of
match-fencing, mincingly precise in its senility, pierced by multipaned
windows with random blue, brown, green and yellow glass. The verandah,
empty of chairs but suggestive of a place for drummers to sit with
their heels on the collapsing railing, sagged in a twisted list. The
two balconies above it had been mended with scrap lumber, unpainted,
and the repairs themselves mended again.
Governor Lampley could easily have driven another thirty, forty, fifty
miles--it was only mid-afternoon and he was not tired--to find modern
accommodations. He could have driven all the way to his destination.
He chose to stop here. As a sentimental gesture? As an uncomfortable
(fleas, lumpy beds, creaky floors) amusement? As a whim? Call it a
whim. The Governor was on an unofficial, very limited, vacation.
He admitted feeling slightly foolish as he took the three steps to
the verandah and walked over the uneasy boards to the plate-glass
doors and into the darkened, dusty lobby. In this position one didn't
give way to sudden impulse. Any yielding to sentiment was calculated,
studied, designed, to be milked for good publicity. He could see the
bored, competent photographers, the casual--well-planned--chat with the
reporters. Marvin would have arranged it all; the Governor would have
only to move gracefully through his part.
Responsibly he ought to phone Marvin, let him know he was staying here,
give his attention to whatever business Marvin would say couldn't wait
till tomorrow. In imagination he could hear the querulous, nagging
tones beneath the surface respectfulness, the barely suppressed
astonishment (what do you suppose he's up to now? a woman? a meeting
with one of the doughboys? a drunk?), the assurance Marvin would call
if anything came up. He ought to phone Marvin immediately.
The thought of Marvin made him turn and glance back through the
doorway, to reassure himself he was not part of a scheduled program
after all. But there was no car on the street save his own, no busy
technicians, no curious onlookers, no one. Only the afternoon sunlight,
the swirling motes, the faint smell of oil and dust.
As soon as he accustomed his eyes to the dimness he saw there was no
one in the lobby. An artificial palm, its raffia swathings loose as a
two year old's diaper, stood in a wooden tub. Eight chairs were placed
in neatly opposing rows, four covered in once-black leather, cracked
and split, the wrinkles worn brown, four wooden, humbly straight.
There was an air of peacefulness independent of the dark, the quiet,
the emptiness, an assertion that there was no need to hurry here, that
there was never a need to hurry here.
* * * * *
He lifted his arm to look at his watch. The sweep-second hand was not
revolving. He put the watch to his ear; there was no tick. He wound it,
shook it; it didn't start. He slipped it off his wrist into his pocket,
and loosened his necktie.
He stood in front of the brown counter whose top was shiny with the
patina of leaning elbows. There was a bell with inverted triple
chins and outpopping pimple, an open register turned indifferently
toward him, a bank of empty pigeonholes. He picked up the chewed pen
with the splayed nib, bronze-shiny where the ink had dried on it.
He had to tip the black scumcrusty inkwell far over to moisten it.
It scratch-scratched across the top line on the page, engraving his
name but only staining the depressions here and there, mostly on the
downstrokes. Oddly, instead of the capital, he wrote down the city he
had once lived in, the city where he got his first job.
After registering he hesitated over the bell. Instead of ringing it
he picked up his bag and walked to the shadowed stairway. Up ahead he
saw a low-watt bulb staring bleakly on the wall. The area around the
globe was a grimy green, outside the magic circle the pervading dark
brown was undisturbed. The carpet under his feet was threadbare and
gritty; through his shoe-soles he felt the lumps of resistant knots in
the wood, and the nailheads raised by the wearing-down around them. He
gazed ahead.
There was a landing halfway up, opening on a narrow hall. Light came
through fogged windows set close together along one wall. The other was
papered with circus posters, the brightly lithographed elephants and
hippopotami faded almost to indiscernibility, the creases burst open
like scored chestnuts. The Governor hesitated, went on up.
At the second floor he turned left, noting how spacious this hall was
in contrast to the one below, how comparatively bright and clean.
Most of the doors were slightly ajar, not inviting perhaps, merely
indicating they were receptive to a tenant.
From the outside there was nothing to choose between them yet he felt
the choice was important. Further, it seemed to him that opening a door
would commit him; he must choose without inspection. Thoughtfully he
passed several. The one he finally entered opened on a large room with
two tall windows. Thin, brittle curtains drooped palely from the rods.
Two dressers, the high one bellying forward, the low one supporting a
tilted metal-dull mirror, were thick with cheap varnish that wept long
blob-ended tears. The double bed was made, the coverlet turned down,
the lumpy pillows smooth and gray. On a whatnot in one corner a glass
bell enclosed two wax figures, a bride and groom in wedding finery. The
wax bride was wringing her waxen hands.
* * * * *
The Governor put his bag on the foot of the bed, took off his
jacket, rolled up his sleeves, went to the sink. The faucets were
black-spotted, green-flecked, with remnants of nickelplating and long
dark scratches. The basin was orange-brown and gray-white. He turned on
the HOT. There was a quick hiss and a slurp of thick, liquid rust. He
tried the COLD. The slurp was the same but there was no hiss. He looked
around the room again, saw the washstand. The knobbly-spouted pitcher
stood in the center of the knobbly-rimmed bowl. The water appeared
good despite the dust floating on top. He poured some in the basin and
rinsed his face and hands.
As a small child he had been sure water was life. Once he sprinkled
some on a dead bird, stiff and ruffled. He found a towel, hard and
grainy, dried his hands, shrinking slightly from the contact. He took
his comb from his jacket and ran it through his still thick hair, only
lightly graying. It was a minor pride that his campaign pictures were
always the latest, never one taken when he was much younger.
He became aware he was being watched and turned inquiringly toward the
door. The man standing there wore heavy work-shoes, blue denim pants,
a denim jacket buttoned to his neck. His face was dark, his straight
black hair long. His eyes slanted ever so little above his high
cheekbones. He smiled at Lampley. "Everything OK?"
"Everything OK," said Lampley. "Except the plumbing."
The man nodded thoughtfully.
"Oh, the plumbing. It went out." He gestured vaguely with his hands,
indicating leaks, stoppages, broken pipes, hopeless fittings, worn-out
heaters. "So we put in washstands."
"I see. Maybe it would have been better to have it fixed."
The other shook a doubtful head. "This was change. Advance.
Improvement. Maybe next we'll put a well in every room, with a rope
and bucket reaching straight down. Plop! And then rrrrr, up she comes
full and slopping over. Or artesians with the water bubbling up like a
billiard ball on the end of a cue. That would be hard to beat, ay? Or
perhaps wooden pipes from the rain gutters."
"I see," said Lampley. The plans didn't seem unreasonable. "You're the
clerk?" he asked politely.
"Clerk is good as any. Everyone has lots to do."
"That's right. Well, thanks."
"Don't mention it."
Lampley rolled down his sleeves, refastened his cufflinks, put his
jacket back on. "Can I get something to eat here?"
"Why not? Come on."
* * * * *
The Governor followed him into the hall, closing the door. He thought
briefly of asking about telephoning since there was no phone in his
room. Still it wasn't really necessary; Marvin could take care of
everything. The clerk led him, not to the stairs he had come up, but in
the opposite direction. Some of the partially open doors were painted
in vivid colors and marked with symbols strange to Lampley.
The backstairs were narrower, steeper, darker; the Governor had a
constant fear of overestimating the width of the treads and placing a
searching foot upon insubstantial air. They came to the halfway landing
but instead of the windowed hall with the circus posters, they entered
a low room, low as a ship's cabin compressed between decks. Exposed
beams held up the ceiling. A long plank table ran between two benches,
a high ladderback chair at the head and foot. One of the benches was
built into the battened wall.
On it a man with an infantile face and bulging forehead under coarse
black hair crouched over the table guarding his food with tiny kangaroo
arms. A stained and spotted napkin was tied around his neck like a bib.
He slobbered and gurgled over a bowl of thick porridge, smearing it
around his mouth, spilling on the napkin as he scooped the mess from
the bowl.
At the head of the table an old man, white-haired, hook-nosed, chewed
silently. On the outside bench was a middle-aged woman with sagging,
placid features, and a girl in her teens. All looked Indian or Mexican
except the idiot, none paid attention to their arrival.
The clerk sat down at the foot of the table. Lampley saw there was
no place for him except on the bench next to the defective. He edged
his way in, staying far as possible from him. The room was suddenly
oppressive; he had the notion they must be near a furnace, a boiler,
a dynamo. He took out his carefully folded handkerchief and wiped his
forehead. The old man glanced at him sympathetically.
The young girl reached under the table and came up with a bright
green crepe paper party favor. She extended it diffidently toward the
Governor. Smiling, he took hold of the stiff cardboard strip inside the
ruffle with his thumb and forefinger. She giggled, holding the other
end; they pulled. The cracker popped, a red tissue paper phrygian cap
fell out. She clapped her hands and motioned him to put it on. Slightly
embarrassed, he complied.
She searched through the torn favor for the motto, unfolded it. She
shook her head and handed it to him. He read, AN UNOPENED BOOK HAS NO
PRINTING. She put a bowl of beans, cut-up chicken, and rice before him.
"Thank you," he said.
"For nothing," she responded, shyly polite. Her young breasts pushed
out against her white shirt. Her dark eyes looked into his before her
long lashes fell. Her mouth was wide and supple. Lampley realized
she was beautiful. He thought with pain of walking with her through
knee-high grass and lying beside her under spreading trees.
He spooned up some of the food; it was overcooked and tasteless. It
didn't matter. Between spoonfuls he looked furtively at the woman--he
dared not let his eyes return to the girl--and thought he saw a
resemblance to.... To whom? The face was pleasant, ordinary, memorable
neither for charm nor repulsiveness. It was a matter of professional
pride, an occupational necessity for him to remember faces; he could
not recall this one. It nagged at the back of his mind.
* * * * *
The old man rose, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, bowing
clumsily toward the Governor. He pulled a wrinkled pack of cigarettes
from his shirt pocket and extended it. "Thanks," acknowledged Lampley,
"I don't use them." The old man shook his head, tipped the pack to
his mouth, replaced it, lit the cigarette with a match struck on the
seat of his trousers. His fingers were thick and twisted; they still
appeared capable of delicate manipulation.
The clerk pushed back his chair. "We might put self-service in here,"
he remarked to no one in particular. "Individual stoves, maybe
mechanized farms or hydroponic tanks." He belched, holding his hand
diffidently before his mouth.
Lampley emptied his bowl. The girl looked questioningly at him. "No
more," he said. "Thank you."
She smiled at him, followed the clerk and the old man from the room; he
was alone with the woman and the idiot. He wanted to get up and go too;
something held him. "A long time," said the woman gently.
He knew what she meant; he refused to accept understanding. "I'm sorry."
"Since you were here. You forgot?"
There was coldness in his stomach. "No ... not exactly. I'm sorry."
She shrugged. Her arms and shoulders were rounded and graceful but
their grace did not obscure the fact that she was old as he, or nearly.
Why was it so reprehensible to long for freshness and beauty in women
but the stamp of taste to want these qualities in anything else? "I'm
sorry," he said for the third time, aware of the phrase's futility.
She smiled, showing a gold tooth. The others were white but uneven.
"For nothing," she echoed the girl. "What is there to be sorry for?"
His eyes went from the creature on the bench to her and back again.
"Yours," she said calmly.
He had known, but knowing and knowing were different things.
"Impossible!"
She showed the gold tooth again. "Why impossible? You make love, you
have babies."
"But--like that?"
"Does everything have to be perfect for you?"
He regarded her with greater horror than he had his--his son. A beast,
an animal, giving birth to beasts and animals. "Not perfect. But
not ... this."
She laughed and moved around the table to the unfortunate. She untied
the napkin and tenderly wiped his vacant face and the undeveloped
hands. She kissed him passionately on the forehead. "You think it is
possible to love only perfection? You couldn't love one like this, or
an old woman, or a corpse?"
* * * * *
Lampley ran from the room, past a curtained entrance, and stumbled
through a hall lit with yellow, grease-filmed light. The hall smelled
of food, acrid, sickening. There was a swinging door at the end,
padded, outlined with brass nails. Many were missing, their absence
commemorated by the dark outline of where they had been. He pushed
through it.
The kitchen was oddly constructed. Its ceiling seemed to be two
stories high; just under it were niches for sooty plaster figures, all
horribly distorted, figures with one arm twice the length of the other,
phalluses long as legs, monstrous heads, steatopygian buttocks, goiters
resting on sagittarian knees. Through a rose window yellow-pink beams
streamed to the flagged floor. Scrubbed and sanded butchers' blocks
splattered with gobs of fat, drying entrails, scabs of hard blood stood
against the wall. Gleaming knives and cleavers were racked in the sides
of the blocks. Tomb-like ranges were hooded in a row; opposite them
empty spits turned before cold, blackened fireplaces.
The old man was seated on a stool before a slanting table, methodically
chopping onions in a wooden bowl. He turned his head. "She gave you a
hard time, hay?"
Blackmail, extortion, exposure, disgrace. "I don't know."
The old man wrinkled his forehead. The peculiar light made the creases
unnaturally deep, like well-healed scars. "Who does know?" He laid down
his cleaver. "Come."
Will-less, the Governor followed. The old man had a limp, formerly
unnoticed. They went past the ranges to a massive steel door with a
red lamp beside it. The old man lifted the tight latch. Lampley noted
a safety device preventing the door from fully closing except from the
outside.
They were in a large refrigerator. Sides of beef, barred red and pale,
hung from hooks. Whole sheep and pigs, encased in stiff, unarmoring
fat, thrust dead forefeet toward the unattainable sawdust-covered
floor. Barrels of pickling brine, boxes of fish and seafood (the
lobsters waving feelers uncertainly) were arranged neatly. It was cold;
the Governor shivered. Plucked fowl dangled in rows. Beyond them wild
ducks and geese, still sadly feathered, were suspended in bunches,
three ducks, two geese to a bunch. The Governor touched a mallard's
breast as he passed; the down was strangely warm in this chilling
place.
They crossed an empty space. The whole carcass of an animal hung from
gray hooks curving through the tendons of its legs. It had been skinned
and gutted but the head was intact and untouched. The shaggy hair
drooped forward, the horns pointed at nothing. The glazed eyes absorbed
the light, the tongue, clenched between dead teeth, protruded.
"Buffalo," cried the Governor. "Surely it's against the law to kill
them?"
* * * * *
The old man ran his dark, heavily veined hand gloatingly over the
bison's hump and down the shoulder. "Tasty. Very tasty."
"You can't do things like this," insisted the Governor.
"Ah," sighed the old man. "Boom boom."
Lampley came closer. There were no signs of the buffalo having been
shot. Its throat was cut and dark blood had congealed around the jagged
wound. The old man picked out several clots of dried blood and put them
in his mouth, sucking appreciatively. He rubbed his cheek against the
head of the animal. "Soft," he said. "See yourself."
The Governor drew back.
The old man stared contemptuously at him. "No wonder."
"How do I get out of here?" asked Lampley.
The old man gestured indifferently. "Try that way." He waved his arm.
Lampley turned. Either the refrigerator had gotten colder or he was
newly vulnerable to the chill. He shivered; hoarfrost crunched under
his feet, the wall glistened with ice crystals. He realized he was not
retracing his steps when he passed braces of partridges--or had he
merely not noticed them before?--grouse, pheasants. He looked back; the
old man was still nuzzling the bison head.
He came to a mound of snow and was puzzled, less at its presence
than at its use and origin. Who would manufacture snow, and for what
purpose? And if not manufactured it must have been brought a long way
at great expense for it did not snow in this part of the state more
than once in a dozen years.
But it was not a simple mound after all but an igloo, crudely
constructed, as though by a child. Impulsively he got down on his knees
and crawled through the entrance-tunnel until his head was inside. It
was warm under the dome, warm and soothing and safe. He backed out
quickly, frightened at the thought of becoming too content there, of
not being able to leave its comfort.
The cold of the refrigerator was accentuated by the contrast; his
breath came in steamy puffs. He hurried to a door opening from the
inside. He leaned against the wall of a dark corridor and breathed
deeply. The picture of the old man fondling the buffalo head was still
before him. He felt his way slowly along the wall, and then he was in
the lobby again. There was something wrong here: the room where they
had eaten had been a half level higher.
There was no point in wondering over the layout of the hotel. He would
retrieve his bag, get in the car and go on to his destination. He
stumbled through the gloom, missing the stairs, and saw he was in front
of an antique elevator, the doors open, the ancient basketwork cage an
inch or two below the floor.
"Get in," invited the clerk, "I'll take you."
Lampley entered, panting a little, smoothing his tie with his palm.
"Thank you."
The clerk pulled the grill shut; there was no door on the elevator
itself. "Ninety-three million miles to the sun," he said. "We'd fry
before we got there."
The Governor considered the idea. "Explode from lack of pressure,
asphyxiate from lack of air first."
The clerk looked at him curiously. "We could shut our eyes and hold our
breath, you know."
Lampley did not answer.
"All right." The clerk grasped the control lever. The cage fell with
sickening velocity.