— Wha paypa it wuz you workin wit?
— The New York Observer. We’re mean-spirited.
I expected him to question me. Maybe even yell. Instead old Uncle Arms pushed me into these bushes. He sacked me amid some Canadian Hemlock.
— What you claim to have heard you shall not speak again, he whispered.
He crouched on the balls of his feet. The back of my head was against the shaded earth.
I asked him, — Where’d your accent go?
16
By six o’clock that Saturday evening I was back outside the Hampton Inn next to vomiting from fear as I walked to the front desk. I poured myself coffee from a silver urn on a table.
The clerk was a pencil-shaped woman in green vest with a white long-sleeved shirt underneath. She waited for me to speak but my coffee was so hot that I was concentrating on keeping my mouth shut to keep from spitting it on the floor.
So she finally asked me, — Are you 603?
— 350 at the most!
She hesitated, but I wasn’t trying to be cute.
— Did you leave your bath running when you went out today?
— No?
— Sure?
— I’ll have you know that I haven’t bathed once in twenty-four hours.
She believed me, which solved the problem of my guilt, but she stepped backward and covered her nose with one hand.
— The maid came to take up your sheets, she explained from her distance. The whole room was flooded up in there.
— I’m sorry about that.
She stepped forward quickly. — Why apologize?
— No one likes to see bad things happen to good hotels.
She didn’t step away again, but did keep her hand over her face. I reminded myself to find time for soap this evening.
— You don’t have to worry, the clerk said. The maid put down towels. It was about sixty of them. We’ll find you another room.
Saved; not liable; excused from small-claims court; I should have felt lucky. Instead I stood in the lobby with dirt on the back of my neck and sweat stains darkening the inseam of my slacks, indignant.
— The maid did all that did she?
Room 414 and room 603 were like identical lamps. One lit, one unlit. I stood inside the new room.
Needing that shower I went to the bathroom but found I was scared of the nozzle. I turned the knob, but as soon as the water ran I imagined another mishap. Two ruined rooms would snuff the last of Hampton Inn’s goodwill. I had a panic attack, that’s all. Like a grief counselor I soothed myself, saying, — It’s fine. Take a shower in a little while. Do something else. Not just yet. Soon. Turn off the water.
With the receiver of the hotel phone to my ear I listened to the dial tone stutter: a signal there were messages for me. They were transferred from room 603. Two were Nabisase’s, at nine-thirty and eleven that morning. The first was the sound of annoyance, asking where was I. The second just dejection; —I guess you and Mom are busy.
The third message was from Mom, but hardly recognizable. Her voice was a bouncy trill. I’d have thought it was a teenager, not a middle-aged woman. At three-eighteen PM she said. — I need to get the dogs from the car, but I’ll send them to you later. Don’t worry, Anthony. I will reach you in my own way.
— Walk over there, I said out loud to myself. Get up and find your folks.
I called our answering machine in Queens, but for what? Nabisase had more friends than the rest of us and she only had two. Checking home messages was just a way to avoid getting up.
To my surprise we had five. Five for Anthony. Which, I don’t know why, made me feel handsome.
The first was one of the managers at Sparkle asking again if I’d like some weekend work. The other four were from the same man, one who clearly hadn’t listened when I said we were leaving town:
— Hello, this is a message for Anthony. Give me a call. You know who this is?
— This is Ledric, I’m sorry if it’s late and all.
— Nabisase, could you pick up and let me talk to Anthony?
— (groaning) I am the dumbest motherfucker on two feet.
17
The Dodge Neon’s trunk was broken open. Its lock looked attacked by claws. Chips of white paint on the Hampton Inn parking lot. My duffel bag was still inside, but Mom’s eighteen figurines were gone.
I forgot about Ledric like lickety-split, opened my bag to make sure my clean suits were there. It’s possible that there was a gewgaw thief in Lumpkin, but I doubted it. I unfolded one suit, shook it out and changed in the backseat of the broken car. Though I tried a few times to slam the trunk closed, it wouldn’t shut.
Stepped out then walked the eighty-five feet back to Comfort Inn. A girl in the employee uniform, jacket and smile, walked me back outside and pointed southwest to a huge carnation-red building where ceremonies were to be held.
The Blue Ridge Theatre.
— I think that’s what you’re looking for, sir.
Preliminary events, like casual and athletic wear, were going to run at eight o’clock.
— That’s a half hour, I said.
— We have a bar inside, if you’d like to pass some time.
— I shouldn’t start drinking, I told her. I’ve got to drive somewhere tonight.
— Is your daughter in it?
— My sister. Did you see that other contest this afternoon?
— Uncle Allen’s? Oh sure. A lot bigger this year. My cousins were in it ’93 and ’94.
— Why not you?
— My life’s been pretty good, she said.
I borrowed twine from the clerk to tie the trunk of our Dodge Neon closed. How sad the sight made me. Just a day before, on November 10th, Mom brought this car home; it made the block seem brighter because it was unspoiled. Now with the white string looped through the trunk this car looked like any of the duds double-parked up Hillside Avenue.
I started the car and left Lumpkin, Virginia, at seven-forty-five.
Miser’s Wend was an even smaller town forty miles south of Lumpkin. The two were separated by the larger city of Winchester, Virginia. Miser’s Wend would never have an exit on I-81 today if not for the Quakers who came in 1773. These facts, the year of founding and who did it, were stamped on plaques every eight feet within town limits. Declaring stones, curbs, cigarette butts as historic Quaker landmarks. But by 1995 the Quakers were aged right out of importance. When I drove into Miser’s Wend I entered an extinct society.
Downtown was only four blocks long with one bookstore, a food market, a dry cleaner; their store fronts had all been built before the Civil War. I felt a mix of admiration and aching back. Sleeping in a car seat all morning still hurt me.
A Quaker meeting hall was in a large field, left to itself. Fifty feet by fifty, one story with a gabled roof. I wouldn’t say it looked like a religious building except for the way it seemed to shine under direct focus from the moon. The wood became whiter. There was a porch on the right side of the meeting house with one small chair out there. It faced me; I drove by.
I touched the passenger seat where my sister had been on Friday. When I thought of her on stage with Grandma I regretted the mistakes I’d made today. Missing her phone calls and now, driving forty miles just because she’d hurt my feelings. When we came back to Rosedale from Ithaca on September 3rd, Nabisase helped me clean out the crowded basement so I’d have a neat place to sleep. If I was going to turn around and keep her orphan’s secret there were still a few miles to decide.
Uncle Arms had written the driving directions on the back of a car loan application.
They were too damn specific for me.