The Midnight Cool Page 16

  In the hall he passed a half-open door. He heard a moan, and when he looked in he saw Gus Kuntz, pants open, a half dozen stereoscope cards spread out on the bed. Gus looked up and scrambled around, trying to hide the cards and tugging at his pants.

  Charles went in and picked up one of the cards.

  Where’d you get this?

  Gus looked up at him guiltily from under his jutting brow.

  Fellow at the auction house sold em to me.

  The card was greasy and well handled. Fat girl with her legs spread and her head tossed back. Black triangle of fur. Double image. Ugly as sin in both of them.

  He handed it back. What you pay for em?

  Three dollars.

  Three dollars? Ah, Gus. You were fleeced. I can get you a better set than these. I can get you some will blow your mind. You get yourself a viewer for those cards and they’ll really be something.

  My pa took all the others and put them in the fireplace. He says I’m gonna go blind.

  You ain’t gonna go blind.

  They burned! Gus’s eyes got wide. They burned all up.

  Listen. You ain’t gonna go blind. Don’t worry about nothing, Gus. You don’t got to worry about nothing.

  When he came back to the parlor Bonnyman was talking about the Belgian workhorses he imported before working for Roan and Huntington. He had a faraway look in his eye. Saying how the horses, perfected after years of careful breeding, made strong and stout on the fine Belgian grasslands, were the color of wheat beer, the color of honey, the color of a kind of apple he used to eat by the handful.

  He went quiet, and stared into his iced tea. Charles looked at him. Such tenderness coming out of Bonnyman’s undertaker mouth was a surprise.

  How is your wife? Kuntz asked.

  Fair, Bonnyman said, making it clear that he wished to say no more.

  The conversation moved on to the latest war news. In November a British ocean liner had been torpedoed without warning in the Mediterranean, and Kuntz pointed out that, all other things aside, this further proved the undeniable engineering genius of the German submarine.

  Now it was Bonnyman who excused himself. When he left Kuntz picked up his pipe and raised his eyebrows at Charles.

  His wife is in a sanatorium. Did you know? She lost her whole family at the start of the war. Though they were French they had lived in Belgium since she was born. Lost both parents when their village was sacked, and her brother died at the Battle of Mons that first August. It has hit her badly. She is not doing well at all.

  Out the window, something had stirred up the horses. They were whinnying in unison.

  Wonder if the coyote’s coming around again, Kuntz said to himself. He looked into the fire. It will be a glad day when this war is over, McLaughlin. It will be the dawning of a new age. A great age of peace and progress and brotherhood between all men. You’ll have the opportunity for greatness. If only Gus— He stopped himself and gazed back out at the horses for a moment. Then he clapped his hands. This town is poised for anything! Why, look at what Leland Hatcher has managed to come in and do. A fellow could learn a lot by studying him. When my father brought us here from Germany back in 1867 he very carefully picked this place. Tennessee, America! His neighbors had never heard of it. But he knew the War between the States had left a vacuum. He knew it was here for the taking. He brought my mother big with child—he jabbed his chest—and that was me.

  Bonnyman had come back in and had been standing in the archway, listening. Taking his seat, he pinched the thighs of his pants and tugged on them.

  I always forget that you’re a Kraut.

  I am not. Kuntz brought down his hand as if he was smacking his leather plait. I am an American. He looked at Charles. You ought to buy yourself a piece of land, son. Best investment a man can make. Only thing they’re not making more of. I hear the Tisdale addition’s being divided into lots. How much do you have in your bank account?

  Don’t have one.

  Ach! Kuntz looked back at Bonnyman. Did you hear that? Shameful! He shook his head. And you, calling me a Kraut. What does Roosevelt say? He says, ‘No hyphenated Americans. Only Americans.’

  Charles wondered if Kuntz included the folks on Freedman’s Hill in this definition. But he knew enough just to put the cigarette in his mouth and not say anything. His face was burning. It had never occurred to him to open a bank account.

  Now Kuntz was talking about Henry Ford, how he taught all his workers English, how he sent women into their homes to teach their wives how to cook American food.

  Organizes baseball leagues for them, he said proudly. Keeps them from doing all the voodoo they might do back in the old country on a Sunday afternoon.

  He lifted his glass.

  Here’s to Henry Ford!

  Well I think it’s terrible, Bonnyman said. They got to remember where they came from. My wife. Her home meant everything to her.

  Kuntz took a mouthful of iced tea, set his glass down with a bang. This is exactly my point! You’ve got a French wife. I was conceived in Germany. Our two nations are engaged in the bitterest of wars. Yet here we sit, smoking together, talking peaceably. It is a beautiful place, America. The melting pot! The alchemy of it! If, after this war, the whole world could be like this, then it would not matter where a man came from, or who his parents were. All men could meet on the level, bringing together their knowledge and experience and backgrounds—think of the possibility.

  Bonnyman turned to Charles and gave him an exasperated look. The light was bouncing off the top of his head.

  How about you, McLaughlin? From where did your people scramble over?

  Well, Mister Bonnyman, sir, he began, choosing his words carefully, my father—

  Son! Kuntz boomed. You don’t even answer him. This is my point entirely. It does not matter where a man comes from. Everything great in America has been achieved through hard work and common sense. Except for the raw land, and we stole that from the Indians. But listen. No bank account? What are you doing?

  Bonnyman was looking at Charles over crossed arms.

  You’ve got an uncanny eye for animals, McLaughlin. Was just telling Mister Kuntz. And you hustle. You could go far in this business. That fellow you’re with. Monday. You ever think about cutting him loose and going out on your own?

  Charles shifted uncomfortably, knocking a doily off the arm of the chair. He leaned to pick it up, then decided to leave it. It had no more occurred to him that he ought to cut loose from Billy than it had that he ought to open a bank account.

  He took care of me when I was a kid, he said quietly. I didn’t have nobody and he took care of me.

  Well so did my mother, Bonnyman said, but you don’t see me hanging on her apron strings.

  Charles finally reached down and picked up the doily and put it back in place. He coughed and fidgeted.

  Bonnyman rubbed the top of his head. You’ll only ever get so far until you realize it’s every man for himself. Most important thing Virgil Huntington ever taught me. In business it’s every man for himself.

  I agree with you there, Lloyd, Kuntz said.

  Charles was thinking about Billy eating a big bowl of Corn Flakes with the new dentures he had bought him. All those damn boxes of cereal. They made him think of the time he’d been laid up weeks in that Kentucky boardinghouse when he was a kid, after a hot horse had thrown him in the woods and broken his arm and collarbone. He had asked Billy for oranges, and Billy had gone out with an old plug to trade and come back with three crates of oranges. Charles had gorged himself on the sweet juicy fruit, forgetting his pain. He had felt like a prince, like the luckiest kid on earth. In the years since he had often asked Billy where he managed to find all those oranges, at that time of year. But Billy would only ever wink.

  Well, sir, he said simply. We’re a team.

  There was a crash from the back of the house. Gus’s room. Bonnyman flinched. What in the hell was that?

  Kuntz frowned and waved his hand dismissi
vely, diamonds flashing. Charles thought about how he had stopped himself a moment ago from speculating on what Gus might have accomplished if he had not been crippled. And he saw a glimmer of deep pain in Kuntz’s eyes. Charles silently vowed to find Gus that stereoscope. Help teach him how to tie his shoes. Maybe there was hope for Gus. It might take a miracle, but miracles happened, didn’t they?

  But it did not last long. In a moment Kuntz was galloping ahead, praising the house and its craftsmanship again. He got up to demonstrate the smooth slide of the room’s pocket doors.

  Why, God willing, we’ll live here the rest of our lives, he said happily, sitting back down. I can still hardly believe I had the wallet for it. This war has been good for the mule business, hasn’t it, Lloyd?

  Been good for all business, Bonnyman said matter-of-factly.

  Well thanks to you, Lloyd, you old profiteer, it’s paid for this house, Kuntz said. He smiled. What is it they say? A rising tide lifts all ships.

  Except a sub, Charles volunteered.

  Kuntz looked at him a moment. His mustache tips began to quiver. Then he began to laugh. He slapped his thick thigh and laughed until his jowls shivered. He showed as many teeth as old Teddy Roosevelt in the photo upstairs. Charles’s heart swelled.

  Yes! Yes! Kuntz cried. Except a sub.

  Bonnyman smiled wanly and reached out to the table, where the iced tea pitcher sat between their three glasses. He touched his own glass.

  My friend Mister Kuntz here, he’s a half-full man if I’ve ever seen one. Always and forevermore. As a half-empty man, I can appreciate that.

  He pushed Charles’s glass towards him.

  What are you, McLaughlin?

  Charles looked at the glass. He looked at Bonnyman and then at Kuntz, still buoyed by the success of his joke.

  Neither, he said.

  Neither?

  He smiled and seized the heavy pitcher and pulled it off the table and filled the glass to the brim.

  Top it off! he said triumphantly. That’s what I say. Top it off!

  Money Matters

  Money Matters

  by Leland Hatcher

  The Richfield Gazette

  I send my holiday greetings to you from afar, dear Richfield, and all the best for a prosperous 1917. And I keep this week’s column short, for as we welcome in the New Year, I know as well as any man that there are only two questions on people’s minds:

  War or no war? And how high can prices go?

  Money

  Bristol

  Billy makes a little money working at Harkleroad’s Livery Stable, enough to pay for his room and all the trifles for Maura: the chocolate and peppermints, the bottles of cheap perfume, hair combs of imitation tortoiseshell, sprays of artificial violets and lilacs for her hat, cards printed with cherubs and hearts that he buys from the drugstore on the corner of Main and Fifth. These things do add up.

  Harkleroad is convinced the bicycles are going to run him out of business. Billy helps him paint a sign, which he puts out in front of the stable door.

  come on fellas—take her for a sunday carriage ride—her skirts won’t get muddy—her legs won’t get tired—you’ll be cozy side by side

  He is a bighearted man, Harkleroad, a veteran of Chickamauga and twenty years a widow, who keeps his account book with a quill pen, pays Billy too well, and feeds the boys who hang around the stable and jump in the rain barrels on hot days. The horses are better looked after than any livery stable horses Billy has ever come across. One august gray gelding is a veteran of the war, just like Harkleroad himself, retired but allowed to stick around because he seems to enjoy the activity, his ears perked at all the comings and goings of the day. Three bullets are lodged in his chest. Harkleroad keeps him in a big box stall and lets the boys spoil him with apples. Every time he passes, he greets him in his rich, growling old corporal’s voice, still strong in spite of his years.

  Onward, Christian Soldier!

  Billy sometimes employs a boy or two to run an errand for him, sending them up to the drugstore with instructions on which hat pin or scented soap to buy. For my secret Valentine, Billy says with a wink. When they come back with the little packages Harkleroad watches and laughs, his white mustache quivering beneath his high stiff derby.

  Let me give you some advice, Monday. Marry her now. It’s cheaper in the long run.

  Marry her!

  Don’t look so frightened, son. Someday you’ll be an old man like me and you’ll realize none of it was so serious, after all. And that you don’t have the chance to go back and do it all over again.

  A few days later he and Harkleroad bring the old gray gelding out into the yard to trim his feet.

  A man on a bicycle flies around the corner, collides with a telephone pole. The horse’s head shoots up and he pulls back from Billy’s grasp. Before the man collects himself and his contraption and rides away, Harkleroad booms at him.

  Keep riding that thing like a madman and they’ll be using it to dig your grave!

  Harkleroad smooths and pats the gelding’s mane, telling him it’s alright. One of the boys, with a face freckled like a turkey egg, is squatting in the corner, sorting his marbles. He looks up.

  Why you always talking to that horse, Mister Harkleroad? He can’t understand you. He’s nothing but a dumb animal.

  The boy points to a group of sparrows that, after scattering at the racket of the crash, has come back down to perch on the telephone pole.

  Horses are no different than them birds up there, and them birds don’t know nothing but to eat, sleep, and fly like hell when the cat pounces. Spend their whole life either asleep or afraid.

  Harkleroad stands back from the horse. Then he takes off his hat and lifts it. The horse’s ears move towards it. He moves it one way and the ears follow, then the other and the ears follow still. The old horse has his head up, watching Harkleroad intently, and Billy can see the shadow of his former glory on the battlefield. When Harkleroad brings the hat down fast to his knee the old horse tenses, a small change that registers in every muscle of his body. The slightest shift. He is still standing there at the end of Billy’s lead, but he is ready to run.

  See what I mean, the boy says. Always afraid.

  Harkleroad puts his hat back on. He rubs the horse’s mane again. I could have done that twenty yards from here and he would have known it. He’s like a spider at the center of a web who knows the second a fly hits it way off in another corner. He ain’t afraid. He’s aware.

  Squinting up at the sparrows, Harkleroad goes on.

  Same as those birds up there. Aware. They can hear the wind blowing through the hay. They can hear a worm roll over under the dirt. And I do believe that’s close to God. Because this must be how God sees the world. All at once, everything, all around Him. Every footfall, every breath, every broken twig. To know is to love, the Bible says. To know a thing, to understand a thing, with not just your thoughts but your heart and your blood, is to love it. I once watched a wolf take down one of my neighbor’s sheep. It wasn’t a battle, it was a dance. The wolf loves the sheep and the sheep, in a way, loves the wolf. Because he is completely and utterly attuned to him.

  This sends the boy into a convulsion of laughter. Harkleroad turns to Billy.

  Well what do you think, Mister Monday? Does it make you laugh, the thought that an animal could love the world and everything in it? Including you?

  Billy looks at the boy and winks.

  If the rabbits love me, why don’t they jump into the snares I set for em two days ago in the field behind the post office?

  Harkleroad smiles patiently, showing his yellow teeth beneath his mustache.

  Maybe you’ve got to woo them, the boy said with a big grin. Whisper sweet nothings in their ears!

  Why, I will try that directly, Billy says, and winks at him again, giving him a smile that says, Let’s humor the old man.

  They finish with the horse and put him away and Billy heads up towards Main Street. He is meeting Ma
ura in an hour, and Harkleroad has paid him. If he hurries he can get to the drugstore before they close and pick up the new little music box she is always admiring.

  A horse! Loving the world!

  Harkleroad may be going a little soft in the head.

  Billy’s Pain

  The hand-painted sign on Freedman’s Hill said:

  skulls read

  fortunes told

  laundry washed and folded

  i speak with the dead

  The house was halfway up the hill, with a dirt yard swept clean and lined carefully all the way around with white stones. In it stood a big coffee-colored mule, head like an anvil, well-fed and brushed to a shine. He nickered to Gin when Billy tied her at the fence, maybe feeling somewhere in his mysterious mule brain a memory of the horse mare who had borne him into the world. Gin ignored him, poor fellow.

  Billy stood for a moment, getting his legs under him. It was the first time he had ridden since the mare’s attack. It had taken ten minutes just to heft himself into the saddle, but Gin stood stock-still for him. Riding up the Pike, he was not much better than a sack of meal, but she made infinite small adjustments to his shifting weight to keep him in the saddle. Bless her, Gin. It could break a man’s heart, a horse like her. Everything she did reminded you that you weren’t worthy of it.

  He went up unto the porch and knocked on the door. At Kuntz’s he had heard about this woman, Aunt Ernestine, who told fortunes and knew herbs. Someone swore she had cured his gallstones, another that she knew the scripture that stopped blood. Billy was ready to try anything. In the months since the mare’s attack the pain had only grown worse. A pain in his head that came and went, a pain in his side that made it so he couldn’t sleep. All kinds of other pains, big and small and in between.