Cloud Nine (3 page)

“All right. I’ll stay put until you come.”

“Raid the icebox when you get hungry, please.”

“It’s the best thing I do, eat.”

And then, grabbing my arm as I turned to go, and spinning me around: “Mr. Kirby, why don’t I say it? We’ve met before. Don’t you remember me?”

“Sonya, I’ve been having a feeling—”

“At Northwestern High, at Christmastime, when you addressed the school assembly, and said how wonderful it would be if the whole year could be filled with the Christmas spirit. And I fell for you. I really fell for you. And—”

“You played the march? The Wooden Soldiers?”

“And then sat down with you—”

“And asked me to sign your program. And—!”

She laughed, and I knew she knew what I suddenly remembered. Her dress had slipped up, while she was sitting beside me, to show those beautiful legs, the same ones I was looking at now. She kissed me again, this time not so virginal. I got out of there, but fast.

T
HE LANGS LIVED ON
Van Buren, in a frame house with shaded trees around it, and I had supposed them strangers to me. But it turned out I knew them both. He was a teller in the Farmers’ Trust, and had cashed my checks often, while she worked in a store at the Plaza, and had sold me my upstairs furniture. A plump, middle-aged woman, she let me in, and recalled herself to me. Then she took me into the living room, an airy place with slipcovers on the furniture, where he was waiting. He was a slim, tallish man, with a face not even a mother could be sure of, and one of those quiet,
‘Will-you-have-it-in-tens’
voices, like every voice in a bank. However, I placed him at once, and said: “Oh yes, Mr. Lang—we meet again!” She pushed up a chair, he waved me to it, and we all three sat down. And at once a pause ensued, or whatever a pause does—or at least for a long moment, you could hear the clock on the mantelpiece. Then, pretty nervous, I got at it. I said I’d been talking to Sonya, and he said yes, he thought she’d be calling me up. I said I’d come to see if there wasn’t some way of “straightening this thing out.” He said: “Well that would be up to your brother—actually it was your mother who rang me, asking me to hold off until tonight, but if any straightening is to be done, your brother will have to do it.”

Now that news about Mother threw me off, and for a moment I was annoyed that Sonya hadn’t mentioned it, but then it occurred to me, perhaps she hadn’t known it. Also, his manner, and this news about Burl, that he had to do the straightening if straightening was going to be done, reinforced what I’d smelled, from the way she had acted about it, that something was lurking under cover that I’d had no idea of. So I heard myself tell him, “Well, I’m strictly here on my own. I haven’t talked to my brother in a couple of months, or seen my mother since Sunday. If I represent anyone, it’s Sonya.”

“I
represent her, Mr. Kirby.”

His voice had a bit of a rasp.

“Then, Mr. Lang, suppose we get at it. Do you mind my asking, so I have things perfectly clear, what it was you intended to do, that you held off from at my mother’s request?”

“Mr. Kirby, it was you who came to see me.”

“Or in other words, get at it?”

“If you don’t mind.”

My temper was beating a tattoo in my throat, but I swallowed it under control, and told him: “Well, we have two questions, here, as I see it. One is moral, and I don’t condone it, or try to minimize it. What my brother did was unspeakable, I don’t try to pretend it was not. But I know nothing I can do about it.

“The other question is financial, and about that, there is something I can do, and will, if permitted. As Sonya explained it to me, it comes down to this: If no charges are filed, if the whole matter is dropped, a Maryland abortion is out, and Sonya must have the child. That, she tells me, she’s willing to do, and in fact prefers it to what she calls the stink that would surely come if my brother is persecuted. But of course, it will entail a certain expense, especially at the Florence Crittenton Home.
So
in return for your dropping the charges, I’m willing to bear that expense. I can give you a check right now.”

Money talks, and I always carry a blank check in my wallet. I slipped it out now, like a magician palming a card, and waved it in front of his eyes. He hardly looked at it. Instead, he asked: “Do you know what the charges will be?”

“Sonya told me, yes.”

“And you think the amount you suggest, the Florence Crittenton expense, adequately compensates her?”

“It’s compensation for the actual costs.”

“It’s no compensation at all.”

“It’s not hay, it’s four-figure money.”

“But what does it leave
her?
What does
she
get out of it?”

“Well if you put it on that basis—?”

“I do, and you ought to be damned glad! You should be thanking God that I do. Because there’s another basis that I could put it on—”

“Louis!” said Mrs. Lang.
“Please!”

“Our family,” he went on, paying no attention to her, “used to farm a place near Waldorf in Charles County, and my grandmother used to sell eggs. She sold eggs that she collected, from women all around, to a storekeeper on the Bryantown Road, who she claimed paid her better than any other. So one Saturday afternoon my grandfather lent her the truck, the little Ford truck that he had, so she could take her eggs in and sell them, and then he walked to Ryon’s store, that was across from the railroad station, to see a show that they had.

“And the show was two runt oxen, that an old buzzard drove in every week, to make his week’s groceries with. The store kind of helped him out, by keeping silver dollars for him, silver dollars in the till, and how the thing worked was: The old buzzard would find him a sucker, and then bet him a silver dollar that he could throw it down—down in the dirt in front of the store, then roll the cartwheel on it, by word command to the oxen, and then talk them around. He would talk ’em, till they turned the cart clear around, sidewise a step at a time, without coming off the dollar. If they did the dollar was his, his coffee and sugar and flour for the week—but they always did and it was quite a show, that everyone gathered to watch, as he talked to them sweet and low,
‘Petty-whoa, petty-whoa, petty-whoa,’
always guiding to the left, and they would work the tongue around, swinging their heads together, braiding and unbraiding their legs. So, Mr. Kirby, on this particular day, the oxen were halfway around, with three-four hundred people gathered around, my grandfather with the rest, when a guy drove up in a Buick, sore as a boil at the storekeeper on the Bryantown Road.”

Mrs. Lang stopped up her ears by pushing her fingertips into them, but he kept right on: “‘Is that a way to do business?’” he bellowed at everyone. “‘On a Saturday afternoon? He’s locked up his goddamn store, so he can screw the egg-woman? Couldn’t he screw her some other time?’”

“My grandfather borrowed the Buick, ran on out to his place, picked up his thirty-eight, and ran on down to the store, which sure enough was still locked. He called that storekeeper out and shot him through the heart. That’s how my family does, when something like this comes up. What wipes out that stain is blood! And short of blood, you ought to be thankful for
anything!
That I don’t do to your brother what my grandfather did to that storekeeper! You ought to be down on your knees.”

“You said it once, no need to say it twice.”

But now Mrs. Lang had taken her fingers out, and told him, very bitter: “You shouldn’t have said it! You shouldn’t have said it at all! How could you tell him that, with me sitting here, your wife? Why couldn’t you have more respect?”

“I tell it all, so he knows what he’s up against!”

“You did not! You didn’t tell it all! You didn’t tell
why
the store was locked up, the real reason, not the one he said, that crazy man in the Buick. It was so he could candle her eggs that the storekeeper locked up his place! She brought in thirteen dozen eggs, and he had to candle them—for that he had to have dark, and that’s why he locked up his store! But to keep from getting hung, your grandfather blackened her name, so he could claim the unwritten law! And it broke them up and ruined her life, and I simply do not see how you can brag about it. And I also do not see how you’re willing to do what he did, blacken a woman’s name, blacken your own Sonya’s name, to do in the name of your family what you should be ashamed of.”

“I’m not ashamed of it, I’m proud.”

“You mean to kill Burl?” I asked him.

“I don’t have to say what I mean.”

“Oh yes you do, because if you don’t, I’m calling the police and filing charges against you. Spit it out! What
do
you mean, Mr. Lang?”

She said: “Louis, you heard him?”

“I mean, on behalf of my child, so she gets compensated, in place of blood to take money.”

“I already offered you money.”

“Your money, you did. It has to be
his
money. And a great deal more money than the piddling amount you quoted to me.”

“He doesn’t have any money.”

“I happen to know he does have.”

“I’m his half brother, I think I know—”

“I work in his bank. I
know
I know.”

“Difference of opinion is what makes a horserace.”

“Was there something else, Mr. Kirby?”

“I go, I bid you good day.”

Mrs. Lang took me to the door, patted my hand, and thanked me for being so considerate of Sonya.

M
Y MOTHER HAS ONE
of the few stone houses in this neck of the woods, a pretty little place on Sheridan, a few blocks south of the Langs, and one block north of East-West, an arterial street in Riverdale. I say “little,” but actually it’s somewhat bigger inside than it looks to be from without. There’s a small stone portico, leading to an entrance hall, which is at the side of the house, not in the center, so the living room is quite large, being almost as wide as the house. It has a stone fireplace facing the arch from the hall, and its a bit on the dark side, as the drapes are dark red brocade.

I pulled up around 11:15, parked, and looked for Burl’s car. I couldn’t see it, but that didn’t prove anything, and I admit I was pretty nervous, wondering what I would say if I had to face him. But Mother opened the door, when I was halfway up the walk. She took me in her arms and kissed me, then kissed me again, which for her was the equivalent of a crack-up for somebody else.

She’s in her late forties, but looks more like the thirties. She’s quite a dish, a bit on the sexy side. She’s a bit above medium height, but not what you’d call tall, and though not fat has plenty of shape, especially through the chest. Her hair is dark, with just a streak of gray, her skin pale with an ivory tint. Her face is a little heavy though nicely molded. Her eyes are brown, and not warm, or cold, or anything. They’re poker-player’s eyes, except that at times, as now, they can be very soft.

“Gramie!” she moaned. “I’ve been trying to reach you all morning. Oh, thank God you’ve come!”

Actually, she said “Gawd,” in the Virginia way she had, as originally she came from Berryville, being of the Burwell family there, who are proud, perhaps a little too proud, of their relationship to one of Jefferson’s secretaries. She was brought to Maryland when young, but sometimes the Old Dominion bleeds through in the way she talks, as when she says
cyard
for
card,
and
gyarden
for
garden,
or
gyowden
as I call it, when I’m having fun with her. But we weren’t having fun now, and I just held her close, whispering, “I came the first moment I could, the very first moment I could.”

She unwound herself from my arms, took my hand, and led me into the living room, where she sat me down on the sofa, the big one facing the fireplace, and then camped herself down beside me. I went on: “I’d have been here an hour ago, except that I had to see Lang—”

“He’s a perfectly horrible man!”

“He’s the father of a girl in trouble.”

“My heart bleeds for her. Did he let you see her?”

“She came to see me, this morning.”

“Oh, then you’ve
talked
with her?”

I gave it to her quick, what Sonya had told me, at least the highlights of it, then told of my offer to Lang, and the brush he had given it. I asked: “Mother, what does he think he’s up to? At my offer, he practically spit in my eye, and then said pointblank he’d take nobody’s money but Burl’s. But Burl doesn’t
have
any money! That stands to reason, and yet Lang says he has, and that he knows he knows. What’s it about, do you know?”

“Not really, but I’m terrified.”

“Have you given Burl money?”

“Only his allowance, this fifty a week we’ve kicked in with, you and I together, since he got out of the Army. He could have money, though.”

“But
how?
Where would he get it?”

“Gramie, it all goes back to that girl?”

“Little Sonya, you mean?”

“No! The teacher, the one that got killed.”

“Oh. I didn’t know her.”

“A nitwit, but insane about him, about Burl. I think he got sick of her. I think she was messing him up with his—weakness. You know what it is?”

“Women, I would say.”

“Yes. Gramie, I haven’t plagued you with it, I haven’t said anything—partly from not wanting to weep on your shoulder, partly from hating to talk about it, it’s so ugly. But you’ve no idea what it’s been like, having him in the house, especially since he got out of the Army. Well, one of the angles has been, I can’t keep a servant. Three times it happened, once with a colored girl, twice with white women, and Gramie, the last white woman I got was older than I am. I got her from the agency, and on account of her age thought my problem was solved. He took her while she was fixing dinner—and seemed extra excited by her
because
she was old.

“Gramie, I’ve tried to inform myself about men of his kind, I’ve read Casanova’s memoirs, and books about Burr, Sickles, and Charles the Second. I don’t understand them at all, but this I’ve found out about them: They’re sick, or unbalanced, or something. Strange, offbeat things excite them, as Dale Morgan excited him—till she became a pest. She was a born spinster, pale, colorless, and prissy, but that’s what set him off.”