Step to the Graveyard Easy (2 page)

“You mean for good?”

“For good. Burn the last bridge.”

“And go where?”

“Anywhere I want. Places I’ve never been, things I’ve never seen or done. People I’d never meet if I stayed here.”

“What, like a character in a Kerouac novel?”

“Not exactly, but that’s the general idea. Why not?”

Bernie’s expression was two-thirds incredulous, one-third disturbed. And seasoned with a touch of awe. “‘Why not,’ he says. This isn’t the nineteen-sixties. It’s a new century, and in case you haven’t noticed, it’s not a kinder, gentler world out there.”

“I’ve noticed, all right. Whole damn world’s gone crazy. The lunatics have finally taken over the asylum.”

“Well? You can’t run away from it.”

“I’m not trying to.”

“That’s what it sounds like to me.”

“I know what I’m doing,” Cape said.

“Famous last words.”

“You think I’ve gone crazy, too.”

“What else can I think? Throwing away everything you’ve built so you can go chasing around the country looking for—what? Adventure, excitement?”

“Among other things.”

“Trouble, that’s what you’ll find. Or disappointment or both. You’re not a kid anymore, you’re thirty-five years old.”

“Thirty-five and stagnating. Vegetating. Suffocating.”

“It can’t be that bad.”

“Not for you, not for most people. It is for me. Boring job, stale marriage, golf on Saturdays, poker once a month, ball game every now and then, win or lose a few bucks on the Bulls and Bears and Super Bowl, drink a few beers with the same old crowd in the same old places—that’s been my entire adult life, Bernie. It’s a tight little box, a trap with only one door that keeps inching down a little farther every day. And the unstable world situation only makes it that much tighter. I’ve got to get out now, right now, while there’s still time—before the door comes down all the way. Simple as that.”

“Simple, hell,” Bernie said. “How’re you going to live?”

“My half of our savings. Money from my Emerson stocks.”

“You can’t have all that much put aside.”

“Enough to start with.”

“What happens when it runs out?”

“Get a job, what else?”

“Sure. Lots of jobs out there for former industrial salesmen, all of them hard labor for low wages.”

Cape said, “I’m not going to worry about that now. Hell, I might get lucky with cards or a horse somewhere along the line.”

“Gambling? Man, if you start trying to run up your bankroll…”

“Easy does it. I’m not a big risk taker, you know that.”

“I did until now. What do you call this scheme of yours, if not a big risk?”

“A fresh start,” Cape said.

“… You’re really going through with this.”

“I really am.”

“Nothing else I can say, then. It’s your funeral.”

“Could be.” Cape smiled with a corner of his mouth. “But at least I’ll be alive for a while. Really alive for the first time.”

“I just talked to Anna,” Mary Lynn said. “My sweet Lord, Matthew. How could you have done such a wicked thing?”

Cape said nothing.

“God will punish you. You’ll feel His wrath one day.”

“The wages of sin,” he intoned.

“That’s right.”

“We’re all sinners, Mary Lynn. Even you.”

“Yes, but my conscience is clear.”

“Sure it is. Never even an impure thought, right?”

“Fornication is a mortal sin,” she said. “If you don’t beg God’s forgiveness, you’ll burn in the fires of hell.”

“No sermons,” Cape said. “I didn’t call to listen to you thump the Bible. Any more of that, and I’ll hang up on you.”

“Why did you call? I can’t offer you any comfort, after what you did.”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Don’t know? Don’t know why you called?”

“Predictable conversation, so far.”

A baby began squalling in the background. Preschool voices rose querulously. His sister had four children, another on the way, and a husband who was overworked, submissive, and had the emotional maturity of a ten-year-old—another kid for her to handle, this one sorely in need of a vasectomy. Mary Lynn was thirty-two; she looked forty-five.

“You’re just like Pop,” she said.

“That’s a lousy thing to say.”

“It’s the truth. A fornicator just like him. His drinking and fornicating sent Mama to an early grave.”

“Oh, bullshit.”

“Matthew. You know I can’t abide that kind of language.”

“Cancer killed her, not Pop.”

“She might’ve survived if it hadn’t been for his evil ways.”

“All right. Have it your way.”

Martyr’s sigh. “Where are you?”

“Bernie Klosterman’s. Just for tonight.”

“Then where will you go?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“To confession and then home to Anna, that’s where you should go. Get down on your knees and beg her to take you back.”

“Beg God’s forgiveness, beg Anna’s forgiveness.”

“Yes.”

“She wouldn’t take me back, no matter how much I groveled.”

“She might.”

“Is that what she told you?”

“Well, not in so many words…”

“She’s all through with me. I’m not going back anyway.”

“Matthew…”

“I’m leaving town tomorrow,” Cape said. “Going away.”

“Leaving Rockford? Have you lost your mind?”

“Found it. Made it up.”

“My Lord, you can’t just leave.”

“Why can’t I?”

“You have responsibilities here—Anna, your work, your family—”

“I’ll take care of my responsibilities. The rest doesn’t matter.”

“How can you say that? Don’t I matter to you? Don’t Ralph and the children matter to you?”

“Yes, but I don’t see any of you except on holidays. We have almost nothing in common, and you and I don’t get along half the time.”

“That isn’t true.”

“It’s true. You keep trying to shove religion down my throat, everybody’s throat.”

“What a godless thing to say!”

“Right. Anyone who doesn’t think the way you do is evil and godless.”

“You sound just like Pop.”

“Pop again.”

“The devil’s in you, Matthew, the same as he’s in Pop. Consorting with harlots, blaspheming, doing Satan’s work. If you don’t cast him out, embrace the Almighty, you’re doomed to eternal damnation—”

Cape said gently, “Good-bye, Mary Lynn,” and hung up on her.

He called the old man’s number in Vero Beach, Florida. Sudden impulse. Bernie went out to buy some groceries, and Cape was sitting there in the silence, and the phone caught his eye. The next second he was on his feet, using it.

An unfamiliar voice answered, saying “The Party House” in faintly slurred tones. Laughter, music, loud voices, came over the wire behind it.

“I’m calling for Sam Cape. This the right number?”

“Sure, Sam’s Party House. Who’re you?”

“His son. Matt.”

“No kidding? Sam never said anything about having a son.”

“If he’s there, put him on.”

“Just a minute.”

The receiver banged against something on the other end. The party sounds rose and fell like a pulse. Somebody yelled, somebody else squealed, a woman said distinctly, “That Polly, she gives blow jobs a bad name.” A minute passed. Then the same male voice spoke again in his ear.

“He can’t come to the phone right now. Sam can’t.”

“Why can’t he?”

Seal-bark laugh. “He’s indisposed. Any message?”

“No. No message.”

“Want him to call you back?”

“Forget it,” Cape said. “We don’t have anything to say to each other after all. Hell, we never did.”

The bank officer was a plump middle-aged woman with a smile that she wore like cheap perfume. She peered at her computer screen, wrote carefully on a slip of paper; tapped the keys, and wrote again. She slid the paper over to Cape’s side of the desk.

“There you are, Mr. Cape. The balances in both your accounts.”

He looked at the figures. Checking: $1,678.24. Savings: $26,444.75.

“Let the checking account stand,” he said, “except that I want my name taken off it.”

“And the savings?”

“Withdraw thirteen thousand, leave the rest. My name off that one, too.”

“Ah, may I ask the reason you’re—”

“No,” Cape said.

She colored slightly, as much from his direct stare as from the sharp negative. She lowered her gaze a couple of inches, kept it fixed on his mouth and chin. “What would you like done with the thirteen thousand dollars?”

“Open a new checking account in my name only, deposit nine thousand. The rest of the money in cash, six hundred in fifties, four hundred in twenties.”

“Yes, sir. If you’d like a new ATM card—”

“I won’t need one. I’ve got credit cards.”

She busied herself with forms. Not looking at him any longer, not saying anything, as if he were already gone.

At his brokerage firm downtown Cape put in an order to sell his shares of Emerson Manufacturing stock and deposit the proceeds in his new checking account. After transaction fees, the amount came to a little more than fourteen thousand.

Cape’s car was a three-year-old brown Buick Riviera, supercharged V-6, chrome premium wheels, all the options. He’d driven it out of state only a few times, on short business trips; it had just 29,000 miles on it, was in near-new condition inside and out. He took it around to half a dozen dealerships before he found the car and the trade package he was hunting for. When he left Hammerschlag Motors, “Nobody in Illinois Beats Our Prices,” he was behind the wheel of a ’91 yellow-and-black Corvette, six-speed, most of the extras plus a new glass top. The odometer read 57,500, and the salesman swore it had had just one owner. Cape didn’t believe either claim, but he took it anyway. It was exactly what he’d always wanted.

On his test drive it had handled reasonably well on turns and curves, smooth-shifting through all the gears, fast pickup, no pings or knocks or rough spots in the engine. Now he took it out on the interstate and opened it up to eighty-five for a mile or so on a straight stretch where the traffic was light. Blew along just fine.

He was almost ready to go.

St. Vincent’s was on the south side, in the neighborhood where he’d grown up. Old neighborhood, old church: grit-darkened stone, twin steeples surmounted by bronze crosses, scrolled and brassbound entrance doors. Inside it was cool, dark, hushed. And empty this afternoon, as far as he could see.

He walked slowly down the center aisle, slid into one of the pews toward the front. He sat there with his hands on his knees. Crucified Christ gazed down on him from the wall above and behind the
altar. So did the Virgin Mary, the twelve apostles at the Last Supper, other biblical scenes in bronze and backlit stained glass.

Cape stared at the altar, seeing it for a time and then not seeing it. The silence seemed to echo faintly with half-remembered voices, half-remembered words.
Dominus vobiscum. Et cum spiritu tuo. Pater noster, cut es in caelis.
Hail Mary, full of grace. Blessed art thou among women. Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.
Kyrie eleison.

For a long time he sat without moving. The restlessness stirred in him finally, brought him out of himself. On impulse he made the sign of the cross, something he hadn’t done in more than a decade. Mary Lynn would have been astonished. Probably would’ve tried to take credit for him being here. He stood, turned out of the pew.

Someone was standing in the shadows by the nave, watching him.

Priest. Young, Cape saw as he came forward, dark-haired and moonfaced, shapeless in his robes. Smiling.

“Hello. I’m Father Zerbeck.”

“Hello, Father.”

“I don’t believe we’ve met. Are you a member of this parish?”

“Once, a long time ago. I grew up three blocks from here.”

“You still have family in the neighborhood?”

“Not anymore.”

“Have you moved back here, then?”

“No.”

“But I’ve seen you here before, haven’t I? Recently?”

“A time or two,” Cape admitted.

“May I ask why?”

“It’s a good place to sit and think. Look inside yourself, make decisions.”

“Is that the only reason you come to St. Vincent’s?”

“I’m not much for prayer, Father.”

“That’s too bad,” the priest said, but he was still smiling. “You seem troubled. Is there anything I can do?”

“No. My decisions are all made.”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

“I know what you meant,” Cape said.

“If you’d like to take confession—”

“I don’t think so. Wouldn’t do me any good.”

“Are you so sure of that?”

“Sure enough.”

“It’s never too late to ask for God’s help.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Have you… lost your faith?”

“The way you mean it, I guess I have.”

“What caused you to lose it?”

“That’s between God and me.”

“So you do still believe in him?”

“I believe in him, all right,” Cape said. “What I question is that he’s as benevolent as we’re taught.”

“Then why do you still come to his house?”

“I told you, it’s a good place to sit and think.”

“Have you tried talking to him? He does listen, you know.”