Holding the Bag
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a short
story by
Barbara Haas
My first wife had a habit of reading in the bathtub, and the
books and magazines scattered around our bathroom were in various stages of
drying out--some stiff, some sopping--after having been dipped in her tepid
water. That she read until the
water had gone tepid was evidence, so she once explained, of how lost she
became in the words. The Fur
& Feather Digest was
the best--70 degree stuff by her
own calculations. Its curled and
discolored edges bolstered this claim. I
was strictly a shower man, had no interest other than the erotic in easing
myself down the sloping sides of that claw-footed tub. And the closest I got to Mim's
reading material was to drape a damp magazine over the radiator from time to
time. So
the first thing I notice when I'm left to stand in her sunny living room
while she takes a phone call in the kitchen is that her books and magazines
have a pristine, just-off-the-shelf look these days: no trace of water stains. The Merck Manual is shelved next to the Afro-Cuban
Religious Experience,
the Bhagavad Gita next
to The Rights of the Citizen in Colonial America. Between
the bookshelves, a windowful of Lake Michigan glitters in the sub-zero cold
outside. Since dawn twin sundogs
have hovered on either side of the sun, their constancy like that of mythical
hounds beside a king's throne.
They throw a weird glow across Mim's original art--the Connie Bieber
in bronze, the Carmon Slater on the wall. I'm studying them when I hear Mim from down the hall. "Babe" this,
"babe" that, something about "babe" I don't catch--all of
it followed by peals of high-pitched laughter. Hers
is a textured voice, as multi-layered as Baroque music. The sound stacks itself, leaves a
visible trace when I close my eyes to listen, as if a variegated thread had
woven its way through the melody. Still
in love with the ex-wife? I
pick up a leather-bound volume--Newton's Mathematical Principles of
Natural Philosophy---and
begin flipping through it. In
love or not, it won't matter for 5-7 years, depending on good behavior, the
sentence likely for Mim's voluntary manslaughter conviction. The jury returned its findings this
morning, and she's free on her own recognizance until a week from next
Tuesday when Judge D'Acquisto of the 3rd District Court, Milwaukee County,
makes his determination. I
close The Mathematical Principles and place it back on an end table. I'm
here right now not to examine her library, nor to ponder love, but to help
settle affairs, the foremost task of which is to take possession of the wild
game bagged in her basement freezer. When
I think back on our marriage, it isn't only the lengthy baths and wet book
bindings that I remember. Mim's
was a serrated blade of a body--down to 101 pounds at one point, all
five-foot-seven-inches of her.
It hurt to look at her--the gaunt collar bone, ski-slope breasts, the
skin-over-muscle look of her thighs, her body lacking that subcutaneous
stratum of fat common to women of child-bearing age. It hurt to look--but look I had
to. After we made love,
I'd roll away, half-afraid I'd find bruises on her where our bodies had
rubbed. Folded up on the
mattress beside me, she had all the angles of a coat hanger. Sometimes as she lay, back
turned, the knobs of her vertebrae as bare as knuckles, she would
shudder--not unlike the shudder I had just eased her to--and it would
surprise me to realize she was crying. That
first time I said, "Did I hurt you?" and she went instantly rigid,
as if startled to find me still there. Her
skin by candlelight was not one hue.
A painter would need peach, olive and cream to capture what I saw--and
that would only be half of it.
Rose and lavender, ivory and rust: flickering candlefire danced these colors before my
eyes. I stared at her back,
watching her spine rise and fall as she breathed--which she did at intervals
lengthy enough to alarm. Like
her tendency not to eat, she had a tendency not to breathe, and I sometimes
lay in bed next to her wondering if she were choking. At
some point, she lifted up on her elbow and, sheet balled near her chin,
turned to me, saying, "Did you want to?" I
blinked. "Want
to?" The response was so
long in coming I forgot what I'd asked. "Hurt
me." A
masculine need to boast my tenderness alongside my strength--as ingrained as
the schoolyard dictum never to strike a girl--rose within me, and I rattled
on for a few moments. It
was as if she were listening with her eyes: dark pupil-less ones that drank in my words. "That's good," she said
after a bit. She nestled into
the crook of my arm.
"You've got it, Richard.
Self-preservation down to an art." How
so, I wondered. "Let's
face it. People stay together
when they've had more good times than bad." "So
we'll stay together?" "Look
at us." She raised her arm,
a gesture that made a broad sweep of the shadows on the ceiling. "Not jinxed, not pathetic, as
wholesome still as baby booties." "Then
why the tears?" A
knot formed between her brows.
"It's a curse that I can look back now on Charlie's faults and
feel compassion." She named
her ex-husband, and I felt my scrotum tense. "Marrying me is like marrying him and me. It's the baggage I bring--baggage I
packed myself." "Who
mentioned marriage?" It was
hard not to hear ice in my voice. A
silvery laugh issued forth, one that carried with it a wintry undertone. "You will. On January 19th at 7:37pm." She named a date three months in the
future. The
truth is I proposed to her the next week, partly to nullify her prediction,
partly as a hedge against that baggage. Where
it succeeded with the former, it failed with the latter. By the time our marriage ground to a
halt in 1985, I was a daily martini-aholic and felt like I'd handled a cruise
ship's worth of suitcases and steamer trunks.
When Mim comes back into the room now, she's changed from the boxy gabardine suit
in which she approached the Honorable D'Acquisto's bench into a pair of
Silver Tab Levi's and a sun-faded aqua t-shirt. Her bones are noticeable--strong ones, to be sure--but
jutting and poking out where another woman--my wife?--might have curves. Vulnerable
and starved, I think. Mim
settles a tea tray on the ottomon between us, the pot an upswept stainless
creation that a museum gift shop might peddle. As she pours out, I comment on her elegant surroundings. Even when we were together and money
scarce she had a fondness for neatly made objects. Her taste in hunting equipment bore this out. Where I made do in those days with my
grandfather's double-barrel side-by-side that was as nearsighted, often, as
its original owner, she packed a Winchester Diamond Grade over-and-under with
a hand-checkered stock of bird's eye maple. Both barrels were bored for different chokes--the top with
an open pattern, the bottom tighter, more effective at short range. I never saw anything but a clean kill
when she took aim. Ironic,
now, given her situation. That
shotgun was confiscated after her arrest, unnecessarily, I might add: a bullet killed Mim's husband. The 9mm pistol never surfaced. Inability to place a murder weapon in
Mim's hands led to the reduced charge. She
sighs now. "Elegance won't
help where I'm headed."
When Mim seats herself on the sofa and tucks her bare feet beneath
her, I catch a glimpse of frosty white polish on her toenails. I think of what my state of mind
would be just before sentencing and wonder where she found the nerve to
steady a tiny brush. Mim says,
"Most days I'll be lucky to see one exquisite ray of sunlight." "Your
lawyer said you'll probably land at the minimum-security prison at Appleton." "Is
that to cheer me up?" My
smile is weak. "I thought
I'd try for something upbeat." "Mr.
Bardy. Always good for a
laugh." She regards me now
with those eyes made less for seeing than hearing, and I am surprised to feel
a panic of nostalgic proportions, when she uses that pet name, tighten its
way through me. Mr. Bardy and
Schmoo. I'd forgotten that. My
feet press against the carpet and the tea cup rattles in my hand. This morning at 4 a.m. as I lay
staring up at the ceiling, my wife, whom I thought dead to the world, rolled
over and clapped her hand over my heart. "She's
dogging you, Richard. She's got
your scent." I
shook my head up at the darkness. Beth's
breath felt hot. "Don't
keep anything. Don't bring her
stuff here." "Relax. This isn't a souvenir
hunt." I
could hear the backbone in her voice.
"You will not get through that door, I promise you." The
thought of Beth-turned-Cerberus, like a cross between Rebecca of Sunnybrook
Farm and the hounds of hell, both amused and worried me. I'd already explained to her that I
would sell Mim's wild game. My
word-of-mouth business as a guide for hunters creates a network for all kinds
of transactions like that. "Dead
meat," she said. "Like
people use to bait traps." "Don't
push me, Beth. I'm not scared of
Mim." "That's
what worries me." She
scooted over to the edge of the bed, and we did not speak again. Soon after I had begun following the
trial I'd catch Beth muttering, giving me those caught-you-red-handed
looks. The darkness of a
marriage gone bad 12 years before had taken up residence in our house, was
tracking its gumbo from room to room. The old shit got mixed with the new, and before long
Beth--Beth!--had threatened divorce. Mim
winks at me now over the tea cups.
"You're gray, balding and a little paunchy." Her tone is matter of fact enough
that this seems a positive appraisal. "You've
still got the look of a late-season deer run skinny." She
peers into her cup, swirls its contents. "This tea is the first thing I've had since a few
lettuce leaves on Wednesday." It's
weak tea, the sort that might steep for hours and nevertheless taste pale and
slight. "Let
me take you out for dinner. We
can celebrate." I name a
fish fry place on Brady Street. "Celebrate? You're daft, Bardy." "Okay,
then, commiserate." She lifts her chin. "Misery loves company. I know what I'm getting out of all
this." She settles her cup
and saucer on the ottomon.
"What are you in for?" I
swallow a sip of tea. "Ostensibly to take a load of meat off your
hands." "Ostensibly." She shifts her gaze from me to the
sundogs outside. During
the 13 days it took to complete her trial I came to recognize, even greet
familiarly during recesses, the crime voyeurs who piggybacked their interest
in Mim Rockaway's fate with that of the "gentleman" rapist's down
the hall in courtroom 356. The
quest for justice possesses a tension not unlike that of major sports events. Groupies gather, begin to rally
behind that tension, maybe even place bets. But tension can't explain my presence for 13 days in the
row behind the Defense's table.
It can't explain my getting wrapped up in the proceedings to such an
extent that I missed my son's pine wood derby at the Scoutarama last
Friday. Tension can't explain my
presence here now. Mim's
gaze slides back to me, to my left hand, where I wear no wedding ring. "You're
married." I
affirm this. "Happily?" I
nod--because, really, there's nothing easier right now. "Then
why are you here?" To
break gaze would be to admit something.
Even to blink would be a confession, of sorts. The space between us is bright with
winter's icy sunshine, but webby and dense too, as something negotiates
itself in the three or four feet that separate us. Then Mim laughs. "Don't
worry. It's not a come-on. Tiger put me up to it." My
neck prickles. "Where's
Tiger come in?" "On
the phone." Mim gestures
toward the kitchen, and I recall the laughing inquiries about 'babe.' "Worried is how I'd characterize
her. With all this. She's worried about the
goods." Mim nods at the
Bieber, the Carmon Slater, a little Argo maquette I'd not noticed tucked away as a bookend. "I'd guess she's
hot-footing her way over right about now." The
thought of her mother sends an instant headache from temple to temple. During the time of my marriage to
Mim, Tiger Bradley not only became Milwaukee's preeminent collector, the
woman who built the Channing collection from "an eclectic hodge-podge of
forgettable fringe works to the multi-million dollar cash cow it is
today" (a quote from the Daily Sentinel ) but also the dirty older woman
who serially groped her son-in-law and propositioned him at every turn. Mim's breasts were less familiar to
me than hers, so frequently did Tiger flash them over hors d'oeurves,
frittatas, Bloody Marys--even in upscale restaurants where the waitstaff was
trained to indulge such behavior. I
stand, rub my hands together.
"Let's get going on that meat." "There. I've gone and spooked you." Nonsense,
I tell Mim, reaching out to help her up from the sofa. "But it's best to let sleeping
dogs lie." Tiger Bradley
isn't so much a sleeping dog as she is a rutting jackal. Mim
remains seated. "Something
she said disturbed me." I
don't doubt this. "She
said, 'Detain him. Just kill
some time.' Can you
imagine--telling me that? To
kill time? Today of all
days?" Her face looks raw
and open, the closest she's been to tears in two weeks. The
argument is more memorable than what we were arguing about, though less
distinct by a long shot than the buck, newly gutted and strapped to the wide
trunk of a Plymouth Fury III. The
one that got away, I thought as it eased past us on I-94. Nine Boone & Crockett points with
a 21" spread, a non-typical whose brush entwined hooves made evident its
last forest trek. Mim
and I had stalked through timber
all morning, waiting for anything to amble by, the shotguns cold enough in
our gloved fingers that the metal burned for the first hour and then left no
sensation after that save a bone-throb. When
the deer showed up aboard its primer-painted chariot, it was stiff as a tree,
its tongue askew. Wisconsin
weekends are full of such sights, convenience store parking lots a trophy
hall of venison. The
buck whizzed by just as Mim and I had taken a break in our fighting. But the sight of it--and whatever
lost chances it suggested--was ammo enough to fuel us up again. She
had dropped to 104 pounds by then and had taken to pegging her pants like
some 50's tough. That combined
with the kohl eyeshadow and Camel unfiltered slanting most moments from her
bottom lip had rendered her employable only in the most intractable of
artscene noir settings, circa 1975, Downer Street. The
craggy lakeshore blurred past the window of our vintage Mustang, and I noticed
a ragged V of geese stitching a hieroglyph against the slate sky. Mim blew a smoke ring when she saw
them, stabbed her finger through it and made some curlicues, as if the geese
in their flyway were a message she was writing that morning just for me. Lord
knows, I'd had an earful by then, enough "You saids" and "You
didn'ts" and "You, you, you" to know the tone of her voice
signalled The End. That our
marriage endured another nine years reveals a lack of imagination on my part
and an uncharacteristic lassitude on hers. All
the way from Sheboygan to Milwaukee she sat scrunched up against the door,
knees pressed against the dashboard, looking as doubled over on herself as a
compass. I glared at the gray
strip of highway disappearing beneath our wheels, Lake Michigan like an old
scar on my left, Mim wounding me on my right, our marriage a surgery
performed with dull instruments. "Yeah,"
she says now, settling a venison
haunch in one of the boxes I've brought, "we were charming, you and
I. I fought with you more than I
did with Charlie and less than I did with Pascal. Not that that had anything to do with what happened,"
she adds quickly. "I never
had a death wish for him." When
she mentions the deceased, she does it gingerly--a careful experiment--as if
tasting the air with his name. I
lift a stack of chops from her chest-style freezer, settle them in one of the
boxes, and wonder if Pascal had a hand in this hunt, if he helped store the
meat here for the future meals he'd never have. The basement is dank and cheerless with a hulking boiler
at one end. Steam whistles
through its pipes. The few
windows are buried under snow, which on a bright day like today gives an odd
yellow cast to the grayness.
It's tomblike here and cold.
I settle three pheasant roasters in the box. Cleaning up after the dead husband chills me. I
say, "We had hunting, you and I.
That's something, I guess." "Neither
Charlie nor Pascal were much for that.
No feel for the business end of a shotgun. Not that it matters now for either of them. Pascal, for obvious reasons. And Charlie, because...." Mim
pauses a moment, sucks in a breath.
The dark humor of that remark sinks in. It's hard to read her face--the way one brow arches while
the other does not; the way her lips part--but I'd say she's torn between
horror and amusement. "Anyway,"
she says, "I heard Charlie joined an ashram in Telluride. That he mortifies his flesh once a
year. Steel grappling hooks sunk
under the skin. Along with 20
other devotees he's led around the ashram's courtyard. Some kind of ritual, huh?" "I'll
stick with hunting." "That's
the chaser to a marriage with me.
Death or torture."
She mimes a quick visual scan of me. "How did you escape so unscathed?" "Who
said I did?" After
handling all the meat, the tips of her fingers are cold when she tilts my
chin to face her, and I'm reminded of winter's sting, turning your flesh to
ice. "Behold, the eyes of
someone who has outlived a haunting." She studies me, narrows her eyelids. I
shake my head, as much to dispute as to move away. But
her touch follows me. "I care about your ghosts." My
fingers twine among hers, and just like a man in love for the first time I
begin with my thumb to explore her hand's topography. "Adding my ghosts to yours would
be like a nonstop Halloween.
Travel light, Mim." She
looks at the meat stacked around us.
"That's what this is all about." Still holding hands, she asks what I plan to do with it,
and I tell her I've brokered deals with several lodges, even a couple hotel
chefs, boutique restaurants that delight in serving exotic game.. The
edges of Mim's mouth turn down, and her shoulders slump. "I wouldn't have eaten it
anyway. I've been a vegetarian
for years." This
news makes me laugh--something I instantly regret. Her eyes gore me. "Well,
I mean, it's incongruent, right?
For a vegetarian to hunt."
I swing her hand lightly. She
pulls away, and her nod is terse, serious. "Where congruency is a virtue, yes." Sometimes
talking with her is like tracking a sneaky bird through heavy cover. The best strategy requires fits and
starts: a lugubrious exchange
sandwiched between uncomfortable silences. But over the years, I have lost my way in Mim Rockaway's
domain.... Even today I've
rushed in, neglecting to take the lay of the land, consult a compass, draw a
preliminary bead or to sniff out telltale scents. "I'm
sorry, Mim." "For
what?" "It." "You
haven't asked if I'm guilty as charged." A
shrug seems the best bet here.
"I believe your lawyer's version of events." "You'd
make a lousy prosecuting attorney, Bardy boy." "It's
less of a stretch that way." "A
lousy juror, too." "So
be it." She
flattens her palm against the gray somber walls, and when she speaks again
her tone is grave. "Because
none of us is above the law, you know." When
she notices that I don't warm to the topic, just keep pitching wrapped meat
into these boxes, she adds, "I mean the law of Newtonian physics. For every action, there is an
opposite but equal reaction."
Mim waits a bit. "If
you've ever felt a gun recoil you know that." I
fold the box lid over and under, the prospect of getting into this as
appealing as a run-in with Tiger.
"I'm going to hustle on out to the car." "Someone
died, and someone will pay."
Mim's hand rests against the wall, and she's staring at it, as if
judging its paleness against the cinder block. "You've got to admire the symmetry. The neatness." A
crease forms between her eyes.
Beyond how composed and poised she was in courtroom 312 today, beyond
how draped she looked on the sofa while ago, I know it's eating away at her,
something even justice rendered can't settle. Mim
always hung with the search the longest, when a cripple went down over rough
country. I can remember her
beating through brambly thatch against a stiff nor'easterly for a half hour
after even the dogs had given up.
A zealot, to be sure.
After retrieving a cripple, she dispensed with it quickly, palm
spanning its back, finger and thumb compressing the heart for a few
moments. She stares at the wall
now, trying to puzzle it through--the neatness and symmetry she's determined
to admire--a wild thing, gutshot and left to worry its wound. "Remember
that day, that cornfield south of Rhinelander?" The
image floats up out of the murk, and I find myself bracing against it, its
kick. "That combine?" There's
a nod. She blinks,
swallows. "I lost my
innocence that day." "Assholes,
Mim. You can't handicap for the
assholes." Her
voice comes as a raspy whisper.
"It started me on a path that led here. Because"--she stretches out her hand, as if she might
clutch my arm, but the action falls short. I'm left to imagine the bird's weight of those
fingers. "Because
someone died, someone will pay."
Alongside the hushed quality, her voice has the neutrality of a math
student's when poring over a story problem. "But there's no symmetry in it for me. Five-to-seven is not enough. Whether at Appleton or
elsewhere. I'm still waiting for
the recoil." "I
don't follow you, Mim. In that
field, they were driving the birds.
Harvesting corn and driving the birds all at the same time. What's that got to do with you?" A hunting party of bozo farmboys--ten
of them--sitting astride a John Deere eight-picker--shotguns banging away at
the roosters that scattered out of the corn in advance of the combine. Running roosters, sitting roosters,
not a one of them flushing, wild or close. It was a day of indiscriminate slaughter. Something
ignites behind her eyes.
"No one pots a bird on the ground, unless it's wounded. What's the punishment for something
like that? A fine? What they did.... It was out of balance, against
nature. No fine can make that
right." The
rest of the Rhinelander image unfurls:
shotgun blasts hurling pheasants into the dirt with such force the
dust explodes where they fall. Mim
leans against the cold cinder block.
She covers her face with her hands, rubs her eyes. "For what I
did, for what happened.... Even
five-to-seven.... I don't know
that retribution is sufficient." It's
the confession not even the county prosecutor could wrangle from her--and how
appropriate, I think: here in
the catacombs as we pull dead meat from the deep freeze. When I lie down this night to sleep
I'll feel like I spent the day in a morgue. "Serve it first. Your time.
Then decide if it's enough." This
response pleases her. She lifts
her hands. There's a smile. "Bardy, you're a survivor." When I shrug this off, she says,
"No, I mean it. You could
send an SOS with a thimble.
Purify ditch water. Find
a fresh trail in dry brush. You're the man, Bardy." A
box of wild game is at my feet, and I stoop to lift it. "I taught you everything I
know." Mim
slinks back into the shadows.
"But look how far it's gotten me." "Present
circumstances notwithstanding, of course, she learned how not to be
tragic. In her time with
you. I credit you with that,
Dickie. Settling her down. You got her away from that frightful
warehouse district. All those
lesbians. Even during your impotency,
she didn't jump ship. You
couldn't get it up, but did Mim bail?
Hell, no. She left those
dykes in the dust."
Satisfied with the fortitude her daughter had shown, Tiger punctuates
her speech with a snap of the head and a sip of gin. Then she clasps her hand around my
wrist, the pressure that of talons.
"Giving up the sauce was the best thing you could do,
Dickie." Even
though I wiped away the kiss after Tiger greeted me, I still feel her smudge
high on my cheek. She's a woman
who applies lipstick so territorially she leaves stains on tea cups and
glasses. Years ago I convinced
myself that she stood to piss and half-expected her one day to lift her leg
at me. Tiger is the danger my
wife in the darkness this morning could not anticipate. My shoulders press back against the
sofa, and I cock my head.
"I'm no longer impotent, if that's what you mean." Tiger's
wearing an embroidered kaftan, its collar nehru-esque. With toggle-stays like these, it
would take some tall fumbling to flash a breast or two. Under the thick fabric, her shoulders
shake with mirth. "Like
it's my business?" "I
mean"--I lean conspiratorially close--"I have a child now." Behind
the amusement, her eyes sweep me.
The twelve years since we last met have sharpened the force of her
gaze, the peregrine-like visage, the predatory smack of her mouth as she
enunciates each word. Swept back
from her forehead, her silver-black hair emphasizes the sleek volpine shape
of her face. Her nose, broken
decades ago in a domestic spat, completes this effect. She's a cross between a hard-coiffed
ambassador and a thug, the hybrid carried to a vanishing point extreme where
there is no difference. I
give an elbow nudge and speak sotto voce. "No
test tube baby, this one, Tiger.
We got him the old-fashioned way." "Take
care, Dickie." Seated there
on the sofa, she steadies her drink, shifts it from her left hand to the
right. "Me thinks the lady
doth protest too much." Her
frown settles on a nowhere spot high above Lake Michagan, and I glance,
too. The sundogs have tracked
their master to the other side of the sky by now, but the light has a
cast: filtered gold. The temperature had dropped to 11
below last I checked. Mim
throws us a look when she walks into the room. She sets a basket of pate and crackers on the end table,
and Babe bounds up from his place on the Oriental. Before Mim can shoo him away he's wolfed down a hunk of
pate. Babe. The cause of all that phone laughter
while ago. A hundred pound
chocolate labrador with a head like Mt. Rushmore. He has drooled since Tiger ushered him in, little frothy
spots here, frothy spots there, a froth deposit at my crotch. "He
greets you genitally," Tiger--always helpful--had said. Apparently she'd been dog-sitting him
throughout the trial and has now brought him back. Mim
opens one panel of the French doors, and Babe scrambles out into the
snow. He trees a squirrel. In the next instant, he pees on the
birdbath. Then he posts up at
the front gate, barking out at the street, balls prominent under uplifted
tail. When he comes back inside,
he has ice pellets in the pads of his paws. Over by the fireplace he stands, one paw lifted, ears
drooping, strained tuba sounds issuing from his brickish muzzle. "It's
obvious how he got his name."
I nod at the brown beast.
"Is he like this on the hunt?" Mim
presses her lips together and starts rubbing Vaseline into the leathery pad
of his paw. Tiger tosses her
head. "You two and
hunting. I always swore killing
small animals was what kept you together so long." She leans toward me, her ivory teeth
wet. "Hunting isn't
everything, Dickie." "Don't
tell my clients that." She
scoots closer, wants to hear all about my marvelous little business, all
about my fabulous little success.
It must be delightful to have established myself, such a triumph. But
I've got my sights trained on Mim, who has continued massaging Vaseline into
Babe's paw. Her fingers tend to
the details, separate out the chunky toes, coat the fur between them. There's a maternal quality to her
work. Mim's
voice sounds strained when she says, "He doesn't hunt." "What? A non-hunting labrador? Do tell." "I
mean, he hates the blast of a gun.
Can't track. Won't run
ditches. He's got no nose." "The
worthless mutt!" Babe
takes this for praise and dumps his blocky head in my lap. He grins his goose liver breath up at
me. Like
the proud grandmama, Tiger hunkers toward him. "How's my big good man? That's right.
How's my man today?" Mim
twists the lid on the Vaseline, sets it aside. She looks around, as if for another domestic task. An ice bucket stands on the end
table. Mim brought it out when
Tiger arrived. She picks it up,
doesn't glance at her mother.
The few cubes inside rattle around. She says something about a refill. On her way to the kitchen, she grabs
Tiger's now-empty glass. After
she's gone, Tiger scoots toward me, her whisper cloying. "Were you frightened in
retrospect, frightened for your life?" I
bump Babe's head aside and stand.
Packed away in the back of my Blazer and hard as granite in the
sub-zero cold, the wild game awaits delivery to its posh venues. A half-full bag of dog food stands by
the door. Tiger carried it in
when she showed up with Babe.
She carried it in, and it hasn't moved from that spot. No one's said anything, no one's so
much as looked at it, but it's been clear ever since Babe thumped his paws
against my chest that I'm to leave here when I go with him. And that bag. Tiger's
whisper is thick. "I mean,
it could've been you." "What
could've been me?" She
smiles. "Playing the
tenderfoot, huh, Dickie. But
that's not you." Beneath
the intense gaze, I can feel her tracking me, trying to draw a bead. "All the nights you lay beside
her, all the years you didn't kill each other. Both of you armed to the teeth. Don't you wonder now--why Pascal, not me? Don't you wonder why you didn't die?" "Fuck
off, Tiger." She
laughs. "That won't fill
the bill, Dickie. It's deeper
than that. The truth is too
great for one or two people to bear.
So who else is there, after me, but you? Mim didn't have anyone else, anyone who once knew her,
once loved her." She tilts
her head oddly, and the stiff fabric of her kaftan rustles. "Or maybe still loves her." "Don't
be preposterous." "Sure,
you've got your wife, your son.
But are you free of Mim?
I think not. Not even
murder can help you there." "Voluntary
manslaughter, Tiger." Tiger laces her fingers behind her
head and lifts her chin, appraising me.
Her days are spent evaluating brush strokes, color and line, judging
aesthetic movement--but I can see her eating insects circa Biblical famines
or drinking blood circa the Donner Pass or abandoning her children circa
Rwanda: she would survive by
doing what she must. She says,
"You always knew what to do.
I could admire you for that.
So smart." "I
don't follow you, Tiger." She
shrugs. "It's better that
way. In--how long? Twelve years, more than that?--our
paths haven't crossed. This city
is big enough
for the both of us. After today,
I don't expect to see you again." I
have the sense of having been pushed along something, worked out of heavy
cover into the light brush--twigs and clumps--along the edges. "It's not like you to wax
sentimental." Tiger
rises from the sofa, draws near.
"I'm a collector. I
find myself hanging onto things most people would not. Any other old woman would be called a
packrat." She turns to look
out the window, her sleek profile etched against the glass. "But I've made millions." I
had forgotten this aspect of Tiger, the one who advertises her wealth, dotes
on it. She is among what must be
only a handful of consumers in 1997, according to Cadillac's marketing
survey, who favored fully loaded El Dorado sedans. She
faces me. "You're not like
me, Dickie. You jettison the
excess. All that tromping
through the woods has taught you what to carry, what to leave." "You
flatter me, Tiger." "Oh,
it's not a compliment. But I can
admire a survival skill when I see one." "So
cut to the chase." "Mim's
been under the gun like nothing else.
It's hounding her." "And
understandably so. Take a
look." "Not
everything about this is as on the surface as you might think. Let me just thank you in
advance." She bows stiffly. "Maybe we'll all laugh ten years
from now." "Nobody's
going to laugh." "It's
clear I don't have to spell it out." She places a hand on my forearm, slides it up to my biceps,
fingers lingering. Her gaze
settles on my chest. "In a
different time, under different circumstances, we would have been
lovers. I guess we can both
regret that." "We
would've ended up killing each other, Tiger." She
arches her brows. "Runs in
the family, that." In
the kitchen, I lean against the window frame, part the curtains. Chimney whisps float above frozen
rooftops. True to the end, the
sundogs are making their final descent toward the horizon, the sun a blaze
between them, and I watch. It'll
be hard for me to shake this day, harder still to walk out of here free. As recently as four hours ago, at the
courthouse, I felt unencumbered, even light. But when I think back to the courthouse now, I know the
lightness to be illusion. Designed
in the manner of other buildings where Justice must balance her scales, the
county courthouse has a cut limestone exterior, its corinthian columns
recalling a Golden Era in the improbable Milwaukee downtown. Inside, the polished marble and the
bronze statuary and the walnut paneling can bear the burden of the truths
brought forth there. Those
materials are sturdy enough to absorb the crimes, the whispering robes of
justice dark enough to swallow whole the ugliness, the panic and desperation,
the blood, until they become part of those materials. Marble isn't just marble but
marble-plus-the crime. The profundity
of stone, metal and wood become an ideal counterpart to the dark stalking
wolf. They can bear the weight,
even cleanse it. But
Mim's kitchen can't do that. Her
copper cookware is too slight and jangly, the skillets, though made of heavy
gauge aluminum, not strong enough to bear the weight. I
turn away from the window. The
walls are awash in late afternoon light. Mim stirs water in a saucepan, her face shadowed by the
array of pans hanging over the stove.
Everything looks precarious and insubstantial. The heaviness of this day bows my
shoulders forward, and I sink against the counter. The
water in the saucepan begins to boil, and Mim stirs more rapidly. When a funnel forms, she slides an
egg from a dish into it. A timer
stands on the counter. She
cranks it to three minutes and turns to me. "He understands voice commands, believe it or
not." I
stare grimly at the tile floor.
"Babe." "He's
what I'll miss more than anything.
Not freedom, not people.
I've menstruated once since 1987. You know yourself I could never have a child.... Please, Bardy boy. He's my baby." "Mim,
it's dicey as hell." She
grabs my shirt sleeve, yanks it up.
"Look. When I get
out, he'll be --what?--six,
maybe eight years old. He can
help me bridge the gap, all that time locked away. He can bridge the whole goddamn thing." "Mim,
I've got a family. I
can't...." "He
knew me before, he'll know me after." I
push her away, and we face off like that, eyes twitchy. When the day shakes down to its final
ugliness, I'll feel like the one locked up. "You told your mother I was impotent." Mim looks surprised, then stares at
the pans hanging above the stove.
"I didn't tell her." "How
did she find out?" Mim places a slotted spoon next to
the saucepan. Plates are stacked
in a glass-fronted hutch, and she reaches for one. "How does she find anything out? Maybe she guessed it. I don't have to remind you what my
childhood was like." She
pops a slice of bread into the toaster, watches the heat coils glow red. All at once her eyes widen. "You know what? She read about it." "Read
about it?" "In
my diary." "You
wrote that?" I whirl to
face her. "Something that
only happened when I was drinking?" "I
needed an outlet." She hesitates.
"It was a bad time." "How
the hell did Tiger get her hands on your diary?" Mim
frowns down at the toaster, and her response is so long in coming I think
she's seeing the future there in the toaster's shiny sides, or at least next
week. "She found it. Here. Right afterward...." The
kitchen counter has an edge of beveled oak. It cuts into my back as I lean against it. "She came here?" Mim
nods. It
only takes a moment. "Tiger
cleared the evidence. She
secured the crime scene." Slotted
spoon in hand, Mim skims the poached egg from the saucepan. She places the egg in a dish and
pokes at it with a wedge of toast.
Yolk bleeds onto the gelatinous white, and she lifts the toast for a bite,
holds it there balanced for a moment, then drops it onto a plate. Mim pushes the plate away and meets
my gaze. "The woman worked
like a white tornado." I
lean against the counter, elbows braced. Now I know what I'll find in that bag of dog food. Fully
loaded, a 9mm pistol weighs no more than a cigarette case. It's designed primarily for close
range but can be pushed to 100 meters by elevating the barrel 25-30 degrees
above the horizontal. The pearl
inlay grip on this model was probably optional, a luxury addition to the
platinum finish. Standing on icy
Pier 19, wind spiking about me, I sight down its snub barrel. Handguns never interested me, whether
for self-defense or as collector's items, though I've known dozens of people
who acquire them, the trade in weapons as lively as the stock exchange. This one would fetch a handsome
price, would round out someone's collection of curios, especially once its
history surfaced. I squint down
the shiny barrel and catch myself trying to see what she must have seen. I find instead the sluggish water,
Lake Michigan's waves heavy with ice chunks and slush. The eastern horizon is dark enough to
make you shiver, a thick and profound blackness that looms over the water as
if ready to pounce. Twilight hovers
toward the west, and rush hour headlights wink along the lakefront. Out here, 100 yards into the lake,
the city is pretty remote. The
pier's concrete edges are draped under a slippery crust, all of the pilings
sculpturesque and ice-covered, a banquet laid with a frozen tablecloth. Bumping
against my thigh as he shifts from one paw to the other, Babe whines. A frost rhime has formed on his
muzzle. He's careful not to hold
eye contact with me, though. The
storm flap on my coat flutters in the wind, and he looks no higher than it,
some native survival skills of his own kicking in. There
are laws of the jungle I barely understand, though I fancy myself capable of
guiding other men by them. Of
course, Wisconsin meadows are not the jungle. Anymore than a lakefront living room is. At least I would not have said as
much. Until today. Know
the difference between life-without-parole and five-to-seven? A circle of petticoats. That's the joke I'll never get to
tell, not to my grandchildren or to the guys over a game of Sheepshead or to
clients on the hunt. Baggage. The
first report shatters the twilight like a firecracker and splinters the
knobby wedge of ice that looks for all the world like an Egyptian deity. Beside me, Babe goes aerial. When he lands, he slips and slides,
legs akimbo. His nails dig into
the ice, but to no effect. He sprawls
like a spider, ears flapping in the wind. The second shot ricochets off the concrete ramparts in a
way that pleases me, and Babe scrambles. His back legs have gone out from under him, and he
skitters toward the edge of the pier. Let
him go, let him drown in the fucking lake. I take a 9mm aim at his ugly head, and never has a target
looked so large. It's the kind
of day that makes you want to put something out of its misery, and here in
the frozen dark is my chance. But
I drop the gun to my side, drill the remaining bullets into the ice. When the chamber clicks, I give a big
roundhouse toss and watch out over the water as the pistol arcs. The waves accept it, fold it in, cold
steel sinking into an ice bath.
Like the stone, metal and wood of Milwaukee's courthouse, Lake
Michigan can cleanse all evils. The
dog lunges, still trying to get purchase. I seize his collar, drag him across the pier with me. He wheezes, tenses those massive neck
muscles, trying to fight. On
ice, his 100 pounds are formidable, and we do this ball and chain routine all
the way to the parking lot. I
end up half-yanking, half-wrestling him along. Beth
said not to bring anything back.
She told me not to keep anything. But when you've been to the gates of hell, how can you
resist? He
can sleep in the crawlspace beneath the woodshed until I clear out one of the
kennels. He'll be Bubba, not
Babe, gnaw beef bones, not lap up pate.
Once spring comes, once the earth bursts again from its wintry grave,
my son and I will train him. If
he can't hunt, we'll try tracking.
If he can't track, we'll try obedience. If he can't obey, we'll give him a poodle cut and sit him
on a pillow. By then, of course,
we all will have found a soft spot in our hearts, and he won't be an outdoor
dog any longer but have run of the house. I can see his big paws tracking mud and grit from room to
room, I can see him slobbering on the curtains. By then I'll no longer think about driving him to a
nowhere spot along the Eagle River, a place where wolves are known to roam,
and dropping the tailgate on the Blazer. And I'll be free. |
"Holding the Bag" appeared
in THE HUDSON REVIEW |
