Hearts In Atlantis

he can’t say. Certainly enough to provide the tinsel; enough to tell him he looks nice in his Paul Stuart suit and blue Sulka tie; enough to wish him a good day and remind him to get the eggnog. It is enough. All is well in Willie’s world except for Jasper Wheelock. What is he going to do about Jasper Wheelock?

Maybe I ought to follow you some night, Wheelock whispers in his ear as Willie shifts the increasingly heavy case from one hand to the other. Both arms ache now; he will be glad to reach his building. See what you do. See who you turn into.

What, exactly, is he going to do about Jasper the Police-Smurf? What can he do?

He doesn’t know.

5:15 P.M.

The young panhandler in the dirty red sweatshirt is long gone, his place taken by yet another streetcorner Santa. Willie has no trouble recognizing the tubby young fellow currently dropping a dollar into Santa’s pot.

“Hey, Ralphie!” he cries.

Ralph Williamson turns, his face lights up when he recognizes Willie, and he raises one gloved hand. It’s snowing harder now; with the bright lights around him and Santa Claus beside him, Ralph looks like the central figure in a holiday greeting card. Or maybe a modern-day Bob Cratchit.

“Hey, Willie! How’s it goin?”

“Like a house afire,” Willie says, approaching Ralph with an easy grin on his face. He sets his case down with a grunt, feels in his pants pocket, finds a buck for Santa’s pot. Probably just another crook, and his hat’s a moth-eaten piece of shit, but what the hell.

“What you got in there?” Ralph asks, looking down at Willie’s case as he fiddles with his scarf. “Sounds like you busted open some little kid’s piggy bank.”

“Nah, just heatin coils,” Willie says. “’Bout a damn thousand of em.”

“You working right up until Christmas?”

“Yeah,” he says, and suddenly has a glimmer of an idea about Wheelock. Just a twinkle, here and gone, but hey, it’s a start. “Yeah, right up until Christmas. No rest for the wicked, you know.”

Ralph’s wide and pleasant face creases in a smile. “I doubt if you’re very wicked.”

Willie smiles back. “You don’t know what evil lurks in the heart of the heatin-n-coolin man, Ralphie. I’ll probably take a few days off after Christmas, though. I’m thinkin that might be a really good idea.”

“Go south? Florida, maybe?”

“South?” Willie looks startled, then laughs. “Oh, no,” he says. “Not this kid. I’ve got plenty to do around the house. A person’s got to keep their house in order. Else it might come right down around their ears someday when the wind blows.”

“I suppose.” Ralph bundles the scarf higher around his ears. “See you tomorrow?”

“You bet,” Willie says and holds out his gloved hand. “Gimme five.”

Ralphie gives him five, then turns his hand over. His smile is shy but eager. “Give me ten, Willie.”

Willie gives him ten. “How good is that, Ralphie-baby?”

The man’s shy smile becomes a gleeful boy’s grin. “So goddam good I gotta do it again!” he cries, and slaps Willie’s hand with real authority.

Willie laughs. “You the man, Ralph. You get over.”

“You the man, too, Willie,” Ralph replies, speaking with a prissy earnestness that’s sort of funny. “Merry Christmas.”

“Right back atcha.”

He stands where he is for a moment, watching Ralph trudge off into the snow. Beside him, the streetcorner Santa rings his bell monotonously. Willie picks up his case and starts for the door of his building. Then something catches his eye, and he pauses.

“Your beard’s on crooked,” he says to the Santa. “If you want peo-ple to believe in you, fix your fuckin beard.”

He goes inside.

5:25 P.M.

There’s a big carton in the storage annex of Midtown Heating and Cooling. It’s full of cloth bags, the sort banks use to hold loose coins. Such bags usually have various banks’ names printed on them, but these don’t—Willie orders them direct from the company in Moundsville, West Virginia, that makes them.

He opens his case, quickly sets aside the rolls of bills (these he will carry home in his Mark Cross briefcase), then fills four bags with coins. In a far corner of the storage room is a battered old metal cab-inet simply marked PARTS. Willie swings it open—there is no lock to contend with—and reveals another hundred or so coin-stuffed bags. A dozen times a year he and Sharon tour the midtown churches, pushing these bags through the contribution slots or hinged pack-age-delivery doors when they will fit, simply leaving them by the door when they won’t. The lion’s share always goes to St. Pat’s, where he spends his days wearing dark glasses and a sign.

But not every day, he thinks, now undressing. I don’t have to be there every day, and he thinks again that maybe Bill, Willie, and Blind Willie Garfield will take the week after Christmas off. In that week there might be a way to handle Officer Wheelock. To make him go away. Except . . .

“I can’t kill him,” he says in a low, nagging voice. “I’ll be fucked if I kill him.” Only fucked isn’t what he’s worried about. Damned is what he’s worried about. Killing was different in Vietnam, or seemed different, but this isn’t Vietnam, isn’t the green. Has he built these years of penance just to tear them down again? God is testing him, testing him, testing him. There is an answer here. He knows there is, there must be. He is just —ha-ha, pardon the pun—too blind to see it.

Can he even find the self-righteous son of a bitch? Shit yeah, that’s not the problem.