He'd been in the service, people said, some place called Korea. Before, they added, he'd been the best fiddler in the county, but he'd given that up. He worked at the ice house, swinging fifty-pound blocks of ice off the ramp with huge tongs and all the time looking around, at the sky, at broken windows in the old power plant across the street, as though he wasn't really there, only his body was, doing these same things over and over, like a machine. He always had this half-smile on his face. He rented a room over the ice house but went there only to sleep. The rest of the time he was out walking the streets or sitting on the bench at the end of Main Street. He'd sit there looking off into the woods for hours. Pretty soon after I met him, when the ice house shut down, he lost his job. They let him stay on in the room, but then they tore the building down and he lost that too, so he lived out in the open, sleeping where he could. Later I'd get to know a lot of people like Al, people damaged deep inside, people whom life had abandoned but wouldn't quite let go of.
How did we meet? I honestly can't remember. I just remember everyone at school talking about him, then there's a skip, like on a record, and we're together throwing rocks into the Blue Hole, which everyone said had no bottom and half the world's catfish, or walking through Big Billy Simon's pasture with cows eyeing us, or sitting under a crabapple tree passing a Nehi back and forth.
It wasn't long before my folks heard about it and told me to stay away from him. When I asked why, Mother said: He's just not right, son, that war did something to him.
But I went on seeing him, after school most every day. That was the first time I openly defied my parents, and things got tense for a while before they gave up. Many subsequent defiances took place in stone silence.
I was fourteen when Al and I met; a couple of years later I was getting ready to go off to college, first in New Orleans then in Chicago, little suspecting that but a few years down the line I'd be crawling through trees not unlike the ones Al stared into every day. In the time I'd known him, I'd grown two feet taller and Al had aged twenty years.
I was sitting outside the tent one day taping up my boots when mail came around. I was on my third pair. In that climate, leather rotted fast. The French had tried to tell us, but as usual we didn't listen. They'd tried to tell us a lot of things. Anyway, it was five or six in the morning-you never could sleep much after that, what with all the bird chatter-and Bud chucked a beer my way, giving out the standard call, 'Breakfast of champions,' as I settled in to read my letter. Mom had written two pages about what was going on back home, who'd just married who, how so many of the stores downtown were boarded up these days, that the old Methodist church burned down. Newsreels from another world. Then there at the end she'd written: I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but Al died last week.
I grabbed another warm beer and went out to forest's edge, remembering that final summer.
For as long as I could remember, there'd been an old fiddle tucked away in the back of a closet no one used, in a cracked wood case shaped like a coffin. It had been my grandfather's, who played it along with banjo. I asked Dad if I could have it and after looking oddly at me, since I'd never shown much interest in music before, he shrugged and said he didn't see why not. This was late in his life, after the sawmill shut down, when he mostly just sat at the kitchen table all day.
I put some rubber bands around the case to hold it together and took it to Mr. Cohen, the school band director, who played violin in church some Sundays. Looked to him like a German-made fiddle from the 1800s, he said. He put on new strings and got the old bridge to stand up under them and gave me an extra bow he had. Not a full-size bow, only three-quarters, he said, but it'll do.
That afternoon I walked up to Al with the fiddle behind my back.
He eyed me suspiciously. 'Whatchu got there, boy?'
I laid the case down on the bench and opened it. To this day I don't know what to call the expression that came over his face. I think maybe it's one of those things there's no word for.
'It's for you,' I told him.
His eyes held mine for some time. He took the bow from under its clip. Al's hands always shook, but when he touched that bow they stopped. He weighed the bow in one hand, felt along its length, tightened the hair and bounced it against his palm, tightened it a little more.
Then he reached out with his left hand for the fiddle.
'It's all tuned up,' I said.
He nodded, tucked the fiddle under his chin and sat there a moment with his eyes closed.
I don't remember what he played. Something I'd heard before, from my father or grandfather, one of the old fiddle tunes, 'Sally Goodin' or 'Blackberry Blossom,' maybe. Next he tried a waltz.
He took the fiddle out from under his chin and held it against one leg, looking off at nothing in particular, smiling that half-present smile of his.
'It's just an old, cheap instrument,' I said.
'No. The fiddle's fine,' he said, putting it back in the case, clipping in the bow, carefully fastening the hooks. His hands were shaking again. 'The music's in there. It just ain't in me no more.'
We sat a while, hearing cars and trucks pass behind us, looking out into the trees. Towards sundown when I was getting ready to head home, he said, 'Reckon we won't be seeing much of each other for a time.'
I nodded, too desperately young-soon enough, that would change-to understand good-byes.
After a moment he added: 'Appreciate what you did, boy.'
I picked up the case. I'd put on a new coat of paint, shiny black. In lowering light it looked like a puddle of ink, a pool of darkness. 'Sure you don't want this?'
He shook his head. 'Didn't mean about the fiddle, but I appreciate that too.' Holding out his hand, he said, 'Like you to have something. Got this when I was overseas, what they call in country, and it's been with me ever since. Want you should take it with you. Be your good luck charm.'
A tiny cat carved out of sandalwood.
CHAPTER NINE
Dawn beat its proud pink breast as I and Chariot chugged to a stop. International news on the radio, a couple of ads for car dealers, now suddenly Jeremiah was a bullfrog, joy to the world.
Another mansion on the hill. Two cars, Mercedes, Lincoln, in a garage remarkably free of clutter. Ancient weeping willow like a bad sixties haircut outside, smell of fresh-brewed coffee from within. Older man in a terrycloth robe sitting at a table just inside glass doors from the patio. Wineglass of orange juice, possibly a mimosa, before him. Basket of bread, bowl of fruit. Scatter of woven rugs on what looked to be Saltillo tile and spotless. Mexican furniture in the room beyond. Lawn sprinklers went off behind me as I peered in.
Snooping about, I found a breachable window in the utility room and took advantage. Stood just inside listening, then slipped the door and listened some more before stepping through. No footsteps or other sounds of movement. Soft ersatz jazz from a radio out in the room by the patio.
He was tearing the horn from a croissant as I came up behind him and put thumbs to his neck.
'Compress carotids,' I said, 'and you shut off blood supply to the brain.' I told him what I wanted to know. 'We can talk when you come back around,' I added, adding pressure as well, as his hands fell onto his lap and the others entered the room like silk. One of them facing me, the other one, the one that mattered, behind. Where they were before, I've no idea. I would have sworn he was alone.
Catching a glance from the one in front, I managed a half turn before the one behind closed on me and I joined the older man in darkness. I came awake with a woman's face above me. The guy who had been standing behind me was male, no doubt about it. Not much doubt, either, that I was on the floor. Turning my head to the right, I saw swollen pink feet rising towards bare legs topped with a hem of terrycloth robe that in my confused state put me in mind of Elizabethan ruffled collars. Turned my head to the left and saw a body desperately attempting to drag itself out of harm's way, though at this point most of the harm it was likely to withstand had already befallen it.
'You're okay,' the woman above me said. Not a question. Shortish dark hair pulled back. Hazel eyes in which glints of green surfaced and sank. She sounded pretty certain. I'd have to take her word for it.
'Mr. Aleche has agreed to call off his dogs. That right, Mr. Aleche?'
From high above terrycloth and tabletop, out of the clear blue sky up there, came a 'Yes.'
