Two years later her younger brother, Jimmy, was reaching for the eight-track cassette of the Bay City Rollers he’d just unwrapped—it had clanked out of his hands to the floor of his friend’s car—when the Ford Fairlane barreled into them. Killed instantly, they said. Didn’t feel a thing.
When Ethel Murray was rushed to the hospital the following year the news was met with remarks like are you serious? Massive stroke, they said. She’d always suffered headaches. He had to pull the plug, they said. So sad, they agreed. Tragic, really.
And so they began to cross streets when John Murray came to town.
“Well, Henry Powell, looks like you’re going to have to help me find myself a pair of trousers,” Mr. Murray says to Henry. “These just won’t do.” His tone has always been courtly—Henry finds himself wondering if Mr. Murray had even spent time in London…he had that kind of flair to his voice.
“No problem, Mr. Murray,” he says, steering the old man to the part of the store devoted to the lower half of men’s bodies. It feels strange to Henry to call this man “mister” still but there is a general understanding with those who enjoy a wide-enough gap in age that the younger will always refer to the elder formally.
Henry notes how much he enjoys the intensity of Mr. Murray’s focus, even though he knows the old man is not seeing him but the ghost of what might have been. When Mr. Murray averts his eyes, Henry is sorry to feel the attention come to an end.
“What kind of shoes will you be wearing?” he asks.
They both look down at Mr. Murray’s shoes: loafers misshapen by overuse and inappropriate weather conditions. Mr. Murray is still staring at his feet when Henry gently touches him on the back, silently suggesting forward movement.
“I think I know exactly what you need,” he says. “Here we go.” He selects a pair of chinos. “These pants are good for just about any occasion.” The heavyweight khaki material is crisp enough to hold up under a blazer’s demands but comfortable enough to be worn on trips such as this one. Weekend errands.
Mr. Murray fingers the material and nods a Chinatown-turtle sort of nod, softly tapering off, giving way to a skeptical tilt. “They’re not too dark?”
“Naw,” says Henry. “I don’t think so. Try them on. I bet you’ll really like the color.”
“I don’t go in for these trendy things,” Mr. Murray grumbles on his way into the dressing room. “I hate these trendy things….” he is saying.
“I promise,” Henry says, “these aren’t trendy. They’re classic. I don’t like the trendy stuff, either. I really think you’ll like them. But if you don’t we’ll just find you something else.”
The chimes are tripped off and Henry glances to the front door. It’s Clarence, the mailman, depositing a neat, rubber-banded packet of mail onto the counter. The daily wave over his shoulder his only acknowledgment of Henry.
“I don’t know.” Mr. Murray nearly stumbles back out through the saloon doors, the extra-long pant legs tangling with his socked feet. “Except for the length, they fit, that’s for sure. I just don’t know about the color.”
“Let me just fold the leg up so we can get an idea how they look,” Henry says, kneeling to roll up one leg. “There. I like them. I like them a lot. You still don’t like the color?”
“They’re comfortable,” Mr. Murray says. “I suppose I should get them. I sure don’t want a trendy pair of pants, though.”
“They’re not trendy, I promise,” Henry says. He stands back from the three-way mirror and lets Mr. Murray turn this way and that, deciding whether he needs more convincing. Henry can tell Mr. Murray had planned on spending all afternoon searching through the racks of pants, trying to find something to replace his worn trousers. He appears surprised it is going so well. This Henry is a godsend, he sees his biographer taking it all down.
“Can you hem them up for me? My sewing’s pretty limited,” Mr. Murray says. “I can put a button back on but Ethel never did let me near that machine so I don’t think…”
“Oh, please—” Henry holds up a hand to stop Mr. Murray from even completing the thought “—we take care of all of that. Let me just go grab my pins, I’ll mark them up and the tailor will have them done by the end of the week.”
“Oh.”
“Why don’t you put your shoes on so I can get an idea of the length and I’ll be right back.”
Henry is in formal wear when he hears it. The hangers clanging together in alarm, then a thump.
“Mr. Murray?” Henry stops in his tracks, in case he’d misunderstood the sounds.
The silence carries a special frequency heard perhaps only by dogs and by those who have an acute sense of danger. Henry shoots back through the racks so fast there are cartoon lines streaming from his back, indicating speed and direction.
“Mr. Murray? Mr. Murray, can you hear me? I’m going to turn you over.” But he hesitates trying to recall what it was he saw on television about this very subject. About moving someone elderly who has fallen. He remembers now: it was on that show Emergency. Johnny Gage. That was his name, Henry thinks. Johnny Gage is the one who said never move a fallen old person.
The voice is muffled by the carpet, “I think I broke something. Oooh.”
“I’m going to call an ambulance.” Henry rushes back to the counter and dials 911. “Hello? We need an ambulance. Please, we need an ambulance. What? Oh, Baxter’s. On Main Street. Please come quick.”
“They’re on their way,” Henry calls out on his way back through the obstacle course of racks to Mr. Murray. Looking down at him Henry realizes that the pants are indeed too dark.
“Damn pants,” Mr. Murray says. His head is turned unnaturally to the side, an angry right angle that looks painful. “I went down so fast…” he trails off.
“I don’t think I should move you,” Henry says, by way of comforting him. He is squatting down alongside him. “You might have broken something. I don’t think I should move you. Or should I?” Johnny Gage be damned, he thinks.
“It’s okay, son,” Mr. Murray says. “I’ll be okay.”
Mr. Murray’s using the word son has an unexpected poignancy even though Henry knows that most older gentlemen will use this term with younger men. It’s different, of course, when Mr. Murray uses it.
“Maybe I should flip you over.” Henry moves off to the side and hunches down so Mr. Murray can see his face. “What do you want me to do?”
“Ambulance’ll be here in a minute,” Mr. Murray says. “Let them deal with it.”
“I’m so sorry,” Henry says. “I should’ve folded up both legs. I thought I’d just do the one. I’m so sorry. God, why didn’t I just do both?”
Mr. Murray’s eyes are closed.
“Mr. Murray? Oh, God. Oh, Jesus.”
Henry stands up and races out to the sidewalk in front of the store to look for the ambulance. He looks east first, but then remembers the hospital is west of this block of Main Street. Nothing in either direction.
Back in the store the chimes sound underfoot as he moves quickly, gracefully, between racks back to Mr. Murray.
“It’s on its way,” he lies. “Mr. Murray? Mr. Murray, it’s almost here. Just hang on.”
“I’m okay, boy,” he says, though his eyes remain closed.
This time the silence telepathically urges Henry to come up with something comforting to say. Something that will fill the time until the paramedics arrive. He clears his throat.
“I bet it’s just a bruise or something,” he says, thankful that Mr. Murray can’t see his own eyes roll in disgust at his feeble attempt at comfort. He knows it’s bad. He knows Mr. Murray’s eyes are closed against the pain.
“Where are they?” Henry asks, standing, shooting back to the front door, through it and onto the sidewalk. Just as it pulls up. He can see that above the hood with its backward spelling of Ambulance one of the paramedics is carefully wedging a to-go cup of coffee into where the dashboard connects with the windshield.
“He’s in h
ere,” Henry calls out to them, motioning them out of the van. “In here.”
The paramedics bear no resemblance to their televised selves, nearly always exploding out of ambulances, expressions grave, movements efficient: equipment grabbed with minimal effort, speaking in a complicated code of vital stats. Johnny Gage’d be disgusted with these two, he thinks.
Henry, fidgety, moves closer as they slide the gurney out of the back.
“I think he must’ve fallen getting off the tailor block,” he says, “I didn’t move him. Oh, let me get the latch from the inside so I can open both doors. They open out so…here, let me—oh, okay. It fits through one? Oh, great. You want me to…? Yeah, just straight back. By the three-way mirror.”
“What’s his name?” is the only thing the paramedic asks.
“Murray,” Henry says from only just behind. “His last name is Murray.”
“Mr. Murray,” the other paramedic says a bit too loudly. “Looks like you got yourself in quite a fix, eh?”
Henry scowls at the condescension.
“Paulie, hand the board over,” one says to the other. Henry looks from one to the other and thinks they look exactly like Tweedledee and Tweedledum. “Okay, on the count of three we’re going to flip you over, Mr. Murray. One. Two. Three. Good. You doin’ okay?”
But instead of answering the emergency technician, John Murray looks into Henry’s eyes and says, “I’m okay, son. Don’t worry. I’m okay.”
“Mr. Murray?” Tweedledee is strapping him onto the board. “We’re taking you up now, into the ambulance. Okay?”
“Don’t worry,” he says to Henry again.
“On three, Paulie. One. Two. Three. Here we go.”
The gurney is secured into the back of the van—a completeness comes with the sturdy sound of doors shutting—and Henry falls alongside Tweedledum, on his way into the passenger seat.
“That pant leg,” he says. “It was the pant leg he tripped on. I should’ve at least tucked it up or something.”
Tweedledum now heaved into the front seat says, “Doesn’t look like he tripped on the pant leg, kid. Looks like it was his shoes: the right sole’s practically falling off. Probably got folded under on his way off the block there.”
Mr. Beardsley is at a doctor appointment, Ramon is not scheduled to come in today. Henry finds himself miserably pacing back and forth in front of the counter, wondering what he should do. His instinct is to follow the ambulance to the hospital. Who else is going to check on Mr. Murray? he wonders. He has no one else. No one to drink bad coffee and hold vigil by his bed until he wakes up from the surgery Henry assumes he’ll undergo. Laura Murray, he had heard, is in a home for the mentally disabled. And as far as Henry knows she is Mr. Murray’s only living relative. What to do, what to do. Henry chastises himself he did not fold up both pant legs. It would have taken three extra seconds, he laments. Three frigging seconds.
The sidewalk in front of the store is empty. No cars appear to be heading in his direction. So Henry makes the executive decision to close the store. He reassures himself it is only for a few minutes. It is an emergency after all.
He tells himself Cathy will know just what to do. He needs to talk it through with someone clear-headed. Yes, this is the right thing to do, he says to himself, pushing the Cup-a-Joe door open. Once he sees her he is sure. Once he sees the place empty he knows it is a sign that he has made the right decision.
“Henry?” She comes over to the cash register from the coffee filter area. “You look weird. What’s wrong?”
“Oh, Jesus,” he says. “I don’t know. I messed up.”
“What happened? What is it?” She comes out from behind the counter and steers him to a seat. “Lois? Can you cover?” she calls out to the back of the place. Henry looks up from the tabletop to see the mousey-looking Lois emerge from her steamy job washing mugs.
“Tell me,” Cathy says. Under any other circumstance Henry would have been thrilled to feel her hand touching his, but here, now, it makes him feel worse about Mr. Murray.
So he tells her about the accident. All in one sentence practically. His words travel hurvy scurvy through the air into her ears, into her head, awaiting interpretation. A jumble of words needing straightening out. She nods in all the right places. Coos, really. Comforting verbal hugs. When he gets to the part about the second pant leg she says, “Of course you wouldn’t have folded it up—you thought he’d stay in one place.” Already she is making sense of it for him. It is as if the words weighed a pound each and in speaking them, in getting them off of his mind, he is shedding the weight.
“I just feel so bad,” Henry says. At the end. Her hand is still resting on his. He is now aware of the stroking motion. And presto, he now feels the thrill of her touch.
“I know,” she says. “But it’s not your fault. You just feel bad for him…like, as a person. You know? But it wasn’t your fault.”
Henry is suddenly horrified to realize that he may have used Mr. Murray as an excuse to see Cathy after all. Because when he looks up into her eyes he no longer feels anything for the old man. Just relief that Cathy is here, touching him, talking to him. What else could explain his newfound elation? he wonders.
“I guess I better get back to the store,” he says.
She nods and gives his hand a squeeze before withdrawing.
John Murray died twelve hours later and was buried later in the week. In that same pair of loafers.
Chapter seven
1977
Finally….finally…Henry knows what he has to do. A can of paint can’t cost that much, he reasons. He stops by the Murray house on his way to the hardware store.
“Hi, Mrs. Murray. Is Jimmy home?”
“Hi, Henry,” she says, and holds the door open for him to come in. “Jimmy? Henry’s here.” She calls upstairs.
Jimmy bounds down the stairs and the boys are off. The walk to Main Street is long and seems longer if alone so it is an arrangement they have—Henry and Jimmy—that if one has to walk into town the other will keep him company. They never discussed it but just happened on it and it stuck. They silently kick a rock ahead and back and forth, careful not to lose it.
“Hey there, boys.” Mr. Hillman at the hardware store is the father of a friend of Henry’s from school. “What can I do for you today?”
“I need some white paint,” Henry says.
“Aisle three. Satin finish?”
Jimmy is fiddling with the power tool display.
“Oh.” Henry had not considered the finish. “Um, I just need to touch a few things up. I don’t know. What kind would I use for inside? For a door. For the frame around a door.”
Mr. Hillman smiles. “A door. Well, there’re lots of different options. Do you have the can of paint that was used originally? An old can? Maybe your father kept it. That would tell you for sure.”
Henry blushes at his own stupidity. He had not even checked his father’s rarely used workbench. And that would be just the sort of thing his father would do: save an old can to make an exact match. Dammit, Henry curses to himself.
“What if I don’t need a match?” he says, a light bulb of an idea winking in his brain. “What if I just do the whole area over?”
“Well—” Mr. Hillman ponders this “—better go with semi-gloss.”
Aisle three is bursting with white choices that depress Henry, who had started out the day sure that this was a good idea.
Mr. Hillman suggests this and that, pointing to different brands and consistencies. Henry shrugs at each one, wanting a decision to be made for him. At last he settles for the semi-gloss in linen, the shade of white, Mr. Hillman says, that is most popular. So Henry fishes the money out of his pocket and pays almost exact change.
“Nice to see you two,” Mr. Hillman calls out over the friendly bell that tinkles on their exit.
“What’re you painting?” Jimmy asks.
“Just a stupid project my dad needs it for,” Henry lies. “What’re you doing lat
er?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll come by when I’m done,” Henry says. This is the easy exchange that has always existed between them.
“See ya,” Jimmy calls out as Henry turns back up his front walk.
Back at home Henry goes straight to the basement and sure enough there are the old paint cans he should have thought about before his errand. Dried paint is petrified on the sides of most. Pompeian drips. In some cases, on a few cans, the old paint has covered up the label so Henry cannot be sure which is which. His father had not labeled any of them. Which is a sort of relief: if asked he can say he tried to match colors but—here’s the beauty of it—he can effectively turn it around and make it his father’s fault for not writing something indicating what color went where in the house.
Buoyed by this he takes a paintbrush from the Peg-Board and, on his way back upstairs, grabs an old newspaper to use as a splatter guard he knows he will not need but, just in case, he wants his bases covered.
He has barely made a stroke when rattling ice cubes announce his mother’s arrival.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she asks. “Stop.”
“What?” he stands up to face her. “I’m just touching up…”
“Stop,” she says. It is three in the afternoon and she is still in her nightgown. “Edgar?” She yells this part.
“Mom…” He reaches for her. “It’s no big deal. I’m just…”
“What is it? What’s wrong?” His father towers over both of them. He takes in the can of paint, the brush in Henry’s hand, his wife’s highball.
“Do you see what your son is doing?” she says, stumbling off to the living room. Or maybe upstairs. Henry is not sure. He is looking at his father.
“I won’t have it,” she shouts on her way to settle somewhere else. “I just won’t have it.”