The Cry of the Sloth

  At the end of the long driveway bordered by the leafless stubble of boxwood hedges, they could see the stately old farmhouse, now sadly in need of sundry repairs, nestled under the two big oak trees. Adam inched the big truck forward, so the handful of chickens pecking in the gravel could stagger out of the way, some of them falling down when they tried to hurry and having to be helped up by the others. He noticed a few gumball-sized eggs scattered here and there in the sand, the hens having wandered off and forgotten about them as they were wont to do ever since they had contracted the blight.

  Flo’s father saw them approaching—heard them before he saw them due to the crash of the John Deere mower against the sign, though he did not know that that was what it was, thinking instead that one of the salesman had run into the ditch as they sometimes did in their eagerness—and he came down to meet them, using a gently sloping wooden ramp especially constructed for that purpose. Adam swung the big truck around and skidded to a stop with the driver’s door just a few feet from the old man’s wheelchair, causing the old farmer to vanish from sight for several minutes in the large cloud of dust that came rolling in behind them. This cloud and the fit of coughing and expectoration that ensued allowed Flo to slip out on the passenger side and streak into the house unseen, from which she emerged moments later clad in an attractive summer frock buttoned to the neck

  “Adam Partridge?” the old man said as he clasped Adam’s hand in a hardy grip. “Estelle Partridge’s boy?” Adam nodded. He sat on a stump next to the old man’s chair and laid out the situation.

  “That’ll be Stint Bros. Towing that’s got your car, son,” the old man said ominously. “Dahlberg Stint and his brother Tiresome.” He spit in the dirt next to his chair, a phlegmy gob that caused a few hopeful chickens to stagger closer. Adam looked down at them tugging listlessly at the stringy mess, and his eye for the first time fell on the Winchester rifle in the leather scabbard hanging at the side of the wheelchair. He had assumed it was a large umbrella probably. The old man continued: “More than likely those boys have got her stripped down by now. Come Saturday your radio and tape player’s gonna be on a table at the new flea market they got down Kenosha way. Hubcaps too probably. Young fellows around here think mighty highly of those Mercedes caps. Bend the flanges a little and make ’em fit a Chevy.” Adam drew nearer, and Flo, who was on the porch shelling peas, could not catch more than a word or two now and then. She listened to the quiet susurration of their mutters, and smiled when a hearty laugh or bitter imprecation reached her ears. She occasionally lifted her gaze from the peas to watch them: her father, wizened and calm and stoical in his suffering, and this young man, mercurial and strangely tormented. So different, and yet … She noticed the angle of the jaws, the long straight noses, the cleft chins, and the odd combination of delicate facial features and thick necks. Adam had also noticed this, and he had noticed too the catch in the old man’s voice when he had pronounced the name Estelle Partridge, pronounced it aloud for the first time in thirty-three years. At that moment he could not help but wonder if it was really just warm Coke that had caused his parents to suddenly abandon their ancestral plot and move to California, or was it something darker? And Flo on the porch was wondering the same thing, for Adam had told her the whole story when they were lying in the grass. Suddenly the aged oaks behind them seemed to loom menacingly, like large beasts standing on their hind legs ready to fall upon them with all the weight of the past. They shivered, Adam and Flo shivered, and yet at the same time they rejoiced, feeling the hot pull of blood to blood. And beneath the rearing oaks they silently called to each other across the chicken yard.

  In the silence she heard Adam say, “I’m going to see Mr. Stint. I want my car back.”

  Her father reached in a pocket. He said, “You best take this, boy.”

  Adam took the gun in his hand. He hefted it, felt the way it sat in his palm, for it was a small pistol. He felt a strange calmness overtake him. “Could I use your truck one more time?”

  The old man opened his mouth to reply but his answer was drowned out by a shout from the porch.

  “No!” came the panicked cry, followed by the clatter of peas on the porch floor as Flo leaped to her feet. Her hands clawed convulsively at her bodice, and she fell heavily across the rail. Adam and her father looked up, and both of them were reminded of a rag doll.

  Adam had leaped from the stump and was rushing to Flo’s side, when he was nearly jerked off his feet by the vise-like grip of the old man’s hand on his sleeve, strong still, though it was gnarled and wizened. He was staring at the empty trailer, which he seemed to have noticed for the first time, his old rheumy eyes like bloodshot marbles, “Where’s the mower?” he croaked. He glanced over to where Flo lay slumped over the porch railing. “Hun, where’s my mower?” “My mower,” he was shouting now, “What did you do with my mower?”

  ¶

  Dear Rory,

  Tremendous poems. Your best yet, especially the one beginning “Moon rise / The transom of the mind falls open.” Do you have periods when you can’t leave the house? I sense something of that sort in the poem. It struck a chord with me, as I have been feeling more and more that way myself, wanting to stay home, just say to hell with the whole brouhaha, and then I think thank god for curtains.

  All the best,

  Andy

  ¶

  Dear Jolie,

  I enclose a money order. This is all I’ll be sending for a long time. I am preparing to consolidate my mind and enter a forest to live on acorns, thereby turning what’s left of my life into a manageable asset. I have had to walk upon the spines of hideous obstacles in order to get this money to you. I have endured gruesome adventures. Essentially, I was flung down and castigated. Morally, I failed, and was embarrassed. Happily, I have slewed forth and triumphed. Details follow.

  For the past two months, ever since the bank started snatching its usurer’s cut from everything I deposit on the pretense of minutely shrinking the vast unpayable sums I owe it, I have cajoled, threatened, and wheedled the tenants into paying a portion of the rent in cash. On Wednesday last I had five hundred and eighty dollars precisely folded in the outside pocket of my blue jacket (the more secure inside pocket being ripped and dangling). I was walking down Fourth Street on the north sidewalk, on my way to the post office, whistling and swinging my arms, and taking little jumps over the broken spots in the pavement, of which there were a great many. My eyes were darting this way and that, there not being any salient sights on the street to keep them in one place for long, when they fell upon a vehicle idling at a traffic light, smoke eructing from its tailpipe in a stinking cloud. Though I was approaching from behind, and so did not have a full and capacious view of the object in its entirety, various tokens and signs let me know that this was the very vehicle I had seen described in a story by one of my contributors. The engine of my brain gave a small whirr and told me that the knobby thing visible through the grime of the vehicle’s rear window was in all likelihood the hatless head of that same contributor. This is called reasoning from the whole to the part; it takes but a second. Having not expected to see said contributor in that spot, and he of course not expecting me there either, I took advantage of these combined unexpectancies to crouch very low and creep up behind the truck (for the vehicle in question was indeed a pickup truck) before the light could flash its permissive green again. My intention was to spring into the bed of the truck—like a tiger, one could say—and then advance rapidly across it to the back of the cab. Once there I had planned—the brain, reinforced by a rapidly pounding heart, was now whirring at a tremendous speed—to clutch with my right hand the chromium mount of a large radio antennae which I saw protruding from the roof while my left arm snaked swiftly around the edge of the cab and slithered in through the open window at the driver’s side. It would have been a good surprise had it worked. Unfortunately, at the very instant I launched myself into the air in the direction of the bed of the truck it disappeared beneath me.
The light had leaped abruptly to green (there is, alas, no yellow in that direction), and the truck had shot forward with a great squealing and smoking of its tires. I might have lost my balance at that moment. That I did not, at least not yet, and was able to bound in hot pursuit, was due to nothing but sheer luck. I believe I was waving my arms and yelling, and was even gaining on the truck, which had been held up by traffic, when I was betrayed by the sole of my shoe. I should have mentioned this at the outset: part of my left shoe had been relaxing its grip on the other parts for several days now and was making a regular flapping sound when I walked. It was a rather enjoyable noise and I had learned to smack my foot down in a way that amplified it several fold. It was quite a stunner in the supermarket. Of course I had not considered the dangers this would pose should I ever need to accelerate my pace beyond a hobble, as indeed I did need to do when pursuing the truck. Thanks to it, the situation did not unfold the way I had hoped when I began to pump the old pistons. To make a long tale short, I fell—precipitously, abysmally, and very hard. I ripped both knees of my trousers, I scraped my left palm so badly it burned like fire for several hours while oozing droplets of blood from parallel furrows, and I almost broke my finger.

  So there I was sprawled in the middle of the busy intersection, traffic was backing up in all directions. Amazingly, no one leaped to my aid, nor did they saunter to it. What they thought of course I could not know; perhaps they thought of both leaping and sauntering, but in the end could not be bothered. I could see heads poking out of car windows all down the line, craning for a better view, and not just children’s heads either, but still nobody got out. I managed to haul myself up into a sitting position and was engaged in close communication with my knees, when a car horn sounded from far down the line, a single halfhearted toot made by the pressure of an uncertain and craven palm. I looked up. I may have glowered. I am sure I grimaced (I was beginning to register the pain in my hands and knees). I realized that I had lost a shoe, the villain with the flap. I tried unsuccessfully to put it on. I would have had to loosen the lace, which I always double knot. I scarcely had the use of my fingers, paralyzed as they were by tingles. Meanwhile, there was no further sounding of horns. I would have preferred a chorus of them. The drizzle of patient silence was completely unnerving. Swiveling my head to all points of the compass, I saw no manly hand outstretched to help, no angelic smile of succoring female beamed its sunshine upon me. My gaze met only the grinning chrome of the automobiles’ grills and bumpers and the blank stares of their huge glass eyes. I crawled—yes, crawled!—on all fours, on my bloodied knees and hands, out of the roadway. I collapsed in a heap on the grass verge. I leaned my back against a signal pole and watched the traffic resume its wonted pace. I thought of how the indifference at the heart of the machine migrates into the souls of those who command them. Then I took off my other shoe and walked home in my socks.

  I assumed at first that my finger was only sprained. But after lying awake all night listening to its complaints, I discovered in the morning an interesting new object protruding from my palm: a soft whitish cylinder about twice the thickness of my erstwhile digit. Where I had once had a knuckle, it sported a dimple. I thought, “I ought to have this looked at.” Other days I would have carried it to Dorfmann. I would have relished handing him my poor damaged digit like baby Jesus cradled in a bloody palm. There was a time when this would have moved him. But our relationship has hit a sharp snag since you left—he was always soft on you—and I am not going to trust an asshole with the life of my trigger finger. Looking in the phone book I discovered a Lawrence Swindell, MD with an office on Oak Court, which is the little street that runs along the back of the Maytag plant. I swallowed six aspirin and drove over. Oak Court is a dead-end street with small ranch houses along one side and a chain-link fence along the other. A wooden sign—Dr. Lawrence Swindell, MD—hung beneath a mailbox in front of one of the houses.

  I opened the screen door, and a chime sounded from somewhere in the back. The waiting room looked like somebody’s living room, complete with sofa and glass-topped coffee table. I sat down in a chair by the door. There were not any magazines, and I was the only customer, so I thought I would take a fresh look at my knees. Unfortunately, I had changed pants and the ones I was wearing did not have openings in the right places. I had to roll the legs up almost to my thighs in order to get a really good peek, and because of my hurt finger I had to do the rolling with one hand, which took some time. I palpated the crusty bits on my kneecaps a while, and then I studied my finger some more. It looked a lot like an enormous grub worm. I took out my pen and gave it two little eyes. I was considering the kind of mouth it wanted—a downturned one certainly, it being a wounded creature, but I wasn’t sure if it should have teeth—when I was interrupted by the entrance of a woman in a nurse suit. I thought of poor Mama and Mrs. Robinson. Seeing me there with my pants rolled up she assumed that I had come about my knees and was already bending over for a closer look when I said, “No, my knees are O.K. It’s my trigger finger.” I held it up so she could look at it. I rotated it so she could see all sides. “It has eyes,” I said.

  “I see that,” she replied.

  I said, “Do you know Elaine Robinson?”

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “Should I?”

  I thought she should. I said, “Elaine Robinson is a nurse in Milwaukee.”

  She said, “Why would I know somebody in Milwaukee? I’ve never even been to Chicago.”

  I wanted to tell her why, but the reason evaded me. “Chicago,” I said, “is bigger than Milwaukee.” She looked puzzled. So I went on, “It started with my shoe.” I lifted my left foot and shook it. The loose sole flapped open and shut. I made it do that a few times. “It’s trying to say something,” I explained.

  She opened her mouth, then closed it. I heard a toilet flushing, and a moment later the doctor walked into the waiting room. He was smiling broadly and ratcheting a bountiful paunch down with successive jerks of a narrow belt. A final cinch, and the belt disappeared into a fold of his belly. He was fat, but except for the paunch there was not a lot of roundness to him. He was blockish and large and his huge square head was bald right down to the ears, which were small and lay flat against his skull. I thought of my own ears and wanted to cuff them (I mean my ears, but also his). “What we got here?” he boomed. I exhibited my offended digit, which he bent over and studied, furrows of fat forming across his brow, while the nurse looked on, her hands on her hips.

  “Can you bend it?” he asked. I tried to make the finger curl; it protested, but I compelled it over. While the doctor interrogated my finger, my own gaze was fixed on the top of his glabrous pate hovering just inches from my face. Round and smooth as a bowling ball, about that size, it was so shiny it made me blink. I glanced up and saw the nurse had noticed my fascination. A faint smile touched the corners of her mouth. Then she winked. I noticed for the first time how neatly she fit her uniform.

  The doctor straightened. “Might be broken,” he said. “But if it is, then the bone’s still in place. Otherwise, you couldn’t move it like you did. Anyway, I can’t put a cast on till the swelling has gone down.”

  I followed him into the examination room. With my pants still rolled above the knees, I looked as if I were about to wade in something. He had me sit on a polished metal table. My feet dangled several inches off the floor. I felt like a child in a high chair. I kicked my legs back and forth in an attempt to pump the feeling up a little.

  “Stop that,” he said. Which was of course the perfect thing to say.

  I sat quietly while he packaged my finger in a splint constructed of two tongue depressors wrapped with several turns of adhesive tape. Then without a word he grasped the rolled legs of my trousers and turned them back down, first one and then the other, and snapped the cuffs straight with sharp tailor-like jerks. He must have worked in a clothes store before becoming a doctor. Leaning on the table next to me he wrote out a prescription for pain medicine
.

  The whole time the doctor was applying the splint the nurse had just stood there watching, hands on her hips, and now she said, “That’ll be twenty dollars.”

  I had the wad of bills from yesterday in my pants pocket, where I had transferred it that morning. My intention was to reach down and peel off a twenty without dragging the rest to the surface. This was not as simple as I thought. Because of the splint I was forced to use my left hand, the clumsy one, though the money was in my right pocket. By twisting my shoulders and torso I contrived to work my hand down into the pocket, where I attempted to unfold the wad. I had what I thought was the corner of a single bill pinched between my thumb and index, while my other three fingers fought off a dozen other bills clinging to it. But the more I struggled, the more tangled they became. From the corner of my eye I could see the nurse craning her neck in what was either astonishment or an effort to peer into my pocket. I succeeded finally in peeling off the twenty and began cautiously withdrawing my hand. This hand, however, having approached the pocket from the wrong side, had entered at an oblique angle, and was now stuck there. I could, of course, let go the bill, relax my fingers, and slip my hand out without difficulty. That, however, would defeat the purpose, leave me without the twenty, and oblige me to start the whole process over. One solution would have been for the doctor or, better, the nurse, being smaller, to put her hand in. But I was reluctant to have them do that. Meanwhile, my awkward posture (twisted at the middle, my left hand sunk deep in my right pocket), combined with the physical exertion of trying to wrench the hand back out, caused me to lose my balance. Staggering sideways, I lurched across the room and collided with the side of a glass-fronted cabinet. Fortunately the glass did not break, though judging by the noise a number of things fell over inside. Finally, by dint of an upward jerk that practically lifted my feet from the floor, I snatched my hand free from what I had come to think of as the jaws of my pocket. My hand rocketed forth, the sought-after twenty dangling from it, and immediately in its wake the entire wad of remaining bills erupted from the pocket in a kind of volcanic explosion.