Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories

A WEE DOCH AND DORIS

HE STOOD FOR a long while staring up at the house, but all was quiet. There was one light on in an upstairs window, but he saw no shadows flickering on the shades. Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse, Louis smirked to himself. Christmas wasn’t so hot if you were in his line of work. People tended to stay home with the family: the one night a year when everybody wishes they were the Waltons. But all that togetherness wore off in a week. By now everybody had cabin fever, and they were dying to get away from the in-laws and the rug rats. That’s how it was in his family, anyway. By New Year’s Eve his ma had recovered from the thrill of receiving candy from Anthony, bubble bath from Michael, and a bottle of perfume from Louis, and she had started nagging again. Louis always gave her a bottle of perfume. He preferred small, lightweight gifts that could be slipped easily and unobtrusively into one’s pocket.

He also preferred not to have endless discussions with his nearest and dearest over whether he was going to get a job or enroll in the auto mechanics program at the community college. Neither idea appealed to Louis. He liked his schedule: sleeping until eleven, a quick burger for brunch, and a few hours of volunteer work at the animal shelter.

Nobody at the shelter thought Louis was lazy or unmotivated. He was their star helper. He didn’t mind hosing down the pens and cleaning the food dishes, but what he really enjoyed was playing with the dogs, and brushing down the shaggy ones. They didn’t have a lot of money at the shelter, so they couldn’t afford to pay him. It took all their funds to keep the animals fed and healthy; the shelter refused to put a healthy animal to sleep. Louis heartily approved of this policy, and thus he didn’t mind working for free; in fact, sometimes when the shelter’s funds were low, he gave them a donation from the proceeds of his night’s work. Louis thought that rich people should support local charities; he saw himself as the middleman, except that his share of the take was ninety percent. Louis also believed that charity begins at home.

Christmas was good for the shelter. Lots of people high on the Christmas spirit adopted kittens and puppies, or gave them as gifts, and the shelter saw to it that they got a donation for each adoptee. So their budget was doing okay, but Louis’s personal funds were running short. Christmas is not a good time of year for a burglar. Sometimes he’d find an empty house whose occupants were spending Christmas out of town, but usually the neighborhood was packed with nosy people, eyeballing every car that went by. You’d think they were looking for Santa Claus.

If Christmas was bad for business, New Year’s Eve made up for it. Lots of people went out to parties that night, and did not plan on coming home until well after midnight. Being out for just the evening made them less security conscious than the Christmas people who went out of town: New Year’s party-goers were less likely to hide valuables, activate alarms, or ask the police to keep an eye on the premises. Louis had had a busy evening. He’d started around nine o’clock, when even the tardiest guests would have left for the party, and he had hit four houses, passing on one because of a Doberman pinscher in the backyard. Louis had nothing against the breed, but he found them very unreasonable, and not inclined to give strangers the benefit of the doubt.

The other four houses had been satisfactory, though. The first one was “guarded” by a haughty white Persian whose owners had forgotten to feed it. Louis put down some canned mackerel for the cat, and charged its owners one portable television, one 35mm. camera, three pairs of earrings, a CD player, and a collection of compact discs. The other houses had been equally rewarding. After a day’s visit to various flea markets and pawnshops, his financial standing should be greatly improved. This was much better than auto mechanics. Louis realized that larceny and auto mechanics are almost never mutually exclusive, but he felt that the hours were better in freelance burglary.

He glanced at his watch. A little after midnight. This would be his last job of the evening. Louis wanted to be home before the drunks got out on the highway. His New Year’s resolution was to campaign for gun control and for tougher drunk driving laws. He turned his attention back to the small white house with the boxwood hedge and the garden gnome next to the birdbath. No danger of Louis stealing that. He thought people ought to have to pay to have garden gnomes stolen. A promising sideline-he would have to consider it. But now to the business at hand.

The hedge seemed high enough to prevent the neighbors from seeing into the yard. The house across the street was vacant, with a big yellow FOR SALE sign stuck in the yard. The brick split-level next door was dark, but they had a chain-link fence, and their front yard was floodlit like the exercise yard of a penitentiary. Louis shook his head: paranoia and bad taste.

There was no car in the driveway-a promising sign that no one was home. He liked the look of the rectangular kitchen window. It was partly hidden by a big azalea bush, and it looked like the kind of window that opened out at the bottom, with a catch to keep it from opening too far. It was about six feet off the ground. Louis was tempted to look under the garden gnome for a spare house key, but he decided to have a look at the window instead. Using a key was unsporting; besides, the exercise would be good for him. If you are a burglar, your physique is your fortune.

He walked a lot, too. Tonight Louis had parked his old Volkswagen a couple of streets away, not so much for the exercise as for the fact that later no one would remember seeing a strange car in the vicinity. The long walk back to the car limited Louis’s take to the contents of a pillowcase or two, also from the burgled home, but he felt that most worthwhile burglary items were small and lightweight, anyway. The pillowcases he gave as baby gifts to new parents of his acquaintance, explaining that they were the perfect size to use as a cover for a bassinet mattress. Even better than a fitted crib sheet, he insisted, because after the kid grows up, you can use the pillowcases yourself. Louis was nothing if not resourceful.

He stayed close to the boxwood hedge as he edged closer to the house. With a final glance to see that no one was driving past, he darted for the azalea bush, and ended up crouched behind it, just under the rectangular window. Perfect. Fortunately it wasn’t too cold tonight-temperature in the mid-thirties, about average for the Virginia Christmas season. When it got colder than that, his dexterity was impaired, making it hard to jimmy locks and tamper with windows. It was an occupational hazard. Tonight would be no problem, though, unless the window had some kind of inside lock.

It didn’t. He was able to chin himself on the windowsill and pull the window outward enough to get a hand inside and slip the catch. With that accomplished, another twenty seconds of wriggling got him through the window and onto the Formica countertop next to the sink. There had been a plant on the windowsill, but he managed to ease that onto the counter before sliding himself all the way through. The only sound he made was a slight thump as he went from countertop to floor; no problem if the house was unoccupied.

Taking out his pen-sized flashlight, Louis checked out the kitchen. It was squeaky clean. He could even smell the lemon floor cleaner. He shined the light on the gleaming white refrigerator. Some people actually put their valuables in the freezer compartment. He always checked that last, though. In the corner next to the back door was a small washing machine and an electric dryer, with clean clothes stacked neatly on the top. Louis eased his way across the room and inspected the laundry. Women’s clothes-small sizes-towels, dishcloths… ah, there they were! Pillowcases. He helped himself to the two linen cases, sniffing them appreciatively. Fabric softener. Very nice. Now he was all set. Time to shop around.

He slipped into the dining room and flashed the light on the round oak table and the ladder-back chairs. Two places laid for breakfast. Weren’t they the early birds, though? The salt and pepper shakers looked silver. They were in the shape of pheasants. Louis slid them into his pillowcase and examined the rest of the room. The glass of the china cabinet flashed his light back at him. Bunch of flowery plates. No chance that he’d be taking those. He looked around for a silver chest, but didn’t see one. He’d check on it later. He wanted to examine the living room first.

Louis flashed an exploratory light at the fireplace, the chintz couch covered with throw pillows, and the glass-fronted bookcase. There were some candlesticks on the mantelpiece that looked promising. As he crept forward to inspect them, the room was flooded with light.

Squinting at the sudden brightness, Louis turned toward the stairs and saw that he wasn’t alone. The overhead lights had been switched on by a sweet-faced old woman in a green velvet bathrobe. Louis braced himself for the scream, but the old lady was smiling. She kept coming daintily down the stairs. Smiling. Louis stared, trying to think up a plausible story. She couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, and her blue eyes sparkled from a wrinkled but pleasant face. She patted her white permed hair into place. She looked delighted. Probably senile, Louis thought.

“Well, I’m glad to see you!” the woman said brightly. “I was afraid it was going to be my daughter Doris.”

Definitely senile, thought Louis. “No, it’s just me,” he said, deciding to play along. He held the pillowcase behind his back.

“Just after midnight, too, isn’t it? That’s grand, that is. Otherwise I’d have to ask you to go out and come in again, you know.”

Louis noticed her accent now. It was sort of English, he thought. But she wasn’t making any sense. “Come in again?”

“Ah, well, being an American you wouldn’t know the custom, would you? Well, you’re welcome all the same. Now, what can I get for you?”

Louis realized just in time that she meant food or drink, rather than jewelry and savings bonds. “Nothing for me, thanks,” he said, giving her a little wave, and trying to edge for the front door.

Her face fell. “Oh, no. Please! You must let me fix you something. Otherwise, you’ll be taking the luck away with you. How about a piece of cake? I made it today. And a bit of strong drink? It’s New Year’s, after all.”

She still didn’t look in the least perturbed. And she wasn’t trying to get to the telephone or to trip an alarm. Louis decided that he could definitely use a drink.

The old lady beamed happily up at him, and motioned for him to follow her into the kitchen. “I’ve been baking for two days,” she confided. “Now, let’s see, what will you have?”

She rummaged around in a cupboard, bringing out an assortment of baked goods on glass plates, which she proceeded to spread out on the kitchen table. She handed Louis a blue-flowered plate, and motioned for him to sit down. When she went in to the dining room to get some cloth napkins, Louis stuffed the pillowcase under his coat, making sure that the salt and pepper shakers didn’t clink together. Finally, he decided that the least suspicious thing to do would be to play along. He sat.

“Now,” she announced, “we have Dundee cake with dried fruit, black bun with almonds, shortbread, petticoat tails…”

Louis picked up a flat yellow cookie, and nibbled at it, as his hostess babbled on.

“When I was a girl in Dundee-”

“Where?”

“Dundee. Scotland. My mother used to bake an oat bannock-you know, a wee cake-for each one of us children. The bannocks had a hole in the middle, and they were nipped in about the edges for decoration. She flavored them with carvey-caraway seed. And we ate them on New Year’s morning. They used to say that if your bannock broke while it was baking, you’d be taken ill or die in the New Year. So I never baked one for my daughter Doris. Oh, but they were good!”

Louis blinked. “You’re from Scotland?”

She was at the stove now, putting a large open pot on the burner, and stirring it with a wooden spoon. “Yes, that’s right,” she said. “We’ve been in this country since Doris was five, though. My husband wanted to come over, and so we did. I’ve often thought of going home, now that he’s passed on, but Doris won’t hear of it.”

“Doris is your daughter,” said Louis. He wondered if he ought to bolt before she showed up, in case she turned out to be sane.

“Yes. She’s all grown up now. She works very hard, does Doris. Can you imagine having to work on Hogmanay?”

“On what?”

“Hogmanay. New Year’s Eve. She’s out right now, poor dear, finishing up her shift. That’s why I was so glad to see you tonight. We could use a bit of luck this year, starting with a promotion for Doris. Try a bit of the Dundee cake. It’s awfully rich, but you can stand the calories, from the look of you.”

Louis reached for another pastry, still trying to grasp a thread of sense in the conversation. He wanted to know why he was so welcome. Apparently she hadn’t mistaken him for anyone else. And she didn’t seem to wonder what he was doing in her house in the middle of the night. He kept trying to think of a way to frame the question without incriminating himself.

Steam was rising in white spirals from the pot on the stove. The old lady took a deep breath over the fumes, and nodded briskly. “Right. That should be done now. Tell me, lad, are you old enough to take spirits?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Louis realized that he was being offered a drink and not a séance. “I’m twenty-two,” he mumbled.

“Right enough, then.” She ladled the steaming liquid into two cups, and set one in front of him.

Louis sniffed it and frowned.

“It’s called a het pint,” said the old lady, without waiting for him to ask. “It’s an old drink given to first footers. Spirits, sugar, beer, and eggs. When I was a girl, they used to carry it round door to door in a kettle. Back in Dundee. Not that I drink much myself, of course. Doris is always on about my blood pressure. But tonight is Hogmanay, and I said to myself: Flora, why don’t you stir up the het pint. You never know who may drop in. And, you see, I was right. Here you are!”

“Here I am,” Louis agreed, taking a swig of his drink. It tasted a little like eggnog. Not bad. At least it was alcoholic. He wouldn’t have more than a cup, though. He still had to drive home.

The old lady-Hora-sat down beside Louis and lifted her cup. “Well, here’s to us, then. What’s your name, lad?”

“Louis,” he said, before he thought better of it.

“Well, Louis, here’s to us! And not forgetting a promotion for Doris!” They clinked their cups together, and drank to the New Year.

Flora dabbed at the corners of her mouth with a linen napkin, and reached for a piece of shortbread. “I must resolve to eat fewer of these during the coming year,” she remarked. “Else Doris will have me out jogging.”

Louis took another piece to keep her company. It tasted pretty good. Sort of like a sugar cookie with delusions of grandeur. “Did you have a nice Christmas?” he asked politely.

Flora smiled. “Perhaps not by American standards. Doris had the day off, and we went to church in the morning, and then had our roast beef for dinner. She gave me bath powder, and I gave her a new umbrella. She’s always losing umbrellas. I suppose that’s a rather subdued holiday by your lights, but when I was a girl, Christmas wasn’t such a big festival in Scotland. The shops didn’t even close for it. We considered it a religious occasion for most folk, and a lark for the children. The holiday for grown people was New Year’s.”

“Good idea,” grunted Louis. “Over here, we get used to high expectations when we’re kids, and then as adults, we get depressed every year because Christmas is just neckties and boredom.”

Flora nodded. “Oh, but you should have seen Hogmanay when I was a girl! No matter what the weather, people in Dundee would gather in the City Square to wait out the old year’s end. And there’d be a great time of singing all the old songs…”

“ ‘Auld Lang Syne’?” asked Louis.

“That’s a Scottish song, of course.” Flora nodded. “But we sang a lot of the other old tunes as well. And there was country dancing. And then just when the new year was minutes away, everyone would lapse into silence. Waiting. There you’d be in the dark square, with your breath frosting the air, and the stars shining down on the world like snowflakes on velvet. And it was so quiet you could hear the ticking of the gentlemen’s pocket watches.”

“Sounds like Times Square,” said Louis, inspecting the bottom of his cup.

Flora took the cup, and ladled another het pint for each of them. “After the carrying on to welcome in the new year, everyone would go about visiting and first-footing their neighbors. My father was always in great demand for that, being tall and dark as he was. And he used to carry lumps of coal in his overcoat to be sure of his welcome.”

“What,” said Louis, “is first-footing?”

“Well, it’s an old superstition,” said Flora thoughtfully. “Quite pagan, I expect, if the truth were told, but then, you never can be sure, can you? You don’t have a lump of coal about you, by any chance?”

Louis shook his head.

“Ah, well. First-footing, you asked.” She took a deep breath, as if to warn him that there was a long explanation to follow. “In Scotland the tradition is that the first person to cross your threshold after midnight on Hogmanay symbolizes your luck in the year to come. The first foot to enter your house, you see.”

Louis nodded. It’s lucky to be burgled? he was thinking.

“The best luck of all comes if you’re first-footed by a tall, dark stranger carrying a lump of coal. Sometimes family friends would send round a tall, dark houseguest that our family had not met, so that we could be first-footed by a stranger. The rest of the party would catch up with him a few minutes later.”

“I guess I fit the bill, all right,” Louis remarked. He was just over six feet, and looked more Italian than Tony Bennett. His uncles called him Luigi.

“So you do.” Flora smiled. “Now the worst luck for the new year is to be first-footed by a short, blond woman who comes in empty-handed.”

Louis remembered the first thing the old woman had said to him. “So Doris is a short blonde?”

“She is that. Gets her height from me. Or the lack of it. And she can never remember to hunt up a lump of coal, or bring some wee gift home with her to help the luck. Ever since Colin passed away, Doris has been first foot in this house, and where has it got us? Her with long hours, and precious little time off, and me with rheumatism and a fixed income-while prices go up every year. We could use a change of luck. Maybe a sweepstakes win.”

Louis leaned back in his chair, struggling between courtesy and common sense. “You really believe in all this stuff?” he asked her.

A sad smile. “Where’s the harm? When you get older, it’s hard to let go of the customs you knew when you were young. You’ll see.”

Louis couldn’t think of any family customs, except eating in front of the TV set and never taking the last ice cube-so you wouldn’t have to refill the tray. Other than that, he didn’t think he had much in common with the people he lived with. He thought about telling Flora about his work at the animal shelter, but he decided that it would be a dangerous thing to do. She already knew his name. Any further information would enable her and the police to locate him in a matter of hours. If she ever cottoned on to the fact that she had been robbed, that is.

“Do you have any pets?” he asked.

Flora shook her head. “We used to have a wee dog, but he got old and died a few years back. I haven’t wanted to get another one, and Doris is too busy with her work to help in taking care of one.”

“I could get you a nice puppy, from-” He stopped himself just in time. “Well, never mind. You’re right. Dogs are more work than most people think. Or they ought to be.”

Flora beamed. “What a nice young man you are!”

He smiled back nervously.

Louis nibbled another piece of shortbread while he considered his dilemma. He had been caught breaking in to a house, and the evidence from the rest of the evening’s burglaries was in the trunk of his Volkswagen. The logical thing to do would be to kill the old dear, so that he wouldn’t have to worry about getting caught. Logical, yes, but distasteful. Louis was not a killer. The old lady reminded him of one of the sad-eyed cocker spaniels down at the shelter. Sometimes people brought in pets because they didn’t want them anymore, or were moving. Or because the kid was allergic to them. Often these people asked that the animal be destroyed, which annoyed Louis no end. Did they think that if they didn’t want the pet, no one else should have it? Suppose divorce worked like that? Louis could see putting an old dog to sleep if it was feeble and suffering, but not just because the owners found it inconvenient to have it around. He supposed that his philosophy would have to apply to his hostess as well, even if she were a danger to his career. After all, Flora was old, but she was not weak or in pain. She seemed quite spry and happy, in fact, and Louis couldn’t see doing away with her just for expedience. After all, people had rights, too, just like animals.

He wondered what he ought to do about her. It seemed to boil down to two choices: he could tie her up, finish robbing the house, and make his getaway, or he could finish his tea and leave, just as if he had been an ordinary-what was it?-first footer.

He leaned back in his chair, considering the situation, and felt a sharp jab in his side. A moment’s reflection told him what it had been: the tail of the pheasant salt shaker. He had stashed the pair in the pillowcase, now concealed under his coat. He couldn’t think of any way to get rid of his loot without attracting suspicion. Then she might realize that he was a burglar; then she might panic, and try to call the police; then he would have to hit her to keep himself from being captured. It was not an appealing scenario. Louis decided that the kindest thing to do would be to tie her up, finish his job, and leave.

Flora was prattling on about Scottish cakes and homemade icing, but he hadn’t been listening. He thought it would be rather rude to begin threatening his hostess while he still had a mouthful of cake, but he told himself that she had been rather rude, too. After all, she hadn’t asked him anything about himself. That was thoughtless of her. A good hostess ought to express a polite interest in her guests.

Flora’s interminable story seemed to have wound down at last. She looked up at the kitchen clock. It was after one. “Well,” she said, beaming happily at Louis. “It’s getting late. Can I get you a wee doch and dorris?”

Louis blinked. “A what?”

“A drink, lad. Wee doch and dorris is a Scottish expression for the last drink of the evening. One for the road, as you say over here. Scotch, perhaps?”

He shook his head. “I’m afraid not,” he said. “I do have to be going, but I’m afraid I will have to tie you up now.”

He braced himself for tears, or, even worse, a scream, but the old lady simply took another sip of her drink, and waited. She wasn’t smiling anymore, but she didn’t look terrified, either. Louis felt his cheeks grow hot, wishing he could just get out of there. Burglars weren’t supposed to have to interact with people; it wasn’t part of the job description. If you liked emotional scenes, you became an armed robber. Louis hated confrontations.

“I hope this won’t change your luck for the new year or anything,” he mumbled, “but the reason I came in here tonight was to rob the house. You see, I’m a burglar.”

Flora nodded, still watching him closely. Not a flicker of surprise had registered on her face.

“I really enjoyed the cakes and all, but after all, business is business.”

“In Scotland, it’s considered unlucky to do evil after you’ve accepted the hospitality of the house,” the old lady said calmly.

Louis shrugged. “In America it’s unlucky to miss car payments.”

She made no reply to this remark, but continued to gaze up at him impassively. At least she wasn’t being hysterical. He almost wished that he had given up the whole idea.

Louis cleared his throat and continued. “The reason I have to tie you up is that I have to finish getting the stuff, and I have to make sure you can’t call for help until I’m long gone. But I won’t beat you up or anything.”

“Kind of you,” she said dryly. “There is some spare clothesline in the bottom drawer of the left-hand cabinet.”

He looked at her suspiciously. “Don’t try anything, okay? I don’t want to have to do anything rough.” He didn’t carry a gun (nobody was supposed to be home), but they both knew that a strong young man like Louis could do considerable damage to a frail old lady like Flora with his fists… a candlestick… almost anything could be a weapon.

Keeping his eyes on her, he edged toward the cabinet, squatting down to pull out the drawer. She watched him steadily, making no move to leave her seat. As he eased the drawer open, he saw the white rope clothesline neatly bundled above a stack of paper bags. With considerable relief at the ease of it all, he picked up the rope and turned back to the old lady.

“Okay,” he said, a little nervously. “I’m going to tie you up. Just relax. I don’t want to make it so tight it cuts off circulation, but I’m not, like, experienced, you know? Just sit in the chair with your feet flat on the floor in front of you.”

She did as she was told, and he knelt and began winding the clothesline around her feet, anchoring it to the legs of the chair. He hoped it wasn’t going to be too painful, but he couldn’t risk her being able to escape. To cover his uneasiness at the silent reproach from his hostess, Louis began to whistle nervously as he worked. That was probably why he didn’t hear anything suspicious.

His first inkling that anything was wrong was that Flora suddenly relaxed in her chair. He looked up quickly, thinking, Oh God! The old girl’s had a heart attack! But her eyes were open, and she was smiling. She seemed to be gazing at something just behind him.

Slowly Louis turned his head in the direction of the back door. There was a short, blond woman of about thirty standing just inside the door. She was wearing a dark blue uniform and a positively menacing expression. But what bothered Louis the most about the intruder was the fact that her knees were bent, and she was holding a service revolver in both hands, its barrel aimed precisely at his head.

Louis looked from the blond woman to Flora and back again, just beginning to make the connection. A jerk of the gun barrel made him move slowly away from the chair and put his hands up.

“This is my daughter Doris,” said Flora calmly. “She’s a policewoman. You see, you were lucky for us, Louis. I’m sure she’ll get her promotion after this!”