Gryphon: New and Selected Stories

Winter Journey

HARRELSON, perpetual Ph.D. student, poverty-stricken dissertation nonfinisher, academic man of all work, gourmand, stands in the tiny kitchen cluttered with yellow notepads, a basketball, books, misplaced bookmarks, and boxes of ant killer, staring down at a dented saucepan of cold soup. Harrelson has turned on the burner, but the soup stays cold. At first he thinks that the electric company has at last made good on its promise and turned off the power, yet the bare ceiling bulb continues to shower glare all over everything. The stove is not working. Harrelson grabs the stove on both sides, shaking it, creating lumpy waves in the saucepan. Harrelson’s dissertation on the problem of dating Fulke Greville’s poetry has not been going well. He has been sipping cheap bourbon all evening. Now, at five minutes past one o’clock, with hunger seizing him and the melancholy of his apartment inflating like a face painted on the side of a balloon, he has opened the can of soup for what his mother used to call “proper nutrition.” He lifts the pan, puts his hand over the burner, feels no heat, and transfers the pan to the other burner, twisting the dial to high. He looks out the window. It is snowing a perpetual February snow. Harrelson sees the snow symbolically. Somehow it represents his refusal to sell out. Alone in the kitchen, he says to himself, “Hip hip hooray.” He likes to cheer for himself. It is something he has taught himself to do, in secret.

Turning his attention back to the soup, Harrelson notes that it is boiling. As it does, he gazes at the creation of bubbles at the surface of the soup and listens to the liquid hissing on the side of the pan. How long should soup boil before it is ready to eat? He takes the soup can back out of the trash bag, staining his shirtsleeves with catsup as he does so, and reads the directions: DO NOT BOIL. Harrelson turns the heat off, watches the snow fall for a minute, then reaches for a bile-green plastic bowl in the sink. He washes most of the cornflakes out of the bowl and then pours in the soup. Cream of celery, his favorite. As the steam rises, he searches for a clean spoon and at last finds one with Mickey Mouse on the handle, a twenty-year-old souvenir of Disneyland.

Harrelson takes the spoon and the bowl into the living room and sits down at a wobbly desk five feet in front of the television set. In order to make room for the soup, he pushes three books to the side, and by accident one of them falls off the edge of the desk. It is an old book, a critical commentary. When it hits the floor, its binding breaks and several bookmarks fall out of it. The TV set picks up only one station, which is now showing a Charlie Chan movie, Charlie Chan at the Olympics, starring Harrelson’s favorite Chan, Sidney Toler. Fascinated, Harrelson watches as a world-class track star is discovered to have been murdered. Harrelson drinks the soup and helps himself to the bourbon. Gradually it occurs to him that the phone is ringing. Answering the phone means missing an important clue, but he rises with his eyes still on the television set and backs down the hallway into the bedroom, where the telephone sits inside the bottom drawer of his dresser to minimize the noise of its ringing whenever he has overslept.

He takes the phone out of the drawer and says hello. For a moment he hears nothing and suspects that some sort of prank is being played on him. His friends used to do such things until they found jobs and became respectable. At last a voice rises out of the static clutter and says, “I’m not asking for a favor. I’m demanding it.”

“Who is this?” Harrelson asks. He knows that it is a woman’s voice and that there is a slight edge of irritation to it.

“This is Meredith,” the voice says. She waits. “Meredith. Your fiancée.”

“Meredith!” he says delightedly. “It’s been a long time. Weeks. I can’t remember the last time you called over here. It’s great to hear from you! Are we still engaged? What’ve you been up to, anyway?”

“Cut it out,” she says.

“All right.” There is a gunshot on the sound track of the movie. Harrelson’s foot itches.

“I called because I need help.”

“Name it,” Harrelson says.

“I’m over here at the Mobil station on Stadium Avenue. My car won’t run. Something about the radiator or antifreeze or the water pump. They don’t make much sense here. Anyway, I need a ride home.”

“I’m drunk,” he says.

“How drunk?”

“How drunk what?”

“I mean, how drunk are you?”

“I don’t know.” He stands up in the bedroom, holding on to the telephone. “I was just having some soup when you called. Celery soup. And there’s a Charlie Chan movie on. Something about death and athletics.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Harrelson can hear a cash register clacking in the background of the filling station Meredith is calling from. “Listen,” she says. “I’d call a cab, except I didn’t bring enough money.”

“I will come,” Harrelson says.

“Don’t come if you’re too drunk,” Meredith says. “Can you stand?”

“Yes, I can stand. And,” he adds, “I can sit.”

“Jesus. You are drunk. How soon can you be here?”

“The Mobil station?” He thinks. He cannot remember where it is. He makes a guess. “Fifteen minutes.”

“Are you sure?”

“It is hard to be sure,” Harrelson says, “of anything in this life.”

“If you come to get me, promise you won’t say anything like that again. Promise?”

“Yes. I promise.”

“Now listen,” she says. “It’s snowing out. You’re not sober. You’re going to have to be careful. Put on your seat belt. Avoid other cars.”

“Okay, okay. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be there in no time.” For some reason he repeats the words “no time” before he hangs up.

He remembers to turn off the range and the television set and the lights, but he forgets to put on overshoes and gloves. When he is walking down the front steps, his feet rush out from under him, and he falls on the middle step. He is unhurt. His hands are in the snow, and when he lifts them up, he is pleased to see an outline of his hands on the step. He can feel the snow falling on his hair. He sticks his tongue out. Snow lands on his tongue’s tip like airborne pieces of candy. Now he looks out at the street and sees his car, an ancient Buick, covered with snow, and snow falling in a peaceful rush underneath the streetlight, and more snow accumulating in the street, as if Meredith had thought this through and had wanted a few more difficulties than were absolutely necessary to test his loyalty. Harrelson feels a small quantity of snow working its way into his shoes. “Mr. Nice Guy,” he says, still sitting on the step. He puts his hands down in the snow next to the handprints he has already made. He would like to make a snow angel in the front yard, but Meredith is waiting. He stands up, holding on to the buttons of his coat, and walks with great precision and daring to his car.

As he tries to find his car keys, scattered in his pocket, he holds his head up and looks with an expression of vague speculation at his car and the street. There is certainly a great deal of snow all over everything. Some sort of muffled siren howls gently in the distance. Up the street an unclearly outlined figure is shoveling his sidewalk. Harrelson thinks of Meredith waiting for him in the sinister gas station and renews his efforts to find his car keys. He grasps a number of keys, pulls them out, and watches with neutralized dismay as several of them plop into the snow, leaving slots behind that, Charlie Chan — like, Harrelson uses for pursuit and detection. With all the cold, snowy keys gathered up in his hands, he selects the one that unlocks the car door, deposits the rest in his pocket, and gets in.

He says a prayer, turns the key in the ignition, and the engine starts after a few cranks. As it warms up, exhaust fumes begin seeping up from the floor. Harrelson reaches for a fugitive cigarette on the dashboard, left there by some random hitchhiker — he adores hitchhikers and picks them up at every opportunity — and lights up before getting out to clear the windshield. With his bare hands he sweeps the front and side windows, leaving a bit of ice on the glass for the defroster to take care of. When he is back inside the car, he looks in the rearview mirror and observes that he has not cleared the back window. He shrugs to himself and inhales from the cigarette, which brings on a fit of coughing. He opens the window, looks out into the street to see if anything is coming, prays to his guardian angel, puts the car into gear, and steps on the gas.

In any university town there are hundreds of men like Harrelson, out late at night buying pizzas, sitting at bars sipping their beers quietly, or roaming the streets in their old clunkers. They are all afraid of going home, afraid of looking again at the sheets of clean typewriter paper and the notebooks bare of written thought. They are afraid of facing again their sullen wives and lovers, their tattered and noisy children, if they have any. Against the odds, they refuse to succeed, and the wives and lovers know this and understand it as a rebuke to themselves and family life.

“You won’t grow up” is Meredith’s succinct way of putting it. She has put it to him this way many times, most recently two months ago, in December, the last time they talked. They were sitting in her apartment, its cleanliness a stark contrast to Harrelson’s squalor. Meredith is an accountant, a serious worker with a serious income. They have known each other since high school, when their romance took shape. This romance is now, according to Meredith, on its frail last legs. The fireplace in Meredith’s apartment supplied potent warmth against the December cold, and she had put out the brandy, a V.S.O.P. Despite the appearances, however, the evening was tense, the screws of pressure twisted by Meredith’s contempt for her four-year fiancé. “Look at you,” Meredith said. “Look at what you’ve done with your life. You could have been brilliant. I feel so sorry for you. I don’t want to marry a man I feel sorry for.”

“I agree with you,” Harrelson said. “Pity is a bad foundation for any marriage.”

“Honey,” she said, “I don’t want to break off with you, because I do love you, but I’ve got other things going for me, and I can’t hold them off forever. You know I’ve been going out with other men.”

Harrelson nodded. He was silently praying that she wouldn’t continue in this vein.

“And many of them,” Meredith continued, “are very nice: very bright, successful, and, uh, you know, handsome. I can’t wait forever.”

Harrelson thought she had said everything possible to wound him. So he said, “I’ve made real progress this month. Really, I have. I’m only about fifty pages away from finishing.” He smiled. “Fifty pages away from the degree and a good job.”

“You’re thirty years old,” she said. “You’re getting too old to hire.”

“Oh, no!” This exclamation from Harrelson was more an outcry than a denial.

Meredith leaned forward. Her eyes were glittering. “Honey,” she said, “it’s just that I don’t want to be married to a nerd.”

This was more than even Harrelson could take. He put down his brandy, got into his coat, and left. Because he was Harrelson and because he lived according to a consistent style, he did not shout at her or make an accusation in return. He thought his guardian angels were on vacation and had failed to muzzle Meredith. They allowed her to say what shouldn’t have been said. What no one else knows is that although he attends no church, Harrelson is in an almost constant state of prayer. He has familiars in the spirit world.

The inside of his car smells of burned electrical wire and popcorn. As he exhales smoke from the hitchhiker’s leftover cigarette, a fog appears and frosts visibly on the inside windshield in a pattern of continuous webbing. The car pulls out of its parking spot, its engine making tappet noises that rise to a whine as the back wheels spin on the ice. Fishtailing, the car skids down the street. Harrelson has no snow tires; in fact, the tires are bald. He plans his route in an effort to avoid hills and valleys. Within a minute he has forgotten the route he has planned.

Despite the snow and the streetlights, the street is darker than it should be: a stygian street. Harrelson remembers that one of his headlights has blown out. His hands, gloveless, are aching, numb. And he feels ready to doze off, despite the cold. His drunkenness communicates itself to him as a fanatic desire to crawl into bed and pull the blankets up. He is seeing two of everything: two sets of streetlights, two streets, two steering wheels, two dashboards. And two red lights, both of which he now runs, unable and unwilling to stop the car before entering the intersection. With scholarly interest he observes that he has missed hitting a blue parked car by perhaps two or three feet. For the first time he understands that it might be a moral offense against God and man to be out driving in a snowstorm, drunk. But it is more of an offense before women to be a nerd, a coward, a man who will not help. He accelerates.

At high speed, in snow, the houses fan by him on either side, visually glazed and impacted into smears of windows, doors, roofs, unremoved Christmas lights, chimneys, and, again and again, interior lights, the lights of domesticity left on late at night to ward off prowlers and intruders. Where is the street? It has not been plowed. He continues driving. Continuous motion is important. A dog rushes out in front of the car. It is about the size of an enlarged rat and has a narrow snout. It stops in a seizure of panic. Harrelson hears no thump and feels no impact. He opens his window and looks out into the street receding behind him. The dog stands motionless, watching Harrelson’s car as Harrelson watches the dog, tire tracks imprinted on either side of it in the snow.

“Run over,” Harrelson says aloud, “but not run down.” He laughs to himself, feels the need again to doze off as the heater gradually warms up the car, but resists. He decides to recite poetry. “ ‘Fie, fond desire,’ ” he quotes from Fulke Greville, “ ‘think you that love wants glory / Because your shadows do yourself benight? / The hopes and fears of lust may make men sorry, / But love still in herself finds her delight.’ ” Harrelson hits a parked car. He knows he has hit it from the sound and the impact, but he hasn’t seen it because the windows on the right side are coated with snow. After hitting the car, Harrelson’s Buick bounces back into the middle of the street and begins to skid toward the other side. It hits another parked car, slides for twenty feet, then stops. Glass and plastic have been heard, breaking. He puts the car into first gear and continues down the street, which now looks darker than ever. “Uh-oh,” he says aloud. “I smashed the other headlight.”

I’m not funny, I’m a risk, he thinks.

Other cars are around him; some are moving, others are not. The ones that are moving honk at him and blink their lights. “I am a hazard to myself,” Harrelson says, passing a large building lit up on each floor, as if people are still working. He thinks he sees someone on the third floor looking down at him, an expression of pity on the stranger’s face. The thought of a stranger’s pity makes Harrelson’s eyes smart. Studying the dashboard, trying not to cry, Harrelson steps on the gas, hurrying down the street toward an area where the overhead lights are not so apparent. Sudden darkness: the car plunges into it. He passes two garages and a butcher shop with sausages hanging in the window, the glass lightly covered with snow. What if I hit a child, he thinks. What if I do that.

Now, having made a circle, Harrelson is back under lights in the business district, his car out of control, advancing down the street sideways. He grabs the seat, ready for a collision, and feels the foam under his hand. In front of him is a department-store window, moving from right to left, in which a bald dummy sits wearing a blue polyester leisure suit. He turns the wheel in the direction of the skid, and the Buick straightens out. He feels a sudden elation. He can control himself, the car, the weather conditions. He slows down, steers the car toward the curb, and shuts off the engine. He is drowsy. He will take a brief nap. He bends his head down on his chest and within thirty seconds falls asleep. Instantly a dream starts up. In the dream he is driving the car through a blizzard on his way to get Meredith. The car skids, hits a tree, and there is a bright flash. But he continues driving, reaches her apartment, gets out, and enters the building. He ascends the stairs and walks into her living room. Her back is to him as she works at the stove. “I’m here,” he says. “Hi,” she says, turning around. But now she cannot see him. “Honey,” she says, “is that you?” Her eyes scan the room. “Where are you?” Her voice rises. “I can’t see you.”

He wakes up, full of the intuition that his life is a disaster. He is the sort of person other people cite in order to feel that they themselves are well off: they could live the way Harrelson does. They could be Harrelson. They could think Harrelson’s grubby thoughts. He starts the car. Then, a non-Catholic, he makes the sign of the cross. He has not been arrested. His guardian angel is in the car with him, working overtime. Once in a dream the angel identified himself as Matthew and told Harrelson that he, Harrelson, was under his, Matthew’s, protection. Since that dream, Harrelson has been lazier, more slipshod; sometimes he thinks the dream may have been his undoing.

He drives and drives. He is lost. Visibility is poor. He sees no landmarks. He looks at his watch: he has been in the car for twenty minutes. The windshield wipers move slowly, heavily, like Harrelson’s eyes.

And just at the moment when Harrelson thinks that he is Kafka’s K. and will never reach the Mobil station no matter how long or how hard he tries, there it is. First it appears through the curtain of snow as a glowing patch of light without any solid outlines. Then, second by second, he sees the snowy spotlights, the fluorescent lights over the gas pumps, the aquamarine station itself with its closed garage doors, and now he sees a small old man in a black overcoat filling his car with gas at the self-service pump, and now, closer, he sees an attendant gazing in his direction with something like stupefaction, at Harrelson behind the wheel, in his dark car with no headlights.

The attendant walks over to him. Harrelson’s head is bowed and he is muttering. Though the attendant doesn’t know it, Harrelson is thanking his familiars, making concrete spiritual promises. The man, who is covered with snow, knocks on the window. Harrelson looks at him and rolls it down.

“You okay, buddy?” the man asks. He is wearing a blue parka and gazes in at Harrelson with friendly curiosity. His mouth is open, and Harrelson can see the huge gap of his mouth and his bad, crisscrossed teeth.

“Yeah, I’m all right.”

“Reason I asked is, you got no headlights.”

“I know.” Harrelson suddenly remembers. “Is there a woman waiting inside the station? She’s waiting for me.”

“Yeah,” the man says, “she’s here. What happened to your face, buddy?”

“My face is all right.” He looks toward the door and sees Meredith coming out, all smiles, dressed in her warm red winter coat, her brown boots, and black gloves. Harrelson tries to take his hands off the wheel and finds that he is having difficulty uncurling his fingers. Meredith crosses the front of the car and opens the door on the passenger’s side.

“You should put new headlights in,” the man says, but now Harrelson is closing the window.

He turns toward Meredith, who, instead of smiling, looks horror-struck. “John,” she says, “honey, what happened to you?”

He turns to her, his eyes full of gratitude. “Well,” he says, “I drove over here.”

“No,” she says, “I mean this.” She takes off her right glove and raises her hand to his face. When she touches his skin, he feels a dull burning on his left cheek. “There’s a cut here. A gash. It’s been bleeding. What’d you do?”

“I have no idea.”

“Did you have an accident coming over here?”

“Two.” He holds up two fingers. “I had two accidents.”

“You must have hit your head against the window or the … this.” She reaches over and touches the latch for opening the no-draft window. “You may need stitches.”

“No,” he says. “It doesn’t hurt.” He smiles. “It’s good to see you.” Now he feels happy. “I made it! I made it over here!” He looks at her with a private, conspiratorial expression. “The roads were terrible, and I’m not sober.”

“I know.” She looks at him, top to bottom. “Get out and come over on this side,” she says. “I’ll drive back to my place. I don’t want you driving anymore.”

“All right.” He does as he is told. Now, with Meredith behind the wheel, he sits back, and the pain in his cheek flares up. She is driving. Harrelson does not know where they are. He feels sleepy. She is saying something, but he is not quite sure that it makes any sense. Then the car is parked and Meredith has helped him out, and he is sitting in her living room, his face washed lightly with a washcloth, his cut covered with antiseptic cream. Meredith’s radio is on, and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau is singing.

Habe ja doch nichts begangen

Dass ich Menschen sollte scheu’n—

Welch’ ein törichtes Verlangen

Treibt mich in die Wüstenei’n?

“ ‘I’ve done no wrong,’ ” Harrelson translates, hoping to impress Meredith, “ ‘to shun other men, so what is it that sends me out into the wilderness?’ ”

“That’s the song?”

“That’s it.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. It’s German.”

“I know,” she says. “Isn’t it interesting?”

“I guess so.”

“There.” She is finished cleaning Harrelson’s cheek. “It’s a smaller cut than I thought. Aren’t you going to take off your jacket?” He nods but does nothing. She unzips it and helps him out of it. He is not really looking toward her but toward the stereo radio. “Poor John,” she says. “But listen: thanks for getting me.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I didn’t realize how drunk you were.”

He waves his hand. “That’s all right.”

“Are you cold?” He nods. “Come in and take a warm bath.” She leads him into the bathroom and sits him down while she fills the tub. The warmth in the bathroom makes him sleepy again. He feels her taking his clothes off and helping him into the bathwater. The water’s heat is intensely painful on his chilled feet, like ice picks thrust into the skin. She is still talking. He is bent over in the water, looking at the hair on his legs. “I’ve made a decision,” she is saying. “I’m not going to marry you.”

Harrelson nods. “I know.”

“How did you know? I’ve only just decided.”

“I just knew.” He does not look at her.

“I decided a few days ago. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.” He puts his hand on the surface of the bathtub water and moves it back and forth, creating waves.

“I need more security than you can give me,” she says. “I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.”

“Of course.” Now he turns his head toward her. “Please don’t say any more.”

“I won’t.”

“Thank you.” He takes the soap and washes his arms and chest. “You know, I don’t feel very good.”

“Where?” she asks. “Is it your face?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t feel very good anywhere.”

She stands up and turns away. She opens the medicine cabinet and examines the bottles. “Want some aspirin?”

“No.”

He rises to his feet unsteadily in the tub. Meredith turns around, then takes his hand. With her other hand she reaches for a towel and dries him off. “You need some sleep,” she says. “We both need some sleep.” They walk together toward the bedroom, and Harrelson slips between the cold sheets. He hears the radio being turned off. In a moment, Meredith is in her nightgown, next to him. “We can still be friends,” she says.

“Yes.”

She leans over toward him and kisses him lightly. “We can still make love. There’s no harm in that.” His eyes are closed, but he nods. “Do you want to?”

“No,” he whispers. “I don’t.”

“Maybe next time,” she says. “When you haven’t had so much to drink.” He nods, then reaches his arms around her and rests his hands in their accustomed place below her breasts. As he falls asleep, Harrelson realizes that, after all, they are friends. Meredith does not think he will ever be a husband. Probably she is right. He does not have it in him to take care of another human being. It will never happen. As he drifts over, Harrelson has a premonition that he may not live for long. With what resistance he has left, he dismisses the idea as weakness, a bout of self-pity.

As soon as he is asleep, he finds himself in the company of his familiars. The faces that surround him are illuminated from within, and what they say is articulated in the language of angel speech. One of them welcomes him by saying, “What two time fine,” and another replies with “And certainly certainly more sunsets provided than last February.” These angels have no interest whatever in meaning. They say whatever pops into their heads. But it hardly matters because they gather around him, all smiles, and are pleased to be in his company. Some dispense with words and speak in music. Archaic joy washes over him. One angel detaches himself from the rest and says, “John, you are quite a poor sort,” and it is meant as a compliment. Harrelson accepts the compliment. He feels another one of them bend down and kiss him lightly on the head. He is being gathered up.

But no: at once there is a point on the horizon, a point insistent with earthly magnetism, drawing Harrelson away toward the world, the real world that made Plato so unhappy, and he wakes up, hungover, in Meredith’s arms, the sun rising orange over a field of snow. It is daytime, and Meredith is kissing him, and telling him he must go home now.