Loon Lake

20

The first chance I had I hurried to Penfield’s. He was the only one who could help me with Clara’s escape. That was his word, escape. Clara would leave because she was dislodged by the returning wife, Clara would leave because with unforgivable haste she’d been removed from the cozy confidences of Loon Lake’s master bedroom. But it wouldn’t do to tell him that. He thought he was in torment for her sake. He brooded about rescuing her. That’s the way poets are, I said to myself. They see what no one else can see, and what is clear to everyone else they don’t see.

I found him in bed. His breath rasped. His skin was a strange pink-gray color and it shone in a glaze of perspiration. He stared at me mournfully from his pillows, his blue and bloodshot eyes swimming in helplessness.

Oh God. That was all I needed.

I went out and found Libby in the staff house.

“I’ll have nothing to do with you,” she said.

“It’s not me, Libby. It’s Mr. Penfield. Something’s wrong with him. I think he needs a doctor.”

She looked at me with suspicion. She went ahead of me to the stables and ran up the stairs to keep as much distance between us as she could.

She took one look at the poet and without troubling to remove herself from his hearing said, “There’s nothing wrong with him, he just likes to carry on.”

“What do you know, Libby?” he cried out, stung.

“I know what a hollow leg is,” she said. “Look at this place, it’s enough to make anyone sick.”

“Get out, get out!” Penfield shouted. “Will everyone torture me? Am I to die with the scorn of servants in my ears?”

She ignored him and with a great flurry went into action, picking up papers books dirty socks.

“Go away,” he shouted. “Don’t touch a thing, damnit, you’re disrupting everything!”

She straightened his bedcovers and plumped up his pillows while he shouted at her to leave him alone.

Furious with both of us, she marched out.

“Joe, there’s a bottle of wine under the window seat,” Mr. Penfield said.

I wondered what was wrong with me to be so gullible to the claims of this man. He lived here at Loon Lake sloshing in self-pity, the best aspect of him, his gift for poetry, put to the use of unsound notions. Obviously this was the solution of his life. I couldn’t change that if I tried. Nobody could.

I handed him the bottle and a glass. He sat up.

“Mr. Penfield, I’ve got to tell you something,” I said, pulling a chair to his bedside. “But I need some information first. Who is Clara? Who were those people who came with her on the train?”

“Tommy Crapo,” he said.

“Who?”

“Tommy Crapo. The industrial consultant.” He drank off a half-glass of wine. “Don’t you read the newspapers? Don’t you look at the tabloids? Tommy Crapo who has his picture taken on night-club banquettes with beautiful women.”

Color was coming back to his face. He emptied the glass and lay back on his pillows.

“Is he in the rackets?”

“Mr. Crapo is a specialist in labor relations. Yes. I think that’s a fair description.”

“Does he work for Bennett? Does he knock heads for Bennett?”

He stared at the ceiling. A moment passed. “Why do you ask? You think I should get Miss Lukaćs away from here, don’t you?”

“Well, she’s ready.”

“What?” He was not used to being taken at his word. He was not equipped for action.

“Miss Lukaćs is ready to get out of here,” I said.

“What?”

“She’s ready to make her escape.”

I have committed many sins in my life. This precise sin — the sin against poets — is without absolution.

He was out of bed and struggling into a worn maroon robe that had a few tassels left on the belt. I could hear each breath he took. He got on his knees to look under the bed for his slippers. He found them, stood, stepped into them, and then went slapping across the floor, back and forth from one corner of his apartment to another without purpose or intent but busy with agitation.

I sat him down in his reading chair and brought him a cigarette and lit it for him, he held it between thumb and forefinger, his hand shaking.

“What did she say?” he asked.

“She wants me to get her away.”

“You?”

“She thinks if you leave together, you’ll be too easy to follow. Like a hot car.”

“What?”

“Crapo doesn’t know me from Adam.”

“Crapo is back?”

“He’s on his way, Mr. Penfield.”

“I see. I see.”

“Miss Lukaćs says once she’s safe she can get in touch with you.”

“She said that?”

“I’ve worked out a plan but I need money and I need a car.”

“Yes, yes, so that’s the way it happens. I see. I see.” He was not fooled, he was not a fool, the large protuberant eyes stared through me. “Yes, yes. To be absolutely realistic I’m not in the picture. That’s all right, it’s just, I’m reconciled. The two young ones. Yes.”

He kept talking this way.

I had the uncanny feeling that he was translating what I told him into another language. Yet I could hear everything he said. He rose, he seemed to gain strength, he strode back and forth from the window to the door. “Yes, of course, there is more than I knew. Yes. I want this for her. It’s just. I put my faith in you, Joe. Yes, take her away from here. Two young people! It’s right. Yes, it’s the only way.”

“I’ll need money and a car,” I said.

“Of course. Leave it to me. I’ll help you. I’ll get you both out. You’ll see, you’ll see. I have resources. Yes. You’ll find Warren Penfield comes through. I have resources. I have allies.”

He seemed joyful. He clapped his hands together and glanced heavenward to express his joy. In this moment he would rather have died than reveal his anguish.

As I was leaving he stood at the door and pulled back the sleeve of his robe. “Look here, Joe.” he said. He held up his right arm. “The sign of the wild dog! Right?” He gave me a wan but demonstrably brave smile. I had to smile back. I rolled up my sleeve and showed my arm.

“That’s right,” he said. “You know what two men do who share the sign of the wild dog?” He touched his forearm to mine so that they crossed. “That’s right,” he said in a husky voice. “My pain is your pain. My life is your life.”

Data linkage escape this is not an emergency

Come with me compound with me

A tulip cups the sun quietly in its color

Dixie cups hold chocolate and vanilla

Before the war after the war or

After the war before the war

A man sells me a Dixie cup for a nickel in a dark candy store.

The boy stands on the sidewalk in the sun

Licking the face of Joan Crawford free of ice cream.

A boy enjoys ice cream from a wooden spoon in the sun

before the war in front of the candy store on the corner

while he waits for the light to change. At this moment several

things happen. A horse pulling the wagon of a peddler

of vegetables trots by smartly golden balls of dung dropping

from the base of its arched tail. Then there was a whirring

in my ears and over the top of Paterson Grade School Three

a monumental dirigible nosed into view looming so low

I could see the seams of its paneled silver skin

and human shadows on the windows of its gondola. It was not

sailing straight through its bow but shouldering the wind shuddering

dipping and rising in its sea of air. It soared over the roof

of a tenement and disappeared. At the same time

the traffic light turned green and I crossed from sun to shade

noting that the not unpleasant odor of fresh horse manure

abruptly ceased with the change of temperature. In front of

the shoe repair on Mechanic Street at the sidewalk’s edge

between a Nash and a Hudson parked at the curb a baby girl

was suspended from her mother’s hands her pants pulled down.

It was desired of this child that she relieve herself there and then

schoolchildren going past in bunches peddlers at their cars

mothers pushing strollers and an older boy with ice cream

stopping shamelessly to watch. And this beautiful little girl

turned a face of such outrage upon me that I immediately

recognized you Clara and with then saintly inability to withstand

life you closed your eyes and allowed the thin stream of

golden water to cascade to the tar which was instantly black and

shone clearer than a night sky.

In the morning hacking away at the Indian-chief monument, I saw him going down the bridle path, going right by without so much as a glance at the strange work on the rock, walking a few steps, running, walking again hurriedly, on the trail through the woods.

I waited five minutes and then I dropped my shovel and sauntered off. “Where you going!” someone called behind me. I raised my hand to show I knew what I was doing and that I’d be right back.

This was the trail the riders took to get to another shore of the lake, a mile down from the main house. It was hoed regularly to keep it soft — I had done some of that myself. It went through stands of towering pine and over small clearings where the grass was turning tan and gold in the autumn, and then it dropped down into an area where the leaves were falling like snowflakes. I felt the same turning season in me.

Where the trail cornered, along the shore of the wide lake, was an airplane hangar with a concrete ramp. Mr. Penfield sat on the ramp with his arms around his knees. He was looking at the water. The wind had whipped up a small white chop. Wavelets slapped at the concrete. He didn’t seem to notice Lucinda Bailey Bennett coming out of the hangar and walking toward him. She pulled a big red trainman’s handkerchief from the pocket of her overalls and wiped her hands.

I ducked around through the underbrush and came within a few feet of them. I could see inside: an engine was suspended from pulleys. A man was guiding it to a workbench.

“What do you do, Lucinda,” said Mr. Penfield in a petulant tone. “Paint the innards like a new toy?”

“No, old bear. When I’m through, its innards will be dark and oiled, and refitted to tolerances that will take me to the top of the sky.” She stuffed her handkerchief into the pouch of her overalls. “Why are you sulking? I thought you loved me.”

“Since I gave up manhood to live here, I make no claims of that sort on anyone.”

She smiled. “That’s not the report I have.”

“Oh, Lucinda,” he said with a groan, and he turned to look up at her.

“So much suffering.” She touched the back of her hand to his temple. “Poor Warren.”

“How much better for me if when I came here my throat had been ripped out.”

She sighed. “Yes,” she said, “I suppose so.”

After a moment she turned back and he lifted himself grunting to his feet. He lumbered after her. “Forgive me,” he called.

“Oh, Warren, it’s such a bore when you whine.” She went into the hangar.

“Yes,” he cried out bitterly. “Indeed. My agony does not divert.” And he followed her.

I couldn’t hear them now. The hangar was lit by electric lights that glimmered very faintly through the brightness of the morning. But I saw them moving around, she working and he talking with grand gestures. Every once in a while I heard the sound of his voice, and I knew Mr. Penfield well enough to know he was in good form, eloquent in his self-dramatization. I hoped so, because he was talking for me.

The man who’d been helping came out, lit a cigarette and went off along the trail. I moved to the hangar itself, staying out of sight of the doorway. I leaned my back to the wall.

“You have a good nature,” I heard Mrs. Bennett say.

“Oh my dear!”

“Would you like to go on a flight? Probably not. But a really long flight. Just the two of us. Would you consider it?”

“What? Where?”

“I don’t know. The Far East. Shall we do that? Fly across the Pacific.”

“The Far East?”

“Yes, pooh bear. A long flight. You and I. Oh, that’s a good idea! Who knows what might happen.” She burst out laughing. “Warren, if you could see the expression on your face! The dismay!”

“Lucinda, what — How is it possible? Am I misunderstood?”

“Oh, foolish thing — I don’t mean that! Good God!” She was merry now. “It’s a practice made too thoroughly disreputable by its devotees, don’t you think?”

That evening the four of them met for dinner. I stood on the terrace just out of the light cast through the windows and I watched them at their drinks. A fire blazed in the huge fireplace. Mounted prey gazed down at them. Clara was wearing a gown of sequined silver. She looked cheap. She sat staring at the floor, cowed, maybe even stunned into silence, by the nuances of civilization in that room. The gentlemen wore black tie, in which Mr. Penfield managed to look as rumpled and ill-prepared for life as ever. With his characteristic expression of appeal for love and understanding he glanced habitually at the others, but especially Clara. Lucinda Bennett smiled faintly and kept up her end of the conversation. Only F. W. Bennett seemed to be enjoying himself. He became so animated he stood up to deliver his sentences. He went to a table behind the leather sofa and held up a large flat book opened, and resting on his arm, and he read from it and laughed and looked at the others for their reaction.

I went through the woods to Clara’s cabin and found her luggage standing just inside the front door. There were three bags and a hatbox. I got all of them under my arms or hanging from my hands, and struggled up the hill to the garage on the far side of the tennis court. This was the old Loon Lake stable. It housed five cars. In the last stall was Mrs. Bennett’s car, a rarely used gray two-door Mercedes-Benz with a canvas top and spare tires in the front fender wells. I looked for the ignition key where Mr. Penfield had told me to — in the bud vase on the right-hand side in the back. Yes. I packed the bags in the trunk, which was not large, and put the hatbox in the back seat. I turned on the map light and by its glow learned the European-style shifting. There were four gears, and a diagram of their positions was imprinted on the mother-of-pearl knob of the floor shift. The dust on the seat cracked under me. I flicked at it with a chamois cloth. The odometer showed less than ten thousand miles. Then I saw it was not even miles, it was kilometers. Lucinda Bennett had told Mr. Penfield it was a 1933 model. Clearly, her interest in machines did not include cars. The license plate was up to date, however.

I swung open the doors as quietly as I could and got in and started the engine. I backed out. It was a noisy car — I later found it was only forty horsepower — and I drove it the few yards to the gas pump shushing it as if it were a baby. I filled it with Mr. Bennett’s personal ethyl and then I gave each tire a shot of his air. I was wearing his knickers and argyle sweater and brown-and-white saddle shoes. I tried not to get them dirty.

I was ready to go. I waited behind the wheel. It was a snug little car. The seats were gray leather. The doors opened front to back. I went over some road maps. I sat there and got the feeling of the car and worried about driving it well, and wondered where to go and what I would say to Clara Lukaćs and what she would say to me. I worried that people seeing me behind the wheel would think I was rich. I didn’t once reflect on the lately peculiar conforming of life to my desires. I didn’t think of Lucinda Bennett’s generosity or despair, or Mr. Penfield’s, nor even reach the most obvious conclusion; that I was leaving Loon Lake in somewhat better condition than I had come. Calculating, heedless, and without gratitude, I accepted every circumstance that had put me there, only gunning my mind to the future, wanting more, expecting more, too intent on what was ahead to sit back and give thanks or to laugh or to feel bad.

I peered through the windshield. I watched the trees shaking in the night wind. I unlatched the canvas top and pushed it back a bit and looked at the stars, which seemed to shimmer and blur as if the wind were blowing through them.

Eventually she got there, hurrying along with Mr. Penfield holding her arm, while she held her gown off the ground to keep from tripping. She wore a fur jacket over the gown. He opened the door, but before she could slide in, he grabbed her and hugged her and started to gabble something. I saw all this with their heads cut off. I saw her push him away. “War-rin, please!” she said.

Then she was in the car beside me, in an atmosphere of fur and cold air, and she slammed the door. Penfield peered in, then ran around the front of the car to the driver’s side. I started the engine and threw the toggle switch for the headlights. I adjusted the throttle. I rolled down my window and he thrust something in my hand, a wad of bills. “I wish it was more,” he said. He gave us advice of many kinds, cheerful assurances, warnings about the road, the weather, appeals to keep in touch, phone numbers on bits of paper, promises, vows, thrown kisses — and to this fitful love song I put the car into first, and off we lurched down the road.

We were taking what was called the back road, away from the main house; there was a sudden bend, and Mr. Penfield, waving in the night in his black tie, veered out of my rear view.

I leaned forward, attentive to the clutching, and gradually, as we made our way bumping and sliding over this gravelly unpaved circuit through the Bennett preserve, I got the hang of it. We drove for quite a while. I glanced at her. In the glow of the dashboard I saw her young face.

I think now of that long drive down through the forest to the state road, dogs appearing from nowhere to gallop yelping alongside, their breath sounding metallic, like the engine; and disappearing just as suddenly, then again one or two of them, then for a mile a beating pack; and she saying nothing, only holding the leather strap by her window, looking out to the side, to the front, her eyes following them tracking them, the youth of her illuminated in the low light. Finally we outdistanced them all.

She sat back in her seat. She took a cigarette out of her purse and lit it.

“What do you think he’ll do when he finds you gone?” I said.

“An interesting question,” she said.

And so we descended from Loon Lake, Clara’s clear eyes fixed on the farthest probe of the headlights, and I looking at her every other moment, in her composure of total attention, going with the ride.