Wireman

CHAPTER 6

SAMUEL BARTHOLOMEW watched Jack DeShane’s departure for work more out of habit than anything else. His life had narrowed to such inconsequential pastimes. It was depressing, but not likely to change anytime soon.

At seven-forty while Sam stood patiently in front of a second-floor lace-curtained window, Jack DeShane opened his front door and crossed the old-fashioned porch. On the bottom step he eyed the street from one end to the other before going down the brick walk to his 1974 lemon-cream Monte Carlo.

Sam liked the way Jack walked. It was the satisfied walk of a man in tune with his world. The young cop had not yet been muddled and confused by his police work. He still saw the world broken up into two categories; good and evil. Sam saw in Jack the reflection of his own past.

Th Monte Carlo roared off down the street toward the precinct station. Sam stared after it for a long time, then went to the bed stand where a fresh pot of coffee brewed in a percolator. Coffee in his room was Maggie’s idea. She had supplied him with all the utensils and a can of Maxwell House. She had even found her late husband’s favorite mug, the one with the lifelike tits sticking out on one side, and presented it to Sam with a peculiar smile. Sam was not fond of the mug—who needed chunky pink tits on a coffee cup in the morning? But he would never hurt Maggie’s feelings. Besides, she was exciting in bed and what sixty-year-old retired, disillusioned, lonely cop could argue with that?

The coffee was strong and its smell filled the room. After pouring a cup he slid open a drawer of the bed stand and pulled out a quart of Old Kentucky bourbon. He added a splash to the cup and returned the bottle to the drawer. He sat on the side of the bed in his boxer shorts and rubbed his knotted graying chest hair as he sipped.

Maggie would kill him if she knew he had taken to drinking in the morning. But the dull ache of despair knew nothing of time. Bourbon dulled despair’s pangs for a while and brought heavy sleep. Then it crawled into the hours between lunch and dinner, chains rattling, sneering at him with contempt, and Sam drank more bourbon until despair retreated once again. But lately even the bourbon did not work. Despair woke when he woke and stretched when he stretched and pissed when he pissed.

Before Sam knew Jack DeShane despair had certain limits. It did not own Sam’s soul. But destiny moved the young cop into the house across the street and pushed him into Sam’s life. Despair began to tell tales of old age and weakening desire, sodden drunkenness, and a replay of his own gradual, forty-year decay in the guise of the rookie cop.

Of course Sam knew he could always run. There were alternatives. He had a small savings and an early retirement pension. He could move out of Maggie’s pleasant house and go home to the Georgia hills. He could go to Atlantic City and doze on park benches with other old rummies and play the slot machines with his laundry money. He could move to Key West and luxuriate in aqua waters, catch tarpon, drink in the same bars Hemingway frequented.

The truth, however, could not be circumvented; no one needed Sam Bartholomew in Georgia, in Atlantic City, in Key West. He would only be another shipwrecked piece of debris. At least in Houston where he had worked for forty years to clean up the scum from the streets he had Maggie Richler with her blue-tinted hair and voluptuous, amazingly preserved body. She needed him. It was a startling revelation. Sam did not know why exactly, but Maggie needed him. And now the rookie needed him too. If he turned his back on either of those needs, it would not matter where he ran. Despair would tag along. It was only when he was with either one of those people that despair backed off and hid in the corners.

He heard Maggie’s tread on the stairs. In three painful gulps he downed the doctored coffee before she reached his door. She always knocked before entering, which struck Sam as funny since most nights he slept in her bed, but he paid for room and board by the month and Maggie never let him forget it. Not until he was willing to join his life with hers under the law and a marriage certificate hung on the wall.

“Sam? Can I come in, honey?”

Maggie Richler claimed to be fifty-one, but Sam figured she lied. She was probably his age: sixty, the magic, tragic six-oh. It did not matter. Sam would have loved her if she were a hundred and two, but how do you convince a woman of that?

She stood in the doorway looking at him in his shabby shorts, potbelly stretching out his waistband, fly half open and revealing thick pubic hair, his bald pate showing delicate skull bones. She smiled and Sam thought someone had switched on a light in the room.

“I have to be going,” she announced.

“A court reporter’s job is never ending,” he said, patting the bed beside him for her to sit.

“What are you going to do today?” She asked the same question every day. She sat beside him and caressed his thigh. Within seconds she had a thatch of wiry curls in her palm and pulled at them gently, teasingly.

“I don’t know what I’ll do today,” Sam answered honestly. Enforced idleness was harder to manage than a full working day, and he had not yet found the trick. The old black despair covered his shoulders, and for a minute he thought of the three revolvers in his closet.

“I’ll come home and fix you lunch. How’s that?” She let go of his thigh and tickled his neck before kissing him on the earlobe.

“You bet,” he whispered, taking her right breast into one of his hands.

Maggie pretended to swoon and slapped at his clutching hand before rising from the bed.

“Drink your coffee,” she admonished, her heels already tapping across the bare floor. “There’s food in the fridge, remember.”

“You know I don’t eat breakfast.” Sam picked up his empty cup and touched the tits with his fingertip. The only thing on his mind was a shot of bourbon.

“I know you don’t take care of yourself, Sam Bartholomew. I’ll be back at noon to do it myself.” The door closed softly. Sam stood at the window and watched her leave. An ardent observer, he chronicled the departures and arrivals in his neighborhood. As he watched Maggie’s green Plymouth leave the curb, his eyes caught some movement at the DeShane place. Willie flew across the porch, as if freed from a dungeon, and sailed down the walk to the street. He peered up and down the block. It was too early for play. Other children were still asleep. Willie shrugged and swaggered off toward the corner, his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

Sam sighed as his hand reached for the drawer. What wouldn’t he give to be young again. To be ten years old and free and happy, the world wide open with endless opportunities.

As he poured the bourbon and mixed in the coffee, Sam knew he was lying to himself. He did not want it all over again. He wished it was almost over. He wished he were eighty instead of sixty and that there were no more races to run.

Despair settled over him with a comfortable familiarity. Sam raised the cup. By noon the bourbon would be gone.