He went into the town's old hotel, the same hotel he had stayed in when he was a boy, when the lawyers had engineered it so he could claim his inheritance early. He strode between the same old over-stuffed chairs he had known all those years ago, went to the front desk, and asked to see Noah Larr. After a few minutes' wait, a thick-necked young man in a grey suit of a cut and shade they didn't wear in this part of the country arrived and escorted him deeper into the hotel's hallways and up the elevator and finally to the congressman's room. His escort open the door but then stood aside. Ernest walked in and found the grey-headed congressman seated in a chair by the window.
Ernest cleared his throat. "I am going to get something off my chest and you are going to listen," he said. "Fifteen years ago a man was beaten and died in town for something he did not do and you know it. You were sheriff and you knew the truth and you did nothing. You can go on pretending it did not happen but I cannot. I have a life I need to continue and I can't do that until I make one thing clear to you: I know, and I always will know. "
Larr nodded and sat looking out the window of his room. "What's the point of telling me this?"
"Just that it will be remembered – that the man who died was real and at least one person remembers what happened to him and won't rationalize it away. It won't get lost in philosophies or movements or slogans. You can't build a dam high enough that it will disappear in its shadow, or a lake deep enough that it will get lost beneath its surface."
The man nodded.
"But," Ernest continued, "But it would help me to continue my life, to do whatever it is I have left to do, if you could at least say you were sorry for what you did, and what you failed to prevent, all those years ago."
Larr turned and looked at him with peaceful gray eyes. He melted all distance between himself and Ernest for a second, and Ernest felt like he was looking at a father – a kind and forgiving and warm man. "We need to let youthful mistakes slip away," the man said. "You and I – both of us – have a duty to the future now. We have a lot to accomplish, and not just for ourselves."
"So are you sorry for it?" Ernest asked.
The benevolent father purred and demurred. "I can tell you that I regret a lot of things, especially youthful indiscretions and lapses of judgment, but for various reasons I can't come and precisely tick off things in particular."
"Oh."
"Mr. White, I'm sure you can understand how we sometimes have to atone for things in general in order to move along, to get about the business of the future?"
Ernest stood up and picked up his hat. "I'm sorry – that's not what I hoped to hear."
The benevolent gray man rose, too. "Then what are we going to do?" He smiled.
"Do? Why, remember, and get along in whatever manner that leads us."
"I see." The man bit his lip thoughtfully.
Ernest excused himself and had a hand on the doorknob.
"You're just a discredited crackpot anyway," the man added softly and slowly, as if formulating out loud.
Ernest ignored him and departed.
*
Ernest left the hotel and walked to the destination of his final appointment – a bench off the town square. He heard footsteps behind him and turned to see Atalanta come out from the shadows of the buildings into the light. The moonlight took some of the weariness from her face and gave opalescence to her skin and brightness to her eyes.
"Did you know that I work in a flower store down the street? I can see your old office building from its window. Nothing has ever thrived there. Different businesses come and go, but then the space is back for lease."
"It misses me."
She looked at him. "Ernest, I want to see who you are. I want to find out why you came back here, and what it is you plan to do."
He looked down. "I don't plan to do anything."
"You came back to do nothing?" she said. "That’s the thing that frightens me. You know, you can always see it in a man's eyes when they don't want to live anymore."
"That's not me," he said.
"You've wasted your life."
"Have I? I've been to Giza. I've been Grand Marshal of the Mardi Gras parade on three continents. I found a lost tribe in a rainforest with no sense of humor. I orchestrated a Latin American coup. I've had my tonsils out twice. I tamed a tiger. I raised a lion from a cub. I invented a device for breathing under water that didn't work. I learned to fold paper into little birds. I have kept bees."
"So?"
"I think it's a lot."
"Does it seem like much when you add it up at the end of the day, when you're sitting in your house alone?"
"Are you talking about me, or yourself?"
She glowered at him. Her body was tall and fine and sculpted and she held herself with poise. Her dark eyes were bright jewels.
"You work with flowers," he said. "Who the hell buys flowers in times like these?"
"You'd be surprised." She said. She looked him over and a change came into her face. "Come with me – let me show you something."
She led him to a sturdy red-brick building with a wide front glass window, turned a key in a door, and turned on a light. Color filled the room. Catalog prints of countless flowers were pinned to the walls – roses and tulips and lilies and chrysanthemums. Glass cases held bouquets. Out back he could see wooden tables with dirt and pots.
She turned and looked him square in the eye. "Listen to me: you can remember the dead and go on living. You can treasure something in the past but not get stuck in it."
Neither spoke for a while. A discordant patriotic tune drifted from down the block. The school band was rehearsing in the town square in anticipation of the weekend's dam ceremony. When he looked back at her he saw she had a serious expression on her face.
"Ernest, I agreed to see you here because I wanted to tell you something, in case whatever's eating you is something I caused and you are planning to do something outlandish. I wanted a chance to tell you this: when we didn't work out back then, it was never just because of you. I know what happened, I know what must have gone on in your mind and how upset you must have been. And I know I could have forgiven you. But it was never just you who didn't know what they wanted. I thought I was a strong woman and I wanted to prove something to myself against the strongest thing I could find. I wanted something difficult, and I got it. I found a man who could hardly tear away from his job or the bottle, a man who thought loving was fighting. I wanted something that would fight me and might even hate me. I wanted something that would leave enough scars to prove I was really alive."
"I wanted that at one time too," he said. "In Europe..."
"Ernest," she said. "Just shut up about yourself for once. Just listen."
He nodded. They sat on a bench, side by side.
She looked at him. "I think I was crazy, to want scars to prove I was alive, but I wanted something to show that at least once in my life I had gone up against something bigger than myself and had survived."
White nodded, and reached out toward her. "I don't think it's crazy. Who was it who said, 'Even Christ came back with the nail holes'?"
She looked at him and caught some weird expression in his face. Her eyes got wide and hard. "'Who was it'? It was no one – it was you, imagining what someone clever might have said once, if they had thought up the right line at the right time. It's always you in your mind, in your eyes, in your white suit. That's what I meant when I said I don't want to be a part of it. I have my own life. I'm not stage dressing in whatever story you're telling about yourself, whatever last act you have in mind. I just came here to tell you what I had to say. And now I'm going."
She began to hurry away.
"What if I burn the suits?" he shouted after her. He was surprised to hear the words come out of his mouth.
She stopped liked someone had knocked her legs out from under her. Then a noise like half-laugh, half-explosion came out of her. "What?"
He paused, and turned over in his head the w
ords he'd just shouted. Now he repeated them, but more slowly and carefully, listening to them: "What if I burn the white suits, all of them?"
She turned around, her eyes wide. "And that's supposed to show..?"
He shrugged. "Well, it's a start," he said. "It's something real. It's honest to goodness destruction."
Her hands were on her hips but there was a half-laugh/half-craze light in her eyes. "Okay, start now."
"Excuse me?"
"Right now," she said, throwing out her arms. "Right here. No promises – just do it."
His fingers were on one lapel. "I'll have nothing to wear."
"I’ll sneak in and get a suit from the undertaker's. They have one there for a fellow just your size who passed away. It’s plain, but it’ll do."
He looked at her. "If I do it, will you promise to go to listen to the band rehearse with me?"
"No."
He stood stock still; he might have been a statue. But then slowly he began to unhook his white jacket from one shoulder, then the other. He fished in its various pockets and handed her the items he removed from them. It was a surprising amount. He did the same with his pants, then tossed them both to a heap in the middle of the dark street.
"And that godawful ugly tie."
He slid it out of his collar and dropped it on the pile, too. Then he walked toward her. "My lighter," he said.
"No – I get to do this," she answered. He handed her his flask and she poured some liquid from it on his tie and then emptied the on rest on the pile. Then she lit the tie and held it until it began to crisp and coil in flames like a snake. She dropped it on the other clothes and they ignited too.
"Now let's get you that suit," she said, and he followed her through the alleys to the undertaker’s, where she let herself in with a key. When they emerged a few minutes later he was in a brown suit that fit him well enough save for want of an inch in the arms and legs. They walked back to street and its storefronts, and his eyes traced over her hips and the backs of her arms. She turned and watched as he restocked his pockets with all his items.
"Now can we go hear the band?"
"No, I have to get home. I am going out of town tomorrow to watch my cousin’s children while she is at the hospital. But when I get back Saturday I want to meet you for a bonfire up at your place. I want to stand beside you and see all those white suits burn. I'm serious. After that, we'll see, Ernest. We’ll see what we can do."
She walked away and soon was gone. He stood still one moment, looked down the street toward the town square listening to the notes rising from the band. Perhaps it was only their tone that put an edge of hopefulness into her parting words and into his imagination. But he let himself hope that it was something more. He put his hands in his pockets and walked slowly back up the road.
He went home and lay down. His head buzzed and fell silent; his mind filled with soft images that rose and rose and faded like old boats on a tide that teased but did not finally lift them. The doctor checked and said there was nothing wrong with him, and Mr. White agreed. But at the end of next day he got up, ate, and ordered 28 non-white suits from Brooks Brothers and had Otto run to Tulsa to get some stop-gap ones until then.
He felt calm and patient. Something that he used to lie awake worrying about was gone. He no longer cared to worry. He was content to watch and hope and wait until Atalanta got home.
Chapter 13
The next day Mr. White made a few telephone calls to confirm that his supplies, personnel and equipment for the fair were due to arrive as scheduled. Where decisions were to be made, he told people to opt for the best.
"Yes, I said pate foi gras! Why? Just so they can say they had it once – that's why. So they can tell their children or grandchildren they got to see a royal stallion, or the armor of Henry the VIII, or hear a real orchestra, or pet a tiger – and I want photographers everywhere snapping pictures then sending them to folks, so they can have a picture of themselves doing it all. So they'll have something real to remember and talk about in the coming years when their heads are being filled will slogans and empty promises and phoney-baloney."
He hung up the phone with a jar – but then a moment later, he laughed. It surprised himself. He took his hat from one arm of his idolatrous south sea hat rack and strode out the door.
He drove to meet a man named Michael in a field down by the Negro cemetery. Hadn't Michael been dead? He was sure he'd been dead. His mind traced his memories of the boy in metal braces. He drove and pulled aside in scattered gravel beside an empty sloping field. White plunged his hands in his pockets and strode down to their meeting place. The land dipped toward a weary-looking stand of pole-like trees near a creek. One old bench overlooked a field of graves and headstones, small and tilting when present at all. There was half a fence at most, many wooden crosses, some flowers, many weeds.
Ernest looked down and saw Michael. His body was large now and his clothes were disheveled. His face was full. Tubed metal held and girded him, capturing him and wrapping him back onto curves before he could get outside.
"I knew you'd come back to set things right," Michael said.
Mr. White lowered himself down on the bench. "That's not what I came back for."
Michael laughed. "Heh – always the joker. I thought all your years abroad might've worked some of that unserious streak out of you."
"You know better."
Michael frowned and Mr. White held his own eyes in half-open ease and looked at Michael. He smiled; he paused.
Michael grew uncomfortable and blinked suddenly. "Where's your white suit?"
"They were all dirty."
Michael nodded. "Can I have a cigarette?"
Mr. White obliged. He reached into his jacket for the silver case, then took one out and handed it to the other man. He lit the cigarette for Michael. The caged man's hand shook some, and he exhaled in staggers that then smoothed out.
"I'm afraid I'm going to disappoint you, Michael," Mr. White said. "I'm not here for revenge."
Michael stared at him. "Surely you’re joking. I have had to live here all my life with their smug faces, knowing what they’ve done and gotten away with. It has been a long time. Do you have any idea of what it's like being trapped here? Do you know what it's like to depend on others to do things for you?"
Ernest paused. He took his cigarette out of his mouth and cast his hands toward the field they sat in. "You seem to get places when you need to," he said.
"You don't understand..."
White turned and held the man’s eyes with his own blue ones. "What is wrong with you, anyway, Michael? What keeps you in there?"
"You of all people, with all the best doctors of the world at your disposal. You should understand."
Mr. White looked into the other man’s small brown eyes but saw nothing but a gnawing, fretful anger. "I have to be going, Michael," he said.
White walked across the field back to his car. He paused in passing one headstone but then moved on.
"I'll do things myself if I have to!" Michael shouted across the distance.
Mr. White got into his car and departed. Michael became a flash of metal in his rear view mirror, then winked out.
*
White awoke the next morning to the sound of an airplane buzzing over and over his house. He threw his robe on and ran out the back porch and looked up at the sky.
He craned his neck westward and caught just a glimpse of a yellow biplane heading away, dipping and arcing to come around again. He knew that biplane – it was the cropduster's old Curtiss Jenny. That meant the Professor was come home.
He watched the wide graceful arc of the plane in a turn, out away from the town now and defining an ellipse against the morning. It threw its bold yellow against the mixture of bright pink and pale blue then curved back toward him. The plane disappeared over the stand of trees that marked the end of his field and the beginning of the airstrip. He ran in the mudroom and put on his overcoat and some loafers and hastened a
cross the road and down a lane toward the landing site.
He made it past a stand of cottonwoods to where the airstrip was. He stood with a hand to his eyes as the plane rolled close and the engine cut off. He waited for the propeller to die down, but even as he peered through the dust and wind with tearing eyes he noticed the empty seat behind the pilot's.
"Where's the Professor?" he shouted.
Sara hopped out and was walking around her plane, making inspections after landing. She grabbed some chunks of wood and blocked the wheels.
Mr. White walked closer. "Where's the Professor?" he said again.
She took off her helmet and looked at him. "The Professor got some bad news about his nephew back in Germany – some brownshirts roughed the young man up. The Professor took the news hard, and he's in hospital in a town 100 miles north of here. The doctor forbade him to travel."
Mr. White nodded silently, stunned at the news. "How can I help?"
"As soon as I refuel you can come back up with me and see him. He thinks your money may help his nephew get the papers he needs to leave Germany."
"Of course."
"I'll refuel. You go bundle up for travel at 5,000 feet."
"How about a silk/linen blend?"
"Just hurry!"
Mr. White rushed back into the house. "Otto!" he shouted. "Otto!" but there was no answer, so he ran upstairs, hastily pulled on slacks and a sweater over his nightclothes, and began packing a small bag.
Back downstairs he swung a pastoral painting aside, reached behind it into a safe and pulled out a big stack of cash and some certificates. He flipped through the latter hurriedly, tossing one after another ornamented document to the floor, keeping only the ones he thought might have some international pull. He stuffed some of these in the satchel and some into his pockets. He stopped in the kitchen and scribbled a quick note to Otto. Then he grabbed his bag, took his hat from the deity, and hurried out the door and back to the airfield.