Ernest coughed into his hand. "Did you lift that from Martin Buber or a matchbook? I need to know before I steal it as my own."
The Professor gave a patient smile. "Ernest, I won't be around to help with the museum."
"What? Now see here Professor..."
"Sara and I are going to follow the crops up north – fly in the open air and see the countryside. I will be back in a few months."
Ernest stood stock-still and felt like someone had dropped him off a bridge. Then out of the corner of his eye he noticed something.
"Professor – Where are your gloves?"
The Professor looked down at his own hands. "What do you know? I guess I don't need them."
*
The shock of his conversation with the Professor still sat like a rock in the pit of his stomach as evening fell, bringing with it the concert. Mr. White strode about the kitchen. He was dressed up for the show and had added a blue silk waistcoat to his usual ensemble. His gait was agitated.
"Damn the Professor for running out on me!"
"Can't you just relax and enjoy the concert?" Otto said, slicking his hair back and appraising his teeth in the back of a spoon. "And I can't understand why you brought all your museum plans down here to the kitchen table. They just get in the way of everything."
Mr. White and Otto paced asynchronously but nonetheless came to rest standing over the blueprint and the countless cardboard cut-outs.
"Who's going to help me with all of this now?" Mr. White asked.
"Have some compassion. He lost loved ones back in Germany. The years since he relocated to the States have been rough on him."
"It's damned inconvenient!" White said. He picked up the blueprints and slid all the cardboard icons off of them into a shoebox.
"Just try to enjoy the show, Mr. White."
*
White sat crumpled in the passenger seat as Otto drove them out to the site of Woody Guthrie's performance. It was being held in a natural bowl of the terrain, with a stage erected at its focal point. A sizable crowd had assembled. Mr. White and Otto parked well away from the site and walked up the red dirt lane, approaching the gathering as unobtrusively as possible. White stood behind a line of trees outside the clearing and surveyed the crowd of rural attendees. It was a much larger collection of humanity than he'd anticipated, and it made him uneasy to see so many wild heads, rude hats, so much tattered clothing, so many raw faces. The lantern light of the stage licked and flicked off the sharp angles of their cheekbones and brows. There were hundreds of them, curious and appreciative to be out for music in the cool of the evening. Here and there some families picnicked on the grass. Though the town had offered the square for it, Woody had chosen to hold the concert at the farm of a man who had been involved in the Green Corn Rebellion and local agrarian politics. The farmer, though now graying at the tail end of a once powerful career, sat in an honored position at the front and the right of the stage looking benevolent and innocuous and rounded and sleepy and honored. He sat just outside the light that centered on Woody Guthrie and the musicians he had assembled.
"Y'all want to hear some music?" Woody asked, and the crowd hollered approval. Mr. White had never seen Woody outside of the New York salons of the self-appointed intelligentsia. It was stirring to see him here in his element. It fired him. Ernest stood well back as the rest of the crowd poured mentally forward and coalesced with the musicians and the notes and the twilight.
After an hour of reverie, foot-stomping bluegrass music and the occasional populist anthem, the evening had darkened. The band took a pause and one of the local musicians walked up to the front of the makeshift stage.
"Folks, we're glad you could be with us tonight. As some of you know, I always like to work a little speaking into my shows," the man said, and the crowd laughed.
"For instance, I hear tell some rich guy who grew up in these parts has come back from Europe with his tail between his legs. That's what happens when you make working folks' lives miserable then try to make them buy the balm of your religion for their weariness."
"This is the kind of fellow who represents the very thing we need to change, who inhabits the so-called highest circles of society only by denying a fair wage to the workers underneath him, by skimming off the top of bare subsistence to subsidize his own comfort and excess, then dares to call his kind of living enlightenment and religiosity and insight..."
White turned to Otto with a shocked and withering glance. "He’s talking about me!"
"Now is not the time to make a scene, Mr. White."
"But it's all in a portfolio. I don't hire and fire anybody!"
"Not now, Mr. White, not now."
"But they don't understand..."
People close by began to turn and look at them, but Woody had already taken it upon himself to preempt the orator. "Folks, I expect we all know he could go on for hours – but how about we play some more music?" People laughed and the orator ducked his head in mock chastisement that made them laugh some more. Then Woody plucked his guitar and raised his twangy voice. The crowd began to clap.
Otto turned to Mr. White. "Maybe you should exit quietly."
"But I brought him out here."
"So the gentlemanly thing to do would be to ease out of the picture and let them enjoy it."
Mr. White looked at his servant. Ernest's face was a tense mask of displeasure. But he agreed with Otto and walked off. He turned and strode down the dirt lane away from the crowd and the noise.
Otto watched him leave then turned and noticed Constance at the other end of the crowd. She noticed him simultaneously. He was not completely surprised when she came over and stood beside him.
*
Mr. White left the concert and drove aimlessly on the narrow clay roads until he felt his mind leading him to one house in particular. It was Atalanta's house. He saw it small on a ridge and he stopped his car off to the side of the road, along a line of trees. He saw another car already parked there. He turned off his headlights and got out and began walking up the slant toward her porch.
He paced quietly up beneath towering cottonwoods until the front of her house came into view. He stopped before he entered the reach of the porchlight. He saw Atalanta and a well-dressed man on the porch swing. A bouquet of flowers was on the swing beside her, and Atalanta was speaking in a low voice but the man leaned in and kissed her.
Mr. White turned and walked back to his car. He got in slowly and pulled the door shut quietly, and drove home. The quiet night poured in all around him, and there were countless cold silver stars in the blue-black sky. When he got home he parked halfway into a stand of dead canes and then walked to his office out in the field. He stepped between the beams into his small enclave of solitude and took a bottle from one drawer of the desk. He took a drink. He felt the sting of self-delusion. He set the bottle on the desk. A night breeze rose and fell and he felt like a marionette of fate, a sum of machinations. Thrill turned to an appetite for rectitude, a desire to not be victimized by desire.
*
From Ernest White's Journal:
I got up this morning after Mr. Guthrie's concert and gave Otto an order to fund a fair to coincide with the upcoming dam commemoration ceremony.
PLANNING FOR THE FAIR: Otto is to organize a fair, arrange it, hire the men to set up the rides, booths, games, music, food, fireworks, and so on. I instructed him to err on the side of opulence. He gave me his usual scowl that meant he'd do it but he'd sulk.
He questioned whether I was trying to steal the thunder from the dam ceremony itself, or to somehow win back good feelings from the working men who have descended upon this town and despise me.
None of these are my intention. On the contrary, if I could remain anonymous as to the source of it, that would be all the better. But knowing I can't I won't try to erase the taint of my involvement. I explained that I just got tired of all these drab faces lapping up outrageous promises from politicians and wanted to see them have a little re
al pleasure in the midst of all the hot air. And that's it – as simple as that.
If people are going to be spoon-fed air-spun promises for a better life by every slick-talking businessman or politician or social engineer who comes down the road in the years to come, I want them to have at least one real significant event in their memories to compare them to.
*
Two days after Woody Guthrie's departure there was a new source of novelty and commotion at the train depot. A crowd was waiting for one of the state's U.S. Congressmen. The railroad agent assured the crowd that their esteemed representative was arriving soon to be photographed at their dam commencement ceremony.
Soon after the locomotive came to a halt a tall, sturdy young man got off the train. He had curly brown hair and a strong though child-like pinkish face. He was dressed in a well-fitted dove-gray suit with a lilac shirt. He smiled as the crowd of folks, mostly men, greeted him. His name was Billy Larr and his father was Congressman Noah Larr, who was on in years but trying to make the step up from Congressman to U.S. Senator as a crowning achievement.
A crowd of men gathered around Billy and moved in a cloud while he began to walk from the depot to the hotel. His head stuck out taller than the rest of theirs.
"Where’s your daddy?" someone asked.
Billy turned to him. "He wanted to come on this train but had some last minute work to do. He’ll be here soon. We got a big job ahead of us getting daddy's name all over the state in time for next year's elections. They don't know him like you folks know him here."
"Well, they'll get to know him," someone said.
"Maybe – it takes a while to build a network on the ground."
"When you going to get to pursue your own aspirations?" another man asked.
Billy laughed. "No time to think about that now. Maybe once we get daddy in that open senate seat I'll train one eye on congress. But that's gonna have to wait while we fight this fight."
Once the group has made its way from the depot to Main Street a roundish older man pushed through the circle of bodies with his right hand held forward, and Billy recognized him immediately. "Mayor Ryan!" he said. "It's a pleasure."
"The pleasure's mine," the mayor laughed, and the crowd of men who'd formed around Billy pulled back a little to let the two men walk.
"So how's this town looking?" Billy asked.
"They'll line up for you, Billy, when the time comes. Get your daddy to make a few speeches when the day draws closer, remind folks of all he's done for 'em, and there's no doubt he can put this town in his column. Plus this dam is big news. Best thing in the world to get his name in headlines all across the state. Having your dad up on the dais for the project kick-off will certainly help folks statewide put two and two together."
"We've been thinking the same thing," Billy said. "Gonna take lots of photos."
*
A week after the concert, Mr. White woke up feeling hollow. He fumbled for a cigarette, lit it, then sat up in bed. He ran a hand through his hair then over his cheeks and chin. He saw the plans for his museum scattered on his bureau and he could hear Otto listening to the latest outrages in Europe over his shortwave radio downstairs. He looked at the clock and realized he'd woken up late.
Otto had finished his breakfast and was putting his dishes in the sink by the time Mr. White came down the stairs.
"What the hell are you dressed up for already?" Mr. White asked. Otto was in fact neat and clean-shaven and dressed up for something. His hair was slicked and gave off a bracing barber-shop smell.
Otto looked at Mr. White with a tilt of professionalism to his head. "I'm driving to the college over in Tulsa to get some information on mechanical careers. My brothers have been corresponding with me about joining my family's repair business. Demand for a skilled mechanic is going up every month. I know watch repair and my brothers say I can transfer that to anything mechanical."
"There's plenty of demand for a good mechanic down here, too."
Otto frowned. "Remember our discussion? You said now that I'm back in America I should take every opportunity to follow up on my own ambitions. Well, I'm just researching my options."
White sat down and snapped open the newspaper. "Best of luck, then. You were a big help when I was in Europe, but you deserve to get on with your life now. Just let me know whatever field you get interested in, and I'll pull some strings for you."
Otto set his breakfast dishes in a rack next to the sink and was drying his hands with a towel. "Thanks, but I don't want favors. Whatever I want I'll work toward myself. That's the only way I'll ever be good at it, make it a part of my life, you know, internalize it."
"'Internalize?' Is that a word your psychiatrist used?"
"No, it's one yours used."
"Hm," Mr. Perfect said. He had put down his paper and was looking at his reflection in his spoon and rubbing his cheeks. "You know, maybe I don't need a bath and shave today. Maybe I'll just be more of a bum – you know, like some rich man who gets amnesia and ends up riding the rails, and only remembers who he is after getting clunked on the head again? And then he gets all cleaned up and gives all the hobos who were nice to him a million dollars, and they all go to a ball game at Yankee Stadium or something."
"You do that, Mr. White, but I have to be off."
Mr. Perfect pretended not to hear him and tilted his head this way and that, appraising his distorted face in the spoon, trying to imagine what he would look like with an amnesia-inducing welt. But then he heard the door close and knew Otto had gone.
"Damn," he thought. He put the spoon down and slowly finished sipping his coffee.
Mr. Perfect fixed himself some breakfast and then got cleaned up after all. Two hours later he emerged from the house into the bright morning. His white suit in the full sun was almost blinding. He took a swig from a silver flask then screwed its lid back on and put it in his pocket. If Otto left he would do fine on his own. As if to attest to the fact, he stood on his porch, spread his arms out wide and inhaled deeply. The bright sun against his eyelids made him remember the time he'd received an award after his 100th performance of "Prometheus Fit To Be Tied!" He saw himself dressed in a toga and laurel wreath, standing in the arc lights before the roaring crowd, all 1920's intellectuals drunk on bathtub gin and conceit. After the show they'd all gone out to a party that lasted for three days and ended with him hijacking a horse-drawn wagon full of turnips on a mad dash through Central Park. He threw turnips to the masses like he was J.D. Rockefeller throwing dimes.
The world was green and quiet beyond his yard and beyond the dirt road fronting his house. A gentle breeze was tossing the tops of trees across the road and the sky was blue and clear. He sat on the porch and smoked and worked at one of the crossword puzzles from the New York Times that a friend sent him in bundles. He took a drink from his flask and hunched over the paper. An hour or so passed. He got about half way through then tried to erase a word and tore the paper, then he got mad and balled up the page and threw it across the lawn.
He went back inside and hunched over his museum plans for a while. He picked up some of the cardboard pieces and moved them into several different configurations. He made notes to himself of what periods of history to put adjacent to the others for the most spectacular effect. Then he got a brainstorm idea of how to organize the whole thing archaeologically, anthropologically, architecturally and linguistically, but the idea eluded him once a pen actually rested in his fingers.
He sighed and went downstairs, then out the back door. Out in the open air he felt not quite as harried. He felt his mind expand again and relax. He tapped a cigarette from his case, lit it, and looked around.
He decided that the weather looked fair and pleasant, and that if he kept trying to force the muse he'd kill himself. So he decided he would just walk into town and have lunch.
The idea instantly pleased him. He stood up and rewarded himself for the thought with a drink. He thought about the food he would enjoy in town. He rewarded
himself for that too. Finally through this process of thoughts and rewards he put his feet on the dirt. He dropped his cigarette in the dust but instantly lit another one and set out on his way.
Halfway to town was a place where the road forded a creek and the woods advanced down from the hill to escort the riverbank. The light and shadow here made Mr. Perfect think of Atalanta's eyes. They had been so strikingly beautiful. In the shade Mr. Perfect removed his hat and brushed his brow and turned to see if a figure was following him underneath the shadows, and if it was Atalanta or something wilder, but no one was there. This did not surprise him anymore though it made him want a drink and a cigarette.
From the creekbed the road turned upward and the trees retreated once more toward the hills. From here the red clay lane pointed straight through green fields singing with insects and the soft rustle of the wind in the grass. He walked past tilting unrepaired red barns and now and then a mule or a tractor. A dog barked. He drank to that. He drank to allay the pressure he felt in his mind, pouring out from beneath his self-imposed stamp of a bucolic facade.
After about an hour his flask was empty, and then its spare was empty, and he was glad to emerge upon the edge of town, near old zinc-mining flophouses which now were home to some of the workmen drawn from around the country to work on the dam project. The single men lived here, in these makeshift dormitories like army barracks, row upon row. He heard their loud voices shouting and laughing and he stopped to redirect himself from the gruff sound. His course now took him behind the sagging weed-crowded fence at the back of the lumberyard.
At the end of the fence he turned north again and proceeded toward the heart of town. He walked across the train tracks and emerged between the feed store and the livery. He walked between low brown buildings toward the wider avenue that was Main Street, with its newer buildings and the traffic of cars and people ...
"Watch where you're going, buddy!"
... on across the street toward the tall hotel's dining room but, at a last faint influence of distant stars, veered across the street again toward the depot at the street's more wooded end...
"Watch where you're going!"
"Don't you know who he is?"
"I don't care. I nearly ran over him!"