All The Bells on Earth (18 page)

“What?” Eddie asked, folding his own arms and leaning against the counter beside Walt.

“Apologize to your sister.”

“She wrecked my tower.”

“She just wanted her turn at the sink.”

“She said … You heard.”

“She didn’t mean it.”

“Yeah-huh,” Eddie said. “She talks like that.”

“Well, I think she’s kind of scared, staying here and all. You’ve got to help me take care of her. She’s little, you know? Don’t tell her I said that.”

Eddie shrugged. “I guess,” he said.

“Good man,” Walt said. “Let’s go cheer her up.”

Walt opened the door and they went into the spare bedroom. Nora lay on her bed, facedown, as if she intended to smother herself in the pillow.

“I’m sorry,” Eddie said. “About the water and all …”

She didn’t move, but her body shuddered from a quiet sob. Walt patted her head, wondering what to do. “It’s all right,” he said. “No big deal.”

She put her fingers in her ears, closing out the world. He realized that she was still crying. What next? Pick her up? Roll her over? Threaten her? Where were her goddamn father and mother? That was the ten-cent question. One of them was pounding down another Budweiser and the other one was out looking for space. Shit. What a world.

“I’ll be right back,” he said to Eddie, who climbed into his own bed. Walt headed upstairs.

“How’s it going?” Ivy asked when he had gotten back to the bedroom.

“You better give it a shot,” he said. “I’m a dead loss.”

“I bet you’re not.” She got out of bed and kissed him on the lips. He had the brief feeling that he was being taken somehow, that Ivy had set him up in some complicated and devious way, and was playing him like a fiddle. She disappeared down the stairs, and he sat down on the edge of the bed to wait. Five minutes later he heard her coming back up.

“What’s happening?” he asked.

“They’re settled down. I promised them you’d tell them a story.”

Walt gaped at her. “About what?”

“I don’t know. Read them something out of that fairytale book in the living-room bookcase.”

“All right. But you’re still waiting up for me, right?”

“Why, are you going to read me a story too?”

“Shucks, yes,” he said, heading for the stairs. “Just you wait.”

“ ‘T
HERE WAS ONCE
a man who had three sons,’ ” Walt read, trying another story. The first two he started had apparently been incomprehensible to the modern child. “ ‘The youngest of the sons was named Dummling, and on that account was despised and slighted and put back on every occasion.’ ”

“What?” Nora asked. She wasn’t crying any more, but was sitting up in bed, wearing a pair of dry pajamas.

“What what?” Walt asked, smiling at her.

“What did that mean?”

“What I read?”

She nodded at him.

“Well, there’s these three kids,” Walt said.

“Name of Dumbhead,” Eddie said, snickering.

Nora covered her mouth with her hand, giggling through it, happy again.

“ ‘It happened,’ ” Walt read, “ ‘that the eldest …’ ”

“The what?” Nora asked.

“The … oldest,” Walt said.

“The dummy one?” She looked confused, like she’d lost the thread of the story.

“He wasn’t
dumb
,” Walt said. “That was his name.”

“Why did they name him that?”

“Dumm
ling
. They named him Dumm
ling
.”

“Oh,” she said. She settled down in bed, waiting. Eddie picked at the flowers on the chenille bedspread. He looked tired, his eyes half shut.

“ ‘It happened that the eldest wished to go into the forest to hew wood, and …’ ”

“Didn’t he know he was the oldest?” Nora asked.

Walt nodded, unable to puzzle her out. There was something amazing about the question, some element of it that reminded him of the kind of special lunacy you run across in a Zen koan. Nora was apparently a sort of cosmic mystery. “Sure he did,” Walt told her, closing the book. “He just wanted to cut some wood, you know?”

“For his house?”

“For a fire and all.”

“It was cold,” she said.

Walt nodded. “It was terribly cold. There was snow everywhere. So he got his axe and …”

“How do you know?” Nora looked at him, frowning. “It’s not in the book,” she said. “It’s not in the picture. You’re making stuff up.”

“That’s right,” he said. “Don’t you want snow in it?”

“Okay,” she said.

Walt winked at her. “So anyway, he got this axe and went into the forest. And his friend, this guy named … I forget. Gooberhead, I think …”

Nora snickered.

“… showed up with a bag full of rocks. And Dummling says, ‘What’s in the bag?’ And Gooberhead says, ‘Smart pills.’ ”

“Was it?” Nora asked.

Walt shook his head. “It was a
trick
.” Eddie was asleep now, still sitting up in bed, but with his head slumped to the side. “So Dummling says, ‘Let me have some,’ but Gooberhead wouldn’t give him any.”

“He was
mean
,” Nora said.

“Wait. They were
rocks
, remember? So Dummling says, ‘C’mon, Gooberhead, give me some smart pills.’ And so Gooberhead opens the bag, and Dummling takes out a handful of the rocks and puts them in his mouth and tries to chew them up.”

“Mmm,” Nora said. “Were they candy?”

Walt blinked at her. “No, they were rocks, like I said. They broke his teeth out.”

“Oh!” Nora said.

“And Dummling says, ‘Hey! These taste like
rocks
.’ And Boogerhead …”

Nora burst into laughter, pointing her finger at Walt. “You said
booger
.”

“I meant Gooberhead….”

“
Booger!
”

“Okay, but just never mind that. When Dummling says, ‘Hey, these taste like rocks,’ Gooberhead says, ‘See, you’re getting smarter already.’ ” Walt laughed a little bit. “Pretty funny, eh?”

Nora gaped at him. “Where’s Uncle Henry?” she asked suddenly.

“Why, he’s outside, in the motor home.”

“Is he old?”

“Sort of. I mean …”

“He’s funny. He looks like that head.”

“What head?”

“That cabbage head.”

“
What
cabbage head?” Walt asked.

“That
one
. That fell on the floor.”

Walt nodded. “But did you like the story?”

“Yes.” She pulled the covers up to her chin. Eddie was sound asleep. “But I don’t like that Gooberhead man.”

“I don’t either,” Walt said. “He’s a dirty pig. Go to sleep now.”

“G’night,” she said, turning over and snuggling down into the blankets.

He kissed her on the cheek, then eased Eddie down into bed, covered him up, and tiptoed out through the door, leaving the dining-room light on as a night light.

Upstairs, Ivy lay in bed. She still wore her glasses, but her book had fallen out of her hand, and she was clearly asleep. Walt set the book on the nightstand and eased her glasses off. She murmured something and slid down under the covers. He kissed her on the cheek, wondering vaguely whether it was still a husband’s right to wake his wife up under circumstances like this, or if the politics of marriage had changed along with everything else. He decided to cut his losses. There would be other nights.

Somehow he wasn’t sleepy yet, and he turned around and went back downstairs, where he switched on the Christmas tree lights. The room smelled strongly of pine. He sat down on the couch, watching the bubblers and the whirligigs come to life. Ivy had started buying old-fashioned-looking painted glass ornaments—Santa Clauses, grinning moons, clowns, comical dogs. There was a silver baby’s head as big as his fist, with three different faces on it, each of the faces vaguely astonished, as if all of them had just that moment seen something wonderful and unlikely. He searched the baby head out now, finding it finally among a cluster of glass icicles, and it occurred to him that it was his favorite ornament because it was ridiculous, because it made the least sense.

He loved all of it, though, the whole thing together—the blinking lights shining through the icicles, the bubbles rising in their glass tubes, the colored balls glowing like tiny planets, the gaudily painted figures—and it seemed to him now, late in the evening, as if the tree signified all the light and color and magic in creation.

He laid his head back against the cushion. I’ll just shut my eyes for a moment, he thought, and then get up and go to bed. And for a brief time, he could see the colored lights winking on and off even though his eyes were closed, and he wished Ivy were downstairs, too, sitting with him on the couch.

A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth.

G. K. C
HESTERTON
O
RTHODOXY

The wood was green, and at first showed no disposition to blaze. It smoked furiously. Smoke, thought I, always goes before blaze; and so does doubt go before decision.

A
NDREW
M
ARVELL
R
EVERIES OF A
B
ACHELOR

“W
HAT DO YOU MAKE
of them?”

Father Mahoney held one of the jars in his hand. It was the jar with the eyelid. He shook his head. “I don’t know. You say you heard something when you took the lid off?”

“A human cry. Just as sure as I’m standing here now.”

“Could have been the wind?”

“Could have been. I don’t happen to think so.”

“What’s your take on it, then?”

“I surely don’t know. I don’t mean to be morbid, but I wonder if when they take to digging up LeRoy’s acreage they might not find worse things.”

Mahoney was silent.

“I don’t mean to dump these on your doorstep like a couple of orphan babies, but to my mind there’s no denying that we’re both involved in something here.” He gestured around—at the boarded-up, stained-glass windows, the washed-down walls with the ghosts of filthy words still visible, waiting for a second coat of paint. “LeRoy came after your church. Another one of them got the bells at St. Anthony’s and killed Simms. They aren’t going away. Push is coming to shove. Now, we’ve had our differences in the past, you being a Catholic and all, but I’ve always known you were the real McCoy, and I hope I never let on any different about myself.”

“No, sir,” Mahoney said. “I’ve admired your work here, Protestant or no Protestant.” Mahoney winked at him.

Bentley stood silently for a moment, as if he were working something out in his head. “I’m going to tell you a few things, then. And afterward you can decide whether you want to stand by what you just said, or amend it.”

The priest nodded. Then very seriously he said, “Would you prefer the confessional?”

“Damn it!” Bentley shouted. “This isn’t funny. I’m not con
fess
ing something. I’m telling you what happened.”

“Sorry,” Mahoney said. “Honestly, I
am
sorry. I couldn’t help myself. Go on with your story.”

“All right,” Bentley said. “I’ll make it plain. For a long time I led what you’d call a double life, and what I did in that other life was shameful.”

“All of us have done shameful …”

“I’m not talking about that. What I did was worse. Murray LeRoy knew me, or thought he did, as a diabolical priest named Flanagan.”

“Priest?”

“Minister, then. It doesn’t matter which. Anyway, I introduced LeRoy and another man, George Nelson, to the notion of selling their immortal souls, literally speaking. You know who Nelson is—the lawyer down on the Plaza who found LeRoy burning to death in the alley. Together they conscripted another man, Robert Argyle, who had fallen on hard times after some kind of trouble with the authorities. Argyle had certain … business connections, let us say, in the East. There were certain things he could acquire for them. Anyway, with my help, the three of them sold their souls to the Devil.” He paused, waiting for Mahoney to respond.

“
Sold
them?”

“That’s right. For a price. A good one, too. I didn’t really believe it myself at the time, just as you don’t quite believe it now. I can see that much in your face.”

“You’re telling me they thought they’d
sold
their souls? Like Faust? Was there a piece of paper? Something signed?”

“Well, no, not signed exactly. As a signature they bit down hard on a bar napkin and rubbed the indentation with charcoal. Along with that they gave me … tokens. I didn’t ask for them, mind you. This was arranged by a third party, so to speak, a man named Obermeyer, who lives out in Santa Ana. Nelson’s token was a lock of hair. From Murray LeRoy it was a severed fingertip. He was a sadomasochist of the worst type. Utter degenerate. Argyle offered a little vial of blood. These objects arrived in common household canning jars. And now you know why I don’t like the look of these things here.” He pointed at the jars on the table.