Middle C (31 page)

Howd she do that? I couldn’t beat on the back of our munny-pinchin pastor enuf he buy his truck from me.

I don’t know how she did it. I didn’t know she knew any …

For free?

For … well, if I play a little for … some ceremonies.

Chile stuff. You’ll look suity. The little giggles’ll be in white, too. For confirmation an ring-aroun-the-rosy.

You live here, too?

I church here. My husband leff me these three-town lots. He was used up, and in pieces, too, by the end. My voice was always mine.

So that was you? you singing? I mean, the solo part?

Miss Spiky opened a very wide mouth. I know moon-rise, I know star-rise,

Lay dis body down.

Oh, that’s—

I walk in de moonlight, I walk in de starlight

To lay dis body down.

I’ll walk in de graveyard, I’ll walk through the graveyard,

To lay dis body down.

Gee—There was no stopping her. She sang with a full throat and without embarrassment. Gee—he’d said gee.

I’ll lie in de grave and stretch out my arms;

Lay dis body down.

I go to de judgment in de evening of de day,

When I lay dis body down;

And my soul and your soul will meet in de day

When I lay dis body down.

Joseph dared to applaud. Miss Spiky’s voice rocketed about the basement so rapidly and with such a roar it ran over its own echoes.

You can clap, but you can’t applaud. Only the Lord is worthy of that, an he dont need it. He knows he’s good. I beleeve, in the beginin, he sang; he didnt say those first letters, he sang; he sang, Glory glory let there be light.

All that Joseph could manage was: I like the car.

I tole you it’d run all right. So youre a music man not just a Rambler man?

I’m pretty much self-taught … except for a spell when I studied with Professor Hirk. Maybe you’ve heard of him?

About such, I dont hear much, Miss Spiky said, rolling her shoulders.

And how is Billy Bear? Back in Lowell? Still?

Worn out. Worn out from workin charms. Takes his stuffin, pinch by pinch. To do the burn. He is thinnin to match his grinnin.

There’s religion and then there’s religion, Joseph said, where only he could hear. He realized, just as it was now with his mother, that he should not try to extend this conversation by asking, for instance, how business
went on. Their talk, even such as it was, would take turns he couldn’t steer through. I don’t remember a smile amid that fur, Joseph said.

He wasnt smilin. I dont think. That day. Sleepy maybe like a baby. You were goin home from Whichstown?

To Woodbine … yes.

But it’s Whichstown now?

Yes … for now. I’m—

In a voice, like herself the size of three divas, she burst into a chorus of “Go Down Moses” as her back began to face him. She stopped abruptly. Spect I’ll see you again then.

Expect so.

Mind the traffic.

Love your voice.

Its what it needs to be. Its loud.

Joseph very much wanted to tell Marjorie about his encounter. He very much wanted to tell Miriam, too. But he didn’t think it wise to try to imitate Miss Spiky’s voice; there were characters in the tale, like Billy Bear, he couldn’t explain; background would need filling in; and he’d sound condescending, however he went about it. And when Miss Spiky disappeared up the stairs she was singing the way people do when they’re happy. That Jordan was a wet river.

Joseph had spent more time than he had ever thought he would in church basements. The library’s basement, in contrast, was lonely dark crowded silent, with floors of cement, racks of steel, and windows of brick, but he was adding up hours in it, too. He was saying to Miss Moss how strange it was that there were people whom you encountered at the edges of your life that you just sort of oozed around, as though they were crumbs on a kitchen counter and you were a little spill. Miss Moss was looking intently at him as if he had given her a crumb’s role when they both jumped at a scream that came from above like a burst pipe. Marjorie, Joseph exclaimed, already trying to bound up the narrow stairs and stumbling so badly he whacked a knee. He hardly felt it happening, though he knew he would suffer later when the joint was swollen and purple as an onion. Despite his awkward fall Joseph reached Marjorie’s desk rather quickly and from there saw her in the reading room being threatened it seemed by Portho who was yelling now loud as a train conductor while gesturing wildly, yet looking somewhat dazed to Joseph
as he ran toward them, and his outcries increasingly mechanical. It was he, he would learn, who had screamed. Marjorie was holding her breath and her chest with both hands. Her hair was aloft as if it were momentarily on a cat’s back. She was shrinking against a table with otherwise no good place to go. Portho was yowling more than anything when Joseph came up huffing and said, What’s this?

I’ve asked—I’ve asked this man to leave.

From Portho a grimace as tortured as a shout. My goodness! Joseph said, a little late with his question: Did he just begin to yell like this?

Portho yelled again, but it was the size of a cough.

We can’t have extemporaneous noise like this, sir, not in the library. Readers will be disturbed.

Aint nah peeple, Joseph made out.

Just get this man out of here, Joseph, just get him out. The first thing is out. Out for you, mister, you miserable man! You ungrateful piece of waste!

Unhand this woman at once, you varlet, Joseph half shouted himself.

Gonne donne nonne hands on her.

You shall have to go, varlet sir, at once. Joseph endeavored to push between the two combatants, though without enthusiasm. Portho at that moment seemed vile, composed of filth and froth and frightening behavior. Had it not been Marjorie in this encounter (or maybe his mother or maybe maybe Miss Moss) he might not have had the will. But he did not touch Portho, he was afraid to do that. He slid like a thin book between them.

Don’t touch him, he’ll scream again. I shook him awake, Marjorie said, still out of breath. That’s what set him off. He was snoring so.

Ah, you see, sir, sleep is normally silent, Joseph said in a far-from-resolute voice. If you are going to sleep noisily you’ll have to do it outside. Outside, sir. I believe it’s a nice day. Joseph would try later to forget how fatuous he was being (had been), but the effort would never succeed. The moment became a permanent embarrassment, a scar on life’s skin.

Portho was now still, arms limp, mouth slack. It was Marjorie who was growing shrill. Out, she was repeating. With an elongated
O
. Portho was passive. He was now an empty bottle in an empty sack. Joseph merely gestured like a waiter, and Portho shuffled away from
Marjorie toward the door, allowing Marjorie to lower her voice, though the
O
remained sizable and replete with huff. Aint nah peeple. Bother nah, Portho managed. But he went. To Joseph’s immense relief, he went meekly out the door, pushing through it himself, and stepping slowly down the front steps in his absurd huge tennis shoes like a figure in a silent movie. Marjorie still leaned back against the rim of the library table as if she were being pushed, her face pale but with a hint of yellow in it like a page from an old book.

You are my hero, she said after Joseph reached her side. Joseph held her then the way Miriam had sometimes held him. His own blood began to return from wherever it had hidden. He thought he was embracing her, but when he relaxed his grip, he realized that Marjorie was enfolding him, cheek to chest, her hair, redolent, no doubt from overheated temples, yet fragrant in a light way like stationery that’s been stored with a sachet, muffling, veiling his face.

Joseph sneezed. So they had to part. Sorry, he said, sneezing again. Tickle …

Bless, Marjorie said, even more briefly than spelled.

Ah …

Allergic. You’re allergic to me.

No … ah … no … He sneezed. Your hair … my nose … tickled.

Well, back to your basement or wherever you were, she said. Our little excitement is concluded. He won’t be back, I’m sure. Thank you for your help.

Oh no. I did nothing. You had matters in hand. He—

Screamed. It wasn’t I who screamed like that, I can tell you. I shook him a mite. Put a hand I need to wash, oh dear yes, on an arm—his arm—and shook him just a little, he was snoring so, I never heard the like. And he screamed like a bird in the night. He—

Inspired, Joseph took her in his arms again. Poor dear, he said, moving his head out of the way of her hair, which wasn’t easy. He felt her soften. My hero, my young hero, she said.

They stood together until they both became aware that Miss Moss was nearby. You screamed. I heard a scream, Joseph and I heard it. Joseph, you left me like an antelope from a lion. A scream like that—in a library—quite curdles the blood.

I did not scream.

I heard one.

It was Portho, Joseph said. His knee was beginning to hurt.

It was a woman’s scream.

Yes, but Portho made it. Marjorie hardly raised her voice. Joseph’s knee was throbbing like a thrummed bass.

Miss Moss was sure she had heard the Major playing Lady Macbeth. What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? she said in a firm theatrical tone, as if in character.

Joseph was nonplussed. His knee was speaking to him in Dutch. That was how his mother described her aches and pains: her joints were jabbering in Dutch, a tooth was yelling in Dutch, her stomach was mumbling in Dutch. Marjorie had clearly reentered her cool mood, a mood that hadn’t been far away. Joseph was as silent as anyone who knows they are socially inept, but he felt gratitude when Miss Moss receded. Marjorie walked briskly by to reach her desk, where she was immediately busy, stirring her affairs; these were apparently steaming like a pot. Joseph looked around at table, chair, and radiator in case something required a tidy; however, all was as much in order as ever. He tried to pull a pant leg past his knee but couldn’t, and the cloth when it rubbed over the spot where he’d had it knocked was excruciating. Despite the pain he limped from the library without a word of triumph, need, or farewell, except that he could still hear Marjorie through the open entry. She had recovered her aplomb but now was losing it again. Var let, she managed between fresh hilarities. Var-let, oh my, oh me, un-hand, oh no, un-un-han … ha ha!

Joey climbed the hill to his car, complaining to the slope as he strived to conquer it. He cursed his keys before he rolled the Rambler to the street—they never fit the first time—and weaved his way to Woodbine. Miriam would be shocked at what he’d done to himself, but also curious and solicitous. While he drove he rehearsed his story, divided nicely into edifying anecdotes: prestos with adagios after them, bright panels companioned by pastels more suitable on pajamas.

21

For a fake, this is an utter flop, Miss Moss said with a smile that suggested she would be happy to help Joseph improve the quality of his counterfeit—at the least raise its grade from an F to a gentleman’s C. Because this, she said, holding the offending document by the tweezering tips of her nails, is the license of a loser.

The Bumbler and its presumptuous driver had suffered some near misses over the weekend when Skizzen had driven it to Woodbine in what had become his routine line of duty. He had nearly rear-ended an Amish wagon while cresting a hill, and the scare had opened him like a tin. Later, Joseph had taken a turn too fast and found himself riding the berm. It prepared him to confess his crimes and face jail. Luckily, the expulsion of Portho, a shabby instrument of Satan, from their run-down Eden, as Miss Moss, in inflated tones, preferred to describe the encounter, had apparently made “the dweller in the cellar” more approachable, though Joseph thought Portho’s departure was scarcely sun enough to soften her. Whatever her reasons, Miss Moss had evidently decided to let Joseph admire how her deft fingers flew when she made some basic book repairs; and it was during these demonstrations that he had complained of the car’s erratic behavior and mentioned his fear of being pulled over by the state police, whose eye for the flimsy fob-off driver’s license he carried (and a “permission” they would surely demand he produce) might be sharper than any of the more casual cops from town. Miss Moss had asked to see the offending document whose clumsiness richly amused her. It was a state that Joseph had rarely seen. However, here, in her workroom, she no longer seemed to be a skittish spinster; rather she resembled a competent craftsman, diagnosing difficulties, choosing treatments, dabbing on glues with confident swipes, or even sewing up spinal wounds with surprising dexterity, applying healing oils, and squeezing books in padded vises as though they were patients instead, needing traction.

Although Urichstown’s little library had only the most rudimentary equipment, Miss Moss seemed familiar with the miracles performed in places of wealth and regard—institutions that consequently had fancy
restoration and preservation departments. She singled out the Library of Congress where she had seen sulfurous compounds harmlessly leached from brittle papers, and tears mended that seemed beyond a surgeon’s skills. If Joseph’s little secret had slipped out, so had the information that Miss Moss had once been the head of their modest library and had, during her tenure, made more than one visit to the Folger as well as to the Library of Congress. On one most memorable visit to the capital, she had been honored by a tour of its magical laboratories. As she spoke, she held the plasticized card high in the air at the end of a wavering arm. I understand the passport people use a kind of blue light that brightens the ink on a genuine document and forces any falsified design to disappear. Joseph didn’t dare ask about the historic upheaval that had plucked her from the front desk and sent her to this small basement room with its odd inadequate lamps, few tools, and scarred workbench; nevertheless it was a hideaway, and out of all beck and most calls. Although Miss Moss still resented the Major as well as her own continued subservience to an upstart, she had happily adjusted to “debasement,” a condition for which she had several other similar names. I hang about here like a bat in a cave, she said, making a boast of her banishment. I am the Keller Madchen. You are like a bottle of fine wine, Joseph suggested. Dusty from lying a-round, Miss Moss amended, but he could see that she was pleased.