The Art of Living (37 page)

“Not crazy,” he shouted, turning on me, red-faced and wide-eyed, brandishing a bottle with Chinese writing on it, shaking it at me like it was blackish holy water.

“You're a child molester,” I shouted back.

“What?” he said, surprised.

“Well, something like that,” I said. “I forget the word. You corrupted Angelina and you corrupted us—made us perfectly good citizens steal a dog and kill it for somebody to eat, which is practically cannibalism, and yet on you babble about people accepting things, not caring about themselves, not daring to stand up!”

Arnold held out his hands, pleading for a little justice, a little common sense. “You think I condone your lawless acts?” he asked. “But at least you had a reason. You actually
felt
something.” He glanced at Angelina, then quickly away again. He picked up a pair of tong-like things. “You
felt
whatever it was that made you do it, and you felt something when you did it, I'll bet. Felt something. Right? For a minute you existed! How do you feel about the packaged, drugged-up meat at your supermarket, or airplanes dropping bombs from so high up they don't know there's people down there—they never have to see it—or the Japanese and Russians out murdering the kings of the sea? Do you feel anything at all about such matters, my hot Irish friend? Not likely! Most people don't. If you can't feel anything about things near at hand, how can you feel for things more distant and abstract? Ponder it! Ponder it!”

“You're nuts,” Lenny the Shadow said. It was the first I knew that he'd come back. “You shouldda been a man-eating tiger.”

“More like he shouldda been napalm,” Benny the Butcher said. “
Fssssss.!
”

“
Not
nuts!” Arnold yelled, whirling and pointing at Lenny with the tongs. “Similar but different! I got centuries of tradition controlling my craziness. I got ideals, I got standards!”

He didn't seem to notice that the old man, Frank, the owner, was in the doorway, shrunken, morose, leaning hard on two canes. The bags under his eyes were like toadskin. The eyes, above the bags and under the gray eyebrows, were filmy. Joe stood a little behind him, in the shadows.

Arnold was raving, “I'm an artist, you understand that? What's an artist? How's he different from an
ordinary
nut? An artist is a man who makes a covenant with tradition. Not just dreams, grand hopes and abstractions—no,
hell
no—a covenant with something that's
there
, pots and paintings, recipes: the specific that makes things indefinite come alive—assuming you don't get lost in 'em, the specifics, I mean. Salt, for instance. A man can get lost in the idea of salt—too much, too little, what the ancients thought of it, whether you should shake it with the left hand or the right—No!
That's
not art!
Dead
art!
Cancel!
” He gasped, jumped in again, swinging his left arm in front of him as if driving back hordes. “The artist's contract is, come hell or high water he won't go cheap, he'll never quit trying for the best. Maybe he fails, maybe he sells out and hates himself. You know it can happen just like you know you can stop loving your wife, but all the same you make the promise. Otherwise you have to go with ordinary craziness, which is disgusting.” He spit. Forgot himself and spit right on the floor.

Then he turned with a flourish, reached into the pot two-handed with the tongs, and raised up the dog to look at it. He was bent forward like a wrestler, his expression fierce, arm and shoulder muscles swollen. Whether he was pleased or disappointed we couldn't tell. He swung around and held the carcass toward us, high, dripping pink water—raised it and held it up like some old-time sacrifice the gods were supposed to come sniff.

In the doorway old Frank Dellapicallo said, gravel-voiced, black as doom, “If you cooked that thing you better serve it, mister.”

Arnold swung his head around to look at him. Automatically he lowered the dog into the pot. “What's that?”

“You heard me,” Frank growled. “If that's your chef's special, you better find customers to feed it to.”

“I'll eat it, don't worry,” Arnold said.

“Not you,” Frank said. “
People
. Otherwise”—he jerked one cane toward the hallway behind him—“out!”

Joe came into the light now, arms folded, white sleeves sharply outlined over the black of his vest. He was grinning. You couldn't really blame him, even though Arnold had been more or less a friend. There were blood marks all over the floor, though not as bad as earlier. Ellis had mopped some of it up. Angelina was leaning forward, stretching out her arms toward the old man, whining at him, “
Gram
-pa …”

“Shut up,” Frank said—just like that, exactly as you'd speak to a three-year-old child, or a dog. “He knows the agreement.”

Mechanically, because it was time, according to the recipe in the book, Arnold took the dog out of the pot and laid it in the pan where Ellis had put the fruit and things, arranged it so the pawless feet were tucked under the body and the black cap of hair on the tail could be seen, then carried the whole thing to the oven. Ellis held open the oven door for him while he slid in the pan.

Then everybody just stood there. Arnold poured himself more whiskey.

“Well,” Arnold said, squinting his little pig-eyes and rubbing his hands on his apron, “there's a lesson in this.” He didn't go on. According to the clock over the counter it was 3 a.m.

Just then a knock came at the kitchen's back door. We all jumped, and then after a minute Benny went over and opened the door a few inches to look out. He opened the door wider. Arnold's three daughters stood there, homely and scared-looking, their skin the color of old ashes. The oldest one was eighteen, though she looked more like fourteen or fifteen. The youngest was ten. I knew her a little; she was in my sister Shannon's class at school. All three of them looked like orphans—little glasses like Arnold's and washed-out hand-me-down clothes—but if they looked pitiful it was mostly just the hour and their shyness, maybe a fear, not fully admitted, that their father had had some accident, or had shot himself. They came in sideways, like refugees, looking at Arnold and saying nothing, their expressions meek, timidly friendly, as if they were hoping no one would yell at them. I was aware again of the room's thick blood smell. Arnold stared at the three girls, saying nothing, no doubt trying to figure out how he felt. At last he gave an abrupt nod, freeing them to smile and shyly nod back—they stretched out the nod to make it do for all of us—then they faded as well as they could into the walls.

Arnold began cleaning things up, putting condiments and spices away, carrying knives and pots and pans over to the sink, throwing out his waste. Angelina moved over closer to her grandfather, probably so that when she spoke Arnold's daughters wouldn't hear her.

“How can you fire him, Grandpa?” she asked. “He made us
famous
.”

She knew well enough why Frank could fire him. He'd challenged Joe; he'd made us steal the dog; he was crazy.

But the old man was too tired and impatient for the complicated reasons. “We had an agreement.”

We stood and waited. A strange, mysteriously sweet smell began to fill the kitchen. Tony Petrillo opened a bottle of wine from the bar, just walked in and got it. Awkwardly, spilling a little, he poured a glass for Arnold, leaning on the counter, standing with his feet crossed, big bags under his eyes. Arnold accepted the wine without even noticing, though he had whiskey in the other hand. Tony poured another glass of wine for Angelina, then one for me, one for Benny, one for Lenny, and one for each of the girls. When he held a glass up for Frank, the old man waved him away in disgust. He didn't offer one to Joe.

The three daughters edged over to the sink where Ellis was washing pots and pans and stood watching as if it were fascinating work or he was unusually good at it. They still hadn't said a word to anyone, even to ask what was happening. They put down their wineglasses and began stacking dishes from the dryer. The way they worked—smoothly, silently—you'd've thought they'd been there for hours. They were nice girls, it suddenly struck me. It was funny no one ever noticed them. Maybe the same thought occurred to Angelina. She went over and joined them. She looked the way she had in my father's garage. Small and tired. I was reminded, watching her, that I was going to have to help eat that dog.

“Hey, Arnold,” I said, “how much you figure on charging for that dog?”

He looked at Joe, then me. “Two-fifty sound fair?”

“Hey,” Lenny the Shadow said, “I just had supper.” He put his hand on his stomach. The oldest of the daughters smiled, then looked puzzled.

“Me too,” Benny the Butcher said, and grinned.

Crazy Tony said, “How much for the child's plate, Arnold?”

Angelina turned her face a little to glance at me.

“Child's plate! That might change the picture,” Lenny said. He wrapped his hand around his jaw, thinking.

“Dollar-fifty?” Arnold asked.

So we did it.

We ate by candlelight, out in the restaurant, old man Dellapicallo at the end of the table leaning on his elbows, no plate in front of him. Joe had gone home. When he went out the door he looked smaller than Angelina. I was sorry for him. He was the one who'd been right—sane and civilized from the beginning. But also his walk was oddly mechanical, and the way he shook his head when he looked back at us from the door, it was as if under his hair he had springs and gears.

Angelina sat by me, the others spread around us, close enough to come to the rescue just in case, in this strange world where anything could happen, the dog should wake up. There was no sign of the thousands and thousands of dead Asians, or of Rinehart either, but it felt like they were there—maybe even more there if there's no such thing in the world as ghosts, no life after death, no one there at the candlelit table but the few of us able to throw shadows on the wall. Say that being alive was the dinner candles, and say they burned forever over this everlasting meal of Imperial Dog. Then we were the diners there now, this instant, sent as distinguished representatives of all who couldn't make it this evening, the dead and the unborn. Everybody was feeling it, the importance of what we were doing—though it wasn't
what
we were doing that was important. We could've been, I don't know, planting a tree. The dog was terrific, by the way, once you talked your stomach past the idea. The wine was also terrific. Angelina, as if by accident, put her hand on mine.

“To the future of Ancient China!” Benny the Butcher said, raising his wineglass.

“To the Kings of the Road,” Arnold said, and raised his.

“Hear, hear,” the three daughters said softly, smiling and blushing as if they understood.

Tony Petrillo said thoughtfully, almost so no one could hear him, “To grasshoppers and mice.”

“To Angelina!” Angelina cried, eyes sparkling.

We were all, even Arnold, a little shocked, but in the darkness beyond where the candles reached, Rinehart nodded, and a thousand thousand Asians bowed from the waist.

A Biography of John Gardner

John Gardner (1933–1982) was a bestselling and award-winning novelist and essayist, and one of the twentieth century's most controversial literary authors. Gardner produced more than thirty works of fiction and nonfiction, consisting of novels, children's stories, literary criticism, and a book of poetry. His books, which include the celebrated novels
Grendel
,
The Sunlight Dialogues
, and
October Light
, are noted for their intellectual depth and penetrating insight into human nature.

Gardner was born in Batavia, New York. His father, a preacher and dairy farmer, and mother, an English teacher, both possessed a love of literature and often recited Shakespeare during his childhood. When he was eleven years old, Gardner was involved in a tractor accident that resulted in the death of his younger brother, Gilbert. He carried the guilt from this accident with him for the rest of his life, and would incorporate this theme into a number of his works, among them the short story “Redemption” (1977). After graduating from high school, Gardner earned his undergraduate degree from Washington University in St. Louis, and he married his first wife, Joan Louise Patterson, in 1953. He earned his Master's and Ph.D. in English from the University of Iowa in 1958, after which he entered into a career in academia that would last for the remainder of his life, including a period at Chico State College, where he taught writing to a young Raymond Carver.

Following the births of his son, Joel, in 1959 and daughter, Lucy, in 1962, Gardner published his first novel,
The Resurrection
(1966), followed by
The Wreckage of Agathon
(1970). It wasn't until the release of
Grendel
(1971), however, that Gardner's work began attracting significant attention. Critical praise for
Grendel
was universal and the book won Gardner a devoted following. His reputation as a preeminent figure in modern American literature was cemented upon the release of his
New York Times
bestselling novel
The Sunlight Dialogues
(1972). Throughout the 1970s, Gardner completed about two books per year, including
October Light
(1976), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the controversial
On Moral Fiction
(1978), in which he argued that “true art is by its nature moral” and criticized such contemporaries as John Updike and John Barth. Backlash over
On Moral Fiction
continued for years after the book's publication, though his subsequent books, including
Freddy's Book
(1980) and
Mickelsson's Ghosts
(1982), were largely praised by critics. He also wrote four successful children's books, among them
Dragon
,
Dragon and Other Tales
(1975), which was named Outstanding Book of the Year by the
New York Times
.