In Springdale Town (3 page)

7

Perhaps the emptiness had been forced on Shelling to balance his past. In his previous life on television, solitude had never been a factor. Even when a network cancelled a show, he found more work quickly; when a relationship ended, another started soon after. All of that seemed so far away now, relics. He wondered what some of those people he had known were doing. Though he owned a television, he hadn’t turned it on since receiving his belongings from California.

Saturday morning passed without the situation changing. Shelling sat with his tape recorder as usual, though he thought he spoke with more determination and insight. “In the continuum of solitude, all beings are supreme,” he said, then talked for a while about the consequences and benefits of geographic relocation. The recorder had a voice-activation feature; he clipped the unit to the waistband of his pants and moved out into the yard, where, with an unthinking determination, he dug out a broad swath of turf and turned the soil in preparation for sowing. He forgot to talk into the recorder until he had finished digging, then spoke of the seeds he planned to buy, the vegetables he would plant. And with his garden in mind, he drove into town.

Downtown Springdale consisted of Highway 7 (which, as it cut through the town, became Main Street) and the intersecting blocks between Hill Street and the turnoff where Highway 7 veered right to merge with Highway 23 and cross the river. Hill and Knight Streets ran perpendicular to Main. Various stores, offices, and restaurants lined Springdale’s streets. Shelling had visited them all. The used bookstore and the Japanese restaurant were on Knight. One of the two movie houses was on Hill, occupying a former vaudeville theater. A new complex, built in a space behind the buildings on the west side of Main Street, housed the other theater. Though new, it had been designed in scale and style to blend with the surrounding buildings.

Shelling left his car near the newer movie house. On reaching the used book store, he allowed himself to be sidetracked from his goal of the garden shop. Entering, he had an odd twist in his stomach, apprehension, he thought, though of what? He laughed–nothing in a book store could hurt him.

The woman who ran the shop came out from the back, passing him without a greeting. Shelling roamed the store, flipping pages and looking at pictures in a few cookbooks, but none drew him. In the fiction section, a book protruded from a shelf; he reached for it,
Dead Language
, stories by Samantha Hidalgo. He had heard the name somewhere. The dust jacket photo showed a woman with short dark hair and squarish glasses. “A linguistic and phantasmagoric tour-de-force,” the blurb said. He opened the book at random and read the beginning of a story.
{note 6}

Shelling paid for the book and left the store. Back at his car, he opened the passenger-side door and dropped the book on the seat. There he lingered, not ready to return to his empty house. Across the parking lot, the movie marquee beckoned. Shelling didn’t like going to movies alone, feeling exposed and self conscious, judged for his inability to find a companion, but Springdale gave him little choice.

The ticket booth was on the inside, to the left of the entrance. Shelling found it untenanted. A film called
The Painting of Kathleen Alice May
would be starting soon.

The theater smelled of corn syrup and stale popcorn.
{note 7}
Shelling walked toward the back, passing where the ticket-taker commonly stood. Ahead, the hallway stretched. No one came to challenge him. Continuing, he found the air began to thicken, first around his toes and rising, assuming the consistency of a thin oatmeal porridge, and it resisted his forward progress, pushing on his thighs and sucking at the soles of his shoes. Thick air oozed and flexed to hinder his entry. Perhaps a security measure initiated because of the lack of present employees?

As the air thickened, it also darkened. Shelling looked over his shoulder at the line of fluorescent light fixtures, bright where he entered, fading here. A glow framed a doorway to his right, from behind which came the sounds of a movie playing, but in the dark of the hall, Shelling couldn’t read the sign showing the name of the film.

He traveled on, immersing himself in the shape of the hallway, more a shadow of a hall than an actual one, a shadow that clung to him, and he found himself embracing it, willing it closer, wearing it as a cloak. Even as the last, scattered elements of light skittered away, across the blackened carpet, still he continued. His eyes adjusted to the dark, seeing it as a blackness that shaped the world into figures, into objects of startling unfamiliarity, and in them he found comfort.

8

After the reception, I went back to my room and sat on the balcony, which overlooked the main concourse of the shopping mall. The problem with solitude, sometimes, is what to do with it. For me, here, in this tacky mall hotel, the options were few: read my legal journal, watch television (64 channels!), or traverse the corridors of the shopping mall. There was a movie theater on the far end. I considered going, but decided that seeing a movie would constitute a form of replacement solitude.

For the moment, the artificiality of the view appealed to me. Three stories below, people walked about the mall, young couples hand in hand, families, and tired office workers relishing their weekend, everyone buying things: movie posters, compact discs of the latest hit songs, jogging shoes, and sweaters.

Down there to my right, water flowed from a fountain in the shape of that famous cartoon penguin. Benches ringed the fountain–I had sat on one last night after dinner. The water sparkled as if dyed with light.

As I watched, waves began lapping over the sides of the fountain’s basin. I figured something must have clogged the drain, though it should be a closed system–water in the basin pumping back up to exit from the penguin’s mouth. So with a clogged drain, there should be no water spewing.

Water splashed and pooled on the pavement surrounding the fountain. A child, maybe six years old, ran laughing into the growing puddle, splattering its clothes and head. The mother pulled it away, lifted it, and carried it into a shoe store.

I was feeling hungry, but didn’t want to leave my balcony–the scene here entertained me more than any movie could have. I went inside and called room service for pepperoni and mushroom pizza with a salad. When I returned to the balcony, some man in blue cover-alls, likely from mall maintenance, stood near the fountain. He spoke into a cell phone, then put it in his pocket. He remained, perhaps observing the situation while someone elsewhere attempted to turn off the water. After a time, as the water converged on the bases of the surrounding benches, he was forced to take several steps back to keep his feet dry.

Surely by now someone would have figured out how to shut it down? My liability-law nature started coming up with scenarios. Obviously a problem with the pump’s manufacture, though it could also be a question of improper maintenance. A knock sounded on my door–the pizza. I signed for it and carried the tray out to the balcony.

Another man in blue cover-alls had joined the first. I poured blue cheese dressing on the salad and worked it around. The pizza smelled pretty good, considering where I was, and the salad actually had more to it than limp lettuce. I speared a cherry tomato with my fork and ate it.

A man in a business suit called out to the men by the fountain. He trudged around the growing pool, keeping his glossy shoes far from the water’s edge. A couple of inches of water now covered the bases of the benches, and I wondered how much farther it could extend. A sporting goods store stood maybe halfway toward the other end of the mall, and I pictured its employees busily inflating rubber rafts for use in an evacuation. They would paddle through the stores, forcing their way through floating clothes and plastic toys.

Closing time neared, and few shoppers remained in the area. Some clerks from stores near the fountain hung out in their doorways, watching. They jeered when the flow of water stopped, their voices drifting to my perch as thin echoes. I finished the pizza and wiped my lips. With the live entertainment over, I slipped inside and changed for bed.

9

Cold and dusty morning light filled Shelling’s front room, a thick light, a light that promised nothing. It smelled of degradation, of decay. Shelling had no place here, the light said. But look around–were these not his things, had he not made his mark on the house, the garden? He refused the light’s verdict.

The Briar Café had always been crowded on weekends. Shelling decided to breakfast there among his fellow townsfolk, away from the dismal light that had invaded his house.

He reached the cafe at 8:45; no one was there but the teen-aged wait staff and the unseen cooks, though a few minutes after the arrival of Shelling’s blueberry pancakes, he heard the chime of the brass bell hanging on the door and the sound of people being seated in the booth behind him.

“Ran around naked with the neighbor’s horses?”

“Well, up until maybe seven or so. I was her babysitter, did you know that? And her parents’ Tarot reader of course.”

The first speaker sounded like Shelling’s Great-Aunt Paula, grandmother’s sister on his father’s side; the other woman had a scratchy voice. Scratchy-voice had apparently been to a wedding the day before. Shelling ate his pancakes and listened to the women. He wanted to talk to them–the first non service- providers he had encountered since the couple at the bar, but he didn’t know how to initiate it. They appeared to be giving him no attention. Obviously, the emptiness wasn’t universal, or his presence would have held more significance. Indecision tore at him–he longed for conversation, but feared being rebuffed.

“I was at a CAMAG
{note 8}
retreat,” Aunt Paula-voice said. “Down in Oakville.”

“Did I mention the vegetables?” Scratchy-voice said. “They brought in all these tubs of plants, growing I mean, limes, peppers, mangoes. They had ’em sent from some place in California. Instead of flowers, you see.” Scratchy-voice coughed, a tearing sound that couldn’t have been painless. Shelling hoped her cough meant that she had given up smoking, but he knew so many who continued despite the onset of emphysema and worse. The names the women kept repeating–Caroline, Wadholm, Caitlin, and others–reminded him of something. Probably he had seen them in the paper. An event as big this wedding–no doubt there had been an announcement.

Rainfall had begun as Shelling entered the café, and its rate increased while he sat. The sound of the rain pleased him. The season had been far too dry. Inspired by his new farmhouse (and the solitude), Shelling had planted a vegetable garden, which he kept expanding as spring progressed into summer. Broccoli, basil, tomatoes and, of course, carrot. Aided by a detailed do-it-yourself book,
{note 9}
he had installed a drip irrigation system, but a steady rain like this was so much better.

“He didn’t shoot anyone,” Scratchy-voice said. “Fired off two rounds into the air to catch everyone’s attention. There’s just nothing like the report of a Colt 45 Peacemaker.”

“What year?” Paula-voice asked.

“Eighteen Seventy-four, with mother-of-pearl grips.”

“Sounds like a presentation model.”

The waitress left the check. Shelling put money in the tray and got up. He paused beside the women’s booth and smiled at them. Scratchy-voice was maybe sixty, with gray hair pulled back in a bun. “I don’t need more coffee,” she said.

Shelling went outside. Damn this place–nobody gives a thought to a stranger. What use, this river, this scenic vista of a town? Nothing for him, no one. He slumped against the wall, a few feet from the restaurant’s door. His throat constricted. He coughed and gasped, and his stomach...as soon as he realized what was happening, he staggered to the parking lot side of the restaurant and vomited.

Unbelievable–first time in years he had thrown up. In a daze, he re-entered the café and shuffled into the bathroom to splash his face at the sink. He swished water in his mouth and spat, then pulled several paper towels from the dispenser to dry his face.

Somewhat refreshed, Shelling left the bathroom. The two women were still eating. He stopped in front of them and leaned in close to Scratchy-voice, with his hands resting on the edge of their table. “Hey,” he said, using his best growly voice, the one he had developed for the wife beating psychopath in that episode of
Precinct 10
. “I don’t work here. I don’t refill no damn coffee cup. Got me?”

Without waiting for a response, he spun around and swaggered out of the café, aiming himself in the direction of the hardware and garden store. Weekends there were always busy. Last week–had it been last week?–he had waited for the old guy...Frosty?...Smokey?...to finish showing some woman how to build window screens and help him, but he had given up and left.

Today, he went straight to the seed display. A man passed him, and Shelling looked up expectantly. Not a customer. And he refused to talk to any more shopkeepers.

He selected packets of seeds: arugula, Boston lettuce, and acorn squash. After paying, Shelling found the exit blocked. The door had been propped open to admit the rain-cooled air, and a man several inches taller than Shelling and as wide as the doorway stood there, facing outward and talking to another tall man. Thrilled to have encountered others, Shelling paused.

“But even that’s a reaction,” the big man in the doorway said. “I’m trying to reach cause, not effect.” He had a long ponytail down the middle of his broad back and spoke in a deep voice.

“Excuse me,” Shelling said, thinking more of passage through the door than conversation.

“But what makes a man start fires?” the other asked.

“Excuse me,” Shelling said, louder this time.

“When I was in social work it was easy to feel defeated by the forces of nature,” the big man said. As he spoke, he gestured wildly with his beefy arms. Shelling tried to squeeze through while the man’s arms were up, but the big man brought a ham-sized elbow down on Shelling’s forehead, staggering him back against a flashlight display. “What I’m trying to do now,” the big man said, continuing, apparently without having felt his arm’s impact with Shelling, “is formulate a working model of societal impulses. How everything comes together to form behavior.”

Shelling leaned against the flashlight display, taking shallow breaths. He had dropped his seed packets on hitting the display, and they had scattered nearby. He left them. The faces of the men in the door pulsed and distorted, as if viewed through phosphorescent clouds. A humming sounded, starting low and rising to a cicada shriek. Clenching his eyes shut, Shelling propelled himself forward, smacking against the big man at about kidney level. The impact thrust the big man aside and threw Shelling to the sidewalk. Shelling pushed himself to his knees and crawled toward a bench on the opposite side of the sidewalk.

Someone lifted Shelling onto the bench and held him there. Voices echoed, and lights flashed orange and white. A diorama filled the hardware store’s front window: in it, a model train rolled along tracks bounded by cornfields and into a town that mirrored Springdale, the stone church on one end of Main, the movie theater, river, shops. Minute figures flowed along the sidewalks. There were the people! His memories of the town, so jumbled–people walking, enjoying the quiet life here. Which town did he inhabit? The train stopped to disembark passengers, who joined the other pedestrians on the crowded streets. Two police officers, a man and woman, walked toward the hardware store.