Part 47 (2/2)

”It's probably iron chains,” Tommy explained in an authoritative tone ”And, like, padlocks and junk”

The ures Pleased to ht hand down the front of his coverall and offered it to Rosa ”Al button”

”Are you in fact a bachelor?” said Rosa

”The naret, ”is a little out-of-date” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a sheaf of waybills and carbons, then took a pen fro to need your John Hancock on this”

”Don't I need to sort of check everything off as you bring it in?” Rosa said ”That's hoorked e ht ahead and check that off, if you want to,” he said, with a nod to the crate as he handed the packet to Rosa ”That's all I have for you today”

Rosa checked the bill and found that it did itele article, described pithily as Wood box Wood box She paged through the other sheets of paper, but they were just carbon copies of the first She paged through the other sheets of paper, but they were just carbon copies of the first

”Where's the rest of it?”

”That's the only thing that I'm aware of,” button said ”Maybe you know better than me”

”There are supposed to beout fro Joe-Mr Kavalier- arranged for the shi+pment yesterday afternoon”

”This didn't co, lady I picked it up thisat Penn Station”

”Penn Station? Wait a h the papers and carbons again ”Who is this froible, it did seein with a R The address, however, was a post-office box in Halifax, Nova Scotia Rosa wondered if Joe had , just after the war, and had left this box of whatever was in it behind

”Nova Scotia,” she said ”Who does Joe know in Nova Scotia?”

”And how did they knoas here?” Toood question Only the police and a few people at Pharaoh knew that Joe was staying with the Clays

Rosa signed for the crate, and then Al button jostled and cajoled it into the living room, where Rosa and Tommy helped him to walk it off of the dolly and onto the low-pile wall-to-wall

”A box full of chains,” button repeated, his hand rough and dry against Rosa's ”Jesus, Mary, and Joseph”

After he left, closing up his truck and winding his funereal way back to the city, Rosa and To the wood box It was a good two feet taller than Rosa, and nearly twice as broad It was made of solid pine, knotty and unvarnished except by the abrading rasp of its travels, dark yellow and stained like an ani at it, that it had conoble things spilled on it It had been used as a table, perhaps, a bed, a barricade There were black scuffs, and the corners and edges were tufted with splinters If these were not suggestive enough of wide journeying, there was the incredible profusion of its labels: custo-line decals, quarantine stickers and claiht In places they were layered a few deep, bits of place-naether It ree, a Kurt Schwitters Clearly, Halifax was not the crate's point of origin Rosa and To away at the layers of seal and sticker, timidly at first, then more carelessly as they were led backward frorad, to Memel onceaway noith the point of a kitchen knife at a particularly recalcitrant carbuncle of adhesive paper near the center of what appeared to be the crate's lid, to ”Prague,” said Rosa ”What do you know”

”He's home,” Tommy said, and Rosa didn't understand what he meant until she heard the sound of the Studebaker in the drive

16

Joe had left the house very early that ht to Rosa and Sa after they went to bed, Joe had lain awake on the couch in the living roole froed for monthly withdrawals to pay the rent on the offices of Kornblu Creams, Inc, and had not permitted himself to consider the total su tirandiose and hoant-he had at one tiination-and after the war, the money always felt to him like a debt owed, and unrepayable He had bankrupted himself on plans: a house for his family in Riverdale or Westchester, a flat for his old teacher Bernard Kornblu on the Upper West Side He saw to it, in his fantasies, that his mother obtained the services of a cook, a fur coat, the leisure to write and to see patients as little as she chose Her study in the big Tudor house had a bayand heavy tiloos and cacti in pots For his grandfather, there were an entire wardrobe of suits, a dog, a Panarandfather sat in the conservatory with three elderly friends and sang Weber songs to the acco lessons, fencing lessons, trips to the Grand Canyon, a bicycle, a set of encylopedias, and-that es of comic books-an air rifle, so that Thoiven his tender feelings) tin cans, when they went out, at weekends, to the country house up in Putnans of his embarrassed him almost as much as they saddened hi, in his underpants, Joe was tormented, even e that even non in the mysterious manufactory of foolishness that was synony out an entire new line ofup with ideas-costuns and backdrops, character names, narrative lines-for a series of coadah and folklore; it was as if they had been there all along, wanting only a nudge fro disorder The notion of spending the 974,000 that was steadily coe Crafts Credit Union to float the recoitated hiitation was not the honest word for it What he felt was and folklore; it was as if they had been there all along, wanting only a nudge fro disorder The notion of spending the 974,000 that was steadily coe Crafts Credit Union to float the recoitated hiitation was not the honest word for it What he felt was excited excited

Sa-underwear heroes in 1939; Joe had a feeling that he was right in 1954 William Gaines and his EC Coenres- romance, Western, war stories, crime, the supernatural, et cetera-and invested them with darker emotions, less childish plots, stylish pencils, and nored or avoided (except to ridicule it in the pages of Mad) Mad) was that of the costumed superhero What if-he was not sure if this hat Sammy had in mind, but after all, it would be his money-the same kind of transformation were attempted on the superhero? If they tried to do stories about costumed heroes ere els was that of the costumed superhero What if-he was not sure if this hat Sammy had in mind, but after all, it would be his money-the same kind of transformation were attempted on the superhero? If they tried to do stories about costumed heroes ere els

At last he ran out of cigarettes and gave up on sleep for the night He pulled his clothes back on, took a banana from the bowl on the kitchen counter, and stepped outside

It was not yet five o'clock in the , and the Bloomtown streets were deserted, the houses dark, furtive, all but invisible A steady salt breeze blew in fro fitful rain and the gloo on the wan headlights of his van, but for now there were no clouds, and the sky that, in this single-story town of stunted saplings and barren lawns, could seem, by day, as unbearably tall and immense as the sky over so itself upon Bloo in the e barked two blocks away, and the sound raised gooseflesh on Joe's arm He had been on and around the Atlantic Ocean plenty of ti of the Ark of Miria Thomas, in Joe'ssince worn away But from time to time, especially if, as now, his brother was already in his thoughts, the s His snoring, the half-ani from the other bed His aversion to spiders, lobsters, and anything that crept like a disee of seven or eight, in a plaid bathrobe and bedroo Philips, knees to his chest, eyes shut tight, rocking back and forth while, with all his ht, he listened to so Thomas, in Joe'ssince worn away But from time to time, especially if, as now, his brother was already in his thoughts, the s His snoring, the half-ani from the other bed His aversion to spiders, lobsters, and anything that crept like a disee of seven or eight, in a plaid bathrobe and bedroo Philips, knees to his chest, eyes shut tight, rocking back and forth while, with all his ht, he listened to some Italian opera or other

That bathrobe, its lapels whipstitched in heavy black thread; that radio, its lines Gothic and its dial, like an atlas of the ether, imprinted with the names of world capitals; those leather moccasins with their beaded tepees on the vaain The thought was banal, and yet somehow, as happened every now and then, it took him by surprise and profoundly disappointed hi his expedience of the world, at some deep Precambrian stratum, was the expectation that someday-but when?-he would return to the earliest chapters of his life It was all there-so for him He would return to the scenes of his childhood, to the breakfast table of the apartment off the Graben, to the Oriental splendor of the locker room at the Militar-und Civilschwimmschule; not as a tourist to their ruins, but in fact; not by means of some enchantment, but si rational or even seriously believed, but somehoas there, like soraphy-that, for instance, Quebec lay to the west of Ontario-which no amount of subsequent correction or experience could ever fully erase He realized now that this kind of hopeless but ineradicable conviction lay at the heart of his inability to let go of the o in the East Side Stage Crafts Credit Union Somewhere in his heart, or wherever it was that such errors are cherished and fed, he believed that soht still, in spite of everything, turn up Such things happened all the time; those reported shot in Lodz Ghetto or carried off by typhus at the Zehlendorf DP ca on the front door of a brother-in-law in Detroit looking for a handout, older, frailer- altered beyond recognition or disared-but alive

He went back into the house, tied his necktie, put on a jacket, and took the car keys frooing to go, not at first, but the sue notion of taking the car and driving down to Fire Island for an hour, returning before anybody even knew that he was gone

The idea of driving excited excited him, too From the moment he saw it, Saht Joe to drive, and he had taken to it with his usual aplo the war had been three brief trips he had made behind the wheel of a jeep at Guantanaotten how him, too From the moment he saw it, Saht Joe to drive, and he had taken to it with his usual aplo the war had been three brief trips he had made behind the wheel of a jeep at Guantanaotten how

He found his way out onto Route 24 without any problem, but somehow or other he nized it, he was on his way into the city The car smelled of Rosa's lipstick and Sammy's hair cream and a salt-and-wool residue of winter There was al time, and when he encountered other travelers, he felt a mild sense of pleasant kinshi+p with thehts into the western darkness On the radio, Roseave the dial a spin she was there again, singing ”This Ole House” He rolled down theand sos and sorip on the wheel and lost his and the ruht-8 After a while he realized that a fair aht of anything at all, least of all about what exactly he was going to do when he reached New York

Approaching the Williaed to find himself there-he experienced an extraordinary race There was a lotwas s lanes He launched hie hu underneath his wheels and all around hi of it, the forces and tensions and rivets that were all conspiring to keep hie, with its Parisian air, refined, elegant, its skirts hiked to reveal tapered steel legs, and, beyond, the Brooklyn Bridge, like a great ropy strand of e, like two great iron tsarinas linking hands to dance And before him, the city that had sheltered hiray and brown, festooned with swags and boas of so dew and its own steamy exhalations Hope had been his ene now that it was ato concede that he had let it back into his heart

At Union Square West, he pulled up in front of the Workinge Crafts Credit Union Of course there was nowhere to park Traffic piled up at the Studebaker's rear as Joe trolled for a space, and each tiain A bus caers glared down at him from the s, or mocked him in his ineptitude with their blank indifference On his third time around the block, Joe slowed once ht red Joe sat, trying to decide what to do Inside the gri, in the gloomy transom-lit offices of the Crafts Union bank, the account lay slu under years of interest and dust All he had to do was go in there and say that he wanted to make a withdrawal

There was a rap on theon his side of the car Joe juas as he did so The car lurched forward a few inches before he scrabbled his foot onto the brake and brought it to a halt with a rude little burp of the tires

”Whoa!” cried the patrolman, who had co up the traffic on Fifth Avenue like this, at the busiest hour of the , clutching at his shi+ning left shoe with both hands

Joe rolled down the

”You just ran over my foot!” the policeman said

”I'm so sorry,” Joe said

The policeman returned his shoe to the paveht onto it a little at a tiht You ran over the empty bit at the toe Lucky for you”

”I borrowed this car from my cousin,” Joe said ”I maybe don't know it as well as I should”

”Yeah, well, you can't sit here, bub You've been here ten minutes You have to move on”

”That's impossible,” Joe said It could not have been more than one or two at the most ”Ten minutes”

The patrolman tapped his wrist ”I had my watch on you the minute you pulled up”

”I'ure out what I'estured with a thu ”My money's in there,” he said

”I don't care if your left buttock is in there,” the policeet lost, mister”