The Man Who Wouldn't Stand Up Page 3

  Once he’d gathered up the candy bar wrappers and the Doritos bags and what appeared to be the strap from a woman’s brassiere, Arnold plunged headlong into his weeding. No new tares were actually visible on the surface. He’d been over this ground too many times for that. But he made a point of churning the soil, particularly the moist earth beneath the Japanese maple, because prevention was the best herbicide. First he worked with a spade, then with a short-handled hoe. He lost himself in the labour. Gardening provided him with the same high that long-distance runners found in marathon training and actors discovered on the stage. The rustle of footsteps in the butterfly hedges took him by surprise. Arnold spun around, brandishing his hoe.

  “Jesus, Mr. Brinkman,” said the trespasser. “You look terrified.”

  The voice belonged to an unfamiliar young woman. She was pudgy, with wide-set eyes and the upturned nose of a German peasant, but she was still of the age at which every girl is gorgeous by default. It was an ephemeral beauty. All long hair and smooth skin. You couldn’t compare it to the high cheekbones and perfectly curved brow that would keep Judith stunning into her seventies. But the girl was eye-catching. Not so different from the hundreds of other large-breasted, bare-armed graduate students and aspiring artists who rolled their eyes at Arnold every day on the streets of Greenwich Village—except that this young woman was standing in his yard. She wore a cream-coloured tank-top and carried a canvas bag over her exposed shoulder.

  “Could you put that down?” she asked. “I’m not a burglar.”

  Arnold tentatively lowered the hoe. He still feared this might be some sort of elaborate con-game or blackmail scheme—he knew they enlisted teenage girls for just such rackets—but at least she didn’t appear to be violent. “Explain yourself,” he ordered.

  “I figured you wouldn’t remember me,” said the girl.

  “I know you?”

  Arnold tried to place the intruder’s face, but couldn’t. Had he taught her? Had she worked at the nursery? At some point, all of his former students and employees had blended into each other. Common wisdom said that when you died, you passed through a tunnel of bright light and encountered everyone you’d ever known. Nobody said what would happen if you couldn’t recognize them.

  “I interviewed you for the N.Y.U. newspaper,” said the girl. “About five years ago. When you gave that talk on ‘living off the land’ in Central Park.”

  “Five years ago,” echoed Arnold. “I think I do remember you.” The truth was he’d not only forgotten the interview, but he couldn’t even remember the lecture.

  “See, I’m not a burglar,” said the girl.

  “Okay, but how did you get in here?”

  The girl smiled mischievously. “Magic.”

  “Would you care to be more specific?”

  “Ladders.”

  Arnold looked in the direction she’d come from. Sure enough, the upper rungs of a ladder protruded above the butterfly hedge. On the top step, surrounded by a tangle of black-eyed Susans, a catbird twitched its long dark tail.

  “I set up one ladder on the sidewalk,” the girl explained. “I carried the other one to the top and put it down on the opposite side of the fence. Then I just stepped over horizontally. It’s a neat trick I learned in journalism school.” Arnold must have looked puzzled, because the girl added: “I borrowed one of the ladders from the theatre across the street and the other from the liquor store down the block. I told them you needed them for your garden.”

  “I’ll be sure to thank them.”

  “I’m Cassandra. Like from ancient Troy.”

  She extended her pale hand. Arnold didn’t take it.

  “Well, Cassandra, you still haven’t explained what in God’s name you’re doing in my back yard at seven thirty in the morning.”

  “You won’t be mad, will you? I want an interview.”

  Arnold tossed the hand hoe into the grass. “An interview?”

  “I’m interning at the Daily Vanguard. The new progressive paper. And when I told them I recognized the guy from the baseball game, they totally promised me a front-page byline—if you’d agree to talk. How awesome is that?”

  “There’s nothing to talk about. That’s yesterday’s news—no need to stoke any fires. You’re a weekly, right? By the time you go to press, nobody will remember me.”

  “We’re a daily, Mr. Brinkman. The Daily Vanguard.” The girl rummaged through her canvas bag. She passed him the local newspapers one at a time. His photograph—tongue protruding—appeared on every cover. In The Daily News, the headline read: “Mystery Man Mocks Nation at War.” Newsday ran the caption: “Tongue of a Snake.” But none was more direct than the New York Post. At the angle they’d photographed him—with one arm raised to block the glare—he bore a striking resemblance to Adolf Hitler delivering a Nazi salute. Underneath, they’d printed “THE ENEMY WITHIN” in bold letters.

  “Yesterday’s news,” she mocked. “They’ve forgotten you already.”

  Arnold stared dumbfounded at the tabloid cover; they’d even dotted the i’s in “WITHIN” with miniature swastikas.

  “Don’t look so gloomy,” said Cassandra. “You knocked the Bare-Ass Bandit off the front page of the Post. I think that’s pretty fucking cool.”

  The Bare-Ass Bandit had been terrorizing the city for weeks. This nude, saber-wielding outlaw confronted lone pedestrians and stole their clothing. All of it. Undergarments. Medical alert bracelets. Hairpins. In one instance, he’d even demanded a woman’s sanitary napkin. Then he made the victim watch while he tried on their garments. But in recent days, his M.O. had grown odder, providing a wealth of material for the tabloids. In one instance, he’d kidnapped the Greek Orthodox Archbishop of Brooklyn from his bedroom, and left the cleric bound and naked in Prospect Park, with the words “Jesus didn’t save me” scrawled across his chest in human faeces. The following week, he’d hijacked a bus of disabled senior citizens returning from Atlantic City and run off with their wheelchairs and prosthetic limbs. Only a libellous rag like the Post could think to lump him and Arnold in the same category.

  “This is absurd,” said Arnold.

  “Of course it’s absurd. But it is. That’s why the Vanguard is giving you a chance to tell your own side of the story. We’re on your side.”

  “I don’t want to tell my side of the story,” snapped Arnold. He felt thirsty, dizzy. “There is no story.”

  The girl shifted her weight from one short leg to the other. She looked as though she might pout. “Please, Mr. Brinkman. We’ll help each other out. What’s that expression old people use? ‘You scratch my back and I scratch yours.’”

  No, thought Arnold, we won’t. And he used that ‘old people’ expression all the time. He suddenly realized how uncomfortable he felt having van attractive young woman alone with him in his garden. They weren’t that far apart in age—no further than Rochester and Jane Eyre or Scarlett O’Hara and Frank Kennedy. (Arnold had just finished writing a chapter on the significance of vines in Wide Sargasso Sea and was polishing up an article on the role of cotton strains in Gone With the Wind.) He knew he hadn’t done anything wrong with the girl—he hadn’t even wanted to do anything wrong—but the notion that Judith might suspect him of wanting to do something wrong was enough to make him uneasy. “You shouldn’t be here. My wife will be downstairs any minute now.”

  “Cool. Do you think I could interview her too?”

  Arnold looked down at his feet. He toyed with the keys in his pocket. Where the sprinkler hose was leaking, a thin stream of water fizzed anaemically. Clouds of vapour rose from the hot flagstones. The day was going to be a scorcher.

  “Look, Cassandra,” said Arnold—in the same voice he used with his nephew. “You have to leave. This is not a good time.” He decided he hadn’t sounded forceful enough, so he added: “This is private property.”

  “Come on, Mr. Brinkman. You’ll to have to talk to the press eventually. So why not me? I was here first.”

  “Enoug
h. I’m going inside to have my breakfast. You can let yourself out the way you came in.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Mr. Brinkman. You need all the friends you can get.”

  Arnold walked toward the tool shed. “I have plenty of friends.”

  That’s when the pandemonium erupted on the other side of the fence.

  Arnold and Judith had purchased their brownstone from a paranoid ex-Weatherman who’d gained twenty-seconds of fame for founding a Caucasian Auxiliary to the Black Panther Party. “Hurricane” Cohen’s one remaining legacy was an elevated stone platform at the corner of Arnold’s yard that the radical had used to keep watch. Standing on the three foot ledge, the observer had a clear sight of the front steps and both sidewalks as far as the avenue. A carefully constructed blind kept it a one-way view. In Cohen’s day, there had also been an escape tunnel that connected the yard to the vacant lot behind the sex toy museum, but the city had covered the exit with a storm grating. Arnold later filled in his end of the burrow with cinderblocks. He’d kept the platform as an ornamental piece and surrounded it with ferns. When the first shouts and sirens rose over the fence, he climbed onto the moss-coated ledge to take a look.

  Television vans lined the entire far side of the street. CBS. NBC. FOX. Some of the news crews were already broadcasting. Others lounged against parked cars, sipping coffee from Styrofoam cups. A crowd of pedestrians and local merchants had also ventured down the block to watch. Arnold spotted Darmopolis, the blind proprietor of the liquor shop, scratching his bushy moustache. Also the Chinese barber who spoke with a French accent, and the homeless poet, and the identical twins from behind the dairy counter at the Gourmet’s Paradise. The twins wore matching red bandannas around their necks; they took turns whispering into the blind Greek’s ear. Lots of the other faces were unfamiliar: random pedestrians who happened to be cutting between avenues at that moment. In the centre of all of the mayhem stood Ira Taylor, looking far too comfortable in only a dressing gown and slippers, being interviewed simultaneously by several reporters. The bond seller was practically conducting a press conference. He occasionally pointed in the direction of Arnold’s townhouse and made animated gestures, but it was impossible to hear his words over the ebb and flow of sirens.

  The police department had commandeered the near side of the street. Two patrolmen flanked Arnold’s stoop like the guards at Buckingham Palace. Another team of officers hurriedly erected a cordon of blue sawhorses along the pavement. Fire engines sealed off both ends of the block. There was also an ambulance on the scene. The EMTs were posing for photographs with a conclave of Asian tourists.

  At one level, Arnold understood that he’d been the cause of this frenzy. At another level, the entire business was so implausible, so unreal.

  Cassandra had climbed onto the ledge behind him. He regretted having filled in the Weatherman’s escape tunnel.

  “Okay, Mr. Yesterday’s News. Why don’t you go out there and tell them there’s no story?” asked the girl.

  “What am I going to do?” muttered Arnold. “Judith is going to murder me.”

  “Not if they get to you first,” Cassandra shot back.

  Arnold didn’t have a chance to respond. From the avenue came a thunder of voices that slowly separated out into chants of “Shame! Shame! Shame!” Then the motley parade of patriots rounded the corner.

  The protesters numbered several dozen. Some were clad in military fatigues; others wore red-white-and-blue. Placards read: “A Friend of Osama’s Is No Friend of Ours” and “Eternal Vigilance is the Price of Liberty,” also “Nuke ’Em” and “Jesus Wasn’t A Patsy.” Two young dark-skinned men were decked out in revolutionary war garb and had muskets slung over their shoulders; they accompanied the demonstrators on fife and drum. Poorly.

  At the head of the procession marched an obese black man in a three-piece suit. Reflective sunglasses shielded his eyes. The man held hands with a tiny, withered old woman done up in a lime green church outfit and matching hat. A band of black satin had been wrapped around the hat’s crown. The obese man, in his other hand, held a raised American flag. When this ragtag crew arrived at the police cordon, they removed their hats and sang God Bless America in several different keys. Darmopolis, the wine merchant, joined in. So did several tourists. Arnold cringed. “Kate Smith is turning over in her grave,” he said. The girl just looked at him, puzzled.

  “Do you know who that is?” she whispered.

  “Who who is?”

  “The guy with the sunglasses. That’s Spotty Spitford. As in The Revered Spotty Spitford and his Emergency Civil Rights Brigade.”

  Arnold vaguely recognized the name. It reminded him of a fifties vocal group. “Black conservatives?” he asked.

  “Black reactionaries,” Cassandra retorted. “The self-styled front line in the war against homosexuals and abortionists. They call it the Second Abolitionist Movement. You’ve got to be living under a rock not to know about them.”

  “I’m neither a homosexual nor an abortionist.”

  “Make sure you tell them that while they’re stoning you.”

  When the singing limped to a conclusion, one of Spitford’s assistants handed the minister a bullhorn. Now the entire neighbourhood could hear him speak. And did he speak! Nearly fifteen minutes on the “Fifth Column of Sixth Street” in a voice as heavy as a boulder. Then he turned the pulpit over to the withered old woman. She held up a photograph of her dead grandson. “I taught my boy about service,” she said—barely audible, even with the megaphone. “I’m proud of my Lionel. I don’t understand how anybody could not be proud of my Lionel. Why can’t this man sing to show my boy respect?” The woman’s voice rose in anger. “My Lionel deserves an apology. All the boys in the service deserve an apology.” The woman glanced at Spitford for reassurance and he nodded his approval. “I don’t want no trouble,” the woman concluded. “I just want respect.”

  The protesters cheered. Even a number of the bystanders joined in. Then a chant of “Apologize! Apologize!” swept across the crowd.

  “We’ll be here,” boomed Spitford, “until that dirty yellow coward does the right thing by this gold star grandmother and says he’s sorry.”

  The girl grinned. “It’s your lucky fucking day. You’ve just seen the beginning of the Spitford campaign for mayor,” she said. “If there’s one thing that can get a black conservative elected in this city, it’s a white guy with a red agenda. I guess that’s where you come in.” Cassandra pulled a camera from her bag and snapped Arnold’s photograph. “A souvenir,” she explained. “For our files.”

  Spitford continued his sermon: “We demand that this reprobate acknowledge the error of his ways. We also demand that our elected officials stand with us in our outrage. Where is the mayor this morning? Where is the governor? Where are the people you pay to represent your values at times like these? I’ll tell you where. Nowhere. But that does not mean that we’re going to go away….”

  “You’re so screwed,” chimed Cassandra. “He’s got his political teeth into you. Now there’s no letting go.”

  Arnold resisted the urge to bean the self-ordained minister with a gardening implement. It was the man’s right to protest. But Arnold had no intention of apologizing. He stepped around Cassandra and lowered himself from the platform. “Good luck with your story,” he said. “By the way, that’s off the record.”

  The girl said something in response, but it was drowned out by chanting.

  Judith was standing at the kitchen window in her dressing gown. She’d fastened her hair back haphazardly, and sandy strands stuck out in all directions. Her feet were bare. When Arnold entered—still in his gardening clothes, he realized too late—she greeted him with a chilling frown.

  “We’ve had fifty phone calls in the last two hours,” she said. “I had to disconnect the doorbell before I went insane.”

  “Shit,” said Arnold.

  “I was going to get you, but I didn’t want to interrupt your tête-à-tête with the que
en of the prom.”

  “Don’t start on that. She’s a reporter for the Vanguard. Her name’s Cassandra. The last thing I need right now is you accusing me of things.”

  Judith squeezed and released her fists. “Nobody’s accusing you of anything.”

  “You were hinting. As though it’s not enough that they’ve practically strung me up for treason. Now you’ll have me shot for adultery.”

  Judith laughed—a short, sharp laugh. “As I said, Arnold, nobody’s accusing you of anything. You couldn’t cheat on me if you tried. But you’ll have to admit now is not the best of times to be gallivanting around the flowerbeds, cavorting with teenaged girls. For any reason.”

  Arnold opened the refrigerator. He rummaged through the drawers and came out empty-handed. “Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m just not sure what to do right now.”

  “I suppose you should apologize,” said Judith. “Maybe that will placate them.”

  “That’s the one thing,” answered Arnold, “that I certainly won’t do.”

  Arnold paused to collect his thoughts. The muffled chanting from the sidewalk was audible in the kitchen. It was giving him a headache. He was about to explain that he was too old to apologize, that he didn’t want to be remembered as the asshole who apologized—far better to be hated for not apologizing—when Ray came charging down the stairs. The boy was wearing pyjama bottoms.

  “Can I ask a question?” Ray demanded.

  “No,” snapped Arnold.

  The boy turned to Judith. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Some people are still angry at your uncle for not standing up at the baseball game yesterday,” explained Judith. “Your uncle was about to apologize to them.”

  The boy poured himself a bowl of sugared cereal. “What time are we going to the aquarium?”