Daren Dean

Mercury in Retrograde 45

Troy

There were many a grand destination Troy Scofield meditated on while in prison, but he had not divined he would find himself at the big white house on Court Street. It was a grand two story affair, a front lawn with carefully trimmed and dapper grass like a putting green. Over to the side of the house was an awning more for appearance than utility where honeysuckle vines grew up the white trellis. In the backyard was an ancient carriage house which was as large and pleasurable to look at as any structure in Fairmont. In the backyard, Scofield had noticed the tennis court as he drove by the first couple of times in the pickup and felt himself strangling with rage that she had chosen all of this instead of him. He did not blame her for not wanting Merle, but how could she have turned her back on her own child.

All the houses on the street were backed up from the brick avenue with expansive lawns. None of the houses were new, but they had a grandeur and dignity due their age. The money it took just to maintain each household could have fed some of the dirt farmers out in the county for a year or better, Troy figured. The engine ticked as he watched the postman walk lazily past him in his government issue shorts and round Savannah adventure hat, whistling.

Birds were chirping in a delirium of contentment as he gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles were white. He sat grinding his teeth for a half hour attempting to get his courage up to go knock on the door with the brass foot guard and mail slot. A lawn jockey with a red hat held up a hand in gesture, rather than greeting, seemed to warn him off. He found the diminutive figure disturbing in the way it mocked him from the Easter egg grass of the Crawford home. A cardinal landed on the pristine white birdbath and cocked its head cautiously at the dignified flagstones leading to the front door, seemed to communicate an impending peril in moments to come before tossing itself on to the wind in a quavery,

indecisive version of flight.

There was a plaque outside the door that dubbed the place “Ravenshill” which Dr. Crawford had commissioned and had his gardener attach in what seemed to many in Fairmont to be the height of ostentation. Troy felt himself hating the Crawfords, but knowing that part of him was one of them--not that they would accept him or acknowledge his bloodline. Unless of course, he forced them to recognize who he was in relation to her.

Then he thought of the Crawford place just outside of town, off Highway 54, where all the cattle were penned. It was now a hobby for old man Crawford. He never went out there, except to lord it over his employees on an expensive thoroughbred horse never suited to be ridden around cattle in the first place. His possessions were heavily insured from everything to fire, including force majeure. Troy had seen the heavyset man sitting the horse on an english saddle with knee-high riding boots complete with riding crop in hand as if he were about to run the Kentucky Derby. He wore rounded gold spectacles, perfectly parted hair with a kind of oily hair tonic, and a thick arista mustache almost comical in an old-fashioned way. Even as a child, when he did not know who the heavyset man on horseback was, he was pointing at him from the backseat, placing him in the crosshairs with a “pow.”

A middle-aged woman answered the doorbell in a maid’s uniform that looked ridiculous on her. Her body was not built for it. He could smell food wafting through the air mixed with pine air freshener.

“Yes, may I help you?” the maid asked irritably.

“I’m here to see the lady of the house,” was all he could think to say at the moment.

“I’m sorry she’s indisposed at the moment,” the maid began to close the door.

He stuck his boot in the crack and her eyes went wide with shock, disbelief.

“Young man,” she leaned on the door. “Young man. I will call the police.”

“Just get my Mama,” Troy said.

“Who’s your Mama?”

He smirked.

“She’s around back,” the woman hiccupped. “Go around back. Don’t tell her I sent you.” She opened the door a little and he took his boot out. Her maid’s hat slipped off her head and onto the rug. She slammed the solid door against the jam. He could hear her cussing him in the foyer as he grinned to himself.

Expectation welled up in his chest. He felt he might explode with love and grief or disappointment. He did not know which was likely to happen. Around back an elderly couple swatted a white tennis ball back and forth in fine tennis clothes. Their canvas and leather shoes squeaking on the court as they ran down the balls and hit them with solid thwacking sounds which echoed between the houses. A high chain link fence surrounded the court to keep from losing the balls in the neighbor’s backyard. A woman sat on a wooden chaise lounge wearing a kerchief tied under her chin and big round sunglasses like all the movie stars wear when they’re incognito. It was her.

He ached to live like these people. The wealthy of Fairmont. His own dream home seemed to pale in comparison to the Crawford’s place. He could not aspire with enough faith to own such a house. He looked down at the woman who still looked all right physically for a woman her age, right attractive. Standing beside her he felt she was different from him. The tree was cut down and the fruit fell from it earlier and rotted on the ground until it was mush in his case. She even smelled different. No drugstore perfume for her. She probably went to St. Louis and Kansas City when she really wanted to shop, buying luxuries no one could purchase in Kingdom County.

Troy reached into his breast pocket, hauled out his pack of cigarettes, slid one out, tapped it againt the lighter before a four inch high flame flared up and lit one end. “Hellfire,” he said softly. His eyes moved reflexively to see if she noticed, but she did not visivly stir except to reach over to the little table to take a sip from a bloody mary with a piece of celery sticking out of it, her glass was wrapped in a napkin. She found her own cigarette and put it to her lips, but made no move to light it.

“Do you mind?” she asked, as if he had failed in a gentleman’s etiquette.

“Yes ma’am,” he lit her cigarette.

“Thank you sir,” she drew on her skinny brown cigarette. He divined she smoked foreign jobs.

The couple out on the courts picked up their balls lying against the net. The man stuffed a couple in his short’s pocket and held five in his large hand, holding them in the webbing of his fingers like a circus performer. The tennis players were tanned from being out in the sun. Undoubtedly they recently spent in time in places where the sun was warm year round. The only places that sprung to mind for Troy were California or Florida. He marveled that people of any age had the time and resources to do nothing but go on trips to play tennis or golf, and to sit like she was doing in the early afternoon sun drinking a bloody mary or mint julip.

“You’re Natalie, Natalie Scofield?”

She laughed reflexively, “What? Oh my, my, I divorced that man. Had my name changed back to Crawford.”

“Well, I want to talk to you,” he put the cigarette to his lips as a respite from having to say anything.

“You want to talk to me?” she turned to look at him more directly, a hand shading her eyes from the sun. Her complexion was clear, but her glasses covered her eyes. There was something unsightly about her lips. A firmness around her mouth.

“Do you know who I am?”

The couple on the tennis court were standing together now looking toward him. He waved with the hand holding his cigarette in a mocking way. He knew how it looked to them. They probably thought the gardner, the hired help, was talking to the grand dame for much too long. She raised a hand in their direction, indicating everything was fine. The couple went back to opposite ends of the court and began hitting practice serves, both displayed much in form and hours and money spent in lessons on their carefully groomed strokes.

“I believe I do.”

Troy toed his boot into the perfect lawn. He knew she was watching him from her peripheral vision. She stubbed out her cigarette although she had only taken a couple of puffs. Her hand went to her glasses and she pushed them on top of her head with the petulant gesture of a very young woman. Her eyes were hazel, he had bent slightly to see them from the waist. She giggled as if he had suddenly swooped down and kissed her on the cheek.

“I just want to ask you . . .”

“Relax,” she said. “Have a seat. Drag over one of those chairs and we’ll have a drink together. Francine probably called the cops on you already so you might as well make it easy on them. I’ll have her whip you up something. What would you like?”

“Francine! Francine!” her voice took on an easy authoritative tone. It was the confidence and faith the wealthy had that their orders would be obeyed. In Troy’s world only threat of violence could impress upon soomeone the need to conform to his demands. Francine shuffled up the stone walkway as if one of her legs was about to blow off from the hip, but she was more or less cheerful about it.

“First,” she said. “Call the police back and tell them it was a false alarm. Second, fix Mr. Scofield here a . . . “

“A beer would be fine,” he said.

“Fix him a beer with a cold glass,” she said.

“Yes ma’am,” Francine smiled, grimface reproach.

He regarded her closely as he sat in one of the upright lawn chairs, but did not move it closer to hers on the brick-lined patio with a large C set off in gold in the focal point for maximum effect. She would not look at him. She held her drink, took out the piece of celery and bit into it, and allowed the condensation to roll down her forearm. She watched the couple playing tennis as they finished their warmup and began a set. It seemed a gesture of some kind was called for, but the fancy drinks, expensive potted plants, and the affluence all worked together to throw his thinking off kilter. He had imagined this moment in his minds hundreds and thousands of time. It had always been him shouting at her, or begging her to return, but now he could think of nothing to say to her. It occured to him to get up and take off her ridiculous sunglasses, toss them on the patio and crush them under his boot. There was in her manner a self-contained bubble of pride that protected her. The self-possession of the rich, he concluded.

Francine returned with a beer in one hand and a platter of cucumber sandwiches. He took the beer and sipped at it. An expensive beer that tasted heavy and bitter in his mouth. Since Natalie Crawford was his mother and she was sitting right there he thought she might be the one to make sense of it all. Perhaps she will explain it all, he thought, but she didn’t. He leaned forward but she still did not turn her head. Troy did not know how to talk to a woman like this and the question was in his mind waiting to be asked. There was only one question, but he could never ask it. So he knew he had to ask the other, because the other was practical.

“Why did you leave?”

“What?” she laughed.

“Why did you leave us all those years ago?”

“You know why,” she finished her drink. “Did you like living there?”

“Well no,” he grinned bitterly.

“It wasn’t like I left you, exactly.”

“Yes, you did,” he set his glass on a table and clasped his hands in front of him. “Why did you leave . . . me?”

“I guess I’m,” she turned so her feet were no longer reclining on the lounger, but on the ground and she almost faced him. Her eyes would not meet his.

“What?”

“I guess I’m a terrible mother,” she sat her drink on the table. “What do you want me to say? I see you looking at me. Blaming me. What do you want?”

“I don’t blame you,” Troy said. “I never did. Blamed the old man that you left. I’ve laid it at his feet for quite some time, but I can see now maybe I was wrong.”

“Oh you can?” she asked in a haughty tone. She pinned him with her eyes now. There was a crazy defiance in those green swirls as if she looked on him as a familiar of his father’s come to drag her back to the Scofield place. “You think you can understand me after looking at me for a few minutes?”

“No.”

“No?”

“I don’t understand you at all,” he leaned back. There was an apple tree in the yard. The apples were small and green on the tree. “That’s why I came, I guess.”

“What did you think would happen? That you would move in upstairs?”

“Hell,” he said. “That’s a dream for boys. I would have come here when I was a boy and asked if I had known you were here the whole time. You were here weren’t you? All these years?”

The woman on the tennis court was telling the man not to hit the ball so hard. She told him to “ease up.” The man laughed and said he was barely sticking his racquet out as it was and that he couldn’t hit the ball any less hard. She needed to move to the ball instead of waiting for it to come to her. He demonstrated how she should take small quick steps to the ball and cut it off in an oblique move instead of running parallel to the baseline. She threatened to quit playing. He told her to do whatever she wanted but to quit complaining that he hit the ball too hard. When she asked him why, he said it was because it was a ridiculous statement. “There is no such thing as hitting the ball too hard as long as you can control it.” The man wanted the woman to keep playing so he told her he would use more slice and topsin instead of hitting it so hard.

“Yes,” she said.

“See, I didn’t know that,” he said. “Until recently.”

“So why did you come then?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I know but I can’t seem to put it into words. I guess I just wanted to look at you mainly. There were questions I wanted to ask and all, but now it don’t seem to matter.”

“Well,” she said. “I loved your Daddy once. It was a long time ago.” She snickered into her glass, but it was empty. He could see she was very intoxicated, drunk. He figured she probably was when he first walked up but she had the disposition to cultivate the appearance of being sober. It was something only the rich would bother with in his opinion. “You expect me to say, oh son, it’s so wonderful to see you! Is that what you thought? You poor kid. You’re grown up, but a part of you never did--did it? I read about how you killed that Phelps. It sounded like something your Daddy would have done when he was young?”

“That tired old man? After talking to you, it seems to me like something maybe you would do.”

“Am I so bad?” she snorted.

The woman on the court used the head of her racquet to pickup tennis balls by pulling the balls up with the side of her foot. She tucked one away under her skirt, in her bloomers, and went to the baseline to receive serve. The man hit an easy one to her forehand and her shoes screeched on the hardcourt as she took small lithe steps and

drove it back hard down the line to his backhand. He sliced the ball back to her forehand in a languid motion, but when it bounced it careened wildly off to her right. She again threatened to quit if he continued to apply what she said was “crazy spin” on the ball. The man threw his left hand in the air in exasperation. The woman got in a ready position. The man served into the ad court. She hit a vicious reverse crosscourt forehand to his backhand again. He floated the return. The woman charged the net and smashed the ball, a high forehand volley, grunting during the follow through. He complained that now it was she who was hitting too hard, and did she really want him to just give her every point like that? Yes, the woman said, she did.

Troy stood up finished his beer. As a boy he had always dreamed of living on Court street, but he did not belong there. He had blood on his hands, but he was not cruel enough to reside there with all the bankers, doctors, lawyers, and engineers who he imagined

lived there. Although he had grown up in Fairmont, he did not know everyone who lived on the town’s most stately avenue and it did not occur to him that like old man Williamson who owned the car dealership the residences were owned by the business leaders, and retired men of commerce and industry.

A misstep was made long before he was born. He was locked outside from their fraternity. There was nothing here for him. No family bond: psychic, physical, or otherwise between the woman who was his mother and himself. Actress, he thought with contempt.

The woman on the court threw her racquet down in disgust. Announced she was quitting. She would never play with such an ass ever again, not for the rest of her life. The man laughed more goodnaturedly than before. He said he would pay for more lessons if that was the problem. The club pro would be back from Boca Raton next week.

Troy knelt in front of his mother on one knee. She looked at him. He could see fear and defiance there too. He took her hand in his, turned it over, and kissed the palm of her hand. The gesture said more than he could think to say at the moment or for the rest of his life. He felt her flinch when he did it. She snatched her hand away from him and put it in her lap. She turned away from him. He stood looking at the colorful kerchief on her head. He looked at the form of her. When he was a boy he had dreamed she would return from Hollywood, come and get him out to the Scofield place, and take him back to live with her at a beach house. She never came. Now she sat in front of him, refusing to even look at him. She would not accept him even to touch her. He stood there waiting for her to say something else. There was no finality to it. It was so open-ended like it had been his entire life. She said nothing. He turned away and went back to the pickup parked out front.

Brown dog waited on him at the end of the driveway. As he drove the truck up to the house the dog paced easily beside him with his tongue lolling out toward the frontend as if he were a herder that might try to turn him any moment. In front of the house he rewarded the dog by patting him. He went inside and found some suspicious looking bacon, an entire unopened package, which he laid across the dog’s bowl like an offering to a monarch. Brown dog gently bit off each strip, one at a time, with great pomp and etiquette.

He realized the phone had been ringing for some time much to his surprise.

“Hello.”

“Troy?”

“None other.”

“This is Theron, how are you old son?”

“Fine as a frog’s hair.”

“What? Yeah? Well, I’ve got news.”

“Spill it.”

“Yes sir, I heard something you’ll be interested in. When I first heard it myself, I was shocked. Had my ear to the grapevine--”

“What?”

“Heard Jaelyn was in Baton Rouge?”

“Baton Rouge? Louisiana?” Troy said in exasperation.

“Is there another’n?”

“Where at?”

“Heard tell,” Theron said. “She was working at a joint called Glenn’s for a fella name of Crowhurst.”

“Is that it?”

“It’s something ain’t it?”

“Yeah,” Troy slid down the wall. “Let me call you back.”

“I could come over,” Theron said. “If you wanted to go find her I could drive down there with you . . . did you go by Merle’s?”

“I’ll call you back,” Troy said.

He slid down the kitchen wall. A picture of Jaelyn hovered on the edge of his mind ever since she disappeared, but he had not allowed himself to meditate on the situation at hand. His dreams lately were of houses on stilts near the river where an old woman he had called Grandma, though not his kin, was known to take out a ethereal glowing white ribbon of cloth and waved to the ships that passed. Anytime a ship passed she was known to wave at the passing vessels in all sorts of inclement weather. As a child she had made a name for herself doing this very thing in Savannah.

Bells and horns of various ships passing in sonorous groanings too melancholy for mere words. “A life is like a boat on the river,” Walker said. “If you follow the flags and markers you will be all right. The trick is to navigate properly. If you try to take your own course. Tear off up the river helter skelter. Then you’re going to have problems, boy.” A girlchild with a swollen belly lay in a cerulean hot springs bubbling white with foam, she was the great mother of the Scofield breed. A nimbus hovered above her. The skin of her arms which she lay on either side of the mossy bank was a livid alabaster, her lips red and puffy in her travail, and her dark hair spread richly over her shoulders though an ancient haggard woman struggled to hold it piled on top of her head as though it were a precious and jeweled crown — a symbol that could not be allowed to touch the earth even as she cried out in labor under the sulphurous light. A child was born under the water and at first it was half fish. The child’s skin was striated and a deep green like a prehistoric sturgeon with webbed grasping hands, aristabacked, and feet made to pedal through the bracken.

He had tried to stay away from the Missouri and the Osage rivers. Years ago he had even visited the Current river down further south, but it had been awhile. He did not want to live like the river rat cousins his daddy had taken him to see in year’s past. Their children with dirty elongated faces and feet baked with the clay of river mud on them. In their faces was the look of prisoners of war, as if they had lived through some great catastrophe, and now their eyes were metallic and deadly black to the world of atrocities. No color could exist in their eyes, nor in their iris, because their visions were full of horrors too terrible for words. They were destitute. Even their dreams seemed dusted with a peculiar pallor and impecunious failure.

April 30, 2010