Quiet Days in Purgatory
“He was a turkey meatball,” she said and we both broke up. But later, when I was watching the distant stars change color, I knew that the Colonel and Moissac had reached the treasure vault in the City of the Polychize. Through catacombs of the moaning half-dead, dripping with saliva, they ran. Down wrought iron staircases, deeper and deeper into the concrete earth.
I think I will barely be able to make it to the bed. The sounds of that crying mother bird have just come to me from out of the night and they are interrupting my thoughts of the quiet one. Since we never made it for a walk, Wood will look at me with disappointment as I pass him in the hall. I’ll stare at the ripped Japanese curtains and listen to the train moving rapidly to nowhere. I’ll wait for the breeze. Somewhere in the middle of the night I’ll hear a gun shot and that bird will stop crying.
This was the day, the needle’s eye, so to speak. I woke to an empty house. On the kitchen table there was a note from my wife that she had decided to call in sick at work and spend the day with the kids. She had already called the baby-sitter and gave her the day off. They had taken the carriage and gone for a walk along the river and then were going to get lunch in town. I made coffee and ate some cantaloupe and looked out the back window to see if Helen was around. As I stared out into the empty yard, I thought, “Fuck it, I’m going to stiff work too.”
I called in and got one of The Committee. I think it was the one who wears these shiny polyester jackets and skirts, the one I call Jawbone of an Ass, but their voices are so similar, every word a creak and two groans, I could never be sure. “I’m sick,” I told her.
“Sick?” she said.
I thought quick. “A twenty four hour virus,” I said.
“How can you be sure?” she asked.
“I’ve been sick for twelve hours,” I told her, “and I feel like I’m going to be sick for another twelve.”
“I’ll make a note of it in your file,” she said and hung up.
“Screw her,” I said to Wood who was sitting in the kitchen staring at me.
I walked along the river, looking for them. Then I went up into town and checked the pizza place and the diner. I stopped a few people and asked if they had seen them. The red haired girl told me she had seen them walking off toward the park a half hour earlier. I thanked her and watched her walk away. Over at the park, it was beautiful. The air was cool and I sat for a while in front of the pond, watching the ducks and smoking a spittle stick. I thought if I stayed put, they might find me. After a long time I got up and headed home.
The minute I opened the door of the house, I knew it was empty, and that’s when I first felt something was up. I stood in the living room and listened to the dripping of the faucet in the upstairs bathroom. Then the phone rang. I answered it and the minute I heard the breathing, I knew it was the quiet one. I stayed on the line, waiting for him to speak. It took a few minutes to realize that what I mistook for a light hum in the receiver was actually him speaking. He seemed so far away and his words were pin prick whispers.
“I can’t hear a damn thing your saying,” I told him. He went on and on his voice rising and falling. Finally I hung up.
I went back to Bill’s house and told him what I thought was going on and asked to borrow his gun. He wouldn’t lend me the gun but he said he would come with me and bring it along. We drove around town in his beat up old convertible, looking everywhere for them. “I’ll do what needs to be done,” Bill told me, “but don’t ask me to think about this.”
“I know what you mean,” I said.
After checking all the stores and asking questions, we drove back along the river and spotted a woman walking, pushing a baby carriage like ours. From behind, the woman looked so much like my wife and the boy walking next to her looked like my older son. When Bill stopped the car, and I got out, though, I saw them up close from the front, and they weren’t my family.
We went back to my place eventually and sat around drinking beer, waiting for them to either come home or to get some kind of message from the quiet one. I smoked a spittle stick and the beer and the smoke put me in a kind of daze which eased my nerves somewhat. I sat back on the couch and listened to the music Bill had put on the stereo. As I sat there I began to think of the dreams I had been having of before Purgatory. Some of them played themselves out again and others wove together and then shredded to reveal another mixed with another and coming apart at the seams. It all appeared to be leading to some ultimate answer.
