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Authors: Thomas Gifford
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me.” Her voice was low and soft. “We’ll talk more tomorrow.”
I went to the chair and picked up my robe. She reached out and took my hand. “Kiss me goodnight,” she mumbled. I leaned over and brushed my lips across her cheek and she smiled, young-looking and terribly vulnerable, a woman who had been through a lot in her lifetime and had somehow not been spoiled by it, had handled it all. And my brother Cyril had loved her.
“Tomorrow we’ll take this whole thing to Arthur,” I said from the doorway, “and he’ll tell us what to do. Arthur will take care of the whole thing.” But she was asleep and couldn’t hear me.
Twelve
I N THE BRIGHT GRAY HAZE of morning Paula and I stood in the snow and watched the men from the funeral home bring Cyril out the front door and slide him into their black van. The young men who were doing the carrying slipped in the snow with their burden, swore under their breath, cheeks and ears whipped cheery winter red by the wind. One of them came over to me, muttered something, and with stiff fingers I had to sign something. I had to shake the ballpoint pen: the ink was too cold to feed out onto the paper. Then they drove slowly away like a ship carving its way through deep breakers.
The Lincoln started on the second try. It was forty degrees below zero. I let the immense engine idle for several minutes while we went inside and finished our coffee and toast. We didn’t say much but she smiled at me rather shyly from time to time as if she was remembering last night’s kisses, not Cyril’s death.
The heater didn’t work, of course, so we huddled in the front seat and I let the 462-cubic-inch engine with its 340 horsepower slowly off its leash. It shimmied slightly in the snow and then began inching forward. It was a long way through snow that was over the bumper but as long as I held back on the gas pedal it just kept burrowing ahead, past the trees in a wide arc and on up the grade to the road. The road to town had been plowed and I accelerated just enough to send us hurtling through the barrier of piled frozen snow.
Arthur Brenner’s life was divided into halves, each of which gave him great, enduring pleasure: his office in the Cooper’s Falls Hotel, where he was a man of affairs, where he practiced law, where he wrote his articles and advised those who sought his counsel, and his home, which was where he indulged himself in the art of porcelain—the creation of porcelain sculptures, firing, painting, displaying them. I had heard him say, when questioned about his hobby, that a man with the patience and nerve and steadiness of hand to master porcelain was not an altogether inappropriate choice to lead one through the pitfalls and menaces the law sometimes held.
And, now, holding the door for us, he looked all that I had remembered and hoped for. He was a tall man of considerable girth, gray hair thinning over a broad land face, a face quick to open laughter which made him seem at times younger than his seventy years and at other times implacable and eternal. He smiled now, held out his hand to Paula, then to me. The office was comfortable: the draperies were pulled back, allowing that bright grayness into the room; the ceilings were fourteen feet and the bay window looked out onto Main Street, commanding an unobstructed view of its entire length.
He led us to a grouping of three chairs in the bay of the window and when we were both seated in the comfortable chintz-covered chairs he lowered his own 250 pounds into the third.
“Let me say first how very sorry I am about Cyril. It’s a sad homecoming, a hell of a note.” He cocked his massive head and peered at me from behind heavy-lidded eyes. “How are you? You look wonderfully well, but Doctor Bradlee tells me you were set upon and left for dead by highwaymen. Can such things be?”
I related the curious matter of the inefficient thugs and he sat massaging a close-shaven jowl, shaking his head, widening his eyes
I went to the chair and picked up my robe. She reached out and took my hand. “Kiss me goodnight,” she mumbled. I leaned over and brushed my lips across her cheek and she smiled, young-looking and terribly vulnerable, a woman who had been through a lot in her lifetime and had somehow not been spoiled by it, had handled it all. And my brother Cyril had loved her.
“Tomorrow we’ll take this whole thing to Arthur,” I said from the doorway, “and he’ll tell us what to do. Arthur will take care of the whole thing.” But she was asleep and couldn’t hear me.
Twelve
I N THE BRIGHT GRAY HAZE of morning Paula and I stood in the snow and watched the men from the funeral home bring Cyril out the front door and slide him into their black van. The young men who were doing the carrying slipped in the snow with their burden, swore under their breath, cheeks and ears whipped cheery winter red by the wind. One of them came over to me, muttered something, and with stiff fingers I had to sign something. I had to shake the ballpoint pen: the ink was too cold to feed out onto the paper. Then they drove slowly away like a ship carving its way through deep breakers.
The Lincoln started on the second try. It was forty degrees below zero. I let the immense engine idle for several minutes while we went inside and finished our coffee and toast. We didn’t say much but she smiled at me rather shyly from time to time as if she was remembering last night’s kisses, not Cyril’s death.
The heater didn’t work, of course, so we huddled in the front seat and I let the 462-cubic-inch engine with its 340 horsepower slowly off its leash. It shimmied slightly in the snow and then began inching forward. It was a long way through snow that was over the bumper but as long as I held back on the gas pedal it just kept burrowing ahead, past the trees in a wide arc and on up the grade to the road. The road to town had been plowed and I accelerated just enough to send us hurtling through the barrier of piled frozen snow.
Arthur Brenner’s life was divided into halves, each of which gave him great, enduring pleasure: his office in the Cooper’s Falls Hotel, where he was a man of affairs, where he practiced law, where he wrote his articles and advised those who sought his counsel, and his home, which was where he indulged himself in the art of porcelain—the creation of porcelain sculptures, firing, painting, displaying them. I had heard him say, when questioned about his hobby, that a man with the patience and nerve and steadiness of hand to master porcelain was not an altogether inappropriate choice to lead one through the pitfalls and menaces the law sometimes held.
And, now, holding the door for us, he looked all that I had remembered and hoped for. He was a tall man of considerable girth, gray hair thinning over a broad land face, a face quick to open laughter which made him seem at times younger than his seventy years and at other times implacable and eternal. He smiled now, held out his hand to Paula, then to me. The office was comfortable: the draperies were pulled back, allowing that bright grayness into the room; the ceilings were fourteen feet and the bay window looked out onto Main Street, commanding an unobstructed view of its entire length.
He led us to a grouping of three chairs in the bay of the window and when we were both seated in the comfortable chintz-covered chairs he lowered his own 250 pounds into the third.
“Let me say first how very sorry I am about Cyril. It’s a sad homecoming, a hell of a note.” He cocked his massive head and peered at me from behind heavy-lidded eyes. “How are you? You look wonderfully well, but Doctor Bradlee tells me you were set upon and left for dead by highwaymen. Can such things be?”
I related the curious matter of the inefficient thugs and he sat massaging a close-shaven jowl, shaking his head, widening his eyes
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