The Gravedigger's Daughter Part 46

"Of course, none of us are. Is. Any longer. Young."

Now Thaddeus began to complain more generally of the United States federal government, saboteurs in the Republican party and outright traitors among the Democrats, America's cowardly failure to "pull out all stops" in Vietnam. And what of the "media manipulation" of leftist intellectuals in the country, that Senator Joe McCarthy had been onto but got sidetracked, and his enemies bludgeoned the poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d to death. Why, Thaddeus wondered, were Jews invariably the ones most opposed to the war in Vietnam? Why were most Jews, when you came down to it, Communists, or Commie-sympathizers! Even Jew-capitalists, in their hearts they're Communists! Why the h.e.l.l was this, when Stalin had loathed Jews, the Russian people loathed Jews, there had been more pogroms in Russia than in Germany, Poland, Hungary combined? "Yet in New York City and Los Angeles, that's all you will find. In broadcast journalism, newspapers. The 'paper of record'the Jew York Times. Who was it founded the NAACPnot the 'colored people,' you can bet, but the 'chosen people.' And why? I ask you, Hazel Jones, why?"

Hazel heard these sputtered and increasingly incoherent words through a steadily mounting ringing in her ears. Mixed with the mad cries of cicadas.

He knows. Knows who I am.

Buthow can he?

At last Gallagher roused himself from his stupor.

"Is that so, Thaddeus? All Jews? They don't disagree with one another, about anything? Ever?"

"To their enemies, Jews present a unified front. The 'chosen people'"

"Enemies? Who are the enemies of Jews? n.a.z.is? Anti-Semites? You?"

With a look of indignation Thaddeus drew back in his wheelchair. The subtlety of his argument was being misunderstood! His disinterested philosophical position was being crudely personalized!

"I meant to say, non-Jews. They call us goyim, son. Not enemies per se except as Jews perceive us. You know perfectly well what I mean, son, it's a matter of historic fact."

Thaddeus was speaking solemnly now. As if his earlier baiting had been a pose.

But Gallagher rose abruptly to his feet. Mumbling he had to go inside for a few minutes.

Gallagher stumbled away. Hazel worried he was having one of his gastric attacks, that sometimes led to spasms of vomiting. His face had gone sickly white. Gallagher had begun to experience these attacks when he'd first been heckled at anti-war rallies several years ago, in Buffalo. Sometimes he suffered milder attacks before one of Zack's public performances.

d.a.m.n him: Hazel couldn't help resenting it, being left behind with Gallagher's father. This grotesque old man in his wheelchair glaring at her.

Saying, in Hazel Jones's way that was both breathless and apologetic, and her widened eyes fixed upon the glaring eyes in a look of utter distress, "Chet doesn't mean to be rude, Mr. Gallagher. This is an emotional"

"Oh yes, is it, for 'Chet'? And for me, too."

"He hasn't been in this house, he said, since"

"I know exactly how long, Miss Jones. You needn't inform me of facts regarding my own G.o.d-d.a.m.ned family."

Hazel, shocked, knew herself rebuffed. As if Thaddeus had leaned over and spat on her yellow organdy dress.

G.o.d d.a.m.n your soul to h.e.l.l, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

Sick dying old b.a.s.t.a.r.d I will have your heart.

The gravedigger's daughter, Hazel Jones was. There was never a time when Hazel Jones was not. Saying, in an embarra.s.sed murmur to placate the enemy, "Mr. Gallagher, I'm sorry. Oh."

The white-jacketed servant hovered at the edge of the terrace, perhaps overhearing. Thaddeus noisily finished his drink, a vile-looking scarlet concoction laced with vodka. He too might have been embarra.s.sed, speaking so sharply to a guest. And to so clearly innocent and guileless a guest. His gla.s.sy eyes brooded upon the swimming pool, its lurid artificial aqua. In the ripply surface, filaments of cloud were reflected like strands of gut. Thaddeus panted, grunted, scratched viciously at his crotch. He then rubbed his hefty bosom up inside the T-shirt, with a sensuous abandon. Hazel lowered her eyes, the gesture was so intimate.

The photographs she'd seen of Thaddeus Gallagher in the lodge at Grindstone Island were of a stout man, heavy but not obese, with a large head and a self-possessed manner. Now his body appeared swollen, bloated. His jaws had the look of jaws accustomed to ferocious grinding. Hazel wondered what cruel whimsy had inspired him to dress that day in such clothes, exposing and parodying his bulk.

"Bulls.h.i.t he's 'emotional.' He's a cold-hearted s...o...b.. You will learn, Hazel Jones. Chester Gallagher is not a man to be trusted. I am the one to apologize, Miss Jones, for him. His idiotic 'politics'! His Ne-gro jazz! Failed at serious piano, so he takes up Ne-gro jazz! Mongrel music. Failed at his marriage so he takes up women he can feel sorry for. He's shameless. He's a mythomaniac. He told me, bratty kid of fifteen, 'Capitalism is doomed.' The little p.i.s.spot! These newspaper columns of his, he invents, he distorts, he exaggerates in the name of 'moral truth.' As if there could be a 'moral truth' that refutes historical truth. When he was a drunkand Chester was a drunk, Miss Jones, for many more years than you've known himhe inhabited a kind of bathosphere of mythomania. He has invented such tales of me, my 'business ethics,' I've given up hoping to set them straight. I'm an old newspaper man, I believe in facts. Facts, and more facts! There's never been an editorial in any Gallagher newspaper not based upon facts! Not liberal c.r.a.p, sentimental bulls.h.i.t about 'world peace'the 'United Nations''global disarmament'but facts. The bedrock of journalism. Chester Gallagher never respected facts sufficiently. Trying to make himself out some kind of white Ne-gro, playing their music and taking up their causes."

Hazel was gripping a sweating gla.s.s in her hand. She spoke evenly, just slightly coquettishly. "Your son is a mythomaniac, Mr. Gallagher, and you are not?"

Thaddeus squinted at her. His chins jiggled. As if Hazel had reached over to touch his knee, he brightened.

"You must call me 'Thaddeus,' Hazel Jones. Better yet, 'Thad.' 'Mr. Gallagher' is for servants and other hirelings."

When Hazel made no reply, Thaddeus leaned toward her, suggestively. "Will you call me 'Thad'? It's very like 'Chet'eh? Almost no one calls me 'Thad' any longer, my old friends are falling awayevery season, like dying leaves."

Hazel's lips moved numbly. "'Thad.'"

"Very good! I certainly intend to call you 'Hazel.' Now and forever."

Thaddeus moved the wheelchair closer to Hazel. She smelled his old-man odor, the airless interior of the old stone cottage. Yet there was something sweetly sharp beneath, Thaddeus Gallagher's cologne. A monster-man, crammed into a wheelchair, yet he'd shaved carefully that morning, he'd dabbed on cologne.

Unnerving how, close up, you could see the younger Thaddeus inside the elder's face, exultant.

"'Hazel Jones.' A lovely name with something nostalgic about it. Who gave you that name, my dear?"

"Idon't know."

"Don't know? How is that possible, Hazel?"

"I never knew my parents. They died when I was a little girl."

"Did they! And where was this, Hazel?"

Gallagher had warned, his father would interrogate her. Yet Hazel could not seem to prevent it.

"I don't know, Mr. Gallagher. It happened so long ago..."

"Not that long ago, surely? You're a young woman."

Hazel shook her head slowly. Young?

"'Hazel Jones' The name is known to me, but not why. Can you explain why, my dear?"

Hazel said lightly, "There are probably 'Hazel Joneses'Mr. Gallagher. More than one."

"Well! Don't let me upset you, my dear. I'm feeling guilty, I suppose. I seem to have upset my overly sensitive radical son, who has run off and left us."

Briskly then Thaddeus pressed one of the b.u.t.tons on the wheelchair. Hazel heard no sound but within seconds a male attendant appeared, in T-shirt, swim trunks, carrying terry cloth robes and towels. This young man called Thaddeus "Mr. G." and was called by the older man what sounded like "Peppy." He was about twenty-five, darkly tanned, with a blandly affable boy's face; he had a swimmer's physique, long-waisted, with broad wing-like shoulders. Hazel saw his eyes slide onto her, swiftly a.s.sessing yet vacant. He was one who knew his place: a wealthy invalid's physical therapist.

"Will you join me, Hazel? They say I must swim every day, to keep my condition from 'progressing.' Of course, my condition 'progresses' in any case. Such is life!"

Hazel declined the invitation. She came to a.s.sist Peppy as he helped Thaddeus into the pool, at the shallow end: this was a Hazel Jones gesture, spontaneous and friendly.

"My dear, thank you! I hate the water, until I get into it."

Peppy fastened red plastic water wings onto the obese man, over his fatty shoulders and across his immense drooping bosom. Slowly then he helped Thaddeus into the water with the frowning attentiveness of a mother helping her clumsy, somewhat fearful child into the water, that shimmered and quaked about him. Hazel offered her hand. And how grateful Thaddeus was, gripping her hand. As his weight slipped into the water like a bag of concrete Thaddeus squeezed Hazel's slender fingers in a sudden helpless panic. Then, as if miraculously, Thaddeus was in the pool, wheezing, paddling with childlike abandon. Peppy walked and then swam beside him slowly. Thaddeus was laughing, winking up at Hazel who followed his slow progress through the now choppy water, walking at the edge of the pool.

"Hazel! You must join us. The water is perfect, isn't it, Peppy?"

"Sure is, Mr. G."

Hazel laughed. Her pretty dress had been splashed, and would stink of chlorine.

"Really, Hazel," Thaddeus said, holding his head erect out of the water, with an absurd dignity, "you must join us. You've come so far." The motions of his hefty arms were energetic, those of his atrophied legs feeble.

"I don't have a bathing suit, Mr. Gallagher."

"'Thad'! You promised."

"'Thad.'"

Thaddeus was enlivened again, with a frantic gaiety.

"There are women's bathing suits in the changing rooms, over there. Please, go look."

Hazel stood irresolute. Almost, to spite her lover she was tempted.

As if reading her thoughts Thaddeus said slyly, "You must, dear! To show up my cowardly son. He fled, he's afraid of his old crippled father who has prostate cancer, and a touch of colon cancer to boot. But do you see Thaddeus slinking away in cowardly defeat? You do not."

Hazel knew not to react to this disclosure. Never must she make any reference to Thaddeus Gallagher's health. She would pretend she had not heard. Carefully she removed her high-heeled sandals, to walk barefoot at the edge of the pool. Her legs were long, supple with muscle. Her legs were smooth, shaven. It was a fetish with Hazel Jones to shave her legs, thighs and armpits and other areas of her body that might betray her by sprouting dark, rather curly coa.r.s.e hairs. As Hazel Jones ate sparingly, to remain Hazel Jones who was slender, very feminine and very pretty. In the smelly aqua water, Thaddeus Gallagher strained to watch her.

He could not speak very clearly, paddling and splashing with his absurd water wings. Yet he kept calling to Hazel as one might call to a perverse child. "Surely you can swim, dear? Nothing would happen to you, with Peppy and me at hand."

Hazel laughed. "I don't think so, Thad. Thank you."

"And if I gave you a gift, dear? A thousand dollars."

Thaddeus meant to speak in such a way that Hazel could interpret the remark as a joke, and not be offended. But the words came out awkwardly, his gla.s.sy blinking eyes stared and strained at her.

Hazel shook her head, no.

"Five thousand!" Thaddeus cried gaily.

An old man's harmless teasing. He was falling in love with Hazel Jones. Cavorting in the water, making even Peppy laugh. Paddling and splashing and kicking and wheezing like a baby elephant. His behavior was so ludicrous, so strangely touching, Hazel had to laugh.

"My dear, don't abandon me! Please."

He'd thought that Hazel was walking away. She'd gone only to examine a lattice of crimson climber roses, against a cream-colored stucco wall.

After a few more minutes, Thaddeus abruptly ordered Peppy to haul him out of the pool. Again, Hazel Jones came to help: took the old man's big fleshy hand, that gripped hers tightly. Hazel also brought towels, terry cloth robes for both men. Thaddeus wrapped the enormous towels about his body, rubbing himself briskly. His thinning hair that lay now flat against the big dome of his head, he dried as energetically as he might have done in his youth when his hair was thick. It was exactly Gallagher's practice. Hazel saw this, and felt some tenderness for Thaddeus.

In his wheelchair, wrapped in towels large as blankets, Thaddeus puffed and panted and smiled, exhilarated. The white-jacketed servant had brought him another scarlet drink as well as a silver bowl of mixed nuts which he ate noisily.

"Hazel Jones! I must confess I'd heard certain things about you. Now I see, none of them were true."

Thaddeus spoke in a lowered voice. He kept glancing back at the house, concerned that his son would reappear.

He reached out to take Hazel's hand. She shivered but did not pull away.

"My son is a man of integrity, I know. I have quarrels with him but in his own way, yes of course he is 'moral.' I wish that I knew how to love him, Hazel! He has never forgiven me, you see, for things that happened long ago. He has told you, I suppose?" Thaddeus squinted wistfully at Hazel.

"No. He has not."

"He has not?"

"Never."

"He complains about my politics, surely? My convictions that are so very different from his?"

"Chet only speaks of you with respect. He loves you, Mr. Gallagher. But he's afraid of you."

"Afraid of me! Why?"

There was something furtive and sick in Thaddeus's face. Yet a glimmering of hope.

"You should ask Chet, Mr. Gallagher. I can't speak for him."

"Yes, yes: you can speak for him. Far better you can speak for him, Hazel Jones, than he can speak for himself." The old man's pose of drollery had quite fallen away, now he was fully earnest. Almost, he was pleading with Hazel. "He loves me? He respects me?"

"He thinks that your political beliefs are mistaken. That's all."

"He has never said anything abouthis mother?"

"Only that he loved her. And misses her."

"Does he! I do, too."

Thaddeus and Hazel were alone on the terrace. Both Peppy and the servant in the white jacket had departed. Thaddeus sat swathed in white terry cloth, sighing. Still he continued to glance back at the house nervously. "You have no family, Hazel? No one living?"

"No one."

"Only just your son?"

"Only just my son."

"Are you and Chet secretly married, dear?"

"No."

"But why? Why aren't you married?"

Hazel smiled evasively. No, no! She would not say.

Wistfully Thaddeus asked, "Don't you love my son? Why would you live with him, if you don't love him?"