Howard’s Adventure
Howard, a retired lawyer, was driving home from a funeral. He took the interstate most of the way. A couple hours from his destination, Howard detoured from his path. A woman that he had known a long time ago had asked him to meet her. She had recently assembled an art exhibit for display in the library of a small city and had invited him to see the show.
The forecast threatened a snow storm, but, for the time being, the roads were clear and the February sun shone brightly. Howard hoped that he could make this social call and depart in time to avoid driving in ice and snow.
He was familiar with the city. It was a fine old town with many noble-look buildings of the kind that people no longer knew how to make. Although the city was no longer famous for this fact, some renegade Indians had been hanged there around the time of the Civil War. Howard’s father had been a historian and, when he was little, he had been taken to see the place where the Indians were executed. Howard, himself, was regarded as something of an authority on the event. For a law journal, he had written a commentary on the hangings and trials in which judgment had been pronounced.
Years had passed since Howard was in this town, but he recognized the familiar landmarks from appearing in court there during his practice. The town square was broad and shady in the summertime with ancient oaks and elm trees. Dignified old buildings lined the square: the 19th century courthouse, now a museum, the headquarters of a local insurance company, an incongruously tall fire station with an orange-steeple next to a dark, hulking church with a battery of bells that sounded on the hour. The library was a block away near the hanging site. There was construction on the outskirts of town and Howard was a little confused by traffic patterns in the city. He looked at his watch and saw that he was about to be late. (He had a horror of not attending appointments on time.) A parking space opened mysteriously in an out-of-the-way lane near the library and, so, Howard put his car there and, without taking too much account of his surroundings, hurried to the library. Before departing from his Impala, Howard put the bottle of bourbon from which he had been nipping back in its paper sack and hid it below the front passenger seat.
The librarian at the front desk frowned and led him to a conference room. The lady that he knew was there with another younger woman. Both of them were eating salads from white styrofoam trays. Howard shook their hands and they conversed for a few minutes in the conference room. What was the weather like? And when would the storm arrive? When the ladies had finished their salads, Howard went with the younger woman to the far end of the library where there wa a small gallery. The older woman said that she had to make a phone call, but would join them shortly.
The art in the gallery was largely conceptual. A big stack of government-issued blankets made a rectangular pillar in the middle of the floor. Viewers were asked to remember how the Indians had suffered when the government distributed to them blankets poisoned by small-pox victims. Some sod was staked with an iron post and chained to a wall bracket. A bucket of beads and sequins, the recompense to the Native Americans for their land, was set beside the turf. The younger woman touched Howard’s forearm as she spoke. She became animated. Howard had the sense that she liked him.
After touring the art exhibit, the younger woman showed him a grand room with old paintings on the wall and a plush carpet and regal-looking chairs and tables with gilt-tipped legs. “This is our lounge for donors,” the woman said, touching his wrist. She named some of the donors to the library. He recognized several well-known lawyers among the persons that she listed. He was a little surprised to hear these men were current donors – most of them, Howard thought, had died a long time ago. But, perhaps, they hadn’t actually died, but merely retired from their law practices. He wasn’t really sure. The woman smiled at Howard and ran her fingers up his arm.
Then, she showed him a kind of circular dumb-waiter. It was located in a niche behind a sliding door in the wall. Although the dumb-waiter had been built to carry loads of books between the floors of the library, it could also be used to transport food to the Donor’s Lounge when banquets were held in that place. The young woman suggested that Howard step into the dumb-waiter. (It was odd, but the library building, at least seen from the outside, had only one floor.) The door slid shut behind them and it was pitch-black. Howard felt the young woman clutching his arm and could sense her breathing beside him in the dark.
He thought that it was odd that this young and pretty woman was attracted to him. After all, he was an old man, not much use to anyone any more. What could she possibly see in him?
Of course, there was a penalty for his transgression, if the encounter could be characterized in that way. Howard had lost his car. He couldn’t recall where he had parked the vehicle. The storm was approaching and the wind now blew through the bare branches of the trees. Howard walked at random, hoping to see something that would trigger a memory of where his car was located. Bells on high sounded the hour – it was later than Howard expected. Then, he must have found the car, because he discovered that he was driving along the streets, turning at corners, passing between strangely familiar buildings, all the time searching for his lost car. It seemed strange to him that he was both driving in his car and searching for where he had parked it at the same time. But odd things were happening to him – after all, he had been on the very verge of an unanticipated romantic adventure in the library with the young woman.
He found that he was leaving town, departing on the highway where there was a road construction. His driver’s side window was frosted over and, so, he had rolled it down temporarily so that he could see to his left. The car was skirting a temporary barricade made from orange fencing drooping between orange cones and stanchions. Through his open window, above the sound of the wind, Howard heard a woman’s voice. The voice spoke in an imperative, insinuating way: “Mister, I’m thirsty. I’m so thirsty. Can you give me a drink of water?” The voice sounded in his ear and Howard felt a chill run through his body. Who was talking to him? He looked to his left, and, just a few feet away, an old badly rusted car was cruising next to him, only inches beyond the orange barrier. Some fat women smoking cigarettes were squashed together in the car. They had bleached blonde hair, disorderly and, perhaps, wigs atop their bald heads. The woman in the passenger side of the car reached out and her arm was very long. She reached into his car and seized Howard by his left wrist. Her fingers were cold and vise-like, gripping him like death itself. Howard’s car and the rusty vehicle were running at highway speed down the road, linked by the blonde woman’s hand closed around the retired lawyer’s wrist. He wanted to pick up the bourbon bottle and use it as a club to smash the woman’s hand and break her grip on him. But he didn’t know how to reach the bottle since both of his hands were occupied – the woman held his left wrist and Howard had to use his right hand to steer the car. But, somehow, he was able to seize the bourbon bottle and use it as a truncheon. He swung it and struck one time, two times, three times. The woman relinquished her grip and the car that she was riding veered off to the left, changing lanes. Howard found that he had smashed the bottle into his own wrist and broken bones there. He swerved a little to the right, wincing in pain, and drove right down the middle of the highway. Snow filled the air. He had tarried too long in the old city where the renegade Indians had been hanged. The storm was now upon him.
