The Quarry

Promised Land

An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick . . . —William Butler Yeats Promised Land When I picked up the phone early this morning, Charley Palestine's voice sounded very distant. "Bad connection/' I told him, clearing the sleep out of my throat. "Let me call you back/' "Lou's dead," I thought I heard him say. I smacked the receiver against my palm. "Who did?" "Exactly," he muttered. For months now I'd been having my doubts about Charley's plan to move to Florida. He was seventy-five, and in poor health. Zandy, my wife, was losing patience with both of us. "You don't even notice the changes in him," she said to me with accumulated irritability one night last fall. Whenever we discussed his moving, Zandy would roll her coffee-colored eyes and say the whole scheme would backfire on me. "He'll expect you to fly down on a minute's notice and take him to the periodontist." This morning she made hissing noises as I spoke to him. Since Zandy, I was amply aware, could make a grievance out of anything, I contented myself with nodding agreeably at her concerns, a gesture that only managed to tick her off even more. That afternoon I left my law office on L Street around 3:45 and walked the five blocks to the HMO. Heavy yellow cranes and earthmovers were chewing up downtown Washington. The sky, pitifully 12O THE QUARRY bruised and overcast the past week, was already growing dark. The winds brawling in off the icy Potomac were cutting. Charley looked beat. I was afraid his emphysema was getting worse. We were slouched opposite one another, on needlepointpadded wicker armchairs, in the radiology department waiting room. "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" was being filtered continuously through the hidden Muzak speakers. I was slightly nauseated from the sushi I'd had for lunch. The waiting room, paneled in fillets of imitation maple, was lit for reptiles. Charley, his hands clenched in his lap, was talking, and I was listening. The Wildroot was pooled like Elmer's glue on his black mop of hair. When I came back from the men's room he sprang up and said, "Elliot, do you remember when they kicked our Giants out of the Polo Grounds?" I smiled and tasted something bitter in my throat; gas was flowing through my bowels. "Who's they?" I asked, egging him on. "It's a mystery to me." He shook his head mechanically. "Smart aleck," he sneered. "I can still give you a zetz on your heinie." "Hey—come on now," I said, widening my eyes. He squinted down at me and eased himself back into the armchair. "Charley," I whispered, "nobody kicked them out. They wanted to leave. It was all about making big bucks." "Hah!" He stared at me for a moment and grunted. His face was shiny, and his arms, once big with freckled muscles, looked soft. I leaned forward and put my hands on his knees. They shook slightly. When he parted his lips I caught a whiff of scallions on his breath. "Please don't brood," I said. He grunted again and scratched the dimple in his chin. When he was younger, people said he looked like Kirk Douglas. "Never mind all the malarkey, Elliot," he said. "I don't need you to tell me what happened." "What's eating you, Charley?" His eyes cut quickly to the salmon-colored carpet.After a minute or two he glanced back at me. He shifted uncomfortably, as if his clothes didn't fit properly. He'd had hip surgery about five years before and wore one of those lopsided orthopedic shoes on his left PROMISED LAND 121 foot. "For crying out loud/' he said, coughing like someone who had swallowed smoke. "Yes?" I held my breath. He stared past me without expression. I searched his face. He wasn't wearing his glasses and without them his rabbity eyes appeared terribly wasted, the pupils deep as wells. As long as I'd known him he'd had a habit of pulling down his lower lip and fingering his gums when he was bothered about something. His teeth were fluted and looked like they'd been in the bottom of a fish tank. I put my hand on his shoulder. "Tired?" I asked. "Nah—it isn...