Man Sinister

Talmage Powell Man Sinister

Chapter 1

I came out of the three-day spree in a flophouse on Diamond Street. After I decided where I was, I sat on the bed and held my head in my hands for a while. I found my coat crumpled on a chair. There was a nearly full pint of Old Seaman in the pocket. I gagged, looking at the whisky. It seemed that then as an alcoholic I was an also-ran.

I knew then that I was finished with this kind of drinking. It was not the inevitable belief born of hang-over and remorse. It was the simple recognition that whisky had not done for me what I had hoped. The wrong memories blacked out, leaving stark and clear the very memory I’d been wanting to escape for a long time. The memory of what I had done to my wife.

I slugged the Old Seaman once to still the shaking of my hands. I wanted a shave and a bath, after the drink slid down.

I put on the coat, and turned up the collar. Then I went out on Diamond Street, walked two blocks, and caught a taxi. I rode over to Papa Joe’s house.

A strange black car with New York plates was parked in the driveway. I went around to the rear entrance. Ellen was coming out of the pantry. She jumped like a frightened kitten. She and her brother, Wilfred, were the household servants. She was about seventeen, a peaked little thing with faded brown hair and startled brown eyes. She and Wilfred came of the poorest kind of mountain family.

“Oh, Mr. Martin!” She made it sound as if she had been scared by Old Nick himself.

“Who is the company from New York?”

“Your brother.” Then her mouth became petulant. Her voice was sullen as she added, “And with a new wife. A New York girl.”

I took the back stairs to the second floor. In my room I set the pint of Old Seaman on the bureau.

The door opened and Wilfred shuffled in. “I heard you come up, Mr. Martin. Anything I can fetch for you?”

He was a year or so older than his sister, an obese boy with a round, soft face thatched with limp, sandy hair. His face and his vacant, flat blue eyes suggested inbreeding. He was sly, evasive.

I shook my head. “How long has Harold been here?”

“Couple days.”

“Well, it’s a nice time of year to bring his new wife to Asheville. Plenty of summer color and cool nights in the mountains now.”

Wilfred grunted. “If there ain’t anything you need, I’ll be going on downstairs.”

After he went out, I picked up a razor, shaving cream, and a towel from the bureau. The door opened a second time. This time it was Papa Joe.

He slammed the door. He beat the tip of his cane against the floor. He carried the cane more like a weapon than an aid to his crippled right knee. He was a small man with pale blue-eyes, sparse gray hair always plastered to his narrow skull, and bitterness written all over him. He came from an old Southern family, the kind that used to have colonels.

“Steve, you stinker! You rotter!”

“I’ve been drunk before.”

“Not at a time like this. Look at you! Did you let Vera see you?”

“Vera?”

“Harold’s wife. A nice impression you’d have made. I hope you crawled in the back way.”

My face went hot. “I did. You make Vera sound pretty important.”

“Harold has done quite well for himself. But you wouldn’t understand much about a wife, would you?”

I had to sit down. “You’re hitting low.”

He laughed, a sound filled with sadistic pleasure. I looked at him. A sudden chill grabbed my spine.

“How long have you hated me this way?” I asked.

“Hated you? I don’t. I despise you, as I despise all weakness. Weakness in Government, in men, in theories. Unfortunately the weak number many, and are able to usurp power rightfully belonging to their protectors.”

“You’re telling me to get out?”

“Not at all. I rather enjoy the spectacle of you.”

He was not only my senior by twenty-eight years; he was the man who had raised me. I could not strike him. He had spoken his exit line. I kept my face turned until I heard him leave the room.

I got my shaving stuff together again. “Nuts to you,” I told the Old Seaman bottle. Like many women, the bottle would not keep its promises.

I shaved without my mind being on the task. I was stunned at the feelings I’d uncovered in Papa Joe. Something pretty excruciating must have happened to have shattered his control. I didn’t wonder much about it. There remained for me to leave as much like a gentleman as possible.

Now that I’d discovered his feelings, fragments of memories out of my youth came back — his treatment of me, little actions and words dropped here and there. I’d never thought too much of it before. I’d long been conditioned to accept the status of orphan in the household. Now I began to question Papa Joe’s purpose. Perhaps my status, my failures, had been food for years for his sadism.

I went downstairs. My head was pretty clear, though a dull ache was working on the base of my skull. I was beginning to get hungry.