Lisey's Story(8)

Lisey bent down until her nose was almost touching the yellowed photo from the Nashville American. There was a magnifying glass in the wide centre drawer of Scott's main desk. She had seen it on many occasions, its place preserved between the world's oldest unopened package of Herbert Tareyton cigarettes and the world's oldest book of unredeemed S & H Green Stamps. She could have gotten it but didn't bother. Didn't need any magnification to confirm what she was seeing: half a brown loafer. Half a cordovan loafer, actually, with a slightly built-up heel. She remembered those loafers very well. How comfortable they'd been. And she'd certainly moved in them that day, hadn't she? She hadn't seen the happy cop, or the dazed young man (Tony, she was sure, of Toneh heah well be rahtin it up fame), nor had she noticed Dashmiel, the southern-fried chickenshit, once the cheese hit the grater. All of them had ceased to matter to her, the whole smucking bunch of them. By then she had only one thing on her mind, and that had been Scott. He was surely no more than ten feet away, but she had known that if she didn't get to him at once, the crowd around him would keep her out . . . and if she were kept out, the crowd might kill him. Kill him with its dangerous love and voracious concern. And what the smuck, Violet, he might have been dying, anyway. If he was, she'd meant to be there when he stepped out. When he Went, as the folks of her mother and father's generation would have said.

"I was sure he'd die," Lisey said to the silent sunwashed room, to the dusty winding bulk of the booksnake.

So she'd run to her fallen husband, and the news photographer - who'd been there only to snap the obligatory picture of college dignitaries and a famous visiting author gathered for the groundbreaking with the silver spade, the ritual First Shovelful of Earth where the new library would eventually stand - had ended up snapping a much more dynamic photograph, hadn't he? This was a front-page photo, maybe even a hall of fame photo, the kind that made you pause with a spoonful of breakfast cereal halfway between the bowl and your mouth, dripping on the classifieds, like the photo of Oswald with his hands to his belly and his mouth open in a final dying yawp, the kind of frozen image you never forgot. Only Lisey herself would ever realize that the writer's wife was also in the photo. Exactly one built-up heel of her.

The caption running along the bottom of the photo read:

Captain S. Heffernan of U-Tenn Campus Security congratulates Tony Eddington, who saved the life of famous visiting author Scott Landon only seconds before this photo was taken. "He's an authentic hero," said Capt. Heffernan. "No one else was close enough to take a hand." (Additional coverage p. 4, p.9)

Running up the lefthand side was a fairly lengthy message in handwriting she didn't recognize. Running up the righthand side were two lines of Scott's sprawly handwriting, the first line slightly larger than the second . . . and a little arrow, by God, pointing to the shoe! She knew what the arrow meant; he had recognized it for what it was. Coupled with his wife's story - call it Lisey and the Madman, a thrilling tale of true adventure - he had understood everything. And was he furious? No. Because he had known his wife would not be furious. He had known she'd think it was funny, and it was funny, a smucking riot, so why was she on the verge of crying? Never in her whole life had she been so surprised, tricked, and overtrumped by her emotions as in these last few days.

Chapter 2

Lisey dropped the news clipping on top of the book, afraid a sudden flood of tears might actually dissolve it the way saliva dissolves a mouthful of cotton candy. She cupped her palms over her eyes and waited. When she was sure the tears weren't going to overflow, she picked up the clipping and read what Scott had written:

Must show to Lisey! How she will LAUGH! But will she understand? (Our survey says YES)

He had turned the big exclamation point into a sunny Seventies-style smiley-face, as if telling her to have a nice day. And Lisey did understand. Eighteen years late, but so what? Memory was relative.

Very zen, grasshoppah, Scott might have said.

"Zen, schmen. I wonder how Tony's doing these days, that's what I wonder. Saviour of the famous Scott Landon." She laughed, and the tears that had still been standing in her eyes spilled down her cheeks.

Now she turned the photo widdershins and read the other, longer note.

8-18-88

Dear Scott (If I may): I thought you would want this photograph of C. Anthony ("Tony") Eddington III, the young grad student who saved your life. UTenn will be honouring him, of course; we felt you might also want to be in touch.

His address is 748 Coldview Avenue, Nashville North, Nashville, Tennessee 37235. Mr Eddington, "Poor but Proud," comes from a fine Southern Tennesse family and is an excellent student poet. You will of course want to thank (and perhaps reward) him in your own way.

Respectfully, sir, I remain, Roger C. Dashmiel Assoc. Prof., English Dept. University of Tennessee, Nashville

Lisey read this over once, twice ("three times a laaaa-dy," Scott would have sung at this point), still smiling, but now with a sour combination of amazement and final comprehension. Roger Dashmiel was probably as ignorant of what had actually happened as the campus cop. Which meant there were only two people in the whole round world who knew the truth about that afternoon: Lisey Landon and Tony Eddington, the fellow who would be rahtin it up for the year-end review. It was possible that even "Toneh" himself didn't realize what had happened after the ceremonial first spadeful of earth had been turned. Maybe he'd been in a fear-injected blackout. Dig it: he might really believe he had saved Scott Landon from death.