Roscoe by William Kennedy
“Ghosts aren’t real, anyway. You’re just playing a game. Ghosts are dead. People don’t come back as ghosts when they die.”
“Well, it’s true ghosts are dead, but you’re one hundred percent wrong, Gilbino, and you’re also one hundred percent right. I’d say you’re probably more right than wrong and probably we won’t see any ghosts because, as you say, there aren’t any ghosts. But if there are ghosts, and we see them, then you’ll be a hundred percent more wrong than right. And if we sit in the Trophy House and ghosts come out of wherever ghosts come out of and sit and talk to each other, then you’ll be wrong in spades, and I’ll go to my grave saying I’ve never known anybody to be more wrong than Gilby was about Tristano’s ghosts.”
“I’d like to see the ghosts, too,” Veronica said.
“Don’t tell me you’ve never seen them,” Roscoe said.
“I saw something once but Elisha didn’t believe me. Another night we were supposed to see them but I fell asleep in the chair. When I woke up they said the ghosts had come and gone. Like Santa Claus. You remember Santa Claus, Gilby?”
“He was a fake,” Gilby said.
“In spades,” said Roscoe. “I believed in him till I was forty-two years old.”
“You did not,” Gilby said.
“The Times-Union wrote a story about me. Oldest living believer in Santa Claus. Nothing could shake my belief. I saw those scrawny Salvation Army Santas ringing their bells and I knew their whiskers were phony, but I believed they were all Santa. What a sap. On the other hand, you can’t legally say that imitations are all there is. I could prove the existence of Santa Claus in any court in this country if somebody hired me. Of course, I wouldn’t take the case, because I no longer believe in him.”
“Why did you stop?”
“I found something else to believe in. I fell in love again. You got a girlfriend, Gilbo?”
“I’ve got five or six.”
“Whoa. Playing the field.”
“People say you have lots of girlfriends, Roscoe.”
“People are wrong,” Roscoe said.
“How many do you have?”
“You mean legally?”
“Any way.”
“Just one.”
“Who is she?”
“I’d only reveal that on the witness stand under oath.”
“You never tell the truth, Roscoe, do you?”
“Always never,” Roscoe said. “Or is it never always?”
When the ferry stopped running on the lake in 1938, Elisha built two bridges, at the east and west ends of Lyman’s Island, and made Tristano accessible by car on the gated macadam road, until snow closed the road for the season. When they parked and unloaded the wagon at the house, Belle told them dinner was roasted wild turkey and woodcock that Cal had shot. Veronica unpacked in a hurry, and Gilby asked would they go hunting for birds. Roscoe said, No, Cal got enough; we won’t kill anything more today. Will we go fishing? No. Cal put all the boats in the boathouse for the winter, and it’s too cold to fish today. The fish will all be keeping warm at the bottom of the lake. We’ll fish off the dock in the morning, when the sun is up, all right? All right, but what are we going to do today? We’ll walk the land, said Roscoe, and we’ll look at stuff, and try to see things nobody wants us to see. And so the three of them dressed for the chill weather and went first to the boulder near the house to visit the mink family that Gilby had seen living under it.
“They’re gone,” Gilby said.
“When did you last see them?”
“In the summer. They were brown, four of them.”
“What were they doing?”
“Nothing.”
“That explains it,” Roscoe said. “They got bored and went looking for action.”
They walked to Seneca Rock, where Veronica said she found the large deer horns that were now mounted in the Trophy House, Veronica’s deer that got away. They walked north along the shore of the lake and along the dead sumac with the carmine fruit, still on some branches, that the game birds would eat in the winter. Ferns surrounded the small, clear pool coming up from the well that served the Trophy House, and overflowed into the lake. The forest they walked through came almost to the shore of the lake, tall white pines whose needles had created a carpet through which nothing grew, and the only green was the moss on the rocks and the fallen trees. Gilby said, We’re not seeing anything. And Roscoe said, You’re not looking. You can see everything there is, the secret life of blue jays and pheasant and owls and petrels if you’re careful and don’t intrude. They sat awhile in silence and watched and listened. They heard a bird, a few high and squeaky musical notes, and then heard it again, and Roscoe said, That sounds like a starling, one of those little black devils. They travel in huge flocks, like Albany Democrats. Just keep watching and maybe we’ll see some ducks that haven’t gone to Cuba for the winter. They stared across at the vast mountain range that rose up beyond the far side of the lake.
“I don’t see anything,” Gilby said.
Roscoe led the way up an incline to a plateau of rock that gave a view into the forest, and to a swampy area bordered by elms and maples and birch, and a vagrant pattern of dead trees that had fallen, or tried to fall, in the directions of greatest rot or strongest wind. A few frogs found reason to utter a few croaks, and you could find silken webs intact in the standing trees, signs of life. So many rotting stumps and fallen trees: bark gone, branches gone, their punky selves good for nothing. You could suffocate here in decay and death. What dry ground they could see was solid with dead brown leaves. At the edge of the plateau they could look down at the dark, quiet water of the lake.
“Keep watching the shore,” Roscoe said. “We sat like this one day and saw a fox and her four cubs come out and fool around for ten minutes. It was like being at the movies. Another time we saw a doe, and two fawns on the beach cavorting like puppies, and the mother very watchful, wasn’t she, Vee?”
“Mothers are usually watchful,” Veronica said. “But I don’t think I was with you.”
“Of course you weren’t. I admit sometimes you can’t find the hidden life, but you keep looking. You know where you find monster largemouth bass in this lake?”
“Where?”
“Anyplace you’re not. Once we saw a school of perch swimming right off this rock, out there, as far as we could see. You wouldn’t believe there were that many perch in the universe. But we saw them. Didn’t we, Vee?”
“I don’t think I was with you.”
“Of course you weren’t. It was Elisha. He said to me, ‘What do we do with all these perch?’ And I said we should invite them to dinner. We always invited the fish to dinner. But you were definitely there the day you caught that famous bass, nobody could believe how big it was.”
“Especially me,” Veronica said.
“You put up a great fight.”
“How big?” Gilby asked.
“So big it’s still a world record for Tristano. The previous record was three pounds twelve ounces. But your mother’s was four eight. We put it on the scales and showed everybody. We had it mounted with the names of all the witnesses. You can see it at the Trophy House, on the wall near the big table. You remember that day, Vee?”
“Oh yes. A special day.”
“Fantastic day. That was a trophy and a half. I caught a silver trout on a fly that afternoon. We both had a good day.”
“You have a good memory,” she said.
“I never forget anything,” Roscoe said. “Do you remember the day you met the beaver on the mill stream?”
“Yes, and I remember the partridge with her chicks that we found at a fork in the road,” Veronica said. “One chick was the size of your thumb.”
“Elisha found a loon egg in a nest on Adler’s Island,” Roscoe said. “We kept looking and we found a loon. Elisha talked to it for ten minutes to find out who owned the egg.”
“What did the loon say?” Gilby asked.
“Nothing. It just laug
They walked on and passed what Roscoe called the deer highway and sat awhile to wait for traffic, but none came. Then two birds soared into view over the edge of the lake, and Roscoe said, Don’t move, don’t talk, and they watched the larger bird fly low and dive into shallow water and come up with a dead eel. Both birds flew to an outcropping of flat shale, where the bird dropped the eel and held it with a talon while the smaller bird ate into the eel carcass, and then the big bird also ate.
“They’re eagles,” Veronica said. “You ever see an eagle, Gilby?”
“I saw a duck hawk, but not an eagle.”
“They’re bald eagles, father and son, probably,” Roscoe said. “The national emblems of our democracy, having a late lunch. Anybody hungry?”
After dinner Roscoe tried to tune in WGY on the shortwave radio to hear Alex’s speech, but all he could get was Canadians speaking French and a station somewhere in Scandinavia. “We are outside civilization,” Roscoe said. “We could be in the nineteenth century. I wouldn’t be surprised if Lyman walked through the door.”
Veronica and Gilby had exhausted checkers, and the 1903 books on planting trees and perennials, and Audubon on hawks and eagles. Veronica read Gilby from a 1908 volume of Arabian Nights, the story of the fisherman who finds a vase in the sea and when he opens its cover he releases a genie. The genie, not at all grateful for being freed, is so angry at having been a prisoner he says he must kill the fisherman. But he grants him one wish: he may choose the manner of his death. Since he cannot escape death, the fisherman conjures the genie, in the name of Allah, to answer one question truly: Were you really inside that vase? The genie, compelled to speak the truth, says he was. The fisherman doesn’t believe him and says, That vase wouldn’t even hold your foot. So, to prove the truth, the genie changes into smoke, and re-enters the vase. The fisherman claps the cover on, throws the vase into the sea; so long, genie.
“That fisherman was smart,” Gilby said.
“I’m glad you think so,” Roscoe said.
“Let’s play cards, Roscoe,” said Gilby, and Roscoe then lost eighteen thousand dollars to Gilby playing blackjack with five-hundred-dollar chips. Veronica found the notebook in which records were kept of the great catches and sightings of birds, fish, and game. “‘Tried to shoot giant turtle near dock,’ ” she read. “‘Fired at one deer but no luck. Killed two hundred pound black bear, female, behind Swiss Cottage.’ That’s her there on the floor, Gil.” The bear, twenty-two years dead and now a rug, black, tan, mottled gray, lay in front of the fireplace, nose, teeth, and nails intact, but her hide cracked, frazzled, balding, a sad case.
“Who shot her?” Gilby asked.
“Roscoe,” Veronica said.
“You’re making that up,” Gilby said.
“Roscoe is a great shot, aren’t you, Ros?”
“I used to be. Don’t shoot much anymore. I don’t want to kill anything. Killed the bear because she was dangerous. She came out of the woods behind the lodge and attacked Wilbur, an Irish wolfhound your father owned, Gilby. I shot her before she did more damage.”
“What happened to Wilbur?” Gilby asked.
“He died. Bear mauled him pretty bad.”
Gilby kicked the bear rug in the head.
At the back of the old notebook Veronica found a list of Christmas presents she and Elisha gave to friends in 1928. “We gave Patsy a set of steak knives in 1928,” she said. “We gave you a pocket watch, Roscoe.”
“I carried it until you gave me a wristwatch,” he said, raising his wrist with the Elgin he’d worn since 1936. “And it’s nine o’clock on my watch, big fella. Bedtime.”
Veronica stood up. “That’s right, and also we have to go up to the lodge for a short while,” she said. “I want to pack some of your father’s belongings.”
“I can carry them for you,” Gilby said.
“If you want to be ready when the ghosts arrive, you better get to sleep,” Veronica said. Roscoe told him Cal had fishing rods and bait ready for the morning, and instead of fishing off the dock he’d talk to Cal about getting one of the small boats on the water. Gilby approved of that, and Veronica heated water for his hot-water jar, put him to bed, and piled on the blankets.
The Phantom of Love
Roscoe opened one of the bottles of Margaux ’29 he had brought from the Tivoli wine cellar, and poured for himself and Veronica. They sat in the two wicker armchairs facing the fireplace, seats favored by visiting ghosts, according to a Tristano tradition dating to the age when spiritualists flew in and out windows; Veronica thinks they still do. Friends of Ariel are how the ghosts were first identified, specifics long lost; but some things recurred in stories: they were gray-haired men, dressed rustically and well, and they sipped brandy.
The ghosts lost vogue when the lodge was completed and Tristano’s nightlife moved onto a higher social scale up the hill. But it regained venue in the early 1930s, when, at a late hour, one of the Boston Peabodys, a financial friend of Elisha, swore that two gentlemen sat across from him for fifteen minutes, ignoring his efforts to enter their conversation, content to be spectrally aloof, but not inaudible. They made sounds, said Peabody, nothing you could repeat in words, more like whooshings and wheeings, and yet their demeanor and syntax seemed quite in keeping with proper behavior and chat you might observe at any Boston club. The elder ghost, Peabody said, drank more brandy than the other. When they vanished, so did Peabody’s bottle of brandy.
A rash of sightings followed, some vivid, one or two terrifying to the witnesses, but during the rest of the decade the vogue faded. In 1940, Pamela said she saw a ghost in the Swiss Cottage, a muscular man without a shirt, but it was adjudged to be her gin-fizzed fantasy of the young French Canadian who worked in Tristano’s kitchen. That same year, Veronica awoke from a nap in a reclining chair in the Trophy House to see a spectral young woman standing by the fireplace. Veronica asked who she was, the woman gestured vaguely to the hearth, and Veronica said, Is this your home? The woman seemed to say yes, though Veronica could not say how she did that. Veronica went to the bathroom and threw water on her face and came back to find the woman standing where she’d been, but fading, and then she was gone. Veronica told Elisha, who said, Don’t tell anybody, they’ll think you’re as crazy as Pamela. But she told Roscoe, who remembered the story and now asked, “Who do you think she really was?”
“Somebody who’d lived here and was upset by strangers in her home.”
“You didn’t invent her.”
“I did not.”
“She wasn’t an extension of your desire to believe in ghosts.”
“Positively not.”
“She had nothing to do with Rosemary.”
“Nothing whatever. Stop giving me the third degree.”
“I’m just preparing for ghosts in case we see any.”
“You think we will?”
“No, but, then again, yes, or even possibly. Let’s move to more serious matters.” He raised his glass. “To Tristano. We’re actually here.”
“I told you we would be,” she said, and sipped her wine.
“I never trust anybody who tells me the truth.”
“I have to celebrate what you did.”
She had taken off her bulky knit sweater and now wore a fashionable fawn cardigan. She had pinned her hair into a lovely upswept yellow bun, and her smile gave Roscoe reason to believe he was not only in his right mind, but gaining access to an important truth, always dangerous.
“I’ll go over to Belle’s cottage and get a key to the lodge,” he said.
“I have my key,” Veronica said.
“And I thought the lodge would be my idea.”
“I know you thought that. That’s why I brought my key.”
Veronica looked in at Gilby until she was certain he was asleep, and then they walked up the long hill to the lodge, Roscoe creating a path with his flashlight. They went up the steps of the now empty porch, past
Veronica turned on the butterfly standing lamp, one of several Tiffanys in the lodge, and switched off the harsh light of the chandelier. The house held a damp chill, as cold as outside; but they could light no fire, for the chimneys were capped for the winter to discourage squirrel residencies. Roscoe stood by the walk-in fireplace and stared down at Pamela half naked on the raccoon rugs, come into my parlor, darling, the parlor of false love, get out of here, Ros.
“Where do you want to start?” he asked Veronica.
“Start what?”
“Don’t get specific. I don’t want to ruin it with the wrong words.”
“So we’ll silently figure out each other’s wishes.”
“You’ll never be able to figure out mine,” Roscoe said.
“We’ll start upstairs,” she said. They went up to the main bedroom, and as she lit the bedside lamps Roscoe pulled down the shades on the room’s four windows. She took a suitcase from the back of a closet and opened it on the bed, then rifled the drawers for Elisha’s favored things and packed them: a pair of English suspenders, the binoculars he used at the track and for birdwatching, two of his abandoned wallets, a jewelry case with tiepins, stickpins, and rings, a handful of bow ties, souvenir programs from Broadway shows and the Saratoga racetrack, half a dozen handsomely tailored shirts Gilby might grow into next year.
“That’s enough,” she said, and closed the suitcase and set it by the door. She pulled the dust cover off the bed and threw it into a corner, then turned to Roscoe, who was standing by the bed watching her. “I feel young,” she said.