Clahk
By Rebecca Henry Lowndes // November 16, 2023
Lucy leaned her elbows on her knees, bare below the faded cotton romper, and blinked in the glare. Just within, on the cool side of the screen door, sat her mother at the kitchen table.
It was dreadful hot for May.
From the playground at the corner the cries and commotion of her brothers and sisters, racketing through a game of box-hockey, floated up the street with an eerie, pulsing clarity. It would be a relief to join them there for a while, she thought, rubbing her eyes – though she herself preferred to ride the swings, toe-bumping any cloud that strayed into her arc of sky. But first there was the matter of a certain, raw-fresh vacancy; there was the need to examine it, to know it – perhaps, in her heart, to allow it.
Lucy’s perch was the top porch step from which, chin in hand, she gravely studied the view across the street. Soon the sun would swing around, piercing the thin shade at her left side. Behind her, the floor fan roared a comforting blanket of noise, and ice cubes clanked together as her mother took a drink. But Lucy couldn’t think about lemonade just now – no, she had to focus on this thing that had happened. But her darting thoughts kept riveting back to the single change at that moment apparent in her view from the porch. At precisely the spot where Mr Weaver had always parked his car, she could see today only the many-layered oilstain droppings of his old DeSoto. The bleached blacktop shimmered in the heat, penetrating, intensifying the ache in her head. Mr Weaver’s car had been gone since early yesterday morning. Now, Lucy knew why.
Above the dash of freckles seasoning her cheeks and nose, Lucy’s eyes stilled. The Weavers were the only old people she had ever known, except for Grandad. They weren’t what you’d call sociable – kept to themselves mostly, in fact, but that she could understand, as they had no children to spark conversation between them and other adults on the block.
A short, round, fretful-looking woman, Mrs Weaver loaded supper trays at Memorial Hospital, out on McAfee Street. Her wiry, iron-grey hair, severely curled, she further subdued under a white hairnet. She worked three-to-eleven, on her feet the whole night, which made her ankles swell up horribly, further aggravating the arthritis in her hips so that she walked always with a painful, sidewinding limp. Behind her heavy, Slavic features, she kept to herself, rarely speaking to any of the neighbors, and seemed especially oblivious of the young. But, if it was Tuesday or Friday, and her kitchen door open; and if a playful breeze, happening by, had swooshed clear out to the curb the aroma of her baking, gathering a knot of hopeful, salivating children – then Nell Weaver would, sometimes, emerge, a plate of cookies in one hand, a bowl of muffins in the other; and muttering, “Don’t let this spoil your lunch,” she’d hold them out to eager hands and murmured thanks, her parchment cheeks abloom with sudden warmth and pleasure.
In mild months, whenever he was home her husband immersed himself in gardening. There was something oddly touching (and, to Lucy, reassuring) in the gentle attention this powerful-looking man with the demeanor of a bull could bestow on vegetable rows and flowerbeds. Though his face at those times was a wall of brooding, he did appear to welcome, as he worked, the company of his old boxer, Penny. Lucy was afraid of Penny’s baleful eye and belligerent stance, but had, nevertheless, a healthy respect for the dog’s devotion to her master.
Mr Weaver worked as a pipe-fitter in a foundry west of town. Lucy’s dad was a stock-cutter in the tire-building factory on the east side. Once in a while, taking a break from heaving the push-mower around, Lucy’s dad would amble across to exchange a few words with Mr Weaver (whom he addressed as Clark). They had a fair amount in common, what with irascible shift bosses and the perpetual threat of layoff, so that, “How’s it going down at the plant?” was the usual greeting between them. Unsmiling, but not unwillingly, the older man would struggle to his feet at his neighbor’s approach and, arms comfortably crossed, they’d chew the fat for a while: what a crop the weeds were this year; what Ike had had to say on the television last night; whether the Phillies’ new manager was likely to make the grade.
Lucy would put down her rake then, and trail her dad across the street. She’d hug his knees from behind, peering around his plaid shorts to squint up at the other man, and smile hello. He was at least as tall as her dad, though a generation older. The band of hair that remained to him, above the collar and over the ears, was of the creamy-blond color that suggested a youth spent enduring all the current epithets for ‘redhead’. She was allowed to call him by his first name, which, as a toddler, she had only been able to pronounce “Clahk”. This had brought a wrinkle of amusement to his pale eyes behind their gold-rimmed lenses, and “Clahk” he had remained, at least to her.
She was the only one of the kids that he took any notice of at all. At long intervals, she might be interrupted in a game of jacks on the sidewalk or idling the length of Barrow Lane on her hand-me-down bike by an invitation to come on over for a cookie or to fetch a tool her dad wanted to borrow. Then she would enter the dim coolness of the house across the street, struck by how different it felt from her own, despite their being mirror-images. With a brace of still-warm sandtarts in her hand she would slip down the short hallway and around the corner into the livingroom. There, presiding in absolute, awful domain over all it surveyed, hung the moosehead. Crumbs would fall from her open mouth as she stared up at it. The antlers swept to a breadth of near six feet; the broad, velvety nose loomed over her head, its silver-dollar-size nostrils, she fancied, moistly registering her presence, while, under their dusty lashes, the eyes maintained an imperious glare. It was a magnificent trophy, if a trifle bulky for that narrow parlor, and Lucy found it endlessly fascinating. Every time she came into the house, she’d ask Clahk, “But where’s the rest of him?” – to which, in his gruff, smoker’s voice, unaccustomed to humoring inquisitive children, he’d always reply, “I told you before, Lucy, it’s on the other side of the wall, on the cellar stairs. Don’t open that door, now, or he’ll kick you.”
Still – just once – she’d persisted, needing to know: “But how’d he get here?”
And Clahk, who’d been distractedly riffling the change in his pockets, fell still. He gazed at the child, his eyes stark and luminous behind the glasses. Across acres of time, aeons of distance, his voice came to her, impaled on the words, “This one was Roy’s.”
Lucy only stared, mesmerized by the change in his features, for he wore, momentarily, a look of ineffable tenderness. But then his whole face contorted, his mouth stretched in a grimace, and abruptly, doubled over, he turned his back to her, his spade-like hands splayed over his shame.
Lucy was distraught. How could she, a five-year-old who had somehow bungled, presume to comfort him? She managed to breathe, “I’m sorry, honest, I’m really sorry! I won’t ask you that no more, I promise.” Then, hearing the rhythmic rubbing of the Studebaker’s brakes outside, she broke away and ran to greet her dad.
That night at supper, Lucy had asked who Roy was. A look passed between her parents, and her mother said, “Roy who?”
“Clahk’s Roy.” Lucy deftly popped a lima bean with her fork. “He said the moose was Roy’s.”
“The moose – ?”
But her dad interrupted. “Roy was the Weavers’ son, Lucy.”
None of the kids had known or could imagine there ever having been a child living in that house. To their torrent of questions their father would reply only that the son had been killed in a hunting accident up in Potter County some years before. No how or why would he disclose, nor any details about the boy himself. He was certain, however, that Clark had given up hunting.
“I bet he had a whole big rack of rifles with high-powered sights and all kinds of gadgets!” Lucy’s twelve-year-old brother enthused.
Their father frowned. “I have no idea,” he admitted, “but I’m sure that by now he’s gotten rid of all he ever had of that stuff.”
As she dawdled over her liver and mashed potatoes, Lucy saw it all…Clahk as a dad, fondly clapping on the shoulder a boy with crewcut hair that glinted red in the sun; taking him down to the field beyond the high school to show him how to use this birthday present that was almost as long as he was tall; packing up Uncle Frankie’s pickup for a weekend in the mountains, their first hunting trip together. Transported, Lucy watched scene after scene unreel before her: roasting small game over the campfire for supper; afterwards, maybe whittling, listening to the night sounds, and talking; sleeping on the ground, the sky stunningly broad and deep, and alive with stars. Long before dawn, the swift assembling of their gear, a hasty breakfast, then setting out on the trail together, excited, and intent on bagging something too big to carry.
Now, though the sun was at last full upon her on this stifling afternoon, Lucy, four years the wiser, shivered, remembering her fantasy. Accidents – accidents and their aftermath: the Weavers seemed to have had more than their share. There was the time they were putting up grape jelly and the pressure-cooker exploded, showering them both with sticky, bubbling syrup and second-degree burns. And once, when Clahk was sawing off a low-hanging limb of the majestic, umbrella-shaped maple out front, the saw had stuck and then suddenly jerked free, gashing to the bone the thumb of his flailing left hand.
But what was really peculiar about them, Lucy recollected, was that always, in a thunderstorm, they’d park themselves on metal lawnchairs on their porch and just sit, as if by such vigilance they could deflect from their little brick house the ravening attentions of the storm. At any time of night, in any season, in atmospheric blitzkrieg they’d be there – as it seemed – waiting: stoical, silent, two isolated figures that clicked visible, a slideshow in negative, at every lightning flash.
Still…still…there had been no warning of this – but what was it her mother had been startled by, a couple of days ago? A skirmish of angry voices across the street, a slammed door, a gunned engine; and, finally, a distorted, anguished sound that had spiraled above the stricken house and hung there, like a smoke signal, fading. Then, that evening, scanning the Classifieds, Lucy’s mother had noticed an “In Memoriam” for Roy Stanley Weaver on the anniversary of his birth, signed, “Your Mother, Who Still Grieves”.
Bees on their lilac commutings dive-bombed Lucy’s bright head, but she scarcely noticed. It would be almost twenty years now since the accident that had taken Roy’s life. Lucy, seasoned ruminator that she was, wandered over and around the plausibility of a link between that mishap and the events of yesterday. Though she had never seen a photograph of Roy, she carried in her head an image of him as a scaled-down, golden replica of Clahk. Now, because of yesterday, she found it necessary to pursue a possible connection, to conjure and mentally furnish a connection, for the simple reason that an explanation was required.
Of course – she took up the fantasy, sliding back through time – Roy and his dad become hunting buddies. Over the course of several seasons, following that first weekend in the mountains, there are other hunting excursions, the best of which is the week in Canada, when Roy bags his moose. And then, midway through one wan November afternoon in Potter County, when they’ve been at it for going on twelve hours, both of them weary to the point of staggering, Clahk takes a sighting on an elusive buck he’s been trailing. Roy’s about fifteen feet ahead, diagonally to his left. As Clahk draws breath and holds it for the shot, a blade of pain rips across his back, jerking his whole body sideways. The rifle goes off and, inexplicably, Roy leaps into the air. But it’s not excitement that propels him, for his chest has exploded a crimson curtain that rings down on his life. He takes no bows, says no farewells; he is simply, suddenly, dead. And the bellowing scream that issues from the throat of his father echoes down the mountain, colliding with the echoes of the rifle blast.
Yesterday, now. It was in this morning’s paper, but the neighborhood had known by yesterday noon that something was up. Instead of Clahk arriving home from work, it had been a police car that pulled up. There was absolutely no noise or flurry of any kind, but numbers of people came and went all afternoon long in solemn succession – men in suits, men in uniform, a couple of women in crisp green shifts and white hairnets.
Lucy covered her eyes, seeing behind them the unremarkable, totally ordinary day that would have begun with Clahk taking out the garbage, pausing, perhaps, to taste the sweet, dewy air. He might have leaned against the high, chrome-edged fin of the DeSoto to fish in his pockets for his keys. He’d have closed the car door quietly, mindful of the neighbors, of their alabaster children, sleeping, still as death now, all restlessness and night terror thrashed away; cracked the window, turned the key, savoring the big motor’s throaty purr; and then glided around the corner and up the hill toward McAfee Street, just as on any morning in the world.
Only – Lucy caught her breath at the conscious thought – this wasn’t any morning in the world. This was the morning of Clark Weaver’s Leaving-the-World Day, and nobody had known it but him. For instead of going to work, he had driven on past the plant, a couple of miles up the pike to the bowling alley. And there, without hesitating – it would have been like this – he’d whipped around back, pulled up to the long brick wall, slammed into ‘park’ the car he had ceased to love, reached under the seat, pulled out the sawed-off shotgun, cocked it at his chest, and fired. And his body would have leaped, and the crimson curtain come down.
Now, never again would the DeSoto cruise elegantly to a stop across the street from Lucy’s house. But never mind that, never mind – there had to be a charred and ragged hole in the driver’s seat now, anyway, and thick, sticky-brown stains all over. Better not to see it again.
Had he held his breath – his last breath – to pull the trigger? Had his mind been clear, his hands steady? This was, after all, the moment of truth for the quarry he’d been stalking these twenty years. If only some ripping twinge, some overpowering muscle spasm, had seized him, had deflected that deadly aim! Only the windows, then, would have shattered.
She heard her mother in the kitchen close her book and sigh. The new linoleum squeaked as she went to rinse her glass and then recrossed the kitchen to stand at the door.
“Want a drink, Lucy?”
“Not just yet, Mom, thanks.”
“You’ve been sitting there a long time.”
“I know, I just need to think.”
“About Clark?”
“Yeah, I can’t stop thinking about it.” She turned to squint up at her mother, shadowy behind the screen. “I can’t believe anybody could do that, you know?”
Her mother was thinking too. “Why do you figure he did?” Lucy pressed her.
Again, her mother sighed. “I guess we’ll never know for sure. A man can walk around for years in mortal pain and never talk about it, never have it show. But it eats away at him from the inside out, ’til there’s nothing left of his life but a husk of skin and bone.” Lucy shuddered, remembering the moose in the living room, hide-sheathed remnant of the towering creature it once had been.
Lucy’s mother went on – really, by this time, talking to herself: “At that point, I suppose, all fear of dying is replaced by the desire for death. Despite its finality – or maybe because of it – a man can welcome it, that it releases him from something he can no longer endure.”
“Mom, did Clahk shoot Roy?”
Tucking a lock of hair behind her ear, her mother studied, for a moment, Lucy’s upturned face, washed pale in the fierce sunlight. Softly, thoughtfully, she replied, “They say it was just the two of them, that day. I suppose it’s possible it could have been a stray shot from some other hunter’s gun that killed him – a stranger’s gun. I don’t know. Neither Clark nor Nell has ever spoken about it.”
“Do you think Clahk has gone to hell, Mom?”
“No, Lucy. What I think is, that Clark has finally found a way out of hell.”
Lucy regarded once again the shiny oilstains on the street. A crescendo of shouts – a box-hockey climax – reached their ears, and she heard her mother gently prod, “So, are you going down to the playground at all, or are you just going to sit there all day?”
Lucy smiled a little at her mother’s words, and said, “In a minute, Mom. Really, I will.”
Her mother, satisfied, withdrew then. The baby had set up a wailing, and it was soon time to start supper. Lucy sat for just a while longer, slowly, in her way, growing older.
Rebecca Henry Lowndes is a retired real estate admin, wife of Chris, mother of Nathaniel and Zachary. Her poetry collection, "Years and Other Leavings", was published in 2018. She is currently at work on editing fifty-five years of journaling into a single volume for future publication.