Voices de la Luna

Bernie at the Atlas
Dave Northrup

Bernie Andrulis slowly pushed his way through the noontime throng outside the Adirondack Busline’s waiting room. Out of habit his eyes searched the passersby for details that might be memorable. It could be anything—a furrowed brow, the tense set of jaw or lips, a stumbling, uncertain gait that would speak of an inner life he’d not yet been able to imagine. But today the crowd seemed made up of those whose closed faces and determined steps suggested that the bus station was only a wearisome obstacle to be endured on the way to somewhere else. As he passed Slezak’s tenement, the crowd thinned a bit, and Bernie’s attention became more focused. He stopped, looking up at the front of the apartment building. The windows on all five floors were curtained against the bright sun. Next door the rank growth of weeds in the empty lot bordering St. Casimer’s Church provided a luxuriant green contrast to the burnt rust color of Slezak’s block. Bernie noted the profusion of yellow dandelions standing tall and brilliant above the darker greens of crab grass and young burdock. There was no doubt now that the earth had awakened to the touch of the June sun. The vegetation, fecund and grasping, had run riot over the grey rubble of winter.
     Bernie quickened his step, passing the darkly tinted glass front of the Sargalis Funeral Chapel. Ahead, the rest of the street was deserted, quiet in the still air. At the corner of East Main and Schuyler sat the Atlas Hotel and Tavern, and Bernie turned and strode through the open door. The place looked as though it had just been deserted by its revelers. Stools and tables were scattered about the room, empty schooners littered the bar, and the red globe lights on either side of the mirrored wall behind the tiers of bottles flickered weakly in the midday brightness. A lone patron at the far end of the bar sat hunched forward. At Bernie’s approach the slight figure turned slowly around, revealing the narrow, almost chinless face of Colley McIntyre. Bernie watched as the young man’s eyes went wide in recognition, his mouth opening in a sudden oval as though he were gasping for air, and then resolved itself into a lopsided smile.
     "Hey, Bernie, how th’ hell are yeh?" Colley’s eyes gleamed with the excited camaraderie of booze.
     Bernie snorted in reply, lifting his gaze to the grimy tin ceiling. Colley sensed the air of a man who had just seen something dirty and wearily predictable, like maybe a small pile of dog shit in the street that had to be stepped around, but he forged ahead breathlessly.
     "Hey, old man Rakstis ain’t so good today, so I came in to lend a hand." His eyes moved away from Bernie, taking in the room. "I’m just lendin’ a hand to tidy up a bit, get ready for later. Yeh know, Saturday night’s always a big night."
     Bernie lowered his gaze from the patterns of fruits and leaves embossed across the ceiling and held Colley with his eyes.
     "Takin yer pay in booze before th’ work’s done, uh?"
     The unblinking eyes set above the high cheekbones and beaklike nose took Colley’s measure, and Colley felt that he was being held in the gaze of some sort of predator.
     "Aw, what th’ hell, I’m just havin’ a nip. Yuh want one? Yuh can always have a nip, can’t yuh? Take th’edge off th’ afternoon."
Colley shook his head slightly from side to side and seemed to be studying the motes of dust dancing in the beams of bright light that slanted through the large windows facing East Main.
     "Damn kids get tuh me by th’ end of th’ week. So’s I need a little diversion come th’ weekend. So what, who th’ hell’s it hurt?" he shrugged, not wanting to challenge Bernie.
     "Who th’ hell says it hurts anybody? Yuh need booze, yuh need booze, that’s all." Bernie tossed back.
     Colley sat silent in reply. His eyes sought the floor. Bernie watched as Colley’s gaze appeared to turn inward, making him the captive of a memory farther back than just last week’s encounters with his indifferent charges at the local high school.
     Bernie turned away and started toward the hotel desk at the back of the barroom. He looked over to see his reflection gliding across the bar mirror’s wavy surface. The mottled pinks and whites of his face and the amber of his beard faded as the image passed through a large grey blotch where the silver had dropped away from the back of the glass. For an instant he wondered where he was or even if he was at all. The image of a dying deer he’d seen on the railroad tracks suddenly forced its way into his memory. The animal hadn’t cleared the rails fast enough and a passing express had clipped its back. He saw the deer’s eyes widen with the darkness of approaching death, its red mouth gaping, the head tossing as it lay across the ballast at the trackside. He thought of Colley. You get too close to things you can’t control and they’ll do you no good at all. Forever.
     Old Jack Rakstis, the day manager, was asleep in the shadows behind the reception desk near the stairs. He sat with his head thrown far back in the chair, the yellow skin of his skull-face drawn tight over the bone, and the dark gape of mouth outlined by thin blue lips. A harsh, wet gurgle rose from his throat, and Bernie knew again where he was and what that sound meant. Everyday when the old man fell asleep behind the counter, the Atlas was treated to the same swan song, the only gift Rakstis had gotten from forty years spent in the Bigelow-Sanford dye house. Another example of embracing something you couldn’t control, thought Bernie. He made his way up the creaking stairs to the second floor landing of the only place that he could now call home.
     Bernie forced himself toward the faint halo of light outlining the door to his rooms. Over the years, the thin wood had warped away from the jamb. He fished the key from the pocket of his overalls and grasped the dented knob. There was a faint click and the door swung inward of its own accord.
     The room was awash in a blaze of light streaming through the large curtainless window in the far wall. Bernie struggled out of his overalls and threw them on the crumpled mass of grey sheets piled at the foot of the narrow bed. He turned to avoid the merciless glare, his gaze passing quickly over the kitchen alcove where pots, dishes, and glassware lay scattered about the sink and stove top. Farther over, beyond the small wooden icebox, the door to his tiny windowless bathroom stood ajar. That private bath made his room the most expensive one the Atlas offered. He’d be damned if he’d share a craphouse with the rummies and worn-out whores, who regularly called the Atlas home. Well, it was his home now too, and he’d goddamned make the best of it, even though the light in the place was all wrong, too intense because it came from the south and west.
     Bernie closed the door and faced the wall opposite the window. The tall-legged clerk’s desk, a small easel fastened to its top, was tucked into a corner. Next to the desk, a stand held open cigar boxes filled with pieces of charcoal and pastel spread over a layer of rice. Among the boxes were scattered tubes of artist’s paint and brushes. Bernie’s gaze rose to the wall. Tacked to the dark green plaster was a colored photo of Goya’s The Naked Maja, neatly scissored from a book. Around the photo were red chalk drawings of nudes, seated and standing, their faces and bodies modeled in such striking detail of highlight and shadow that the flesh of each figure suggested the personality of an individual man or woman. Beyond the nudes were tacked a few smaller landscapes of the Mohawk Valley; greens and golds so heavily rendered the colors seemed to pulse in the bright light. Bernie squinted and the wall appeared bejeweled. He looked again at each of the figure studies and waited. Slowly, the fear and anger left him. He grew calm in the certainty that in those drawings he could see others as they really were, in the cast of their eyes, the set of their mouths, the way they walked, or sat in repose. When he transferred faces and bodies to paper he knew he bore witness to the grand dreams and narrow terrors that haunted the lives of others. They were the only true things, hard and fast and true forever.
      Bernie turned and gazed out of the small window above the kitchen sink. Across the lot next to St. Casimer’s, he could see where Forbes Street curved down towards East Main, and his eyes were drawn to a white house in the middle of the block. He could make out the delicately cut, wooden gingerbread and ornately fluted railings of the porches that wrapped around the front of the place. Even at this distance he could see the expanses of grey wood exposed by peeling paint. The windows on the second floor were uncurtained, black rectangles cut into the clapboard, and Bernie, as he raised his hands to wipe the grime of the morning’s labor from around his eyes, looked again into one of the bedrooms shadowed in the late winter dawn.
     He heard the rush of sleet pattering against the window above his head, and breathed again the musky scent of the woman whose warm flesh had clung soft against him. Her dark eyes had opened slowly to watch his face while her arms circled his neck. Her legs slick and moist as the bodies of eels might be, had sought to twine themselves about him. He labored to draw breath in the warm, cloying air, had turned away from her grasp, and lain still upon his back.
      "He’ll be gettin’ up soon," he’d offered by way of apology.
      "Jesus Christ, lover, we made enough noise most a’th’ night; he probably ain’t had any time ta’ sleep anyway. C’mon, baby, just one more for Valentine’s Day." She’d laughed softly, her voice rich with anticipation and promise.
     Bernie had rolled from under the heavy quilt and sat up, hunched at the edge of the bed. After a moment he’d felt the mattress shift as it gave up the burden of his partner’s weight. He’d turned to watch her as she’d switched on the ceiling bulb and stood at the dresser mirror, her back to him. Slowly, she’d begun combing out the matted kinks of her long black hair. She’d finished, turned to stare at him, cocking her head to one side, spreading her arms away from her body, shifting one leg slightly forward holding her pose a moment.
     "How about some more of this?" she’d murmured smiling.

     "He went quick." Bernie recalled Jack Rakstis’ throaty rasp over the phone line on that other Saturday morning a month after he’d been thrown out of the house. "Yeah, he went quick. Just fell on the sidewalk outside the waiting room. Don’t know if he was gonna take a bus or what the hell he was doin’ down there. They said he was dead when he hit th’ ground."
     There were few mourners at Sargalis’. His sisters, a couple of the old man’s cronies from the American Lithuanian Club, and Father Dichavicius from St. Casimer’s. Millie hadn’t come. He’d not seen her since that February morning, although once the weather had turned warm, he’d looked for her every time he’d passed Slezak’s block on his way back to the Atlas from work.
     Bernie stood still letting the warm air dry his skin. There were no sounds from the street or from any of the other rooms in the Atlas. After a while, he stepped beyond the door of the bath into the larger room where the weight of the silence and the light bore down unremittingly upon him. His eyes sought the wall that held his drawings. In the painful glare they seemed just formless blobs of color. Bernie took a quick step forward and tried to look out of the small kitchen window, but the angle of the sun across the dirty glass made it impossible to see his father’s house. He stood still, his mind racing with thoughts of Millie and the old man—as the one had cast him away, so too, had he cast away the other. The bright air began to suffocate him, and when he tried to draw a breath the taste of abandonment lay bitter in his mouth. He must leave the Atlas, make his way over to Slezak’s. Downstairs he would no doubt pass the sleeping Rakstis and Colley, who by now would surely be comatose on the bar. Bernie dressed quickly, and descended the stairs.
     The reception desk was deserted. Bernie made his way to the barroom where the air was cool. The front door had been closed, and the air conditioner in the transom above gave off a low hum. Tables had been spaced in even rows, and with a quick step Jack Rakstis was pushing chairs across the newly mopped floor. Bernie noticed that his face had lost its yellow pallor. Jack’s cheeks were flushed a bright pink. Indifferent to Bernie’s presence, he did not look up as the gandy dancer passed. Over at the bar, Colley was busy with a soapy rag. He too was silent, and as Bernie stared at him, Colley looked up with steady eyes. Then he went back to scrubbing down the bar. Out in the street, Bernie raised a hand to shade his brow. The dazzling sunlight made it painful for him to look toward the west where Slezak’s block lay waiting, and with uncertain step, Bernie walked ahead into a world he could no longer imagine.