The Angel on the Roof Page 9

  The winter continued to bear down, quite as if Merle had not won the lottery. There were snowstorms and cruel northeast winds out of Nova Scotia and days and nights, whole weeks, of subzero temperatures. Merle’s money, the five hundred one-hundred-dollar bills delivered by Leon LaRoche, remained untouched in Merle’s cigar box under the bunk in the bob-house. The brand-new bills, banded into thousand-dollar packets, filled the cigar box exactly, and the box, with an elastic band around it, sat in the darkness of the bob-house and the well-lit minds of everyone who lived in the trailerpark. Everyone carried the image of that box around in his or her head all day and night. Some even dreamed about it. Leon LaRoche told Captain Knox that when he delivered the money, the old man in stony silence, as if angry at being interrupted, took the money from the bank pouch, and, without counting it, stacked it neatly into the cigar box and tossed, literally tossed, the box under his bunk. The Captain, as if disgusted, told Marcelle Chagnon, who, worriedly, told Doreen Tiede, who told Claudel Bing that night after making mild, dispassionate love, and Claudel, stirred to anger, told Carol Constant the next morning when, on her way to work, she gave him a lift into town because he hadn’t got out of bed in time to go in with Doreen and her daughter. That evening, Carol told her brother, Terry, because she thought Merle would listen to Terry, but Terry knew better. “That man listens to no one,” he said to Bruce after telling him about the cigar box that contained $50,000, and Bruce, full of wonder and admiration, agreed with Terry and tried to explain the pure wisdom of the act to Noni Hubner, but she didn’t quite understand how it could be wise, so she asked her mother, Nancy, who thought it was senile, not wise.

  In that way, within twenty-four hours of Leon’s having delivered the money to the bob-house, everyone in the trailerpark shared an obsession with the image of the cigar box full of hundred-dollar bills. They could think of little else. Merle’s earlier winnings had not achieved anything like this status, but their experience with that considerably lesser amount had gone a long way toward determining how they looked at this new money. The October lottery had dropped $4,500 into Merle’s lap, and the residents of the trailerpark each went to him and asked for some of it and directly received what he or she asked for. This new amount, however, was so incomprehensibly large that no one could apply it to his or her individual needs. Consequently, they applied it to what they saw as the needs of the community as a whole. It was not Merle who had won the $50,000; the trailerpark had won it. Merle had merely represented them in that magical cosmos where anything, absolutely anything, can happen. Of course, it’s probably true that if, on the other hand, what happened to Merle through no effort on his part had been as colossally, abstractly bad as the $50,000 was good, the residents of the trailerpark would not feel that it had happened to the community as a whole. If, for example, Merle were shot in the head by an errant bullet from the gun of a careless deer hunter out of sight in the tamaracks on the far side of the lake, the people in the park would blame Merle for having been out there wandering around on the ice during hunting season in the first place. They would mourn for him, naturally, but his death would be seen forever after as a warning, an admonition. Anyone can be a cause of his or her own destruction, but no one can claim individual responsibility for having created a great good. At least, that’s how the people in the trailerpark felt. Which is why they believed that Merle’s winnings belonged, not to Merle alone, but to the community of which he was a part. And, of course, there was their earlier experience with the $4,500. That sort of proved the rightness of their feeling, gave them something like a logic.

  The days went by, and Merle showed no sign of recognizing that something extraordinary had occurred in his life and the lives of everyone else at the park, as well. Every morning they peered out their windows and saw again the red bob-house in the distance, a horizontal strip of smoke trailing from the stovepipe chimney if the wind was blowing, a vertical stick of smoke if the wind had let up. In the afternoon, as it grew dark, they looked toward the lake again and saw that nothing had changed. Because Merle refused to act any differently than he had in the weeks before he won the lottery, no one else could act any differently, either, and it almost came to seem that they had imagined it, which is one reason why they were eager, whenever possible, to talk about the money with one another. It was true, wasn’t it? I didn’t just dream that Merle Ring won the lottery, did I? And then, as time passed, with the continuous discussions having satisfactorily proved that Merle did in fact win the Grand Prize Drawing, they began to take and present to one another their respective positions on what Merle ought to do with the money he had won.

  “The man’s obviously incapable of behaving responsibly toward money,” Captain Knox explained to Leon LaRoche. “Money demands to be taken care of in a responsible manner. You can’t treat it like some sort of waif, you have to take care of it,” he said.

  Leon agreed. Wholeheartedly. They were sitting in the living room of the Captain’s trailer, Leon on the sofa, the Captain slumped back into his red leather easy chair. Behind him on the wall hung a map of the world. In the center of each of a large number of countries, mostly central European and southeast Asian countries, the Captain had pinned a small red flag with the Communist hammer and sickle on it. Earlier in the evening, having delivered to Leon a lengthy oration on the subject of the insidious workings of what he called Castroism in the very corridors of the United States State Department, he had ceremoniously pinned a red flag to Panama. That led him to a discussion of the responsibilities that go with power, which in turn had led him naturally to a discussion of the responsibilities that go with wealth, and that was how they had come around to talking about Merle again.

  And now that people were taking positions on what should be done—with Merle, with the money, or, in certain cases, with Merle and the money—they had begun quarreling with one another. For while the Captain and Leon, for example, believed that one had a moral obligation to take care of money in a responsible manner, they were not in anything like clear agreement as to what, in the case of Merle’s lottery winnings, constituted a responsible manner. Nor did either of them agree with what Carol or Marcelle or Claudel or anyone else thought ought to be done with Merle and the $50,000 that, through no particular effort or even intent of his own, he had so recently come to possess. And since everyone had a stake in what was done with the money, the feelings ran pretty high, and it didn’t take long for the residents of the trailerpark to think that everyone else in the trailerpark was stupid or greedy, or stupid and greedy, while he himself, or she herself, was neither. Here, then, are the ways the people in the park thought the situation should be handled.

  DOREEN TIEDE: There are some of us here who have children to support, who work for a living, who don’t get any help from ex-husbands or dead husbands or big government pensions. I think we know who we’re talking about. There are some of us here who won’t take welfare, who don’t have fancy jobs in fancy doctors’ offices, who don’t stay home and collect other people’s rent while other people are out working their asses off at the tannery. There are some of us who would like a normal American life. And who deserve it, too. I think we know who we are.

  TERRY CONSTANT: We could form a corporation and buy out the trailerpark, develop the beach, fill in the swamp, and put up a restaurant and bar. We have to think for ourselves and take over control of our destinies. Enough of this business of making somebody else rich while we get poorer for it. Make a summer resort out of this place. Swimming, fishing, water skiing. Or maybe a summer camp for city kids. Nature walks, arts and crafts, sports. Put up cabins for the kids, while the rest of us live in the trailers. I’d get number 9, where that guy who shot himself lived with his kid. We could run the place in winter as a lodge for snowmobilers. Maybe, if you promoted it right, ice fishing would catch on. The point is, we’d all be working together for the common good. You don’t just spend the money, you use the money, because it doesn’t matter how hard you work, it takes mone
y to make money. Not work. Not time. Money. Leon could be treasurer, old Captain Knox could be chairman of the board. I could be the executive director. We’d make Merle president of the corporation or something honorary like that. I’d get a good salary. Marcelle could run the restaurant. Carol the infirmary.

  BRUCE SEVERANCE: When you’ve got money, unless you’re stupid, the first thing you do is eliminate the middleman. That way you control the entire operation, like Henry Ford did. What do you think pissed off the Arabs? All those American oil companies, man, they controlled the entire operation. I got connections in Jamaica like Shell had in Saudi Arabia, man. You could bring a plane in here in winter and land it on the lake. Simple. Easy Street. How the hell do you think the Kennedy family got started? Running booze from Canada during Prohibition, man. It’s not like we’re Mafia or something. I mean, everybody smokes grass!

  NONI HUBNER: It’s important to be fair. That’s what I believe in. Fairness. Right?

  LEON LAROCHE: In an interest-paying savings account at the Catamount Trust, Merle’s money will earn enough for him to live without financial anxiety for the rest of his natural life. The stock market goes up and down, government and municipal bonds, though they offer a distinct tax advantage, are a young man’s game, and there’s no need to speculate on the risky commodities market. After all, Merle only wants to live in a modest way, free of worry or risk, that’s obvious and natural, and with his social security, plus interest on his lottery winnings, he certainly ought to be able to do so. What kind of selfishness would prompt a person to deny him that opportunity? The bank would be happy to take care of Merle’s funds for him. He’d be our single largest depositor, and I myself would handle his account for him. I’d probably become an officer of the bank, maybe eventually a vice president. It’s not every teller can bring in a fifty-thousand-dollar savings account. The publicity would be good for the bank, too. We could have a picture-taking session, Merle signing the deposit slip, me taking the cigar box out of his hands. We’d need an extra guard. I don’t care what the Captain says, I know money.

  CAROL CONSTANT: With that much money, he could do something useful for a change. He could help others. The whole thing makes me sick. He sits out there on top of fifty thousand dollars, while back here people are struggling to survive. If he doesn’t want the damn money, let him give it to the town, so it can help the poor, for Christ’s sake. I see people from this town every day so poor and sick they die before they’re supposed to, people whose houses burn down, people who’ve been out of work for years. I see kids with nutritional diseases, birth defects, kids who need glasses to read but can’t afford them so they do lousy at school. While that old man, that senile jerk, sits out there fishing through a hole in the ice. It makes me sick. I’m sure he’s senile. Those are always the ones who end up with money to burn, the ones who are too feeble-minded to know what to do with it. He doesn’t even know how to use it for himself. I wouldn’t mind so much if he just took off for Florida and spent it on some old lady and a condominium on the Gulf. I hope someone steals it off him. I just hope it’s not Terry. Though, God knows, Terry could make better use of it than that old man is. Terry might at least pay me back a little of what I’ve spent taking care of him these last few years.

  CLAUDEL BING: You hear all the time about an old geezer dying and they find a million bucks or something stashed under his mattress. All those years the sonofabitch has been cashing welfare checks and living like a fucking rat in a hole, and meanwhile he’s sitting on top of a fucking million bucks or something. Then the government goes and takes it all for taxes or something. I think we oughta just go on out there, get the bastard drunk, and take that goddamn cigar box off his hands. He’d never know the difference anyway. Sonof-abitch. If I do it, no one’s gonna know about it. I’ll be long gone from here. California. No reason why his dumb luck can’t be my good luck. Nothing wrong with that. I earned it, for Christ’s sake.

  BUDDY SMITH: You probably remember the tragic death of my father by his own hand. He was very fond of you, Mr. Ring, and often spoke highly of you to me, telling me himself what a kind and generous man you are. I will soon be returning to N.H. on business of a personal nature and was thinking of dropping by the trailerpark, where I have so many fond but also sad memories of my childhood. I thought, if you had the room, because my father was so very fond of you, I could perhaps visit with you a few days and we could talk about the old times. I’m a young man, alone in the cold world now, and without the kind of wise counsel that an older man like yourself can provide…

  NANCY HUBNER: The man is obviously depressed. You people amaze me. He’s depressed. It happens often to elderly people who live alone and don’t feel needed anymore. We simply have to take better care of our senior citizens. The man needs company, he needs to feel wanted, and especially he needs to feel needed. We ought to make up an excuse to have a party, a Valentine’s Day party, say, and march out there and say to him, “Merle, if you won’t come to our party, then we’ll bring the party to you!” We’ll all have a lovely time. We’ve got to bring him back into our circle, a man like that should not be allowed to be alone in life. The money has nothing to do with it. Really, nothing.

  DEWEY KNOX: The man’s obviously incapable of taking care of himself, so it shouldn’t be difficult to have him declared incompetent to handle his own affairs. The money can then go into a blind trust, which clever and aggressive management ought to be able to double in a matter of a few years. Imagine, if you’d bought gold five years ago, as I did, when it was going for $112 an ounce, you’d now have nice little nest egg. I myself, if pressed to it, would certainly be willing to put together a management team to handle the trust. Other than asking for a nominal fee for services provided, the capital accrued would, of course, go directly into the trust and ultimately to Merle Ring’s heirs. It could be arranged so that Merle himself received a modest monthly stipend. People like Merle need looking after. Not vice versa, the way some of you would have it.

  MARCELLE CHAGNON: Am I crazy, or is everybody trying to figure out how to get Merle’s money for themselves? It’s his money, and I don’t care what in hell he does with it. He can wipe his butt with it, for all I care, if you’ll excuse my English. So what if he’s got lots of money he don’t need and you don’t have enough. So what else is new? That’s life. Do I expect my sons, all grown up and making good money, to send me money just because they got lots of it now and I don’t have enough? No, I do not. That’s life, is all I got to say. All I care now is that Merle does something with that money, spends or gives it away or loses it, something, anything, just so life can return to normal around here. I wish to hell he’d never got it in the first place. Thinking about it, all this talk and argument about it, gives me a goddamned headache. I hate thinking about money, and here I’ve been doing it all my life. I get the same damned headache every time one of my sons writes and tells me he just bought a new dishwasher for his wife or a big screen TV or just got back from Bermuda or someplace. What do I care what he just bought or where the hell he went on vacation? What the hell do I care about money? There’s lots more important things in life than money. I just want to forget it exists.

  It’s hard to know more about a person’s life than what that person wants you to know, and few people know even that much. Beyond what you can see and are told (both of which are controlled pretty easily by the person seen and told about), what you come to believe is true of who a person is, was, and will be, comes straight from your imaginings. For instance, you know that a man like Merle Ring had a mother and a father, probably brothers and sisters, too, and that for most of his life he was a working man and that he was married and had children. He has said as much himself, and besides, these things are true of almost any man you might choose to read about or speak of. That he was married numerous times (you might imagine four or five or even more, but “numerous” was all he ever said) and fathered numerous children explains only why in his old age he was as alone in the wi
de world as a man who had never married at all and had fathered no one. Whether he meant to, Merle had avoided the middle ground and in that way had located himself alone in the center of his life, sharing it with no one. In fact, you could say the same of everyone at the trailerpark. It’s true of trailerparks that the people who live there are generally alone at the center of their lives. They are widows and widowers, divorcées and bachelors and retired Army officers, a black man in a white society, a black woman there, too, a drug dealer, a solitary child of a broken home, a drunk, a homosexual in a heterosexual society—all of them, man and woman, adult and child, basically alone in the world. When you share the center of your life with someone else, you create a third person who is neither you nor the person you have cleaved to. No such third person resided at the Granite State Trailerpark.

  In any event, though you knew all these things about Merle’s inner and outer lives, you could know little more about them than that, unless he himself were to provide you with more information than he had already provided, more actions and reactions, more words. And, unfortunately, as the winter wore on, he seemed less and less inclined to say or do anything new. People’s imaginings, therefore, as to who he really was, came to dominate their impressions of him.

  This, of course, was especially true after he won the money. By then most of the people at the park were frightened of him. The money gave him power, and the longer he neither acted on nor reacted to the presence of that money, the greater grew his power. For the most part, though they argued among themselves as to how Merle should exercise his immense power, no one dared approach him on the subject. They spoke of it, naturally, and made plans and commitments to send one or another of the group or several in a delegation out onto the plain of ice to ask Merle what he was going to do with the money, but by morning the plans and commitments got broken, ignored, or forgotten altogether—until the next time a group of them got to bickering, accusing one another of selfishness and greed and downright stupidity, when a new agreement would be made as to who should make the trip. The trouble was, they no longer trusted anyone or any group from among their number to return with accurate information as to Merle’s behavior, and for that reason they could not be relieved of their imaginings. Finally someone, possibly Marcelle Chagnon and probably as a bitter joke, suggested they send a child, the only true child who lived at the trailerpark, Doreen Tiede’s five-year-old daughter, Maureen.