Spondulix: A Romance of Hoboken Read online

  And of course Roz came.

  Rocinante Parker, aged fifteen, stood shoulder-high to Rudy. Rudy thought she looked like a movie star. Her bounteous flaming hair now reached midway down her back. Her figure showed improvements in all the right areas. Her green eyes glowed hot as vacuum tubes with jade filaments in some celestial Atwater-Kent. Rudy had accumulated much secondhand information about her interests. She belonged to the chess club at school, hated Bing Crosby, earned pin money by babysitting and tailoring, and dreamed of some day buying an Indian-brand motorcycle.

  He wasn’t sure what she knew about him. The Sphinx faced stiff competition from Roz in the enigma business.

  For most of the evening Rudy steered well clear of Roz, as if she were a razor-edged reef and he a flimsy canoe. He accepted the good wishes and compliments of his friends with an air of amiable half-wittedness, ate and drank things he did not taste. At last he could stand the lack of contact no longer. He approached Roz with what he deemed a safe compliment poised on his lips.

  “I like your hair.”

  “I haven’t done a thing different to it since I was six.”

  Rudy’s jaw dropped.

  “Pull that up before a bird decides to nest there.”

  Face burning, Rudy turned and walked away. They spoke no more that night.

  The next day saw Rudy boarding a train out of Waterloo, the Rock Island Line, heading for boot camp. Many people had come to see him off. Leaning out the Pullman window, clutching at farewell handclasps, he spotted Roz hanging well back in the crowd.

  Overnight she had rudely cut her hair short as a man’s.

  This insolent willful savagery failed to diminish her attractiveness one whit. Rudy waved tentatively to her as the train began to pull away.

  Although not utterly certain, Rudy had a feeling she chose to reply by sticking her tongue out at him.

  All the way to Davenport Rudy stared at the ceiling of the car, ignoring the roughhousing and jive of his new comrades. Why did Roz hate him so? Perhaps she felt his occupation had no dignity. Beekeeping did seem at times a silly, even ridiculous way to earn a living. A grown man playing with tiny insects! Yet what choice had he enjoyed up till now? The economy was only just recovering. Maybe after the war his options would loom larger.…

  At home that spring and summer Horst Honeyman (the name change had been duly registered at the courthouse) tended his hives alone. He missed his only son, but tried not to let his feelings show. He knew blatant grief would disturb the bees. Hoodless and veil-less (he had never yet been stung), carrying his smoker, hive tool (a blunt steel blade used for separating frames) and uncapping knife (to open honey-containing combs), he made his familiar rounds. In the barn, only a small portion of which was given over to Axel, Honeyman centrifuged and strained, heated the liquid gold to kill yeasts, bottled the honey and boxed the bottles. Each of Honeyman’s hives produced upwards of one hundred pounds a year. A lot of work in such a harvest. Deliveries took time too. And then there were the orchard owners who paid Honeyman to bring his hives to their fruit trees for pollination. What with fighting bee lice, waxmoths, mice and termites, the unaided Honeyman experienced a swift passage of the months following Rudy’s departure.

  Private First Class Rudy eventually returned for a brief visit. In his uniform, Freyda averred, he looked handsome as Gable. She fed him crabapple pie, a family tradition since its first serving upon their arrival here. Over a glass of piestengel Rudy announced that he had received orders for the European front. Surprisingly this news did not squeeze tears from Freyda. Instead, Horst began to weep. Something about the prospect of his son ultimately fighting on German soil affected him in some ancestral niche of his rocky heart.

  Rudy did not attempt to see Roz before shipping out.

  One day many months later, resting momentarily in a cold Alsatian bunker, a bleary-eyed, stubble-faced Rudy sliced open a letter from home with his well-honed bayonet. Its entire text read:

  Hi, how are you? Dad made me write.

  Everything’s okay here. See you sometime.

  Roz

  Rudy kept this paper pinned to the inside of his ripe undershirt, against his bare chest, until it disintegrated.

  When Rudy’s first hitch ended, he re-upped. This time the arcane demands of the war shifted him to the Pacific theater.

  Horst and Freyda Honeyman received a snapshot and a letter one day in early 1945. The black-and-white, blank-bordered print showed Lieutenant Honeyman surrounded by his platoon. On the back Rudy had scrawled “Honeyman’s Heroes!!!”

  Dear Mom and Dad,

  I can’t tell you where I am but it’s better than rainy old France. The sun shines all the time, we get to go swimming just like in the river back home (no sharks in the Wapsipinicon though!), and the native girls are really swell kissers! Just kidding! By the way, how is you-know-who? Still as sweet and beautiful as ever? I betcha! Tell her I kept her letter with me till it fell apart, and could use another. On second thought, maybe you’d better not say anything. We all know about her temper!!! All my love as I am always thinking of you both.

  Love, Rudy

  Freyda shook her graying head sadly. “When is he going to see that little chit for what she is? Too good for my son? Hah!”

  Honeyman had always admired Roz’s stubborn independence, which mirrored his own. “Now, now, don’t be too hard on her, Frey. Look at the evidence. She hasn’t dated anyone since Rudy’s been gone, has she?”

  “There are no men fit for dating left in town since the war began!” Freyda countered.

  One day the war ended, like a summer storm unnaturally prolonged but just as curt in its departure. Not long after VJ Day, Rudy came home, whole of limb and sound of mind. At least as sound of mind as he had ever been since that day Roz stuck her tongue out at him at the terminal.

  The civilians staged a parade through the streets of Independence for the soldiers. Rudy looked for Roz in the throng but never spotted her.

  For several days Rudy wandered around house and apiary and stables, striving to reintegrate the old homestead within his experience-altered soul. Everything looked at once strange and familiar, like the photo of a distant ancestor. Rudy slept long hours, ate Freya’s big meals, gradually re-involved himself with the routine of the hives.

  At first, uncommonly, he suffered several stings. The bees seemed resentful of his long absence, eager to punish his lack of proper attention and assert their priority,

  Rudy pretended every sting was a kiss from Roz.

  Once the bees had made their several points, they stopped. Again Rudy shared his father’s immunity. He interpreted this as a good omen, an indication he had fully rebonded with his past. He resolved that now or never was the time to confront Roz.

  That very Sunday Rudy dressed in his best suit (a bit loose on his war-attenuated frame) and drove the family truck into town. The October air freighted scents of transition that somehow subtly encouraged Rudy’s spirits.

  At the Parkers’ house he found Mister Parker and his daughter in the parlor.

  At age nineteen Roz could no longer conceal from Rudy’s worshipful eyes the plain fact that she was the most beautiful woman alive. Especially since her hair had grown back.

  Roz was knitting. Her needles flashed and clicked at a frightening speed. Sighting Rudy, Roz had accelerated the deadly instruments to near-supersonic limits. He estimated she’d burn through about a skein an hour at this rate. Roz was evidently attempting to recreate a sweater worn by Dorothy Lamour in a movie. A page ripped from Photoplay lay on her knee. Rudy figured she’d have the garment finished by noon.

  Rudy found himself babbling from the get-go. “Dad sent me in with some of the last of the season’s honey. The hives are closing down now, but we had a good year. You’ll notice this batch is a little darker than usual. It’s from hives we set out among Mister Voelker’s blueberry bushes. Sort of a boggy taste. Mighty good on pancakes. You, uh—you like pancakes, don’t you, Roz?”
/>   “Don’t make me drop a stitch,” she said.

  Mister Parker folded his newspaper and stood up, “I’m sure you young folks would like to be alone. Lots of catching up to do. And I’ve got some papers to grade for tomorrow.”

  “No, Mister Parker! Don’t go!”

  Too late. Rudy was left alone with Roz.

  Nothing availed but to plunge ahead, just like taking a pillbox in the face of withering machine-gun fire.

  “Boy, does it feel good to be home! I sure missed everyone here. You especially, Roz.”

  “Why did you go then?”

  Dumbfounded, Rudy decided to assume the question was rhetorical. “It must have seemed kind of empty in town, with all us fellers away fighting.”

  “I can’t say I noticed.”

  “Did you get my letters? I sent dozens, you know.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you must know I got yours. The one, anyhow. Maybe some others got lost—?”

  No response. Were the tips of the needles beginning to glow?

  “Anyhow, thanks for writing, Roz. It sure meant a lot to me.

  “Everyone had to do their part for the war effort. I collected newspapers and kitchen scraps too.”

  “Well, yeah, sure, there was that aspect of it. But on a personal level, that letter helped me through some mighty tough times.”

  “That’s good to hear.”

  Taking this as encouragement, Rudy plunged on more glibly. “Gee, I bet all those foreign places I described must’ve seemed sort of unreal to you folks back here in the sleepy old Midwest.”

  “We saw them all in newsreels.”

  “Heck, that’s nothing like being there! Sure was an education for me. Met a lot of nice people despite everything.” Rudy tried to inspire some jealousy. “Those French gals now—” He waggled his hand and wolf-whistled.

  “I hear they don’t bathe all that often.”

  Rudy drew up short. “Well, people do things differently all over the world. But underneath, I think you have to say, we all share the same needs and dreams. Deep down inside, where it really matters.”

  “Coming from someone who saw the utmost in horror and brutality, that sentiment strikes me as incredibly naive.”

  Rudy discovered he had come to his feet volitionlessly. His fists balled by his side, a nearly palpable veil of blood obscured his gaze. Words tumbled from him.

  “You are the most conceited, insensitive, arrogant, snitty little bitch I have ever had the misfortune to know! If you’re an example of what I was risking my life for, then I wish I’d let the whole goddamn country go to hell. I don’t know what I ever saw in you. You’re as mean as you are beautiful. If I ever thought I loved you, you’ve damn well cured me of that delusion.”

  Roz calmly set aside her knitting and stood up. She loomed nearly as tall as he. Alarmed by the grim expression on her face, Rudy took a cautious step backward. Roz dropped her head and hunched her shoulders as if weary or sad. Then at full speed she ran forward and butted Rudy in the stomach.

  Rudy toppled like a concussed prizefighter to the braided rug, his wind stolen from him. Roz dropped down to straddle his chest, her wool skirt blanketing him, her knees pinioning his ribs. She grabbed his ears and began pounding his head against the floor. Grateful for the rug, Rudy could have wished it thicker.

  “You dumb Kraut! You lousy bugherder! You’re pathetic! You’re pitiful! I think you’ve got something special inside, but you won’t bring it out! You’re deep as a teaspoon! You’re dull as a drone! You’re flat as the prairie and just as bland! I want a man who knows the mountains and valleys and the big cities! Anything but Iowa! New York or Chicago, not Cedar Rapids! What do I have to do to open your eyes, damn it!”

  Just short of inflicting permanent damage, Roz ceased employing Rudy’s head as a carpet-tack hammer. His cranium felt like it had that time he took some shrapnel upside his helmet.

  Rudy dared to lever himself partway up on his elbows. Roz held two fists to her forehead while she quietly sobbed.

  “Marry me,” he said.

  Roz dropped her fists and glared. “Make me.”

  Mister Parker appeared at the parlor door. “Having fun, kids?”

  Four more years of courtship, including two chaperoned trips to Chicago, were required before Roz set the wedding date.

  The Widow Blechschmidt had coincidentally capitulated to Mister Parker around this time, and so a double ceremony was planned.

  Roz scandalized the entire town by getting married in green. Rudy didn’t care. The dress matched her eyes.

  Extra rooms had to be added to the Honeyman house, that domicile symbolizing a mundane agrarian existence Roz seemed now moderately reconciled to, so long as she could embellish it at will with frequent trips to more exciting climes. Just like those three days seventeen years ago, the whole Parker family, including a new generation, congregated to raise the add-on. Helping build the new wing, Rudy experienced an immense déjà vu, harking back to that day when the Honigmanns had first arrived on this plot of land by the Wapsipinicon. He tried to imagine imagining then the actual course of those seventeen years, and decided that even H. G. Wells would have had trouble making that speculative forecast.

  Roz became pregnant in the winter of 1949, She insisted on a trip to New Orleans as an appropriate present for her gravidity, and Rudy gratefully complied, too shell-shocked by his imminent fatherhood to refuse. Even Mardi Gras failed to divert his thoughts.

  Back home the couple continued to indulge in many visits to Independence’s lone moviehouse. One film they saw, titled With a Song in My Heart, starred the actor Rory Calhoun.

  Leaving the theater, a round-bellied Roz said, “That Rory Calhoun is so handsome.”

  Rudy remained silent. He kicked at a lump of dirty ice.

  “Oh, not more than you, silly. He’s too Hollywood.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “But still, he does have a certain look.…”

  On July 23, 1950, Rory Honeyman entered the world.

  Chapter Three

  Cinderella in Swimtrunks

  From the vantage of ten meters in the air the hives resembled square checkers on a board of grass and clover. “Kingers,” perhaps, with super stacked triumphantly atop super. They stretched away north, all of a uniform color, making any hypothetical checkers game appear at an end, one side having conquered magnificently. Beyond this disorderly array the Iowa plains stretched interminably to the horizon, broken only by an occasional copse of trees around a farmhouse or two. The road that led to Honeymans Apiary—Lt. Rudy Honeyman, Ret., Prop.—had been widened and repaved in the past fifteen years. It seemed to constrain the greenery like the band on a sheaf of fresh hundred-dollar bills.

  Along the eastern edge of the scene meandered the Wapsipinicon, low and muddy this late in summer, too low for even small children to essay a dive into their favorite swimming hole. Lush greenery overhung the water; rocks protruded from the riverbed. A gray desiccated splintered board, caught between two midstream boulders like a toothpick between teeth, protruded skyward. It looked like some fragment of a vehicle, a wagon or sleigh perhaps.

  Rory Honeyman stood at the end of his concrete diving platform, surveying river, hives and fields. Up here he always felt rather like one of the early explorers of the formerly virgin continent. Columbus, Balboa, De Soto, Cabeza deVaca. New vistas beckoned and inflamed his imagination. Somewhere out there Colorado and Mexico awaited his imminent inspection. And beyond that, who knew what marvels?

  At age eighteen Rory Honeyman was clean-shaven, muscular and rather ingenuous-looking. His hazel eyes could have belonged to an innocent martyr in a Renaissance canvas. He wore abbreviated European-style swimtrunks patterned with a shell motif. His red hair lay plastered wet to his skull. He had been in the water all day, until he could smell nothing but chlorine. Now he prepared to take his last dive, the final one before he had to leave for Colorado.

  Toes securely planted at the ed
ge of the platform, Rory glanced down. The chemical-blue pool below seemed awfully small and hard-surfaced. It appeared to be filled not with water, but with a block of tinted Lucite. The muted hum of the filtration system drifted up to his ears. Suddenly, despite having performed this feat thousands of times before, what he was about to attempt appeared flatly impossible, the superhuman folly of some madman. The time last week when he had lost the water returned to Rory with full force.

  “Losing the water” was one of the most dreaded hazards of high-diving. In the middle of a complicated maneuver, you suddenly grew confused as to which direction was down. How many times had you spun? Where was the damn water?!? Under your back? In front of your face? Beneath your feet? Where was the damn water?!? How should you come out of this dive? Did you even have sufficient time to straighten out for a clean entry? Could any motion save you from a painful, perhaps mortal crash? Or would action just aggravate your blunder? WHERE WAS THE DAMN WATER?!? Maybe you began to panic then, started to flail awkwardly, finally hit the unforgiving surface of the pool with an unmitigated, embarrassing, stinging, concussive WHOMP!, sending a geyser up where there should be only the lovely, stealthy, silent rip.

  This unfortunate failure of instinct and confidence had happened to Rory a few days ago. He had been practicing a dive with a high degree of difficulty, the single dive he felt he had not yet fully mastered: an armstand, cut-through, reverse one-and-one-half somersault. Partway down, he lost the water. The result was painful and humbling. When he hauled himself out of the pool, he was shaken inside and out.

  Five minutes later he had regained the heights of the platform. Addressing the sky with the soles of his feet, ten meters closer to any putative God than a moment earlier, arms trembling as they supported his weight, Rory swore, then launched himself.