Life & Other Passing Moments. Victor J. Banis
and the little girl, too. He had given what he had, but he hadn’t let go of it, he hadn’t shared it. He had resented everything that he had given, and his resentment had held on to everything even when it was gone from his possession. He thought back on his coat, and made an effort to bless the warmth that it might give the old man, and he thought of the family huddled in their car, and blessed the food he had given them, and the money; and the little girl...he opened his eyes, but she was gone.
Probably she was somewhere looking for shelter, or more likely, something to eat. He hoped she found it, before the night got any worse. The snow seemed to be coming down harder now, although, oddly, he didn’t feel anywhere near as cold as he had before. He felt hot, if anything. He undid a couple of buttons, and stumbled to his feet. He was light headed, though. He couldn’t exactly think where he was, or where he was headed. No place, really, he supposed. He had no place to go, did he, and nothing to do when he got there?
He began to stagger through the snow, singing softly to himself. “What child is this...?”
“Mister?”
He looked, and there was the girl again, right beside him. “Why, I thought you had gone,” he said. “Why’d you want to hang around, anyway? You ought to be looking for something to eat. The Seven Eleven is open, I bet, if I knew which way that was.”
“Come with me,” she said, and took hold of his hand.
He held back, but she tugged at him. “Hurry,” she said. “This way.”
“Well, that’s just a back alley,” he said, “There isn’t going to be anything down that way.”
But there was. They came round the corner, and the night fled before the light that spilled out of the windows ahead of them, and the lamp shining over the door, and the sign that said, Antoinette’s.
He stopped in his tracks, gaping in astonishment, and while he stared, the door of the restaurant opened, and there was Antoinette herself framed in it, she looked a lot like Karen Delvecchio. She saw him and smiled, and waved.
“Hurry, come on in,” she called to him.
“Little girl,” he started to say, but she had disappeared again, and when he looked down, he saw only his own footprints in the snow.
Why, there she was, in the doorway with Antoinette, and as he stared, the others came out and crowded around them, too—the old man, still in the blue parka, and the family from the car, Don and Ellie, he could see now that she was pregnant, and Robbie, balanced on his crutch.
“Come on,” they called to him, and “Supper’s ready,” and “The fire is warm.”
“We’re all just waiting for you,” Ellie said, “Hurry, now.”
He did. He began to run, and then he was flying, and they waved and called, and Antoinette laughed gaily and said, “Welcome, come on in, welcome to Antoinette’s.”
THE MUSHROOM KING
It is a paradox of sorts that though they are often people who most enjoy solitude, writers are nonetheless inevitably intrigued by people. This is not to say that they do not dislike some of them or find themselves bored with them. Still, I have said often that even boring people fascinate me.
Mr. Maugham said that he never spent fifteen minutes in the company of another person that he couldn’t have written a story about. I have no doubt that he was speaking sincerely. I can certainly say that I have never spent fifteen minutes in the company of another person that I didn’t discover something of interest about him or her (well, yes, all right, there have been times when the fifteen minutes seemed like fifteen years).
I have always found people infinitely fascinating. This is something that I have discovered about my fellow men and women over the years: everyone—but everyone—has something special about them, something they do better than anyone else, something they know better than anyone else, some secret that you may be the first to ferret out of them, some unsuspected (perhaps even by themselves) talent or gift. Every one has his niche.
Let me tell you, for instance, about Otis McVeigh, as I shall call him. I went to school back in Ohio with Otis. Otis was quite simply a clunk. He was not the stupidest person I have ever met, though he never displayed any great intelligence. That is not the same as saying he had none—for some bizarre reason, straight young men in the Midwest of the fifties had an aversion to letting it be known they had brains. I had yet another classmate who, if memory serves, was never more than a C student, who later turned out to be a professor at the University of California in Los Angeles, a job you don’t get without some smarts.
What was worse in Otis’ case was that he had no wit. He was neither good-looking nor spectacularly unattractive. He was not unkind nor rude nor evil, which can at least be fascinating. If, some years back, you should have asked me if there weren’t at least one exception to finding something interesting in everyone I met, I might have been tempted to mention Otis.
Some years after our school days had ended, I was back in Ohio to visit my mother. It was spring. Mushroom season. Which is to say, sponge mushrooms—morels if you want to be fancy—but to us they were sponge mushrooms. Oh, to be sure there were some sub-categories. Dog’s peckers looked like, well, you know, and were among the least prized. But mostly we called them sponge mushrooms, and they did indeed look like little brown and golden sponges on their all too fragile stems.
In Ohio mushroom season is brief, two or perhaps three weeks. The weather must be just right. A good shower and the following day a warm sun. They often come back to the same field where they were found the year before, but some springs they hardly make an appearance, and even when they lie at your feet in abundance they are so well camouflaged that they can be all but impossible to see. It is not uncommon for a hunter to return home with his sack no fuller than when he set out. Locals tend to guard their favorite spots with a secrecy that would be envied by a James Bond villain.
On this occasion, on the first morning of my visit, my mother fixed me an omelet filled with the precious delicacies and the butter they had soaked up—enormous, meaty, savory specimens. Between mouthfuls I asked her where she had found such bounty. She smiled a bit shame-facedly and told me she had paid a visit to Otis.
“Otis?” I almost choked on my food. “Not Otis McVeigh?”
The very same, as it turned out. “He’s the Mushroom King,” my mother explained.
It seems that though others might spend hours in the woods and return home empty-handed, Otis had no such problem. He found mushrooms by the sack full, by the basket. He was never, during the season, without a generous supply of them, which he was more than happy to sell to those less fortunate.
Of course everyone wanted to know where he found them. Mushroom hunting is serious business in Ohio, in the springtime. Each morning during the season there were those who would attempt to follow Otis when he left his house, to discover where his particular fields of plenty might be; but to no avail. Around and around Otis would drive, down country roads and rutted lanes, through covered bridges, past this barn and over this hillock, into town once more and out another route—until he had lost his trackers or they had given up in disgust.
Later (unless their own search had been fruitful, and supposing they really craved some fruits of the field, as by this time they surely did) they must park at the curb outside Otis’ house, follow the cement walk along the side of the house to the back porch, knock at his kitchen door and purchase—at a hefty price—the objects of their desire. I am even told that there were those who came late at night, under cover of darkness, and afterward pretended that they had found these mushrooms themselves. But I am quite certain that my mother would never have stooped to such subterfuge.
There was nothing for it. I had to see for myself. My mother placed a call and that very evening we found ourselves following the cement walk about the side of Otis’ house, only a short stroll from my mother’s own.
Otis gave every sign of being happy to see me, though we had never been chums in any sense of the word. He invited us into his kitchen. We sat at