A Lush and Seething Hell by John Hornor Jacobs

Author:John Hornor Jacobs
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-10-07T16:00:00+00:00

10

Cromwell: Remembrances of a Hotel Room

“Crumb,” Hattie says, looking at him. She’s wearing a slightly worried expression. He looks up from the field journal, shaking his head. “Another record. It’s getting late.”

“This is bizarre. Parker’s all over the place,” Cromwell says, tapping the journal.

“How so?” Hattie asks.

“He goes from describing recordings to discussing his dreams. I knew his mother drowned when he was young, but it really did a number on him.”

Hattie takes the journal and begins reading, her brow furrowed.

Cromwell stands and stretches. He exits the secret room, goes to the bathroom, urinates, and then washes his hands and face. He wipes his hands on a towel and blankly wonders who will wash it now that the inhabitant of the house is dead. Should he wash it? He holds it to his nose and smells the ghosted scent of detergent and thinks about the humdrum minutiae of a living house. Laundry. Trash. Dirty sinks and toilets. Leftovers crowding a refrigerator. The detritus of a family.

Maizie insisted on doing laundry; cooking and the management of the kitchen fell to him. “You don’t know how to fold clothes,” she said, smiling. “And you’ll burn down the house with an iron.” She took care of the bathrooms; he was tasked with the yard, the gutters, the windows. She dusted and fed the cat. He cleaned the litter box. The division of labor sorted through twelve years together, through college and after, during their young professional life, from apartment to condo to house. It was an undeniable progression, one his parents approved of. Cromwell was a man who would always do the right thing, whose life would unfold in predictable ways.

She would do the laundry but wanted him to help make the beds. The rustle of sheets ballooning over the mattress with a pop, caught in light from the window. A white bedroom, the color of purity. They would sleep with William between them, when he was younger and sick, baby breath sweet in Cromwell’s nose, Maizie’s gaze searching his face. “How did we deserve this?” she whispered.

“I don’t know. Who deserves anything?”

“We do,” she said, kissing her son’s head. “We deserve this. He deserves this.”

There are no endings, just beginnings, Parker said. That phrase sticks with Cromwell.

In the bedroom, he notices that the sun has fallen and realizes he’s hungry. They worked through lunch. So easy to forget the demands of the body when the mind is otherwise engaged.

“Let’s call it a day,” he says to Hattie. She raises an eyebrow but doesn’t protest. She sets down the journal and removes her earphones from her neck and places them in the Pelican case’s padded interior. She sets the TASCAM to charge in the outer bedroom.

“It’s bizarre,” Hattie says. “These two men driving around, sleeping in their car for the government, recording folk songs. Everything’s so different now.”

“Not that different, really,” Cromwell says. “We’re just better funded. At least this year.”

Something bothers her, Cromwell can tell. He waits.

“No, this dude is weird. Like, he’s got a hard-on for ‘Stagger Lee.

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