The Dahlia Field by Henry Alley

Author:Henry Alley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: gay fiction, gay relationships, gay men, gay short stories, gay short fiction
Publisher: Chelsea Station Editions

Ledge Psychology

My brother and I basically grew up in our father’s variety store, a small family affair in the Ballard district of Seattle, where, until we reached high school, we worked for minimum wage. When my brother turned twenty-two, he married Flo, who had a job at the telephone company. By then, I was sixteen, and, studious by nature, did not have much of a social life, and they, liking to expound on ideas, kept company with me.

The summer of 1961, I imagine things in a perpetual sunlight. Market Street was quiet in those days, especially on a Saturday afternoon, when the Seattle Times truck would swing by and leave papers off at the corner seller—not only that evening’s but the Sunday’s “B” or “Bulldog” edition. My mother had her own ailing mother in California, so our parents were frequently gone, leaving us, my brother and me, in charge of the entire store. My brother was working up quickly to replacing my father anyway, once he retired. The only other person on staff with us was Rose, a veteran of the variety store trade, who had beautiful red finger nails and specialized in doing gift wrap and demonstrating cosmetics. No one could curl ribbons the way she did.

Saturday afternoon I had just gone out and gotten a Times, so we could check on what was playing at the Ridgemont, our local art movie theatre. Flo and Dale always liked to see “a good stimulating film” and then hold forth at Clark’s Round the Clock afterwards. As I came back through the glassed entrance, I also had a red Double A dahlia with me, chosen from the flower seller’s galvanized bucket. It was for Rose.

“Oh, you gallant young men,” she said. “I’m quite without words.”

But this time I found a stillness and seriousness to the place, as the evening light, narrowing on closing time, came through the front and burnished everything. My brother was on the phone at the back of the store looking very grave.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, yes, yes. Well, we can be there.”

As he talked—Rose, delighted with her dahlia, was taking care of the customers—I opened the “twilight edition” of the paper and saw that the Ridgemont was offering a double bill of Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal and hoped that Dale wasn’t encountering anything that would hold up our Saturday night theatre-going. In those days, we used to seek out the next Bergman film the way the Elizabethans would the next Shakespeare.

“Not good,” Dale said, coming off the phone. “Not good, not good, not good. Gabriel—you know Gabriel?”

“Yes, I know Gabriel,” I said.

“Well, he’s off on the ledge of Frederick and Nelson’s, and he’s demanding the three of us come and talk him down. He’s threatening to jump from the department store window.”

“Talk him down?” I asked, ironic. “You mean we want him to jump?”

Dale was not nimble in his speech, although he was in thought. He was dark-complected and slim, mustached—unusual in those days, perhaps for an intellectual effect.

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