Bullet Park   ::   Cheever John

"This is the property I had in mind for you," he said. "I hope she won't be in. She's not much of a saleswoman. She said she was going out." He rang the bell but Mrs. Heathcup opened the door. It appeared that she was preparing to go out but had not quite made it. She was a stocky woman with skewered silver-gilt hair, wearing a bathrobe. On the tip of one of her silk slippers there was a cloth rose; on the other there was none. "Well you're welcome to look," she said in a in hoarse, carrying voice. "I hope you'll like it well enough to buy it. I'm getting a little tired of having people track mud through the place and then decide on something else. It's a lovely house and everything works-you'll have to take my word for that-but I've known people around here to sell houses with dangerous wiring, backed-up septic tanks, obsolete plumbing and leaky roofs. There's nothing like that here. Before my husband passed away he saw that everything was in apple-pie order and the only reason I'm selling is because there's nothing here for me, now that he's gone. Nothing at all. There's nothing in a place like this for any single woman. Speaking of tribes, it's like a regular tribe. Widows, divorcees, single men, the tribal elders give them all the gate. Fifty-seven is my price. That's not my asking price it's my final price. We put twenty thousand into the place and my husband painted it every single year before he passed away. In January he'd paint the kitchen. Saturdays and Sundays and nights, that is. Then he'd paint the hallway and the living room and the dining room and the bedrooms and then next January he'd start all over again in the kitchen. He was painting the dining room the day he passed away. I was upstairs. When I say that he passed away I don't want you to think that he died in his sleep. While he was painting I heard him talking to himself. 'I can't stand it any longer,' he said. I still don't know what he meant. Then he went out into the garden and shot himself. That was when I found out what land of neighbors I had. You can look all over the world but you won't find neighbors as kind and thoughtful as the people in Bullet Park. As soon as they heard about my husband passing away they came over here to comfort me. There must have been ten or twelve of them and we all had something to drink and they were so comforting that I almost forgot what had happened. I mean it didn't seem as though anything had happened. Well here's the living room. Eighteen by thirty-two. We've had fifty guests here for cocktails but it never seems crowded. I'll sell you the rug for half of what I gave for it. All wool. If your wife wants the curtains I'm sure we can work something out. Do you have a daughter? This hallway would be a beautiful place for a wedding. I mean when the bride throws down her bouquet. Now the dining room…"

The dinner table was set for twelve with soup plates, wine glasses, candlesticks and wax flowers. "I always keep my table set," said Mrs. Heathcup. "I haven't entertained for months but Mr. Heathcup hated to see an empty table and so I always keep it set, sort of in memory. An empty table depressed him. I change the setting once or twice a week. There are four churches in the village. I suppose you know about the Gorey Brook Country Club. It has a good eighteen-hole course designed by Pete Ellison, four en tout cas courts and a pool. I hope you're not Jewish. They're very strict about that. I don't have a pool myself and frankly it's something of a limitation. When people start talking about pool chemicals and so forth you'll find yourself left out of the conversation. I've had an estimate made and you can have one put in the back garden for

eight thousand. Maintenance comes to around twenty-five a week and they charge a hundred to open and close it. The neighbors, as I've said, are wonderful people, although they take some knowing. You might think Harry Plutarch, who lives across the street, a little odd unless you knew the whole story. His wife ran off with Howie Jones. What she did was to have a moving van come to the house one morning and take everything out of the place except a chair, a single bed and a parrot cage. When he came home from work he found an empty house and he's been living with a chair, a bed and a parrot ever since. Here's a copy of the evening paper. It might give you some idea of what the place is like…"

As Mrs. Heathcup flushed toilets, opened and shut doors, the stranger, whose name was Hammer, felt a lack of interest in her house increase until it seemed like a kind of melancholy, but the tragic and brightly lighted place was commodious and efficient and one lived in such places. There was the ghost of poor Heathcup, but every house has a ghost. "I think it's what we want," he said. I'll bring Mrs. Hammer out tomorrow and let her decide."

Hazzard drove him back to the railroad station then and left him there. Suburban waiting rooms are not maintained and the place had been sacked. Broken windows let in the night wind. The clock face was smashed. The hands of the clock were gone. The architect, so many years ago, had designed the building with some sense of the erotic and romantic essence of travel, but all his inventions had been stripped or defaced and Hammer found himself in a warlike ruin. He opened the paper and read: "The Lithgow Club had its annual dinner on Thursday evening at Harvey 's restaurant. The program began with a parade of sweethearts-wives of the members-which was followed by a demonstration of the hula given by Mrs. Leonard A. Atkinson who was accompanied by her husband on the ukulele…

"Seventeen debutantes were presented to society at the Gorey Brook Country Club…

"Mr. Lewis Harwich was burned to death last night when a can of charcoal igniter exploded and set fire to his clothing during a barbecue party in the garden of his home at 23 Redburn Circle…

"School taxes expected to increase."

He caught the 7:14.



II



Holy Communion. Sexagesima. Nailles heard. a cricket in the chancel and the noise of a tin drum from the rain gutters while he said his prayers. His sense of the church calendar was much more closely associated with the weather than with the revelations and strictures in Holy Gospel. St. Paul meant blizzards. St. Mathias meant a thaw. For the marriage at Cana and the cleansing of the leper the oil furnace would still be running although the vents in the stained-glass windows were sometimes open to the raw spring air. Abstain from fornication. Possess your vessel in honor. Jesus departs from the coast of Tyre and Sidon as the skiing ends.