notebooks of gabriel s.

 one: the fox and weasel

Upon Nathan’s return to the rooming house, standing on the front stoop and craning his neck, he squinted at the bright, thick haze above him in awe and disbelief. Within it, a sign slowly materialized, its shadows peeling away. Lopsided, creaking on its chain in the cold, dusty wind. 

The Fox and Weasel, the sign’s gothic letters proclaimed above a double-pointed arrow, one arrow pointing at the front door and the other at a second flight of stairs leading toward a cellar tavern. 

Which, Nathan wondered, was the Fox and which the Weasel? Or did both establishments share the same name and proprietor? When he arrived earlier, there’d been only one arrow and no cellar tavern, the rooming house’s windows dark as if swathed in blackout curtains. 

Now inside, a single, mobile light flickered, resembling a lamp being carried from one room to another, while in the cellar tavern neon lights glimmered. Nathan also heard music, a jukebox playing a scratchy record, the needle stuck in a groove.

The few repeated notes sounded familiar, a childhood echo perhaps. A nursery rhyme? (In a cellar tavern?) Or did the name Fox and Weasel remind Nathan of a fairy tale his mother used to recite to him?

He trembled inside his great coat and, straining, gathered his two pieces of luggage, a suitcase and a briefcase. The second item, rather, a portmanteau.

That was what on the train the other salesman, Robert Halzer, had called it, who’d taken Nathan’s briefcase by mistake, despite their looking nothing alike, the portmanteau far fancier, though without Nathan’s sales leads, samples, and scripts, testimonials and credentials, his bona fides.

Nathan’s letters from his wife Molly, her news regarding their children, Gina, six, and Alexander, three.

The suitcase and especially the portmanteau heavy, cramping his fingers and wrenching his back. He’d been walking all morning looking for a place to stay.

He climbed to the top step. After leaving the train station, he’d gone to the Fox and Weasel first, but finding it dark sought other rooming houses nearby.

Now he’d gone full circle, the train station always within sight, glowering atop the hill, cloaked in smoke and shadow. The cold air reeked of diesel fumes, and it had begun to rain again, the raindrops coagulant of cinder, ash, and water: thick, viscous, and gray.

Before he set down his luggage to ring the bell, the door swung open, revealing a wizened woman wielding a lantern, the house’s interior otherwise dark.

“You must be Nathan Grombach.”

Her voice barely a whisper. Nathan had to lean forward to catch her words.

“We’ve been expecting you. Please come with me.”

Art: The Weasel in the Granary, Percy Billingham (1871-1933). Courtesy New York Public Library.