2,974 words

Levin
by Don Swaim

She spends her days cursing me under her pharmaceutical breath and clipping coupons from the junk mail maligning our mailbox. Her nights are something else. We live in a rental near the agriculture college just outside of town, my wife and I. She’s got multiple sclerosis so for her merely living is a bitch and it’s not getting better. This morning I left the house without taking my Ativan—three milligrams per—so I’m feeling antsy as I make my rounds. Tryin’ to get off the stuff, but it’s brutal.
This is what I do. I collect the coins from the borough parking meters. I’m visible to all, yet mostly unseen. Somehow I revel in my gray-uniformed anonymity—except when I bicker with wayward parkers. When my pack’s full I lug it to borough hall to count the coins, roll them in paper containers, and trundle the booty to the bank where I make deposits in the name of the municipality. A few years ago the cops arrested a meter man for pilfering the coins, which he would secret somewhere. Same guy who demanded a pistol permit—for protection—although no local collector had ever been robbed. Probably never will. Not here, not for small change in this lily-white quadrant of the commonwealth.
They first installed parking meters here in ’48. Aside from extramural sprawl, not a lot’s changed save for the streetlights. They’ve been redesigned to look like gas lamps—and flower baskets dangle in place of overhead utility wires. It’s a small town that audaciously ignored its obituary. Stores like the pharmacy with its Formica soda fountain, the five and dime, and the chrome-sided diner are now gift shops, galleries, and restaurants.
Then I see him. You can’t be in my job without recognizing most of the faces in a little place like ours, but the man who stumbles on the sidewalk where the roots of a defiant oak have upended the concrete is a stranger to me. His clothes are old as if compiled in a rush from a thrift store rack. I run to his side, help him up. There’s strength in his heft, but his flesh has the pasty hue of  a non-sedentary man who nevertheless spends his days out of the sun.
“It’s okay.” He grins, embarrassed. “I’m used to bein’ on my knees.”
His body carries an odor of something intangibly aquatic blended with clay, mothballs, wool, and dried leather.
“What do you do?” I ask. 
“Miner.”
“Anthracite?”
“Galena ore. You know, lead, silver. Bullets, gasoline, solder, paint.”
“A galena mine’s near here?”
“Fifteen minutes. Along the north branch of the Neshaminy. Place called Levin.”
His jaw’s bony, almost severe, five or six day stubble. He might have stepped out of a Dorothea Lange photograph.
“Everything’s… different,” he says. “Don’t get into town much except for droppin’ off the kids at the movies or to the doc.” He scratches his chin. “Well, pardner, gettin’ late. Time to head back home.”
I shrug as he walks off. Although I’ve lived here ever since my months in Lewisburg, I’ve never heard of Levin.
Nothing’s gone right for me, not really. Not since I was a hotshot anchor at Action Seven in Cleveland and counting the big bucks until they made some little strumpet my co-anchor. I had a minor fling with her, which didn’t go well. Either the sex or our personalities. She went back to dividing her time between her boyfriend in New York and her husband, who lived, god knows where, Kansas City, I think. But the worst thing was when I discovered she was earning fifty grand per more than I. Rightly pissed, I hacked into her email, found lots of compromising goodies, like the messages to her lawyer after she got plastered while visiting her Manhattan flame and was arrested for slugging a cop. And the tawdry nude pictures of herself she emailed to her inamorato, who could have done better. I kept current with whatever she did and wherever she was with my computer at work, my laptop at home. I even read the messages she exchanged with her mother to whom she poured out her itsy-bitsy heart. Naturally, I leaked, as an anonymous but reliable source, the juiciest dirt to the local gossip columns. Anything to bring the little ogress down. She finally got her delicious ass fired for the cop-bop incident, but when she sued Action Seven for defamation everything fell apart. For me. It was obvious a hacker had leaked her emails so when the FBI showed up I was Suspecto Numero Uno. When the Feds laid claim to my computers that was that. Had no choice but to confer upon them my guilty plea. Six months in the pen, a $250,000 fine. At my sentencing I expressed remorse, tearfully apologizing to any and all within hearing range, including a seventh-grade class on an escorted courthouse tour. My broadcast days were snuffed out like sulfur on a match, and when I finally slunk out of Lewisburg my wife, to my astonishment, was waiting at the gate.
“Arthur, never forget I had to sell our house and move to a two-bedroom apartment. All our friends are gone. My god, the disgrace. We need to go somewhere else. Start over. If I weren’t sick… I hope you understand, really understand, what you’ve done to us.”
I understood, but all I could do was to bury my tear-stained face into her unforgiving bosom. Often the past is unpitying, as in my case, and all you can do is to try to forget what you’ve been through and hide in a place where nobody knows you. After that you just make do. I even quit the booze for a time—but in truth I was in Lewisburg longer than my sobriety.
I bump into the miner again. He’s standing, gaping, in front of the coffee place at the corner of Main and Court. I nod hello.
“It’s all changed,” he tells me. He looks perplexed. “This here used to be the Fountain House, and now they call it Starbucks. Across the street. Oriental carpets? It was a Rexall’s. And the courthouse. A big round thing like a toilet, not the old stone building with the clock tower. At least the County Theater’s still here.”
“How long were you away?”
He laughs. “Never left. Oh, to Philly once for some dental work, and sometimes to the Jersey shore. I take the family up to Allentown for the fair pretty regular.”
There’s a story here, I think. Despite my disgrace, my instincts as a reporter kick in when they need to.
“May I ask your name?” I say.
His eyes narrow, suspicious.
“Sir, I’m a municipal employee, and I saw you take a spill on our sidewalk. Therefore,  on behalf of the borough I’d like to render an apology,  Mr.… Mr.…”
A crooked smile. “Hendricks. Ben.”
“I’m Arthur Marsh. Time for my break. How’s about I buy you a cup of coffee, seeing that we’re right in front of Starbucks?”
Inside, Ben seems confused by the array of coffees, and orders a cider while I choose the Mocha Frappuccino.
“Costs so much,” he says. “Can’t believe these here prices. Why, I can heat my house for a month on the coal that these coffees…”
“My treat.”
We lift the drinks to our lips. 
“Ben, tell me about Levin.”
“Ever hear of Neimeyer and Eastern Mining Company?”
I shake my head no
“Owns the mine. Town’s got a post office, a hotel. Hardware, the grocery. A dozen or so houses. Filling station. Two churches. Spur to the Reading Railroad tracks. It’s been out of use for a long time, but we’re goin’ to restore the tracks one of these days. Grew up in Levin. Like Pa and Ma. Pa used to work the mine until his arthritis. He still hobbles about though. Town’s been around since, don’t know, the Civil War when they tapped into what they thought was coal. Turned out to be galena ore.”
“And what road is your town on?”
“New Galena. Fact is, Levin used to be called New Galena, but when the post office opened they changed the name to Levin on account of there’s another town called Galena somewhere’s, and they didn’t want no confusion. Motor up Dublin Pike about three miles, turn onto New Galena Road. Can’t miss it.”
“At Lake Galena.”
“Lake? I told you, we’re along the Neshaminy.”
We finish our drinks. Ben thanks me and lumbers off while I resume the tedium of my rounds. Getting jumpy again, hands starting to tremble. Cool it, mister. As quick as your ass is home you’re back on your med.
I sleep sporadically that night, the ghosts of my many guilts plaguing me, and there’s no stopping them. Not real ghosts, slithering and elusive, but fiendish Feds, venal prosecutors, voracious lawyers, self-serving sexpots. I wake in a sweat and moan when I see the hour on the bedside clock—so late, always so late. I swap my sopping pajamas for dry ones and manage an hour or two of sleep, which isn’t enough.
On Sunday, my wife and I drive up Old Ironhill Road through the covered bridge to Creek Road, which runs along the lake’s south shore. We turn onto Callowhill, taking us around the dam to New Galena Road. As we drive we see flashes of turquoise water through the trees, but nowhere do we pass a town called Levin. Sitting at a picnic table a few yards from the edge of the lake, which is patrolled by arrogant geese, we eat the tasteless sandwiches she packed. On the water dart canoes, their paddles churning white-capped froth. Diminutive sailboats are leaning against the wind, rainbow sails billowing. 
“Not much of a lake,” my wife says, breaking the awkward silence that routinely punctuates our marriage. She’s a product of Cleveland and the vastness of Lake Erie. It’s a wonder she sees at all. The MS affects her eyesight and her thick glasses overwhelm her once pretty face. When she’s on the Internet she eyeballs the computer screen from two inches away as she analyzes the various properties of Desmopressin, Difropan, Dilantin, Dantrum, Decadron.
“They dammed the Neshaminy to build this lake,” I tell her. “Forty, fifty years ago. Three hundred sixty-five acres. I read up on it. Dam stopped a lot of that flooding downstream.”
She says nothing, obviously unimpressed by the breadth of my knowledge.
Sandwiches eaten, we walk to the earthen dam where asphalt pavement leads us sixty-six feet to the top. The narrow lake stretches three miles to the east, shoreline dark with green, although the red roof of a vintage barn peeps over the trees from far off. On the lesser side of the dam a meandering stream trickles through the well-explored woods.
I say, “When we lived in Cleveland my dentist was named Levin.”
“No, his name was Levine.”
She’s right, of course. She’s always right.
A week later while on my rounds I encounter Ben. He’s with a woman his age and two kids about eight or ten. She’s gaunt with a hawklike nose, and might have been attractive once.
“This here’s my wife Alice,” he says. “And our boys, Donny and Will.”
She wears an unstylish dress, shoulders oddly padded, and the kids have on corduroy knickers. Knickers? The boys tell me that when they’re old enough they’ll be made to ride the school bus to the high school here, and they don’t want to. 
Ben says, “Just that we’re a close-knit community is all. Never leave it less we got to, like when I need to get the auto registration and stuff.”
“That why you’re in town, Ben? On account of Motor Vehicles is now up in Dublin.”
“Naw, just wanted to buy the kids shoes at Thom McAn’s. But it don’t seem to be around no more.”
“Try the Bon-Ton on North Main Street. In that strip mall where the Staples is.”
“Strip mall?”
“A lot of the stores moved out to the highway.”
“That why Kresge’s ain’t here no more?”
“I think they’re all Kmarts now.”
“And what’s a Staples?”
I chuckle. “You’re kidding.” I say to his wife, “How do you like living in Levin, Mrs. Hendricks?”
“They call me Alice.” Her breath is fetid, her teeth yellow, neglected. “It’s the only place I ever lived. Can’t imagine bein’ no where’s else. Mama still lives there, and Ben’s folks. Where our two kids is being raised and goes to school. And our church, Mennonite Baptist. All our friends and neighbors, and Ben’s job. A Heaven Levin is.” Her body transmits the odor of cheap talcum and starched cotton.
“My wife and I drove up that way a while back and couldn’t find it,” I say.
Ben says, “You must have turned wrong, Arthur. Our home’s just four houses down from the hotel, the Wetherill Inn. Stop in and knock at our door. Ain’t got no phone. I know, I know. Gonna put one in one of these days. ’Bout everyone in town’s got one. Knock hard on account of we always got the radio on. You know kids with their serials.”
“On the radio?”
“When I can I takes ’em to the movie show here in town on Saturday mornings. The serials. Batman and all. Can’t always do it on account of my job. Shift work, you know. And the missus here, she don’t drive.”
Am I crazy or is he… they? An entire family can’t be deranged, so, damn, it must be… A pulse pumps in my cheek. After my shift I drive with resolve up Swamp Road, which becomes Dublin Pike, intending to turn east when I reach New Galena Road. But you can’t. New Galena Road ends with a t at Dublin Pike. I’ve already driven the entire stretch west and there’s no Levin.
“Bizarre,” I tell my wife that night. “Those people are either lying to me about living in Levin or it’s some sort of mass delusion.”
“You had your own share of delusions, Arthur.”
I sip my vodka, despising both the contempt in her voice and myself.
“A cheap shot, Fran.”
“I’ve got the right to lob a few once in a while. There’s a lot I’ve lost too.”
Our marriage was tenuous even before Lewisburg, even before she got sick. Day after day, night after night, I try to expel the old torments from my mind, but I remain haunted. Once, I had dreams instead of memories. In my arrogance I thought I had it made. Once. When I had a wife who merely tolerated me.
She’s snoring like an animal in agony as I climb out of bed and pad to the kitchen where I take out the holy water and pour two fingers, then another two, and another. Praise thee, Johnny Walker. I think about Ben and his mythical birthplace of Levin. Damned Levin… Can’t get it out of my skull. Wait a minute…
I thump my empty glass on the table, totter back to the bedroom, and dress clumsily in the shadows, quiet so as not to awaken my mouth-trumpeting wife. Fleeing the house, I start the car. Weave through the covered bridge, past the dam. On New Galena Road I ignore the sign reading peace valley park closed at sunset. It’s inky driving under the overhanging trees on either side of the road, despite the perfect moon, but I’ve been to this place so many times I know exactly where a turn-off leads to a rise overlooking the lake. This must be it. The moon’s so dazzling it reflects on water still as polished marble.
He appears like a spirit, even though I know there are no spirits.
Ben. Standing on the shore.
He isn’t alone. His wife and their sons are next to him. And others. They’re luminescent as if coated in phosphorus.
I leave the car, keys in the ignition, and go to them.
“I knew you’d come, Arthur,” Ben says.
“I knew I’d find Levin eventually, Ben.”
“This here’s my mother and father and Alice’s mother. Yonder’s my cousin Jeb. And Uncle Frank and Aunt Bea. Mr. Wyntien owns the hardware and feedlot, and Jim runs the hotel. Mr. Neimeyer there, he’s my boss. Nelly’s our postmistress. Farmer Wismer. Grocer Laubach. Pastor Kephart. I’ll introduce the rest in good time.”
“We’ve been waitin’ for you, Arthur,” Alice says. “Come with us now.”.
“I’ll get my car keys.”
“No need, Arthur.”
She takes one of my hands, Ben the other. The residents of Levin follow as I’m led to the shoreline and into the water, calm and cold, not an unpleasant cold, but one conciliatory and soothing. Down the lake’s slope we walk. Down, down. Above, through the water’s depth, I see the moon, yellow and filmy, as if it’s about to burst into fragments. We come to the Mobil station with the sign of the flying red horse. And the grocery store, a bottle-shaped Nehi Soda sign by the door, and next to it the frame post office building with the swinging sign that reads levin. Wyntien’s Hardware with an nra—we do our part poster in the plate-glass window. Beyond it a steepled church, chalky white. A bell peals. The Wetherill Inn, three stories, light gleaming from every room. A radio, it must be a radio, blares from somewhere, but I don’t recognize the voices. We step over the railroad tracks, the old Reading spur.
This town… This town. They flooded it for me. Just for me.
Ben says, “You can see our house from here, Arthur, just down the street. We’ve made up a bed for you. You’re going to be with us for a long, long time.”