The Caveman's Valentine (14 page)

Romulus ran, and ran, and about halfway up the slope he ran himself out of wind.

He held up a moment—he had to get some breath. His lungs were shrieking. His legs were sodden. He looked back, and as he did the light lifted again, and found him. Again it settled upon him. Steadied.

Then he heard a gunshot, and something popped in the grass next to him.

That got him going again. He ran and he zigzagged as best he could with his bad ankle. The grass popped again, another shot, closer. He looked up. The field was clear directly ahead, hopelessly clear and fatal. But to the right there was a dark mass of brake. Where the rabbit had gone. Romulus would have to be a rabbit, too—he veered and scrambled, and pushed into that tangle.

I
t was a stand of gray dogwood, taller than he was. It cut off the light behind him, so he had to grope—to forge ahead blindly.

Something clawed softly at his cheek. Tendril of a thornbush. Then something tried to hold hands with him in the dark: another thorn-shoot. Something grabbed his ass, and something tried to pull the silk sock off his sore ankle. He twisted. He put his hands in front of his face and shoved on. Stepped high, leaned into the pain. The thorns slashed away.

He tried telling himself that in truth, in the best of truths, these were not thorns but fireflies, fireflies over the tobacco fields at his great-uncle’s place in North Carolina. And this was not pain, it was only the fireflies’ little pulsing fires. For a moment that seemed to help. The wall of lightning bugs parted, opened a way for him, and he ran full tilt through that opening and then he smashed headlong into a swarm of something and if they
were
fireflies, they were a species with stingers like black raspberry thorns and they cut him to ribbons, they ganged up and threw him to the ground.

He lay there. He tried to swallow his mad thirst for air. Held it down in his gut for a moment so he could listen.

Somewhere behind him a soft, slow tread.

He looked above him. The play of the flashlight.

Always the play of that fucking flashlight.

He shimmied along on the ground, on his knees and elbows. The thorns dragged along his skull. One of the thorn-serpents got under the collar of his coat and worked its way down his back. Bob’s beautiful shirt tore, Romulus’s neck tore, the pain roared. He reached back and wrapped his hand around the barbs and pulled out the tendril. Pushed it aside and crawled on, and presently he came upon what seemed to be a shallow sort of ditch that ran under the thorns. Follow that rabbit. Hunching along for a few dozen yards and then suddenly it wasn’t quite so dark—the sky had opened above him. He stood.

He was out of the thicket.

He was at the top of the slope, and on the other side the field dipped down quickly into trees, and there was the sound of a stream at the bottom. The sweet plashing of a country stream.

Then his shadow flickered on the trees before him.

Which meant the fucking light had found him again.

He stumbled down the hill.

But he was dragging, he was spent, he had nothing left. When he got to the stream he leaned against a big tree to weight his lack of strength and breath, and it seemed likely, it seemed in fact
certain,
that this was as far as he was going.

All the strength he had left he used to climb onto a big low limb of the tree, and then up to another smaller limb.

There he rested. He held on to a branch that ran at about chest level behind his back. His arms were outstretched, and his head drooped.

And it occurred to him that now he had all the requisites for his martyrdom. He had the thorns in his hair. He had the wounds. The stigmata, the weariness, the whole cake.

Even the pose.

Not on your fucking life, Stuyvesant.

Oh, Romulus recognized this one. This was one of the bastard’s cheapest tricks.
Put you in one of these poses,
make you feel that martyrdom is
just the ticket
for you. Make you feel like your pain is a
work of art
or the
Second Coming of Desperation
so that when he runs you through his gauntlet of suffering and then death, why, you won’t even care, you’ll chalk it up to your
tragic fucking communion
with the suffering of God.

You’ll go out with a shit-eating smile on your face. You won’t fuss.

Right?

Not for me, fucker.

Romulus let go the branch with one hand, and straightened himself up and scowled. Get out of that droopy pose. Get set.

If you’re going to die here, you’re going to die standing tall. So come on now, Stuyvesant. Come on down here and get me.

The light came down the slope.

It searched along the stream bank.

The light came closer and closer, until it was right beneath the tree, and then the hunter stopped. Not more than five feet from Romulus’s perch. Romulus could have spit on his head.

The hunter was listening now. And moving his flashlight, moving it in a slow, slow circle. Like a watchtower beam.

It was coming around to Romulus.

But it was coming low. Keep your mouth shut, don’t move a muscle, and if you’re lucky it will slide
under
you, right under your shoes.

Not a muscle.
Where your face twitches, stop that. Where the blood keeps crashing to your temple, stop that, too. You’re part of this tree. You’ve been growing here for years.

Seraphs, hush.

The light slid under Romulus’s shoes.

It kept going around.

Then it paused. The hunter had an idea and the flashlight beam came back. Came up—slowly—into the tree—and then the sunrise was full in Romulus’s eyes, and he did the only thing that was left to him—he leapt straight out, straight for that light.

S
lammed into the hunter and his elbow knocked the flashlight up and he got one fiery glimpse of the no-face. It was a no-face because white bandages had been wrapped round and round the head.

Then the rest of Romulus crashed into the hunter and the flashlight spun crazily in the air and the gun went off. Romulus hit the ground. The ground was mud, he slid. His head was stopped by a rock.

His thoughts shrank up a moment and then cleared, and he struggled to his feet and spotted the gun. The flashlight was lying on the ground, and in its scoop of light Romulus saw the gun where it lay on a flat mossy stone. He went for it.

But before he could reach it, the light jumped.

The hunter had picked up the flashlight. Romulus turned, and the light blazed in his eyes. He looked back at where the gun was, but that was all blackness now. He faced the light and moved toward it, and it flared and sparked in his vision and he lumbered forward and reached for it. It went out.

He lunged—but there was nothing there. Nothing to see but the light’s afterburn. He blinked. Huge purple peony, blooming in his vision.

He heard the hunter’s footsteps as they raced away. He followed the sound, scrambled after it till a tree slugged into his shoulder and spun him around.

The footsteps faded away.

Romulus stopped where he was and waited till his eyes had attuned themselves to the dark. Then he went back and found the mossy stone and the gun.

The feel of the gun, its slick heaviness, gave him the creeps. He tossed it into the water.

He sat on the mossy stone until the rain started up again.

Then he didn’t know what to do.

T
he rain came harder and harder, and Walter Whittle, of Walter’s Bar, watched it coming down and knew there was no hope for late traffic. Knew that this was all the customers he was going to see tonight.

He counted them. Seven. The same seven he’d counted an hour ago. The same seven he’d counted last month. The same seven that he supposed he’d count around his deathbed when the lights went out for keeps. All of them
gaybos,
except for Cassandra rocking her hips over there by the jukebox. Cassandra, too, probably—though who knew what really turned on that piece of flirtatious trash?

Andy and James were dancing, draped over one another and churning softly to an Andy Williams ballad. The Gaybo Club, they never asked to change anything in the jukebox—they’d just take the good old standards that were in there and enjoy them in their own disgusting way. And ruin them, forever, for Walter’s ears.

They’d sing along to Pet Clark and Tony Bennett, and laugh uproariously.

They’d dance their unpleasant dances.

So wasn’t it about time to clean this place up? Walter asked himself. To throw these deviants out on their debauched bony asses?

Yes it was. It had been time for a long time. The Gaybos, they were why nobody else would come in here. They were what had happened to the traffic. Nobody wanted to come to a bar full of Gaybos. People thought they’d catch their death.

Walter had tried to explain this to the Gaybos, many times. They had laughed uproariously at him.

“Walter,” they’d said, “nobody ever came in here before us—except a couple of your old Zeke buddies, and they’re dead, Walter. We’re the only business you’ve got.”

Walter said, “Ah, shit—this used to be the busiest hotel on the Hudson.”

They said, “Yeah. About fifty years ago. When your mummy and daddy ran it.”

Then he started making them drink out of plastic airline cups, so he wouldn’t have to clean their glasses. Cleaning their glasses sent shivers up and down his spine.

They laughed uproariously at him.

Cassandra said, “Oh, airline glasses. Very seventies.”

Sometimes Cassandra seemed to be the Gaybo Club’s mascot, other times its ringleader. About the glasses she’d said:

“Walter, nobody’s
ever
coming in here if you serve drinks in airline glasses. Even the airlines don’t use airline glasses anymore.”

Walter said, “I ought to put a quarantine sign over the door,” and they laughed uproariously and did it for him:
QUARANTINE.
And though he took it down as soon as he’d noticed it, word got out—and the whole town had a good yuk over it.

He said, “I don’t want this place turning into no Gaybo Club!”

Right away they started calling themselves the Gaybo Club.

Once, he threw them all out. Then one night after a week of scant receipts, they all come trooping back in. He said, “I thought I told you to get lost.”

They said, “We forgive you, Walter.” And Cassandra put her money in the jukebox and punched up Frankie’s “High Hopes.”

Walter told them, “OK, stay. What the hell do I care? But I tell you this—I’m not putting up any damn frilly pink curtains on the windows.”

And they
tsk
ed and said, “Walter. Walter. We love you just the way you are.”

So now here it was Saturday night, and usually Saturday brought in enough non-Gaybo business to tempt him into staying open another week. Tempt him into thinking that if he could hang on till summer, maybe the cottage people and the theater crowd would just flood in this time, maybe they’d scatter the Gaybos for good, maybe . . .

But this Saturday night it was pouring out, and there was nobody here but the six Gaybos and the punk girl. A Saturday like this was pure perdition.

The music ended.

One of the Gaybos, Dan, called to Cassandra standing at the jukebox: “Jesus, Cassandra,
play
something. Quit looking for the Butthole Surfers. They’re just not
in there,
girl.”

And then Walter heard the vestibule’s outer door creak open and his heart jumped a little.

“Walter! A customer! Hide the airline glasses!”

The vestibule’s inner door opened.

A large black man came in. Tattered coat, mucked and bloodied all over. Lame, wild-eyed, leaving tracks, leaving the door open, the Gaybo Club speechless for the first time in its history.

The apparition crossed the room and sat at the bar.

The apparition said, “Could I have a . . . cranberry juice, please?”

The Gaybo Club exploded in laughter and applause.

“
That
was perfect.”

“
That
was a moment that will go down in Walter’s Quarantine Bar and Gaybo Club Hall of Fame.”

“God! Wonderful! Creature from the black lagoon comes in, orders a cranberry juice.”

The black man turned and smiled. “I must look a
sight,
huh?”

“You look like the last chapter of Revelations.”

“You look like Walter’s latest nightmare.”

“No, you look like Cassandra’s latest boyfriend.”

“Walter, get the man his juice! For Christ’s sake.”

Walter reluctantly poured out a cranberry juice from a can.

The black man took a sip, and made a face at the sourness. Then he downed the rest.

“How much?”

“Dollar.”

The black man put a dollar on the bar.

The Gaybo Club was still gaping amazed at him.

“What
happened
to you?”

He shrugged. “Went to a party. Got thrown out.”

“Whoa. Andy, why weren’t
you
there?”

“Tell Andy here the address! That sounds like Andy’s kind of party!”

Round of laughter. The black man shrugged again. “I don’t know the address. The Leppenraub farm.”

Silence. That struck a chord all around.

Walter pushed the dollar back toward the black man.

“You got thrown out by David Leppenraub? It’s on the house then. Have another. What the hell were you doing with that son of a bitch?”

“Playing piano.”

James spoke up. “Looks like you were playing pretty piss poor.”

The black man drank down his second cranberry juice.

“No, I think I played pretty well. The hostess said I was magnificent. I think they were just offended by something I said.”

“What did you say?”

“I said David Leppenraub was a murderer.”

“Whoa.”

James asked him, “Who’d he murder?”

“Scotty Gates. You know him?”

Said Andy, “The kid? The kid who modeled for him? He was murdered?”