The Caveman's Valentine (24 page)

“There are a lot of them.”

“I know. I’d have to have commandos to help me. We’d have to kill for
five days.”

R
omulus could not sleep in the tiny bed. In the utter silence, with fireflies flashing out the window, his eyes stayed open all night. However, in the morning the kids made a terrific racket, and that helped him to relax—he napped for an hour or two. Then he got up and went out. He walked to Miz Peasley’s.

She didn’t answer his knock. She was at work, of course. But he gave her a minute, just to be sure, and then he went around back.

Found the cottage where Joey had stayed.

Found it padlocked. He walked all around it. There were four small windows, but all were secure, and soon he was back at the door again, frowning at that padlock.

Romulus thought that perhaps a man raised in the ghetto ought to know how to pick a lock. Not he.

He went back to the big house. Tried the back door. Also locked. He walked around and found slanting cellar doors. He pulled at one of the old wooden wings—it resisted him. He pulled harder. Suddenly it sprang up. He grinned and shrugged and went down the steps into cool darkness.

The cellar had a lovely cave-smell, and a soft flow of sunlight from the doors, which he had left spread wide.

When his eyes adjusted, he saw the steps that led up into the house, and he climbed them. He came to the door at the top, groped in the dark for the doorknob and found it. It turned when he asked it to.

He was in the kitchen.

Such a tall kitchen. To find the ceiling you looked way up like you would in a church. The refrigerator was a museum piece. His great-uncle the dentist had owned one like that.

The key he was looking for was hanging on a string by the back door. He went out, returned to the cottage. The key opened the padlock.

The old door creaked open and he stepped into Joey’s place. Simply furnished. The flowers in the vase on the checkered tablecloth were as fresh as Miz Peasley had boasted. There was also a shelf with every ribbon or medal or flattering gewgaw that little Joey had ever brought home. Romulus saw in this decor the hand, the grabby eye, of Miz Peasley. He didn’t know Joey, of course, but it seemed unlikely that, on his own, the kid would have saved such trifles. No, the decor was his mother’s and she’d done a handsome job. It was truly a wonder what you could do with slave quarters when you fixed the roof and put in plumbing and AC and cut the occupancy from fourteen souls to one.

Romulus searched through every drawer he could find. He checked behind the cabinet. He checked the closet.

Then he stepped into the tiny bedroom. Not much to see— just a bed and a hook rug under it.

He thought a moment. Then he lifted the bed and slid the rug out, and saw the loose floorboard. When he saw that, he felt his pulse go up a notch. He set the bed down. He got down on his belly and slid under it a ways, and prized the board up with his fingertips.

A stink came up.

He slid forward a little farther and looked in. Not much light but he didn’t need much light—it was a shallow space. In the space was a mousetrap.

In the trap was a mouse who had made its mistake some time ago but still looked astonished.

Romulus stared at the thing. He understood that he had come a long way and gone to a great length of trouble for nothing. However, this was more or less what life was about, wasn’t it? He tidied the room and went outside and locked up and stood a moment in the shade of what he thought might well be a pecan tree. He had never seen a pecan tree but he knew they had leaves like this, fan leaves like a walnut had. And there were black husks, like shell casings, all over the grass. From last year’s crop.

Then he noticed a line in the grass.

Near his feet. A faint break, maybe a foot and a half long, and as he studied it, he noticed another break, at right angles to the first. In a few moments his eyes had picked out the whole square. Where someone had dug, and then carefully replaced the turf over the hole he’d made, and in another month of this warm spring the place would have been invisible.

Romulus knelt and got his fingers under that piece of turf and lifted, and the whole thing came up, like a piece of carpet. He moved it aside and scrabbled at the earth. He dug up a locked metal box.

He found some loose bricks and put them in the hole where the box had been. Rearranged the carpet of turf. Went back into the big house and put the key on its nail, and retraced his steps down to the cellar and up and out.

He carried the box back to Lavonia’s.

Nobody there. Lavonia was at work. The kids were in school. He spent twenty minutes picking at the lock on the box with an assortment of kitchen knives and forks. Then he looked for a hammer. It took him longer to find a hammer at Lavonia’s than it had taken him to find the locked box at Joey’s. When he finally found one under the kitchen sink it didn’t help him any. He took monster whacks but they only dented the box.

This was not elegant detective work.

He heard a saw going across the street and went over there where three men were building a garage. He borrowed a sledgehammer.

That did the trick.

The lid flew open. Inside the box was a small cardboard box with a videotape inside.

He returned the sledgehammer. The men’s T-shirts had cusps of sweat under the arms, bibs of sweat under the collars. If he could have given up his own work, and taken up theirs, he would have. If he could have been useful to them swinging that sledgehammer, if he didn’t have that videotape waiting for him over there in Lavonia’s . . .

He thanked them and went back and fixed himself some coffee.

He was going to watch the videotape while he drank the coffee, and then perhaps the indulgence of the one thing—fresh coffee!—in a kitchen!—sunny morning!—would assuage the ugliness of the other thing. But soon the coffee was all gone, and he still hadn’t touched the videotape.

Then he got a bit brisk with himself—he pushed the cup away and brought the videotape into the living room, and turned on the TV.

He studied the VCR controls for a long time before selecting one. Using his dim memory of the Bible for his instruction manual, he decided that Power was surely the prime mover, the essential beginning of things. He pushed. The machine sprang to attention. He fed it the tape, which it devoured.

Now what? Why, we’re all the frolicking children of Eden, what else should we do but Play?

I
t was a movie about pain.

Not about damage. The tape depicted some damage, but damage wasn’t its theme. The damage seemed somehow incidental to the pain.

Scotty Gates was manacled to a white wall. His back was to us. His face was in profile. While we watched, something happened to him. He winced, screamed. Then it happened again. But you couldn’t see what it was. The frame was cut off just above his waist, the damage was off screen.

All you saw was the look on Scotty Gates’s face. A glaze of old tears. A single bead of blood where he had bit his lip.

Then his voice. With the dead-echo of a confining chamber.

“Please. Why . . . are . . . you . . .”

Next, Leppenraub’s voice. Faint, far from the mike: “I love you.”

The thing was done to Scotty again. His head lurched upward, his carotid artery pulsed, his mouth opened and he cried out again.

“Please. Please. Please. Please.”

Leppenraub: “Look at me.”

Romulus had the feeling that whatever was being done to Scotty, Leppenraub wasn’t doing it.

He was having it done
for
him.

For David Leppenraub, Sheila. For his pleasure. You didn’t believe me. You thought he was too gentle, or too afraid. Nobody believed me, but I knew. I know what Stuyvesant can do to people. I’ve known all along, but none of you believed me. Now what do you say? Now the shit is before us, Sheila, it’s in plain view,
now
what do you say?

On the video, the thing was done to Scotty again.

Scotty: “I don’t . . .
why?
Please tell me why, what’s the
point,
what’s the . . . what’s the purpose? Do you think this is art? This is—”

Leppenraub: “Look at me. I want you to look at me with your wonderful eyes.”

C
ut to Scotty slumped in another white corner, staring up at the camera. His limbs were splayed, limp. No manacles now. There was no more need for manacles.

Scotty asked: “Is there . . . something . . . I can do? To stop . . .”

He was shuddering. His voice trembled. He brought his arms up to fold them across his chest and something flashed toward him. Snakelike, rubbery, and a sharp slap was heard on the sound track and Scotty’s hands fell to his sides.

“Please.
Isn’t there something you want?”

Leppenraub: “What sins have you committed?”

Shuddering. Spasms. “I can’t . . . I can’t . . . no more.”

Again he raised his arms, to wrap them around himself.

Again the blurred snake, Scotty too weary to flinch. He groaned.

Leppenraub: “You’re too soft.”

“You’re brilliant. You’re
brilliant.
All right? But I can’t . . . it’s not . . .”

The lash.

Leppenraub: “How annoying.”

“Brill . . . brilliant . . . art . . .”

He tried to curl up fetally.

The lash stopped him. The lash liked him to stay open, undefended.

Leppenraub: “You’re a glutton,”

Leppenraub’s voice seemed bored and remote. Seemed he was making this movie only because he and his friends had nothing better to do that day.

Fuck a kid up for life, it’s fun, sure, it’s something to while away a rainy day, but that’s about as far as it goes. Really, it’s scarcely worth the effort.

It was just
play
for Leppenraub. It was a break from making his gentle art.

R
omulus heard the screen door shut behind him. He wheeled in his chair.

Millie was there. She was looking at the screen.

“What you watching?”

He rose. He tried to shield her with his body. She tried to see around him.

“Millie, it doesn’t matter. Aren’t you home early?”

“Half day. I have to wait and Miz Grey will pick me up. Is that a good show?”

“Wait outside for Miz Grey, OK, Millie?”

“That man don’t have no clothes on. Is that man hurt?”

“Millie, here’s fifty cents. Is there some kind of candy that you like?”

“Yes.”

Behind him, Scotty groaned.

“Go buy it. At the little store. Don’t cross any big streets, right? When you come back wait outside.”

“OK.”

“Is that a promise, you’ll wait outside?”

“Yes.”

F
ull-length shot of Scotty facing the camera. Again the manacles. A hypodermic syringe dangled from his arm.

There was nothing left of him.

His lower lip was so weirdly slack you could see his gums. There were deep furrows between his eyes, but the eyes themselves had no expression, or they had drawn all expression deep within themselves. They had carried their lights inside and shut the doors.

Now it was more than pain, it was an
exhaustion
of pain.

Scotty spoke. It was hard to hear him. He said, “How . . . long?”

Leppenraub: “What? What’s the matter?”

“Let me . . .”

“There’s no way out.”

“Fuck you. You . . . fucking bastard.”

“Don’t cry, little peasant.”

No blood. No crimson or bruise-purple. All white, shades of white. Stuyvesant’s favorite color.

Said Scotty, “Why don’t you let me die?”

Leppenraub, mocking him: “Oh, if only this were over
quickly!”

In the background, faintly, laughter could be heard. His audience.

Said Scotty, “Why not . . . mercy? Why not? This hurts. Let me sleep. Let me . . . why not . . . show some mercy?”

“What sins have you committed?”

Romulus heard the screen door slam again. He said, “Millie, I told you to wait outside!”

But it wasn’t Millie.

It was a young white man, blond, strong, spare. He glanced at the screen, and then into Romulus’s eyes. He went to the VCR and he hit Eject and took the tape out.

He turned to Romulus.

He said, “You don’t want to watch this. I promise you, you don’t. This will give you nightmares.”

H
is eyes were bloodshot. He looked like he was familiar with nightmares.

“Joey?”

“Yeah, that’s a name all right. It’s not my name, not now.”

“So what do I call you? Clive Leif?”

“Not that either. That sounds like some phony theater name, and I’m no longer involved with that life. You don’t have to call me anything, mister. You won’t know me long enough for this to be a problem.”

Romulus asked him, “How’d you know I was here?”

“My mother called me.”

“She said she doesn’t have your number.”

“Well, that was smart of her to say. Tomorrow I’ll get my number changed, so next time she says it, it’ll be true.”

Romulus asked him, “But how’d you find me
here?
I didn’t tell your mother where I was staying.”

“Yeah, but from the way she described you, I had an idea Shady Rest hadn’t given you the presidential suite.”

“How did she describe me?”

“She said you were black.”

“Oh.”

“Also kind of scruffy-looking, but black would have been enough for Shady Rest. Safe bet you’d wound up here.”

“Right.”

“If you’re planning on staying awhile, there’s a nice cave down by Amos Creek.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.”

“Is that for real?”

“Is what for real?”

“Mama says you live in a cave?”

“I do. I wouldn’t say it’s
for real,
but it’s where I live.”

“You’re not a detective?”

“Not so I get a paycheck.”

“But you found this tape in a hurry.”

“Luck.”