The end of the night (18 page)

sound flat. His mind with always racing ahead of his words so that at times he was almost incoherent. And there was a flavor of holiday about him. That's the best word I can find. He was living up every minute, enjoying hell out of it, and he pulled you along with him. You were certain he was a ludicrous type, and you kept wondering what he would say and do next. He was ludicrous, but he was alarming too. He was making up his own rules as he went along.

They had a bottle of tequila anejo on the floor. Sandy and the girl were drinking it very sparingly out of little porcelain sake cups which had come out of his beat-up, bulging rucksack, I found out later. Shack was belting it down. I bought a house setup and, on invitation, started belting along with him.

Shack and Nan took no part in the conversation. They stared at me from time to time without approval. I was the outsider. And, way in back of all Sandy's effusiveness, was a disdain which also marked me as one who was not of the group. I was a sample of the outside world, and they were examining me.

The conversation with Sandy spun in a lot of dizzy directions. He was showing off, I knew, and I was waiting for a chance to trap him. I didn't get it until he got onto classical music. Do not ask me how we got onto that. I remember dimly that the conversation went from Brubeck to Mulligan to Jamal and then jumped back a century or so.

"All those old cats borrowed from each other," he said. "They dug each other and snatched what they liked. Debussy, Wagner, Liszt—hell, they admitted taking stuff off Chopin. Take that Bach character. He lifted from Scarlatti."

"No," I said flatly. The tequila was getting to me.

"What do you mean—no?"

"Just plain old no, Sandy. You missed the scoop. Vivaldi influenced Bach, if that's who you're thinking of. Antonio Vivaldi. Alessandro Scarlatti was the opera boy. He influenced Mozart, maybe. Not Bach."

He sat as still as a bird on a limb, staring at me, then suddenly snapped his fingers. "Scarlatti, Vivaldi. I switched wops. You're right, Kirboo. What goes with education? I thought all you types learned was Group Adjustment and Bride Selection." He turned to the others. "Hey, maybe I got somebody to talk to, you animals. Shack, hand me the sack."

Shack bent and picked the rucksack off the floor. Sandy

he.i :: in hi? ]£r 2.nd opened it. He took out a plastic com-rim:e-:ei b>?x. I: nv^s shout eight inches long, r«^o inches crer. :c;ir inches v,-ide. v* iih six compartments in it The com-pirin^fnis «'ere iimos: fuli of pills.

He iockec It his ^v^tch. took rw'o pills out, two different or.es. 2^z rushec :hem ^^ er in front of Nan, She took them v.-:ihoi;: co~n-e-:.. He pj: t.'«o aside for himself. Then he se.ec:ei three LTid rushed then- o^e^ lo me. One was a small £-2v mmzie v»-:ih rcunded e>?rr.ers. One was a green-and-v.h:ic capsule. The ihird was i sntaii. -.^hite, round pill.

"Eat in s«xl faeakfa,'' he said.

I was aware of haw intently the three of them were watching me. "What are flieyr'

"Tbsftk pm ipon way oot m front, college boy. They'll get 3|)oii off die cmb and into the parade. They won't book you. Miracfcs ftf modem me

If I had anytfaiqg left to lose, I c»uldn\ remember what it was. I wadied tibem down with tequila. '^ouVe got a supply there;' I said.

Nan joined the conversation for the v&ry first time. "Chris-sake, he had diose prescription pads in L..\. and any time anybody goes any plaoe, they got to hit a new drugstore for Doc Golden. He papered &e town.'*

In €M Latin,"" Sandy said, patting the box. "It gives me this deep sense of security.^

"WhatTl they do to a square?" Nan asked.

*niialfs what we^re checking out, man,"' Golden told her.

As we talked I waited for something to happen. I didn^t have any idea what to expect. It all happened so gradually that I wasn't aware of the change. Suddenly I realized that my of e waythii ^ around me had been heightened. The ccAor of tiie sun outside, the stale beer\' smell of the loom, Naur's iHtften nails, Shack's thick hairy Sanity's eyes quick behind the crooked lenses. The edges of ewayth ing were diaiper. The edge of my mind was sharper. When Sanity talked I seemed to be able to anticipate each wont a firaction tit a second b^ore he said it, like an echo in reverae. There was a steady tremor in my hands. When I wasn't talking, I cienrhcd my teeth so ti^btly they hurt When I my head it seemed to be on a ratchet, rather than tum-I had a constant butterfly feding of anticipation in my gpt. And everything in the worid fitted. Everything went and I knew the special philosophical significance of

The End of the Night T?:?

everything. Sometimes I seemed to see ".' through the wrong end of a telescope^ tiny, . their faces would swell to the size erf bmh was an amusing monster. Nan was loaded w: Sandy was a genius. They were tlic finetf Htti^ _ met.

And the talk. My God, how I coidd talk' came, the special wordi, so I gooM taft: lil need the tequila. I got onto a taQEii^ js^ I fists on the table and, leaioDg futwaid, I ic' -story, all of it, and I laaem as I was tdffiing : pitiful shame there was ae tape f eoot d e t th. be saved. I told it all, and ' ran down.

"He's really humming, -, iaid fondty.

"Too much D?" Nan suggested.

"He's big. He can use a heavy charge. Sc ;.: place at all, Kirboo?"

"No place, oq my own tinne, free as a fat -^ ears were ringing. 1 coidd bear way hteaxK Isk-. mering on a tree.

"Well go to New Orleans." 5, wild friends and playnrntes i: -scrounge a pad and live fru..:..

"This party gets biggar, wc can :ti: _ 1 -said sourly.

"Look at aU he can leam,* Saz _ mind off his problems, Naiio. Whc:; .- .■ - — kindness?"

"We don't need him," ^tfsai said.

Sandy, quick as light, ti—pgrf her head with his fist that for a mome-: ': t: -. :.

"You're a drag," he said, grinn.:. : - -:

"So we need him," she said. "Yc _ _: i : i _ the skull, man."

"I can let Shack do it, you

I didn't know at ^lat time appeared with a magical sw--j -. steady, pale as meccoary, ten ir

"Hit me one time, Heman _. heavy mouth as she spoke. ".

"Aw, for Chrissake, Nan," : . . _ huh. I haven't done nothing."

There were two customers at the bar. T^t

around the end of the bar and over to the table. "No knives, hey," he said. "No knives. Don't give me trouble."

As Nan folded the knife and lowered it below the edge of the table, Shack stood up. There was a hell of a lot of him to come up so quickly and lightly. "You need trouble?" he asked.

"No. That's what I was saying, fella. I don't want trouble." He turned away. Shack caught him in one stride, caught him by the forearm and spun him around.

"I got mixed up," Shack said. "I thought you were asking for trouble."

The man was big and soft. I saw his face turn suddenly gray and sweaty. I didn't understand until I looked at Shack's hand on the man's arm. Shack seemed to be holding him casually. But his iron fingers were deep in the soft, round arm. The man's knees sagged and he forced himself erect with an effort.

"No . . . trouble," he said in a weak, gasping way.

"That's nice," Shack said. "Okay." For a moment his face was contorted with effort. The man gave a faraway bleating sound and closed his eyes and sagged down onto one knee. Shack hauled him up, gave him a gentle shove toward the bar and released him. The man tottered back to the bar. Shack sat down.

"The philosophy of aggression," Sandy said. "She got sore at me and took it out on Shack who took it out on fatso. Tonight, when he gets home, he beats up on his old lady. She kicks the kid. The kid kicks the dog. The dog kills a cat. End of the line. Aggression always ends up with something dead, Kirboo. Remember that. It's the only way to end the chain. She put the knife in Shack's throat, that would have ended it We're all animals. Let's get out of here."

We went out into a low slant of sunlight. I had the cheap, shiny, Mexican suitcase. Sandy Golden had his rucksack slung over one shoulder. Nan carried a large, sleazy hatbox,- a drumlike thing covered with red plastic stamped in an alligator pattern. Shack had his few possessions in a brown paper bag. The world was bright, aimless and indifferent. We hitched for an hour. There were too many of us. It didn't seem to matter. Nan sat on my upended suitcase. Sandy talked about the sexual impUcations of the design of the American automobile. In the last light of the day an old man in a stake truck stopped. He had the three of us get in back and he got Nan in front with him. He dumped us in Brackettville, thirty miles away. He had

to turn north there. We ate questionable little hamburgers in a sour cafe.

I had been with them long enough to sense the undercurrents between them. Shack was stalking Nan with a relentless patience, with implacable purpose. When he moved near her, his neck looked swollen. She was aware of it, and so was Golden. But Shack was stopped just short of savage directness by his pathetic desire to please Sandy in all ways. It wasn't the knife stopping him. I'd seen him move. He could have cuffed it out of her hand before she could have used it. The focus of his desire was so strong it was like a musk in the air.

We found a place in Brackettville. A dollar and a half a bed. Moldering Httle eight-by-ten cabins faced in imitation yellow brick, each one with an iron double bed that sagged like a hammock, one forty-watt bulb, one stained sink with a single faucet, one chair, two narrow windows, one door. Cracked linoleum on the floor. Outhouse out back. Sheets hke gray Kleenex. Nails in the studding for coat hangers. The Paradise Cabins.

There were six cabins and we were the only trade. We took three. Four and a half dollars for three beds. We sat around Sandy and Nan's cabin—Shack on the chair, Sandy and me on the bed. Nan on the floor. We talked. Sandy finally doled out pills.

'These all by themselves are death, man," he said. "You go down six feet under, where the worms talk to you."

We broke it up. I was in the middle cabm. I wasted no time piling into the sack, trying not to think about bugs. I fell away so fast I didn't even hear her come in. I woke up with a great start when she wound herself around me, saying in an irritable, conversational tone, "Hey! Hey, you! Hey!" She jostled me insistently.

I had fallen so deeply into sleep so quickly that time and place were out of joint, and with an almost unbearable joy I put my arms around Kathy Keats and found her mouth with mine. But the lips were wrong, and her textures were wrong, and her hair had a musty smell. Kathy was gray and dead, and as I remembered that, everything else cUcked into place.

I took my mouth from hers and said, "Nan?"

"Do you think it's for Chrissake little Bo Peep," she said in a sleepy, sulky voice, administering a caress as mechanical as any song lyric.

"I didn't know you cared, kid."

"Shut up, will you? Sandy said pay you a visit. So here I am and so get it the hell over with, will you, without all the conversation."

Had I not awakened thinking she was Kathy, it would have been impossible. But it was not, and so we got it the hell over with because it seemed easier than sending her back with a no-thanks message for Sandy. With meaningless dexterity, she made it very quick indeed, and rolled out and, in the faint light, stepped into her slacks. She'd left her blouse on.

"Tell Sandy thanks," I said, with rancid amusement

"Tell him yourself, sometime," she said, and the screen door creaked and banged shut as she left. Before I could enjoy my own bitterness, I fell back into sleep.

I learned Sandy's special motive on Monday when it was almost noon and we were a mile east of Brackettville on 90, swinging high and clear on Dr. Golden's encapsulated joy, thumbing the cars that whined by, trailing dust devils. Sandy reached over and patted Nan on the firm seat of her slacks in a proprietary way and said, "Did this chick do you right when I sent her to you last night, Kirboo, or did she drag?"

"She . . . she was fine," I lied, feeling uneasy.

And I had to turn and look at Shack. His face had turned a swollen red and he was staring at Sandy, and looking as if he had lost his last friend. He looked as though he would break into tears.

"Jeez-Chri, Sandy!" he said, "How come it's okay for him, but you never ..."

"Don't we have to teach this upstanding young man aU about life and reaUty, Shack? Would you deprive him of an education?"

"I figured you just didn't want to share, and that was okay, but if you're going to do like that, I'm going to . . ."

"You're going to what?" Sandy demanded, moving close to Shack,

"I just meant . . ."

"You want to go to New Orleans, or do you want to go back to Tucson, Hernandez?"

"I want to come along, Sandy, but . . ."

"Then shut up. Okay?"

Shack gave a long and weary sigh. "Okay. Anything you say, Sandy."

The scene had elements of the bull ring in it. Hernandez

could have snapped Sandy's spine in his hands. The girl was the cape, spread in front of the black bull, then whipped gracefully away as he charged. I knew Sandy was testing his own strength and control. But when the scene was over, Shack looked at me in a way that made me entirely uncomfortable. Up until then he had been indifferent toward me. But now I could sense that he wanted to get those big hands on me.