The Name of the Game is Death (3 page)

Five days Inter there was another envelope.

Seven days later there wasn't.

The mail clerk handed me a telegram addressed to Earl Drake. I got away from his window fast and opened it. It said IN TROUBLE STAY PUT DO NOTHING WILL CALL YOU. DICK.

I stared blankly at the recruiting posters on the walls. Bunny was in trouble, all right, but not the kind I was supposed to think. The telegram was a clinker. When we'd Inst teamed up, I'd arranged with Bunny that a telegram from either of us was to be signed "Abie."

I tut that was just the least thing wrong with the telegram. If he lived to be a hundred-and-four, Bunny would never call me about anything. The knife slash that gave him the livid throat scar had also reached his vocal cords. Bunny was a mute.

Bunny hadn't sent the telegram.

Only someone who had intercepted a thousand-dollar envelope meant for Earl Drake could have sent the telegram. I looked at it again. It had originated in Hudson, Florida.

I drove back to The Tropics and found Hudson in an atlas. It was a crossroads town south of Perry on U.S. 19, en route to Tampa.

I checked out of the motel.

The soreness was gone from the shoulder. It was still stiff, but it would have to do. Three-fifty, four hundred miles a day without killing myself, I figured. Five days.

Knowing Bunny, I was sure there was only one way he could have been dealt out of the game.

I had business in Hudson, Florida.

The only time I was ever in the pen, the boss headshrinker gave me up as a bad job.

"You're amoral," the prison psychiatrist told me. "You have no respect for authority. Your values lire not civilized values."

That was after he'd Hipped his psychiatric lid at his inability to pierce my defense mechanism, as he called it. I had him taped from the first sixty seconds. He didn't care what I was; he just wanted to know how I got that way. It was none of his damn business, so I gave him a hard way to go.

Oh, I could have told him things. About the kitten, for Instance. I was maybe eleven or twelve. Fifth or sixth guide. I saw this kitten in the window of a pet shop. A blue Persian, although right then I couldn't have told it from a spotted Manx. I ran my finger across the glass and watched her little pink nose and big bronze eyes follow it, and I knew she was for me.

I went home to make my case. I wasn't from any underprivileged family. The kitten's price might have jolted my folks a little, but I wasn't in the habit of asking for much. I was the youngest in the family, with a bushel of sisters and mints, so getting me the kitten became a family project. I they'd been trying for some time to get me to play more with the neighborhood kids. I'd given up trying to explain that other kids gave me a pain, king-sized.

I named the kitten Fatima. First syllable accented, ail short vowel sounds. It seemed to suit her coppery eyes and smoky coloring. I played with her by the hour. I even taught her tricks. No one teaches a kitten anything it doesn't want to learn, but Fatima humored me. We had a grand time together.

I still got a load of guff frequently from the family about not participating more with my age group. I paid no attention. I had Fatima, and she was all the company I needed. In some moods she was a natural-born clown, but in others she had an aloof dignity. I'd never have believed that anything so tiny could be so fearless. Fatima would have tackled a lion if one had got in her way.

Some women's organization in town gave a pet show. YWCA, Junior League, Women's Club, American Legion Auxiliary, BPOE Does—I don't remember which, but I remember women were running it. I bought a little red leash for Fatima out of my paper-route money, and I entered her in the show.

Fatima and her red leash knocked their eyes out. She was a real ham. She sat up in the center of the outdoor ring and went through her whole bag of tricks, better than she did them for me in private. She went through the kitten and cat classes like a streak, and we were brought back for best in show. In the ring for the final judging there was Fatima, a big boxer dog. a black rabbit, a hamster, a goat, and a bowl of topical fish shaded from the sunlight.

The boxer belonged to a kid who went to the same school I did, a fat tub of lard a grade or so ahead of me. I knew him by sight. If I ever knew his name, I've forgotten it. When I saw the boxer, I steered Fatima to the other side of the ling, She just plain didn't like dogs. The fat kid saw what I was doing, and he followed me in a smart-alecky way.

Fatima swelled her throat ruff and hissed a Persian's surprisingly loud hiss at the boxer. The fat kid laughed. I asked 111111 to move his dog away. Deliberately he gave him more leash The boxer leaned down for a closer look, and quicker than I can say it, Fatima raked his nose. The boxer snarled, then snapped. Just once.

Fatima lay on the grass, one tiny little dot of blood on her ruff. Her neck had been broken. The big dog nosed at the inanimate bit of blue gray fur, then looked up at me as though half-ashamed. I didn't blame the boxer. He'd done the natural thing for any dog.

I picked up Fatima's body and turned blindly away. All I wanted was to get out of there. The fat kid—who'd first looked scared and then defiant—grabbed my arm and spun me around. "Look!" he crowed. "Lookit him! Cryin' like a baby!"

I beat the shit out of him.

The women got me off him finally. I was scuffed up, and so were a couple of them. There was a hell of a lot of gabble-gabble I walked out on. I took Fatima home and buried her in the backyard.

That was Saturday. Sunday I hung around the house most of the day. Monday afternoon I waited in the schoolyard for the fat kid, and I beat the shit out of him all over again.

That night his father came over to my house, and there was a big pow-wow. My family was surprised to learn about Fatima's having been killed. They hadn't missed her. Finally they settled everything to their satisfaction. The fat kid's father would get me another kitten, and I would apologize to the fat kid.

I told them no. I was polite, but I told them no. I told them I didn't want anything from anyone. My father took me upstairs for a little talk. I listened and said nothing. When he saw he was getting nowhere, we went back downstairs. The pow-wow broke up with all the adults making baffled sounds at each other.

The next afternoon I had to chase the fat kid from school clear to within a couple blocks from his house before I caught him. It didn't help him a bit when I did.

There was a lot of telephoning that night. My father was mad. He took me upstairs again and gave me a licking. He said we were going over to the fat kid's house, and I was going to apologize. I was still crying from the licking, but I told him I wouldn't do it. He made a lot of sputtering noises before he left the bedroom. We didn't go

anywhere.

Later that night our minister came to the house. He talked to me for a long time—all about the unexplainable things that happen in life and the necessity for understanding. I listened to him. I was polite. I wasn't going to give them a chance to call me surly or bad-mannered. When he was tired of talking, the minister went away. I don't think even he thought he'd accomplished much.

The fat kid wasn't in school the next day. I was disappointed. When I got home, there was something for me. The fat kid's father had left a carrying case with a blue Persian kitten. I didn't say anything to my mother or my sisters. I took the case out into the backyard, and when they stopped watching me I walked crosslots to the pet shop and gave the case and kitten back. I told the pet shop man to give the fat kid's father his money back. The pet shop man looked funny, but he took the kitten, and he didn't say anything.

My father blew his stack when he got home that night. I didn't answer him back when he started in on me. All I wanted was to be let alone, and no one would let mc alone. My father said I was damn well going to do what I was told, and if the new kitten wasn't back in the house the next night the consequences would be mine. I knew it wasn't going to be there.

So when I got a licking the next night it was partly for having caught the fat kid again on his way home from school, and partly for not having gone back to the pet shop for the kitten.

The next day in school I was called down to the principal's office. He talked a long time, too. The gist of it was that one more go-round with the fat kid and I'd be expelled from school. I asked him politely what the situation had to do with school. I can still see his face tightening up. muscle by muscle. The principal said sharply I was persevering in an attitude I would regret to the last day I lived, but he never did answer my question.

The fat kid wasn't in school that day, but I got a licking anyway that night for not having brought the kitten home. I got another the next night, and another the next. They were almost ritualistic by then, without a word being said on cither side. I overheard my mother arguing with my father about his handling of me, and him shouting at her. I was sorry to hear it. I didn't want sympathy. I didn't want anything. I was stronger than they were, and I knew it. I had undivided purpose. I didn't feel like a martyr. I felt like someone doing what he had to do.

At school I was having trouble finding the fat kid. He was leaving by different doors, at different times. It was three days later before I caught him. The next morning I was back in the principal's office. He wasn't there, but his secretary told me I was expelled. She looked kind of funny all the time she was telling me. I just kind of hung around nil day and went home at the usual time.

My mother and sisters were all waiting for me. At first I thought it was about being expelled, but they hadn't heard. They'd bought me a new Persian kitten. I thanked them. I wasn't mad at them about anything. I wasn't mad at my father about anything. I fed the new kitten because it was a poor dumb animal that needed my help, but I didn't play with it.

My father came home early, in a tearing rage. The principal had called him. When he saw the new kitten and learned where it had come from, he clouded up and thundered my mother and sisters about going behind his back. They turned on him
en masse,
and it astonished him. He didn't change his mind, exactly, but for the first time in better than a week I got to bed that night without a licking. I had to admit I was glad. My right shoulder had

been hurting a little worse each of the last three days. I made a bed for the new kitten and went to bed early myself.

By noon the next day I had caught up again on lickings. Before breakfast I slipped out of the house and waited for the fat kid on his way to school. He screamed like a girl just at the sight of me. I was in the house at ten o'clock when my father came home from work and marched me

upstairs. He really laid it into me. About an hour afterward I was sick to my stomach.

I didn't go downstairs for lunch. My stomach still felt bad, and my shoulder was really giving me a hard time. I tried staying in bed, but that made the shoulder worse. Around two o'clock my mother came into my room. She looked at my eyes, put her hand on my forehead, and called the doctor. I had a broken collarbone, and the doctor strapped me up like a mummy. He asked me about the marks on my body. I didn't answer him. It was none of his business. Afterward I heard him talking to my mother out in the hall, and my mother was crying.

I took it easy the rest of the afternoon. I wondered how I could keep after the fat kid with an arm strapped down, but I knew I'd find a way. I was sitting downstairs leafing through an encyclopedia when my oldest sister came flying into the house. She ran into the kitchen without seeing me, and I heard her breathlessly telling my mother about a big moving van in front of the fat kid's house.

His family was moving away.

I don't know why I was so sure they were moving out of town. Maybe because I knew they knew I'd find him if They lived anywhere in the same town. I felt a deep sense of peace.

And just like that, it ended.

The shoulder healed in live weeks.

In eight they let me back into school.

Around the house the subject was never mentioned.

In a year I think everyone had honestly forgotten.

Except me.

I made El Paso the first night.

Highway 20 through Mesa, Safford, and Duncan in Arizona brought me to Lordsburg, New Mexico. Between Safford and Duncan the desert is for real. The stark, multi-colored rock and sand of buttes and coulees grimly overshadow the sparse greenery of saguaro cactus, mesquite, and palos verde.

Highways 70* and 80 join up at Lordsburg and run together through Deming to Las Cruees. I turned south there on 80 to El Paso. The temperature when I left Phoenix had been eighty-five. Rolling past the railroad-marshaling yards in El Paso, there was a flurry of snow in the headlights. Altitude makes a difference. The odometer on the Ford said 409 miles when I pulled into a motel on the east side of town.

I'd pushed it a bit to make El Paso. I had a reason. I had to get my arm attended to before the bandage became a part of the tissue. I knew where I could get it cared for, no questions asked, across the International Bridge in Juarez.

The motel office had signs at the front desk advertising fabulous guided tours of the fabulous city of Ciudad Juarez in fabulous Old Mexico. I had them call the agency, and in thirty minutes a potbellied little Mex showed up to guide me. He was about thirty-five, with the eyes of a well-fed weasel. Six dollars changed hands, and we took off in his car.

He was a cheerful talker. Compulsive, almost. He had been baptized Jaime Carlos Torreon Garcia, he told me, but his friends called him Jimmy. He worked for Pan Am in El Paso, but lived in Juarez. He guided nights and weekends. Would I care to see the most excellent Mexican filigreed silver, handworked? I regretted that on Mexican filigreed handworked silver I was loaded. Jimmy was too old a hand at the game even to look disappointed at my turndown.

It was a twenty-minute ride from the motel to the bridge. On the way across it, Jimmy had a sparkling remark for everyone at the check-in stations—English for the US customs men, Spanish for the Mexican soldiers. No one bothered to look at me. With the number of trips Jimmy made over that bridge, he was better known than the president of the country. Either country.