by Gil Meynier
Oh, that, thought Joe. Why were people always interrupting him when he was thinking.
“Who took her where, why?” said Joe as if it mattered.
Dorry started to tell him that Mrs. Fred had gone after the men who were putting the tarpaulin over the corner of the house. She had fought them with an ax-handle. She had never said a word; she had just tried to fight them off with an ax-handle. She didn’t want anybody to touch the house. That was after the ambulance had gone. They took her away in a police car. It was awful.
Joe turned on his heels and walked out of the room. What the hell did he care what happened to the old woman? Let Jard cry over it. She was doing a good job of it.
He was thinking of the belt. What could have happened to it?
He went to Mayhew’s room. It was locked. He reached for his pocketknife to take off the lock, then he thought better of it. He’d have to wait until he was alone in the house. He went into his room and squinted through the peephole. Everything in Mayhew’s room was the way it usually was. Hell, the belt wouldn’t be there!
Now, what!
He needed that belt. If he hadn’t passed out like a damn fool he would have had a chance at it. He’d have it by now.
Sometimes Joe felt like giving up. He had to work so damn hard for everything he got. With the belt he could have bought a car and gone off. With a car you can stay in one of those swanky tourist courts, the kind with Venetian blinds, and be somebody. They had taken all that away from him. And that left him just where he was before. And all that, all that...effort, for nothing.
The coolness that traveled in the bowels of the storm was wearing off. It was hot and muggy again. Maybe that was what was bothering him. He kicked the door shut and sat on his bed.
All of a sudden he didn’t like the way he felt. It frightened him. It was the beginning of a feeling of terror that was slowly creeping into him. It was what had made him want to close his door and sit down. He had been all right up to now. He had done a fine job with the police, but now it was beginning to bother him. There was a moment, out there, when he had seemed to see everything in sharp, microscopic detail...It was coming back. He was seeing it. He didn’t want to look at it, but he was seeing it. He didn’t want to think about it, but it seemed to insist that it wanted to be thought about. And it was knowing that thinking about it was making him sick, and trying not to think about it was making him want to be sick, that made him feel this way. And knowing that it was going to bother him, and not knowing what it would do to him when it did bother him...it was the terror of being tempted to give up, of falling to the temptation of giving up and saying: I did it, and not being able to stop saying it, or saying it when he didn’t intend to say it. The way it had hit him, just now. Suppose he suddenly wanted to walk up to a policeman and say: I did it. That was the danger, the constant risk, the terror. Unless it really had been an accident. If everybody said it was an accident, then it would be an accident. All of it. Even that very small part of it that had been a push, that very small part of it that was insisting on being thought about, the push that he was now, at this very moment, feeling, at the very moment when he was trying not to think about it. He was no longer seeing it; he was feeling it, and it was making him just as sick, sicker. He knew he was looking sick, frightened-sick, and if anybody saw him like that, there would be hands on his shoulders, forcing him into a chair, making him talk and say things that weren’t true. That’s why he had closed the door. And there was the fear of that bottomless feeling of fainting, and the terror of knowing that he sometimes fainted. Suppose he fainted when he was trying to get away from something. Fainting shouldn’t be. It was inhuman, monstrous. They say that if you hold your head down...
His head down between his knees, his folded arms pressing against his stomach, he was beginning to feel better when he heard the knock at the door.
He straightened up, his head strangely heavy. He said:
“Yeah?”
“Joe,” said Mrs. Jard from the hall, without opening the door, “I think I ought to tell you that the city people are ordering us out of this house. They have condemned it. I mean they are condemning it today and we have to move out. Of course, you can do what you please.”
Joe looked at the closed door and listened to Mrs. Jard’s steps going down the hall.
He didn’t want to stay there anyway.
He had nineteen bucks.
Funny how your thoughts can slow down. Now all he was thinking was that he didn’t want to stay here anyway. And nineteen bucks. There was no longer any racing around in his head. He just thought he didn’t want to stay here anyway. His thoughts did not go any further than that. Even about the nineteen bucks. His thoughts did not go any further than that. On the whole he felt kind of indifferent.
If he could stay feeling like that he could go away somewhere, maybe, where people would leave him alone. Indifferent. That was the way to be.
13
INDIFFERENT is the earth beneath the passing storms. Indifferent, on its course, it endures while ephemeral growths and humans shiver, fret and grope. Between acceptance and rebellion the minds of humans waver. Acceptance, the patient landscape and rebellion, the blowing wind, the lashing storm.
In Jard, rebellion is a frowning, a shaking of the head, a small defiant gesture. The gesture that makes her pack hurriedly, muttering: “They can’t keep her. She must be with someone who understands her, poor thing. I’m going to take her to my little farm. They can’t stop me.” A gesture that extends as far as the center of town, as far as whatever it is that is holding Mrs. Fred in its grip. Jard will go down there and tell them they can’t keep her. The order of things, whatever it is, will have to be changed so that Jard, her arm around Mrs. Fred, can take her down the road to the little farm. It is frightening to think that she may get lost in official corridors she does not understand, but Jard is going to fight. Rebellion hovers close to acceptance when she stops packing for a moment and thinks: Isn’t it a shame people don’t have better luck than they have! She isn’t thinking of herself. Poor Mr. Mayhew.
In Dorry, acceptance of things as they are is a fertile, rolling field because things as they are are human, people are good and bad, love is warm and alive, and sad, too. Rebellion is not against the nature of laws, not against what is not understood, but against what people make you do as they look blindly past you into their own problems. She does not rebel against her trouble, nor does she rebel against the acceptance of trouble. She rebels at the loneliness of human beings when they feel human. She thinks: Oh, why is it so difficult to be happy when it is so easy. She smiles because she knows that she is capable of being happy. Then she thinks: Poor Mr. Mayhew...so pink...I wonder if he was happy. And she feels sad, sad as if she had really known him, because she knows that life is warm and it is sad when life withdraws and the warmth goes away.
Mayhew. In him rebellion was a tiny plume he wore in the band of his hat. His lifeless body, as it lay briefly in the mud, was where it had always been, close to the patient earth while the twinkling plume fluttered in the wind. He had never rebelled at the inevitable. He had chuckled at it. He had been mildly rebellious at the humdrumness of life until he discovered that accepting it without revolt was sufficient rebellion. Nimini pimini, he used to say, shrugging his shoulders, refusing to rebel is rebellion enough.
Mrs. Fred had no thoughts on the subject but, actively she struggled against the inexplicable changes brought on by the passage of time. That fence, it was new just a while back—why should those staves suddenly fall off the rusted nails? Those men, why should they put that old tarp over the corner of the house? That rounded mound of melted adobe bricks—that’s what it was for. That’s what those bricks were for. And people telling you that old stump was a tamarisk when just a little while back it had been a...something else. What did it used to be?
Strangely enough, Stringer is not a rebel, unless contempt is a form of rebellion rather than a form of acceptance. He does not rebel at l
aws, or law enforcement. He is contemptuous of the inadequacy of people’s laws as he is contemptuous of people’s frightened efforts to live within their laws and standards. Dorry he considers the only real person he has met in a long time. So, I’m going to help her, he thinks.
In the little restaurant, the waitress says: “Gee!” and she shakes her head sadly when the deputy sheriff tells her what happened. She does not say more than that because she knows that if she lets herself go she will say how she rebels at the unimportance of death. Not the unimportance of dying, because, gosh, that’s about the most important thing that could happen to you, but the way people made it seem unimportant—“that old fellow kicked the bucket; bring me another bowl of chili, honey”—gosh, even if you’re going to be a waitress all your life, you should be treated like somebody when you die.
There was not much rebellion in the deputy sheriff, he would say. Except, perhaps, at the fact that some guys do all the work while others get all the publicity. And, maybe, at the fact that you were never really appreciated. Take dropping in on that inquest out of curiosity, the way he did because his friend on the police force was going and had said: “Aw, come on and then I’ll drive you home.” Well, nobody was going to appreciate his doing all those little off-duty things like noticing that the pale youngster who rented the black Packard was there. Lived in the same house with the man who had been killed by a falling timber or something. Or that one of those Italians was mixed up in it some way. Drove the blonde away after the inquest. No, nobody was going to appreciate little things like that.
Unappreciated, indifferent, the mountain-rimmed bowl of landscape lay beneath a lid of clouds that stretched endlessly in all directions. Yonder a shaft of sunlight pierced the greyness and diffused its light on a dragging trail of rain, miles away. Peaks and the outlines of mountain ranges reared clear and sharp in the white, cool light. Dark roads glistened for a while and then began to steam. People who make a point of studying those things made a note that there are no bright colors on the desert. Only the silver greenness of the olive tree, the faint purple darkness of shadows, the elusive light blue of air, the lusterless yellow of pollen and the grayish tan of sparse, withered grass. The vivid colors are all in the bright sunlight, when it shines.
Now the streets are dry again. Wisps of cool air caress the town, lingering, soothing, the storm’s apology. Tomorrow it will be hot again. Gates will be burning to the touch, tarred roads soft underfoot, eyes will squint in the bright light and chests will heave great sighs...unless another storm...
Alone in the condemned house Joe was prowling around. He felt safe. Everything had gone all right. He felt a certain trepidation, as when you have won a race. You’d like to tell somebody how you did it and, until the trepidation wears off, you can’t settle down. There had been a moment, when the fellow from the sheriff’s office had come in, panic had threatened. Joe had expected him to come over and lay a hand on his shoulder and pin something on him. But he had just sat down, there with the others, and the business had gone on. Joe repeated what he had told the policeman. He had been afraid of the woman across the street, specially as they went in and she practically bumped into him. But she had looked at him with a teary smile and when she said: “Poor fellow!” he had had to make an effort not to grin. Well, not too much of an effort because he was still plenty scared.
Joe spun the rocker around. It spun and rocked. He spun it again. It was not very heavy. This time, instead of spinning it, he hurled it, straight-armed, across the living room and it crashed against the stone fireplace. The cushion fell off in the middle of the room. Mrs. Jard’s government envelope fell out of it, too. Joe picked it up and, just for the hell of it, he dropped it in the high water-tank above the toilet in the bathroom. After what he had gone through he wasn’t going to tamper with government mail. Not him.
So, the business had gone on, in that sort of courtroom. Somebody wanted to know what Mrs. Fred was doing with an ax-handle. Joe thought he hadn’t heard about that, then he remembered Dorry saying something about it. Dorry was there, and damn if Stringer wasn’t there. He had brought her in his car and, afterwards, took her away. Damn bitch, suppose she told Stringer that Joe had tried to kiss her or something, suppose she lied to him and turned Stringer against Joe the way Joe had turned him against Mac.
When everybody left, after the fellow had said it was accidental death, he had leaned over the water-fountain in the hall, and when he had stopped pretending that he was drinking, he was alone. Pretty smart. He saw the sheriff’s man and the policeman get into a car together. It worried him for a moment. But, hell, they weren’t thinking about him. Nobody was thinking about little Joe.
That was yesterday.
He wondered how long he could stay in the condemned house. He didn’t give much of a damn about it, but he also wondered who was going to worry about all the furniture and stuff. From what he had overheard before the business started, the city or the county or the state was going to put Mrs. Fred away unless Jard took charge of her or something. Imagine, old women like that owning houses.
Joe looked through all the closets. Nothing but junk. Some of it stank. The kitchen was a mess. Another big chunk of wall had fallen in, on the inside this time. Still, if he could stay for a while he could make himself damn comfortable. Nobody would even know he was living there. He’d go out at night, when it was dark. Mystery man. When he was a kid he used to daydream about a house with a tunnel; the tunnel opened in a hidden lot, somewhere, and nobody ever saw him go in or out of the house. Kid stuff, but jeez, kids have a good time.
He went into Dorry’s room. Her bags were gone. It was stuffy but he did not want to open the windows. Leaving the windows closed, nobody would know he was in the house. It wasn’t stuffy; it was smelly. It was smelling of Dorry, her powder, her toilet things, her something. He bounced on his back on the big double bed. How it smelled of Dorry! By God, he was going to sleep in this bed tonight! Who was to stop him!
He rolled onto his stomach and pushed his face into the pillow. He toyed with the idea of wondering how it would be if he had handled Dorry differently and they were both in the house, now, by themselves. Funny about the smell of Dorry on the pillow, if you took a deep sniff it disappeared; it was there only if you took little sniffs.
There was one thing he did not want to think about. He did not want to think about money.
He did not want to think about money, but, nevertheless, he was thinking about it. First he played with the idea that he had all the money in the world and a house to live in. Hell, he was all set. But the drabness of the house and the muddy mess in the kitchen kept turning up in his mind, and when all the money in the world dwindled down to nineteen bucks he was forced to think about it. Collecting rent money was out.
Suddenly he swung his legs over the side of the bed, ran across the room, flung himself around the doorway, elbow around the door-jamb, took a couple of quick steps and slid the rest of the way down the hall, coming to a halt at the edge of the great curtain of Jard’s alcove. Playing cops and robbers, he peered behind the curtain. Nobody there!
Seriously, now, he pulled out the drawers of Jard’s dresser and looked for the little squares of tape. One of them was still there, whatever had happened to the other. The way it peeled off, easily, Joe figured that the other one must have fallen off. That’s what you get for using old, dried-up tape. The ring in his hand was the one with the little diamonds. Well, that was something. He folded the corners of the tape over the ring and put the faintly sticky wad in his pocket.
He took a look at Mrs. Fred’s empty room. Come to think of it, he thought, that crazy old woman was the only one who had ever been kind of nice to him. There was a big old cobweb between the trunk at the foot of the bed and the window. Joe stood over it and, with careful aim, he let a frothy, white blob of saliva roll over his lip and fall onto the dusty web. No spider. He would have kicked at the web and broken it up, but with that spit on it, he didn’t want to dirty h
is shoes.
The thing to do was to see Mac and talk himself back in again.
Mac wasn’t such a bad guy.
The air in the house was hot and heavy. He sat in the swing that hung from the ceiling on chains in the living room. Crazy goddamn swing. Hanging from the ceiling, on chains, in a goddamn living room! He didn’t like that kind of swinging; it made him sick.
He had to see Mac. He didn’t like the idea of following Mac around and saying: “Look, Mac...” “Wait a minute, Mac...” “Now, wait, Mac...” because he had an idea that Mac wouldn’t be easy to talk to. He didn’t want to grovel around in the dirt, but he guessed he would if he had to.
All he wanted was to be back in good with Mac. Then he’d live quietly with nobody to bother him. Working with Mac would be like having a job. He could tell Mac he had had nothing to do with the Italian, that he was only trying to do him a favor. He’d probably never see Stringer again, anyway.
He wondered what the others were doing. Hell, he didn’t care. He didn’t care if he never saw them again. Mrs. Jard, that old fool. Dorry. Hell, he didn’t give a damn what happened to them. All he was interested in was getting back in good with Mac. This time he’d play straight. No funny business. Share and share alike. They’d stick together. And some day Joe would go home—home, that was a good one!—with a big hat and cowboy boots. Joe, the big gambler from the West. Maybe he’d run into Dorry and marry her. He’d marry the hell out of her. Big man from the West.
He started swinging himself on the creaking chains to see how long he could do it without feeling sick again. What did other people do to pass the time? He had always wondered about that. Everybody seemed busy and you knew goddamn well that they weren’t busy all the time. What did they do when they weren’t busy? You can imagine a rich fat guy smoking his cigar, stretched out on a fancy davenport, flicking the ashes, but after that, what did he do? What did anybody do? Just wait for something to happen? What did people do who had nothing to do? What were they all waiting for? You know three or four people; they know three or four people. All your troubles are born right there, among three, four people. And all around you thousands of people who don’t know each other, all busy as hell, each knowing three, four people, thousands of people making all the noise you hear, tooting the horns, blowing the whistles, flying over your head. Then a storm comes along making more noise than anybody. Then you sit here, swinging, making the chains creak, wondering what the hell people do. And it is so silent in the empty house that you feel as if the world is an emptiness all around you. Nobody with any sense sits in a house that’s falling apart. You only stay because you don’t want to think of going anywhere else, but you know you can’t stay. What happens when they condemn a house? Why don’t they tear it down? Not knowing how things are done is frightening. All those thousands of people who are doing things that affect you! And you don’t quite know what they are doing; they are holding you on all sides, even if you don’t see them, and even if they don’t know you.
