by Gil Meynier
I can’t stand this, thought Joe. Thinking is no good for you, it keeps you from moving around. That was a damn fool thing he’d done, putting it in the water-tank.
He went to the bathroom, climbed on the seat and retrieved the soggy envelope. Then he dropped it in the toilet and flushed it away.
Then he noticed that silence followed the flushing. There was no water gurgling to refill the tank. He shrugged his shoulders. He pressed the button. No light came. He went into the kitchen. No gas. Everything had been turned off. There was a smell of sour mud or maybe it was the sticky, bitter smell of the canvas over the wrecked wall. It stank. He went back into the living room.
What is it that makes people live in a town like this? You ride along in the train and you don’t see anything but brush and bushes and land all wrinkled up and naked. Then, all of a sudden, there’s a town, with Indians and Mexicans and buildings and houses made of mud. You look around and you see mountains. They seem close but they’re twenty, thirty miles away. There’s sunshine. So damn much of it they are glad when it rains. Joe couldn’t say he was crazy about it, but if he went back home he’d probably tell them there was no place like the West. As a matter of fact he felt sorry for those guys, back there, in the big dingy city. Look at him, driving a car any time he felt like it.
He counted his money. Nineteen bucks. He was itching to get his hands on that steering-wheel. He wondered what had happened to that guy near the golf course. He’d better cut that out. From now on, everything straight. With a steady income from Mac there was no sense in taking chances.
I’m talking to myself, he thought. That’s crazy, isn’t it! He felt like dancing. He felt like waltzing around. He spun the swing around and left it jerking crazily on its chains. Then he thought if someone came into the house and saw the swing moving they’d know there had been someone in the house.
Carefully, he steadied the swing, staying with it until it was motionless again. It took quite a while, you’d be surprised.
Then he looked around the living room. No bodies, no clues, nothing to tie anything up to little Joe. Playfully, he peered into the street. All clear. Now, to see if he could manage the front door without making it creak. It didn’t creak, but the old wooden porch sure did.
The playful mood disappeared as he walked to the gate. He wasn’t too fond of the idea of seeing Mac, but it had to be done. He wished...
As he was about to open the gate his hand stopped, poised above the latch, and a much more pleasant idea popped into his head. Why hadn’t he thought of it before! Mac could wait.
Down came the hand, clang went the gate and Joe started quickly toward the bus-stop, enjoying his idea as he walked. Isn’t it silly how sometimes you overlook the simplest things, isn’t it wonderful how when you have something to do you don’t like you think up something much better to do! It was a shame people didn’t know what a smart brain he had! He was feeling good, taking big steps, walking fast toward the bus-stop.
The idea was to look in on the women. As simple as that.
You turn from something you don’t like, like seeing Mac, to something you can handle with a certain amount of pleasure. Calling on the women. He could be big-hearted Joe who came all the way down to the little farm to see how they were getting along. Nice boy, Joe, so considerate. Or he could be silent Joe, towering over them, letting them know that they couldn’t run away from him, hinting that they would never be free of him, specially Dorry, that he would follow them to the end of the earth.
And what was to keep him from moving in on them if he felt like it!
He could see himself laughing silently, the way Stringer did. He could see himself, laughing silently, moved in, sitting in a deck chair, laughing silently as the obedient women busily waited on him. He would insist on their being quiet and respectful as they brought him his food, his drinks, washed his socks, made love to him. Absolutely!
What was wrong with that?
He whistled as he walked and he didn’t mind having to wait a long time at the corner for the bus that would take him toward the little farm. That’s how good he felt.
14
HE was still feeling good when a shining new bus, in a hissing of air-brakes, pulled up at the corner and opened its doors for him. He looked around as he dropped a dime in the coin-box. Always look around. Part of the system. Look on the empty seats. If anybody left anything lying around, sit on it, or right up against it if it’s a package. He’d never had any luck, but that was the system.
Making his way to the back of the bus, Joe looked at the women. He had done it for years and couldn’t remember a single instance when it had done him any good.
It’s a laugh, he thought, the way they sit, eyes straight ahead, not looking at anybody but knowing they’re being looked over. They’d jump a mile if you sat next to them and said something.
He reached the back seat of the half-filled bus and sat down and tried to dismiss the people from his mind. There was nothing on this trip but ugly women and grandmothers and a few men who looked as if they had no interest in anything, just sitting there, bouncing with the bus.
Nice new bus, still smelling of paint. Nice new seats, firm and clean.
One minute you’re in a house, all by yourself, wondering what people do. Next minute you’re sitting in a bus, looking at a bunch of them, trying to figure them out. They don’t know that you’ve just come out of a house made of mud, with a busted wall, that you’ve got all those ideas in your head...
You can’t stop thinking about people. You look out the side window and you see houses. You don’t see people in the houses, but you know they’re there and you wonder like hell what they are doing and it gives you a funny feeling to know that you can sit here doing all that thinking about people but that you can’t get near them. They’re closed up against you. If you look in their windows, wink at them, pat them on the leg, they’ll call a cop. It’s hard to get in anywhere. On the bus, you pay your dime and you sit down and there are people all around you, but you are not in with them and you wonder about them. Maybe they wonder about you, but there’s no connection. An old woman tries to talk to someone but they freeze her out and she sits there with all that talk in her. Or some fellow sits there grinning at everybody, and they look away, and pretty soon nobody will look at him and he gets off with all those grins and goes off somewhere.
Me, thought Joe, I wouldn’t talk to anybody on a bus. If somebody asked me where some place was, I’d say I didn’t know. Give them their own medicine.
The way he answered questions about what had happened in the yard, or where he’d been in the rented car.
He liked being on the back seat because people couldn’t see him grin and, right now, he felt like grinning. Who wouldn’t!
He had everything in fine shape. Was it his fault if people got themselves hurt!
Hot air was blowing through the open windows of the bus. Hot air that felt cool because it dried up the perspiration on you. Mayhew had given him a long-winded talk about how evaporation makes you feel cool. That was the kind of stuff the old man thought about instead of figuring out angles. It was funny to think that all that nimini pimini business got him was a conk on the head by a piece of timber that fell all by itself.
But, seriously, what are people supposed to be doing? Just eat and sleep and work at a job and let themselves be pushed around? And get up in the morning and get busy, and eat and go to bed and get up again and get busy. Like the guy who drives the bus. It was easy to see that somebody had to get up and drive this bus, and blow the whistle on the train, and wash the dishes, and pull the carrots out of the ground, and sell the papers, and take in the money that was rolling around, but when you think that all those people who are doing all those things don’t even know each other, don’t even know who Joe, the guy with all the plans in his head, is...well, you wonder if they understand what they’re supposed to be accomplishing. Maybe some of the big shots know, but all they do is push the little shots around wit
hout telling them why they’re being pushed around. ‘
Once, when he was still paying his ten bucks regularly, Mayhew had told him that people had written books about it. They were in the libraries and anybody could read them. Joe remembered giving the old man the sneer and saying:
“What’s all the books got to do with me?”
For crying out loud.
What have they got to do with Dorry smelling the way she does or the nineteen bucks in your pocket. Dorry smelling the way she does and you getting the feeling that you want to put your hands on her, and you biting the inside of your lip as you think about her and wanting to give it to her good, one of these days.
What kept you from doing it on the mountain-top?
Clouds in the sky. They look even whiter when you see them through the blue glass of the windows on the bus. They seem to be going the other way while the bus rolls along, stopping at a corner now and then. Stopping, going, getting you there in spurts. Rolling you down toward the little farm.
Go ahead, bite your lip, nobody’s looking, except, maybe, the driver in that narrow mirror. I bet, thought Joe, that if there’s a good-looking girl on the bus the driver looks at her all the time in that mirror. He can look all he wants, but he’s got to sit there and drive the bus. And he stays on when she gets off. That’s why it’s a lousy job. Now, take the blonde who puts the chips in her brassiere...some night, if he felt like it, he could get Mac to introduce him and there’s no telling what might happen, while the bus driver kept on making the same damn trip over and over again, in little spurts, day after day.
The sun felt hot when it broke through the clouds. It felt hot on Joe’s legs and he spread his thighs so that they wouldn’t perspire so much. Women can’t do that.
Women’s thighs must get awful hot, he thought. Full and soft and moist.
Now, he could see his reflection in the window next to him. People might think he was looking out into the street but he was looking, with a certain amount of pleasure, at a reflection of himself which seemed to be riding in the street, a foot or so outside the bus. His hair looked good and was staying the way he had combed it. Even the breeze that was blowing through the bus did not disturb it. He looked much better now that his skin had cleared up. With a tan on his face, he’d look real good.
Looking out of the corner of his eye he tried to see his profile. Turning his head, he looked at himself straight on to see if, by looking at him, people could tell anything about him, about what had happened, about the plans he had in his head. He looked young, all right, but there were a lot of big shots who were young, or looked young.
He felt impatient. He wondered how the Italian had managed to get to be a big shot. He could do it too, if only he knew how you got to be that way. Laughing silently wasn’t all of it. But if he, Joe, had known about it back home...when those fellows closed in on him to beat him up or to make him do something he didn’t want to do, he could have stood there—he could see himself—laughing silently, and the fellows would have stopped in their tracks, puzzled, impressed, suddenly respectful, and they would have changed their tune, and they would have said: “Gee, Joe, how about you telling us what to do...”
That was nice to think about: Joe, the boss, telling them what to do. A bored look would mean: Take him out and beat him up. A slight movement of the chin: Shine my shoes.
Suppose that was the way it had been; he’d be up there now, where Stringer was.
Instead of which...instead of which Joe was in a mess, if you want to know. Nineteen bucks and no place.
He stopped looking at himself and glanced along the length of the bus, through the windshield, and along the road ahead. He wanted to reach the little farm. There was a long walk from the end of the bus-line and it was going to be hot walking.
He wondered if other people used their brain the way he did, all the time thinking, all the time getting smarter. Besides which, if he wanted to, he could relax, as he was doing now, in the heat and the warm breeze, in the drone and springy jouncing of the bus, letting his thoughts idle along, idle along until a drowsiness came over him, a pleasant drowsiness.
Except for downtown where some of the old streets do not fit into a grid, the streets of the town reach out into the desert in parallel bands, north and south, east and west, inching farther every year through the scrub, on the rugged ground that nobody wanted a while back, a mesh in which thousands of people dwell, exchange dimes and dollars and live their lives.
From the corners of the grid wandering roads push on, past service stations and zoos and lonesome courts, past settlements that have no streets, over bridges, culverts, passes, through fenced land and open range to other grids and tangles of old streets, miles away, where people live their lives on the edge of a highway that leads farther on to other grids and tangles, to other climes and soils.
All the grid and tangles are linked across the land, a comforting thought for those who like it, a disquieting one for those who wonder what part they have in the tangle of people, the mesh of towns, the grid of undefined limitations within which they are born and live their lives.
Even a pleasant drowsiness does not keep you from worrying about the feeling that all those people are held together by something you don’t understand. Something that pops up and keeps you from doing what you want to do. You try to shake the drowsiness but it is not worth opening your eyes because there is nothing but the drone of the bus and the hard, bright light and you can let your head nod and roll with your eyes closed. Let it roll.
Quickly, Joe opened his eyes, brushed moisture from the corner of his mouth and wondered how long he had been asleep. The driver’s head was tilted up and Joe thought the man’s eyes were watching him in the narrow mirror. Okay, it’s legal to sleep on a bus.
What he had been thinking about was Dorry, standing on the porch, with her suitcase, her ringlets of blond hair, and what had been going on in his own head when he had come up and said:
“Looking for something?”
He had made a mess of it, somewhere. Everything had been fine, the black Packard, the bar, the perfect gentleman. Everything had been fine until they came down from the mountain. He felt hot and sticky and a little sick inside as he thought about it.
It probably wouldn’t have made any difference if he had told the Italian that he and Dorry...anyway, it had made a much better impression: Sure, you can have Dorry; I’ve got lots of girls. That way the Italian was under a sort of obligation, even if he had seemed to forget it: get us a chair, go get Mac, I’ll think about it, so long!
And Joe trying to do him a favor.
And the letters in her suitcase. And the ring.
It’s all right to put your hand in your pocket and feel the small wad of tape, but what are you going to do with it? It wouldn’t do to be caught with someone’s ring in your pocket. You could drop it out of the window of the moving bus, your arm on the ledge; nobody would notice. But you’d better keep it. There might be somebody, later, you’d like to give it to. First time out. Big impression.
She’d have to be someone like Dorry, though. Maybe a redhead. Hell, what was he worrying about, they were all alike.
There was one climbing on the bus now, big legs, nice face, putting a coin in the box, coming down the aisle.
Joe slid his thigh off the long seat as if to make room for her although there was no one else sitting there. If she sat on the same seat with him it might be the beginning of something. He made a show of looking out of the window to make it easier for her. But the next time he looked he saw her sitting down, up the aisle, facing the road, her back to him.
She’ll never know what she missed, thought Joe. Nice face, big legs. He spread his thigh on the seat again.
Okay, so things had been messed up a bit. The really bad part had been when he had tried to hold out the two-fifty on Mac. That was the mistake. It always came down to money, didn’t it? Like the two-fifty with Mac, it was the ten dollars he didn’t get that had come between him an
d Mayhew. They had been pretty good friends before that. Ten bucks, two bucks, nineteen bucks, buck here, buck there; everything you feel, everything you want, everything you plan is held back because of a few lousy bucks.
And that old guy in the junk shop, sitting by the door, with mirrors all over the place, watching the customers. Fifteen cents for a second-hand ice-pick! Anyway, he’d never used it. It was back there, in the condemned house, sticking in the partition.
Speaking of junk, thought Joe...and he looked for a while at the junk yards, the strips of desert littered with wrecked cars, heaps of worn tires, scrap aluminum and rusty gears that lined the road as it pushed beyond the city limits. He looked at tin-covered garages, grocery stores in converted two-room homes, small flowerbeds with borders of half-buried bottles, frame houses going up, men in overalls mopping their brows, hand-painted signs, the untidy bric-a-brac of edge-oftown existence. All of it, now in bright sunlight, now in the moving shade of piled-up clouds, now hard on the eyes, now in drab shadow, bristling with dusty green tamarisk, harsh oleander, tin cans and desert growth.
