by Gil Meynier
I haven’t done anything to you, he wanted to say to Stringer. Lay off me, he wanted to say to the heavy man who was bending over him. But he didn’t say it because, surprisingly, nothing was happening to him. Stringer had joined his friend. The heavy man, in a disgusted voice, said:
“Look at him...”
“Hold it,” said Stringer.
“Look at him...like a kid.”
“Let it go,” said Stringer. “Sit up,” he added, to Joe.
Joe propped himself up on his good elbow. Stringer sat on the running board.
“Honest, Stringer, I wasn’t doing anything...”
As he spoke Joe turned his head toward the darkened house, as if he had heard something, something distracting that would divert the Italian’s attention. If only someone’d come out of the house! If only the door would open, throwing light into the yard! Stringer would want him to stand up and make it look as if they were talking, three friends. Joe would stand up, gladly, and then, standing there, three friends talking, he’d suddenly run back to the house. He could almost feel himself running. But his aching elbow and the rough ground beneath his hand made him feel as if he were going to lie there forever, between Stringer on the running board and the heavy legs of Stringer’s friend on the other side of him, in the dark.
A soft breeze was blowing, swirling in the darkness, in the darkness that covered an immensity of wilderness, an immensity of wilderness in which three, four people Joe knew had gathered on a pin-point of space to fling him to the ground, cringing.
It would have been so simple never to have met these people. Only yesterday, it seemed, he was free of them; then Dorry had come, and he had been nice to her; then Stringer, from nowhere, had started to push him around, and Mayhew had come storming into his room—if he had had a chance to drop the suitcase, things might have been different—now Stringer was saying:
“You’re not being nice to your friends, Joe.”
And he was saying it in a sweet-sounding, reproachful tone that put a different meaning to it. And what that meaning was, Joe could only guess at. And what could he answer?
“I was only...” He was only what?
He was only thinking that he had to get up, on his feet. He pulled up his knees and started to get up, but when he was halfway up, one hand still on the ground, Stringer’s friend gave him a shove with the back of his hand and sent him sprawling again on the hard, gravelly ground. Burrs and spiny twigs pricked him through his shirt. He had only looked at the ruggedness of the desert; now he was feeling it. And when you feel the harshness of the ground against your back nothing else exists; your fight is right there, your victory is to get up on your feet again, and then you still have to fight the whole world...but how can you when people are standing over you and there is nothing in your hand but the stinging of the abrasive ground and the round, spreading pain of a deeply embedded burr that pricks your other hand when you try to brush it off?
And when you have your good clothes on! You’d think that you wouldn’t think of your clothes in a spot like that. But you do, and when you do it infuriates you. Roughness is more unfair when you have your good clothes on. And it makes you mad to think that trying to protect your good clothes gives the other guy an advantage he doesn’t need, or doesn’t know he has. And it makes you want to get up again and fight, and you do get up, quick this time, and when you are halfway up you lunge forward and you want to feel your head butt into the other guy’s gut, and when you are halfway there you see the other guy’s foot coming toward your face...
The next thing he remembered was a foot coming toward his face, a shining, hard shoe and a hard, sharp pain.
Now there was no pain, only a throbbing in his head and a sudden dread that a throb like that, if it kept up, or increased as it seemed to be doing now, frightening, uncontrollable, might lead to death. What he heard came to him as if through wads of cotton. He was sitting on the ground—he didn’t remember sitting up; the last thing he remembered was lunging forward—and his head was on his knees. Turning his head, he rubbed his mouth against the palm of his hand. He shut his eyes hard, and held his breath and waited to see if the throb would go away. Then, quickly, he had to breathe again to push down the spurt of nausea that was rising from inside of him, but nothing could stop it. In a painful upheaval, he vomited, all the more painfully because nothing came up. Then he had to open his eyes, and stop breathing again, and listen hard, to hear what was being said.
In the dark, a few feet away from him, Mac was saying: “Well...it’s a proposition!”
He said it in his calm, everyday voice, and Stringer, in a tone that was different from the one he used with Joe, a tone that was eager and friendly, was saying:
“You’ll run the whole place...”
Slowly, almost indifferently, Mac said:
“I’d have to think it over.”
“Naturally,” said Stringer. “You might have some ideas of your own. Layout, and equipment...”
“I’d have to know...”
“Sure,” said Stringer. “Let’s the three of us go somewhere and talk this over. My friend, here, he’s had his hand in things like this. .
Mac was silent for a moment. Joe wondered what they were going to do. If he understood this right they wanted Mac to run a place that Stringer and his friend would put up for him. Mac would be the boss.
Mac would be the boss, thought Joe. Mac, then, wouldn’t be interested in a few bucks at a time from the racket. In fact, he’d throw stuff like that out of his new place. He’d throw Joe out. Mac would turn on Joe. Mac was turning on Joe, right now, talking to Stringer. Maybe there was still time; maybe he could convince Mac not to take up with the Italians. He and Mac had the racket, hadn’t they? What more did he want!
“Okay,” said Mac, after a while.
“Attaboy,” said Stringer. “We’ll talk this over.”
Joe heard moving feet. He heard Stringer’s friend say: “It’ll be a sweet deal for all of us.” Then Mac said:
“Here, take my car to the hotel and leave it there. Just leave it there.”
A bunch of keys struck against Joe’s legs and fell to the ground between his feet, and the big sedan drove off, Stringer and his friend in front, Mack in the back seat.
So that’s the way it’s going to be! Joe picked himself up and dusted the dirt from his clothes. So that’s the way it’s going to be!
His head was still throbbing. Blindly he clung to the thought that he couldn’t let Mac and the others disappear into the night. He had to follow them, he had to be near. He didn’t know why...he had no idea of what he could do, but he had to be near.
Hurriedly he climbed into Mac’s car and swung it out of the yard into the side road. He heard and felt the car knock over the fence post at the entrance of the driveway but he thought: To hell with that, and kept his eyes on the two red dots of the twin taillights of the sedan, some distance down the road. For some unthought-out reason, he kept his lights off and he couldn’t see the road; he kept straight by the taillights of the other car. He’d turn his lights on when he got to the highway. He thought he was catching up with them, then abruptly they disappeared as the sedan turned onto the highway, toward town. Now he had to turn on his lights because he was hurtling along through total darkness. He was shaken by a chilling fright as his light came on and he barely managed to avoid the ditch. For a moment he careened from side to side. He was not used to Mac’s light car. In a moment he’d get it on the highway and see what it could do.
He wondered where they were going. They might stop at the bar where he had first met Stringer, goddamn him. On the other hand they might not want to be seen in public. Mac probably wouldn’t. So...
Turning on the highway, Joe looked for the twain taillights. He had trouble finding them; a couple of oncoming cars were leaving impenetrable darkness behind them. Joe speeded up. Mac’s car was a good bus; it ate up the road once you got it going. Rid of the oncoming cars, he spotted the taillights, two very s
mall dots, a good distance away.
Behind the wheel of Mac’s car, Joe felt lonelier than ever. When it was taken away from him he would have nothing left. That was a fact. The Italians were taking Mac away from him and when Mac took his car away he would have nothing, no racket, no money, no nothing, no place to live, and with even the women gone from the house, there would be nobody he knew. That whole town would have nobody in it that Joe could bunch up with, no one but guys like the man from the sheriff’s office, the fellow in the shack, the fat man behind the lunch counter where the two mechanics had looked up at him and then had looked away. What was the matter with everybody? All of them part of something that was pushing Joe around. Unconnected as they were, they were part of something...
Some damn fool stood in the glare of the headlights, his arm up, thumbing a ride. If Joe hadn’t had something else on his mind he would have given him a damn good scare, but, busy, he paid no attention and tried to catch up with the sedan. He didn’t want to lose it when it reached the outskirts of town. Not that he knew what good it would do but he knew that they couldn’t get rid of him, just like that. Take my car to the hotel. Just leave it there. Did Mac think he could treat him like that! Just leave the car there and get the hell out. We don’t need you any more! If it hadn’t been for Joe, Mac would never have had anything but what they paid him for a night’s work. He’d be sitting in his cheesy room at the hotel instead of riding around with the Italian, talking about a place for him to run, double-crossing Joe.
Just leave it there, he said, thought Joe.
And if Stringer’s friend was not a hired bruiser, but a guy who was interested in starting a gambling joint, what in hell right did he have to knock a fellow down and kick him in the face?
Joe was surprised that his jaw did not hurt. Maybe it would hurt tomorrow. The throbbing was gone. Now all he had was the stinging on his hand from his fall. He must have skidded a little and it had skinned the heel of his right hand. Holding on to the gummy wheel of Mac’s car made it sting more. He rubbed his hand on his pants. Rubbing hurt, so he just held it against his leg for a while.
They were at the edge of town. There were a couple of cars between him and the sedan. Once under the street lights, he thought of driving with his parking lights, but then he thought that it would make him more noticeable instead of less so. He still didn’t know why he was following them. He didn’t know what he could do in town, but in the country, on the other side of town, if they went to the ranch on River road...well, the way he was feeling, he’d catch them from the side somewhere and ram this goddamn car right through them. And he’d walk away from the wreck, laughing like hell.
Everything seemed asleep along south Sixth, except the neon signs. Cars between Joe and the sedan turned off, one by one, into the driveways of tourist courts. Joe slowed down. The sedan had slowed down, not as if it were going to stop somewhere, but more as if it were making a point of observing the speed limits. They’ve got police cars cruising all night in the empty streets. Hell, they couldn’t be going to the bar; it was closed by now. Everything was closed.
I bet that’s where they’re going, thought Joe, and he tried to picture the ranch on River road. He had driven by there several times but damned if he could remember where the ranch was. Probably on one of the dirt roads that branched off, without a sign. If he knew where it was he could cut across town and get there ahead of them.
But what the hell for? In fact, the idea of the ranch frightened him. You never know what they might have out there.
What had started as an impulse to follow the three men in the sedan was now mechanical work. There was little meaning to it and the feeling that this was the only thing he could think of to do, one man against three, made it seem useless and hopeless, and at the same time he could feel fury brewing in him. Like back there, when he had wanted more than anything to feel his head butt into the big man’s gut. Now he wanted to rip, tear apart, make hurt, as his hand was hurting as he rubbed it against his pants, only more. A hell of a lot more.
The sedan was going right through town all right. Joe imagined Stringer driving casually, speaking to Mac in that way of his. Maybe his friend was doing the talking. Mac in the back seat, like a big shot. Mac, telling the flunky to drive the car back to the hotel and leave it there. Mac, the double-crossing piker.
There is so much you don’t know about people, thought Joe. So much they don’t know about you. A girl like Dorry comes along and you can find out some of the immediate things about her, like what she wears, how she kisses in a car, her letters, her...
He felt into his pocket. The ring was still there in its wad of dried tape.
...her marriages, her bonds, but beyond that, and before that, she is just something from nowhere. Although, with her, you could imagine a city behind her somewhere in the East, and people like soldiers, and her pop, maybe in his shirt-sleeves. But with people like Jard, the nowhere they came from was dark and obscure and ancient and when she left the house you didn’t know where she was going. Like himself, where was he heading? Where the hell...it gives you an empty, makes-you-want-to-give-up feeling, that what you are headed for is something beyond those two taillights, something that might turn out to be anything, maybe something that would be forced on you, not what you wanted, like all the other things that had been forced on you.
He didn’t want to think of Mayhew. And he didn’t have to, because that was all taken care of, because he had been a smart boy, and anybody could tell it was the wind, not Joe, that had pushed the timber over. And the way not to think about it was to say to hell with it and think of something else. Which was easy, even if a mouth was puckering at you in the side of your mind. Let it pucker. But when you remember wondering if you could cut out those lips, if they would keep on wriggling like pieces of cut worm, seeing them there in the side of your mind begins to bother you a little. You want to speed up and leave them behind.
Then you’re downtown and a police car comes out from a side street and rides along between you and the sedan and you begin to think that you had better get the hell out of there, but you’re not doing anything wrong, so you drop back a little and, quick, wonder like hell where the sedan is going to turn; and you take a chance on its turning on Speedway, going east, and smartly you turn on Third, which runs parallel to Speedway, and if you hurry along to Park and turn left you can slow down as you near Speedway and pick it up again, and if you keep talking to yourself it keeps you from thinking, but when you find that all you can say to yourself is Park and Speedway, Park and Speedway, and you still don’t know what you are going to do, you think that you had better start thinking again.
They treat you like that! But they don’t really know you. They don’t know what you can do, and how smartly you can do it. They don’t know about Mayhew, or maybe Stringer does, because he was at the inquest, and maybe he realizes that Joe is a lot bigger guy than he appears to be. Maybe Stringer is scared and that’s why he brought that friend along. But Stringer is smart, too; he doesn’t let on that he is scared. But he takes up with Mac, who is soft, not tough like Joe.
Look how smart Joe is: he doesn’t stay on Third Street until it reaches Park. No, he turns north on Fourth Avenue and heads for Speedway again, and one block from Speedway he turns right on First Street, and now, at every corner he can watch for the sedan. And there it comes, big as life, shining black under the light at the intersection, still observing the speed limit although it is three o’clock in the morning and the streets are empty.
The next thing to do. Think of the next thing to do. And be smart. The next thing you’re going to do is not to follow them up Speedway and down Campbell to River road. They might see you. You’re going to scat north on First Avenue, turn right on Fort Lowell and park alongside the gas station at Fort Lowell and Campbell. It will be closed. You will park there and wait for the sedan to come along. This is a chase and they don’t know that they can’t escape you. You’ve got them because they don’t know how sma
rt you are. They think they can just forget about you, kick you around and forget about you.
Kick you down and treat you like a kid...but you’re not breathing like a kid. You’re breathing like a fighter, like Joe Louis coming in, and you’re not driving like a kid, tooling down First Avenue in that sort of open country. You’re driving like something powerful, something powerful and controlled, and when it hits, fellows, you’re going to know that something hit you.
The breathing. That’s funny about the breathing. Sometimes you find yourself breathing hard and you don’t know how long you’ve been doing it.
Goddamn, thought Joe, why doesn’t he have this car fixed? There was no dashboard light. He had thought of looking at the gas gauge. Wouldn’t that be something if he ran out of gas and lost them? A little thing like a little gas could put distance between him and Mac and he might never see them again. There was a light at the intersection of First and Fort Lowell. He’d have to use it to take a look at the gauge as he made the turn.
And now the wind was blowing. The bushes he could see along the side of the road were shaking wildly and he had to straighten up when the wind hit the car. At the far end of the range of his headlights he saw dirt and sand blowing across the road. Hurriedly he rolled up the windows; nobody likes to be hit by blowing sand. He slowed down, raised himself in the seat and reached behind him to roll up the back windows. He hated to lose time but he had to do it because when that sand hits you it gets into everything and it peppers you brutally. He knew by experience. With the windows up, the wind blowing, it sounded as if he were inside a rolling drum. A sudden gust in the steady blowing screeched across his windshield. When he reached the driven sand he heard it crackle against the side of the car and the car rocked a little. He kept it straight and kept on going, speeding up. When the road was clear again he was about to relax when lightning flashed, not far away, briefly floodlighting the side of the mountain, and a cringing moment of fright came when the thunder let loose, the loudest he’d ever heard, the loudest since the one before May hew...why think of May hew now? Joe set his jaw and drove on. Thunder can’t hurt you; it’s the lightning that can hurt you. But not in a car. The rubber tires protect you, or something like that. And now it had to rain. Fast, slanting, silvery dotted lines of rain raced toward the rolling car, and the range of the headlights was limited to the grayish, swirling curtain of a cloudburst. When the rain hit the car he was blinded for a moment, until he could get his windshield wipers started. Lightning flashed again, and when he thought that it couldn’t rain any harder, the beating of the rain on the car increased in angry blows. It was coming down so thick and fast that water seemed to bounce as it hit the flooded surface of the road.
