“Fly, man,” he said aloud. The sound of his own voice comforted him. “Fly right in a tree.” No trees here to land in: just saw grass and cattails and now and then a small low bush, killed by the brackish water, its dead twiggy arms stuck straight up. He said aloud: “Never find a dead man back in there, if they sank him. Not this time. And not me.”
He was nearing the city. A couple of cars appeared ahead of him. He passed them both with a blast of his horn. The third car was a big tan Studebaker; he swung around it carelessly. He didn’t notice the approaching car until it passed, missing him by an inch or so. Then all he saw was a mass that flashed by and all he heard was a puff of a scream. A puff like a bit of smoke passing, here and gone.
“Sainte Vierge,” he whispered aloud, “Mother of God …”
Down the inner side of his pants he felt a running spreading warmth. With the sudden release of pressure, he shivered all over. The car jumped to the left, two wheels went off the pavement. It tipped and bounced, springs bottoming, something dragging, metal screaming. He slowed, eased the car back on the pavement. A few more minutes and he realized there was a puddle under his feet and a spreading wet stain on the seat beside him.
By nine o’clock he was in New Orleans. For some reason, he began to count the churches he passed, Episcopal, two Baptist, Christian Scientist. That makes four churches in three blocks on Claiborne Avenue. Isn’t that interesting? Must have more churches on this street than any other. Except maybe that stretch of Canal where the Old Man lives. To hell with the Old Man. He turned into his street, saw the garage where he kept his car, gates sagging open, just the way he had left them. How long ago?
He lived in the upper apartment of a small duplex. As he climbed the back stairs, his landlady, standing on her little screen porch, yelled up to him: “You sick or something, Mr. Caillet?”
He took a deep breath before he answered. “I’m just tired. I been working and I’m just tired.”
“You want something?” Her voice was all interest. She loved to mother things, from her plants to her sick cats. “You want me to bring you some ice?”
It was a point of great pride with her. She had an electric refrigerator. His apartment had only an icebox. “There’s ice up here,” he said. “Thank you.”
He went inside before she could race up the steps after him.
He loosened his pants and let them drop to the kitchen floor. He stripped off his shirt and his underwear.
A white enamel coffeepot stood on the stove. He’d used it, when? Last week. He lifted the top: only dry brown grounds. There were a couple of dirty cups in the sink, and a yellowish stain on the drainboard tile. What would that be? He didn’t remember anything yellow. He opened the icebox door. Quick sour odor, sharp and nasty. Green-and-black mold climbing up the white porcelain sides.
Got to get this place cleaned up.
In the dining room the bare wood floors were hazy with dust. Three chairs circled the table. Shouldn’t there be four? …
The whole place was hot and stuffy. He began opening windows. Why are all the shades drawn? That woman downstairs, she must sneak in and pull them, to save her precious furniture. This room now, all wicker, loose ends to spear you if you leaned back in any chair. The lamp table had a cracked glass top, twisty line like a hair curling across the corner—when would it break? And that vase full of pink feathers …
He picked it up, feathers bobbing gently, sifting out little trails of dust, and put it in the living-room closet which was completely empty except for spider webs. He studied them for a minute, counting the white egg cases. Never saw so many in my life. When they hatch out, they’ll fill the house.
Carried out by spiders ... he could see himself borne along on their hairy backs, like a football coach in triumph. Maybe I could train them. …
With all the windows open, there was a sudden quickening of air, a cross-draft ran over his naked skin. He’d really got sunburned—he touched his face gently—he wasn’t used to that much exposure any more. He looked at his arm. Covered by a shirt sleeve, he had not burned there. I’ve got pretty white skin, he thought, peeping through the maze of black hair; my old man must have been white after all.
(He’d had one big fight with his mother, and him a little boy still: “I betcha my father was some old nigger. Betcha anything.” His mother fetched him a slap on the side of the head that cut his lip and sent him spinning into the wall. She walked away while he howled at the sight of his own blood. At the horror of what he had said. At the fear of everything that glared at him from all the corners everywhere.)
Robert looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. How can you shave over that sunburn? There’s the fancy shaving bowl the Old Man gave you.
He lifted the bathroom screen and dropped the bowl into the yard. To hell with the Old Man.
He looked at his watch. It was now ten o’clock.
“I quit,” he told his watch’s second hand as it stuttered around the dial. “I’m going to find another job.”
He kept his liquor in the clothes closet. The bottle of bourbon was missing. His landlady had got it again.
And what was left? Not much except an unopened bottle of Chivas Regal. He put that carefully in the middle of his bed, reached for the telephone, and dialed the Old Man’s house. A girl’s voice answered—he’d almost forgotten the Old Man’s daughters.
“This is Robert Caillet.” He spoke slowly to be sure she understood. “I want you to give your father a message for me.”
“He’s right here,” she said. “I’ll call—”
“No, honey.” That slipped out; it wasn’t proper, he wanted to be so correct. “Tell him I’m coming over. That’s all.”
He hung up. Dialed another number. “Betty, please.” He waited again, eying the Chivas Regal bottle.
“Hi di doodie …” A sharp, metallic voice.
“Baby doll, I’ve got a bottle of Chivas Regal sitting right next to me.”
“Oh, Robert,” she said, “how cute of you to call.”
From the tone he guessed her mother was close by. “What about tonight?”
“I think I’ll go to bed early, Robert,” she said. “Mother and I are both tired.”
“About an hour?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
He lay back on the bed; he had plenty of time. She lived not five minutes away, on Claiborne Avenue. It was handy having a girl in the neighborhood. The past two days were slipping far back in his memory; the pounding blood was washing them away.
He parked his car, as he always did, in front of a vacant lot on Jena Street. Carrying the bottle in a paper bag, he walked to the big white raised house at the corner. There was a gate, always open, into a yard full of hibiscus and paper plants and ginger lilies with drooping pink flowers. A wet elephant-ear slapped his cheek. Damn things dripped no matter how dry the weather. … He stood next to a crêpe-myrtle tree, his fingers absent-mindedly fingering its smooth trunk, waiting for the basement door to open.
HE’D COME here first, a year ago, with a guy he’d met at the track, Al Stevens. Al hung around the stables, a short dark-eyed young man, who worked at City Hall and was a fourth cousin of the mayor. “You really want something, my friend, I have got it for you. You never had anything like this.”
That was how he met Betty.
ROBERT WONDERED why he stood so patiently in the darkness. You could always find a girl: at a speakeasy, at the movies, waiting for a streetcar, even walking down the street. He’d done that once—on Girod Street; he went there to a bookie once in a while. He passed a woman, green dress, black hair in the new short cut. There was something … he circled the block, so that he could approach facing her. He walked by casually. He was sure. He spun on his heel and followed her. She stopped to look in a window, and he stopped beside her. “That’s a Greek restaurant,” he said. “Maybe you like Greek places?” She smiled slowly. She was the woman, he remembered, who said she was forty-five and a grandmother. He didn’t bel
ieve her—she was more like twenty-five. Women had funny kinks sometimes, and that was one of them.
But why, when there were so many women in the world, was he standing in a wet garden, waiting for a door to open? What was so special about her that he brought a very expensive bottle of real Scotch? Chivas Regal, people would pay a lot for that. More than a musty basement and a lumpy couch, a couple of grimy glasses, and maybe, only maybe, some ice, if she’d been able to smuggle it from the kitchen.
There was something with that couch; they rode it together like a live thing. His loins throbbed and ached, excruciatingly, demandingly. “It hurts so good, honey,” he whispered, “hurts so good.” He saw that his body was glowing, like waves at night, blue bright and shining on all its surfaces. The glow shivered and flickered until it exploded and poured off, surf-like, and he spun and shook and balanced and came to the end of his breath. And in the quiet there for a moment he was the only man in the world, perfect and alone.
You horny bastard, he told himself, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He felt his way to the side of the house, leaned back against the clapboards. When the door finally opened, he did not move. Let her wonder. She hesitated, then stepped into the dark. Left foot, right foot, on tiptoe against the mud, robe pale blue in the light. Uncertain, never had to wait before. The hundreds always pounded eagerly forward: Open your door the least crack, we’ll rush in. … Let her wait, stand there, little toes sinking deep in the mold. Nobody ever raked up the leaves. Season after season gathered soft and yielding underfoot. Sexy leaves. Full of worms. Male and female worms undulating up and down together.
Another step, long robe hitched up now. Never saw her venture so far out in the garden. Ruin those slippers and how will she explain that? I got muddy slippers chasing the cat, Mama. . . . Did she have a cat? No dog, no barking. She whispered “Robert?” Too low, too soft. Wait a bit. “Robert, Robert are you here?” Looking toward the place he’d always stood, never thought to turn around. “Robert!” That was nice and loud. Good for her. Talk to her now, watch her jump: “Boo, you pretty creature!”
LATER, AS he got into his car, he remembered: the Old Man expected him. He sat in the dusty Ford and squinted along the dark street. All the overhead lights had little colored halos, and his head sang with the receding tides of alcohol. He felt light and floating and very thirsty. The car’s engine sputtered in the night damp, hesitated, and settled down to a shivering rattle. The clutch didn’t engage, the gears grated, stuck. He jammed his leg down, silencing them. The back of his head twitched. One of his ears was moving; it was dancing and wiggling on the side of his head. Maybe, he thought, the Old Man’s given me up. If the house is dark, I’ll go on home.
Every light in the Old Man’s house was burning. Robert looked up the terraced steps into the blazing glass-paneled front door. All that, he giggled, for me. I’ll leave in a burst of glory.
He began to climb the stairs. Never knew there were so many of them; my ears are popping like I’m swimming under water. …
The moment his foot touched the tiled surface of the porch, the front door swung open.
“We were waiting for you,” Maurice Lamotta said.
Robert stopped, in mid-step, his hands dangling in front of him. “I didn’t expect you’d be here.”
“We’ve been waiting for almost four hours.”
Robert squinted at the thin narrow head, the expressionless face, the fragile body in its striped seersucker suit. “I’ve had a hard day,” he said slowly. “I am just plain not used to getting killed.”
Something focused at the back of Lamotta’s brown eyes. Mockery. Surprise. Maybe only interest. “It does make a difference,” the thin lips said. “As a matter of fact, it can be quite annoying.”
“To hell with you,” Robert said.
The Old Man sat in the big blue armchair by the imitation fireplace, filled now with dried flowers. There was a highball on the table next to him, sweating away in the heat, almost untouched.
“I know I’m late,” Robert said. “And I quit.”
The Old Man’s eyebrows went up a fraction of an inch. Silently he pointed to a chair.
Robert ignored him. “I don’t like being chased by people. It makes me nervous. And I didn’t find out anything except that everybody’s lying: I don’t even know where your god damn boat went down. So I’m going to find another job, me.”
He stopped, startled for a moment at the Cajun in his speech. Thought I was farther away from that. … Thought I had some courage too, but I don’t. “I’m alive, and I quit. Jesus, not even a gun. You know what that’s like?”
“A gun would do no good,” the Old Man insisted. “They are much better at that than you are. A gun would only make you feel that you could fight.”
“I been in it without a gun,” Robert said, “and me, next time I want one.” There was the damn Cajun again.
The Old Man pointed again to the chair. “How can I guess what happened?”
He was so tired. Maybe if he sat down for a minute. “Just so you stop pointing your finger,” he told the Old Man. His back hurt, and his eyes felt like they were jutting out. Damn woman. Should never have gone there.
His fingernails were dirty. How could he get dirty hands in bed with Betty? “I’ll tell you what happened.”
When he finished, the Old Man said nothing. He drank his highball slowly and the condensation fell on his lapel. Lamotta sat motionless, too.
“So I quit,” Robert repeated.
The Old Man did not seem to hear. He stared into his empty glass, now and then shaking the ice, listening carefully to the little crisp rattle. Robert faded from anger to annoyance to boredom to, finally, a fitful drunken sleep.
After a while, through his doze, he was conscious of the Old Man and Lamotta talking, arguing. Of Lamotta saying, “You are wrong.” Of the Old Man saying, “I’ll call right now—what time is it in New Jersey? Louis won’t mind waking up for a deal like this.”
Robert heard the Old Man walk heavily through the hall to the telephone and begin jiggling the receiver impatiently. Robert shifted, opened one eye. Maurice Lamotta was staring at him, his face twisted with anger. “You’ve just cost the Old Man a very great deal of money, do you know that? He is getting out of the liquor business.”
“Me? I just quit.”
“He won’t let you quit.”
“Look,” Robert said, “he don’t tell me what to do. I can always go back to fishing.”
“And I hired you.” Lamotta went to look out the night-blinded window.
Robert yawned loudly. Fish, fish, see all the pretty fish. He was dozing again when the Old Man came back.
“That’s done,” the Old Man said. “I was sure Louis would be interested.”
“Do you know how much that will cost you?” Lamotta said.
The Old Man fixed himself another drink. “Bootlegging will not be with us forever, my friend. I see the end of it and so do you.”
Lamotta sniffed. “One day I will figure out exactly what you have lost by quitting because of a fight.”
The Old Man chuckled, a dry humorless sound. “My friend, you know better.”
“These people are amateurs.” Lamotta was actually pleading. “You could take care of them.”
“Mossy,” the Old Man said, and for a minute Robert did not recognize Maurice Lamotta in that name, “it would not be easy, and there would be,” he hesitated, looking for the word, “some trouble.”
“And Louis,” Lamotta was still arguing, “what do you think Louis will do?”
“He will probably kill every one of them.”
“Right now Louis is thinking you’ve turned coward.”
“Why do I care what Louis thinks? I’m not in the liquor business, I don’t need a reputation. Let Louis have the profits and the troubles. Let him have the last few years. …”
“You sold too cheap.” Lamotta almost choked on the words.
“Mossy, my friend, you forget there’s mone
y in legitimate business. I am now respectable.”
Lamotta sighed, almost a sob.
The Old Man said: “I would not risk the boy, you understand that. No amount of money would make me risk his life again.”
ROBERT WOKE up with a lurch, almost jumping out of his chair. The Old Man sat in the same spot, but there was breakfast on a tray beside him, and the room smelled of coffee. At the window, daylight was beginning—the faint green flush of the east, beyond the puffy crest of a palm tree.
“Why didn’t you wake me up? You let me sleep all night.”
“It’s more peaceful with you asleep.”
He looked vaguely sad, Robert thought, or was he just tired? “I’m going home.”
“Sit down,” the Old Man said.
“I quit.”
“You did not quit,” the Old Man said. “This afternoon you will be on a train to Chicago; tomorrow you will be on a train to Denver.”
“I’m tired traveling.”
“You stay here,” the Old Man said, “and you will get killed.”
Robert just stared at him, facts slowly sinking into his consciousness.
“I’ve paid a lot for your safety,” the Old Man said, “and I do not propose to waste my money.” He got up slowly. “You heard us last night, and contrary to what Lamotta believes I do not like to lose money. … Now, shave if you want to, but don’t leave the house. I’ll wake my daughters and have them pack.”
Robert blinked at him. “Daughters?”
“We’re all going on a vacation,” the Old Man said. “The school year is almost over, the sisters at the convent will not mind if my girls miss the last month.”
“I’ve got a hangover and I don’t feel good,” Robert said. “Where are we going?”
“Next time don’t drink so much because you’re scared,” the Old Man said. “We’re going to see the West. The whole West; maybe I’ll buy a ranch.”
THEY SAW the whole West, as the Old Man promised. From Montana (where he did buy a ranch: “I’d like to go hunting sometimes”) to Arizona where they dutifully surveyed the Rio Grande. For months they toured methodically, jarring on horseback over rock-littered ground, on muleback over trails so narrow Robert closed his eyes against dizziness, on narrow-gauge railways to abandoned mine shafts, on sleek fast trains that raced hour after hour through empty stretches of nothing at all. Robert remembered endless look-alike mountains and on their slopes flowers called columbines whose skinny ugliness appealed to him strongly. (I am going queer, he told himself, when flowers begin to mean something to me.) Moonlit desert flats that gleamed like snow. Piles of stones commemorating births and deaths and battles. And winds, hard dry winds. The Old Man loved mountains; the sound of the wind made him smile gently to himself, as if he were remembering something.
The Condor Passes Page 13
