First Blood

by David Morrell

  'I warned you about that staring,' Teasle said. Leaning against the juke box, he unstuck his wet shirt from his chest. Left-handed, he took a cigarette from a pack in his shirt pocket, lit it, snapping the wood match he had used in half, then snickered, shaking his head in amusement as he walked over to the counter and smiled strangely down at Rambo on the stool. 'Well, you sure put one over on me, didn't you?' he said.

  'I wasn't trying to.'

  'Of course not. Of course you weren't. But you sure put one over on me just the same, didn't you?'

  The old lady set Teasle's coffee down and faced Rambo. 'How do you want your burgers? Plain or dragged through the garden?'

  'What?'

  'Plain or with fixings?'

  'With lots of onion.'

  'Whatever you like.' She went off to fry the hamburgers.

  'Yeah, you really did,' Teasle said to him and smiled strangely again. 'You really put one over.' He frowned at the dirty cotton bulging from a rip in the stool next to Rambo and sat reluctantly. 'I mean, you act like you're smart. And you talk like you're smart, so I naturally assumed you got the idea. But then you come dragging back here and fool me, and that's enough to make a man wonder if maybe you're not smart at all. Is there something wrong with you? Is that what it is?'

  'I'm hungry.'

  'Well, that just doesn't interest me at all,' Teasle said, drawing on his cigarette. It had no filter and after he exhaled, he picked off bits of tobacco that were stuck to his lips and tongue. 'A fellow like you, he ought to have brains to carry a lunch with him. You know, for when he has some emergency, like you have now.'

  He lifted the cream pitcher to pour into his coffee, but then he noticed the bottom of the pitcher, and his mouth went sour at the yellow curds that were clinging there. 'You need a job?' he asked quietly.

  'No.'

  Then you already got a job.'

  'No, I don't have a job either. I don't want a job.'

  'That's called being a vagrant.'

  'Call it whatever the hell you want.'

  Teasle's hand slammed like a shot on the counter. 'You watch your mouth!'

  Everyone in the place jerked his head toward Teasle. He looked around at them, and smiled as if he had said something funny, and leaned close to the counter to sip his coffee. 'That'll give them something to talk about.' He smiled and took another draw on his cigarette, picking more specks of tobacco off his tongue. The joke was over. 'Listen, I don't get it. That rig of yours, the clothes and hair and all. Didn't you know when you came back down the main street out there you'd stand out like some black man? My crew radioed in about you five minutes after you got back.'

  'What took them so long?'

  'The mouth,' Teasle said. 'I warned you.'

  He looked like he was ready to say more, but then the old lady brought Rambo a half-full paper bag and said, 'Buck thirty-one.'

  'For what? For that little bit?'

  'You said you wanted the fixings.'

  'Just pay her,' Teasle said.

  She held onto the bag until Rambo gave her the money.

  'O.K., let's go,' Teasle said.

  'Where?'

  'Where I take you.' He emptied his cup in four quick swallows and put down a quarter. Thanks, Merle.' Everybody looked at the two of them as they walked to the door.

  'Almost forgot,' Teasle said. 'Hey, Merle, one more thing. How about cleaning the bottom on that cream pitcher.'

  3

  The cruiser was directly outside. 'Get in,' Teasle said, tugging at his sweaty shirt. 'Damn, for the first of October it sure is hot. I don't know how you tolerate wearing that hot jacket.'

  'I don't sweat.'

  Teasle looked at him. 'Sure you don't.' He dropped his cigarette down a manhole grate by the curb, and they got into the cruiser. Rambo watched the traffic and the people going past. In the bright sun after the dark lunch counter, his eyes hurt. One man walking by the cruiser waved to Teasle, and Teasle waved back, then pulled away from the curb into a break in traffic. He was driving fast this time.

  They went down past a hardware store and a used car lot and old men smoking cigars on benches and women pushing children in strollers.

  'Look at those women,' Teasle said. 'A hot day like this and they don't have the sense to keep their kids indoors.'

  Rambo did not bother looking. He just closed his eyes and leaned back. When he opened them, the cruiser was speeding up the road between the two cliffs, up onto the level where the stunted corn drooped in the fields, past the YOU ARE NOW LEAVING MADISON sign. Teasle stopped the car abruptly on the gravel shoulder and turned to him.

  'Now get it clear,' he said. 'I don't want a kid who looks like you and doesn't have a job in my town. First thing I know, a bunch of your friends will show up, mooching food, maybe stealing, maybe pushing drugs. As it is, I've half a notion to lock you up for the inconvenience you've caused me. But the way I see it, a kid like you, he's entitled to a mistake. It's like your judgment's not as developed as an older man's and I have to make allowances. But you come back again and I'll fix you so you won't know whether your asshole's bored, bunched, or pecked out by crows. Is that plain enough for you to understand? Is that clear?'

  Rambo grabbed hold of the lunch sack and his sleeping bag and got out of the car.

  'I asked you a question,' Teasle said out the open passenger door. 'I want to know if you heard me tell you not to come back.'

  'I heard you,' Rambo said, flipping the door shut.

  'Then dammit, do what you hear you're told!'

  Teasle stomped on the gas pedal and the cruiser lurched off the road shoulder, gravel flying, onto the smooth hot pavement. He made a severe U-turn, tires squealing, and sped back toward town. This time he did not sound his car horn going past.

  Rambo watched the cruiser get smaller and disappear down the hill between the two cliffs, and when he could no longer see it, he glanced around at the fields of corn and the mountains in the distance and the white sun in

  [?missing page 15?]

  and then he was decided. He grabbed the rope on his sleeping bag, slung it around his shoulder and started hiking into Madison again.

  At the bottom of the hill into town, trees lined the road, half-green, half-red, the red leaves always on the branches that hung over the road. From exhaust fumes, he thought. Exhaust fumes kill them early.

  Dead animals lay here and there along the roadside, likely hit by cars, bloated and speckled with flies in the sun. First a cat, tiger-striped - looked like it had been a nice cat too - next a cocker spaniel, then a rabbit, then a squirrel. That was another thing the war had given him. He noticed dead things more. Not in horror. Just in curiosity of how they had come to end.

  He walked past them down the right side of the road, thumb out for a ride. His clothes were filmed yellow with dust, his long hair and beard were matted dirty, and all the people driving by took a look at him, and nobody stopped. So why don't you clean up your act? he thought. Shave and get a haircut. Fix up your clothes. You'll get your rides that way. Because. A razor's just one more thing to slow you down, and haircuts waste money you can spend on food, and where would you shave anyhow; you can't sleep in the woods and come out looking like some kind of prince. Then why walk around like this, sleeping in the woods? And with that, his mind moved in a circle and he was back to the war. Think about something else, he told himself. Why not turn around and go? Why come back to this town? It's nothing special. Because, I have a right to decide for myself whether I'll stay in it or not. I won't have somebody decide that for me.

  But this cop is friendlier than the rest were. More reasonable. Why bug him? Do what he says.

  Just because somebody smiles when he hands me a bag of shit, that doesn't mean I have to take it. I don't give a damn how friendly he is. It's what he does that matters.

  But you do look a little rough, as if you might cause trouble. He has a point.

  So do I. In fifteen goddamn towns this has happened to me. This is the last. I
won't be fucking shoved anymore.

  Why not explain that to him, clean yourself up a bit? Or do you want this trouble that's coming? You're hungry for some action, is that it? So you can show him your stuff?

  I don't have to explain myself to him or anybody else. After what I've been through, I have a right without explanation.

  At least tell him about your medal, what it cost you.

  Too late to stop his mind from completing the circle. Once again he returned to the war.

  4

  Teasle was waiting for him. As soon as he drove past the kid, he had glanced up at his rearview mirror, and there the kid had been, reflected small and clear. But the kid was not moving. He was just standing there at the side of the road where he had last been, watching the cruiser, just standing there, getting smaller, watching the cruiser.

  Well, what's the holdup, kid? Teasle had thought. Go on, clear out.

  But the kid had not. He had just kept standing there, getting smaller in the mirror, looking toward the cruiser. And then the road into town had sloped sharply down between the cliffs, and Teasle could not see him reflected anymore.

  My God, you're planning to come back again, he had suddenly realized, shaking his head and laughing once. You're honestly planning to come back.

  He turned right onto a side street and drove a quarterway up a row of gray clapboard houses. He swung into a gravel driveway and backed out and parked so the cruiser was aimed toward the main road he had just left. Then he slumped behind the steering wheel, lighting a cigarette.

  The look on the kid's face. He was honest-to-God planning to come back. Teasle could not get over it.

  From where he was parked, he could see everything that passed on the main road. The traffic wasn't much, it never was on Monday afternoons: the kid couldn't walk along the far sidewalk and be hidden by the passing cars.

  So Teasle watched. The street he was on met the main road in a T. There were cars and trucks going both ways on the main road, a sidewalk on the far side, beyond that the stream which ran along the road and beyond that the old Madison Dance Palace. It had been condemned last month. Teasle remembered when he was in high school how he had worked there Friday and Saturday nights parking cars. Hoagy Carmichael had almost played there once, but the owners hadn't been able to promise him enough money.

  Where's the kid?

  Maybe he isn't coming. Maybe he really left.

  I saw that look on his face. He's coming all right.

  Teasle took a deep drag on his cigarette and glanced up at the green-brown mountains lumped close on the horizon. There was a sudden cool wind that smelled of crisp leaves and then it was gone.

  'Teasle to station,' he said into the microphone of his car radio. 'Has the mail come in yet?'

  As always, Shingleton, the day radioman, was quick to answer, his voice crackling from static. 'Sure has, Chief. I already checked it for you. Nothing from your wife, I'm afraid.'

  'What about from a lawyer? Or maybe something from California that she didn't put her name on the outside.'

  'I already checked that too, Chief. Sorry. Nothing.'

  'Anything important I ought to know about?'

  'Just a set of traffic lights that shorted out, but I got the works department over there fixing it.'

  'If that's all then, I'll be a few minutes yet coming back.'

  This kid was a nuisance, waiting for him. He wanted to get back to the station and phone her. She was gone three weeks now and she had promised to write at the most by today and here she had not. He did not care anymore about keeping his own promise to her not to call, he was going to phone anyway. Maybe she had thought it over and changed her mind.

  But he doubted that.

  He lit another cigarette and glanced to the side. There were neighbor women out on porches looking to see what he was up to. That was the end, he decided. He flipped the cigarette out the cruiser window, switched the ignition and drove down to the main road to find out where the hell the kid was.

  Nowhere in sight.

  Sure. He's gone and left and that look was just to make me think be was coming back.

  So he headed toward the station to phone, and three blocks later when all at once he saw the kid up on the left sidewalk, leaning against a wire fence over the stream, he slammed on his brakes so hard in surprise that the car following crashed into the rear end of the cruiser.

  The guy who had hit him was sitting shocked behind the wheel, his hand over his mouth. Teasle opened the cruiser door and stared at the guy a second before he walked over to where the kid was leaning against the wire fence.

  'How did you get into town without me seeing you?'

  'Magic.'

  'Get in the car.'

  'I don't think so.'

  'You think a little more.'

  There were cars lined up behind the car that had struck the cruiser. The driver was now standing in the middle of the road, peering at the smashed taillight, shaking his head. Teasle's open door angled into the opposite lane, slowing traffic. Drivers blared their horns; customers and clerks came sticking their heads out of shops across the street.

  'You listen,' Teasle said. 'I'm going to clear that mess of traffic. 'The time I'm through, you be in that cruiser.'

  They eyed each other. The next thing, Teasle was over to the guy who had hit the cruiser. The guy was still shaking his head at the damage.

  'Driver's license, insurance card, ownership papers,' Teasle told him. 'Please.' He went and shut the cruiser door.

  'But I didn't have a chance to stop.'

  'You were following too close.'

  'But you slammed on your brakes too fast.'

  'It doesn't matter. The law says the car in back is always wrong. You were following too close for an emergency.'

  'But-'

  'I'm not about to argue with you,' Teasle told him, 'Please give me your driver's license, insurance card and ownership papers.' He looked over at the kid, and of course the kid was gone.

  5

  Rambo stayed out walking in the open to make it clear that he was not trying to hide. Teasle could give up the game at this point and leave him alone; if he did not, well then it was Teasle who wanted the trouble, not himself.

  He walked along the left-hand sidewalk, looking down at the stream wide and fast in the sun. Across the stream was the bright yellow, freshly sandblasted wall of a building with balconies over the water and a sign high on top MADISON HISTORIC HOTEL. Rambo tried to figure what was historic about a building that looked as if it had just been put up last year.

  In the center of town, he turned left onto a big orange bridge, sliding a hand along the smooth warm paint on the metal rail until he was half across. He stopped to peer down at the water. The afternoon was glaring hot, the water fast and cool-looking.

  Next to him, welded to the rail, was a machine with a glass top full of gumballs. He took a penny from his jeans and reached to put it in the slot and held it back in time. He had been wrong. The machine was not full of gumballs. It was full of grainy balls of fish food. There was a small metal plate stamped onto the machine. FEED THE FISH, it read. 10 CENTS. PROCEEDS BENEFIT BASALT COUNTY YOUTH CORPS. BUSY YOUTH MAKE HAPPY YOUTH.

  Sure they do, Rambo thought. And the early bird gets the shaft.

  He peered down at the water again. It was not long before he heard somebody walk up behind him. He did not bother to see who it was.

  'Get in the car.'

  Rambo concentrated on the water. 'Will you look at all the fish down there,' he said. 'Must be a couple of thousand. What's the name of that big gold one? It can't be a real goldfish. Not that big.'

  'Palomino trout,' he heard behind him. 'Get in the car.'

  Rambo peered further down at the water. 'Must be a new strain. I never heard of it.'

  'Hey, boy, I'm talking to you. Look at me.'

  But Rambo did not. 'I used to go fishing quite a bit,' he said, peering down. 'When I was young. But now most streams are fished out or poll
uted. Does the town stock this one? Is that why there's so many fish down there?'

  That was why all right. The town had stocked the stream for as long as Teasle could remember. His father often used to bring him down and watch the workmen from the state fish hatchery stock it. The workmen would carry pails from a truck down the slope to the stream, set them in the water and the ease the pails over to let the fish slide out, the length of a man's hand and sleek and sometimes rainbow colored. 'Jesus, look at me!' Teasle said.