“Goddamn!” he shouted, snatching the mug up, and pitching it over his shoulder. White dust and slivers of glass exploded from the far wall.
“Where’s my fucking glass?”
He burst through the bedroom door as if an enemy were waiting for him. She was lying on the bed reading an orange paperback titled ATLANTIS: The Third Eye? in block letters on both covers.
“You really are childish sometimes,” she said, not looking up from the book.
He slapped the book out of her hands and it flapped across the room into the wall. “That’s right. I’m one childish son of a bitch.” He spun and drove his fist through the cheap hollow-core door, gashing his hand. He slowly turned back to her, sucking on his fist. He smiled at her, his teeth pink with blood, and asked in a pleasant voice, “Well now, that was even more childish, wasn’t it?”
Then his voice hardened. “Wasn’t it?” he asked her. “Isn’t that right?”
He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “Right? Say it. Right! You goddamn well better say it. Say it now!”
She said the word “right,” and he let go of her.
“Right,” he said. “That’s right. Absolutely. Right! Aren’t you pleased that we were able to clear that up?
“And you don’t know anything! Nothing!” he yelled, splintering the door again, then again, “Nothing!”
He stepped back from the ruined door, out of breath, and stood looking at his bloody hand.
“I know that I’m tired of your moods and rages,” she said softly.
“So am I, lady.”
Hanson sat with his face close to the fire, drunk on White Mountain wine. He thought now how fire was like the ocean, colors changing and flowing into one another. The fire was hot on his face, and the lump on the bridge of his nose throbbed, still tender where it had been broken when a Hell’s Angel had sucker-punched him in an Oakland bar. The iced white wine made his tooth ache, a tooth that had gotten chipped in a fight with a black staff sergeant back in Da Nang, a fight that had grown out of a drunken argument about what Hanson had called the “realities” of integration.
The crescent scar over his right eye seemed to pull tight. An old friend had thrown a full Budweiser across the kitchen at him, the lip of the can splitting his scalp open. It had been a party the woman had thrown for a visiting poet only a week after Hanson had gotten back from ’Nam. The poet, a woman in her forties, wrote about “The Revolution” in lines like, “Be warned amerika, your friends/enemies wait to bring you to justice.”
The cut had bled a lot, blood running down over his eye, dripping from his chin. Hanson had cupped his hands and caught the blood, lapping it up like tap water, laughing crazily. He spotted a pretty girl, a graduate student, he supposed, her face smooth and perfect. She had on jeans, ninety-dollar hiking boots, and a patched work shirt. She was watching him in horror.
“Hey, momma,” Hanson had called to her. “Hey, my little alternative-life-style dumpling,” he’d said as he walked toward her, fixing her with his bloody eye. He snatched her by the hair, bent her head back, and kissed her full on the mouth, forcing his tongue between her lips. She broke loose, her lips bloody, retching, and ran for the door.
Now, sitting in front of the fire, Hanson thought, A person’s scars are a dossier of his dealings with the world. He smiled, pleased with the phrase, and studied the flaw in his wineglass, the firelight opalescent through the wine.
He passed out in front of the fire, sweat on his face, dreaming that he was on a hillside in Vietnam, taking a break in the midday heat. Beads of sweat tickling like green flies down his neck, the fire rustling like elephant grass. He could feel the web-gear harness across his left shoulder and the compact submachine gun under his right knee. If anything happened he could be up and running with all his gear, sprinting the first few yards in his sleep.
It was winter. The tourists were gone, and the tidal pools were healing after being trampled and littered by the summer people who clogged the roads with their campers and rec-vees.
Hanson stepped carefully from rock to rock above the fragile life of the tidal pools. He crouched occasionally to study one of the clear basins: starfish, green and purple spiked anemone, small striped fish flashing in the shadows. Pieces of abalone shell shifted and turned in the currents, one side like an old scab, the other side a smooth, pearly blue.
Anyone watching from the bluffs might have thought he was studying a road map, shifting from one leg to the other, inclining his head, studying the highways for the best route, the fastest, the most scenic, one that would take him through a particular town perhaps.
But Hanson was looking for what he called clues, some pattern in the tidal pool that might explain something or part of something, might hint at what he should do, or forecast an event. The patterns and movements of larger masses—the ocean, wind in the grass, the quality of the light, hawks and clouds—he called them omens. They were no more or less important than clues, but he watched them differently. Omens moved around and over him; they came and went suddenly, and he could only hope to realize their meaning before they were gone. They could not be studied like tidal pools. The world was alive with omens and clues, like dust sparkling in the sun. Hanson felt that if he could discern the pattern in time, he could leap into it and take his place in the world, like leaping into a complex and manic dance.
He found a shark’s tooth in the sand, a big one, shaped like an arrowhead. The body of the tooth was a glossy dappled gray, the edges serrated. The root, the part that had pulled somehow from the shark’s jaw, was wedge-shaped, a thick wing, porous, the color of driftwood. The tooth was flawless, not a crack or chip in it. He placed it carefully back in the depression in the sand where he had found it, setting it in like a puzzle piece.
On the way back to the bluffs he stopped to watch a sea gull peck at the white eye of a large fish head. The head was thick and gray, set in the sand like a lead maul.
The gull pecked mechanically, without malice or relish, tearing off a small scrap of eye, tipping his head back to swallow, then pecking some more. Hanson walked toward the fish head, and the gull side-waddled to the edge of the surf, fixing Hanson fearlessly with its bright black eye.
The fish had a heavy, low-slung jaw that Hanson prodded open with the toe of his blue track shoe. The jaw flanges were thick with pearly mucus and gave way slowly to perfect rows of needlelike teeth.
Hanson sat down on an outcropping of rock and looked out to sea. On the horizon a big seagoing tug was towing the hulk of an old freighter north to the scrap yard up the coast. The freighter had no king posts or booms, no bridge or wheelhouse, and it rode high in the water. It was too far away to see the tow lines, so the freighter seemed to be stalking the tug, maimed and blind, neither gaining nor falling behind.
“Ah,” Hanson said, smiling, “the omens are many and confusing this night,” thinking of Mr. Minh, who had taught him how to read the omens.
It was getting on toward dusk when Hanson started back to the cabin. The gull was still pecking tirelessly at the fish head. The lighthouse out on the point blinked, and Hanson could feel the faint, insistent wind begin to blow, howling faintly in his ears, chilling him, reminding him that he was supposed to be dead, that there had been a mistake in Vietnam. The space that his body was supposed to occupy in the world had closed over while he was still alive to fill it, shutting him out.
The pile of snails was just outside the back door. They were dying, but still trying to move. Their shells were split and torn like thumbnails, and they grated softly against one another, whispering to Hanson. In the dim light the pile of snails moved more slowly, and then not at all. Hanson heard the whispering, and the old terror rose in his chest and up into his mouth.
She was sitting inside at a folding table, writing. As she took a drag off one of her thin brown cigarettes, he kicked the table over, catapulting paper, books, and half a cup of tea against the wall, leaving her sitting in the chair in the middle of the room. He
placed one hand against her chest and, very deliberately, pushed her and the chair over backward.
“Don’t move,” he said.
She was in an awkward position, her legs straddling the back of the chair, braced on one arm, about to scramble back and away from him.
“Don’t. Fucking. Move. I’ll kill you if you move. I’ll break your fucking back. Jesus Christ, you’re crazy—”
“I don’t think—”
“Shut the fuck up. You can’t do things like that. The snails know what they’re doing. They pull their shells along until they find the place they’re supposed to be. They know where it is when they find it, and they stop there and seal off. You start fucking around with things like that—they been around for a million years—they survived because they know when to stop and seal off and when to move—you fuck around with patterns, with constants, don’t you see,” he put his foot on her chest, “don’t you see?”—she nodded her head—“and it’s all over—it’s too late now—and that is when the bad shit begins.”
The tavern, The Uncommon Good, was crowded and noisy; all the regular winter people were there. Commune hippies in bib overalls were nursing their beers. There were people who ran the boutiques and crafts shops, students and teachers at the small but well-financed art center. Always there were a few women, in their thirties and early forties, who had a desperate enthusiasm for everything, who favored peasant dresses and shawls, who made weekly trips to the post office to pick up checks sent by their husbands.
The kid had a pitcher of beer and a glass in his hand, looking for a place to sit down. He was Hanson’s height, but thinner and several years younger. His hair was light brown and shoulder length. He was wearing jeans and a brown satin cowboy shirt embroidered with roses. He had a wide leather belt with a big silver buckle in the shape of a peace symbol.
The only empty chair was at Hanson’s table, and the kid walked over to it.
“Anybody usin’ this chair?” he asked.
Hanson stared straight ahead as if he hadn’t heard.
The kid stood there.
Hanson looked up at him with a neutral, almost benign expression, then looked past him. “Nobody’s using it,” he said.
The kid stood there, looking uncomfortable.
“It’s okay,” Hanson said. “Go ahead and sit down. But can’t take a hint just took on a new depth for me.”
The kid, who had started to sit down, stood back up, spilling some beer. “Look,” he said, “I’m sorry, man, if you’re into something. I didn’t mean…”
“No, it’s okay, Gypsy Cowboy. Siddown, I’m not into anything. Sit down! I’m almost out of beer. Pour me a beer.” Hanson laughed. “Into anything.”
Hanson drained his glass and held it out for the kid to fill. “See,” he told the kid, “I learned this trick somewhere. You’re on a bus, right, and there are only two empty seats left, one of them next to where you’re sitting. And here comes some big fat woman with a bunch of shopping bags. Here she comes now, dragging all her shit up the aisle. Or it’s a wino who stinks and is gonna tell you what a great guy he was in the old days. Or some pimply-faced PFC home on leave, wearing his baggy uniform with his pants tucked into his boots, all his friends away at school or married. All through basic training he’s been thinking how great it’s gonna be to come home, and after two days of it he wants to go back to the barracks.
“Here they come now, the PFC tripping over his boots, feeling self-conscious and out of place, the wino sucking his teeth, the woman grunting and sweating, all headed right for that empty seat next to you. And you don’t want them to sit there. No, you can do without that. So what you do, see, is just stare straight ahead, not at anything in particular—what they call a thousand-yard-stare—and keep thinking, Die. Die. Die! and they’ll go past every time. They’ll stand up before they’ll sit next to you.”
“Maybe the lady is tired,” the kid began. “The PFC could tell me about the Army. The wino might have a story.”
“Maybe,” Hanson said. “The lady can take her bags and sit in the other empty seat. The PFC isn’t going to tell you the truth about the Army, he’s gonna tell you what a hero he is. All winos have the same story: ‘It’s a hell of a life, kid. If only I was your age again, whole life ahead of me, coulda been something.’ ”
Hanson gripped the edge of the table and glared at the kid. “Coulda been something,” he shouted. “Maybe, huh!” People at other tables looked over.
“You know! Don’t ya? Huh. Huh. Yeah, I know you. No ‘maybe.’ I don’t forget.”
More people looked over. Hanson made a clumsy grab at the kid, who jumped back, knocking over his chair.
“Yah,” Hanson growled, “dirty son of a bitch. Oughta kill ya!
“That’s the wino story,” Hanson said, sitting back and laughing. “Starts out telling you a lot of lies, giving you advice, then forgets where he is, thinks you’re somebody else, somebody who fucked him over once, and you got a madman next to you for the whole bus ride.
“On the other hand,” Hanson said, “you should pay better attention to who you sit down next to.
“Thanks for the beer,” he called to the kid, who was edging up the stairs to the second floor of the tavern.
Hanson ordered another beer and carried a chair to the back of the room, setting it down in a narrow space between the jukebox and the doorway opening to the stairs. He rocked on the back legs of the chair rhythmically, lightly thumping the back of his head against the wall, holding the beer in his lap with both hands. He smiled. His back was to the wall and both sides were protected.
He’d changed from the nylon track shoes into heavy work boots. In his hip pocket he had a flat-handled lock-blade knife. The first three inches of the blade could shave the hair off the back of his hand and lift a gray powder of dry skin. The last two inches were dull, so he could pop the blade open with his thumb. A trick he’d learned from a merchant seaman in—where was it now—Mobile? Yes. Mean Mobile, Alabama, where a knife was called a Mobile boxing glove.
Knife fighting. Yes, an interesting topic. An excellent topic, he thought, reciting to himself as if he were giving a lecture. “The most important rule,” he went on, his lips moving slightly as he half-pronounced the words, “is never to let the other guy know you’ve got a knife until you’ve cut him.” But, he thought, taking a drink of beer, even if he knows you’ve got a knife, try to keep it just out of sight, behind your leg. That way he won’t be able to kick it out of your hand, and when you move, he won’t be able to anticipate the angle of your lunge.
A guy with a red beard and a girl in a tie-dye blouse walked through the front door, laughing. The guy bent his hands into his armpits and flapped his elbows like wings, shouting, “Whoop. Whoop.”
Also, Hanson thought, also, it makes the other guy nervous, psychs him, knowing you’ve got a knife but not being able to see it.
Now some people say, if you get into a knife fight, you might as well plan on getting cut, but you decide where. Offer the other guy your left forearm, and while he goes for it, you can move inside and pick your spot. But I don’t know about that one. He’d seen what the pain and loss of blood from a deep cut could do.
He remembered the black PFC who’d gotten his cheek laid open with a case cutter in Fayetteville. The Circus Lounge. A place where you go to the bathroom in groups, for protection. “Gorier than a white man,” he mumbled to himself, looking at the moisture rings on his table. Smooth black skin peeling open, white fat tissue underneath and red muscle beneath that. The blood bright and startling against the black skin.
Well…he thought. His eyes had begun to work independently. He closed one and watched people in the bar talking. He couldn’t hear what they were saying. The jukebox drowned them out. Some bullshit song by some guy with a voice like a woman. Some sensitive asshole, he thought.
The jukebox paused, whirred, and began another song:
You got yer army an’ yer CIA…
I got my rainbow an
’ a sunny day,
You gotta boogie-woogie,
You gotta boogie-woogie…
Hanson bought another beer and went upstairs to a room with two pool tables and a pinball machine. The kid was playing eight ball with three guys in their twenties. The leader seemed to be the one wearing a black T-shirt. It was too cold for just a T-shirt, but his big arms and chest showed nicely through the thin cotton.
Hanson planned to take the leader out first.
One of them was wearing a plaid shirt, jeans, and logger’s boots. He didn’t look like a logger.
The third one had shoulder-length blond hair and was wearing a gold ring in his left ear. He had on a denim vest with silver studs across the back and a wide leather watch band with three buckles.
A twelve-year-old boy, one of the local kids, was playing the pinball machine that rang and chattered as Hanson pulled a chair over to a corner where he could watch the whole room.
The boy was good. He knew just how much he could shove and knee the machine before it would “TILT” and end the game. The machine was named Round Up, one of the old kind that fires silver ball-bearings with a spring-loaded plunger. Pink plastic flippers, like little stubs of amputated limbs, twitched as if stung and batted at the ball as it rolled past. When the ball dropped into one of the holes, the machine shuddered, big-breasted cowgirls etched into the glass flickered with light, and the box score added up with mechanical grunts.
The boy had already won two free replays when the one in the T-shirt yelled at him. “Hey, that’s enough of that noise. You’re fucking up my game. Take off.”
The boy looked up from the machine.
“Yeah, you got it. Take off. Now.”
The boy left, his two games unplayed.
Hanson sipped his beer and tapped his foot to the jukebox below. The Gypsy Cowboy kid smiled and said to the one in the T-shirt, “Frank, you’re shooting so bad tonight an earthquake couldn’t hurt your game.”
Sympathy for the Devil Page 8
