“Must have been asleep.”
“Darby’s still sleeping. And I don’t wonder. That old boy will sleep for a month to catch up.”
He stared across the river. Spotlights had been rigged, somehow. The truck was up on its wheels. Men were hauling at a long rope and he heard the distant chant as they heaved in unison. The truck was inching backward out of the river.
“Progress, eh?”
“The ferry ought to be over pretty soon. And you’ll have to do something about your car.” He couldn’t seem to come all the way up out of the mists of sleep. His mind was cottony, turgid. He stood up and stretched until he heard his shoulder muscles make small popping sounds.
“Who’s singing?” he asked dully.
“Those twin blondes. Sitting up in their car. They gave me something. Here.”
His hand closed around the cool bottle glass.
“It’s tequila, sugar. Maybe you need some.”
He removed the cork, tilted the bottle up. It splashed acidly against his teeth, burned his mouth. He took three gasping swallows, lowered the bottle, and shuddered. It socked hard into his stomach, made a spreading warmth.
He listened to the singing. Funny thing for them to be singing. Church music. Sounded sweet and clear. Gave you the creeps, somehow. Took you way, way back. Combed and brushed and sitting there, and the little shelves with holes for the wineglasses, and the funny taste of the bread as it melted slowly on your tongue. Sun slanting in and that low organ note that made your belly feel hollow every time the man hit that exact note.
Bad luck to think about churches.
He tilted the bottle up again. It went down easier.
“Hey, don’t be a pig!”
He gave her back the bottle. Had to watch it. Empty stomach under that tequila. He braced his feet and stretched again, yawned, scrubbed at his belly with his knuckles.
She slid an arm under his and ran her fingers up the nape of his neck. He clamped her waist in his arm, put his mouth down hard on hers, pressing all substance out of it, pressing it into looseness, running his other hand down her flank, pulling her in hard against him.
“There’s a place,” she said, her voice sounding dusty and broken.
They stumbled back into the darkness, into the field behind the tree line, making difficult business of walking, the way he was holding her closely. After a time she turned against him, slack-legged, pulling him down, grass rasping dry under them, dress fabric rustling, then thighs hard-white in starlight, her mouth a blackness, eyes reflecting a feral star glint, and taloned hands and the fumbling and the knowledge of the quickness coming. Bennicke glanced to the side and saw, in the starlight, the bullfighter and the barb drawn back, and the metal gleam. With a great cry he threw himself back and away from her, scrabbling crabwise, crying out again, and suddenly the bullfighter was gone from the starlight. He looked at her and saw no barbed shaft protruding, saw only a whiteness and heard her voice, heavy with contempt, saying, “What the hell is the matter with you?”
He didn’t answer. He located the gleaming bottle, set carefully aside out of harm’s way. He moved to it, tilted it up, drained what was left.
“What am I supposed to do?” she asked acidly.
“Shut up!”
She sat up, rearranged her clothes. He threw the empty bottle into the darkness. It thudded and rolled, not breaking. When you started seeing things, you were going nuts. No question about that.
She moved to him, tried with a certain sullenness to excite him. He pushed her roughly away.
“The deal is off, sugar,” she said.
“Just get away from me.”
“Pardon me for living,” she said. She got up and walked away, leaving him. He could still hear the sweet distant singing, the counterpoint chant from the far bank of the river. Something scuttled in the dry grass and he thought of scorpions and stood up, quickly. Desire had gone as though it had never existed, as though it would never return. The thought of her, the thought of any woman, sickened him.
Tequila rolled thunderously through his blood. He arched his hard thigh muscles and hunched his shoulders. He wanted to hit something, smash something, regain through violence his accustomed feeling of assurance.
After a bit he went down to the river bank, his walk a cocky strut, his elbows held away from his sides. Tequila droned and sang in his ears. The river bank was lighter because of the lights across the river. He saw the half-spick Texan sitting with the pale-headed girl. The Texan’s greaser buddy squatted on his heels a half-dozen feet from the couple, perennial cigarette clenched between thumb and middle finger. Flames roared high in Bennicke’s brain. He had to do something, anything, to feel alive once more.
He swung his shoe and kicked the Texan’s buddy heavily in the ribs, sending him sprawling. Bennicke bounced on his toes, waiting, and said, “Squat around where you don’t get in people’s way.”
The Mexican jumped up and moved away, holding his hurt side. He said something softly to Texas, who had got to his feet.
Texas said gently, “What was the point in that?”
“He gets in my way and next time I kick him in the face.”
Figures had moved out of the shadows. Bennicke felt them moving slowly in, converging on him. His mouth suddenly went dry. He suddenly realized he had to make his scrap with Texas, or perhaps feel the white-hot twist of a knife.
He moved with a prancing walk toward Texas, saying, “Maybe you want to get in my way?”
Texas said something quickly in Spanish. Laughter suddenly exploded through the tension, shattering it. The laughter went on and on. Bennicke felt his face burning.
“What kind of a crack was that?” he demanded. “You talk too fast for me.”
“I told them they could watch how little fighting roosters are trained for the ring. Mrs. Gerrold, suppose you walk up the road and keep your back turned.”
“I’ll stay here, Bill,” she said.
Bennicke realized that Danton expected to take him. So he leaped quickly, snatching at Danton’s wrists, butting at his face. Danton snapped a hand free, brought his forearm across, chopping Bennicke across the side of the neck with it, moving his body out of the way. Del Bennicke’s rush carried him to the side of the truck and he slammed his palms against it to stop himself.
He spun fast, bringing his hands up, but Texas hadn’t followed him. He stood, waiting for Bennicke to make the next move, and Bennicke sensed contempt and anger in the tall man. Bennicke put his chin on his chest and went in fast, trying to hook the taller man in the middle. From somewhere out of the night there came a vast, hard-knuckled fist, swung like a bag of rocks on the end of a rope. He saw it a fraction of a second too late—too late to roll with it, much too late to move inside of it. As red lights exploded across the sky, and as the earth tilted up to crash against the back of his head and shoulders, he was filled with anger at his own mistake in judgment, yet also with the release that only violence seemed able to bring him.
When he sat up, Texas was sitting on his heels talking to the girl again. Texas said, “Now tell my friend you’re sorry. The one you kicked.”
“You can scrap,” Bennicke said softly.
“Tell him.”
Bennicke found Pepe in the gloom. “Sorry,” he grumbled.
“Está bien,” Pepe said, and Bennicke heard the laughter behind his words. Bennicke got up slowly, kneading the side of his neck. They all seemed to be waiting for his reaction, looking at him as if he was a damn beetle in a jar. He walked away, up the dark road.
The Mooney girl caught his arm, pulled him away from a nearby car. She was panting as though she had run a long way. Almost like a dog in summer.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?”
“Del, oh, my God, Del!” she whispered, holding his arms. “He’s… he’s dead! And I thought “Be was asleep!”
He pushed her away. “It’s your party. Remember? I’m out of it.”
“You’re not! You’re not! Y
ou’re going to help me.”
“In a pig’s—”
“Because if you don’t, I’ll tell everybody here the Mexican cops want you. I’ll get somebody to tell them in Matamoros. I’ll tell them you stole that car. I’ll tell them you’re a murderer or something. I’ll clobber you good if you don’t help me.”
“O.K.,” he said quickly. He took her up the steep bank, and in the deeper blackness near the trees, he drove his right hand at her throat, caught the softness between thumb and strong fingers. She raked his face once before he pinned her hands. She twisted and they tripped and went down, heavily. She thrashed, half under his weight, and then he sensed her struggling growing weaker. Suddenly he released the pressure, sat a bit apart from her, his head in his arms. She coughed and gagged for a time, then lay still, breathing hard.
In a husky, toneless voice she said, “What made you quit?”
“I don’t know.”
“They must want you bad, the Mexican cops.”
“They do.”
“Murder?” she whispered.
“It wasn’t, but they’ll call it that.”
“We’re both in bad shape, Del.”
It was said in a quiet voice, a voice that held no anger, no surprise.
“How do you know he’s dead?”
She took his hand and he felt her shiver. “I went to him. He was making a real funny noise. I couldn’t figure it. And then… something ran away from him. Something small. It was…”
He had a funny impulse to put his arm around her. Comfort her, somehow. All the brass and starch was gone out of her. She was a frightened kid.
“I’ll help,” he said, “but not on account of you threatening me. Keep that straight.”
“I don’t care why as long as you do it.”
“We’ll do it just like we planned. Only I’ll have to get him away from here. I’ll have to carry him. I remember from daylight that there’s a rock ridge about a quarter mile back and a half mile off the road—same side of the road he’s sitting on. I can get him up on my shoulders, We’ll drag him back a way so nobody will notice. I’ll put him over behind that ridge. It should work. They’ll find his car in San Antone. The records will show he came back into the States. I’ll strip him, and if nobody finds him before tomorrow night, they’ll never know who the hell he was—or even what color he was.”
On the far side of the river the truck was completely out of the way. Two cars had crawled up to the ferry deck. Bennicke sat silently, thinking of how close he had come to killing her, of killing, with her, his only chance. Murder had been the word to touch off the insanity. They were all after him. Every one of them. Even now somebody was probably watching. He looked around, moving his head very slowly.
Chapter Eleven
WHEN he had seen Linda’s bright hair in the lowering sunlight, bright against the muddy river, Bill Danton, the tall Texan, had felt a stir of pleasure so quick and so warm that it startled him a bit. It matched the pang of regret he had felt watching the ferry pull away, taking her out of his life for keeps.
He remembered Dad saying that the surest way to get to like people was to do them a favor. They might resent you, but you sure got fond of them quick. He wondered if the Quixote job had been what warmed him up toward her. She was a cute little bug, all right, with that hair lighter than her golden shoulders, and that look of hers, grave like a little kid, but yet showing that she was a woman grown. The tan linen dress hung sweetly on her, deftly accenting the taut little hips, commenting briefly on the cone-sharpness of her young breasts. He had sensed that here was that rare and lovely thing, a woman with beauty but also with loyalty, sensitivity, and the funny humor which is at once lusty and pixie. Her laughter would be wry bells, and there would always be a part of her that could never be completely captured, thus taking from any relationship with her that dull curse of possessiveness.
He guessed he had better face up to it and admit, watching the shabby rowboat approach the bank, that she was just too darn close to that picture he had been carting around in his head, of a girl he had never met, of a girl made up of bits and pieces of other girls known wisely and not too well.
He walked down to the bank, pulled the bow of the rowboat up, gave her his hand. She came out of the boat onto the gray cracked bank and told him very calmly that her mother-in-law had died. And suddenly her mouth twisted and her face contorted like the face of a child. He put his arm around her shoulders, walked her away from the line of cars, walked her upstream along the river bank. She took tissue from her purse, and when he began to sense a warning rigidity of her shoulders, he took his arm away quickly. She sniffled at intervals and finally stopped and planted her feet and blew her nose.
“Darn foolishness,” she said in a small voice, smiling weakly.
“Not at all. It can be a hell of a shock.”
“It was, but I don’t think I was crying for her. I never really got to know her. We’ve only been married a few weeks, and she tried to stop us from being married, until she saw she couldn’t win, and then she got very sweet about it. She flew down to Mexico City to travel back with us to Rochester. It was a shock because… well, she was such a strong personality. In her own quiet way.”
They came to a tree that had been brought down in some flood of long ago. The trunk was bleached white by the sun. She sat down on the trunk, her chin resting on her palm, elbow on her knee.
Bill thought of the young husband. Just a kid. This girl had grown up, but he hadn’t quite managed it yet. He sat down on the trunk, handed over a cigarette.
“I’ve got some here, thanks,” she said.
“Talking can help, you know. I listen good.”
“I don’t want to cry on your shoulder, Mr. Danton.”
“Bill. And I heard your husband call you Linda. Is it O.K. if I do?”
“Certainly, Bill. This is a crazy day. As if the world had stopped. I feel as though I were dreaming it. The doctor gave me something to take and the world is all fuzzy. If I start talking, I won’t stop. I can feel it. And I’ll say too much and get a load of remorse later.”
“That truth serum they use, isn’t that just a sedative? Sodium something. Sodium pentothal.”
“How is anybody supposed to know what truth is?”
“Well, I haven’t talked metaphysics since a couple of required courses at A. and M., but maybe I can remember just a little. As I remember it, some people claim that truth, as such, is not a constant. It varies with the individual and with the time and the place. Say like what was true yesterday is a damn lie tomorrow.”
“Maybe I’ve hit a place in my life where I’ve got to change my ideas about truth. That ever happen to you?”
“Sure has, Linda. Had to change everything once when I was a kid. My stepmother is a Mexican lady. When I first went to the States to school, I had the damnedest accent you ever heard. Anybody called me a Mexican, I had to go down fighting. Did a lot of fighting, all right. One day I wondered what in the pure hell I was fighting about. Next boy that called me a Mexican, I told him I was. Made me feel better. Made me feel better than fighting, because when I was fighting it was like I was objecting to the label. World is full of people objecting to labels. Washington is full of people calling each other communists.”
“Your home is happy, isn’t it, Bill? Are you married?”
“No, I live with the folks. What makes you think it’s happy?”
“Oh, it’s an air people have. I don’t know. Sort of secure. When I was little we had a happy home. Dad died and it sort of broke up, and I guess ever since I’ve been trying to get married so I could re-create life the way it was. My husband’s home life wasn’t happy. I think I wanted to give him what I had, and what he missed.”
“We get along fine. Big stone hacienda sort of place near Mante. Always somebody singing. Always a laugh. We give each other a bad time, but let somebody else try to, and the Dantons unite.”
“That’s the way it should be.”
&nbs
p; He frowned. “Maybe it’s just too good. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking today. I get restless, but I never get the gumption to pull out and do anything on my own.”
She looked down at the gray hard mud near her feet He looked at her and saw the tears begin to spill out of her eyes again. “Hey, now!” he said softly.
“I…I can’t seem to help it. We’re alone. I won’t ever see you again. If I can blow off steam, maybe I… can stop getting the weeps every minute.”
“I told you before. I listen good.”
“But this is so personal, damnit.” She took more tissue and wiped her eyes. “How is a person to know anything? I fell in love with my husband. As far as I knew, I was in love for keeps, and it couldn’t hit harder. Oh, a dream world! With violins and roses, yet. And today I find out that inside he’s really sort of a—a little person. I’m trying to talk myself back in love with him, but I can’t seem to.”
“He’s probably upset. Hell, he’s just a kid.”
She gave him a look of surprising fury. “I like kids. I want to have a lot of my own and raise them. I don’t want to bring up somebody else’s.”
“Maybe this thing today will make him grow up.”
“I doubt it. And see where it leaves me, Bill? What do I do now? Go ahead and try to make the best of it, and maybe leave him five years from now after he’s taken all the joy out of life? Or quit right now? I have a lot of respect for marriage. I wanted mine to last forever. You start treating marriage like a… like a car you can trade in when you get tired of it, and it doesn’t have much meaning any more. And I can’t blame John Carter Gerrold for what he is. It’s his mother’s fault. Do you want to hear a good definition of a bore? It’s one of Dad’s.”
“Sure.”
She spread her arms wide, like a fisherman recalling the one that got away. She was holding up her two index fingers. She waggled the one on the left hand. “Now, here is what you think you are, see?” She waggled the index finger of the right hand. “And here is what you actually are. If the two things are way apart like this, you get a bore, somebody who can’t see himself as others see him. The closer together you bring the two hands, the better sort of person you represent. If you actually are what you think you are, with the fingers right together like this, then the chances are that you’re a pretty decent human being. A nice guy. Dad used to say that most of us have just a little divergence, and that if a man didn’t have any, maybe he wouldn’t have any pride.”
The Damned Page 12
