Cutter and Bone

by Newton Thornburg

  “Yes.”

  “Mostly I’ve had students before. College boys. It kind of fit in with their needs. You know.”

  “Sure.”

  “You’re older.”

  “I’m thirty-three.”

  She smiled slightly, almost coyly. “And may I say you don’t look like the handyman type.”

  “I’ve been other things.”

  “Such as?”

  “Business. Marketing and so forth.”

  “A dropout?”

  “You could call it that.”

  “And what’d you leave behind? Wife and kids?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Nothing’s just like that.”

  “Where was it you dropped from?”

  “Chicago.” He wondered why he did not tell her Milwaukee; it wouldn’t have mattered.

  “And has it worked out for you—the dropping out?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Well, at least you’re honest.”

  “At times.”

  The smile had gone over the edge now, was openly ironic, knowing. “The work here’s simple enough. The yard and the pool, like I said in the ad. And then I have this truck I use for junk, stuff I pick up at junkyards, usually down the coast, Oxnard and around there. Stuff I use in my sculpture. You’d help me there too. Some of it’s pretty heavy.”

  “No problem.”

  “My husband’s got a computer service company. Software Systems Inc., he calls it. You know what software is?”

  “Yes.”

  “He has to travel a lot. He’s almost never here.”

  “I see.”

  She put out her cigarette now, carefully, and moved forward on her chair. For a moment he wondered if she was going to reach over and put her hand on his knee or just go straight for his fly. Close, she was all makeup, heavy eyeliner and false lashes and face color. Looking at the taut line of her jaw, the drum-tight skin, he could almost see the incisions above her hairline, the cunning face-lift scars running through the gray roots. And he felt his gut tighten. Could he bring it off? Would he be able to close his eyes and do his thing? Stoned, maybe. He would need grass, bales of it.

  “One important thing,” she said. “And I hope you’ll be straight with me. I don’t want someone who just needs a place to crash, someone who’d be here a few days and then—” She threw her hand in the air. “Gone. Split.”

  Bone assured her that was not his intention. “I think this is just what I’m looking for,” he added. “What I want.”

  “Good.” Smiling, she stood up. “Come on then. Let me show you your room.”

  When they reached it, a small efficiency apartment at one end of the three-car garage, she put her hand on his arm, just a friendly little gesture, nothing much, but sufficient to tell him what he had to know. He had not read her wrong.

  “All right?” she asked.

  Bone looked about him, at the tasteful expensive furniture, including a twin-size bed, a color TV, an air conditioner. “It’s fine,” he said.

  “When can you start?”

  He could have been back with his things in a few hours, but that was too soon for him. He was not ready for the job yet, not ready for her.

  “Tomorrow,” he said.

  She looked disappointed. But she smiled. “Tomorrow it is, then.”

  When he got back to Cutter’s house Bone found it empty except for the baby, who was sobbing disconsolately in his crib. Bone picked him up and quieted him and then changed his diaper, an operation he had not performed in many years. Then he warmed a bottle of milk he found in the refrigerator and fed him most of it, all the while feeling not only ridiculous but angry too, disgusted at Mo for having left the kid alone. It was something Ruth would never have done. No, her problem was the reverse, that she had almost never let the girls out of her sight. Of the two, Bone was not sure which was worse. The kids undoubtedly knew. But they weren’t talking.

  In time he decided that a little sunshine would not do the two of them any harm either, and after writing a note to Mo—“Baby’s with me. Think I’ve found a buyer for him. B.”—he put a cap and jacket on the kid and drove him the few blocks to the park across from the Mission.

  Little Alex Five, as Swanson called him, was thirteen months old and just now beginning to toddle. So Bone carried him to a bench near the sprawling rose garden, which was not yet in bloom, and the baby immediately began to work his way around the bench, holding on most of the time but occasionally letting go and taking a few tentative steps out into the grass, where he would stop and do a little balancing act and then abruptly turn around and lunge back to the safety and support of the stone seat. Bone moved about ten feet away and sat down on the ground, trying to play his new role of superannuated baby-sitter as coolly as possible. If he were seen at it by someone he knew, so be it. But he did not particularly want to appear to like it; that would have been a touch precious, he thought, possibly even sick. A grown man alone with someone else’s baby—in modern America it was definitely a combustible situation. So he sat his distance and glanced over at the infant every now and then. And in time he realized that little Alex did not like the new gulf between them, in fact was about to challenge it. Twice he started out and then stopped, sat down and crawled back to the bench, where he immediately pulled himself up and resumed his enterprise, scowling over at Bone like a quarterback trying to read a new defense. Finally Bone offered him a little encouragement and the baby set out again, carefully stepping the first half of his journey and then falling the rest of the way, plunging into Bone’s hands. Bone told him he was pretty big stuff and the kid gurgled happily. But he wanted more. He crawled back to the bench, pulled himself up, and made another beeline for Bone. Then he kept doing it, over and over.

  Still Bone had time to sit and smoke and observe the park scene. As usual there was the Frisbee set, young hippie types who had piled out of their minibuses to spend a fruitful afternoon sailing Frisbees back and forth, to each other as well as to their dogs, the inevitable pack of mangy Dobermans and German shepherds and other kindred gentle breeds they seldom went anywhere without. When Bone thought of his own young stud days, the college years and after, he could not conceive of having to drag a dog through all that. To his way of thinking, young men needed dogs about as badly as they needed clap. Yet these characters clung devotedly to their canines. And about the only reason he could see was the species’ unselective capacity for instant adoration. To feed a dog was to become a god of sorts. Maybe not to Mom or Dad or to the creeps back in school, or to the pigs and straights of the world, but to your dog, oh yes, you were a winner, you were bright and beautiful, you were loved.

  But then Bone had to admit the syndrome was hardly confined to raunchy kids in minibuses, especially not in Santa Barbara. Downtown or on the beach or here in the parks, or for that matter along any residential sidewalk, the story was pretty much the same—dogshit. Or as Cutter put it, “Pedigreed dogshit. You can always tell by the slight royal purple cast it leaves on your sneakers.”

  “It was not the sort of day, however, to sit and ponder dogs and their waste. The afternoon sun, warm and brilliant, lay like a coat of fresh paint on the adobe façade of the Mission. On the stone steps in front, a number of tourists sat in shirtsleeves while others wandered the colonnade or snapped the mandatory snapshots around the old Moorish fountain. And closer, beyond the rose garden, the Frisbee throwers and a few strollers and huddled groups of teenagers were scattered across the wide greensward, which rose gently to the queen palms and great shaggy eucalyptus at the far edge of the park. So for the moment the world did not seem such a bad place after all. Alex Five certainly was enjoying it. He had just teetered across the chasm again and into Bone’s hands. And as Bone got up now, carrying the baby back to the bench, he picked up a strong new odor that reminded him of Cutter’s monicker for the kid, old Brown Pants. Yet Bone felt no revulsion toward him. He was such a happy uncomplicated little
bugger. At the same time Bone was unable to take any real pleasure in the child. The plump pink skin, the almost hairless head, the sweet breath and clear, clear eyes—for some reason they reminded him all too vividly of Mrs. Little’s painted and butchered flesh, the dead black hair and glop-rimmed eyes, the desperation that oozed from her, like yet another cosmetic. For the baby was on his way too now, just a few steps behind. It was only a matter of time before blood would appear in the old brown pants or the sweet lips would begin to exhale the sour deaths of lungs and stomach, and the pink skin would run to white ash as the heart began to tire. Mrs. Little or the kid, it was not much of a choice really, just a matter of time.

  “How touching,” a voice purred. “How too, too sweet.”

  Turning, Bone found himself looking up at Mo, half hidden behind a pair of dark sunglasses. “Well the mother of the year,” he said.

  “If only I had a Polaroid,” she came back. “Ladies’ Home Journal, certainly they’d buy a print. And then I could give one to Alex, show him what fatherhood is all about.”

  Bone smiled wearily, watching as she sat down on the other side of the baby, took him onto her lap.

  “He didn’t give me much choice,” he explained. “He was yelling his guts out.”

  “Oh, I can imagine. Mother takes a five-minute walk around the block and—”

  “An hour’s more like it,” Bone cut in. “I changed him at the house. I gave him a bottle. And we’ve been here—”

  But Mo was already laughing. “Changed him! Fed him! Oh that’s just too much, Rich. Now if he was a little girl I think I’d understand. I mean, knowing your proclivities.”

  “You get more like Alex every day.”

  “Honest, you mean.”

  “Sick, I mean.”

  Lighting a cigarette, she shrugged indifferently. “Okay, I plead guilty. I guess it was longer than I thought. But it was so nice out, you know? And he was sleeping. I thought I’d just get a little air, and then once I started walking—” She gestured helplessly at the park, the glorious day.

  “That’s why the rent’s so high.”

  “I guess. How’d your job interview go?”

  “I’ll be out of your place tomorrow.”

  She smiled again. “My two Alexes will miss you.”

  And as usual Bone played her game. “I’ll come around still. Don’t worry.”

  “Oh good.” Taking off her glasses, she looked straight at Bone for a change. “Now, why do I do that, huh? I mean always coming on so bitchy with you. I don’t mean anything by it, Rich, I really don’t. For some reason you just bring it out in me.”

  “My natural vulnerability. It invites attack.”

  “Oh sure. Maybe it’s just your looks, you think? I mean, loving Alex, maybe I just naturally resent a handsome bastard like you. And yet I don’t really, I mean resent you. I—”

  “Drop it, okay?”

  “Gladly.”

  The baby had taken hold of her ear and she shook herself free, nuzzled him in the neck and he giggled. And as she looked up Bone saw that her eyes had filled with tears. Because she did not try to hide them he asked her if anything was wrong.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You and Alex?”

  She did not bother to nod. “Has he said anything to you?”

  “About what?”

  “Anything. Everything. Me, the baby, the whole setup.”

  “No. Nothing special.”

  “I don’t believe you. I can’t. But if he was splitting, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

  “Wouldn’t he?”

  “Please, Rich. Help me. Tell me if he’s said anything.”

  “I have. He’s said nothing.”

  She sat there looking at him. “God, I despise the lot of you. You’re like birds of prey, you know that? Above it all except when it’s time to eat or screw.”

  Bone shrugged. “I’m sorry, kid. You asked.”

  “And a fat lot of good it did.”

  “What makes you think something’s wrong at home?”

  “You were married. You live with someone, you can tell. It’s just different lately. He looks right through me.”

  “Money problems. It’s usually money, Mo. You ought to know that. Once he gets his next government check—”

  “Oh sure. Everything will be roses.”

  Suddenly she got to her feet and picked up the baby. “You take us home?”

  “Of course.”

  As they walked to the car she told him that Cutter had phoned home earlier. “He said he’s bringing a guest for dinner,” she added. “How about that, huh? Dinner at the Cutters’. Or Alex and Mo’s, I guess I should say. Anyway, he asked me to ask you to be there?”

  “Who’s he bringing?”

  “The victim’s sister.”

  Bone did not miss a step, but the news hit him like a small stone thrown hard. “The girl last night?”

  “The cheerleader, yes. Her sister.”

  “Goddamn him.”

  “Alex? Why? What’s he up to?”

  Bone put her off. “I’d rather not know.”

  Cutter did not make it home until almost nine o’clock that evening, hours after Mo’s small roast had turned black in the oven and she had calmly abandoned it in favor of martinis in front of the fire with Bone, who was responsible for both, having that afternoon cleaned out the fireplace and bought some ersatz logs and real booze at the supermarket. While he liked the fire too, and the drinks, he did not share Mo’s indifference to food, and had first raided the kitchen, cutting off an end of the burnt roast and downing it along with a rocklike baked potato and some scattered greens, the makings of a salad that never did get tossed.

  So he was feeling fairly comfortable in front of the fire now, his stomach full, a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other and a good-looking girl to share it all with. The only problem was the girl—for her, he might as well not have been there. One moment she would be goddamning Cutter, shaking her head in futility and bitterness, and the next she would give in with a wistful smile and say something inane, like it was good she and Cutter weren’t married, because this sort of thing would really piss her off then. She might think she owned him then, you see. But of course no one owned anybody else, and anyone worth his salt would not let himself be owned. So of course all she had a right to do was wonder where he was and what he was doing, and for that matter admire him too, precisely for this, for pissing her off, because it meant he was his own man, he was free, he was worthy of her. Bone, listening to her run on, occasionally lifted his glass in a toast. White woman speak with dumb tongue, he said. White woman full of shit.

  But she was not listening.

  And finally they heard Cutter arriving home, the Packard’s old engine laboring up the hill. Bone absently went over to the window, in time to see Alex bring the car to a stop out in front, unable to pull in because of a Toyota that blocked half the driveway. But he was not stymied. Abruptly he threw the Packard into gear and roared ahead, slamming into the Toyota and driving it backward a few feet. At the crash, Mo got up and came running over to the window, just as Cutter finished backing up a short distance and now took another crack at the tiny foreign car, this time smashing the front end over the curb onto the grass, totally clearing the driveway, which he calmly entered now and parked. If there was a scratch on the Packard, Bone could not see it. The Toyota, however, looked as if it had been in a head-on collision.

  In the driveway, Cutter got out of his car, alone, grinning.

  “He’s drunk,” Mo said, opening the front door.

  Bone laughed. “What makes you say that?”

  Across the street and next door people were beginning to come out of their houses and apartments Among them was a thirtyish elementary school teacher, the owner of the Toyota. She ran to her car and examined it as if it were bleeding to death and there might be a chance of saving it. Then she turned on Cutter.

  “You maniac!” she cried. “You drunken man
iac!”

  “It was in the driveway,” he said. “I didn’t even see the goddamn thing.”

  “You lying bastard. You dirty rotten cripple.”

  Cutter shook his head at that, like an adult reproving a youngster. “Peace, my child. Listen, why don’t you come in the house with me and we can talk it over, okay? I tell you what, you come in and I’ll let you see my thing and maybe even play with it, and we’ll call everything square. That sound all right to you?”

  “Oh God, he’s flying tonight,” Mo said.

  The woman was crying now and her apartment neighbors were telling her to go back inside and call the police and her insurance company, because he wasn’t going anywhere, she didn’t have to worry about that, and they would back up her story.

  One man, a Negro across the street, gave Cutter the black power salute. “Right on, brother,” he yelled. “They block my driveway too.”

  Cutter returned the salute with his left arm, the stump. “Power to duh people,” he said, and the black man grinned.

  Cutter came on in.

  “That was beautiful,” Mo told him. “Absolutely beautiful. You know our insurance has lapsed?”

  “That’s her tough luck.”

  “And if you lose your driver’s license?”

  He had gone into the bathroom to urinate, leaving the door open behind him. “It’s already expired,” he said over the splashing. “And anyway, Where’s it written you got to have a license to drive a car? Mine runs just fine without one.”

  Mo made herself another drink and resumed her vigil in front of the fire. As Cutter came back out, Bone asked him where his guest was.

  “What guest?”

  Bone looked over at Mo.

  “The Durant girl’s sister, remember?” Mo said. “That ‘real dinner’ you told me to make for her. ‘Not our usual slop’—I believe that’s how you put it.”

  “You two are hallucinating, you know that? Acid heads, that’s what you are.”

  “You didn’t call me, is that what you’re saying? You didn’t say you were bringing this girl home, and that you wanted Rich here too?”

  Frowning, Cutter looked from Mo to Bone. “You part of this put-on?” he asked.