“Gee,” said Janey, “that looks bad.”
* * *
At his rare best, Stanton had the uncomplicated goodness of those who can talk to strangers. One knew that at his worst he was a joker and, to that extent, demonic. But at his best he had a simplicity that was not Quinn’s and that Quinn envied, an ability to walk into the middle that Quinn, the calculator, lacked.
So Stanton led and Quinn followed with Janey on his arm. Stanton introduced himself all around, smoothly overriding country reticences, and then introduced Quinn and Janey to each of them flawlessly. He began, after that, to quip with Earl Olive as though from acquaintanceship immemorial.
“Where’s my dinner, Earl?”
“Shit.”
“What you done with my God damn dinner?”
“Sheeyit.” Earl looked over his shoulder from the fire. “Bobby, these folks wont some fuckin beer.” Bobby brought three cold Pabst Blue Ribbon beers.
“Thank you,” said Janey in a high voice. Now the others approached the fire warily. One girl stared at the side of Quinn’s face until he looked over; and her smile which had been halfway up went all the way up. “Hi.”
“Hi.” Quinn swigged back half his Pabst Blue Ribbon. He hadn’t been introduced to this girl. Now Earl was smiling at him.
“Good, huh?”
“You bet,” said Quinn, smacking his lips just like in the advertisement: Say! That’s good! And! It doesn’t fill me up!
“Gimme a sip,” said the girl, her yummies making rather a good thing of her short-sleeved pink sweater. Quinn gave her the can. She tilted it to her mouth a moment and handed it back. It was empty.
“All kidding aside,” Stanton was saying, “we already ate, Earl. You just go on and make pigs of yourselves. We don’t mind.” Earl’s arms fell to his sides, his chin to his chest; he commenced to jiggle all over.
“You tickle me,” he managed, “I swear you do!”
* * *
“Jim,” Quinn answered. “Jim Quinn. What’s yours?”
“Lu.”
“Hi, Lu.”
“Hi.”
Lu had a short little skirt of aniline blue that exposed the dimply legs. She wore low, fur-lined après-ski boots that Quinn ignored: the ski shops introduced a misunderstood element into the North.
The sun going off took the color out of Earl Olive’s fire and it burned pale as frost under the skewered meat. Earl had one hand plunged far into his pocket while the other delicately rotated the skewer. Stanton told him the only way he’d eat anything he cooked was if it was drowned in ketchup and if he could chase it with a quick fifth of Pepto-Bismol so it wouldn’t repeat on him. Earl Olive heaved all over and said my God you tickle me, oh Jesus.
“So what is it you do anyway?” Lu asked.
“I make parts for cars.”
“Like what kind of parts for cars.”
“Triangular ones with holes in them.”
“Yeah? Wow. Is it hard?”
“Not at the moment.”
“You guys sure,” Earl called, “that you don’t want any meat?”
“Positive.”
Janey came up. “Would you get me a beer?” she whispered. “Vernor drank mine.”
“What? Oh, sure. Here—” Quinn went to an open cardboard box and fished out two more Pabst Blue Ribbons.
Bobby stepped over, a beer in his hand curled up close to his chest. “Lemme crack them bastards for you.” He had an opener on a long silvery cable attached to one of his belt loops. He opened the two beers and gave them to Quinn. Quinn thanked him and handed one to Janey.
“Thank you,” she whispered, made one slice of her eyes toward Lu and rejoined Stanton. Quinn thought: what does she see? What does Janey see?
Meanwhile, Bobby and the fat girl got on the Harley-Davidson and began driving through trees and brush. Lu explained that this was called “gardening,” tearing up the earth, a sport developed during the war by teenagers who specialized in the highspeed wiping out of victory gardens by the skillful use of the power slide. Quinn nodded, listening first to her and then to the snarl of the motorcycle working its way up and down the hill through the ferns herbivorously, making purposeful back-and-forth casts so that when it wasn’t on top of the hill and quite dark against the sky, it was below and all that was visible were the twin ovals of flame at its tailpipes. Still, above the rude exhaust came the fat girl’s wild, loony cackle. Stanton came over. “How do you like that?” he asked. The motorcycle was now swiveling and skidding up the hill toward them.
“I guess I don’t.”
“What! Where is your sense of history? The bumpkin is motorized. It could have been exactly the same in the beloved Middle Ages where everything begins, dueling, everything. Look: you still have the peasant in his leather jerkin. Only now he’s on a motorcycle instead of his wife’s ass—” Janey looked up at him and he didn’t return her glance.
“Hey!” said Lu. “There’s ladies present!” She smiled at Janey and Janey smiled back with delicate strain. Quinn opened another beer.
“Piggy,” said Stanton, “I’ve watched you.”
“I’ve watched you,” Quinn said, “through an unrewarding month.”
“Come own,” said Earl, joining them. “Eat something!”
“I couldn’t possibly, Earl,” Stanton said. Earl had a substantial gobbet on the end of his cooking fork. He looked upon Stanton with devotion. “I have to watch Quinn and see that he doesn’t get artificially elated.” Lu giggled and pushed her baby fingers into Quinn’s ribs. Stanton looked at her and Janey turned away.
Five minutes later, when the sound of the motorcycle had stopped without the machine’s reappearing, Quinn tilted the can up precisely so that the acrid beer ran thinly over his teeth. He could see Lu over the arc of the can. He tried: “You want to see if we can find Bobby and the other one?” One of those timed silences that try the heart followed.
“Okay.”
The spoor of the Harley was clear down the face of the hill; feather-shaped blades of earth turned up, smashed twigs and ferns down to a broad skid mark in soft ground and a place where the rear wheel had dug in half a foot and the exhaust had scorched and withered the foliage behind. Lu made downhill use of Quinn’s arm and when he kissed her hotly she ran her hands up and down him in three-foot swipes saying, “Darling!” But when he tried to delay she insisted they press on. Quinn wasn’t interested. So Lu took the lead, scouting forward into the brush ahead where the trail was still clear, bulled and busted through the tag alders downward. Now the light was quite diminished because the trees behind were west of them. The trail leveled into dried-out lowlands and a meadow of dead cattails waving stiffly in the slight wind. It looked as if the motorcycle would have been easy to manage here; the soil was flat and the cattails easy to batter down. But as though from violent impatience, the skid marks had become reckless, prolific and the cattails were slashed and battered in every direction. Twenty feet along this trail and they began hearing voices. Lu going ahead waved for silence from the already silent Quinn. He closed in alongside her and they went along Indian fashion, choosing their footing among the dry and broken stalks. In a moment, the twilight glinting of the huge motorcycle was visible through the vegetation and there was the smell of leaking gasoline harsh and unnatural in the decay of the lowland, the smell of which was sweet as yeast. Five more feet brought them the scene: the motorcycle slouched in chromium enormity, its wedge of finned cylinder heads in a calligraphy of shadow, exhausts sweeping back to the goiter bulge of mufflers and stopping at clean, beveled ends. On the great seat the fat girl knelt, naked, and holding the handlebars. Her throat was a curving arch, her face which was that of a sympathetic Irish policeman, implored the sky in silence. Her breasts were small but her stomach, full and pendant, hung toward the mirroring fuel tank of the machine. Bobby stood to one side of the clearing, also naked, smoking a cigarette and squinting in thought, holding the cigarette up close in front of his face. Presently, he stooped
and rubbed it out, walked to the motorcycle and crouching on its footpegs behind her, sexually assaulted his companion who managed to keep her balance holding on only one-handed while the other hand was plunged deep into her full head of hair. She nickered.
“Now!” said Bobby, and she swung down one enormous leg adroitly, thrust the kickstarter and, as the machine roared, swung the leg back to kneel on the seat and, letting the engine return to idle calmly, crooned into the treetops.
“Now razz the pipes!” The fat girl twisted the throttle, the engine raged and Bobby’s bony frame flailed in an uncanny hucklebuck. “Now first gear!” She moved a lever, crooning. Bobby flailed. “Now pop the clutch!” Two great tulips of flame expanded suddenly and the motorcycle lurched into the brush with its strange burden, roared maniacally and died, presumably crashed or fallen over. Quinn hadn’t the heart to follow. Lu was sitting on the ground rocking back and forth and moaning. Quinn intuited that the performance had not been inspirational for her; and, perhaps, that was it: no kisses! The redeeming thing to do, he thought, would be to give her a small, fond, almost sibling, kiss. He did so and her jaw seemed to fall open a foot. Lu’s little dimpled hand was in his fly, jerking his private adroitly until it was revealed and mouthed swiftly as an hors d’oeuvre. A moment later her outer garments were in a pile and the plump little highschooler sat in real stag magazine underwear, French thrust bra and net panties with sewed-on dominoes. Then, even these were gone too. She had small, smeared breasts and, legs apart, slight ridges of flesh gathered at her hips. She hauled Quinn in, already drawing and counterthrusting with a learned voracity that caused in the confused young businessman an orgasm he thought would roll his spine like a cloth window shade. Afterward, when he sat staring, he saw Lu behind a low bush ten feet away. Only her face showed smiling sleepily; he heard a delicate whiz in the leaves. When she came back he watched her dress.
“Jimmy,” she said, bending over insanely and feeling the ground for something misplaced, “I have something to tell you.”
“You weren’t a virgin,” Quinn said.
She stood up. “Why did you know that? You can’t always tell that.”
“I was just talking,” Quinn said in the same stunned voice.
“My mother always told me to sit tight until Mr. Right popped the question.”
“I sure didn’t pop any questions.” Quinn laughed.
“Who said you were Mr. Right?” Lu tied the angora collar around her neck. She gave Quinn a little hug and said “Darling!” peremptorily. They headed for the barbecue again.
* * *
“James,” Stanton said, “you be second.”
“What for?” Bobby and the fat girl were eating grilled meat with lazy stupefied movements, both sitting on the motorcycle. Quinn wondered how they beat him back.
“Earl here called me a raunchy mother and I had to challenge him to a duel.”
“I’m ready to roll!” said Earl Olive. “Come own.”
“Don’t fall for it,” Quinn told Earl. “I’ve been shot in the face, in the chest, in the throat. He never loses.”
“He’ll lose this time.”
“No he won’t. I promise you.”
“I have handled virtually every type of pistols. Come own.”
He started off, Stanton skipping beside him. Quinn followed. Janey passed him and joined Stanton, glancing back reproachfully at Quinn who wondered if it was for not having been more effective against Stanton. Then suddenly Lu took his hand in her baby fingers. She looked up with yearning and said, “Before, I was down in the dumps. Now I feel real excellent.”
“That makes me feel good,” Quinn said. She pressed her face to his arm a moment.
“Know what else? You’re cute. Know that? You’re cute as a bug!”
* * *
Quinn watched the loading of the guns, a pair of drab English horse pistols of the eighteenth century. When Stanton said that the wax bullets were only to indicate the winner, Quinn went into details; and when Stanton poured double charges Quinn argued. Olive was not impressed. Quinn warned Olive to protect himself and then began the counting. At ten, Earl Olive whirled into a gunfighter’s posture, feet wide apart, crablike, left arm crooked out parallel to the ground, the gun low and forward and the face thrust toward the elegant Stanton in fatal invitation. He fired just an instant before Stanton who, Quinn now well knew, held his fire. Stanton, left hand on his hip, was untouched; he then shot and connected with Earl Olive who screamed and whirled, holding his face. The pistol slipped from between his hands and fell onto the floor spinning. Earl’s hand came down from his face. His nose was broad and bleeding. He began to stalk Stanton who, without looking at him, carefully hung the horse pistol in the cabinet, turned back as Earl Olive swung wide, missing him, lunged and missed again as Stanton danced away. When Earl Olive recovered himself, Stanton jabbed out flat, leaning very slightly forward at the waist, the right hand crimped up close, and centered Earl Olive’s face with a terrible sound. Olive groaned and swung wildly. Stanton stepped into the blow, taking it on the shoulder in order to swing deeply and heavily into Earl’s stomach so that he went right down onto the hard floor, his wind knocked out, making his lungs rake to regain it. Earl Olive lay in complete physical defeat, the side of his face pressed against the floor, his knees drawn up, his hair splashed out from his still head. Quinn’s ears rang and he went to the stairs. He looked back at Vernor’s wondering face, his hands plunged deep in his pockets. He felt then that Stanton was only bad.
He sat down upstairs and lit a cigarette. He looked around the empty living room and gnawed at his lip. An instant later, Earl Olive crashed the door open as he went out, making a strained, humming noise that broke as soon as he was invisible in the darkness to a harsh reiterated howl of animal rage. Quinn sat straight upright; even his nervousness was gone; everything but his attention was gone, until the howling stopped. When that happened, his composure left him and he started gnawing the lip again.
Stanton came up. He looked into the darkness where Olive had gone. “I hardly know what to say,” he said, his tongue lingering on the consonants as though he was about to stutter. “The scene seems to have had its origins in the epics of the Wild West. I never, never imagined … That nice bait purveyor and likable peasant. But no, shooting at me and hunting me is not to be allowed. M-my position here is well, essentially that of the nobleman.” Quinn groaned. Stanton went on, averting his face. “In any event, I pay bills here. I do not, repeat, do not collect a salary and will not be patronized or stalked by those who do.” He stopped and reflected. “Let’s look at the good side. Let’s notice how this polarizes things. Olive’s dealings with me and the other members make him the enemy within. May I predict that this is not going to be the usual boring, phlegmatic summer? May I predict that it is going to be a little more … athletic? I have to make this place livable and the old low-key razzmatazz just doesn’t do it. When I arrived I did everything I could to make things interesting. I told jokes. I did imitations. I wore funny hats—I had one with windows, decorated with birds’ nests, road maps, calling cards, menus, watch springs, swamp marigolds, spherical paper wasps’ nests, flounder skeletons, cat bones, little rubber horses, photographs of mine shafts and skyscrapers. A printed pamphlet introducing the spectacle was available on request. No dice. They sat around and picked each other’s noses and read the Wall Street Journal. I even tried to improve club relations with the farmers around here. I still had the Ferrari so I could get to a lot of farms in a day. I would pull up alongside a farmer, introduce myself as a member of the Centennial Club and say, ‘The earth is good, gentlemen. Only the soil prevails.’ Then I would demonstrate eleven thousand revolutions in all five gears just to keep their attention, becoming as a tiny dot upon the green horizon. What more could you ask? A living diplomat. I played Teresa Brewer and Perez Prado records in the dining room. Nothing. I gave away free ball-point pens and trained Olson’s dog to shake hands. I killed a rat. No response. Then I sa
w that rats and hats and ball-point pens weren’t what it takes to electrify twenty-six thousand acres of forest and make it habitable. What it takes is tension and constant menace. And nothing overt would do. These birds can snuff out anything conventional with their various bribed public officials. My task has been to show them the grace and dignity of self-reliance through dueling so that they will think in terms of settling their own problems intramurally. Next I give them a problem. That’s where Olive comes in and I expect he’ll work out just right. Unless I miss my guess, he’s raging around the forest like a rabid dog right now. That is a role Olson couldn’t have fulfilled. He’s too realistic. Now if they settle Olson’s hash on their own they will have taken the first step in cutting themselves off from the outside, and the first step toward setting up a tiny enclave on the sensible systems of the Middle Ages.”
“Who will be king?” Quinn said.
“Oh, come on. String along.”
“I am. But who will be king.”
“No king. It couldn’t get that far. You can’t run a single acre on the principles of the Middle Ages, much less twenty-six thousand. It would be a step toward destruction. That would suit me. I am sentimentally attached to these lands. And I have learned to be the enemy of the people that inherit them. That is what this club hasn’t figured on—”
“What do you mean, Vernor? Come on, will you. Talk plain.”
“Naw, suh! Dat’s enuff. Ah has spoken.”
* * *
Rather than dote on the latest Stanton pronunciamento, Quinn elected to spend the night fishing. As he prepared his tackle and made coffee for the thermos, he involuntarily thought of Stanton’s insolent dream world and the cockeyed dramas that proceeded from it, commonly embroiling everyone around him.
The Sporting Club Page 10
