"Yeah, but I don't think I can," Leonard said.
"That's right," Chub said. "Express yourself. I'm not offended."
"Before he expresses himself in a way you don't want, Chub," the burned man said, "let me introduce myself. I'm Paco."
"Paco what?" Leonard said.
"Just Paco."
Paco didn't come forward to shake hands, and we didn't go to him. I stood there feeling foolish. Leonard probably felt disgusted, and with good reason. What had seemed like a good idea yesterday now seemed childish and pathetic. Reality had taken hold and I felt like a little boy who had been playing at adventurer but had just been told by Mother to put my toys away and come in to supper.
We stood that way a long time. Leonard said, "Isn't anyone gonna ask me my sign?"
Chub said, "I sense a lot of hostility in you, Leonard. I'd like to know you better, have you think of me as a friend, someone you can talk to. Being able to talk things out can really let off pressure."
"Chub," Leonard said, "that analysis shit might be all right for an airhead like you, but you come at me again with that, I'm gonna let off that pressure you're worried about."
Chub started to open his mouth, then mulled it over. His lips twitched, like the words were living things trying to push out. But he held them. Leonard looked like a man who just might let off pressure.
I felt sorry for poor Chub on one hand, but on the other he sort of asked for what he got. Kind of wore a perpetual KICK ME sign around his neck and on his ass.
"We're not getting off to the best start," Howard said. "There's no need for threats."
"He wants to talk like people talk, okay," Leonard said, "but he wants to play analyst, he can talk that trash to himself."
"We're going to work together," Howard said, "we got to coexist."
"True," Paco said, "but could be a solid punch in the teeth would do Chub some good. I'm tired of him myself." He looked over at Chub. "One word about my physical scars being a manifestation of my internal condition, or some dumb thing like that, and I'm going to promise you something similar to what Leonard promised."
Chub put his hands in his pockets and smiled to let us know he could take whatever was dished out. He was okay, you were okay.
"Violence isn't the way here," Howard said. "Let's sit down and get something to drink or smoke and talk business. We'll eat in awhile."
"That sounds right enough," Leonard said.
"Trudy," Howard said, "will you help me bring in some drinks?" Then to us, "Selection's limited. Coke, beer, some Dickie whiskey. We got a little grass, anyone wants it."
Chub didn't want anything. I went for beer. Paco and Leonard took the Dickie.
Trudy caught my eye and gave me a look that pinned my skull to the wall. Gee, what did I do? Leonard was the bigmouth. I thought I'd been pretty sweet, all things considered.
I tried smiling at her, but she wasn't going for that. She turned her back, and she and Howard went into the kitchen and closed the door.
Paco went over to Leonard, grinned and said, "By the way, big fella, what is your sign?"
"The Asshole," Leonard said.
"I'll buy that," Paco said.
Chub smiled. He smiled big. He liked himself. He and the world were at one with one another. Except he was smiling so tight the muscles in his cheeks were quivering.
In the kitchen I could hear Howard murmuring, and though I couldn't understand what he was saying, I could tell from the tone of his voice that Leonard and I had already worn out our welcome, or Leonard had worn it out for the both of us. Not that it mattered. Now that we were dealt in, they had to let us stay. Thing was, I wasn't sure there was anything to stay for.
That feeling of foolishness washed over me again, big time.
Chapter 9
After a bit, Trudy and Howard came back with our drinks, and I sat on the couch with them. Leonard got the gutted chair, and Paco and Chub pulled the folding chairs up close. Howard sipped a beer and went through the stuff Trudy had told us about the money most likely being laundered. Then he started waving his hands and working his best facial expressions; threw in a few cents about how the spirit of the sixties need not die; how the money we were going to get could be used to push the ideals of that time forward; said the survivors of that noble era need not fall by the wayside; that unlike the dinosaur our generation had been compared to, we were not in fact extinct or even on the endangered species list, we were merely hibernating like a bear, and now was the time to awake to a new and productive spring.
Although Howard pretended to be talking to both me and Leonard, it was pretty clear it was me he was trying to interest. Trudy had told him about my past, about my involvement in "the movement," and he thought he might jump-start my old battery if he could find the right words.
He couldn't.
I was curious about what they had in mind, but felt it would be a mistake to go the next step and ask. I'd open a whole new can of germs that way. Once they knew I was interested they'd try to work their virus into my bloodstream and take over, and I couldn't see any reason to go through the process.
From the way Trudy looked at me, I think she was both surprised at me and disgusted with me. I don't know if it was my lack of interest in their cause, whatever it was, or the realization she was losing control over me.
During Howard's dissertation on the sixties and what it meant to him and should mean to all of us, Chub threw in a few "right ons," but for the most part was mercifully silent. Paco yawned a lot, and Trudy tried to stare me into submission. I attempted to look pleasant but a little dense, like a dog listening to a talk on nuclear physics.
When Howard was on his third run of rephrasing what he'd already said, hoping to sneak up on my blind side, Leonard said, "Since I don't see we're talking much business, pardon me, will you? Because like the bear coming out of hibernation and feeling the first intestinal stirrings of spring, I've got to take me a big, greasy shit. When y'all get to the folk songs part, maybe I'll come back. I'm good on 'I Got a Hammer.' "
"Wrong era," I said. "We're talking Beatles and Doors here."
"I never can fit in," Leonard said, "and I try so goddamn hard."
He went in search of the bathroom.
"Your friend doesn't seem to like us much," Howard said.
"No, he doesn't," I said. "He wasn't involved in any movement during the sixties except moving out of the way of bullets, trying not to get his ass shot off in Vietnam."
Howard nodded like that explained some things. "He knows about guns, I presume?"
"Yeah, got a medal or two in Vietnam. But on the negative side he's a little weak on the social graces and Bob Dylan lyrics, and I've caught him in a few mistakes when we're discussing the ballet and the history of Marxism."
"I don't get the impression you're all that interested in reviving the spirit of the sixties, either," Howard said.
"Can't imagine why you thought I might be. Well, I can imagine, but whatever Trudy's told you about me, that's in the past. This sixties talk is embarrassing. You sound like a first-year college guy who's just gotten away from mom and dad and discovered weed and liberal politics."
"The sixties were a positive time, a good time," Howard said.
"Some of it was. Some of it wasn't. But that was the sixties. I'm happily selfish now. I'm in this for money and money alone. Besides, sounds to me like you're trying to justify theft with sixties rhetoric, and you're too goddamn secretive for my taste. You sound like more illegal stuff than I've agreed to, and I don't want to hear about it. I'm not going to prison for some idealistic rush. This idealism crap has got me nowhere but tired and broke and cut to the bone. Money I can spend, and might get away with.
"I can take it and go someplace warm with cheap whiskey and loose women." I looked at Trudy. "Women that want nothing more than hot, sticky sex down Mexico way or on some tropical island where you can run around with your ass hanging out and your dick slapping your thigh, and nobody asks you to do anything
but mind your own business. You people fight the good fight, whatever it is, because you're going to have to do it without us."
Paco grinned, got out a cigarette pack, lipped a smoke and lit it with a cheap lighter.
"Don't make us breathe your bad air," Howard said.
"Screw you," Paco said. He blew smoke across the room.
Normally I'd be on Howard's side, but I enjoyed seeing him irritated. I almost asked Paco for a cigarette.
Howard sighed, looked at Trudy sadly; he was a smart, hip guy dealing with a bunch of nincompoops. What could he do?
"Anytime change is encouraged," Chub said, "there's always someone who argues for the status quo, or decides to run off and take it easy, concludes mat the best and simplest way—"
Paco reached over and slapped Chub on top of the head with his fingers.
"Damn you," Chub said. "That was childish, Paco. You're frustrated about something, you should discuss it, not resort to—"
Paco slapped Chub again, this time with the palm of his hand, said, "Shut up, will you, Chub?"
"Whose side you on, Paco?" Howard asked.
"Yeah," Chub said, rubbing his head.
"I'm not choosing up," Paco said. "I'm tired of Chub's bullshit is all. He keeps talking like he's done some things. Hell, leave Hap alone. He isn't interested. Let him and Leonard do their job, then let's do what we're gonna do. They couldn't care less. If they want it that way, let's leave it that way. You guys are starting to sound like evangelists, and I hate those fuckers."
"Amen." It was Leonard back from the bathroom.
"You look refreshed," I said. "Hope you struck some matches."
"About four. It was a championship shit."
"I can see this isn't going anywhere," Chub said. "So I think I'll withdraw until we're willing to converse sensibly."
"Telling it like we see it," Leonard said. "Isn't that what you like, Chubby?"
"I don't need this," Chub said. He got up and went through the hallway door.
"I hate it when he leaves the room," Leonard said. "He makes things so damn bright when he's around. But since he's gone, I'm going outside to smoke."
"Thanks for not cluttering up the air," Howard said, and he looked at Paco.
Paco put a smile on his ugly face and kept smoking.
Leonard said, "It's not your air I'm worried about. It's mine. This place has a rot smell under all that fucking incense. Smelled enough of that in Vietnam. The rot and the incense."
Leonard went outside.
"Think I'll join him," Paco said, and he got up and went out and closed the door.
"Me too," I said, and got up and started after Paco.
"Hap," Trudy said. "We got to talk."
God had spoken. "Do we?" I said.
"I told you you shouldn't have done this," Howard said to Trudy.
"You don't know everything," Trudy said, and stood up.
"I know this," Howard said. "I know this isn't a good idea at all. You're thinking maybe with some other part of your body."
"That's rich, coming from you," Trudy said. "I've seen how you think."
"How you make me think."
"Children," I said. "Let's not fight."
Howard stood up, held his beer in my direction. "I got something to say to you, big shot."
"Say it, then," I said. "While I'm used to the drone of your voice. I'd rather not get acclimated again."
"You think you can come in here and run things," he said, "be a goddamn comedian. But you're wrong."
"I'm not trying to run anything. I just don't want to be ran."
"We got some scruples here. Idealism may strike you as dumb, or sissy, or childish, or nostalgic, but there's more to it than that. There's more to us than that."
"I'm sure history will be kind to you," I said. "Howard gave his stolen money to the whales. He was a good guy. Hap gave his to wine and heat and women. He was a bad guy. Leonard bought all the Hank Williams originals he could find. He was a bad guy."
"What's with the whales?" Howard said. "No one's said a thing about any whales."
"Shut up," Trudy said. "You're drunk."
"Only had a beer," he said.
"The smell of rubbing alcohol makes you silly," she said.
"Look, Howard," I said, "I'm not trying to cause any trouble here. You think maybe I'm trying to take Trudy—"
"She's her own person," Howard said.
"Yeah, but you don't like the fact that I've been fucking her again, do you?"
"Hap," Trudy said. "Don't."
"You know I have," I said. "You think she came over to my place and merely talked some business? We banged each other till our eyes bugged out."
"Like Howard said, Hap, he doesn't own me. And neither do you."
"And I'm damn proud of it," I said.
What Howard thought he knew, he was now certain he knew. In theory it was okay, but in actuality it got under his skin like a chigger.
"It doesn't matter," Howard said, but his voice lacked conviction. "She's a grown woman. I've got no strings on her."
"But she's got them on you," I said. "And I should know. They used to go all the way through me and fasten to the bones. I got maybe a few still tied in me. Enough that I'm acting horsey here when I shouldn't, and it's making you do the same."
"I'm saying you're not coming in here and changing what we believe, what we're going to do. That's all. I'm not saying anything about me and Trudy or you and Trudy."
"I think you're saying plenty about just that. You open your mouth and your heart and dick talk over you. Like I said, I'm one to know."
"You don't know anything," Howard said. "You and that other guy, you think you know all there is to know, but you don't know a thing."
"Let's leave it," I said. "I don't want to hear any more. So it isn't the whales. Do what you got to do for people and animals and nuclear disarmament, and give my regards to the boys in Leavenworth."
"To hell with you, pilgrim," Howard said. He moved around the coffee table, staggered slightly. That bit of alcohol really had got to him. Or maybe it was the capper to some he drank earlier. Had I been in his place, knowing Trudy was supposed to be with me but was off with one of her ex-husbands for a few days, I'd have took to drinking too. At one point I had.
He came around the coffee table and put his hand out and pushed me hard in the chest, but he made the mistake of not pulling back fast enough, and I put my hand over the back of his, trapped it to my chest and bent forward. It sent Howard to his knees. It was a playground trick, but heck, he started it.
"Stop it, Hap," Trudy said. "Let him go."
I let him go. Trudy bent down and put an arm around him and tried to hoist him up. He shrugged her off, got up on his own.
He pointed a finger at me, but he wasn't standing as close as before. "Try that when I haven't been drinking."
"Okay," I said.
"Hell, listen to me," he said. "I'm playing your macho game now. I'm not getting pulled into this. I'm gonna lie down. I've had all this foolishness I want."
Without wobbling too much, he went through the hallway door and out of sight. Maybe he and Chub had their own special place to sulk back there. Some old sixties records to play.
"Happy?" Trudy said.
"Semi."
Chapter 10
I awoke to the sound of a bird and the embrace of the cold. The voice of the bird was pathetic, and the cold was criminal.
I was on the back porch of the little house, and it had once been screened in, and in a sense still was, but to make it a kind of room, cardboard had been tacked all around on the inside of the screen in a couple of layers. It might have worked okay summers, but winters, especially this winter, it wasn't much.
I wondered whose idea it was to fix the porch this way. The landlord or its erstwhile renters? I voted on the renters. A landlord who'd let people live in this shit box didn't strike me as the type to bother with even cardboard siding.
Originally Leonard and I had
been in the kitchen, sleeping on the floor. The cookstove, with the oven door open, heated up the small room perfectly. But I awoke in the middle of the night bathed in sweat, finding it hard to breathe. I opened the door that led out to the back porch and that helped some, but the air in the kitchen was still poisonous with butane. I toed Leonard awake and told him I was going out to the porch, and if he didn't want to spend tomorrow in Marvel Creek Funeral Home, he might want to do the same.
Now I was lying under some ice-crusted blankets, inside an old sleeping bag. The bag was on top of some broken down cardboard boxes (probably the remains of the interior decorating scheme), and the seams on the cardboard had worked through the bag and into my back. I was still in my clothes. My socks felt damp from yesterday's sweat. My body felt stiff as wire.
I rolled over, and sitting in the kitchen doorway with a blanket over his shoulders, shivering, looking at me in what can only be called an unpleasant manner, was Leonard. His breath was snorting out of his mouth and nostrils in white puffs and his eyes were narrow.
He said, "I've let you talk me into some shit before, Hap, but this one is the king of all the dumb things. These fuckers are seriously balled up. Ought to have my ass kicked, and be proud of it."
"Good morning."
"Chub is really in orbit, and Howard is so full of what Trudy's filled him with, he doesn't know if he needs to shit or throw up."
"Don't you have something unpleasant to say about Paco? You wouldn't want to leave anybody out."
"He confuses me. He doesn't seem like part of this. He's got his feet on the ground."
"You're just sweet on him because he went out on the porch and had a smoke with you."
"Yeah, that's it."
"They're kind of silly, Leonard, but they've got good intentions. Without people like these sillies, blacks would still be drinking at water fountains that said colored and they'd be going around back of a restaurant to get their food through a little slot."
"Now you're talking like the fat guy."
"He's a clown, but his heart's in the right place."
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