"I'd rather you not," Howard said. "It'd probably work out all right, but I think if we can get through this without it being mentioned anywhere, better off we are."
"I agree with that," I said. "I'm just saying what we can do if things get too difficult. I leave, and you'll have to ask. And even if you're told, you'll never find anything down there. You'd need a guide. Then you'll be tying one more person into it you don't know."
"As Leonard pointed out," Howard said, "we don't know each other.''
"True," I said, "but I sense something special about you and me and Trudy. We could be one big happy family."
Howard uncrossed his arms. I could see the patch on his shirt pocket. It said FLOYD.
"You guys are pushing your luck," Howard said.
"Please don't start that again," Trudy said. "I don't want to see Hap or Leonard hurt you, Howard."
Howard looked at her as if she had just sliced his nuts with a knife. "He might not be so lucky this time," he said.
"Luck hasn't got a thing to do with it," Leonard said.
"Why don't you guys arm wrestle?" Paco said.
"Don't you start in too, Paco," Howard said. "You're starting to sound like them. What you've done doesn't hold you forever."
"Well," Paco said, shaking out a cigarette, "I hate that."
"Floyd?" I said.
"What?" Howard said, then it dawned on him. "It's just a shirt."
"Man with no pride in his name or shirt, it's hard to know what to think of him," Leonard said. "He could be anybody and not even care. I'd want my own name on my shirt."
"Me too," I said.
Chapter 14
I stood on the front porch and looked out at the night.
Everyone was in bed but me. I had turned in but the cold and my thoughts wouldn't let me drift. I had the uncomfortable feeling that Trudy and the gang were planning something stupid. I had no idea what, and had decided to follow Paco's advice about not knowing, but I couldn't help but think about it. Because of that, I had got up, pulled on my shoes and coat, and gone outside to think.
It was cold and clear and the moon and stars were bright, and their lights rested in the yard like puddles of gold and silver paint and wound through the trees like gold and silver ribbon.
I tried to find Venus. There was a time when I knew where to look. I couldn't remember if it was visible this time of year or not. Once things like that were important to me, and I knew some answers.
I read in a book that primitive men could see Venus in the daytime at high noon with the naked eye. In fact, sailors as late as the 1600s could do the same, and they guided their ships by it. Now the ability was no longer needed, or desired, and modern man could not see Venus in the daytime.
I was somehow distressed by that. Hell, I couldn't even see the bastard at night.
I gave up on Venus and let my mind smooth out. I absorbed the night and the moonlight and watched my breath turn white against the dark. That was about all the thinking I was willing to handle.
I took a deep breath of chill air and went inside, tossed my coat on the gutted armchair, sat on the couch, and picked up a book Chub had left on the coffee table. It was one of those books that explained how everyone could profit from analysis. It was written by an analyst.
Marking his place was a faded black and white snapshot. It was of a big black-haired guy, somewhere between thirty-five and forty-five, kind of handsome, with wide shoulders and a smile full of big white teeth. There was something about him that made me think of someone who had ran a few pigskins between the goalposts, and now ran a few deals past his competitors. On his right was an attractive, well-dressed blond woman who looked like she had been trained to be the Queen of England, and might have been, had the job not been taken.
Pushing his way between them, as if not really invited, was a blond kid of eleven or twelve with enough meat on him to loan to two others. He was smiling, but the smile wasn't much. His was the face of a kid picked last for football games and told to go long, the face of a guy not really asking for a lot, and getting less.
The kid was Chub, of course, and I felt sad looking at him. I turned the photograph over. Written on the back in a young hand was Mom and Dad and me.
Maybe the picture meant something to him—a slice of a good moment, when he thought he'd grow up to please his parents and be something other than a fat kid. And maybe I was full of shit, and it was just a marker.
I had just started reading the book because I was bored enough to jack off with a fistful of barbed wire and roses when the hall door opened gently and Trudy came into the room.
She was wearing a red tee-shirt and nothing else. It fit tight. Her nipples poked at the fabric like the tips of .45 casings, and it stopped high on her thighs and made her seem all legs. Her hair was tousled and she looked tired and somewhat older without her makeup. She looked good though. She smiled at me, closed the door softly, leaned against it, said, "You too?"
"My mind's racing," I said.
She nodded at the book. "Learning anything?"
"It's all anal and sexual. Talk about shitting or fucking and you reveal yourself immediately."
"Do you, now? I was going to slip into the kitchen for some milk. Think I'll wake Leonard up?"
"If he were straight, you just walking by would wake him up. I'm surprised the whole house isn't awake. Dressed like that, you ought to ring like a bell."
"Want some milk?"
She always did take compliments well.
"I'll take some milk."
She brought back two small fruit jars half filled with milk, handed me mine and sat down beside me. I couldn't help but put my arm around her.
"You really do pick at Howard," she said.
"I don't like Howard. He's a prick."
"He isn't so bad."
"Guess not, you're sleeping with him."
"I like him. I used to love him. Not like you, but I loved him."
"Uh-oh, here we go." I took my arm from around her.
"Put your arm back, silly."
She crossed her legs high and the tee-shirt went way up. She wasn't wearing underwear. I put my arm around her again.
I said, "Didn't you forget something?"
"Howard tossed them somewhere."
"That's not what I wanted to hear."
"Truth."
"Sometimes a little white lie is better."
She set her glass on the coffee table and kissed me on the neck.
"You going to go through all the men in the house tonight?" I said.
"Is that supposed to make me mad?"
"Yep."
She kissed me on the neck again. "You're the only man in the house."
"Shit, Trudy."
"You like me saying that, don't you?"
' 'If I believed it, I'd like it more."
"Like you said, sometimes a little white lie is better."
I smiled.
"Let's go for a ride, Hap."
"Now?"
"Uh-huh."
"You might get a little chilly, lady."
"Just a minute."
She got up and eased the door open and smiled back at me before she went into the hall. After she closed the door I thought about her going to the room she and Howard shared, tiptoeing about, looking for her panties and her clothes. I had looked through the house earlier, just to look, and their room was a small thing with a mattress on the floor and a messy pile of blankets and some Coke cans tossed about.
At the other end of the hall Paco and Chub shared a slightly larger room. Chub slept on a saggy box frame bed in the middle of the room and Paco had a cot in a corner. The room had very little in it. A chair with clothes tossed over it and a small box of Chub's books, all of them on subjects designed to be read at gunpoint.
Less than five minutes later she was back. She was dressed in a blue denim work shirt, jeans, scuffed black work shoes, and a thick red and black jacket. She looked like the best-looking lumberjill alive.
She held up a set of keys.
"The Volvo," she said.
"Will Howard mind?"
"Of course."
I pulled on my coat and we went outside and got in the Volvo, Trudy behind the wheel. We backed out and the ice in the drive cracked under the tires. We drove to the highway and started toward Tyler, which was about twelve miles away. The car heater worked slowly, and the car was as cold as a meat locker. The highway was smooth with hardly any ice. I guess road crews had been at work salting it, There were splashes of gravel for the really bad spots.
Trudy reached for me and I slid over and leaned my head against her shoulder and she kissed my cheek. She held one arm around me as she drove and I smelled her perfume and the slightly stale wool of her coat.
I felt good and a little foolish. There was enough of the old male culture about me that I felt positions should have been reversed. I hoped no one saw us.
We drove like that for a long time. Finally Trudy said, "I wanted to go for this drive because I wanted to talk."
"About what you people have planned?"
"You people?"
"You know, power to the people and all that."
"Really have become a cynic, haven't you? God, but I miss the old Hap Collins."
"Did you miss me the most while I was finishing up my prison term?"
"You never have got past that, have you?"
"Let's say it's the sort of thing that weighs on a fella's mind."
"I did miss you, okay?"
"I like the way you showed it."
"I never claimed to be perfect. I'm sorry it happened like that, but it did, and that's that. I can't undo it, so let's leave it. And the plans we have isn't what I wanted to talk about. I thought I might work up the courage to tell you something about myself you don't know. Something you ought to know. For old time's sake."
"What kind of something?"
"Something pretty awful."
Chapter 15
"I killed Cheep," she said.
"Our bird?"
"Yeah. Could you move on your side of the car while I talk about this?"
I moved to my side of the car.
"It's complicated, Hap. Cheep was not only our bird, he was a symbol of our relationship."
"Sounds to me like you been reading Chub's books."
"I been thinking is what I been doing; thinking for years. Trying to figure why I'm no good at relationships. I go into them full tilt, mean for them to work, but I can't maintain. You were the best. I had a shot there. But I messed it up. I mess them all up. You see, I got to have my white knight. I know better. Be your own person, and a woman is a person too, and all that shit, but I got to have my white knight. And if the man I'm interested in isn't a knight, I try to make him one. I send him on a quest, and soon as he's no longer on the quest, or is dealing with the consequences of the quest, I lose interest in him, and the cause I've sent him on. I may get interested in the cause again, but I got to have my white knight with me if I'm going to do anything. I see my knight as going out there and doing what he's doing not only for the cause, but for me. I suppose it makes me feel loved. Important. Understand?"
"What's this got to do with Cheep?"
"I'm coming to that. But when the cause really takes the knight—in your case prison—I feel cheated. Like it's not for me anymore. Things come apart. I want to start over, get a new knight. But I couldn't do that with you because of Cheep. Just a bird, I know, but he made me feel tied to you. Other things wouldn't do it, the cause, the love we shared, but the bird was a living reminder. He wouldn't fly away. Depended on me completely. And I couldn't just leave him. He wouldn't have lasted any time in the wild, and in fact would have suffered. But I didn't want to start life anew with him. He reminded me I was a failure at things. Relationships, what have you.
"So I filled the bathtub with water and took Cheep and held him under till he drowned. It didn't take long. He didn't suffer. But I still think about it. I carry that goddamn bird's ghost on my soul like a weight.
"But when I did it I felt good. Not that Cheep was dead, but that I had made a strong decision without anyone's help, or without me leading someone else into doing what I wanted. It should have been a turning point. But I didn't really understand why I did what I did at the time. I knew I wanted to be free of something, but I wasn't sure what. You were my first major love, but on a smaller scale, with boys in high school, couple in college, I had already established a kind of pattern. Building someone up so they could be special, and since they were special, and they loved me, it made me special. Against all odds, we two… that sort of thing. You see, killing Cheep was killing a symbol."
"Cheep might disagree."
"But the sense of freedom didn't last. I fell back into my old ways. I found a new knight and let him lead, and when he led away from me, I went knight hunting again, and again. I understand all that now. What I'm saying, Hap, is that I'm ready to kill a bird again. This time, the bird is the old me. I'm going to drown that bird and be a new person. Someone who believes in herself. In idealism for its sake. Not as a symbol of worth, or love. I want to be a woman who doesn't need a man to put out front and pretend he's leading and suffering for me, his fair-haired damsel. Don't have to say, 'Look at my man go.' I can go. Come hook or crook, I can see things through."
"Jesus Christ, Trudy. You been doing some major rationalizing here is what you been doing. You're not learning to be independent. You're realizing how selfish you've always been is all, and you're justifying it with some bullshit self-analysis, like Chub would do."
"Think what you want."
We were silent for a time.
"This thing you're going to see through," I said. "It sounds serious."
"Let's say I'm serious. I'd like to have you with us, but I don't need you the way I used to need you. I don't need Howard either."
"Don't need us, how come you got us?"
"I want your help. But I don't have to have it. Not the old way, as my knight. All I want is to believe in something so strong, that belief and my own inner conviction carry me. Like those monks who set fire to themselves to protest the Vietnam War. I want to have that kind of dedication."
"They had dedication, all right. But they also got burned up."
"It's all gone bad out there, Hap. Worse than the sixties, because now no one cares. Someone's got to do something, even if what they do is nothing more than stirring the soup. We could start people thinking. They're all so apathetic. So what if the ozone layer is being eaten away by pollutants in aerosol cans? So what if people are starving on our city streets? Why have government funding for AIDS? It's a disease for queers, right? People don't even vote anymore, because they know it's all a lie, Hap."
"Don't forget the destruction of the seals," I said. "The whales? The sparrows like Cheep?"
"I did what I had to do, Hap. It was a terrible thing, but sometimes you have to do terrible things so you can make progress. Sometimes you do something terrible so some good will come of it."
"Trudy, you got to grow up sometime. You can't take the world in to raise. No one can."
"I feel sorry for you, Hap. You got nothing left inside to hold the dark away."
When we got to Tyler, Trudy turned around and we started back.
I said, "You seem to be avoiding telling me exactly what it is you have planned."
"I thought I'd tell you tonight, Hap. But I've decided not to. You might try and mess it up out of spite."
"I may disagree with you, but I'm not spiteful."
"You might be. You've changed. Could be I don't know you good as I thought. I wanted you with us, but I think now you should do your job and take things as they come to you."
We didn't cuddle and kiss anymore. We didn't even talk. Trudy turned on the radio. It was an all-sixties station. Percy Sledge sang "When a Man Loves a Woman," followed by the Turtles singing "She Only Wants to Be With Me." Good stuff, wrong moment. It was depressing.
We got back to the Sixties
Nest, and I was about to get out when she reached across and put her hand on my thigh.
"You couldn't have changed that much, Hap. You were so… noble."
I put my hand on hers, suddenly wondered if this hand was the one that had held Cheep under. I wondered what else that hand was capable of. I took hold of it and put it on the seat between us.
"Watch it, that's knight talk… You've changed too, Trudy. You may have the willpower and dedication you always wanted, but I think maybe you lost something in the process."
"I see it as a gain."
"Whatever. I think for you and me, there's been too much blood under the bridge."
I got out of the Volvo and went in ahead of her, went to the back porch and took off my coat, socks and shoes, rolled up in my bedding.
I heard Trudy come in and go through the hall door, then I didn't hear her anymore.
I lay there listening to Leonard snore and tried to force myself to sleep for a few hours, but I'd go in and out, and when I came out I would remember bad dreams.
Dreams that ought to have been funny, but weren't. Like this soft, feminine hand holding me by the throat, pushing me down into a tub of water. My mouth was open and I had a beak instead of lips and I was blowing bubbles.
Then I was floating face down in the water, my back covered with feathers, the water in the tub red as blood.
Chapter 16
Next morning I waited in my sleeping bag until Trudy and Howard were off to work. I didn't want to look either of them in the eye. Didn't want to see the look of disappointment she would give me, the look of pain Howard would have. He probably woke up in the middle of the night, found her gone, and thought we were out banging one another silly until the wee hours of the morning.
I think Trudy would have wanted him to think that. I wish that was what had happened. I wish I had never learned the truth about Cheep.
Someone had bought a few groceries the day before, so Leonard pan-toasted a couple slices of bread and we spread them with butter and had some bad leftover coffee the texture of syrup.
Outside the day was cold, but still clear. We drove to the bottoms and began our game plan.
What we did was simple. We drove down the main bottom road until we saw a cutoff we thought the car could handle, and we took it.
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