The Daredevils

by Gary Amdahl

  After inquiring politely in Jules’s office, he made his way across the gallery and down the stairs into the shop, then across that room, passing men he now knew by and large to be other than what and whom they appeared to be, walking swiftly but awkwardly with a self-consciousness that was like a great weight on his shoulders, his legs strangely stiff, his face suggesting an errand the goal of which he could not keep straight from the one thing he must avoid at all costs. He made his way around the glass display case and walked past the cash register to the dirty red curtain, which he parted clumsily and carried with him one or two steps down the aisle of spare parts. He walked with an air of complete freedom that was thoroughly but incompetently, amateurishly feigned through the back rooms until he found a way, a way different than the one Vera had used the first time, down into the cellar and through its milky, oily darknesses to the door of the room that held the press.

  This door hung slightly but heavily ajar, the seam a less oily, more milky light than that in which he stood. He pressed against the door carefully but firmly and heard the sound of weights being transferred by gears and pulleys, and, not incongruously, that of water being poured from one container to another.

  And there they were, the snow-gray jug and basin, Vera with her back to him but her face visible in the tiny cloud of the mirror. On the washstand stood a large full bottle of whiskey. Its cork lay on the floor and the burned smell of the whiskey made its own invisible little fountain over the bottle. The smell of ink and naphtha and damp paper was otherwise so strong in the milk and oil glowing around the lamp that he thought he could see particles of ink and paper floating as if in solution, microscopic bubbles of ink and motes of paper debris.

  It was all a little too vivid. They began to make small talk.

  “High grade of white,” said Charles, fingering a sheet of paper in the press tray.

  “Cost a fortune,” said Vera.

  “Smooth finish.”

  “It’s lovely paper.”

  “What made you choose Vera as a pseudonym?”

  “Vera,” said Vera, “was chosen in honor of two Russian women.”

  He smiled in friendly anticipation of an anecdote, but felt a sensation something like that of hearing a drip from a leaking roof strike the pot set below it faster and faster.

  “One Vera killed the governor of Petersburg. A General Trepov, I was told. A terrible tyrant, had a man flogged for failing to remove his cap. You know the kind of asshole. Vera sat in his waiting room with, I don’t know, a hundred other petitioners, half of them dying, the other half wishing they were dead, and when he came up to her and asked her what her complaint was, she said, ‘You are, General Trepov,’ withdrew a pistol from her cloak, and shot him dead. Then she sat back down. That’s the part I like best. Sitting back down. Twenty-four January, 1878, seventeen years to the day, as it happens, believe it or not, of my birth, in Muscatine, the Button Capital of Iowa. The other Vera was a leader of The People’s Will. She participated in some of the various attempts made on the life of Alexander II, you know, rolling a bomb under his carriage and having it roll out the other side before it exploded, stuff like that. But they got him in the end, never fear.”

  “You really know your business,” said Charles. Vera looked at him skeptically, and he said, “I mean your history.”

  Vera burst out laughing. “My business, yes indeed!” She stopped laughing rather suddenly. “Rosemary taught me everything I know. Via Jules, who had all the books in the first place. I would be a frustrated dolt without them.”

  He nodded as if he knew this to be so, strangely, because it was not flattering to Vera and he had not meant to do it. Then he turned to the press. “It’s beautiful.” He glanced at Vera in a way that suggested he was talking about her and not the press. “It’s like William Morris’s.”

  “Yes. Didn’t I say so . . .?”

  “Oh yes, you, it’s—yes. Have you read News from Nowhere?”

  “No.”

  “Well it’s a good novel if you ever have some time on your hands,” he said, a little combatively. Did he want to replace Rosemary and Jules as her tutor? He seemed so absurd to himself that for a second he thought he might jump up and run away.

  Then she was hanging in his arms and crying and they were kissing ferociously; she smelled of tobacco and tasted of salt and as they moved around the press to the bed he saw a white ashtray full of crushed and burned butts, black sprinkles of tobacco, blacker smears of tar. He became ravenous, ravening, for other deeper riper smells and slicker textures.

  Afterward he accepted a drink of whiskey. He had drunk before, but not much, had never been drunk, a little wine at table that he had to admit enlivened him rather ominously—but never drunk. Drunkards were unknown in the family and avoided publicly. It went down hard but flowed smoothly into every vein and artery of his body and at once both warmed and cooled him so that he felt satisfied and lustful, depraved and magnificent, languorous and on fire, all at once. He fumbled wanly with a cigarette and came to think that he had been wrong about alcohol and tobacco. All he needed now was a firearm—which of course were not proscribed but only easy to lay his hands on up at the ranch. Vera gave him another drink and then put the bottle out of his comically flailing reach, telling him sternly that further drinks would place his erection in jeopardy. He laughed with derisive abandon at the thought of impotence.

  Everything that had happened to him had happened long ago and far away.

  There was in fact a revolver beneath the bed but Vera kept this information to herself. In the exhausted peace that followed what seemed like a never-ending cycle of dazed orgasm and reawakened lust, in stinking darkness of the little room, in the quiet glugging of whiskey from the bottle and smacking of lips, he felt he had come to an earthy and practical understanding of everything he hadn’t been taught in school, in books, sermons, talks with Father, Mother, Alexander, Andrew. Plato and his Statesman were particularly, grievously, wrong. A hero was born to ascend the heights of human courage and ecstatic selflessness but just as surely to descend to the hell of vice, sin, squalor, and barbarism. Not to dwell there, nor strictly speaking to enjoy it, but to save good people and punish bad people. No, not even that: simply to know. It was so simple, and he glowed with gold and iron certainty of it. The lamp hissed and sputtered, the light evened and faded and died, and at some point he understood Vera had risen to shut and lock the door. Then she was beside him again and he slept for what seemed like years, dreaming of many small groups of people, all of whom seemed to know and respect him, even to look to him for guidance, as they made a serious but pleasant journey, on foot, through a hilly forest. The sound of their footsteps was somehow the most remarkable feature of the dream. Then an electric light was turned on and blinded him. He had not known there was an electric light in the room, and he was unable to think beyond the strangeness of it, certain only that he was no longer dreaming.

  It was a light for corpses, not living people.

  In the dream he felt blind and possibly dead. He became frightened. He turned his head and saw Warren Farnsworth staring at him from the doorway. The look on Farnsworth’s face was one of inscrutable grievance and Charles’s immediate reaction was to be annoyed. That was when he knew he was awake. It was, however annoying on the surface, a look he would never forget. When had he stood up? Was he naked? Farnsworth swung a blackjack high and hard into his temple, and he went down.

  If he thought that Jules would be a source of support as well as enlightenment in this new situation, he was made immediately to understand otherwise. He sat on the edge of the little bed and Jules stood over him, his finger leveled angrily at Charles’s face. This finger hovered just this side of focus and it irritated him a great deal. Jules meanwhile was trying not to shout, trying not to sputter. He had no trouble with what Farnsworth had done! He would have done the same thing in his place! A woman Charles did not know, who was wiping the blood from Vera’s face with a rag and hot water, looked up
at this. She looked angry or disgusted or defiant, and yet said nothing, returning carefully to Vera’s brow, which was split open. It was Charles, Jules said, still not quite shouting, thrusting the finger even nearer, that he had all the trouble with. He did not know what the fuck Charles was doing there. Vera, with difficulty around the rag, said that he was there because she had invited him. Jules had to wonder then what the fuck she was doing there as well. Vera stared at him, aghast, around the woman’s hands and the bloody cloth.

  “Awful lot of poor decisions made here tonight,” she sputtered furiously, “and you are going to choose mine to condemn?”

  Charles said he was there because he loved Vera. The woman shushed him, speaking clearly to him but not looking up from Vera’s wound, waiting for Jules’s hypocrisy to catch up with his anger, which it finally did. He deflated visibly and hung his head. He was ashamed of himself, he apologized, but managed to leave the room nevertheless with an air of unappeased anger. The women smoldered with scorn while the bandaging and smaller, murmuring ministrations went their full course and were, at long last, complete.

  A little while later, Jules, the woman, and Charles escorted Vera to the office of a nearby dentist who was competent to stitch flesh, and this man, though sleepy or drugged, put twelve perfect stitches over Vera’s right eye. It was then decided that drinks were in order, so they went to the Fior d’Italia and sat outside. Vera insisted on whiskey, so a bottle and a pitcher of water were brought to the little table. A glass was prepared for Charles and he drank it in a manner and at a speed that seemed commensurate with the tempo of the table, but it went with incredible speed straight to his head. He had not realized how earnestly in composure he’d been holding himself. Not one breath or flicker of muscle had been expended that was not strictly necessary. With the coursing of the whiskey, however, he began to feel as if composure were a gift of the gods, and he glowed with easy gratitude. Anxiety and tension and pain he hadn’t let himself recognize began to flow out of him, like blood from a mortal wound, and he laughed warmly and generously but quietly at whatever was being said.

  “He had no business being down there,” Vera said flatly but with conviction.

  “No business?” Jules wondered. “No business?”

  “Shut up, Jules,” suggested the woman quite pleasantly, whose name Charles still had neither caught nor sought.

  “We had an agreement,” said Vera, less flatly and with less conviction.

  “What sort of agreement?” asked the woman.

  “No doubt,” said Jules breezily, “an unspoken one.”

  “Shut up, Jules,” said Vera.

  “That room,” the woman reminded Jules, “was until very recently a room about which there was an unspoken agreement on which lives depended.”

  “Until very recently. More recently it’s become a room about which agreements can be negotiated. Pretty much on the spot. If need be.”

  The women reserved their answers and the table was quiet for a moment. Conversations from other tables washed in as if the table were a container being filled. Then Charles told Jules to shut up, even though he hadn’t actually said anything. The table became so quiet that it seemed it had in fact been filled with a viscous liquid. Lacking the bearings his ears might have provided, he lost himself and had difficulty focusing on his companions. Once he thought he’d looked them all in the eye, he shrugged in a kind of apology and said it was a matter of comic timing. One feels a rhythm that one cannot resist.

  “That is my room,” said Vera, her teeth angrily clenched.

  “It is,” said the woman. “He’s got no business appearing there, as it were, on your doorstep assuming rights and privileges he does not have.”

  “Never has had and never will have,” said Vera. “Whatever the fuck he may think about it.”

  “You’re his girl, Vera. You can’t pretend—”

  “I am not his girl!”

  “Vera, look, no, of course you’re not ‘his,’ but he thought so, and you know he thought so. You let him think so, isn’t that right?”

  “No, that is not right.”

  “I think that’s right,” said Jules.

  “Shut up, Jules,” Charles said again.

  Jules turned on him instantly and had his nose almost touching Charles’s nose. “Tell me to shut up one more time and I’ll make you suck your own cock, you understand me?” He was speaking softly, but visibly trembling.

  Charles looked away with a sneer, but felt the woman touch his arm, and looked back.

  “Tell me you understand me.”

  “It was a joke.”

  “Do you understand me?”

  “Yes,” Charles said, not sobering up exactly but gaining some purchase he hadn’t realized he’d lost. “I, um, yes, I understand you. I apologize. I am sorry and I understand you, loud and clear. I—”

  “Thank you. Where was I?”

  “It’s all timing,” said Charles. “My timing’s off. That’s all. Don’t get so—”

  “Vera is not Warren’s girl, no matter what Warren thinks,” the woman reminded everybody.

  “Underwear in a fucking bundle over some piddly little thing like timing—”

  “He doesn’t own me. Where does he get off thinking he owns me? Where the fuck does he get off thinking that?”

  “The Revolutionary Catechism, maybe,” the woman couldn’t resist saying.

  “I thought we were done with that horseshit,” said Vera.

  “Oh, we are,” said the woman.

  Suddenly Vera was shouting and crying. “I CAN TELL YOU I AM DONE WITH THAT HORSESHIT!”

  “We are all equal and we are all free,” said the woman very quietly, more or less into Vera’s ear, and Vera quieted down. Jules took a drink and then Vera took one. After a moment, in which he was obsessed with notions of timing, Charles took one.

  “I’ve got to read this Revolutionary Catechism,” he said. No one said anything, either in reproach or agreement or even indifference, and he pulled the bottle over again. It was a prop. He poured himself, ever so carefully, a drink, and ever so carefully slid the bottle back to the center of the table. He drank the drink with careful savoir faire and sat back judiciously.

  “It’s got absolutely fucking nothing to do with the fucking Revolutionary Catechism,” said Jules. “He’s a man and he thought you were his girl. He’s a lonely guy and he leads a pretty rugged life. He does all the shit work and he thought you respected that more than the rest of us do.”

  “I did,” said Vera. “I do.”

  “He probably thought you were not only his girl but a refuge.”

  “All that is true but I AM NOT HIS FUCKING GIRL!” Vera was shouting again. “I’VE GOT TWELVE FUCKING STITCHES IN MY HEAD! IS THAT WHAT A GUY DOES TO HIS FUCKING REFUGE?”

  “YES!” shouted Jules.

  “HE PRACTICALLY BASHED MY SKULL OPEN! I SUPPOSE HE CAN FUCKING KILL HIS FUCKING GIRL AND YOU WILL BUY HIM WHISKEY AND CIGARS TO CHEER HIM UP!”

  “I’m not here to defend him,” said Jules, shutting down abruptly.

  “No?” asked the still nameless woman.

  “I am here to say he is thinking certain thoughts and will continue thinking certain thoughts and we all had best take those thoughts and beliefs into account in order that they not have permanent consequences.”

  “If I see him again, I’ll fucking kill him,” said Charles.

  “He’s probably saying the same thing. Where does that leave us?”

  “All right now,” said the woman. “You’re drunk. Shut up.”

  “I’m drunk?” Charles asked. “Because my timing is off you think—”

  “You’re drunk, Chuckles,” said Jules. “And if I’m not mistaken, it’s the first time. You got fucked and you got drunk and now it’s beddy-bye time. Back up to your palace on the heights, looking out over your glittering little city by the sea.”

  White-hot anger flared up in Charles. It was so sudden and so strong that it took him by surprise
and he could not properly direct it. But his face became a neutral mask of its own accord and he said he did not have any trouble sorting out the ethics of their little situation. He said he would fuck up the little prick if he saw him again. He said he would kick the little bully’s ass until his spine snapped and then he would roll him in a ball, stuff him through the hole in an outhouse, and piss on him. He admitted he was drunk and that his timing was off but asked his friends to fully describe what aspect particularly of that condition troubled them so. He was able for the first time in his fucking life to say what was on his mind, do what he felt like doing, and if that offended their dainty anarchism, well, he could live with that. He launched himself into a dramatic lecture on the classics because it struck him as a spectacularly appropriate thing to do. That was to say: spectacular and appropriate at the same time. He was a Platonic Republican Gone Mad. Did that make any sense to them? No? Jules said he knew Plato as a fellow who kept the cards pretty close to his vest, oftentimes said what he meant but said he didn’t really mean it, and vice versa. Sometimes he’s talking about the state, sometimes he’s talking about the soul, liked to talk about Ideal Forms but was seriously involved in smoky backroom politics in Syracuse.